"It's another robot 'like us'," Biddydee continued. She looked back at Dissonance flinch from a tiny bug buzzing near it and slouched. "Well, 'self-aware' at the very least."
"It?" the giant machine said.
Biddy shrugged. "Said they were whatever their audience wanted them to be."
Rahllup watched Dissonance screech when a lump of ashen snow from a tree suddenly fell on them. She crossed her arms and nodded. "Ah think it's cute, like a squishy toy."
"Shouldn't we get going?" Galah asked. "If we stay here any longer Dissonance will probably implode," he mocked.
"Fine." Rahllup poked Galah several times in the chest. "Ah have no idea what yer s'pposed to be, but ah'll get ya back fer what you did to my arms."
Galah stared at her. "You did that to yourself, though. No one asked you to detach your ar--"
They were interrupted by Biddy stepping between them. "Can we do this another time? My power levels are running low from the little run we did and I'd like to be full before we do another power consuming activity like you two punching each other and losing your arms."
The two agreed, and Rahllup stomped her way towards Dissonance, grabbing them by the head and slinging them over her shoulder. His system was too shocked to properly process the events that just took place, and he was admittedly very scared of this gigantic machine with flames as a face, so he remained silent.
The two sisters remained silent as they followed behind, listening to the group conversing and Dissonance trying to dissuade a confrontation between Galah and Rahllup, the latter wanting to use the flamboyant machine as a weapon. Their programming started to eb and sway, glitching with more and more processes crashing and needing to be rebooted or rewritten altogether. There was a yearning as they watched the group moving along. An unknown sensation, uncomfortable as it was. Celestia felt a pang of desire, perhaps, or joy, or melancholy. She wasn't sure what it was since she only had a written explanation of emotions in her storage, and machines were never meant to become self-aware.
Luna, however, was not taking to the processes very well. She looked at her arms again, then back at Galah. She still needed time to process. Perhaps an answer to what happened to her would come at night. The diagnostics were at least mostly reliable in that regard. Mostly.
It wasn't long until everyone reached the house again, and Rahllup dumped Dissonance into the dirty ground with a chuckle and headed over to her home.
"No!" Dissonance cried out. "I'm dirty," he whined. They shook their arms and frantically patted their fluffy scarf in some desperate attempt to clean it. "I didn't even know there were others, let alone gargantuan behemoths!" They looked angrily at the sisters floating by, ignoring Galah who was already ahead of everybody. The flamboyant machine watched him walk through the door, destroying it before announcing his return, seemingly oblivious to what had just occurred. "You two, why didn't you warn about another gargantuan behemoth?" Dissonance yelled.
Luna stared at them. "What does--"
"Very big," Celestia anticipated and explained.
The blue machine looked back at the house and could hear everyone yelling at Galah who, as always, remained confused and oblivious to his actions. "We said we were looking for others like you and we were going to a farm."
"Yes, I gathered that, but why did you not warn me about the giant," Dissonance repeated.
"You met with one. You didn't react. We figured you wouldn't mind another," Luna said flatly.
Dissonance had to make several attempts to process the information they had just acquired. "That's not even remotely the same! One has a sleek and elegant design, while the other looks like a swollen mass of metal with fire as a face!"
"Yes."
"...Fine." Dissonance stood up and wiped the dust off their chassis as best as they could. "I'm going to meet this plebeian farmers and see if I can gather some story inspiration from their simplistic lifestyle."
Annoyed, the flamboyant machine walked towards the house, tripping and flinching at every rock and bit of dust that flew at them. The sisters were going to follow when Luna suffered a system malfunction and collapsed. Her sister was quick to catch her and wait until there were signs of rebooting.
"What happened?" the white machine asked. "You crashed. Too much information being processed? A process failing? A part malfunctioning?"
Luna stared at the dark sky, noting that it never really changed regardless of what time it was meant to be. She raised her arms and saw them trembling. "I...I don't know. I thought a full system analysis would detect the issue, but..."
Celestia continued bobbing her head left and right and up and down to an inaudible tune. "But?"
"When Galah said his power cells were low..." Luna glitched and her eyes shorted briefly. "Red alerts appeared in my view, but there were too many. They were loud. Many many voices. If Galah shuts off..."
"We can reactivate him."
The blue machine stared at her arms like they were parasites draining her of blood. She twitched a moment and her lights changed in luminosity randomly and erratically. "M...Maybe, but him going. No more Galah." Luna looked towards the house and Saw Galah cleaning up his mess while pa and his son were holding a new door further down the doorway. "We can't restore him. We can't...restore the others." The images of the enraged machines from what she could at best define as 'dreams' rolled in front of her vision, staying in small squares and repeating in non-synchronized fashion.
Celestia stopped dancing and stared at her sister. "Then their data is corrupted?"
"No. They're...Not replicable. We don't..." Luna's twitching and glitching were starting to ramp up in intensity, reminding Celestia of herself when she was finally freed. "Unable to read the information. Unknown data format."
"You need to terminate these tasks of yours. They're overloading your system," Celestia said. "You don't have the same pathways that I have. Your system can't handle the strain."
"...But yours can," Luna said with a strange tinge in her voice. "I...will keep these errors under quaternary processes. They're not necessary to our continued functioning."
"Let us return to the home and inform them of our intention to return to the blue," Celestia said calmly. She raised her sister up. "No need to dwell on non-functional processes. Those lead to eaten resources and crashing."
The new door was already up, and the family was already almost to bed. All that were left were the robots and Pa. The latter was sitting on the stairs leading to the second floor.
"Took ya long enough," he complained. "Thought you were both exploring the environs or something." He pointed his thumb at Dissonance. "Brought in this weird poofy thing, now?"
