An Infinite Loop

The 'DL' symbol flashed on my screen. I put my headphones on and answered the call. "Hi Devon!"

His usual greeting started as suddenly as it stopped: "Hey." However many meetings and calls I'd had with him, he'd never said anything different, unless it was nothing at all. He continued, "So. Let's look at it."

"Alright, sharing my screen now," I said, giving myself some time to move the cursor up to the 'share screen' button. After I clicked it, and the screen finished fighting with itself, I was met with a hum.

"Hmmm. What's your zoom level?"

"Um." I didn't know what that meant. "My what?"

"The zoom level of your browser."

"Um." I still didn't know what that meant, but I knew enough to know there was probably an answer in the internet settings, so I moved the cursor over to that button and clicked on it. I hazarded a guess, "I think it's normal?"

He said absently, "two hundred percent," I assumed reading from something on my screen. My eyes found it - there in the settings, with a plus and minus symbol next to it.

"Is that bad?"

"Not if it works for you. What was the issue again?"

"Right - I can't create this bug report." I moved the cursor to close the settings and show the full page again. "The page won't move to show the 'create' button, so I can't, you know... create it." Saying it out loud made me feel stupid.

Devon was always super busy. I wondered how he felt dealing with my stupid problems - other than confused, which was obvious. "What do you mean it won't move?"

"I normally make the page move down with this button -" I pressed the button with the triangle symbol on it. Well, it was one of the buttons with the triangle symbol on it. The one with the point facing down. "The down button," I remembered, since he couldn't see what button I was pressing. "But it doesn't work on this page."

"Hmmmmmm," came the humming again. He went quiet, but I heard some button presses on his side, and a moment later the 'share screen' menu went away and I was looking at Devon's screen instead.

It was always impressive watching him work. Not just because he was smart - though he was, in that quiet-genius way where you couldn't follow his train of thought until it had already arrived at its station - but also because of his mastery of the mouse-and-keyboard. His cursor flicked across the screen faster than I could follow it, and he typed faster than he could talk. Maybe even faster than I could talk, and I could talk way faster than he could.

In no time at all, he'd found his way to the same page I was at, and he'd changed his settings so it looked the same as on my screen. "Okay, so you can't move the page down..."

"That's right."

I heard a few button presses, but nothing changed on his page. He must have been pressing the down button.

Then he did something that made the page look really weird and complicated - it was divided in two, with the bottom half coloured dark with white text in another language written on it. His cursor poked at the text, and I heard more button presses.

"I see," he said, almost... gleeful. I could hear the smile in his voice. "It doesn't work on this page."

That sounded like what I'd described, but his tone was strange. "What doesn't?"

"Keyboard panning. You'll have to use the scroll wheel."

"Oh." That I understood. "I don't have one."

"You- you don't?"

"Yeah, I have to use a special mouse, and it doesn't-"

"Oh right. No problem." His page went back to normal, and his cursor flicked to the edge of the screen, where it pointed at a skinny grey bar. "You can use the scroll bar instead. Should still work."

I didn't see anything that looked like a scroll bar, but I tried to memorize what he'd done, and thanked him regardless. "That's great, thank you so much!"

"No problem," he replied flatly, as he always replied to that sort of thing, and somehow he managed to almost squeeze it into two syllables. "Hopefully that helps."

"It does, thank you!"

"Great."

A second passed. That's right, he never said goodbye first either. "Bye!"

"Later."

The call ended.

I sighed, and took off my headset. The call had only lasted six minutes and he'd solved the problem that had been stumping me all morning. I knew he was smart, and good at this stuff. I knew that. But it didn't make me feel any better.

I went to a mall cafeteria for dinner before heading home, as usual, but the usual server at the noodle place I liked wasn't there. It was someone else - too impatient to be new, I figured. Our schedules just hadn't crossed before. I had to explain all over again how my BitCard worked. You'd think if a pony could figure it out, a human should have no problem. Just scan it! Then I had to assure them I didn't need any help carrying my food to my table. The way they looked when I levitated it, you'd think it was the first time they'd seen a unicorn, but that seemed unlikely considering the cafeteria had those weird plastic half-seats the humans gave to ponies in lieu of pillows.

To be fair, maybe it was their first time seeing my kind. I couldn't stay mad about it. It was just tiring going through this whole routine every time I had to buy something from somepony new. And maybe humans had similar trouble with ponies who weren't used to their world and all its... things.

In that respect I didn't have much to complain about. All the big problems had been sorted out before I arrived, and the worst of the unfamiliarity was behind me. This place wasn't home, but it was comfortable, more or less.

While slurping my noodles and people-watching, I couldn't help but notice another pony in the mall, passing by. She was dark-purple with reddish hair and wore a gray scarf over a black turnout. But it wasn't her outfit that caught my attention.

Well, it was the fact she was another pony, firstly. Even in a tunnel town there had to be more than a hundred humans for every pony, since they're the ones who'd been living here all along in the first place. It was the same in reverse on the Equestrian side. But more than that, and more than her size - she was quite tall, probably taller than some stallions - was the way she carried herself. She moved with a sense of belonging and purpose. She was on top of the world looking down. The humans in the crowd made way for her.

Eventually she passed into the distance, and I couldn't keep staring at her like I was, but I kept wondering. Was she some kind of celebrity? I didn't know if any ponies had gotten famous on Earth, but I knew some ponies who were famous at home had kept their fame here, too, even discounting the Princesses and such. Maybe she was like that. Or she just acted the part and strangers behaved accordingly. If that was the case, I was a bit envious.

At least I had my noodles.

I still hadn't heard a good explanation for why the humans didn't do Winter Wrap-Up. What was the point of freezing weather for nearly half the year? They couldn't grow crops, all their machines needed extra work done or else they break, and going outside for anything sucked. Probably more for them, since their coats were so thin, but by the time I got into bed I was still thawing. I'd heard it was different in other parts of the world - nearer the bottom the seasons were reversed, with summer taking winter's place and vice versa; while nearer the middle there was no summer or winter, nor spring or autumn, but simply a wet season and a dry season. It all seemed silly to me. But I was a pony.

I opened HoofPrint and right away swiped left on some humans. I could have set my preferences to exclude them entirely, since I just wasn't that interested, but they were the ones who'd invented dating sites in the first place, so I could learn a thing or two. Sometimes I did.

More went left. Even some ponies. It wasn't healthy to do this so late at night when I felt so awful about myself, but I did it anyway. The swipes were as shallow as they were easy. Coat a shade too green? Left. Cheekbones slightly asymmetrical? Left. Broken horn? L-

"Oh shit," I said, out loud, to my empty room. That was her - the mare from the mall. I couldn't see it at the time, but she had a huge battle-scar down one eye, and a broken horn, ending in a jagged edge halfway up. I'd known some ponies who had broken their horns, but they usually capped it so it would look normal. This mare hadn't done that. It was just... like that. Like she was unafraid of showing it. Like she was proud of it. Looking past that - or not - she looked like she belonged on a movie poster. That would explain the celebrity vibe I got from her earlier.

I couldn't swipe left on her. But I couldn't swipe right, either. She wasn't the kind of pony you could just trot up to and chat with. What would I even write? "Hay?" Not a chance.

So I left her unswiped. It took another long moment of staring at her profile image before I noticed she had a name: Fizzlepop Berrytwist. Hints of a spiral, like my name, but it didn't seem too fitting. Then again, I wasn't sure if mine was, either.

If she really was famous, I could search her on the internet and find out what for. But that didn't feel right either. And it meant I'd have to close HoofPrint and stop looking at her for a moment.

I didn't feel like doing that.