The old maker frowned and leaned against his cane after being lifted up. Luna backed away when the giant put its hand in front of them and returned next to her sister.
"I don't need medical aid," he refused stubbornly. The technician grunted. "What makes you think I can do anything for you-" He was interrupted by Celestia twitching wildly. "-two...?"
"You are a designated robotic technician," Luna said. "You are qualified to aid us in maintenance needs."
"Just use a station!" the man yelled angrily.
"The station has proved inefficient." Luna looked to Celestia throwing the helmet back into its pile. "Celestia needs your aid. Her internal systems have been placed under great duress for an unknown amount of time."
The male narrowed his eyes. "Celestia huh? So you're custom models?" He walked over to Celestia while the giant kept watch and looked around the white machine's hull. "I don't see anything designating you as a custom model," he said.
"I am not a custom model," Celestia said. The man looked shocked. "I am model LH-37-bq3. My new designation is 'Celestia' after cross-referencing data in my storage."
"What...You named yourself?!" he shouted in disbelief. The technician was speechless. "But that doesn't make any sense! There's no precedent for such a thing, and for AI to develop themselves in such a manner is...Where are your owners?"
"Mine are currently at their habitation. I am not allowed to disclose their location as per the security terms of my programming," Luna said.
"I don't have anyyyyy," Celestia sing-songed before her head twitched.
"That behavior is clearly abnormal." He looked at Luna from the corner of his eyes. "But it's not caused by stressed systems. That's all its doing."
"Her," Luna corrected.
The technician blinked. "What?"
"We have come to the consensus of being called 'sisters' per my owners custom designation of myself," the blue machine corrected.
"Saying 'myself' and not 'this model'? Interesting," he pondered aloud. He rubbed his wounded leg. "What did you say your model was again?" he asked Celestia.
"I am model LH-37-bq3," she answered.
"And you?" he asked Luna.
"Model LN-1a."
He scratched his head. "I don't recognized either of your model lines." He looked to Celestia. "I at least recognize that you're part of the thirty-seventh batch of manufactured models, but do you have any other designations? I don't recognize 'bq3'," he said.
Celestia looked into her personal logs. "No. That is all the information provided in my manufacturer's tag."
The male grunted. "Doesn't even state the model number of the batch approved..." His eyes shot wide open. "If it even has anything to do with that..." He was growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of information being provided to him by the machines. They were supposed to be more helpful! "Wait. Are you public models?" he asked the two.
"Unknown," they said in unison.
The technician dragged a hand over his face. "By being public models, I mean if you're available for purchase by the public or if you're private models. I have an inkling that you two are since I've never seen your models, your model designations, nor even heard of what you're capable of." He grabbed his chin and looked at their legs floating above the ground, leaving the dust and sand on the floor. "I'll see if there's anything that I can do, but considering what you've been demonstrating just by your models so far, I don't think I'll be able to do much."
He approached Celestia and tapped her chest at various points. "Where's the button to open your chest?" he shouted angrily after cursing aloud. Celestia unlocked the plating over chassis then gradually opened her hull itself. "Oh...Thank you," the technician said.
Celestia's internals were an assortment of various cables surrounded by a black, stretchy polymer, all wrapping around the sides of her internal framework and sliding seamlessly into the holes linking to her arms, legs, and head. To Luna, it looked like muscle fibers and thin, metal support framework interlinking around the cables. The supports were the size of needles and just as thin. A large blue sphere occupied most of the white machine's torso. The blue robot could see the blue energy wafting off all of her sister's components. It flew and ebbed and weaved in the air, wrapping around the technician's body and that of the giant before dissipating quickly after.
Luna could see that the maker was completely lost. She had seen it on the face of the 'father' many times before. He just hung onto the opening of Celestia's torso and stared at all the cabling and the sphere in the center of it all.
"You two are just shocking me more and more." He looked to the pile of boxes holding the batteries and saw another light go red. "We've gone past the use of the leaky batteries. The ones we have now just gradually dry up inside, but they can't hold a charge for a long while."
He reached out to try and touch the sphere, but Celestia grabbed his arm and carefully pulled it way. "Dangerous. Contact with my power source can cause you to cease function instantly."
The technician shivered. "Thank you, I suppose. Not ready for that trip yet." He exhaled loudly. "Whatever you have is filled with a lot of energy. A lot of it." He looked deeper into Celestia's framework.
Luna could see blue dots scattered about in her sister's frame. Kept in circles permanently rotating blue energy about them. It created a flow through Celestia's body that was being absorbed and exhaled by various 'pores' in the metallic structure of the machine herself. At the entry of the pathway leading to Celestia's left arm, the blue machine could see a blue disc spinning at a very rapid pace. She didn't have the necessary equipment built into her to be able to determine the rotations per minute.
"I can't figure out what any of this is or how any of this works. I've never seen technology like this in my life." He backed away from Celestia and pointed to the piles. "And I've been doing this for a long time." He groaned. "That being said, I can still see the same signs of stress on your framework. If you don't stress your systems any further, the materials should relax themselves back into place," he said. "You can go back to whomever owns you, now."
