Zenith Part 1: The Odd Arrival

Hot.

Why’s it so hot?

Holy hell it’s hot, you’re sweating buckets here!

 

“Gaahhh!”

 

You gasp, sitting up quickly, and flinging the heavy blankets from your bed as you stumble to the window, throwing it open to let in the cool breeze. The midmorning sun glares in at you through the trees, making you squint.

 

“What the hell, why was the room so...”

 

You trail off as your gaze finds your quietly humming beast of a computer sitting on your desk.

On.

 

“Oh, right.”

 

You must have accidently left it on again; last night had been a long one. There was a big order to process for some office building in town, 20 brand new workstations, and you really needed the cash.

 

You had been trying to save up to move out of this one-horse town since you got your hands on your very first clunker of a computer at age 10. Not that you didn’t love your parents, but they were the simple type, and awfully wary of new technology. So five years ago, after your 18th birthday, you had moved out, trying to make a living on what you saw as a growing industry.

 

Unfortunately this place had little appreciation for technology, the fact that you had any business at all was only because big banks and the like were pushing the local stores to go digital, at least in part. Checkout systems, inventory terminals, and the occasional cubicle station were all you could sell. All mundane to the extreme compared to what you were interested in, with low-end hardware to match. Thank god for the fact that they -always- needed tech support, or you probably couldn't afford to eat. The only thing that made you think twice about leaving was the mountains.

 

The cool air of the Sierras, the glacial valleys that stretched for miles, sitting by a lake and drinking a fresh snow margarita on sun-warmed granite, there was really nothing like it. That stark openness of nature was a calming break from all problems electronic, and financial. It was a way to escape the endless error codes, bluescreens, and incompatible drivers; the bills, invoices, and bank statements. It was easy to pack up the backpack and leave for a few days, maybe a week, if you had the time, and just walk. You could walk as long as you cared too, and sleep where you chose, enjoying the scenery along the way. It was a fantastic hobby, but there was no money in it, so all too soon the other half of your life would call you back. Speaking of which...

 

You notice you’ve been staring out your open window at the distant mountain peaks in nothing but boxers for a while now. One good thing about this shack of a house, not many neighbors this far out on the back roads.

 

You gather some fresh clothes from the dresser, and take a quick shower. Clean from the heat of your rude awakening, you sit back down at your computer, ready to finish what you’d been so busy with the night before that you’d completely forgotten to turn it off. Shaking the mouse, you see a shutdown dialog box, stating that notepad.exe wasn’t playing nice, and asking if you wanted to force a shutdown anyway.

 

Well, that would explain it; you had just been so tired you didn’t notice the prompt and fallen straight asleep. Odd though, you don’t remember doing anything in notepad, must have been a parts list or something.

 

You move the shutdown prompt off to one side, and pull up the offending notepad.  It looks like a postal order confirmation, like you get for computer parts, marked “Delivered” at the top. But this one is oddly blank, it’s missing the package tracking number, the price, and even the company that shipped it. In fact, aside from the long strings of #INTERNAL_USE_ONLY numbers, the only information it has is the weight (1 lbs), your address, and the delivery date and time, 9:30AM... today.

 

You glance down at the computer clock just in time to see it flip from 9:29 to 9:30 as you hear the sound of tires throwing gravel in front of your house and a car motor roaring. You jump at the noise, right hand jerking the mouse wildly across the screen... and right onto the OK button of the shutdown dialog.

 

“Fuck, no! Wait!”

 

The computer calmly proceeds to do exactly as you told it, and starts shutting down, the motor moving away from your house down the hill.

 

“Dammit, stupid goddamn piece of-“

You swear as you jump from your chair and bolt out the front door and into the driveway, seeing dust settling on the dirt road as the engine fades off with distance down the hill.

 

“Who the hell...”

You turn back, running inside to get your keys, and catch your foot on a small brown wooden crate, maybe six inches on a side, sitting right on your front step.

 

Your bare toes jam into the hard wood painfully, sending both you and it tumbling through your front door and across the cheap linoleum of your entranceway.

“Owfuckmytoejesusthathurts-“

 

Keys forgotten, you get up and limp to the kitchen, yanking open the freezer, and snatch a cold pack from the ice shelf. You limp back past the entranceway to the living room, which isn’t much more than a crappy old couch and a TV that gets two channels, both of which are fuzzy. You limp around a few boxes of old or spare computer parts, and sit down heavily on the couch, holding the ice pack to your aching foot.

