The End of PonySquare
by DeltaFlame
Chapters
All is Well
The End of PonySquare
"The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow."
~Bill Gates
In the magical land of Equestria, a new revolutionary invention has been made available to the general pony public: the internet. Nopony truly knew exactly who truly created it, but it was an instant hit, and ponies all over the world were buying a computer to use this "internet", the glorious, limitless source of information and entertainment. (Twilight, however, refused to buy a computer, saying she "needed to take care of her beloved books"). But almost everypony else was now using the internet; even Fluttershy got her own computer! (There is no need to worry about Fluttershy's innocence and the sensitivity of the internet our our world, however, as the Equestrian internet is influenced by the ponies of it's universe, and therefore does not have the offensive, hurtful, inappropriate, and just plain gruesome content that our own internet unfortunately has). There were videos, news, information, shopping, blogs, and... social networking. Social networking was the most popular thing the vast world of the internet had to offer. So many possibilities! Ponies could share funny pictures with their friends, tell others what they were doing at the exact moment they were doing it, comment on another pony's post, and so much more. One site in particular was very popular. "PonySquare", it was called. Ponies who joined could make new friends, roleplay with other ponies to do anything that came to their imagination, and create quizzes and polls for other ponies to take.
In this internet, unlike ours, ponies who used it were actually mentally transported to a completely different world until they willingly logged off. a complete physical material world formed around their conscious mind, allowing them to interact with the other users on a face-to-face scale similar to the real world outside of the internet. while their body was left behind, their mind was completely wrapped into a different dimension of time and space. This is the result of very power unicorn magic incorporated into the Equestrian internet system as a whole, giving its users a more real-life experience. PonySquare itself was a very intriguing place, as it was quite identical to Equestria; however, the residents who lived there were very much different than most ponies in the real world. Ponies who lived in PonySquare could control what they looked like, which gave many ponies a little too much creative freedom. Many alicorn stallions were strewn about the world, many more than just the royal princesses. For some still unexplained reason, most of these alicorns were either black, red, or even both. Also, since Twilight Sparkle and her friends were so popular in the real world from saving Equestria multiple times, quite a few ponies actually made themselves look identical to them, hoping to live a heroic and amazing life like them. This applied to other ponies, too. The Wonderbolts, the Princesses, and even the Cutie Mark Crusaders had clones of them wandering about PonySquare.
There were many other species in PonySquare as well, even ones that didn't exist in the original Equestria. There were occasionally griffons and zebras here and there, but there were also humans, which were only myths and legends in Equestria. There were demons, Vamponies, hybrid creatures, dragons, foals, and even inatimate objects had a "profile" in PonySquare. Yes, it was quite a magnificent world, even more so than Equestria.
There are many ponies lives in PonySquare that we could follow, but let's follow the story of a specific pony. Her name is Default. She is a maroon red mare with a short, wavy purple mane and a short purple tail. The day she created her account was admittedly one of the most exciting days of her young life. She had never seen something so magnificent as the internet before, and PonySquare was cream of the crop. She decided to make her profile match who she was in real life, so she could be herself and make new friends. She finished her account and finally logged in.
Username: Default_
Password: ***********
Suddenly Default began to feel lightheaded, and as she looked on at the computer screen, it started to feel like it was getting closer. Soon the screen covered her entire vision as her conscious mind fell into the physical world of PonySquare. She eventually fainted as digital binary code surrounded her mind.
She woke up later in a beautiful sunny meadow outside of a fake Ponyville. The sun was gorgeous and a light breeze was blowing softly all around her, she could hear the birds chirping and friendly voices coming from Ponyville. She sat up slowly and suddenly found another pony standing at her side, looking down at her with a wide smile. "Welcome to PonySquare!" the yellow and blue pegasus colt shouted down at her. "I hope we can be friends!" Default smiled back kindly, frankly shocked and surprised that somepony had found her so quickly. "Thanks for the welcome!" She replied. The blue colt simply looked at her with a broad smile for several moments before replying back, "Just let me know if you need help with anything, Default!"
"Thanks! Wait, how did you know... ?" Default asked, slightly concerned that she might have a stalker. "Your name?" He replied as he pointed above her head. She then looked up, confused as to what he was pointing at, when she noticed that she had the name "Default" written above her as a form of identification. She looked back at the colt and noticed that he had one too just like hers. "Blue Blaze" the name said. She opted against asking whether it was his real name or not. It was already too obvious, as nopony's name would ever be "Blue Blaze". That's just too generic.