"No," Luna objected.
The technician was caught off-guard. "N-no? What do you mean 'no'? Does that go against a directive or rule in your programming."
"No. I am...following a directive," she explained.
The technician walked slowly towards the blue machine. "And what directive is that?" he asked her cautiously.
Now Luna's lights were the one to flash erratically. "To find...other...machines." The man gestured to his whole yard. "No," Luna rejected. "To find...other...machines," she strained to say.
"You mean similar models like you?" the man asked.
Luna shook her head. "I...am unsure."
"You have to be more specific. There are plenty of machines around, but your own models, if they're really private, won't be floating about haphazardly," the technician explained.
Luna grabbed her neck with a ring hand, drawing the man's gaze. Her lights were flashing angrily and her body was starting to twitch. "I...don't know...Others. Like us," she continued.
"There are plenty of others like you!" the man shouted. "Just lacking some of your features. What are you looking for?!"
Luna's body stopped glitching and she glared at the technician. "I don't know," she growled.
The maker left the machine to her own devices to 'cool' down, and laughed. "So you do feel emotions. Incredible!" His smile turned awry. "As a person vaguely related to science, I can say that this is quite incredible." He frowned. "Don't know what the regular folk would think. Plenty of people." He looked around his yard. "I have some service stations I haven't used since I received them. Was supposed to be to help maintain and recharge the robots around here, but I don't use many, and they aren't compatible with the newest model of service station spread about the city." He gestured to the giant to follow him. "I'll set two of them up before sending you on your way. You'll be safe here, after. Why, you might find others like you on the network, but don't keep your hopes up. " He looked over his shoulder. "You're the first I've ever seen of A.I. becoming self-aware." He frowned and rubbed his leg. "With so many generations you would think this would have happened sooner."
After her systems cooled off, Luna looked around for her sister, finding Celestia wandering about the area, fumbling through piles of old machinery. She decided to follow her sister's behavior. Most of the piles didn't interest her. Sure, they were other machines, but nothing particularly interested Luna. She decided to go towards a more organized bunch and found the chassis of several old machines. One of them was very close to her own size, albeit half a time bigger than her. What remained of the rusted metal was a bright brown with stained areas of rust. The torso was broken in two, giving it the appearance of a broken heart.
"Found something interesting?"
Luna turned around calmly. "Are the stations ready?" she asked.
The maker chuckled nervously then coughed into his fist. "I underestimated how heavy they were. The giant you saw is currently setting the platforms up for me to connect afterwards." He leaned to the right to get a better look at Luna's finding. "Oh. That thing. A strange chassis that one. Found a weird note on it telling me to melt it down at all costs." He rotated his free hand in the air. "Mentioned how the robot 'made everyone terrified' while it was active." He chuckled. "Kinda looks like a broken heart every time I see it. I just scrapped the entrails for parts and left the hull there. Might need the scrap later for a hull remolding."
Luna found interest in it, much to her confusion, and started to look around the scrapyard for anything she could find use in, all under the watchful eye of the technician.
"One thing bother me," Twilight interrupted. "The technician being interested in you developing sapience is one thing, but who were your...ahem...owners?" Twilight coughed.
Luna shrugged. "I don't know. They often mentioned working in something related to science, but I never retained what they were saying since I was still just following my programming back then."
"Still, I think that you developing like that is amazing!" Twilight frowned and pondered as she tapped a hoof on the ground. "I don't understand the technician's reluctance to mention you to the public."
Luna and Celestia looked to each other, but Luna started first. "Twilight, what would you do if a machine that was being made throughout your life all of a sudden gained sentience rather than sapience?"
"I would be thrilled!" Twilight shouted as she threw her forelegs into the air. "A machine developing its own mind? That sounds incredible!"
The lunar princess shook her head. "Okay. So, you would be thrilled like that for a machine of your size, I imagine, or smaller even." Twilight sensed a smile creep up the princess' non-existent face. "What if they were big enough to help construct buildings? What then?"
Twilight gave pause. She had to think of a proper response. "Well, I would still be thrilled. It might take a bit more caution, but I'm certain I could get through to them."
Celestia sighed. "Twilight, you're saying that because you developed a bias after seeing us and hearing of our story," she chided.
"N-no! That's not...Okay, maybe it's a little true, but so what?" she asked.
"What if that machine decides that it would prefer to destroy everything then instead of traveling around curiously like Luna and I did, hm?" Celestia put her arms on her hips. Twilight was speechless. "Being optimistic is a fantastic, my dear Twilight. Really, it is, but you have to remember that robots gaining sapience like that could be a very bad thing. Others might come to the conclusion that their own makers are a threat to their survival and behave like cornered animals. Others would see all the history and stubbornness of their creators and self-improve to help their creators become the best of what they can be. You wouldn't even know the conclusion they would come to to do it." Twilight was listening very closely. Now she had new theories to ponder on and philosophical quandaries to solve. "A new sentient ai is like an infant. It needs guidance, and if you don't give it that, it could very well develop wrong based on its initial programming alone."