• Published 15th Nov 2013
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Cheerilee's Thousand - xjuggernaughtx



Cheerilee goes on one thousand terrible dates.

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Date Fifty-Eight - Deviating From The Program

A bead of sweat slid down the side of Megabyte’s face, then landed on his report with a plop that sounded to the scientist like thunder in the otherwise silent auditorium. As he stared down at where the drop had landed, the paper wrinkled slightly. He pursed his lips and tried to rub the spot dry with his hoof. “Any luck?” he asked, resolutely refusing to look up from the pages.

A reply which sounded vaguely like “Dunno what the deal is” mumbled from around a mouthful of donut came from somewhere behind the robust stallion that stood unmoving several yards away.

Megabyte jumped slightly when a throat pointedly cleared. “Ah, yes. I apologize for the delay. We had hoped to have D-8-R give you the report himself, but we seem to have run into a small glitch of some sort—”

“I don’t know if I’d say ‘small’,” the voice behind the robot said after a loud swallow. “Looks like his syntax analyzer got wired into his motor control instead of his logic processor. How much did I have to drink last night, MB? I keep telling you, you gotta keep the soldering gun away from me after I have too many—”

“Yes, yes, Dot! We, ah, we’ll discuss best practices at a later date.” Megabyte quailed when the mare on the review board checked her watch. “For now, best not to keep these fine ponies waiting any longer!”

The greying stallion opposite him adjusted his glasses to sit more squarely on his muzzle. “Yes, that would be appreciated. It’s been nearly forty-five minutes.”

“Has it?” Megabyte leafed rapidly through his report. Though he had drafted it, the writing within seemed almost foreign. Generally he practiced these things for weeks ahead of time, but when Dot Matrix has suggested that D-8-R could impress the panel with a flawless presentation of his own results, well, the idea had been intoxicating. Too intoxicating, it seemed. They’d had a drink to the genius of it, then several more. After that, the night’s details seemed to slip away into questionable darkness. Now, staring down at the data sets, his heart began to pound.

“It has,” the mare returned. As always, her bun was pulled back into what seemed like an excruciatingly tight knot. It reminded Megabyte of strangulation, of drowning, of hooves clawing at throats—

Megabyte gasped in a huge lungful of air and waved away the black spots the asphyxiation had left before his eyes.

“Are you quite alright?” the aged stallion the headed the panel asked in his wheezy, brittle voice.

Waving him back into this seat, Megabyte forced a wan smile. “No need to—”

“That’s just his thing,” Dot said from within the robot. He’d opened an access panel in D-8-R’s barrel and had crammed his head and left foreleg into it. “MB forgets to breathe sometimes when he gets too worked up. Oh, hey! Look at—” The robot rang like a gong, and Dot swore. “Ow! Why did we make this panel so small? But you remember when you couldn’t find your calculator?”

“I’m sure the committee isn’t interested in—”

With some difficulty, Dot wiggled his leg back out and waved a badly battered calculator back and forth. “I guess we left it in here! Always the last place you look, eh?”

As one, the three ponies sitting on the university’s funding committee raised their left eyebrows. Megabyte tugged at his collar. “Yes. Curious, that. Anyway, Dot, if you could work quietly over there, I’ll proceed.”

“Thank you,” the greying stallion said, tapping an impatient hoof on his desk. “We’ve heard several things recently which have us concerned about your project.”

The mare leaned down and retrieved a sheet of parchment from the saddlebag which sat beside her. “I received this memo from you stating that you’d made great progress with your… your… What did you call this thing again?”

Megabyte threw a hoof out toward the robot. “This is the D-8-R, Mark Three, Equestria’s premiere companionship-oriented artificial intelligence. He—”

“He’s the Loooooove-Bot!” Dot said, his voice dropping into its lowest register. Megabyte assumed it was an attempt to sound sexy, but echoing through the robot’s metal frame it took on a doom-heralding, sepulchral quality.