She simply smiled and held her hoof out to shake his hoof, but as suddenly as he showed up, he disappeared. She literally saw him vanish out of thin air. "Hm?" She thought to herself. "Oh well, I guess that's just something ponies do here in PonySquare. They just disappear!" She laughed to herself and walked towards Ponyville. When she got there, the first thing she noticed was that its inhabitants were very.... strange. There were mostly ponies, of course, but there was also a five-headed dragon, several humans, griffons, and a very strange tall faceless white man in a black business suit, just to name a few of the oddities. The were also an unnatural amount of alicorns. Pink ones, white ones, green ones, and a lot of black and red ones. She didn't question it, however, as she could understand why so many ponies would want to be alicorns. She noticed a large board in the center of town; it was a large cork board filled with news, notifications, polls, quizzes, photos, and the like. She took several sheets of paper off of it and decided to fill out several polls and quizzes.
"Who is best pony?"
"If I left, would you be sad?"
"How much do you know about Iron Heart?"
Default turned in her results and took a walk around the town, looking for any other different features. She noticed a section of town called "Chatrooms", filled with identical looking buildings with different names, some of which were changing randomly or getting erased entirely. There was a digital sign by the doors of each building that said how many ponies were in the rooms. She casually walked into the Truth or Dare room. What Default found, however, was not at all what she expected. Some ponies were getting into a dramatic argument, others were making out on the couch, and some were just sitting in the corner and doing absolutely nothing. She backed out of the room slowly, hardly giving the ponies the time to acknowledge the fact that she had entered at all.
She kept walking and found a section of Ponyville called "Groups". She looked around for a group she might like and found a "Pony RP Group", where ponies could pretend to have adventures of all kinds, almost similar to a recreational center, but with more foal-like enthusiasm. She thought it sounded pretty good, so she joined promptly. Ponies could come whenever they wanted to and play around with other ponies as long as they wanted to. She decided to start right then, joining a group of five other ponies and pretending to solve conspiracy theories and cleverly avoiding danger. Something she did not expect when she joined was that it felt very real; she could see, hear, smell, and feel everything going on around her in the role-play. They all survived of course, but in the end she felt a bit uneasy from how real it felt, so she decided to take a break from roleplaying for a while so she could get more used to it. It was evening now; Default took a walk until she saw a small house suddenly appear in front of her. Confused, she looked at a sign that was hanging on the outside wall.
"Default's House"
She shrugged and walked in, looking around at all the things inside before going upstairs and collapsing on the bed. "This", she thought a she drifted off to sleep, "was a fun day."
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Default woke up sitting in front of her computer; she logged out and turned the computer off, getting into her bed once more and falling asleep.
Things Have Changed
In a rift of time and space beyond even Celestia's knowledge, ten elite leaders of an all-knowing race of god-like beings were gathering for a council meeting. The "Mods", as they called themselves, were as tall as skyskrapers, circling around a large flat table and peering down at it. They could see every single creature in PonySquare, each of them living out their digital lives. The beings were discussing the future of their empire amongst themselves.
"fgh loifdre sdjklfah lrhgk gh."
"Things have changed..."
"ksdhjfg sdfjkhgk ud duhdu."
"It is not the way it used to be."
"ieuf ehbubf bfhhefhb e ruber ew e."
"We must cleanse..."
"hicefsuyvg eugbu euwb tuyi."
"The bugs are too much for it to handle."
"wub wub wub wub gwaaah, ee gugugugugugu brrrrr."
"We will reset.... it must be so..."
"dgnlsg werlignsd sdlfng lwbg fdsgidlufbg slidb b idlusffbils jo"
"The world shall be divided, between ponies and creatures."
"gsh te htrh hdgs fh dshs sgh."
"Then it will be done."
They all placed their arms into the center of the table and lifted them up, using their other-worldly magic to slowly cause the perimeter of PonySquare to dissipate. The Mods dismissed their meeting, going their separate ways and letting their decision run its course.
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Default got out of bed the next morning at 6 and logged on to PonySquare before anything else. She felt faint again like she did before as she fell into the binary abyss, waking up a few moments later in her bed within her home in PonySquare. She left her home after looking through her house a bit more, which disappeared behind her once she walked out, and resumed her activities of poll-taking and friend-making. Default walked around Ponyville and greeted any new ponies she saw, giving them a friendly smile. Walking through the park, she smelled all of the flowers and fresh fake air. She sat down next to the lake under a tree and relaxed, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw something unusual that she hadn't noticed only moments earlier; the sky in the distance looked like it was getting.... closer. She couldn't really explain or understand it, but it looked as if the world was somehow getting smaller. She got up and walked in the direction of the horizon.
