Chat!

It was 8:00 a.m. in Ponyville and all seemed peaceful. The shopkeepers were opening their shops, the fillies were going to school  and Derpy was was gliding clumsily towards Twilight's house.

"There is your package, miss Sparkle, have a nice day."

"You too, Derpy." Twilight replied.

She called Spike to help her transport the package into the house because it seemed quite heavy, but he didn't answer. She entered her bedroom and found him sleeping... for some reason.

"Wake up, Spike, I need your help carrying this package inside."

Spike yawned: "Can’t you do it yourself?"

"No, and you will need to wake up anyway, so get up and help me."

However Spike answered with a groan and still didn't get up. Twilight levitated him out of the bed and placed him on the floor, then she said: "Are you still comfortable? Now go to work!".

An hour later, Spike had transported the package into the house and had breakfast. Twilight Sparkle slowly opened the box with a paper knife: She started to cut off the tape from the left to the right. When she was finished she stashed the still intact remains of the package for later use.

The completely opened  box revealed a grey block with a screen on it, a black "tower" with lots of sockets, and some kind of booklet, whose cover stated "Security- and assembly manual". The Personal Computer she had ordered the week before had arrived !

"Wow, quite a bit smaller than the computer in the basement. I wonder if it has the same functions as the old one?" She pondered before she started to assemble it.

She ordered Spike to create room for the PC on her table, and after an hour everything was ready. She read the instructions for a last time, then she powered up the computer.

The screen flashed green and words appeared on it: "Please wait, configuring boot up data. This operation won't be needed after the first start."

A small white and red bar showed the progress the machine was making.

Half an hour later Pinkie Pie arrived near Twilight's house, looking for her. She knocked on the door only for it to be opened by Spike.

Pinkie asked : "Hi Spike, where is Twilight?"

"She is trying to find out how the new computer works..."

"Oooh, can I come in?"

"Of course yes!"

Pinkie Pie entered, and saw Twilight Sparkle looking at a blue screen with a red text on it.

She walked up to her and asked "Hi Twilight! What are you doing?"

"Oh, hi Pinkie. I'm starting up my new computer. I want to tests its features, but it seems that it will take a long time, so I might start re-cataloging..."

"Or you could come play with me!"

"Ah...ahem... no, I can't, I need to re-catalogue the library..."

"Ah, well, ok, see you later!" Pinkie replied before bouncing out of the library.

An hour later, the library was reorganized and the computer was tested. Twilight asked Spike about her tasks for the day.

Spike replied that the other task were helping with the assembly of a new part of the town library.

The Human perspective:

Felix Mazzoni woke up at the 6:00 a.m., the sound of the alarm clock still ringing in ears. He was used to that routine since he was ten. He always woke up two hours early so that he wouldn’t ruin his record of perfect attendance. After all as the class’ ‘Vigilante’ he had to set an good example.

‘Vigilante’ was an honorary position given from the teachers to students who showed great feats of honesty, in-time presence, and breaking up shady dealings in the class. Basically a stigma that wrote “exclude me” on those who had to bear it.

When Felix went downstairs, he found the table was still filled with the remains of last nights dinner, leaving it to him to clear himself a place to eat. Shortly afterwards he prepared his school material, quickly started the computer, checked the emails, and shut it down again.

One minute later Felix was already on his bike, ready to reach the school ten minutes before he was due.

The path was the same everyday; a pineyard, now reduced to a pile of dead trees and (for some reasons) boars, the secondary street to the marketplace, and finally the last bit to school. That way was printed onto his retina after seeing it for dozens upon dozens of times.

Few things changed, not even the branches and the parked bikes changed their position during the week. He felt like he was caught in the ‘Truman-show’, only that the actors were more varied.

Felix arrived at school very early, half an hour before the lessons began, so he took it slow and started to think about his upcoming day.

First, dead-languages-hours AKA Latin and Greek, with a teacher who seemed drunk twenty four seven; then missionary indoctrination AKA Religion, with a professor who dressed himself like a fourteenth century preacher; and finally, Epic, which was the only decent thing all morning...

