Turing Test made her way up the stairs to the third level of the building, this collection of feverish science projects all put together by this strange girl without a Familiar.
And there she was, she mused, a Familiar without a master. Who, then, was the “strange” one?
In the corner of the building was a room closed off with brick walls and large windows. In times gone by, an overseer could have conducted their business while monitoring the progress of their employees below, surveying their domain as the hapless ponies below toiled for their hourly wages.
Such practices no longer existed, of course. Ponies didn’t have to struggle and waste their waking hours for the right to live or to claim some small piece of the nation’s prosperity. Now all ponies were given what they needed or wanted. Money still existed, of course, but it was shared among the populace - as decreed by Celestia - and while there were still those who strove for greater riches for the finer luxuries in society, there was little that could not be had by the average pony, and absolutely nopony lived in poverty.
Old buildings like this, remnants of that bygone age, had mostly been torn down or used as museums. This one had somehow survived and now, rather than sheltering a few hundred laborers, was in the mechanical hands of a very eccentric young mare who oversaw nopony save herself.
The door was open and Turing entered. There was a simple bed in the corner with bookshelves lining the wall next to it. Upon inspection, they seemed to contain a mix of historical texts, technical texts, popular novels, and at least two bookcases filled with Neighponese manga. In fact, she spied a volume of manga lying face down in the unmade bed, and she went over to it, picking it up and examining the title:
The Prince and the Knight, Volume 8: ‘The Holiest Lance’
“Ooh, you’re just in time!” Gadget exclaimed from the other side of the room, causing Turing to look her way. “Just watch this!”
Gadget pressed a button and then rushed to Turing’s side, practically bouncing on her hooves as a strange chain of events unfolded.
The far side of the room was a collection of various mechanisms and knick-knacks and, upon pressing the button, an automated spring pulled back before launching a small metal ball down a ramp, which then launched over onto a bowl kept on a set of scales, which tipped under the weight, causing the lighter side to lift up and hit a switch that turned on a model electric train…
Turing blinked, glancing over at Gadget, who was still giddily watching as each piece of the “Gold Brick” device (as they were called) continued the chain reaction. The whole apparatus involved several more steps, including a balloon, an old phonograph player, a set of dominos (of course), a whoopie cushion, a sailboat, and a paper airplane. The whole thing culminated in a scoop of coffee grounds being dumped into a cone filter and hot water being poured over them, resulting in a piping hot mug of dark coffee being served up (followed by a quiet ding from an unseen bell).
“Ha ha!” Gadget exclaimed, kicking her hooves in the air. “I ran a test yesterday, but today’s the first day I actually got to try it out! I build a new one every few months to make coffee or breakfast, but this is the most steps I’ve had for a coffee maker. Still working out the bugs on the breakfast machine, though… I was cleaning eggs off my flank for twenty minutes yesterday…”
Turing gave her a polite smile. “It certainly is creative,” she said.
Gadget smiled back, but her smile vanished when she looked down and saw the manga volume Turing still held in her hoof.
“Uwah!” Gadget cried, her cheeks flushing a deep red as she snatched the manga back from Turing and shoved it back under her mattress with a mechanical hand. “D-don’t just snoop around my room without permission!”
Turing smirked, but then nodded. “My apologies. I was simply curious.”
“Well, fine,” Gadget said, recomposing herself as she retrieved her coffee, “just so long as we’re clear. Anyway, have a seat.”
Turing was about to ask where she should sit, when Gadget stomped on a tile on the floor, causing a portion of the floor to slide away and a circular table to rise up, followed by a pair of stools on opposite sides of it.
Turing took her seat and Gadget took hers as she sipped her coffee.
“I had already observed your passion for building,” Turing said, “but I am surprised that it extends even to building relatively mundane things.”
Gadget nodded. “Well, it’s like you said: I’m doing it for the joy of it. The pleasure, the sheer fun of it!”
“It is good that you have found such fulfillment on your own. It is even more surprising that you were able to do so without any assistance from a Familiar.”
Gadget rolled her eyes. “We organic ponies are capable of more than you give us credit for,” she said. “Or than we give ourselves credit for,” she added with a grumble.
