002 entered the gloomy room, her brass hooves eliciting a loud creak from the wooden floor. It was a large, seemingly abandoned house she had entered this stormy night, a house the likes of which would have been portrayed in a foal’s horror story, with rattling windows, vermin peaking out of corners and the creakiest stairs in Equestria. The robotic visitor had carefully taken each step, distrusting the old wood. Yet she felt no fear of the old mansion, she had not entered this building as part of some stupid foal’s bet, no, she was not like an organic, wasting her time on such trivia. She was here for a specific reason, namely, the pony… the being, who inhabited this dark place. 002 opened a grating door to find the house's owner, a being fitted to a spookhouse. The pony turned towards 002, flashing a grin which showcased its yellow teeth and tongue, visible through a large hole in its right cheek.
“Welcome,” it said in a mare’s voice that had a faint echo to it, too insignificant for anypony to notice, but 002´s mechanical ears were up to the task. 002 also noticed her opponent’s lips were moving slightly off-sync to the voice. Fascinating.
“So, what brings my best friend to my domicile in the middle of the night?” It asked.
“I have told you, I do not designate you as a ‘friend’, Hollow.” 002 responded, her voice equally echoing, yet more in a mechanical manner and her pronunciation seemed off. As if a griffon who had never heard a word in Equestrian was reading an Equestrian text out loud. While echoing. Mechanically.
“And yet,” Hollow asked, rolling her pale, colorless, grey eyes, without even a trace of a pupil. “You are here, again. You gotta see something in me for you to visit me again and again.”
If 002 possessed teeth, she would have ground them. The pony’s smug grin became even less bearable with her response. “You… interest me.”
“OHOOOH!” Hollow exclaimed, then she placed her hooves on her cheeks and fluttered her eyes at the one-eyed robot. One of her eyes could apparently only close halfway.
“Stop that!” 002 said harshly. “You know why, it is apparent and both of us know that!”
Hollow raised a hoof to wave it off. A large strip of flesh and muscle had been torn out, revealing the bones underneath. The wound was surrounded by dried blood. When 002 had first met the strange mare, she had reacted with surprise. Never before had she heard of a being like this as her creators had never showed her comics. Or movies. So she had nearly leapt back in her horseshoes when in the middle of a forest, she had run into a pony covered in several mortal wounds, walking along the path as if nothing was wrong. It was her first encounter with a zombie. It had been fascinating: a being, broken, yet functioning, dead, yet alive. After this meeting, she had wondered about the mare, Hollow, as she called herself. 002 had found herself distracted, a state which she had previously thought impossible for a robot, and her higher cognitive function kept reevaluating this meeting. Finally, 002 decided she wanted, needed to give in to her curiosity and learn more about the zombie. Begrudgingly, she had enlisted the help of several biologicals to find Hollow and she had visited her every so often since then. Many fascinating things she had learned, yet the urge to visit again had not become weaker. No, it had increased.
Even now, her eye wandered over the zombie. Despite the many, many pictures of Hollow stored in her databank and her perfect memory, 002 always felt like she could find something new in the undead's appearance. Hollow’s fur was a light shade of grey, although several faint pigments at the base of a few hairs suggested she had originally been yellow. The mane was a darker grey with a few bloodstains capturing several strains, it looked horribly unkempt. The side of her chest was torn open, rips protruding out of the flesh and into open air.
“Keep your eye to yourself, will you?~” Hollow whispered and again, 002 focused on the voice slightly out of sync with her lip movement. Surely, her voice was of magical origin, she reasoned. Otherwise, no speech would be possible. Just that moment, Hollow took a breath- and a wheezing sound emanated from her side as the air escaped from her punctured lungs.
“Like what you see?~” The dead mare giggled.
“You are an interesting being.” 002 responded evenly, yet she turned her head away, avoiding eye contact with the mare.
A hoof touched her chin, lifting her head up, and she saw Hollow’s blind eyes looking right into hers. What magic allowed her to see? The mechanical mare asked herself.
“002,” Hollow whispered. “You´ve been coming here over a month now. Everytime I want to be friendly, you push me back. I like you, 002. You are… yes, very interesting. You claim you come here because you just want to learn what I am, but is this really everything? Is this all you're here for?”
“Yes!” 002 though stubbornly, but to her surprise, her speaker did not say these words. Instead, she stood silently and her immediate thoughts blurred away. She knew it was not true. She had learned most things about Hollow by the time their fifth meeting had come to an end. She was a… a “soul” as it was called, bound by dark magic into a magical construct inside this corpse. From Hollow’s own report, she knew the undead had once lived in the crystal empire at the time Sombra reigned, but had died, yet the dark magic latent in these frozen lands prevented her soul from leaving her body. At this point, 002 was able to create a working theory for how all aspects of the undead worked. The only question that she didn´t know the answer for was why she was still so curious! Something about this mare just… interested her.
“No.” 002 said, the light of her eye shrinking to a tiny pinprick.
