//------------------------------//
// A Walk in the Park 
// Story: Circuitry 
// by Show Off 
//------------------------------//

	“A.M.P., you seem upset.” Twilight is running a monthly diagnostic on me, looking for any programming errors that may have crept into my system. I have never cared for the unfeeling tendrils of the lab’s mainframe computer; that is no secret.
“I am growing weary of Canterlot,” I reply. I have not been out of the city since my last venture to the cave some eight weeks ago. Twilight’s royal duties have subsided somewhat, and she has been dedicating her time to me, constantly tweaking my systems to make my operations smoother.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Twilight says, distractedly looking at a monitor. “I know how much you like to run. Maybe we can go to the park later?”
“You would accompany me?”
“Of course! I’d love to spend some time in the park with my little girl.” This is a favorite expression of Twilight’s; she prefers to think of herself as a mother to me. I suppose there are similarities in their roles, but there are times I know that Twilight cannot see anything more than a complex computer. Regardless, I smile.
“I would like that very much, Twilight.”
She grins back at me. “Excellent! Just let me finish debugging this line of code and we can be off!” She says it like the updates won’t take another hour to complete.
“I have a question for you, Twilight.”
She pokes her head from around the computer terminal she’s busy behind. “What’s that, A.M.P.?”
“I have within my memory banks letters you have written to Princess Celestia concerning your studies of friendship. Am I to understand that at one time you had no friends?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose that’s true. I liked reading and studying more than I liked going to parties and meeting other ponies. I had Spike, of course, but I always thought of him more of a sidekick than a friend.”
“What changed?”
“Celestia sent me to Ponyville, where I met ponies who cared more about me than about themselves.”
“Is that how you would define your friendships?”
She laughs quietly and turns back to her computer to check the progress of my updates. “A.M.P., there is no one definition for friendship. It’s multilayered, kind of like cake.”
“You would compare your relationships to your friends to a confectionary dessert?”
The lavender alicorn falls over laughing. “Oh, A.M.P., you say the silliest things sometimes!” She continues to laugh for several minutes more.
“I am simply trying to understand your analogy.”
Twilight wipes tears from her eyes as she slowly gets up. “What I mean is that friendship has no set protocols. Like magic, it’s self-perpetuating. It cannot be forced or created, only carefully guided. It ebbs and flows of its own accord. There’s nothing material somepony can point to and say ‘that’s it’. It’s something that has to be felt out.”
“And that is why you built me,” I say quietly. “A…machine…to test that hypothesis. To see if an artificial being has the capacity to make friends. To see if friendship is a force that exists in reality, or merely in concept; a supercomputer capable of delivering unbiased results.”
She bristles at my statement, and chooses her next words more carefully. “That was your original purpose, yes. But you’re something more than that now, A.M.P. Not just an experiment; you’re like a daughter to me. I just want to see you happy.”
I sit quietly after that. Twilight seems perturbed that I phrased my conclusion so bluntly, like she does not want to admit it to herself. For a while, the only sound is the occasional notification ding from the computer.
“It looks like everything is running fine,” Twilight says later when the process is complete. She disconnects the data wires from my mane and stands back to let me get up. “Are you ready to go to the park?”