 

“Ahhhh... damn that hurts, the hell was that doing there anyway?”

 

You wait a minute or two, then, inhaling sharply, you gingerly lift the cold pack from your toes to check the damage. Not as bad as you expected, only a little bleeding and still plenty painful, but it should be better in a few hours. You turn your head back over the couch toward the front door, and see the tiny crate lying where it had landed, not noticeably cracked or dented, owing, as your foot attests, to its durability.

 

“What the hell box. Not cool man.”

 

In apology, the wooden crate does a five star impression of a wooden crate.

 

“Fine, be like that.”

 

You stare at the crate for a few more moments before getting up and limping over to grab it, taking it with you back to the couch. You set it down on a convenient box, and balance the cold pack back on your foot. Turning the small wooden cube over in your hands you see it’s made of half inch thick planks about two inches wide, and doesn’t weigh more than a pound or two. On one lid is a piece of paper, stapled to the wood on both ends, with your address written across it in astoundingly neat handwriting. A gentle shake hints that it’s filled with straw-like packing material and a soft-ish object. You attempt to pry off the lid end with the label using your nails, but the box resists your efforts.

 

Grumbling you go find a flat-head screwdriver from your computer kit and limp lightly back to the couch. Jamming the screwdriver between the lid and the side of the crate gains you a small gap, which you work at, moving around the lid, until the small nails finally pop free and the lid comes loose. Inside is a mess of tan straw, packing the crate from wall to wall, and cushioning its cargo from any run-ins with rouge toes.

 

You dig into the rustling straw and your hands quickly meet with a velvety soft fabric object, slightly squishy to the touch, and shaped like a... pony?

 

You slowly pull your prize from the box, its orange coat and multi-hued blue mane and tail in contrast with the dull tans and browns of the couch you set him down on, your hands trembling slightly. His blue eyes are expertly sewn, as are the small marks on each of his flanks; a tiny pair of snow-capped mountains with a trail leading away between them.

 

A unicorn.

 

Your Unicorn.

 

“... huh?”

 

He sits there, a slight smirk across his muzzle, while your mouth hangs slightly ajar, your brain not quite able to reason how in the world you came to be looking at what is quite clearly a fluff-and-stuff rendition of your OC, Zenith. You barely browse MLP merchandise, let alone order a custom made plushie, especially one of such good craftsmanship. The show, like your hikes, was a welcome break from the tedium of life, but you never got much more into it than that.

 

Well, there –was– the forums, but that was mainly for getting those awesome pics and discussing episodes. And you suppose you –did– make Zenith because you wanted to have a unique pony for your avatar instead of just using one from the show. And You –guess– you might have gone a tad overboard with the details (In hindsight a cutie mark and explanation behind it wasn’t really required for a picture of his head, but it had been fun to do).

 

All that aside, you had never told anyone online more than your timezone, and certainly no one in town knew you watched the show, never mind what Zenith looked like. And what the hell was up with that text doc with the delivery info on it? That must have been open when I ran shutdown last night for it to interrupt it like that, but the time was for this morning, and it was accurate to the second! That, and who the hell was it from?

 

Carefully placing plushie Zenith back in the straw, you limp him and the box back to your desk, tossing the cold pack back in the freezer on the way. A quick press of the power button brings the ever obedient computer back online. Setting the crate to the side you lift Zenith up for closer inspection while it boots.

 

“Alright little guy, where are you from?”

 

You turn him over, looking for any tags.

None.

 

You check the box for a card, packing slip, return address, or anything.

Nope.

 

You see if the address paper yields any clues.

Nada.

 

Hm, well, there is the writing... maybe it can be identified? But without access to some giant police database or something your hopes of finding a match are slim to none, it sure doesn’t look familiar to you...

 

Actually, it kinda does; the exact spacing, the even lines... The computer now on you pull up a new word document, type out your street address, highlight it, and in the font drop down select Monotype Corsiva. Well damn, that’s it. Somebody just traced it with ink onto a new paper.

 

You blow out a long breath as you sit back in your chair, staring at the crate with little Zenith smirking back at you from the pile of straw beside it, his tiny orange horn poking up through the cobalt blue fabric mane right beside its lighter, sky blue, stripe. A quick glance at the clock shows it’s just past 10am.

 

Just for kicks you pull up the recent file listing for notepad, and much to your pessimistic expectations, it doesn’t contain anything like what you saw just half an hour ago. Even a search for .txt file extensions in the temp files doesn’t turn up anything but logs and config files.