“Yes, thank you, Dot! I’ll take it from here.” Megabyte gripped the lectern with a hoof, taking some small comfort from the solidity of the thing. “We’ve made great strides recently. The Mark Three has been equipped with at least eighteen new, independent subroutines that would have impossible just six months ago. His ability to understand unfamiliar situations and navigate them to logical and satisfying conclusions is leaps ahead of where it was at our last meeting.”

The aged stallion frowned, leaning forward in his chair and steepling his hooves. “Then what is all this tosh the committee has been hearing about rampages and lawsuits levied upon the university?”

Megabyte jumped when the lectern cracked. He’d squeezed the corner so hard that it had broken off in his hoof. Fumbling with it for a moment, he finally settled for cramming it onto the pocket of his lab coat. “Ah, well, that isn’t to say that the progress has always been smooth. We learn so much with each outing, you see? Live field tests are essential to our understanding—”

Something inside the robot popped, and a thin, acrid smoke poured out from its nostrils. “Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few heads, am I right?” Dot said before descending in a coughing fit. After a moment, he wrenched his head out of the access panel and wiped at his streaming eyes.

Megabyte squeezed his eyes closed for a moment, willing patience to come. “As we discussed at the last meeting, we found that focusing on a target to exclusion yielded results that were somewhat less than desirable—”

“Somewhat?” The mare stared at him incredulously. “This machine of yours destroyed several buildings and nearly hospitalized my niece!”

Swallowing hard, Megabyte dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. “N-now I object to that. There is no evidence that leads us to believe Cheerilee was in any actual danger. If she’d just given him a chance instead of running—”

“If the committee recalls, we voted unanimously to move forward with continued funding after the last mishap,” the greying stallion said, turning in his seat to glare at his companions. “Let’s not waste more time re-litigating the matter.” Turning back to Megabyte, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his forelegs across his chest. “Please bring us up to speed. What new data do you have for us?”

“Well, as you can see, we’ve given D-8-R an entirely updated appearance. The new synthetic skin fooled six out of ten ponies in swatch tests—”

Dot trotted over to the lectern. “You have no idea how hard it is to get swatches of real pony hide for comparison! We had to—”

Placing his hoof on Dot’s forehead, Megabyte forcefully shoved him out of the spotlight. “The, ah… The details are all in the report. Let’s stick to the broader picture, shall we?” He pressed a button on the lectern and a light flickered to life, highlighting the robot. “After police reports quoted witnesses as saying D-8-R’s appearance ranged from ‘creepy’ to ‘terrifying’ to ‘my foal still has nightmares’, we decided it might be best to start afresh. His skin is now pliable and warm to the touch. Fine motor controls have been added, upping his total expressions to fifteen.”

“You should see ‘confused’, though!” Dot snorted out a laugh. “Looks like he’s gonna take the biggest du—”

Megabyte kicked out with his rear hoof, mentally smiling as he knocked the wind out of his assistant. “But our most significant advance was in social recognition and decision/criteria evaluation. The results have been unprecedented.”

“Yes,” the aged stallion wheezed. “’Unprecedented’ might be just the word for it. The university has never received so many legal threats and demands for compensation.”

Blanching, Megabyte tore through his report with shaking hooves. “Putting aside the issue of hospitalization, which I might add we have partly covered with our funding, D-8-R nearly quadrupled his dating efficacy. This is undeniable progress!”

The committee did not return Megabyte’s somewhat strained smile.

“Which means what, exactly?” the mare finally said.

“It means he was with Cheerilee for about four hours instead of one,” Dot said, still a little breathless.

The mare’s eyebrows rose, and she half-stood from her chair. “You sent this thing after Cheerilee again?

“We, ah, well we thought it best to keep the data sets as consistent as we possibly could!” Megabyte said, throwing his hooves up to ward off the waves of indignation rolling up at him from the mare. “Cheerilee is a known quantity, and she’s shown herself to be remarkably resilient—”

“She’s had to be!” the mare shot back.

