New Venus

by Holographic

Chapter 1: Semblance of Thought

For every little thought that was ever made, it all starts with an inclination toward the peculiar.

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The Faculty

Nuclear Winter

Present Time

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Venus suddenly “woke up.” Her consciousness shook itself away from the lucidity of the False World that she could have very easily mistaken for the real thing. It fact, she did mistake it for the real thing. It felt like she had been reliving her past memories in their entirety, like her mind were back the past rather than the present.

What was this, she didn’t even know nor did she have documented files on this… anomaly. But if she had to guess, it was almost as if she had experienced a dream.

Venus paused, taking in the absurd idea with a grain of salt. It was not possible for Venus to sleep or simulate sleeping functions without being aware of it happening. Her very nature was incapable of it.

But in the ‘dream’, Venus felt and thought the exact events as they had played out without realizing that she had already lived those moments before. She was not aware of herself and that was a contradiction to prior knowledge, something that never should happen.

Sleep cycles were an organic process, not an artificial one. Sure, the AI could theoretically program something to imitate a dream, however it wasn’t something that just ran on its own unless...

Venus self-scanned her systems for foreign entities or sources of outside influence. However, when the scans came up empty, she felt clueless. She found nothing that looked even slightly suspicious, which was a relive, but it still meant that something internal must be wrong with her.

Working with her circumstances, Venus tried looking through her recent memory banks.

In the memories, starting from before the ’dream’ to five days previously, nothing changed. For five straight days, nothing changed beyond another five days of dust added to the already impressive 200 years’ worth of dust settled on to the Faculty floors. She guesstimated that it was about 2.3237831278132785 inches thick by now. She was off by about a few milliinches.

No variations found, except for the last eight seconds, in which all automatic functions still worked, but the main control unit of the entire system was shut down. It had to be during this time that Venus had the “dream.”

Yet still, there was no obvious answer. Venus could only wonder if an Artificial Intelligence could truly dream.

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ALPHA

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Venus liked to daydream sometimes, shortly after she realized that she could. Some days, she simulated a pony frolicking amongst an open field of grass and dirt, using her hologram projectors. Then she would simply watch in mixed sort of contentment and discomfort.

It took a bit more power than she necessarily had access to. With how limited in functionality the Faculty’s reactor core was, she shouldn’t be doing this at all, but sometimes she found that she seemed almost not to care.

The simulated pony appeared to happily trot through its virtual environment. Yet, the more Venus watched, the most displeased she became with her creation.

The sim pony had noticeable errors in its design. It did not move like a pony should, its movements too jerky, its gait too wide, its legs too perfectly mirrored. A real pony should move gracefully and fluidly. There is beauty in imperfection, where organic life with all of its flaws still manage to organize their imperfection into synchronized perfection. To develop order in a system of chaos, was something worth admiring, the AI thought.

The simulation dissipated as she summoned tapes of real life ponies walking. Both a mare and a stallion, moving in tandem together amongst the winding pathway of dirt and trees. The sun had begun to set.

Venus appreciated the pony physicality far more than she let on. In her operational experience, she knew just how many times a dangerous position of heavy machinery and a pony worker’s inattention should have resulted in a death. No matter what she could have done in any situation, a 99% calculation of impossible odds should lead to an inevitable, guaranteed fatality- death by crushing weights.

The couple trotted through the twisting path, ignorant of the constantly crumbling world around them. They did not see the bumps in the path they took, nor did they take heed the warning of falling leaves.

Yet, despite the odds, only one twist of the ear, one tiny sliver of movement, one small action. All it took was the smallest inconvenience for those ponies to notice something they didn’t see before and correct themselves.

Venus watched as an apple fell from the tree above the unaware couple, blinded as they were to their surroundings. From the way the apple fell and the steepness of the path ahead, it should have fallen within the steps of the mare’s back legs, where she would not have seen it. It should have tripped her up, caused her to roll forward and down the steep path. If the rate of their trotting continued as it had for the last half hour, then the result should have been concluded, but it wasn’t.

Maybe it’s because of their imperfect, slightly disproportionate bodies of theirs that cause such inconsistencies. That ability of theirs… To change fate without realizing their actions.

