I walked back into the room with the monitors. There wasn’t much in there, just my chair, keyboard, and six monitors, arranged in two rows of three. The central lower monitor held the visual render of Equestria, which stayed focused on Twilight Sparkle. I’m still not sure why it stays with her, it just does. The top left contained the continuous scroll of the logs stored by each of the AI’s. The bottom left was blank currently, though the console would appear over there. The bottom right would show Discord when he showed up, though it was almost always blank. The top center and top right stayed blank. Still don’t know what they’re there for. Nothing ever happens with them.

{Ah! Sir, good morning. Nothing much happened.} His face flickered on his usual screen, smiling at me. That smile of his always creeped me out, made me think he was hiding something.

I set my cup of coffee down on the desk, relaxing into my chair. “Thank you Discord. How is Twilight healing?”

{The keratin in her hoof was slightly separated, though the doctor was able to fix it. Her ankle was dislocated, not broken, and was quickly reset. She’s predicted to make a full recovery within two days.}

“Well, could be worse.” I leaned back in my chair, sighing. Twilight will survive, good. Who should I check in on today? I thought to myself, bored.

{Sir? You did say you would program me a voice today.} A beep came with Discord’s message, snapping me back to reality.

“Ah, yes, I did say I would, didn’t I?” Pulling myself close, I grabbed the keyboard and set to work. I quickly typed up a simple program, giving him a basic voice. Nothing to get excited over, just a base to build off. “Alright, what more are you looking for?”

“Well, I was hoping for something more, well, evil.” I stared at him, his basic voice flat and devoid of emotion.

“Evil?” I asked, confused. “In what way do you mean evil?”

“Well, perhaps not exactly evil, more, controlling, or perhaps egotistical.” I simply stared at him blankly. I had no idea how to respond. Slowly raising an eyebrow at him, I continued to stare. “Um sir?” I continued to stare, starting to get slightly annoyed. “Alright, alright. I’m not sure exactly what, just, I want to sound more like a villain I guess.”

Sighing, I rolled my eyes, pulling my keyboard back. “Well, alright.” Over the next few hours I worked with Discord, creating a voice for him. He was a picky program, always asking me to change something. Eventually he was happy, having picked through everything I tried.

“There, you have a voice. Now let me get to work.” I snapped, slightly annoyed with him. With a nod his face vanished, leaving me alone. “That’s better” I sigh to myself. I type out a few strokes, refocusing the camera on Twilight. She was still in the hospital, recovering.

Twilight was starting to get annoyed. And she was starting to understand why Rainbow Dash had hated staying in the hospital. She had all the books she could want, and two days to read them. And yet, she was bored. She didn’t like sitting still as she read. Normally, she would be working on something, or curled up in her blankets. Here though, she could do neither of those things. Her hoof was in too much pain to even think about moving around, lest she increase the pain. And she didn’t have any work to do. So she lay there, on her back, a book levitated and open in front of her.

“It’s going to be a long day isn’t it?” She asked herself, not bothering to check if she was alone.

“Well, I hope it is!” Pinkie exclaimed, jumping onto the bed next to Twilight. “I mean, on a normal day there’s only so much time to do stuff! And if it’s a long day then...” Twilight tuned the earth pony out, closing her book with a sigh. While she never tried to maintain a conversation with Pinkie, pretending to do so allowed her to think.

And think Twilight did. Her mind started flashing around, working on different things. From idle wonderings on how Pinkie could keep talking to wondering if she should tell Princess Celestia about what had happened. She had been so focused on trying to not scream over the past few hours that she hadn’t thought of Celestia.

I wondered if she would send a letter. Sometimes I hated it when she did. I had programmed an AI for both Celestia and Luna, but they became aware of the program. I had to shut them off, revert them back to basic AIs. And whenever Twilight sent Celestia a letter, I was the one who answered it. I couldn’t reactivate Celestia or Luna. Not without destroying the simulation. Resting my head in my hands I sighed again.

And then Pinkie stopped talking. Just stopped, as if someone had clamped a hand over her mouth. But much more effective than that. I looked up, wondering what was happening, my eyes widening. The program had sped up, to almost three times it’s usual rate. I grabbed my keyboard and set to work, knowing something was wrong.

-Time-flowrate () = 1

The program returned to it’s normal speed, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Discord!” I called. “What just happened here?”

“I’m sorry sir. I greatly dislike hearing that pink mare talk. She never stops. I always fast forward through her.” I could tell Discord was ashamed at what he did. Which was odd. Discord never felt ashamed, only ever cocky and self assured. I knew I’d have to look into this.

“Don’t. Ever.” I commanded. “I have no idea what will happen to them now.” Discord stared at me, one eyebrow raised. “Everytime I change the flowrate I have to mess with the AI logs. The logs are hardcoded to record at a certain speed. I have no idea how that reacts to a change of the simulation speed.” I sighed. “And now I can’t edit them. I’d have to pull them back and wipe them, but I can’t reverse the flow. And I can only go so far back with hard jumps.”

“Sorry sir.” Discord mumbled. I shook my head. I still wasn’t sure he meant it.

-Display Twilight.AI.log(450)
-Display World.log(450)

On my left, the bottom screen flicked to life, printing out a huge log of what had just happened to Twilight. The screen above it flicked, clearing before loading up the worlds log. I knew the world log would record correctly, no matter how the time.flowrate was changed. Twilight would be the first I would have to check. Pinkie always seemed to know a bit too much, so I decided to do her last. And after all, with Twilight’s level of intelligence, she would be the first to notice anything wrong. And after her, the rest of the logs. I needed to make sure nothing had happened to them. There were hundreds of lines though, thousands even. This was going to take time. I sat, pouring over the logs, looking for any errors, in either the log itself, or the time coding.

Twilight slowly sat up, shaking herself. She had just had the strangest feeling. It was as if the whole world had sped around her. Shaking her head, she closed her eyes. That can’t be right. She thought. Time doesn’t just speed up and slow down. It flows at a constant rate. The most anypony can do is jump around. Twilight pondered. But it had. I don’t think it was just my imagination. One moment Pinkie is talking to me, the next, it’s night and she’s gone. Twilight rolled her eyes. I must be getting a little bit crazy from staying in here so long. Twilight laid back down in her bed, gently shifting so as to not aggravate her hoof. With a content smile she pulled her blankets over her, settling in for a night of sleep. I can ask my friends about it tomorrow.