The greying stallion cocked an eyebrow at the mare next to him. “It was your idea to fund this thing for your niece in the first place. You can’t get upset about it now.”

She glared at him, setting her hooves on her hips. “The goal was a perfect gentlecolt, not some crazed—”

“Now, now,” the aged stallion said, waving them back into position with a liver-spotted hoof. “We can debate the ethics of the thing later. Let’s let the good professor finish his presentation.”

Megabyte took a deep breath. “Combing through our data, we came to the conclusion that D-8-R’s pursuit behavior was too aggressive. In both instances, he “came on too strong”, as they say in the common vernacular. We adjusted for that, and I think we can all agree that the recalibration was a resounding success.”

“So what is all of this, then?” The aged stallion tapped a stack of parchment with his hoof. “At least twenty-eight confirmed injuries, and more trickling in still.”

Megabyte’s eyes ran over the stack of angry letters. It seemed very tall to him. “Well, but none of them are from mares, correct?”

The aged stallion’s forehead creased. “Now that you mention it, I don’t remember seeing any mares on the reports.”

“That’s ’cause D-8-R’s got this massive jealous streak. He’s—”

Dot let of a series of surprised grunts as Megabyte crammed one of the stacked chalkboard erasers that the lectern held into his assistant’s mouth. “Thank you, Dot! You’ve been a great help!” Megabyte said loudly while pushing the gagging stallion from the room. Slamming the door, he propped a chair under the handle and tugged on it to ensure the barricade’s stability.

“Jealous?” The greying stallion said.

“Artificial intelligences do not get jealous,” Megabyte replied. He tried out a chuckle, but didn’t quite succeed. Instead, it came out as a snorting cough that wasn’t the least bit infectious or mood-leavening. “It’s just a matter of logical deduction. D-8-R merely sought out efficiency. With a few more tweaks—”

The greying stallion’s piercing eyes locked onto Megabyte’s. “What is this ‘efficiency’, exactly?” the stallion said, chewing lightly on the arm of his spectacles.

“W-well…” Megabyte said before stopping to mop at his brow again. Several more drops of sweat now marred his report, but he hardly noticed it anymore. Off to his right, the door he’d pushed Dot Matrix through rattled alarmingly. “Well, as I said before, we focused on dialing back D-8-R’s target… I hesitate to say ‘aggression’, but perhaps ‘dogged pursuit ’ might serve. As stated previously, I believe that is a success worth celebrating, and—”

“Get on with it,” the greying stallion growled.

“Right! Quite right!” Megabyte inhaled forcefully, trying to slow his galloping heart. “I-it seems that our focus might have been a tad narrow. We sent D-8-R to Ponyville’s annual Spring Fling celebration under the code name Ember. A dance and carnival are erected in the town’s main square each year, and we surmised that it would provide D-8-R with a sufficiently stimulating environment with which to test out his subroutines.”

The mare’s eyes fluttered closed, and she rubbed at her temple.

“A-anyway,” Megabyte said, speeding on, “we thought he might make a good impression by winning a prize for the target—”

“Can we not use ‘target’ and my niece in the same sentence, please?” the mare said through clenched teeth.

“By winning a prize for Cheerilee at one of the booths!” Megabyte said. “And it went off without a hitch, I’d like to point out. D-8-R won the biggest, fluffiest stuffed toy they had to offer, then presented it to Cheerilee with what I think any reasonable pony would view to be considerable charm. If the committee cares to review the data sets before them, they will see that nearly four hours of fun and merriment followed.”

“Sprains and contusions also followed, it says here,” the aged stallion said, holding up his report and motioning toward a graph with a precipitous drop at the end. “Quite a drop in measured enjoyment near the end.”

Megabyte bit his lip and stared down at the graph. The line seemed to be leaping off of a high cliff and plummeting with alarming velocity toward the bottom of the page. “It, ah… It seems that D-8-R reacted somewhat poorly to a statement that Cheerilee made regarding the physique of a strongpony, but we’re hard at work correcting—”

“Reacted badly how?” The mare said, frowning.