 

You pick up Zenith and lean back again, gazing off into the distance in thought, and gently stroke his coat and mane. It’s oddly therapeutic, the material is indeed of superb quality, and you resign yourself to the fact that the mystery will have to wait. You still have to finish that order from last night.

 

Several hours of price hunting, review reading, and spec-checking later you have what you prey is a list of compatible hardware for the order, and enough copies of the needed software packs to cover them all. You steel your resolve and press “Submit Order” on no less than seven different websites order forms. Oh to have a wholesale account, what a wonder it would be! A quick phone call to the office manager who placed the order and it was done. Until the parts got here there was nothing left to do, and by the shipping forms he had at least 4-8 work days. And since today was Thursday, they probably wouldn’t get here until almost a week from now, enough time for a most excellent trip!

 

The clock reads 2pm, and Stomach makes a strong point in favor of it being lunchtime. Hurt Foot complains that it’s still in pain, and that sitting is fine, but Brain manages to get Other Foot to agree to carry more of the load, and Hurt Foot begrudgingly agrees. You stand, stretching your arms above your head, as something falls from your lap to the floor. Looking down you see Zenith, legs a bit askew, laying on his side. You reach down and pick him up, dust him off, and set him back on the desk. You go check the fridge, pulling out sandwich fixings as they catch your eye.

 

Mustard, mayo, turkey slices, avocado, provolone cheese, lettuce, pepperoncinis; the works! You mangle together your sandwich and bring it back to the computer to eat, planning on browsing the mlp forums to see if you recognize the handiwork of one of the plushie makers there.

 

Funny comics and reaction images abound, but no leads on the source of your mysterious plush. By about 5pm you call it quits, lots of people make plushies, but none that look quite like yours. You even checked your credit card’s recent purchases to see if you could spot any that might have been a sleep-deprived good idea, but no luck there either. That and your internet connection speed was driving you crazy. They just don’t offer anything better out here, but it still takes forever for pages to load.

 

A bit tired of all the runaround this has caused you, you decide to make good on the idea of a trip up the mountain. Practiced hands find all your gear and pack it snugly in your trusty backpack, leaving the bear canister empty for a shopping trip for food early tomorrow morning, since it was getting too late to want to go to the store tonight. As you finish stuffing your clothes in the top of the pack Zenith catches your eye. You walk over and lift him up, admiring the level of detail paid to his cutie mark.

 

“Somebody really spent a lot of time on you didn’t they?”

 

His blue eyes silently regard you with that same lopsided smile.

 

“Well why not bring you along? Your special talent was exploration, and I’m feeling adventurous!”

 

You carefully tuck him into a side pocket, making sure not to pull any hair or tweak any joints, then sit down to plan out your route for tomorrow.

 

Perhaps you’ll go up that valley on the north side of the range? It had the most fantastic waterfall, and feeding it was a crystal blue lake, perfect for swimming. It was a bit farther from home than you normally go, but you -did- have the time to spare. You decide to go for it, and print out a travel itinerary to file with state parks. 20 miles or so day one was harsh, but powering up to that lake would be worth it. That way you could enjoy a few days of day hikes and leisure by the lake. By now it’s almost 9 o’clock, and you’ve got an early morning tomorrow if you want to be on the trail on time.

 

You reheat some leftover pasta from the fridge and settle down in front of your computer, looking over the topographic maps of the lakes surrounding terrain. There are several good paths up the mountain from there that would make some pretty fun day hikes. One leads up to the saddle to the next valley over, and switching to satellite view (augh, so long to load!) reveals a wide, gently sloping plain, awash with wildflowers, and some small buildings off to one side. An old pioneering cabin perhaps? What a view they must have had!

 

Satisfied, you close the maps, and shutdown the computer. Dishes washed and drying, window closed, and your clothes stripped off, you’re ready for bed. You climb between the sheets and lay on your side, your gaze landing on your pack. With a slight amount of embarrassment you get up, go over to it, and remove Zenith from his side pocket. You haven’t slept with a stuffed animal in forever, but today has been long and weird, and he is ever so snugly soft! Back between the sheets you curl up, Zenith’s tiny form tucked in your arms, his horn and mane tickling your cheek.

 

You speak quietly to the darkened room,

“Goodnight Zenith, tomorrow will be a new day, full of exploration and adventure!”

 

With that, sleep lightly creeps over you, warm and comfortable, and whisks you away to the land of shapeless thoughts and pleasant dreams.