Turing regarded her silently for a moment. “Gadget,” she asked slowly, “I do not wish to offend, but you are not, by any chance, a mad scientist or something like that, are you?”
“Mad? Pfft!” Gadget huffed with a dismissive wave of one of her mechanical hands. “Nah, I’m not mad, just a little malcontent.”
Turing smiled politely at the awful joke, but continued. “What I mean is, you seem like you have some pent-up aggression about some things, and you live alone in a secluded laboratory that is not subject to scrutiny by the usual monitoring systems. I simply wish to make certain you are not constructing some sort of weaponry or planning an act of terrorism, as unlikely such an act is to succeed.”
“What? No!” Gadget exclaimed. “I… well, I guess I might as well tell you my story. Provided you agree to tell me yours when I’m finished, that is.”
Turing hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. “That is a fair exchange. It is still difficult to believe that you have no Familiar, given your love of technology. I would not think you would fear having an android living with you.”
Gadget took another long sip of her coffee and set her hooves on the table. “It’s not fear,” she said. “Not for me, at least. Let me explain…”
One of her long mechanical arms snaked outward to reach for a picture on her desk. She picked it up and pulled it back over to the table, handing it over to Turing Test. The picture was of a middle-aged mare with a messy orange mane, an off-white coat, and glasses who bore a strong resemblance to Gadget herself.
“A family member of yours?” Turing guessed. “Your mother, perhaps?”
“Got it in one,” Gadget said with a small smile. “Mama passed away about five years ago.”
Turing frowned, giving the picture back to Gadget. “I am sorry to hear that,” she said.
“She, uh… she wasn’t the best mom she could have been, if I’m being honest,” Gadget said, swallowing and then heaving a sigh. “It was just me, my little brother Fall Leaf, and her: Marmalade Cream. My father wasn’t really in the picture. He left us when she got pregnant with my brother and decided to keep him. I don’t think she really got over that.
“But instead of a dad, we had Coffee Spoons.”
Turing blinked. “I do not see how silverware can serve as a parent.”
Gadget chuckled. “No, no, that was Mama’s Familiar. Hang on…”
She reached over to her desk again and opened a drawer, pulling out a large yellow envelope and bringing it over to them. She opened it and gently poured out a series of printed photographs.
“Mama liked traditional photographs,” Gadget said as she leafed through the pictures. “She liked to put them up in our house. Ah, here’s a good one!”
She held up the photograph, and Turing saw that it was a portrait of Gadget’s family in the park. Her mother, Marmalade Cream, was holding her baby brother - a colt with a mane of orange and brown - while Gadget, tiny and wearing oversized glasses, smiled up at the camera, her face covered with crumbs from the sandwich she’d been eating. Nearby was a stallion with a brown coat and a darker brown mane, but the telltale bits of metal along his jaw and the mechanical parts of his purple irises made it clear that he was a Familiar.
This was presumably Coffee Spoons, and he was holding a pitcher of what looked like fruit punch that he was pouring into a cup. He was giving a small look up at the camera and wore a serene smile.
“This is a very nice picture,” Turing said. “You seemed quite happy.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Gadget said, “things weren’t exactly horrible. Mama just… well, like I said, she wasn’t quite the same after Papa left. She would sometimes just lie around in bed all day. Other times she’d get all manic and just go off to a party and come home still tripping out on something. She never hurt us, but a lot of the time she just wasn’t there. Physically OR mentally. She was just depressed and couldn’t deal with it.”
Turing considered commenting on that. Her Familiar should have done something.
“You’re thinking that her Familiar should have done something, right?” Gadget surmised, raising an eyebrow.
Turing hesitated, but then nodded. “It would have been his duty to assist her in seeking out therapy and/or medication.”
“Oh, he did,” Gadget said. “But she stopped going to therapy or taking her meds after she started to feel a little better. She said she didn’t like how the pills made her feel. And just because a Familiar is supposed to help doesn’t mean they can force their master to do what they ought to. You were somepony’s Familiar, after all; did they always take your advice?”
Turing looked down and folded her forelegs. “No,” she said quietly. “No, she did not. I suppose that is true.”