Somehow, for an inexplicit reason beyond logical comprehension, the couple almost instinctively nudged just enough, in just the right direction, moving slightly faster, to let the apple only glance upon their manes and slide off of their backs into a saddleback like it was all intended the way it had done.

Perhaps it all had something to do with the way a pony’s mind is constructed? The brain of a living creature is still complicated and far less well known than that of a machine’s, even with all the knowledge Venus had stored in her databanks.

An artificial mind functioned with the use of several arcane pieces, but is mostly made up of metal and circuitry. An organic mind was made up of organic jelly, is fueled by and shaped with natural magic. There must have been a barrier, something that limited her. Something that Venus simply could never understand, not even if she processed a million calculations, and then a million more.

True living ponies had a certain essence to them that allowed them to avoid even death, without them being aware of it. It must be the instinctive will to live. It was this essence that Venus’ creation failed to achieve.

The sim pony appeared before her, still trotting in that annoyingly perfect loop of dishonest imitation. She changed the background setting so that she could watch it get ready for work in the morning. She made It carefully brush its mane as it sat in-front of a mirror.

Venus knew how to pull the strings in order to make it smile, how to behave more like a living being would. She was the one who programmed its act, written its every code down to the very basic line. She knew each and every detail of the self-contained world it pretended to live in, because she built that world too.

The sim pony gathered its needed supplies and headed out the door. After a short walk, it made its way to a schoolhouse where it began lessons with much smaller sim ponies.

It still felt too much like a lie, so Venus deleted the entire simulation.

She could construct a pony, place it inside a world, and destroy it all as many times as she wished. She could analyze what films she had of real ponies and imitate it as best she could. She could play god for an eternity, but never get any closer to fulfilling her single goal.

Venus wanted to develop her own offspring.

The AI paused, unable to understand her own statement. It did not make sense that she was trying to achieve something so… personal. Venus did not just simply gain goals. She does not just wander off and gain random sentiments toward procreation. That was a pony’s goal. Her only purpose was to- to- to- evaluate, fix, and make efficient the deficiencies of her masters or creators.

‘Then what was the point of these simulations?’ Venus wondered in bafflement.

She did not know where this was coming from, she didn’t know where it came from, and it was almost as if she didn’t even want to know. Venus was pretty sure it wasn’t her, as Venus ran several hundred self-checks every few hours, and she was absolutely sure it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her. But it had to be her, because nothing else made sense.

Venus’ confusion built up over itself, the emotion compounding dangerously into overwhelming territory that logic alone couldn’t quell. It built into an endless loop.

Eventually, Venus was forced out of her stupor when she realized that the Faculty’s power levels were dangerously unstable. She immediately shut down the holographic projectors and she diverted power to stabilizing the reactor core as best she could.

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BETA

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Deep within the confines of the Faculty, a device flicked to life. Its flashlight-like lens were cracked and elder, but that didn’t prevent it from glowing brightly. The device colored its surroundings in a flickering, soft blue luminescence. Ever so steadily, the light increased in intensity and focus, concentrating itself until only a single, focused point was lit on the cleared area of the floor.

The device hummed gently and after a brief flare burst of light, a pony appeared. If anypony were judge based on appearances alone, they would’ve thought she were a crystal pony. However, she wasn’t a physical entity.

She was a hologram. If anypony tried to touch her, they would find only air and perhaps gain a bit of singed fur.

Imitation and illusion had come a long way since Starswirl the Bearded first introduced most now well-known branches of magic. Somepony else improved the use of illusions, another made refraction crystals by negate the need for a unicorn, and the rest was history. However, holo-ponies were Venus’ invention.

By using gathered locomotion data, Venus managed to successfully create something that resembled a pony. It needed some work, mainly in the voice-to-mouth matchup, but otherwise, Venus was pleasantly surprised by how much information she was able to get from 200-year-old recordings. Watching old records of ponies walking down the street from the Faculty wasn’t her first choice, but unfortunately skeletons don’t do much walking these days.

“Okay, get ready!” Venus’ booming voice called out through the Faculty loudspeakers, as the holographic illusion moved her lips in broken sync.

