And Not Just the Social Media Sites...
“Hey there, Pipsqueaks! I’m streaming to you live from the castle's luxurious day spa. The water’s fine and I wish you could all jump right in with me!”
Pipp smiled as a stream of likes and hearts flowed up from her phone, as well as generous donations of bits. Ponies had been asking her to do this for a long time, after all how else would they be able to see the gorgeous royal hot tub?
She set down the phone on the edge of the tub and stretched her hooves up in the air. “Today’s stream is brought to you by Essential Pony Oil Bath Bombs! With over…” Pipp glanced to the side at her cue card. “15 lovely fragrances, and no confirmed cases of dermatitis, EPOB is happy to be Zephyr Height’s number one creator of—”
There was a beep as the camera shut off and an error message popped up. “Huh? Ponybook has a 418 error? What in Equestria? I better go to MareMareGo and search to see what that means.”
Pipp sat up in the jacuzzi and dried her hooves off on a towel. “After all, those adoring fans were really sending the love tonight.”
With a few quick taps, she switched to the phone’s Steedzilla browser and pulled up the search engine. “Wait, what’s this? A 500 error? Good grief… I guess I have no choice but to check Bing.”
She tapped a few more shortcuts and an angry beep issued forth from the phone.
“What do you mean, can not resolve Domain Name Server?”
Pipp tapped on MareTime to call Zipp and find out if she was having trouble too. The spinner spun and the page failed to load. Next she tried Nitter, maybe somepony had posted some news about this outage?
Nothing.
She climbed out of the tub and started to dry herself off. Pipp took several quick breaths and she felt anxious. “It’s okay… it’s just a short outage. I’m sure everypony will be just fine....”
Two ponies were standing on the street looking at their phones in horror. “It won’t work, what are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, do you have one of those old radios?”
“Radio? What’s that?”
Overhead one of the large TV’s that overlooked the plaza blinked to life and two newsponies appeared.
“This is Dazzle Feather with Breaking news in Zephyr Heights! The internet is down, and ponies everywhere are panicking. It has been over fifteen minutes now since Princess Pipp’s Positively Delightful spa day stream was interrupted! We go live now to Zephyrburg, CEO and founder of Ponybook!”
The camera cut to an office boardroom with frosted glass for the walls. Behind the glass, several dark shapes were seen running to and fro. There were a few flashes in the background, and the sound of a pony hitting the glass.
Zephyrburg didn’t react to the sound as he began to slowly and monotonously speak to the news anchor. “There has been a minor technical difficulty and our team of highly skilled engineers is working to fix the internet. We believe that there has been a problem in the cloud in a large series of tubes that has become backed up. If everypony remains calm we should have our entire suite of apps back online in one to forty-eight hours.”
The news station reappeared again. “There you have it Pegasi! Ponybook is hard at work trying to figure out which intern screwed the pooch! And now, over to Olly for the latest in Buckball news! Olly?”
A stallion began to excitedly shout as the camera cut over to him. “The players' badges won’t work and they can’t get out of the locker rooms. They’re gonna starve! Or suffocate!”
Suddenly the TV flickered out, replaced with a blue screen filled with tiny white text, and in large letters the code “0xDF84AC”
A squadron of Pegasi guards was circled up outside the strip mall, as ponies ran about screaming.
“I don’t know what Princess Pipp is thinking! There hasn’t been a Neigh on Nitter in hours!” one panicked mare screamed.
“Stay calm!” Thunder shouted. “Just return home, or go for a nice scenic flight!”
He turned and looked to the side to see one of the guardsmen walking out of a department store with several pairs of sneakers balanced on his back.
“Really? Looting?” He sighed and shook his head. “Queen Haven is going to be very upset.”
“How will she know? For the first time in years, nopony can record it on their phones… come on, you know you want a new pair of Hoofsies to wear around the house.” The pegasi winked.
“Ugh, fine, I’ll loot one pair if it’ll get you to quit messing around and send for reinforcements…”
Sunny, Hitch, and Izzy walked up a steep incline, avoiding the many loose rocks that were strewn along the canyon. They each had a saddlebag on, and were wearing concerned looks.