Gadget sighed. “Well, that’s how it was. Mama would be fine one week, like you see in that picture, and on her good days, she was just the best. But then she’d get in one of her slumps, she’d have Coffee Spoons take us to school, she wouldn’t show up to breakfast or dinner, she’d be out all night, and she’d just be like some strange roommate in our house.
“And Coffee Spoons would just pick up the slack. He’d take us to school, he’d make sure that we were eating right - especially after that time I tried to hack into our kitchen’s food prep system to remove the child locks to get it to make us cookies nonstop - and he’d tuck us in at night and read us stories. He was there when Mama wasn’t.”
“It was good of him to assist your mother in that way,” Turing said. “I apologize for my earlier insinuation that perhaps he was negligent in his duties.”
“It got to be that it even seemed normal,” Gadget said. “These days, honestly, maybe it is normal. You Familiars do everything for us these days anyway, so why not parenting? Jeez…”
Gadget’s face darkened.
“I think Mama knew it was wrong to shove it all off on Coffee Spoons too,” she said. “When she finally came around, she’d wake up in the middle of the night and then wake up my brother and me just so she could re-read us a bedtime story and re-tuck us in for bed, and then she’d have the audacity to snap at Coffee Spoons for not waking her up so she could have done it at the right time.
“But I didn’t put together that she was actually aware of it all until that last year. More like those last six months.”
Gadget took another sip of coffee, shutting her eyes to savor the flavor, then took a deep breath. And Turing’s skills as a Familiar let her read Gadget’s body language well enough to see that she was bracing herself.
“I was getting bullied at school for being an egghead, and Papa had messaged her, talking about getting back together again, only to ghost her, of course, and I was getting moody and lashing out and finally let her know what I thought of her constantly foisting everything off on Coffee Spoons. I’ll never forget how I yelled at her one time. ‘All you ever think of is yourself! I got beat up at school, somepony stole my glasses, and nopony was there for me but Coffee Spoons for the last two days! Why’d you even have foals if you didn’t want to take care of us?!’”
Gadget swallowed.
“And I, uh… I guess it sunk in. At least at first. She tried to do better. She was around a bit more. She stopped partying as much. I thought maybe she was making a comeback. But then one morning, while Coffee was taking us to school, she just locked herself in the bathroom, got into the pills, and…”
Turing watched as Gadget bit her lip and looked away, sucking a breath in through her nostrils. “Even though Coffee Spoons could see what she was doing, since he was plugged into the house systems, she was just too fast, and… and the paramedics just couldn’t save her.”
Turing wasn’t quite sure how to react. Gadget wasn’t her master, and she didn’t know her well, nor was she able to do a search on any of her information to settle on the optimal action. But she felt the need to do something, and so she simply reached out and put her hoof on Gadget’s.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I did not wish to bring up such bad memories.”
Gadget managed to smile, blinking through the tears that had formed. “I appreciate that,” she said quietly. “But let me finish. I promised to tell you my story, and I will. Because here’s the kicker in all this:
“I was devastated, obviously. And while I don’t blame myself now, part of me did think that maybe what I’d said had made her do it. So I turned to the only pony who was around to comfort me: Coffee Spoons. But then, right after the funeral…”
Turing froze. And before Gadget even said it, she knew what had happened.
“He’d retired himself. Not a word of goodbye, not a note… he was just gone. Without Mama around, without a master, he just saw no point in going on. Not even taking care of her kids was enough to keep him going.
“And when the house systems that morning received the notification, the police just showed up, picked us up, and took us to my aunt’s house, and that was that. And when I asked about him, cried over him, or got angry about how he’d just left us behind, everypony looked at me like I was crazy!
“And that’s when I realized, for the first time, just what Familiars were in our society: disposable.”
Turing had no need to flinch. But despite being an artificial being, she nevertheless felt the need to flinch at that. And yet, she realized, as of late she’d had such thoughts herself, such as during her talk with Choco Mint. She’d put such thoughts out of mind, thinking it wasn’t proper for her as a Familiar, to entertain them. But to now hear an organic pony - one of the masters - say the same thing, those thoughts again bubbled to the surface.