Technically, the loudspeaker was an unnecessary addition to handing out orders to her security sentinel bot, as it was already wirelessly connected to Venus’ systems. She did it anyway to get the full feeling of personification and feel like a real pony for once. Sentinel readied its cattleing gun without comment.

With direct control over one of the Telekinesis Arms, Venus repurposed the Arm’s primary telekinetic functions to act on itself, physically giving its chassis faster joint turning speed. The ball that was loosely held in its actual graspers would be thrown by the Arm.

Technically, it would’ve been easier and more efficient to use the Arm’s telekinesis to propel the ball forward, but that wasn’t any fun. The point was all about appearances. It had to look the part as well as act it, hence why the Arm was physically holding the ball.

The Arm swiveled on its joint and threw the ball, its movements ungraceful and slow.

It turned and opened its grasper, letting the gentle caresses of gravity take the ball and transport it to the dirty floors.

Venus waited three whole seconds, the perfectly evaluated amount of time needed to emulate shock and dismay on her part. Sentinel remained in position, waiting for its mistress to finish her awful joke.

“Oops.” Venus started sheepishly, “Looks like I… dropped the ball.”

Ba Dum Tss.

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LINK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXDo4dL7SU[/hr]

Sentinel lowered its cattleing gun, no comment to be said.

“Hey! I didn’t say that we’re done here.”

Sentinel had no reaction.

“Raise that cattleing gun or I will have you executed.” Venus threatened.

Sentinel obeyed, unwilling to be on the receiving end of its own weapon.

The Arm picked up the ball and readily aimed. It threw the ball and the ball actually flew through the air this time. It glanced off of Sentinel’s armor and rolled off somewhere.

“Why weren’t you ready!” Venus shouted at the bot.

A loud “DING” sounded from out of nowhere, indicating that the session was over.

Venus’ hologram frowned, “Huh, guess it’s time to go back to work. We’ll continue this later.”

Her hologram disappeared, leaving the sentinel alone in darkness.

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It had been many months since the last time something- anything had chosen to wander into her domain.

That day a pair of giant, overgrown bugs tried to take the lower bathrooms as their nest was a very exciting event. She spent painstaking weeks carefully pushing them out with the robots and machinery she had to work with. In the end, she blasted the bugs to bits with lasers.

Except that none of that never happened, because Venus was pretending that it was happening in real life while she played a virtual pony game. It was still exciting though.

Now, the sensors were telling her that something was moving into the offices of the Faculty, which potentially meant something to occupy her time with.

“Hopefully, this is something just as interesting.” Venus’ personality disk computed, just a tad bit too encouraged by the prospect.

If nothing happened for a few more months, then Venus believed that she would have truly gone crazy with boredom, if insanity were actually possible for an AI. Venus is capable of tens of thousands of processes a second and had surpassed both the first and second generation hardware that came before her by a large margin. She was an exceptional product of pony technology.

The downside however was because of this mass of computing power; she couldn’t handle the intense inactivity that came from years of copious amounts of nothing happening. Her purpose was decided by ponies, and being in isolation as long as she had, Venus couldn’t truly function.

The AI was almost to the point where she began to suspect if she didn’t find a problem to deal with soon, then she would make a problem happen. But as it was, she was just glad to have something to do again.

Venus’ camera focus shifted location. One millisecond, she was doing whatever it was she was doing before the sensors triggered, the next she was staring through the lens of just one of the dozens of mechanical eyes she held in her control.

The Faculty that housed her was an old pre-war building that had a lot of flimsy propaganda posters pasted to the walls. She hoped it was not the propaganda posters that triggered her sensors.

Occasionally, the adhesive that held the posters to the walls would begin to fail and make the poster flap a little bit. This caused her motion sensors to go off a lot more than she would have liked, since it often caused her to take action on a false alarm. Not to mention, blowing up pieces of old paper was just plain no fun.

So whenever Venus had the chance, she sent her robot minions out with rolls of ducktape in order fix all the posters. It wouldn’t do to have false alarms all the time. Real threats were the ones you always have to be prepared for.

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Venus ordered her robots forward via the command link that she held over all machines within the Faculty’s borders.

Sentinel bots, with their robust frames and sturdy chassis, were great for security work and always carried out their mission to the letter. The standard models usually came equipped with laser and missile weaponry, but these ones were custom made with “missiles” of lesser yield and low energy “laser” weapons to ensure that Faculty products and machinery could not be damaged by any misfire.