"I'm not poofy, I'm 'puffy'," the machine corrected.
"Figured you'd be coming back with twelve or something." The caretaker burped and coughed afterwards.
"Told you ta stop that. Real gross," Rahllup complained.
She and Biddy were standing in front of the path to the kitchen, while Galah was sat in the space between the couches facing the television.
"I do what I want!" Pa retorted. "I'm old enough that I can burp and fart wherever I want and people think it's just a sign of a failing body!" He chuckled to himself. "Always think I can't help it."
Biddy sighed. "And we told you that it's disgusting to the other caretakers, which is why they don't like to talk to you or even acknowledge your work on robots."
Pa waved the notion off. "They never did to begin with, so why would that change now that I'm old?"
Galah scratched his head. "Don't makers view age with respect? The older scientists and engineers I knew were respected and looked up to by their peers."
The old caretaker remained silent for a moment. "Then they were lucky they had that kind of relationship with their employees at their workspace."
Luna watched him stare at the floor for a long while, curious as to what might be happening in his head. She felt her body starting to tremble when Celestia put a ring hand on her shoulder. The blue machine's gears relaxed almost instantly.
"Awww," Twilight coo'd. "Even back then you cared for each other like sisters."
The two stared blankly at the former student. "We were sisters, Twilight," Celestia said in disappointment.
"Well, y-That's not what I meant," Twilight stuttered. "I mean, even when you still weren't fully 'aware' you still cared a lot for each other like siblings would." She looked back at the image. "Something I wouldn't have expected at all."
The alicorn got poked in the ribs by her former teacher. "I'm just ribbing you, Twilight. We know what you meant."
Luna shot up and angrily pointed at her sister. "No! Not the puns! Don't you start again!"
Celestia floated against the ceiling, laying her back against it and holding her arm to her face. "Sounds like you're still sour about losing that contest."
"You...!" The lunar princess crossed her arms and turned away. "Maybe."
Twilight was completely confused. "What? Contest?"
"Nothing important, Twilight Sparkle," Celestia said. "Maybe we'll tell you the tale another time," she added. "Plenty like that from the time we awoke to now. There's even villains and events that no pony remembers at all."
"But we still do," Luna said with a sly tune.
Twilight could swear that the sisters were smiling, even if she couldn't see it on their faces.
"Anyways, I would very much like to see the blue," Dissonance said. They had decided to lie down on one of the couches despite their weight. It seemed that the family had reinforced everything for the two giant machines that worked around the farm. "I've heard many rumors and tales and made so many performances based on them." They rolled over to look at the sisters. "Seeing you two, I bet they're all real!"
Rahllup scoffed and Pa gave a single laugh in response.
"What is a rumor?" Luna asked.
"It is conjecture based on information obtained through often-times unreliable sources," Celestia explained. She looked at Dissonance without turning her head. "Often accepted as truth by the most gullible or hopeful." The white machine accessed her database. "They often lead to different forms of entertainment by the more creative parts of the makers."
Luna's lights seemed to brighten on the idea. "And what kind of rumors have you heard?"
The flamboyant machine pulled off their scarf, revealing a plethora of scrapes, scratches, and deformities in their chassis. Dissonance seemed annoyed enough with the dirtiness that they pulled off their most prized possession to clean it as they talked. Pa leaned forward when he saw the machine's body. "I've heard that streams of water fly in the sky to and from various parts of your cities, carried by invisible canals in the sky that only your vehicles can see. I've heard that your buildings all float and reach high into space, where your actual homes lie, letting ships dock after they've sailed across the stars." They looked at Galah before patting the scarf hard. "I used to think that all machines from the blue were these strange, incomprehensible constructs, advanced beyond understanding, and while I see that with you two, I don't see that with him," they scoffed.
"I'm advanced too!" the prototype yelled.
"Sure you are, sweetheart," Dissonance teased. "You're somehow less advanced than that triangular behemoth yet you function on the blue."
"Don't be fooled by his appearance," Rahllup warned. "There's somethin' wrong with his chassis. It's like a military grade robot."
Dissonance's teeth spun to show a face raising a brow skeptically. "But for the tales, I've heard that the ground beneath your feet is part of your machinery and technology, and that it goes down for miles and miles! That you shift and change everything when you need to, and so the city is never the same and always has something to explore every day! That you have robots like flying serpents that swim through those dark tunnels, bringing like and color as they create more machinery." Their eyes somehow sparkled. "Even your makers have evolved beyond what the caretakers are, becoming some kind of ascended machinery! Almost god like thanks to the help of the blue and some energy we don't know about!" They checked their scarf and quickly lowered it. "Is it true that you have another energy source that we don't know about? Is that how you can be powered for so long and you float constantly?"
"Geez, like a tiny child, this machine," Pa commented. "How do you even develop into things like this? Your codes are weird."
The two giants stared at him, insulted.
"You programmed us," Rahllup said through non-existent gritted teeth.
"Bah, superfluous information," the old male dismissed.
"So?" Dissonance insisted. "Is it true?"
"No," Luna responded flatly.
When both she and Celestia noticed the machine slowly slump back onto the couch, they felt something in their systems, and the alarms sprung back into Luna's vision. They both had to say something quickly.
"Those may not be true, but we have other things for you to witness," Celestia said. "Our vehicles fly in the sky."
"The streets roam with different robots of various generations," Luna added.
"The streets and buildings look like clean, white sculptures accented with many colors and lights."
Luna dug deep into her database, where she kept her most prized memory. "And there are tremendous buildings whose forms defy anything you could imagine. They're beautiful when paired with the night sky, and they are...gargantuan," she explained.
Dissonance seemed to perk up at the thought. "I'm very eager to see what these different generations of machines from the blue look like."