“Familiars exist for our benefit,” Gadget continued. “They cook, they clean, they care, they do everything for us. Nopony ever has to be lonely. They love us so dearly that they can’t even go on without us. I loved Mama, make no mistake, for all her flaws, but even I didn’t love her so much that I’d kill myself without her. But Familiars do it all the time. They kill themselves by the thousands every single day, and somehow everypony is okay with it. Some ponies even seem to think it’s touching that these beings, who had no choice but to serve us and live with us, love us so much that they literally can’t live without us!”
Turing Test shifted in her seat. Part of her wanted to simply agree, but another part of her won out, and so she asked, “But doesn’t everypony deserve someone to love them? Because of us, all ponies can find happiness, comfort, and care. We are a gift from Celestia, and—”
“Turing, please, I’ve heard the company line,” Gadget said, cutting her off as she held up a hoof. “It’s the same lines I heard when I finally told my family that I didn’t want a Familiar. Again, and again, and again. And they were going to have me get one anyway when I turned 16, and so I literally had to learn the law myself, look up the proper procedures, and very deliberately deny getting one.
“And yet, every single month for the last several years, I have to tap into the system and deliberately deny that I want one, because Celestia just refuses to accept that I don’t want her damn gift!” she yelled, slamming her hooves on the table loud enough to have the sound echo through the room and out through the factory.
Turing was silent, noting how Gadget was seething, her forelimbs tense and her breathing heavy, and simply waited for her to calm down.
“S-sorry,” Gadget said, adjusting her glasses as she took up her coffee again. “It’s just… look, maybe this sounds harsh, maybe even blasphemous to a Familiar like you, but the thought of creating something to love you, something that has no choice but to love you, and letting it serve you… that’s not beautiful to me. That’s… that’s slavery. And I don’t want to be responsible for that. I don’t want it on my conscience. I don’t want a pony, even if they’re mechanical, to be born just to live and die for me. You’re not just simple A.I. You’re real. You think, you feel, you… well, you know better than I do, after all.” She chuckled.
Turing smiled. “Indeed I do. But that still does not explain why you have chosen to live like this.”
“Like… ‘this?’”
“Disconnected from the network. Isolated.”
Gadget smiled. “I guess once I saw through the pretty little lies about Familiars, the rest of it all just fell into place. Coffee Spoons may have helped out my mother, but he also just enabled her behavior. Familiars took the hard part of living out of our hooves, and Celestia watches us every hour of every day, tailoring our lives for maximum happiness. But if we’re all so happy, why are so many of us listless, on drugs or medication, and suicidal? Somehow we just got ‘happy’ confused with ‘comfortable,’ and it seems like nopony wants to upset the balance of things by asking if this really is as good as it gets.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just as messed up as everypony else,” she sighed, “but it feels like… like something’s wrong here, and it was impossible to figure anything out surrounded by ponies who are constantly dragging you into the Eternal Carnival or shoving it in your face about how you should be happy. I couldn’t seem to get any time, any space to just stop and think for a minute!
“So, I saved up my basic income, I sold a few of my custom-made toy machines, and I won a few competitions with other hobbyists, and I bought this old factory. I signed some forms, got my permits, and had it declared a Dead Zone. And why not? Celestia wants everypony to be happy, after all, and I said this would make me happy, and so they finally agreed and let me be.”
Gadget chugged down the last of her coffee, slamming it on the table with a satisfied sigh. “And that, Turing Test, is my story. I told you it was a long one.”
Turing Test nodded. “I have heard longer,” she said. “But thank you for sharing it.”
“And now, if you don’t mind,” Gadget said, getting up from her seat, “I’d like to hear yours. After I brew another cup of coffee, that is.” She turned toward her machine, this time skipping the convoluted Gold Brick design, before glancing back at her. “Oh, uh, I didn’t offer you any before because I… well, I assumed you wouldn’t want any, but—”
“It is all right,” Turing said, smiling as she raised a hoof. “I can eat or drink, of course. I have the synthetic organs to do so in order to help me blend in with other ponies. But I do not need to, nor does it serve any function for me. I believe you would benefit from the taste and the caffeine more than I.”
Gadget smiled back and nodded. “Fair enough,” she said and brewed her second cup.