Hollow smiled and 002 experienced a form of feedback she had never experienced before. A sort of perpetual positive, repeating over and over. She knew not what to call it, but she… liked it.
“Then… maybe… you could bring yourself to call me your friend?” Hollow asked, her tone hopeful.
002 gave it thought. Was it this which caused her curiosity? She'd never had an organic friend before, nor had she desired it. What use was there of a friend who suffered of weaknesses like age or disease and would die, leaving her alone again? Yet, she pondered, Hollow was of her own accord already a thousand years old. She need not worry about age as her body was kept in the same state by the same magic which sustained her. She could potentially grow just as old as 002 herself.
“I could.” She said, and the undead bumped her hoof in the air. Maybe, she thought, maybe having a single organic friend wasn't so bad. After all, Hollow was mostly magical in nature anyway.
They sat on Hollow’s floor and chatted, an activity 002 failed to comprehend the purpose of; most likely there was none, but it filled her with the same cognitive loop she had experienced before and so she did her best to prolong it. She even accepted when Hollow asked whether she wanted to enter her casket. Only when she was inside the dark, enclosed space did she ponder why the zombie would wish to sleep in a coffin. Was it a kind of humor?
Just then, the casket lid opened and Hollow climbed in, squeezing herself inside. Their faces were only inches apart and 002 felt their hooves touch. “Do you want to inhabit this coffin alone? The space is very limited.”
“No, I think this is fine.” Hollow whispered, poking her hoof over 002´s metallic chest.
“You are poking me.”
“Yep~”
“Am I meant to reciprocate?”
“If you want to~”
002 poked Hollow´s ribs and observed as the mare shivered. “Do you feel my hoof?” She asked, surprised. Did she really experience touch even through dead skin?
“It's cold… I can feel cold.” the zombie shuddered.
002 looked at her own hoof. “I am sorry. My body is not heated. Except for my mane and tail.”
Hollow’s eyes darted to the thin, white curls that made up 002´s mane. “Can I touch?”
“You may.”
Hollow let out a long sigh as she pushed her hoof in the robot’s mane. “So warm…” She purred.
“I can turn up my internal functions and increase the heat output if you wish so.” 002 suggested. It would be an inefficient use of her battery power, yet she failed to think of a better usage.
Hollow nodded and entangled her hooves deeper in the heated haircut, letting out a contented sigh. “You said I was interesting… is this why you keep visiting me?” She asked.
“Obviously.”
“What exactly about me is so interesting to you?”
Again, 002 was at a loss for words. What was so interesting about this mare? She had already scanned and mostly understood her unique physiology, what drove her back here?
“You said you liked me.” She said to win herself more time. “Why?”
“Oh, everything.” Hollow grinned. “You're not scared of me, for one. You know how it is to be treated like something less than a pony, you're interesting, you want to spend time with me… also, I don't have to feel jealousy over heartbeat and such things. And lastly… you´re just fun to hang around with.”
002 was stunned. Never before had an organic complimented her. At least, in any way that wasn't her creators patting themselves on the back for constructing her.
“Now your turn!” Hollow grinned.
“You…” the robot started, unsure how to continue. “You are different… than most organics. You treat me politely. You see me as equal to yourself, not a tool or a monster. You… appreciate my company. And… something about you interests me. It keeps my higher cognitive functions occupied. It is a loop that does not end, an equation I cannot solve, but the answer lies somewhere here… with you.”
Hollow blinked her blind eyes, then her features broke out into a wide smile. “I feel the same way, 002.” She whispered. “I think the answer you seek… is love.”
002 pulled her head back, knocking it on the wall of the casket. How did I miscalculate my position, she asked herself for a moment, but the inquiry was pushed back by the undead mare’s revelation. Love. Such a stupid, organic concept. Yet, did it fit? “Love, noun, A: strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties . B: attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers. C: affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests.” She said out loud, pondering. B could be ruled out, as a machine, she did not feel any sexual desire. Yet, kinship… she felt some sort of connection to the zompony. And friendship might be enough to count for personal ties… yet she experienced the strongest confirmation as her positive feedback loop stopped for a moment and then came back, triple showering her processor.
“Are you certain?” She asked, her eye focusing on Hollow’s face, once again exploring every little detail of her visage. “We are intrinsically different beings.”
“Differences attract.” Hollow whispered in her ear. “And we're not that different anyway. Both of us aren't biologically alive, we don't breath, we're not treated equally by normal ponies… we love each other…”
“You are biological. Despite your additional magical nature, your body is weak, as it is made of flesh and bone.”
Hollow lowered her eyes. “Is… is this a problem?”
“NO!” 002 exclaimed forcefully, with a ferocity that surprised even herself. “No… not with you.”
And then the zompony closed in, her lips pursing, and 002 met her lips with her face, letting the kiss hit her faceplate and she knew what to call the loop coursing through her processor.
Happiness