*	*	*

Twilight leads me to a smaller park tucked deep within the city. It is picturesque and serene, and this late in the afternoon, there are few ponies lingering about. I walk beside my creator as we stroll along a walking path.
“Twilight, do you ever miss the company of your Ponyville friends?”
“Everyday,” she responds immediately. “I don’t get back to Ponyville nearly as often as I’d like, and my stay there always seems so much shorter than I want.” She has the same wistful look in her eye that she always does when remembering her friends. “But Pinkie always throws the best party when I get into town, and Applejack always has some amazing new dish to try. Rainbow usually gives me some pointers on flying, Rarity has a new outfit for me to try, and Fluttershy is there to listen to any problems I’m having. It’s not so much the amount of time you spend with your friends, it’s the quality. Plus, I exchange letters with them almost daily.”
“What about your former assistant, Spike? You said earlier that you considered him to be a ‘sidekick’ rather than a friend.”
“My relationship with Spike has matured as well, A.M.P. He’s a dear friend to me, as well as a very helpful young dragon. I know I left the library in good hands.”
I ponder the things Twilight said for a while as we continue to walk. Even an introverted mare such as herself was able to make friends; how could it be so hard for me? The question turns in my mind and I am unable to come up with an adequate answer.
A loud bang brings me out of my introspection. A rock that bounced off my flank lies in the dirt where it landed. Behind me there is a group of adolescent unicorn colts, pointing and laughing. Before I can respond, Twilight rounds on the gang and flares her wings. “You leave her alone,” she barks in an angry tone. “Or would you rather deal with me?”
“I-I-I’m sorry,” the biggest one stammers. “It, uh…slipped out of my magic-”
“Enough!” Twilight yells. “Go home before I decide to test out my latest spell!”
“What spell is that, Twilight?” I whisper to her, but she silences me with a kick in the flank. Her distinctive aura forms around her horn, but she’s just holding magic, not actually casting.
The colts run off, yelling something incoherent about not being turned into bugs. Twilight allows the magic to dissipate and folds her wings down to her back. She turns to me and nods her head, motioning me to continue walking again.
“What would you have done to them?” I ask her as we continue down the path.
She giggles contentedly to herself. “Oh, nothing.”
“Nothing at all? Your posture indicated that-”
“A.M.P., I was bluffing.”
“Bluffing? But suppose they had not believed you. What if they had challenged your authority?”
She stops to face me. Her expression is soft. It is the same look I have seen the mothers here give their children. “They were just bullies, sweetie. That’s all. As a rule, bullies are simply insecure ponies who feel like they have to hurt others to make themselves feel better. If you stand up to them, they will usually back down.”
“I fear I may never fully understand pony behavior.”
She laughs again, and unfolds one wing to embrace me. “Don’t worry, A.M.P. That’s what I designed you to do.”

