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// Prologue: A Mundane Creation 
// Story: Alpha One Six 
// by Misanthropian 
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"So what you recon there are? 10,000 of these things in service now? 100,000." James looked unnervingly an the machine before them.

"I don't know, they're in basically every hospital in Equestria now." Ada responded as she closed the robot's skullplate.

James shuttered. "You almost done?" He never cared for robots. The combination of plastic and metal along side the artificial hair in place of a mane and tail. The way they could just be opened up to work on the. It was all to uncanny-valley for his taste.

Ada trotted over and playfully knocked the stallion's cap off his head. "Why do you work here if it bothers you so much?"

"ERoCo. has some of the best benefits of any company in Equestria. I just didn't expect to get selected for maintenance.", he said, reaching down after his hat in frustration. "Celestial, I hate robots."

"Well were almost done." Ada headed over and began typing commands into a terminal.

There was a click from the machine as it began its boot sequence. Boot diagnostics flashed across the terminal as the system transition from the kernel into userland, and began loading into the required runlevel.

The boot finished by displaying the firmware operating system version and prompting for login. "Kernel-6.0.12! Looks like the new firmware is showing up. That's good."

"Great, are we done yet?" James asked, staring uncomfortable at the cold blue glow of the robot's eyes.

Ada stepped up in front of the machine. "Not quite." She gave it a cursory look-over for any obvious physical defects. She finally looked to machine and gave it an order. "Report. Info."

The machine looked to here and responded, "Info: Model number N55 release 3 revision 26. Serial number 4326-25-a8-a016. Manufactured for Ponyville General Hospital by Equestrian Robotics Corporation. ERoOS version 28.10, Equinix, kernel-6.0.12. Unit designation, Alpha One Six. Standing by for maintenance."

James shuddered again upon hearing the machine speak.

Ada rolled her eyes. "Quit being such a child, it's just a programmed response."

"That doesn't make it better."

"Hmm..." Ada returned to the machine. "Enter maintenance, authorization 5113."

The machine snapped back to attention. "Awaiting commands."

"Run self diagnostics." Ada barked at the robot.

"Standby..." The machine clicked and whirred as its joints were flexed slightly to test that they were responding to the computer input.

Jamse grew tense "Every time. I swear, one of these days, one of these things is going to just jump forward and murder us."

"Not likely" Ada said with a deadpan look. 

"Diagnostics complete; All systems nominal."

"See. Nothing to worry about." Ada looked to James. He simple looked away. She shook her head and returned to the machine. "Caretaker Alpha One Six, enter shipping mode."

"Confirmed. Preparing systems for shipment to deployment location." The robot's limbs tensed up and it's eyes grew dim as it enter into hibernation.

"Thank Celestia," James sighed, " now lets get this thing out of here." He got up, grabbed to machine and carried it over to a large shipping crate.

"Yeah yeah. Hurry up, I want to get a lunch break sometime today." Ada grumbled.

James lifted the lid up. "This'll only take a second."

As the lid was closed two dull eyes glanced once more at the light of the open room, before it was cut off leaving only wood grain and paper to be seen, then darkness.