She walked for several miles until she figured out what was going on. The sky really WAS getting closer! The ground was disappearing before her eyes and a black void was all that remained behind it, but the background of the sky was still there, acting like a wall for a giant room. It got closer to where she stood every second. She ran back to Ponyville as quickly as she could, panicking and starting to cry as she galloped. "What the hay is going on?!" She thought to herself. "How do we stop this, and what will happen to us if we don't? Who's the leader of PonySquare, I have to let them know that we're all in danger!"
She ran at top speed back into Ponyville, storming into the town hall and into the mayor's office. Coincidently enough, Mayor Mare was also the mayor in PonySquare's Ponyville. "Mayor!" Default exclaimed as she practically broke down the office door. "Hm?" The mayor asked in confusion. Default continued, "PonySquare is getting smaller!"
"What do you mean, miss?"
"I mean it's disappearing!!"
"Hah, don't be ridiculous, sure there are a few errors here and there, but nothing too fatal. I'm sure you just saw an illusion or something."
"I'm serious!!!" Default snapped in frustration. "Just follow me and see for yourself!"
"Fine..." The mayor gave in as she sighed. She followed Default to the now diminishing edge of PonySquare, which was now much closer than before. "Oh... my..." The mayor stammered, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. "We have to tell everyone in Ponyville! Who knows what will happen if we don't get out in time?!" Default continued. The mayor thought for a minute and said, "Although I don't want the ponies to worry, yes, we should tell them for the sake of their safety." They both hastily returned to Ponyville and used the siren to call for a town meeting. The mayor and Default stood at the podium as the ponies gathered. Once they had a fairly large crowd, The mayor got their attention.
"Citizens of Ponyville, Citizens of PonySquare...... I regret to inform you that we must leave PonySquare for the time being, as we will all be in very grave danger if we stay. This world is becoming rapidly smaller, and if we do not leave, we may be lost in nothingness forever. Please, tell everyone you know to leave PonySquare until further notice."
The crowd was silent for a moment, and then out of nowhere erupted in panic. Everypony tried to leave within those first few silent seconds after the mayor's speech, and they we panicking not only because PonySquare would be gone, but because, for whatever reason.... none of them could leave.
The End
Ponies were running around in a frenzied panic, desperate to just find some other way out of the rapidly disappearing PonySquare. Some of them grabbed their foals and tried to find somewhere to take them to safety, others grabbed foals they didn't even know, the cutie mark crusaders hid under a table, but mostly ponies were just running into their homes and hoping that they would somehow be safe by just hiding there, or that they might escape if they successfully fell asleep in their beds. The mayor and Default silently stood at the podium while the chaos ensued around them. "Maybe it would've been best if we just hadn't told them." Default said blatantly. "Yes, it didn't really do much good anyway if we can't even get out at all...." The mayor replied.
Suddenly, Princess Celestia appeared with in front of the two mares in a flash of white light and observed the chaos solemnly. "It is a tragedy..." Celestia said with pain in her voice. "I do not know exactly what will happen.... I can't bear the thought of not being around to raise the sun without a proper heir because of something as silly as this. I will do what I can to find a way out, but I cannot make any guarantees. Canterlot is already gone, and I wasn't able to save the ponies there, I wasn't able to use a spell in time.... I can only hope that they are in a better place. I regret letting myself get wrapped up in something like this, if can only hope that Luna will be able to manage without me." Tears welled up in her eyes as she spoke, imagining being apart from her dear sister. Celestia raised her magnificent horn and her signature yellow glow arose from it, flooding the area with a golden light. It spread out across what was left of PonySquare, pressing itself against the disintegrating walls and attempting to at least stalemate it to give her enough time to do perform a large-scale teleportation spell to try and get every remaining pony and creature out of PonySquare and back into the real world. It would not be easy in the slightest, if possible at all, but Celestia had to try.
The other remaining "alicorns" noticed what Celestia was doing and tried to help her. However, their powers were completely useless, as they were not a true alicorn like Celestia was. The Sun Princess let out a struggling groan as she focused her immense magic on performing two spells at once, something that only extremely talented alicorns could do; she was The ruler of the Sun, after all. While her first spell held back the collapsing wall, she then performed a teleportation spell; a light purple light erupted form her horn and engulfed all of PonySquare. Every living thing could feel the effects of Celestia's magic, as they could see themselves stating to fade away slightly. It was actually starting to work!
She focused her energy more and more, desperate to save what was left of her subjects from imminent doom. Celestia let out a painful shriek, however, and both the teleportation spell and the suppression spell receded entirely, leaving them back where they started. Celestia collapsed to the ground, too weak to move from the magic draining her energy. "I... I'm sorry, my ponies.." Celestia whispered as Default, the mayor, and the alicorns gathered around her. "Even I am not strong enough... I failed you all."