*	*	*

Back at the Observatory, Phase Shift completes my system check. “Did you have a good time with Twilight today?” she inquires.
“I enjoyed our time, yes,” I answer. “Twilight is often able to explain some of the more complex and irrational relations between ponies.”
“I would hope so,” Phase says as she disconnects me. “She’s spent the better part of ten years studying friendship.”
“She seems perfectly capable of dealing with almost any social interaction with such ease. I feel as though I could study for an indefinite amount of time and still be at a loss for normal conversation.”
She readjusts her glasses as leans up against the wall. “I think the key is just to be confident. If you have confidence in yourself, other ponies will be confident of you.”
“I am fully aware of my own abilities.”
The brown unicorn laughs a little. “That’s not quite what I meant. You have to trust that everything will go okay, and not be preoccupied with how a conversation is going to end. Try to live in the now, instead of freaking out about the future.”
“That is good advice,” I nod. “I will let you be on your way; I do not wish to make you tardy for your date this evening.”
Phase’s eyes grow quite wide. “How did you know I was going out tonight? I didn’t tell you…did I?”
I point a hoof at her mane. “You are not wearing your usual perfunctory mane style and you have applied make-up to your face.”
She blushes, and hides behind her dark hair. “Am I that easy to read?”
“You have adopted a routine, and based on your specific deviations from that routine, I can predict with roughly eighty percent accuracy-”
“Thank you, A.M.P., that will do.” She is slightly put-off by my frank assessment, but she smiles at me again. “I’m glad to see that you’re picking up on more subtle behavioral cues.”
It is a compliment, and one that has special meaning to me. “Thank you. Enjoy your night with Splice Bolt.”
My care-taker’s jaw falls open. “I have to ask how you knew that.”
“Twilight told me,” I say flatly.
She bursts into laughter. “Of course she did. Good night, A.M.P.”
“Good night, Phase.”
The lab falls silent after Phase leaves. Outside, the moon shines quietly, and the cloudless sky presents a perfect opportunity for studying astronomy. I climb the stairs to the eighth floor telescope, and train it on the constellation Orion. For the next several hours, I work my way slowly through the major constellations, then move on to the figures of the zodiac. I've just trained the lens on Virgo when I hear hoofsteps behind me.
Twilight stands behind me, with a stern look on her face. “You should be in bed,” she scolds me.
“As should you,” I counter matter-of-factly.
She cannot hold her authoritative look for long, and soon she breaks into a grin and joins me at the eyepiece. “You seem to like astronomy,” she says thoughtfully. “You know this isn't the first time I've caught you up here after-hours.”
She is right, of course. I often come here before retiring to study planetary motion. “The stars have an ordered movement, and studying those patterns is...relaxing. Did Princess Luna really create each of those stars?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, the stars have been there forever. Luna only organized them, categorized them, and named them. She even built the constellations for navigation and annual cycles.”
It appears to be an intense labor of love. “It would seem she cares deeply for Equestrians.”
“She does.”
“But if so, how then did she-”
“How did I become a dark tyrant whose sole purpose was to destroy the life-giving light of my sister?”
I whip my head around to identify the new speaker; Twilight seems equally surprised. Princess Luna had come into the room silently during our conversation, and stood in the doorway in full regalia. She spreads her wings and glides gently onto the observation deck with us.
“Princess,” I say, bowing to show proper respect.
“Please, rise,” she tells me. Her voice is not harsh or commanding, but neither is it gentle. She has given me an instruction, and she expects me to carry it out. I draw back up to my full height, but remain silent. “That was your question, was it not? You wish to know how somepony who loved her subjects would want to cause pain and suffering.”
Twilight shot me a worried look, not wishing me to incur the Princess’ ire. But she knows as well as I do that I will not lie. “Yes, that is the question I was going to ask.”
My lavender creator jumped into the conversation. “Luna! I don’t think you know A.M.P. She’s an automaton I built to test some of my more advanced theories on friendship.” She smiled nervously, anxious about what Luna’s reaction would be to my reply.
“I am aware of A.M.P.’s nature. She is a frequent character in your dreams, Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight grins sheepishly and takes a step back. The Princess of the Night addresses me once more. “Perhaps this will be a good lesson for you then, A.M.P. Please, join me in a more comfortable environment.”
There is a brilliant flash of light and the odd sensation of being stretched out and squished back into shape again. When I look around, I notice that we are on Princess Luna’s private balcony, set with chairs and tea for the three of us. “Please, sit,” she instructed.
We gather around her table and the Princess tosses her mane before beginning her story. “Just over a thousand years ago, my sister was forced to banish me after I attempted to alter the fundamental forces of the world. I shall not bore you with the details; they are quite widely known. I recall that your question was ‘why.’”
She pauses to take a sip of tea. “The answer is perhaps more simple than you realize; I was jealous.”
“Of Celestia?” I ask. “You were upset that Equestrians slept through the night and were awake all day, never appreciating the aesthetics of the night sky?”
“That was perhaps the superficial veneer that history has recorded, but it was not the true cause. I was envious of the love that they showed for my sister. Foals often complained of the night's arrival, and ponies would rise early to see Celestia raise the sun. Nopony took notice of the movements of the constellations until after my banishment. In my pain, I decided the best course of action to take was to take away what the others loved deeply. I decided that if I was not to be loved than I would be feared; love is dead in a world of slaves. Despair can drive a pony to do many terrible things.
“It is in our nature to want love, A.M.P.; it is in your nature too, I gather. Twilight knows this better than some. She understands that you have been growing despondent, and fears for you.” Twilight nods her confirmation. The princess leans in close to me. “Whatever happens, A.M.P., you must not lose hope. You must not allow grief to control you. You must not give in to despair, for that way lies madness.”
Twilight rests a hoof on my shoulder. “I know things are hard for you,” she says. “But always remember that your friends love you, and we never want to see you in pain.”
For once, I have no questions. I am content to sit quietly and analyze while Twilight and Luna continue discussion of other topics. After approximately an hour, Twilight decides that it is late and time for us to return to the Observatory.
“Goodnight, Luna,” she nods before turning to me.
“Goodnight, Princess,” I bow.
“Good day to both of you,” the Princess responds. “A.M.P., think well upon what I told you.”
“I will, Princess. Thank you for your concern and your advice.”
Twilight’s horn glows bright as she teleports us back to the laboratory. She escorts me to my bed, and after I settle into the memory foam nest, she kisses me lightly on the front of my head. 
“What is the significance of this action?” I ask.
She smiles and meets my gaze. “It’s a sign of affection,” she says sweetly. “Goodnight, my little pony.”
Somewhere deep within the circuits and wires of my motherboard, a strange warmth springs up. It is an unfamiliar sensation, but one I find myself enjoying very much. I pull Princess Prettypants in close to my chest, and for the first time in my impeccable memory, I fall asleep smiling.