Kindle in Equestria
By: The Grey Pegasus
= Chapter 1-Shot =
Twilight Finds a Kindle
"What… is this thing?"
Twilight held aloft an object in her magical grasp. Nearly every aspect of the thing was unknown to her. Currently, all she knew was that she had been walking up to her loft to do some studying before turning in for the night, when she found this new item sitting on a pillow on her bed. It appeared to be a grey rectangle. To learn more beyond that, she would have to step closer to it and give it a more in-depth inspection.
When she picked it up, she was able to create a few more initial observations. Firstly, it was a light… object. It was fairly thin, and it was made of a material that seemed to be plastic. The word 'kindle' was written on both flat sides of the object, along with many more smaller inscriptions at the bottom on what appeared to be the backside. On what she presumed was the front side, there was an image of a similar object, and in the picture, the object had what looked to be a page of a book imprinted in the middle rectangular area.
She couldn't speculate as to what it could quite mean. The alien object was still confusing to her. But perhaps there were secrets that she could find out about it. Yes! A systematic sequence of making observations should eventually lead to answers!
"Hmm… if the outside alone can't tell me anything, maybe something inside it can!" Twilight figured. She probed the innards of it with magic, and was clearly surprised at what she discovered. "There's no magic, but many, many small electrical currents!" Twilight continued to feel it, and further refined her conclusion. "Oh wow! This is amazingly complex! Though there's hundreds of small electric currents, as random as they may seem, there's actually an order to it! Amazing! Oh, I can't wait to find out what this does!"
With that revelation, Twilight needed to find out how to activate this… device. Yes, it was a device of some sort. Something had to happen with the electrical… circuits she sensed inside, and it surely wasn't for magic. Sure, she could probably siphon the charges for arcane purposes, but something told her that it was definitely not the intended purpose.
"Maybe there's something on the outside surfaces that activates it?" Twilight gently put her hoof along the smooth surfaces, and her instinctual action was to go for anything that was not flush with the surface. On the front, there were four black lines below the large rectangular picture area. Running her hoof over it, it gave a small, resounding 'click'.
"A button most likely!" the purple unicorn exclaimed. Excited, she pressed it again, but this time also scanning the inside of the device as well. "Well, it's definitely a button. But for what function? It... didn't change anything."
Not letting the lack of any noticeable event discourage her, Twilight continued to scrutinize the object. Coming to the bottom, she noticed quite an interesting assortment of... things. From left to right, there was a sort of socket, a small ridge, a circular socket, another small ridge, and finally, a rectangular… button. The last item appeared to be yet another button. Curious, Twilight put a hoof to it, tapping it with the edge of her hoof.
"Maybe this will do something?" Not even a second after asking her question out loud, she got her response. On the rectangular area where there was a picture, a new image appeared. Twilight squealed in glee at finally making progress to unlocking this strange, newly arrived alien device's secrets. Then a slight frown fell on her face when she read the words.
"Enter passcode... What?!" It appeared that at this stage, 'unlocking' would also be in the literal sense. "A passcode?! Actually, that's quite genius if there's anything private on here, but UUGGGHH." Twilight looked at it more closely. "There's numbers on there, so it's a code using numbers... okay." Then a thought struck her. "There's numbers, but how does it want me to enter it? There's no other buttons for selecting.. What does it want me to do, touch it?"
In partial frustration and to prove to herself that it was a ridiculous idea, she touched the number '0'. The number appeared in the box above the numbers, before changing to an indiscriminate dot. "WHAT?!" Twikight placed the item down on her bed for a moment and just stood staring at it for a little bit.
"That… actually worked?… What?…Whaaat?" After a couple moments of staring in astonishment, the unicorn decided it was time to get over her reaction and move on. "Spectacular! But now this leaves me at the part where I enter the correct passcode. How do I do that?"
Twilight brainstormed for ideas on how to discover said code, coming to a logical conclusion after not very long. "Hmm… If this functions through touching this surface, maybe I can cast a spell that displays past points of contact! Yes, that should do it!" Once again joyous at her progress, Twilight casted the correct corresponding spell, and rejoiced when it actually showed results. "It worked! It actually worked! Now… the major points of contact in this area seem to be on the 1, 2, 6, and 0, as well as that thing to the left of the 0 with an 'x' in it that seems to be pointing right, and to the right of the 0, it says 'OK'. Okay then! That narrows it down!"