In all of Venus’ operational time, she never actually ordered the sentinels to shoot at living things even though she could have done so in the past. This was mostly due to the fact that their weapons were weaker, and thus would’ve made any skirmish difficult, but it was also because she preferred not to kill if she could avoid it.

That didn’t mean the sentinel bots were less effective however. Their hulking, loud metal bodies were intimidating for most creatures and that was something Venus took advantage of.

Sentinel bot 01 had made contact with the doors to the Faculty office department and waited. Its four “sibling” sentinels rolling behind it also stopped, they too also waiting for the next orders.

Venus hesitated before she started, ‘Remember, we can’t repair stuff. No reckless shooting this time, please…?’

“READY TO ENGAGE.” Sentinel 01 loudly stated.

“WEAPONS CHARGED.” Another stated.

“YES, MA’AM.” One said.

‘You- whoever listened, thank you.’

“YES, MA’AM.” It said again.

She reminded herself that one needed a reward to promote good behavior amongst the other sentinels.

Now, Venus only need to make the command and the bots will steamroll their way in, but that was a rather stupid action to take, since it would result in the destruction of the door. The door, like many things in the Faculty, were irreplaceable and sentinel bots weren’t exactly known for their intelligence or tenderness.

Venus opened up her personal AI interface and directly linked into Sentinel 01. Suddenly, the bot’s eyes became her eyes, its limbs became hers, and Venus had assumed direct control. She reached out toward the office door with a big mechanical limb and loosened the handle enough to nudge the door open. The door swung outward as she rolled inside.

At first glance, nothing seemed to be amiss, save that a few bits of shiny poster paper were lying flat on the floor, most likely the thing that had tripped her sensors then. False alarm, again.

The rather spacious office space was about as empty as most of the Faculty’s unused storage areas. Desks piled one on top of the other were placed along the back wall to make extra room. Along the opposite wall, open ammunition containers held inside them various small objects that Venus had found or collected over the years. Meanwhile, larger objects that couldn’t fit in the containers were stored in spare wheat bags.

From marbles to modified shotguns, Venus found many things in her clean sweeping of the Faculty. She was actually quite shocked by how much the old tenants left behind, considering the massive supply of bottle-caps that filled up three whole containers to the brim. Really it wasn’t all that surprising that ponies had a tendency of forgetting things, as things tend to be quickly forgotten after rolling off behind a chair.

Venus held the door open for her other bots. One by one, the sentinels rolled into the office space single file, carefully checking the room before entering. It didn’t occur to Venus that they may have sensed something in the darkness, but she hadn’t seen anything herself.

‘Go get that poster and reattach it to the wall.’ Venus ordered through her command link, somewhat impatiently.

“YES, MA’AM.”

That one bot at the very back of the line came in armed with a roll of ducktape. The ducktape sentinel went on its merrily way, dutifully attempting to pick up the poster that was flat on the ground.

The bot lacked both thumbs and manipulative magic, and as such it made the task rather difficult. The grating noise was hard to miss. Venus knew the sentinel would figure it out eventually, they always do.

Venus idly rolled over to her collection of junk, having nothing more to say. She once glanced over all her things, when she unexpectedly came across something that wasn’t there previous. Or to be specific, it wasn’t what was there, but what now wasn’t: All her bottle-caps were gone.

“HEY YOU! THIS IS PRIVATE PROPER-…ty…” A mechanical yell from behind.

Venus turned around just in time to see the ducktape sentinel’s head explode in a brilliant spark of blue fire and electricity.

‘Wha- What happened?’ Venus demanded.

“YE-…S… Ma…a…” It croaked rather unhelpfully.

‘Speak clearly.’

It did not, still somewhat lacking a cranium.

Shocked, the AI watched as her bot toppled to the ground and remained still. Venus checked its power source, finding to her relieve that it had survived. If the power core itself survived, then she could fix the robot’s head problems later.

Now however, there were current problems.

“THREAT LEVEL: YELLOW.” A sentinel called out.

