Kawa's Attempts at Self Discovery and Squick

It was a good week or so later that Twilight Sparkle visited me in the cheap motel I had taken residence in. It wasn’t easy to get there – I had to get my hooves on some money first so I could rent a room in the first place, but dammit if I didn’t! At the time Twilight arrived, I was just sketching all sorts of things on a shitload of paper I’d nabbed from various locations.

“Come in”, I said when Twilight knocked on the door.

“Hello, Kawa. I thought I’d see how my favorite not-so-homeless bum was holding up. What’re you doing?”

“Designing a computer”, I replied flatly, focusing on the complete bullshit in front of me. “But b‘fo that I’ve been practicing writin’n’drawin’ with my mouth.”

Twilight levitated a random page in front of her. It was, I noticed, a drawing of her and Rarity having tea.

“This is pretty good for somepony who still had to learn it just one week ago”, she complimented.

“I could draw before that. Just not wi… I should shut up now.”

Twilight was silent for a few seconds at my refusal to finish that sentence and put the drawing back. “So… what kind of computer are you working on?”

“Doesn’t really matter”, I replied as I worked on adapting seven-bit ASCII to Equestrian, optimizing some useless historical garbage as I went. “I just need something to… occupy ma mind, y’no?”

Twilight nodded in supposed understanding.

“There’s three things I really need”, I announced as I stood up.

“There are”, Twilight corrected.

“Up yours. One: a good drink”, I started to list, pointing at a small variety of different sodas. “Two: a computer, or somethin’ else to keep me busy. So I thought I’d combine the two. Three: a good fuckin’, and four a bath.”

“You said there were four things”, Twilight remarked.

“Yeah but then I stood up and all this musk got… released", I explained. “Can’t believe you got me on that and not the third thing.”

“Well yeah”, Twilight admitted as she sorta scuffed her hooves against the floorboards. “I can understand that need, really. Who doesn’t need some intimacy now and then?”

I snickered a bit at her choice of words. “What?” she said.

“Now and then, you say”, I quoted as I slowly turned around to face her, an unintended predatory grin hidden below the rim of my hat, my active eye staring right at Twilight. The words came out fluent and dark, my Dutch accent all but buried under a practiced movie-style American English. “Now and then. Do you have any idea what it’s like, Miss Sparkle, to have both an unhealthily large libido, strrrict personal principles on relationships, and a crippling lack of self-esteem and thus nopony to have such a relationship with?”

She took a careful step back.

“Not from personal experience, I don’t”, she replied softly.

As if a switch had been thrown, the entire scary persona dropped, leaving just the regular me in its place. Though, to be honest, so many appearances are an act, I often feel like I’m not sure what the real me is like. But this is close enough.

I slumped to the floor.

“Drives a guy completely whacko”, I whispered as I turned back around, flopped onto this cheap-ass bed and assumed an approximation of the fetal position, to try and softly cry into the pillow. Again, I couldn’t possibly tell you how much of that was an act.

That must be kinda like how Peter Sellers must’ve felt.

Behind me, Twilight stuck around to check out the designs I made. I had the aforementioned “ESCII” code sheet, some machine code operand lists (not too many cos I like taking RISCs), a schematic view showing how the program code and data would share the same memory space… all it was missing was a physical design, cos I had not the second clue how these ponies could possibly implement such things.

The first clue I did have was that maybe gems and magic charges were the key, which I had duly noted.

Hidden at the bottom of the clusterfuck-that-would-be-a-stack was a sheet with what the design could be called. I basically spent an hour or so thinking up horse puns on “von Neumann” and “Princeton”. There was, of course, a big ol’ sloppy circle around “von Newmare”. I’d given it bonus points for being horrible.

“This is really very interesting, you know”, Twilight remarked. “Having the instructions and values share the same space… wouldn’t that let instructions write more instructions?”

“Yeah, ‘n change existing ones too, if you need to. But… as much as I’d love to stick around ‘n talk tech, I think I should… I dunno, go out and, eh… explore town a bit?”

“Maybe you should. You’ve been cooped up in here for quite a while now, so maybe you should go out and make some friends.”

I looked up and gave the unicorn a derpy Kubrick stare from under my hat.

“That’s rich, comin’ from you.”

Twilight snorted. “Just… get out of here, okay?”

“I’ll get my coat.”

A few minutes later, I found myself wandering through Ponyville. As I tried to locate some waypoints and important locations, I spotted one specific pony sitting at a café with a drink. The one pony I had consistently proclaimed best pony.

Cheeri-motherfucking-lee.

I took a moment or two to collect myself. I could do this! It was Cheerilee, and even if she didn’t have the radical 80’s look anymore, she was still best pone and as Celestia was my witness I would—

--completely lose my kung-fu grip on my train of thought and watch helplessly as it once again derailed and went on a disastrous rampage, nearly picking off a washed-out secret agent and finally coming to a full but crumpled stop at Total Loser Pussy Central Station.

I could almost feel the color drain from my face as I ducked into an alleyway and dropped down with my back against the wall.