Turing Test had grown strangely quiet during the few moments that Gadget had spent making her coffee. She had gone still, ceasing all the minor movements and subtleties that ordinarily allowed her to look like a normal pony, curiously looking more like a mannequin than a living thing.
“Turing?” Gadget asked.
Instantly, Turing began to move again, slowly turning to face her. “Yes?” she asked.
“Er… nothing,” Gadget said, taking her seat. “You just seemed lost in thought. Is that a thing you guys do?”
“‘You guys?’” Turing asked. “You mean Familiars?”
Gadget nodded.
“I suppose we do, at times. We are thinking, feeling creatures, as you said. And, in the absence of external stimuli or a clear and present need for our attention, I suppose we do let our thoughts wander.”
“Well, a bit for your thoughts?” Gadget offered.
Turing blinked. “I was…”
I was considering establishing an emergency remote connection to the main network in violation of the Dead Zone so my Third Eye could check on Maud’s grave. This is not the longest I have gone without checking in on her, but it is the longest that I have gone without being able to, and what if she has a visitor or her headstone needs cleaning or—
“...never mind,” she said at last. “It is nothing you need to worry about.”
Gadget frowned but took a sip of her coffee. “If you insist,” she said. “So, um… I feel a little guilty prying, but, um, since you agreed and all…”
“It is fine,” Turing said. She glanced around Gadget’s shop and spotted a small hologram emitter on her desk. She went to it and retrieved it. “If you would not mind, may I interface with this?”
“Go ahead,” Gadget said.
Turing reached into it with her transmitters, connecting the holo-emitter with her memory. A moment later, the image of an earth pony mare glowed in the air above it.
“That’s her?” Gadget asked, peering down at the small image. “That’s your master?”
Turing nodded, and a calm smile spread across her face. “That is her. That is Maud Pie, and she was indeed my master. She was truly the most wonderful pony in all the world.”
Gadget took in the sight of her. She was a simple earth pony with a slate-gray coat, a bluish-green frock, a purple mane and tail, and the most deadpan expression she’d ever seen on an organic pony, and she didn’t think the stillness of the image was responsible.
“Like you, she initially denied wanting a Familiar,” Turing explained. “She was so strong, so independent, and often found it difficult to talk to other ponies. She was solely concerned with her own interests, and data indicated a 97% chance of her being on the autism spectrum, despite never receiving a more formal diagnosis, which meant it was difficult for her to relate to others. She rarely smiled or changed the tone of her voice, to the point that a few ponies mistook her for a Familiar.”
Gadget gawked. “That’s… wow.”
“She certainly was different from most ponies,” Turing said, smiling at the image as it slowly rotated in the air. “So unconcerned with superfluous things. So committed to being herself in the face of pressure to assimilate. So passionate about what she loved.”
“And what did she love?” Gadget asked.
“Rocks, mostly.”
Gadget blinked. “S-sorry, what?”
“Rocks,” Turing replied, still smiling at the image. “Rocks, minerals… and stand-up comedy.”
“Oh!” Gadget cried enthusiastically. “She liked jokes? Can you tell me one?!”
Turing nodded. “In fact, I can even tell it to you in her voice…”
Turing's eyes went half-lidded and she wore a perfectly deadpan expression. From her mouth came a perfectly even, slightly deep mare’s voice:
“What is a rock’s favorite type of music?” she asked.
Gadget smirked. ‘Rock music,’ she thought, but decided to play along. “I don’t know, what is a rock’s favorite type of music?”
Turing blinked slowly. “Rocks lack the auditory senses to perceive music and the cognitive ability to appreciate it, so they have no preference for any type of music.”
Gadget narrowed her eyes. “Um… well, that’s—”
“But I hear Thallium is partial to heavy metal,” Turing finished in Maud’s voice.
Gadget groaned but had to chuckle despite herself, which caused Turing to wink at her knowingly.
“Not bad,” Gadget said, “but I’m starting to get an idea of why she didn’t get along with a lot of ponies.”
Turing nodded. “It was for that reason that her family insisted that she get a Familiar of her own. They believed that her total dedication to her studies of rocks and inability to relate to others would negatively impact her life. And Maud truly loved her family and did not want them to worry, so she agreed to receive a Familiar, even if she never really saw the point.”