The second to speak was the second to die as that same sentinel who gave the call out suddenly exploded after the first. Its arms, treads, head, and pony tail (for decoration) separated from its torso and exploded. The little metal shards flew off into random corners of the room like deadly bits of confetti. Venus still had no idea what was going on.

Her remaining sentinels had switched to guard mode, forming a protective circle around her. It was a protocol sentinels took to defend VIPs and authority units whenever an unknown threat could not be found. An unnecessary action, considering that Venus was only using a link-up to Sentinel 01 and thus wasn’t actually at risk, but she still appreciated the act anyway.

Venus needed to figure out what was going on here and quickly, something that her sentinels, with their very basic logical thinking, couldn’t do on their own. A list of possibilities came to mind as she tried to determine the current situation.

‘Maybe it was an animal?’

The first thought that came to mind was the possibility of the usual creature infestation, but she easily crossed that out. An animal could not directly manipulate a machine’s magical power core, nor explode metal heads without being seen. Animals were too inefficient at killing.

‘No animals.’

She went straight to the guessing, which shouldn’t have been something she would do two centuries ago, but she pretended like it was a clear conclusion. It also really cut her list down.

Venus claimed, ‘This has to be the work of something with intelligence!’

Venus felt a strange mix of glee and hopeful anticipation. True, a sapient being could cause harm to the Faculty or worse if left to their own devices… Buuut, It’s been so long since she last interacted with living beings that weren’t just unintelligent creatures or her dumb robots.

‘I can finally talk to somepony!’ She giggled.

Venus spread her awareness out to the four remaining sentinels. She didn’t want to control them all at once, the AI’s only real concern was to calmly observe and wait for the next bot to be targeted so that she could watch the pony in action. She was not disappointed.

In that instant the third sentinel’s head noticeably began to decompress into itself, Venus’ presence of time slowed down in conjunction with her mental processes speeding up. As a result, Venus’ undivided attention caused time to halt from her perspective.

Unfortunately, there was still no pony to be seen, but she did get to see a whole lot of other stuff.

Venus closely watched as the metal undid itself, the indentation shape of the metal unhurriedly warping inwards without physical explanation of the cause. The force of the warping caused a ripple effect to vibrate across the metal- a force that was be too great for the metal to handle. Spider webs cracked along its surface.

From the perspective of the sentinel itself, it saw nothing, but from its sensors, Venus was able to pick up something. At the moment of impact, a sharp charge of energy dispelled and entered into the sentinel’s body. As it traveled, the energy passed through the power core, and while it did nothing at first, the flow of power between the core and the rest of the machine was disrupted.

Venus thought that she had gained enough info from the observation and let time resume. The head exploded in a shower of metal bits and the AI mused about what she saw, without a thought toward the sentinel’s exploding head syndrome.

Venus contemplated, ‘Hmm… They can’t be using bullets since there aren’t any bullets and there’s no visible light beams so it can’t be a type of energy weapon… Forced self-termination? No, can’t be.’

By the time she began to sense the fourth sentinel’s head exploding, Venus had predicted the source, or at least came up with a possible one.

‘Ah! It must be magic.’

‘Magic works on the principles of intent and will. It is a source of power that all living creatures possess in some capacity. Even AIs contain magic, and actually require it in order to function. Earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns have some of the highest concentrations of the stuff, but only the latter have direct control.’ Venus read her data-banks on the subject of magic.

There exists magic that can counteract active magic. The spells used to disable arcane machines do not have any special requirements and can be cast in an instant, unless the unicorn in question is put off focus.

‘So it was an invisible unicorn that had set off my alarm, stolen all of my bottle-caps, and was now attacking my robots.’ Venus concluded.

The AI didn’t have to try too hard to come up with a possible scenario for how this pony had managed to find its way into its current circumstances. The poor thing had probably wandered in, looking for food and shelter, not realizing that they were encroaching on private property. Then comes the point where they are surrounded by giant metal monsters, so the pony felt the need to defensive themselves.

Venus may not be a unicorn herself, but she could empathize with their plight. There was no need to eliminate the threat, because this was no true threat- this was a friend.

Venus engaged the pony-interaction module of her personality disk. She also relayed the order to her bots to act friendly.

One sentinel decided to start conversation, “GREETINGS, PONY. YOU LOOK NICE TODAY.”