"Don't say that Princess, you did what you could." Default replied sadly. The wall closed in even more; now it was only a half a mile away, and gaining speed. Houses were crumbing to pieces as they vaporized with the ponies still in them, water in the lakes evaporated into nothingness, and the animals were disappearing behind the invisible wall as they tried to run to the center. Everything was becoming pixelated, error signs were showing up in random places, the environment was changing to random colors and misshapen blocks, and nothing was as it should be. There was a loud whirring sound that everypony could hear, as well as a dial-tone signal and beeping, with static becoming more and more obnoxious. It was like a digital nightmare for the remaining ponies who could only watch and do nothing as the wall came closer.
The entire town was now engulfed except for the town square where Celestia and the other ponies were. The alicorns panicked as the wall embraced them, but they accepted their fate and drifted beyond the wall. The mayor also disappeared behind the wall as it engulfed her. Default stood over Celestia with tears in her eyes. "W-what will h-happen t-to us?" She asked her Princess, moving down to embrace her. Celestia smiled just a little as she embraced the unfamiliar pony, happy that she would be going alone. "I... don't really know..... I don't really know." The both saw a blinding white light as the wall finally overcame them, and PonySquare was gone.
A New Beginning (Epilogue)
Black was the only thing that Default could see. She couldn't hear anything. She couldn't feel anything. There was no hot or cold, no up or down, nothing. After floating for what felt like hours, but was in reality a few milliseconds, She finally saw a white dot in front of her. It she had no realistic idea of just how close or far away it was. The dot slowly stretched into a vertical line, getting longer and longer before her eyes, soon, splitting her entire black vision with a white lining. Two halves of the spacial plane were developing, the gravity pushing her to the left side to prevent her from getting caught in the split. Default had absolutely no idea what was happening.
She could finally hear once more, a whispering high-pitch tone slowly getting louder and soon turning into a deafening roar. She tried to cover her ears from the sound, but nothing helped. She then noticed that this was because she had no hooves. She looked down; she didn't even have a body! Her consciousness was merely floating around in a lifeless void. The white line grew brighter and brighter, eventually blinding her temporarily. She could not cover her eyes or her ears, but had to endure the awful sensation. She felt as if she was being reborn again. Little did she know, that was exactly what was happening. The plane split entirely and threw her for an immeasurable distance, the white line and the entire dimension getting farther and farther away.
---
She hit the ground. But she felt no pain. She sat up, startled, and found herself once again in the outskirts of Ponyville. She got up and galloped to Ponyville as fast as she could to find out if she was in the real world or PonySquare. She went to the center of town and found the familiar cork board. She sighed in relief, knowing she was back in PonySquare. Default looked to the horizon, feeling the false sense of Celestia's sun on her maroon red coat, taking in a deep breath and taking a moment to be thankful to be alive. She tried to log off. This time, fortunately, it worked. She woke up at her computer desk, smiling with complete joy that she was still alive. She X-ed out of PonySquare, but she noticed a notification for a new website alongside PonySquare.
"Welcome to BronySquare"
She read more:
"The original PonySquare has been split up into two sites, PonySquare and BronySquare. PonySquare will be all about role playing in that you can create as many accounts as you like, RP wherever and whenever you want and do whatever you please as long as it’s within the site’s newly revised rules. The split was an intentional occurrence due to interdimensional interference, PonySquare was unintentionally allowing a specie known as humans from another dimension into Equestria vicariously through PonySquare. We the moderators have learned that their society is much more capable of corruption, and we have taken action against interaction with them. We don’t want the site to be flooded with other universes.
On the other website, BronySquare, there won’t be any role play, but instead will focus on real life networking. This site will allow humans and ponies to interact in a moderated environment and will be more about keeping in touch with each other, staying up-to-date about community news, and sharing stuff like pictures, music, videos and lots more. Other improvements will be a better event system for meet-ups and better delivery of the latest in community news directly on our site. As for the no role playing you’ll still be able to use your own original character or ponysona for your account on BronySquare, just don’t RP on it there, that’s what PonySquare will be for!
We would like to thank you for your attention and support in that we hope to see you again on the new sites!"
Default smiled and sighed. "Maybe someday." She laughed and turned off her computer, heading downstairs and out the door, breathing in the real air and heading for Sugarcube Corner to meet REAL ponies. "Maybe someday."
THE END
A blinding flash of light was all that Echo the changeling could see. He woke up laying in a grassy field, with an overcast of clouds above him. He sat up and rubbed the back of his head with his hole-filled hoof, wondering where he was. He had never seen a place like this before. Echo then noticed something strange: the field he was in.... it was completely flat, and extended towards the horizon. There was nothing else there. Just an infinitely long field. Echo looked up and shouted as loudly as he could, hoping someone would hear him.
"HELLO?!"