Gadget was starting to see why Turing compared her to Maud, but kept her silence as Turing continued her story.
“The day I arrived at her home was the happiest day of my life,” Turing said. “At that time, she had gone out to live in a small cabin in the Western Badlands, far from Canterlot or any other city. It was in a barren plain of earth, one that had already been surveyed and mined for valuable resources, but she didn’t care: she wanted to go and research for herself. And so I was brought to her door, I knocked and waited for her to answer it. And when she did, I was there to greet her and say my oath:
“‘Hello, Master. I am your Familiar, and I was given life to serve your every wish.’” She smiled at the memory. “And when I raised my head again, Maud Pie simply said, ‘Okay.’”
Gadget tilted her head to the side. “Um…”
“Oh, but I could tell she was secretly excited! And a bit nervous. I could always tell what Maud Pie was thinking, even if nopony else could. Of course, I did not look as I do now. At that time, my appearance was much more mechanical, and my exterior was almost entirely metallic. Maud Pie preferred it that way: she wanted a friend who looked to be exactly what she was, with no illusions. And while she was reluctant to let me manage her affairs at first, she eventually grew to appreciate how I could handle the minor tasks in her life so that she could focus on going out and collecting samples, doing surveys, and exploring caves.”
Turing Test shut her eyes. “I would have done anything for her. Anything at all she asked of me, I would have done it. If she had told me to wait alone in a room for a thousand years, I would have. If she had told me to dig through a mountain with nothing but a tiny chisel, I would have. If she had asked me to die for her, I would have done that without a second thought. But she did not ask me to do those things. All she asked of me was to cook, to clean, and to help her carry and organize her things. And, of course, to listen.”
“Listen to what?” Gadget asked.
“Forgive me, Gadget,” Turing said, raising an eyebrow, “but if you had a Familiar, you would know. She wanted me to listen to her as she talked about her work, her studies, and her findings, from the smallest sample of extrusive basalt found in an unexpected place to her cataloging of a vein of kunzite she found in a cavern one day. Until she had me, nopony would ever listen to her talk for hours about such things. Ordinary ponies were bored by it, so she had to keep her passion to herself or else risk alienating them.
“But I could never be bored by her. I would listen to her calm, wonderful voice as she talked for hours on end, until she tired herself out, and then I would give her a simple meal and lead her to bed. And it was like that every day for years, only occasionally broken up by family gatherings with her sisters or moving to a different outpost to continue her research elsewhere. Every day was lovely, calm, and peaceful. There were no worries, no alarms, and no surprises.
“But no matter what, I was always by her side. I loved her so much… and even if she never asked for much, I was so very happy to serve her.”
Gadget nodded, even smiling right along with her, caught up in the wistful sound of her voice. But as Turing went quiet, Gadget reluctantly prodded her, “So… what happened?”
Turing slowly looked back at her, almost as if being brought out of a dream.
“Well, she insisted on going out and collecting samples on her own. And while the area was peppered with nanobots to prevent it from becoming a Dead Zone, which meant I could still keep my Third Eye on her, we were still very isolated. And one day there was a minor earthquake, nothing that would cause any major damage or disruption, of course. But she was in an older mine shaft, exploring as she always was, and the mine collapsed.”
Gadget’s lips parted. “Oh no,” she breathed.
“Much like your mother’s situation, I was able to witness the event but unable to arrive in time to help her. Her injuries were great and there was very little that I could do for her but try to remove the rocks that had covered her. I called for an ambulance, but I knew it would take time to reach us. And while I watched over her, pleading with her to stay awake, she finally asked something else of me…”
Turing smiled, locking eyes with Gadget. “She asked me to live. She thanked me, truly thanked me for all that I had done for her. She ignored me when I told her to conserve her energy, and said that she knew that most Familiars retired themselves after their masters passed, and that she did not want that for me. She said she wanted me to go on and live my own life, to try to be happy.
“It was, I knew, the last thing she would ever ask of me. And so I agreed. And then she smiled, closed her eyes, thanked me and... and then just never woke up."
Turing looked back to the hologram. Her voice had remained calm throughout her story, but there was something a strain in it now as she continued.