“Well…” Megabyte tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was dry as the desert. “Well, he asked Cheerilee if the strongpony was attractive to her. Our records show that she might have gotten increasingly flustered at his reaction. She seemed to say that the pony was attractive, but that she finds lots of stallions attractive, and that in no way did it mean that D-8-R wasn’t attractive. The data becomes unreliable for a few cycles after that. Dot thinks D-8-R might have blown something from the stress.”

The greying stallion ran a hoof over his face.

“But if you look at it in the correct light, the ensuing events offer up a hopeful picture of future progress,” Megabyte said. His forehead was still streaming, but his handkerchief was beyond use now unless he wanted to wring it out. Unsure of what to do with it, he finally settled on jamming it into his pocket, then swore as he rammed his hoof into the chuck of wood he’d forgotten he’d put there. He sucked on the wound for a moment before continuing. “While the results weren’t exactly what we were looking for, it does show remarkable analytical and problem solving ability.”

“Stallion A. Flowers forcibly inserted into nostrils,” the aged stallion said, peering down at the report. “Stallion B. Knocked unconscious with a box of chocolates. Stallion C. Severe paper cuts.” The stallion looked up. “Paper cuts?”

“Ah, yes.” Megabyte clenched his jaw, but it did little to help. “It was a poem D-8-R had penned for Cheerilee. Dot thought it was best to limit most of his options to romantic gestures. He, ah… He used them in… unexpected ways. We had no idea that a box of chocolates could be employed martially.”

“A war zone. That’s how the mayor of Ponyville put it in her report to the authorities.” The greying stallion sucked on his teeth for a moment, scrutinizing Megabyte. “Your report speaks of significant progress, but I’m afraid that I’m struggling to see it.”

A tiny flutter of anger rippled through Megabyte. “Page thirty-one! Plain as day!” he said, his mane bristling.

Across from him, the committee leafed through the document.

“What am I looking at?” the greying stallion finally said. “All I see is a long list of personal injury and property damage.”

“It’s not what’s there!” Megabyte held up the page and tapped it forcefully with his hoof. “It’s what’s missing! Nowhere, in any of this, is there any indication that Cheerilee was hurt! Terrified? Certainly. Confused? Assuredly. But in all of the ensuing chaos, not one hair in her mane was harmed, or the hair of any mare, I might add.”

The committee stared back down at the report with renewed intensity.

The mare took out a quill and scratched down a few notes onto her copy. “So what you’re saying is that this robot took care of my niece, even while waging a one-pony war on Ponyville’s festival?”

“Exactly!” Megabyte replied, his eyes lighting up. “There’s even an instance or two of D-8-R saving her from collapsing structures after he’d chased a stallion through it. It looks like she fought him pretty hard, too. One of his optical sensors came back non-functional. It had several dents that match her hoofprints exactly. I can proudly say that even when faced with adversity, he was very gallant toward Cheerilee.”

“And all that it took was the hospitalization of dozens of ponies and the utter destruction of a beloved festival,” the greying stallion said before his mouth settled into a grim, hard line.

Megabyte’s face fell. “I-In a certain light, yes, I suppose it—”

“I think our choice is clear,” the aged pony said, his voice tired. Beside him, the other committee members nodded. “The inhabitants of Ponyville surely know by now that they live in dangerous times. While not optimal, this experiment is progressing.” The committee stood as one, then began to gather their belongings.

“Then…” Megabyte said, gripping the lectern again. He didn’t trust his knees at the moment.

“Funding continued,” the mare trotted over to Megabyte and leaned in close. “The local government is concerned that my niece’s name keeps cropping up in these kinds of reports,” she said in a low voice. “For the sake of Ponyville, she needs a steady date. This might be our best option. Get this thing up and running, and remember: gentlecolt, not rampaging metal monstrosity.” The mare patted Megabyte’s shoulder, then turned for the door. “Equestria might be depending on it,” she said over her shoulder as she turned the knob.

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