She went through around five combinations before the code was accepted. "I found the correct passcode! Yes, yes, yes!" Twilight clapped her hooves together in triumph. She returned her eyes to the device. "Hmm… Something about an application unexpectedly closing… I wonder what that means. Maybe I'll find out later." She tapped the 'close' button and the small message box disappeared, leaving a menu of items to choose from.
With the device now open for exploration, Twilight once again observed the items in the image. There was a list of words, such as 'Reference', 'School', and 'Story'. "I suppose this is the main directory," Twilight noted to herself. There were also a few other things that appeared to be interactive, such as a space near the top that said 'Search' and to the right of that, a box that said 'Menu'. However, as she was already subconsciously mesmerized by the words 'Reference' and 'Story', she mentally put off tapping on those until later.
Deciding that she had probably already done enough research for the day, Twilight tapped her hoof on the word 'Story' and picked a random item in the selections afterwards. Twilight held a smile that could rival Pinkie's shortly afterwards.
"Is that… what I think it is?! It is! It's a page of a book, but not in a book! Now, according to how intuitive the controls are for this thing, the next page should be accessible through a natural motion, such as… maybe simulating turning a page with a hoof?" Twilight did as she told herself, and tested her hypothesis which she knew would most likely would be right. And lo and behold, with a smooth motion of her hoof, appeared the next page on the display.
Twilight put the device down for a moment to give some gratitude to some divine force. "Oh great universe, thank you for bestowing upon me this incredible innovative item. I can already tell that it is made for ones like me. And I apologize for sounding as dramatic as Rarity." With the show of thanks finished, Twilight returned to the alien object.
"Hmm... I should probably call this something. Or maybe it's simply called a 'Kindle'. I'm sure that word isn't all over this thing for nothing." And so, Twilight decided it would be referred to as a 'Kindle', as it was probably dubbed that originally. "Now, all this discovering is exciting, but I think it's time for a good read…"
<<+>>
Three days later
"Hey Twilight, are you sure that you're still not going to send Princess Celestia a letter about that thing?"
"Later, Spike. I'm not done studying it." Twilight continued to keep her attention on the Kindle.
"Not even a short one to notify her or anything?"
"Why? It's not like it's dangerous or anything. I'm sure it could wait."
"Remind me again why it's better than books?"
"Well, obviously there's the size advantage. This electronic book, or e-book, as I've coined it due to it's characteristics and functions, it's visibly a lot thinner and smaller than a book. Next to that, it can contain multiple books without taking up too much space. Granted, it's memory, as I've found out, can only hold so much, but I've been trying to figure out how to possibly increase it through magical means." As Twilight recited her explanation, her hoof touched the display a few times.
Spike looked puzzled. "Uh, can you run that by me again?"
"This is basically a self-contained library. Like a real library, it can only hold so much, but because it's not strictly physical, I figured that maybe I can modify it to hold more electronic books."
"Wow… But how'd you figure out it couldn't hold more than a certain amount?"
"Oh! I found a manual that I could download, which is apparently the term for taking one of these e-books from a sort of library, and it told me nearly everything I needed to know about the Kindle! Which was really fortunate, because I also found out that the little icon at the top right tells how much energy this still has before running out. Because of that, I found a simple way to recharge it before it had a chance to run out! Apparently, wherever this originated from didn't have any magic, but instead relying on developing advanced technology. But since there's magic here, I was able to make use of that advantage and just use magic to recharge it's power supply!" Twilight glanced at Spike with an accomplished expression on her face.
"Geez, that's amazing, Twilight!" Then a realization struck the unicorn's assistant. "Wait, so if that thing's basically a library on it's own, then what'll you do with all the books? What'll you do with me?!"
Twilight just looked at the dragon and laughed. "Spike, don't be so silly. We live in a library, remember? That means other ponies come to borrow books? Just because I have this," she said, motioning to the Kindle, "doesn't mean the books are going. Sure, I may not use them as often, but the ones I can get off of the library on this don't have anything of Equestrian origin, so I'm still going to have to refer to the books often. At least until I figure out a way to get my books onto here…"
"Oh."
"As for you, well, you're still gonna have to arrange bookshelves. And send my letters to Princess Celestia," Twilight stated.
"Oh yeah. I forgot about that," Spike admitted.
"You can be so silly sometimes," Twilight said with a smile.
"Yeah, yeah. You know, I still haven't gotten a good look at that thing. You've been reading on it ever since you found it."
"Alright, Spike, what do you want to know? I personally haven't even gotten far into the other functions of this thing. The history books about this race called 'humans' are fascinating! I don't want to stop reading!"
It was Spike's turn to laugh. "Yeah, that sounds exactly like you, Twilight."
