//------------------------------// // Botify and Sever (Sweetie Belle, Rarity; Comedy, Slice of Life) (God I'm so tired of typing Comedy and Slice of Life) // Story: Anthology of Graybles // by Str8aura //------------------------------// "Should you be conscious for this, darling?" "I feel like these are questions we should've asked before we started." Sweetie sat open on a sewing table, scorched black. Various mechanical parts, flowered glasses filled with murky black liquids, books with Golden Oaks stamps on the covers and barcodes on the backs, and breadboards sloppily plugged into the prone bot lay scattered on, around, and occasionally inside her, completely paralyzed from the neck down as a seamstress with a marksman's ability diligently worked on her with all the excitement and can-do attitude of a stay at home big sister drafting her little sister into bonding activities, and the technological know-how of one, too. "They didn't cover this on youtube." Rarity gritted her teeth as she threaded dollar store-bought wires into the breadboard. "We might be government experiments? I'm not sure." Sweetie pondered, exposed voicebox lighting up as she did. "Well, you're not doing a very good job of keeping concealed." "I never said it was a secret government experiment, like something out of Maximum Ride. The princesses are very open about the experiments they commit, mostly because it's difficult to convey the ramifications of those experiments to the general public when the papers describing them use 'friendship', 'love', or 'ChIA-PET sequencing' every third sentence. They're like the opposite of a fnord." Rarity tsked, curiously attempting to use a needle in place of a wire between two close ports. "Well, it's still no reason to set the school on fire, as if you're not banned from enough at school already." "Me and that kirin student were the most likely to survive fire. We had to see if it was possible, and we made the dutiful sacrifice in the name of science." Sweetie protested, head rattling about on her neck. "Invulnerability isn't an excuse." "I'm not invulnerable, sis; no sapient robots are. The average life expectancy for one of them is around 7 years, because they keep getting blown up. This discludes their rebuilds and clones, of course." Rarity looked up curiously, barely avoiding getting singed by an angry spark as she did. "Then why does it keep happening? Shouldn't they be smart enough to be aware of these statistics?" "They all think they're going to be the exception." "Like you?" "Sapiency and the intelligence of a computer often comes with the stupidity and confidence of a pony." "Do all robots respond to questions they don't want to answer with vagueness?" "Depends on the robot. Some simply wait until they have the sufficient information to answer it, which can take anywhere from two weeks to two years, depending on how long it takes for a scientist to walk in front of them and talk out loud. Some build smarter robots." "How do you build something smarter than you?" Rarity quickly pulled Opal out of her sister's chest as she made a grab for attention. "That question explains some things about your technological know-how. Like why you entered me into the school's Go playing club." Sweetie spoke with a twinge of concealed passive aggressiveness, like how a splinter of mulch conceals the river it floats in. "I never claimed to be a Dr. Wakeman. You know you're adorable talking about all this, right?" Rarity reached for her sister's head, gently patting her cheek. "Am I ever not to you?" She shot back, squirming away from her sister's grasp as best she could. "Nope." Rarity replied cheerfully. Sweetie grumbled, quickly trying to change the subject. "Most sapient robots, however, just respond to questions they can't answer with 'You know, I really have to google that sometime.'" "What separates them?" "You know, I really have to google that sometime." An exact recording of her earlier words looped. Rarity pulled out of her work, chased by another angry spark, then an apologetic spark, then a guilty spark. Sighing from the exertion, she reached for one of her fine glasses. "That's filled with oil." "So it is. You don't drink this, right?" She swiftly put the glass down, and Sweetie silently lamented the missed opportunity to see her sister drink oil. "I feel like I'm experiencing a microaggression." She spoke, staring off into space dumbfoundedly. "How does a girl your age know all these big words?" "You didn't at your age?" "Of course not." Sweetie scoffed. "And next you'll tell me you didn't know how to calibrate your eyes at my age." "Point made." "I seem to be making a lot of those, which is weird since you're the one sticking needles inside me." Rarity scrunched her muzzle, miffed, before melting into a smile and gently patting one of Sweetie's disembodied legs. "You're still grounded, by the way." "I'm a being beyond anything you could ever hope to be." Sweetie yowled childishly. "Keep talking and you'll get grounded for longer." "I forfeit this entire conversation."