“It’s not like Zipp and Pipp to not return their calls,” Sunny stated.
“Well,” Hitch huffed as he tried to catch his breath from the long climb. “Probably just a storm. Knocked out their cell phone towers. And it’s only been one day, what could be wrong in such a short time?”
“This fog certainly is thick enough!” Izzy shot a horn blast of magic forward to try and dispel the clouds. Instead, it made them turn a dazzling shade of purple. “Oh, this fog is really stubborn!”
Sunny began the final climb up above the cloud layer. “We’re almost to the summit and then we can see what… happened…”
She stood before the two enormous buildings that flanked the bridge into Zephyr Heights. Smoke was pouring from the windows of both buildings, and Pegasi were strewn about the bridge leading into town. The air was filled with moans and whimpers from the lethargic ponies.
Hitch rushed forward to help them, and the two mares took off after him. When they got to the nearest pony, Hitch was already kneeling to help.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
The Pegasus grabbed Hitch by his bandolier. “No… bars… please, did Sprout win the Stallioncraft 2 tournament?!”
“Huh?” Hitch rubbed a hoof behind his neck in confusion.
“Just… let me die… too bored…” The pegasus slumped on the ground and poked a hoof at his phone, which was flashing with a bright red low battery indicator.
The story repeated itself as the three ponies ventured deeper into town. All around them were ponies that seemed to have lost the will to live. Glass windows in every storefront were shattered, and every electronic device looted. Several of the delis and bistros were empty with meals half eaten. Occasionally a pony would stumble past, even a guard or two, but all they could talk about was Klip Klop, Ponyfans, or Instamare being down.
“I think we’d better head to the castle and get some answers from Zipp and Pipp,” Hitch said.
“Sounds good.” Sunny replied.
“Oh, the elevator’s just past that huge fire!”
They looked where Izzy was pointing, and saw a large building with letters twenty feet tall that read “Ponybook”. The fire raged, and it seemed most of the Pegasi who weren’t in a stupor were doing their best to handle fire fighting equipment and put it out.
Sunny noticed a familiar white pony with a multi-colored mane. “Zipp!” She ran over to her side. Sitting next to her was Pipp, though her normally pink fur was stained black with soot. “What happened?”
Zipp shot a sideways glance to Sunny, while rubbing a hoof on Pipp’s back. “She tried to get inside, into the cloud, to fix her livestream…”
“How… Do I know if they like me? I haven’t talked to anypony in days…” Pipp pouted.
Zipp rolled her eyes, “One day, Pippy, it’s only been one day. And we all like you.” She looked back at Sunny. “She’s been like this ever since our internet went out.”
“All this,” Hitch waved a hoof around, “is because you didn’t have internet for a day?”
She nodded. “I’ve seen it before, but never this bad.”
As the fires subsided a figure started walking through the smoke, and out the front doors of Ponybook. Zephyrburg marched out towards the firefighters and Princess Pipp, his business suit immaculately clean and his fur unstained by the fire. He didn’t so much as smirk, his expression holding all the charm and poise of a still image of a pony whose cat had just died.
“Princess Pipp. We’ve fixed the server, and recovered your Ponybook account.” Zephyrburg tilted his head.
Pipp suddenly beamed with joy, and launched herself at him to hug him. “Oh thank you so much! Thank you!”
“You know,” Izzy said. “This is why unicorns don’t have smartphones in Bridlewood. I mean, we do play some Warpony 40k and flip tables like you wouldn’t believe, but we haven’t burnt down the town in many many moons… I think there’s an important lesson to learn here Pipp! About doing awesome stuff in moderation and—”
Pipp, totally ignoring Izzy’s sound advice, began shouting happily at her phone. “Hello there Pipsqueaks! Today we’re live streaming with Zephyrburg from the site of a five-alarm fire that consumed most of a data center!”
And slowly, as the signal went out to every Pegasus in town with battery charge left in their device, Zephyr Heights recovered before everypony’s eyes.
"And remember, like, subscribe, and ring that bell!"
Author's Note
I haven't been on a bandwagon since 2014, and I couldn't resist. I hope you enjoyed and found something to laugh at.