Twilight chuckled along and rolled her eyes. She looked back at the Kindle. "So what would you like to know, Spike?"
Her little dragon assistant looked at the display. It was currently at the main directory, where all the books were sorted into their respective categories. "Whoa. That's really cool. But you've been reading all this for the past few days, so what about that 'Menu' thing at the top?"
Twilight tapped on it, bringing up a new interface. "Now what do you want to see?"
A certain word caught Spike's eye. "Ooh! Experimental! I wonder what's in that?!"
"I don't know," Twilight declared as she tapped that selection, all the way at the bottom of the list. "I haven't gone there yet, since I've still been reading."
The new screen displayed a few things. At the top seemed to be a notification from the developers. "We are currently working on these experimental prototypes. Do you find them useful?…" Twilight kept reading it. Once she finished, there were three items left, and all appeared to be interactive. At the top was 'Web Browser', below that was 'MP3 Player', and lastly, at the bottom, was
I don't know why you would stop writing in the middle of a sentence, but the item you were looking for was 'Text-to-Speech'.
Oh yeah! Hi every…one! Right! Everyone! Now, I'm not exactly sure why I'm writing all my thoughts down; actually, I think it's justified, since this is first-…person narration. I'm sure it would make more sense in first-person, as it's like talking directly to you. Third-person would be weird, and I don't really think it would sound good narrating my own actions. Unless I was Trixie. (By the way, interesting explanation you have for her, Grey. I guess it is possible that Trixie was acting like that because it's her job as a stage magician.)
Right! So anyway, it's me, Twilight! Yeah! And this story was the first thing Spike and I saw when we tapped 'Web Browser'. Personally, I find it strange that you had all my processes written down to the spot! Then again, you said that according to a personality test, I was your closest match out of all six of us. Element bearers, that is, but I'm sure you all knew that anyways. I suppose all you did was write down what you would logically do in this situation.
Still, that brings me to the next point. It's really creepy how the first… website (right, that's the correct term) I'm on is dedicated to making stories about us and Equestria. (Also weird was that book sharing my namesake about vampires, and, uh, the 'sparkle' part. I'm sure that can't be a coincidence… but I digress). After getting over the shock of the realization of this place, I started reading around! Wow there's a lot of romance stories about us… (Among many other things of course. Such as sending us off to war, Grey…)
What kept me sane was the theory of multiverses, where anything imaginable is real, somewhere. Thus, I was able to accept the strangeness of this situation and continue on! Now, you might think that it wouldn't be comforting, as that means every story on here, and many others, would exist, meaning I could read hundreds of different ways that my friends and I come to a demise (and apparently Rainbow is very susceptible to death. Maybe I'll tell her some of these, and see if she gets a kick out of it). But no, it's only slightly unsettling. Once you know about the multiverse theory, you already know that you're warranted to have horrible lives in some of them. But it's not my problem! I'm in a universe where everything's going normally!
Oh, I would also tell you what happened in the Crystal Empire, but I'm sure you can all wait a few more weeks. Hee hee.
Anyways, I started reading around this place. There really are some great things. Then I remembered that I was on someone else's account… with an unfinished story about me and this whole experience. I guess this is why you stopped. You didn't have this to finish it. Or you stopped, and when you came back, this was gone. I can't be sure, as I don't know how much time has passed for you.
From there, I reread your story, contemplating whether I should add things to your part above. I decided against it, since ponies don't really like others tampering with their work. And because you're like me, I would guess that you especially wouldn't like others altering your work without permission.
Therefore, I learned all the functions of the writing interface and wrote this section! I also made the sensible choice to use the automatic page break tool, instead of that fancy symbol you usually use. Since I'm writing now, I'm doing it my way: being efficient. However, I will try and hope that the automatic indent button works.
About the part where I considered adding on to your established content. There wasn't much description about me going through all those reading and discovering. I would've guessed that that would be central to this, obsessing over my tendency to read and all. Then I figured it out: not only would it have been boring, but it is hard to type on this Kindle! I also wondered why you went through all this trouble when you could have just used your laptop, but I guess it was a self-challenge to try and write it on the device featured in the story.
Also, I don't even know how I can get internet connection interdimensionally. But apparently there is. Let's just hoofwave that. I'm not sure I want to try and figure it out.
So! I'm going to stay here until you tell me to log off. I'll respect whichever decision.
~ Twilight Sparkle
P.S. And no, you can't blame the 700 Read Laters and 736 Unread Chapters on me. That's still your fault.