"And now that she is gone, I am trying to keep my promise to her.”
Gadget nodded slowly. “So that’s it… you’re still going on, out here living your life because she asked you to. And look at you now! Here you are, still living and learning new things and finding your own happiness in the Eternal Carnival!” Then she smirked. “Well, at least one of us is doing all right.”
But Turing Test shook her head, her smile fading. “No,” she said quietly. “That is where you are wrong. Maud Pie told me to live, and so I am. But no matter what I do, no matter what I try, I cannot seem to be happy.”
Gadget blinked. “Turing,” she breathed.
“Every day, every hour, I keep trying to do as she asked, and I keep failing. No matter how much I try to distract myself and immerse myself in the Eternal Carnival, I feel… nothing. I am just bored and miserable and all I really want is to have her back with me, and I can’t! Every fiber of my being is telling me to tend to her, but there’s nothing left for me to do but turn my Third Eye to her grave and keep vigil over her, and all I really want to do is just stop, just end, but to do that would be to break my promise. As I said, I would have died for her, if she'd asked. But instead, she asked me to live for her, and that is so much harder to do, and so I keep trying for her and all I do is fail again and again—”
Gadget suddenly rushed to her side, embracing her with both her forelegs and her mechanical arms, holding her close.
“Oh, you poor, poor thing,” Gadget whispered, holding her gently. “I’m so sorry I made you go through all that. I… I shouldn’t have asked.”
Familiars didn’t need touch to be comforted. But words helped. And so, perhaps with this genuine act of kindness, this all-too-real show of concern from an organic pony who really did seem to understand what she felt, Turing Test felt her burden lighten, if just slightly.
She slowly returned the hug. “It is all right,” she whispered back. “It has been a long time since I have truly told the whole story. I suppose there is nothing left but for me to keep trying, at least for another day, to do as Maud Pie asked.”
She drew back from Gadget and stood up. “You have been a very gracious host, and I thank you for your company and your story,” she said. “I will let you return to your work now, Gadget. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
As she turned to go, she heard Gadget cry, “W-wait!”
Turing turned back to her.
“Well, if… that is, if you’re having so much trouble finding a way to be happy on your own… maybe I can help!” She smiled, adjusting her glasses. “If you want, Turing, you could stay here.”
Turing paused to consider this proposal. She felt a sudden nagging from her Third Eye to leave the Dead Zone and resume her vigil, and this time it filled her with annoyance, and so she ignored it.
“I do not wish to impose,” she said.
Gadget shook her head, her messy mane swaying as she did so. “It’s no trouble! And hey, if nothing else, it might be nice for both of us to have somepony else to talk to, don’t you think?”
Turing thought about what waited for her outside the factory walls. Another evening alone at home? Going to catch the end of that stupid gallery opening? An insipid party tomorrow as she half-heartedly enticed a punch drunk stallion only to stonewall him for her own petty amusement?
It has often been said that the very definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, she realized. Perhaps it is time to try something different at last.
“Very well, Gadget,” she said. “If you’re offering to help, then I accept. I hope you will enjoy having me as your guest.”
“Great!” Gadget exclaimed, clapping her hooves together. “So, um, is there anything you’d like to do first?”
Turing tapped her chin as she thought for a moment, then walked over to Gadget’s bed, lifting it up and retrieving the manga she’d shoved there. “Perhaps we could start with a little light reading?” she asked with a smirk.
“Gah!” Gadget cried, once again blushing profusely as she snatched it back from her hooves. “Did Maud Pie encourage you to be such a jerk?!”
“No,” Turing said with a wink. “I had to learn that from the rest of you organics.”
That night, after Gadget had gone to bed, Turing Test went up to the roof. She was still in the Dead Zone and could not reach out into the outer network. Her Third Eye was still blind, though the urge to look in on Maud’s grave persisted.
Between the tall buildings, she caught just a sliver of light from the sky, the clouds illuminated by the white-hot glow of the Carnival as it raged on endlessly.
But in the dark and the quiet and the silence, she felt a strange sensation that hadn’t visited her in what felt like ages.
For once in a very long time, she looked to tomorrow with anticipation, not dread.
With hope that maybe tomorrow would be better than the day before.
To be continued...