"Halictin! There is no escape from the hive!" A young changeling was running through a dark, warping wasteland as a great and terrible voice rang through his entire body. Behind him, the charred hive he once called home twisted and bent, crawling towards him like a sinister slinky. Suddenly, he tripped on a burrow in the ground that he was sure was not there a second ago. He screamed, the hive approaching. He was sure it was right above him, and his scream melted into a sob as the shadow around him grew.

Suddenly, it stopped, the hive exploding into light as a large pony appeared in the air between him and the former hive. It was no ordinary pony, it was the Princess of the Moon. He looked up at the Princess, even meeting her gaze, then suddenly, a great "BEEP" emanated from her, and she turned away, disappearing. For a moment, Halicitin lay still, uncertain of what happened. Just as he came to the realization that this was a dream, the floor beneath him dissolved, and he awoke with a shout.

Princess Celestia knew instantly that her sister had invaded her dream, and she turned towards Luna, eyeing her fellow princess with uncertainty.

"Why do you come here, to my dreams, sister?" asked Celestia. "I cannot recall the last time you've done this."

"Well, sister," admitted Luna, "I have a long night ahead-"

"BEEP!" sounded Luna's computer, somehow echoing into the dream world. Luna disappeared for a few seconds, then returned as if nothing had happened.

"Oh," realized Celestia, "So that must be what your package was. Why not just stick with PC-DOS?"

"They're coming out with a new version of Greifenstein 3D," argued Luna, "Just for OS/2!"

"BEEP!" Luna looked surprised, noting,

"That was fast. I think it's almost done. I wonder why I've used not a quarter of the disks."

Luna returned to the physical world again, seeing her computer ask what hardware she had. She noticed the background was patterned now, and the computer mouse now reacted with a digital pointer that made it quite easy to proceed. After two screens of hardware selection, the computer now asked Luna for what software she would want. She noticed, and nearly squeed in joy at seeing the "WIN-OS2" feature; Luna could still play Greifenstein 3D even before the updated release came out!

She accepted nearly every feature available, it was not like two whole gigabytes of storage were gonna go anywhere.

The computer asked for the next disk, she frowned.

Luna returned to Celestia's dream, and the latter shook her head, asking, "So it wasn't as done as you presumed, was it?"

It was not. Luna did not need to state so for her to know.

"Are you sure there are no other ponies whose dreams you need to visit?" asked Celestia.

"I only saw one," said Luna, "I took care of it."

"And in what way did you do that?" pressed Celestia.

"Well, this glitterbug- I mean changeling was having a nightmare about the old Changeling Hive, the whole hive was after him, so I just blocked it from getting to him, then I left."

"And did you… get to the root issue?"

"Well, it was rather abstract, I would have to see through it for a couple of nights before I could really get a proper-"

"BLIP!" interrupted Luna's computer again.

"That was shorter than last time," noted Celestia, but Luna was already gone.

This time, she was not back for almost a minute, but just as Celestia prepared to go back to playing the story of her dream, Luna returned, announcing, "Yep! Not a single nightmare left. You should be happy that it is so. You once had to fill my hooves, it is not easy."

"No, I suppose you're right," returned Celestia. "However, may I get to my dream?"

"Ah, of course, sister," said Luna. Celestia almost felt bad for giving a sigh of relief as her sister faded away.

As the first signs of dawn crept through the windows, something felt wrong to Princess Luna. Perhaps she had just grown used to the repetitive insertion of diskettes and waiting for loading bars, but now, one night later- or, for all she knew, perhaps it had already been two nights and a day- it was asking for Diskette 1, and it was asking which drive it was in.

Warily, she replaced the diskette with Installation Diskette 01, and, having remembered some time back that the computer had referenced it as the A drive, she told the computer it was in drive A. The computer beeped at her, and she tried Drive B. The computer beeped at her, and she tried Drive C. The computer beeped at her, and she remembered a different Diskette 01. She levitated the FI Disk 01, and horrifyingly, it was accepted. The computer beeped, asking for Diskette 02.

The sky outside was dark again, and at first Luna was sure night had already fallen as she toiled through the installations, but a sharp cracking noise made her realize that a storm had arrived. Another crack of what now registered in her mind as thunder rang through the castle, and suddenly a shower of sparks filled the room, and her monitor went dead.

Luna nearly leapt forward, shouting, "No! Come back to me, computer!" She slammed the computer with her hooves, pouring magic at it in a futile attempt to- she wasn't even sure what she was trying to achieve. Sobbing, she looked up as the lights returned, and she dared toggle her computer's power, but the damage was far worse than just halting her progress.

Her computer would not turn on.

Author's Note

Originally, DOOM was gonna be mentioned, but I thought Greifenstein 3D would be funnier because 1. it's a parody instead of just a direct nod, and 2. Equestria at War reference.

Also, the downer ending is because I am literally installing OS/2 while writing this and AAAH it actually takes this long, I'm sorry, but I can't go on.