By the time he finished thinking about it, the groundkeeper opened the gates and let him in, and a few minutes later, the bell rang.

Felix finally realized why he hated working with his classmates and the reason that he allied himself with the professors instead, trying to defend his mates. The fact that he was a brony, something that seemed unacceptable to the pea-sized minds of his male classmates, who labelled him  as a "girly boy" and picked on him about it. At least he had his above average size and strength, that kept others from harming him physically, but that didn’t change the fact that they were annoying.

One of his classmates approached him, obviously looking for trouble.

"Hey, Felix, did you play with your Barbies today?"

"Well, no, and you? Did you remembered to have your daily lobotomy? It seems yes!"

"Ooh, the lady is angry!"

"And the baby has learned to talk, a miracle, considering the size of your brain."

The ‘discussion’ was interrupted by the arrival of the Latin/Greek teacher, who started her "baby talk" as usual.

Finally the last lesson passed. Felix ran to his bike as fast as he could, to avoid other attacks from his "friends". After all, hearing them talk all the morning, didn't make him happy to see them, nor was he in the mood to even greet them before leaving.

When Felix arrived at home, he noticed that it was only noon, meaning he had time to surf the Internet a bit before lunch. He started the PC, connected to the Internet and took a look in his usual brony forum. Only then he saw a new feature, a chat room!

That seemed great in Felix's eyes. When he couldn’t have a real conversation without being ridiculed, shunned, or plainly ignored, he could at least chat over the internet.

Felix tried to enter in the chatroom, but it seemed that it was not ready yet. He wasted a bit of time browsing whatever site he came across. After twenty minutes, the chatroom activated, and showed only one user. Felix had never seen this user on the forum, but still there he was. He wasn't even in the list of the members, how he could be in the sites chat room? Quickly Felix shoved his doubt aside as paranoia and greeted the new user...

The other side:

Twilight returned home after she had helped out the other library, only to see Spike using her new computer.

“Note to self: Never leave Spike alone if you want to be the first to use the new equipment...” She thought to herself.

"Spike, who gave you the permission to use my computer?"

" No one, but after all..."

"I don’t want you near the computer without supervision, and I’m you legal guardian. That means that you have to obey me."

"Well, still, I found something interesting while going on the Net: I found a place..."

"Gimme that! I desire to see! I don't want you to see...", but Twilight only saw a red window, with a white letters in it.

"-Hi !

• Who are you?

• Why you are here if you didn’t join the Forum?"

The text was accompanied by an image of what seemed to be Nurse Redheart as a filly and a blue name "Theoric Medic".

Twilight was surprised by it, and she tried by instinct to write in the chat, which seemed to work:

"-I don't know, I stumbled in here thanks to Spike, my assistant."

"- Well, interesting, now, how you could you enter here in forum's chatroom ? "

Twilight looked at Spike with a disappointed expression, then she wrote: "-Well, still, who are you? And where did you get that picture?"

"-I am one of the administrator of the forum, and I got the picture from Deviantart. If you want, I can give it to you"

"-What is an ‘Administrator’? And ‘DeviantArt’?"

"-Never been on the internet before?", a little picture of Rainbow Dash laughing appeared.

Twilight started to worry even more:Where in the Tartarus did he get those images?

"-Well, no, it's my first time..."

"-So, follow me into this place between heaven and hell! I will give you a link to 4Chan, so you will witness the Internet in all its glory... and its horror."

Twilight Sparkle didn't reacted well to that phrase.

"All it's glory... and horror? Wow, this is a messy place, but what if I found something dangerous? I hope not, but...” She took an helmet, and put it on before she wrote: "I'm ready, give me that ‘link’ and I will be with you."

On the screen a light green writing appeared: the text was ineligible, but when she clicked on it, the window changed to one of a green-and-white screen, with lots of text, and images of her saying the most random things, varying between "I have no idea!" and "I can't sleep... I want to post ponies": the last one was a pic of her when she went insane over forgetting the letter some time ago. She was annoyed, and wanted to know more about the whole thing.