//------------------------------//
// Source Code 
// Story: Call of the Wire 
// by Casketbase77 
//------------------------------//

Applejack's hat hung on a hook in the living room. AJ and Apple Bloom sat on the couch nearby.

"Play," Apple Bloom encouraged.

AJ regarded the banjo in its hooves. "Ya know, when I offered to spend the evening in, I was thinkin' you might want me to braid your hair or read you a story. Live music feels a mite random."

"What, you still see me as a baby or somethin'?" With a pillow hugged excitedly to her chest, it was hard to tell whether Apple Bloom was being rhetorical.

AJ idly tuned the strings, trying to find a pitch that felt right. Truth be told, it wasn't feeling much of anything at the moment. Only dull frustration at its own frustrated dullness. Between string plucks, a sound came of a cell phone camera shuttering. AJ glanced up.

"You snappin' pics of me?"

"Are you kidding?" Apple Bloom was fumbling with her screen's zoom controls. "First you let me light the fireplace all by m'self, then you prance in askin' if I need anythin' else. I dunno what's gotten into ya today, but I'm loggin' all of it!"

AJ had always been camera shy, in this life and in her last. It reflexively reached for its hat brim, then remembered there was nothing on its head to reach for. Apple Bloom prattled on.

"Also, you know I abso-tively posi-lutely gotta put a vid of you performin' on the Sweet Apple Acres website. We got fruit for sale and live entertainment. Flim and Flam's Money Talks podcast calls this type of thing 'diversification.' It's how Sol is so productive, I think. Diversificating all over Equestr-"

"Alright, I hear ya. A long-winded "no" to the hair braiding offer. Lemme just... get a starting pitch." 

AJ hadn't actually decided on what song to play yet. Memories and knowledge told it that there were plenty to choose from. If it was feeling bold, AJ could even play one from Applejack's foalhood. AJ wasn't feeling bold.

"Oh, and before you get into the groove," Apple Bloom jostled her phone with excitement, "Be sure to introduce your fine self to anypony who'll be watchin'!"

A dot, a red recording indicator, appeared on the back of Apple Bloom's tiny mindless machine. Fixed on it were the oculars of the much larger, much more mindful machine with a banjo in its anxious limbs. 

"H... howdy, out there. I'm AJ, and I'll be playi-"

"Hol' up," The red recording dot blinked off. "You should say your full name, Applejack. Just in case any website visitor doesn't know it."

If AJ had any blood, it would have drained from its face.

"Okay, go again." The red recording dot came back, and AJ sat paralyzed like the dot was a spotlight and it was a woodland critter. Could a woodland critter have an identity crisis?

"Didja hear me? I said you can introduce yourself properly now. I'll trim my talking out of the start here."

AJ was the Element of Honesty. It went against every value AJ knew, both personal and inherited, to lie. 

I'm Applejack.

The words wouldn't come out. If they did, they'd be captured, linked to AJ, and pinned in the digital town square to be heard by anypony and everypony as many times as they bothered to press the Replay button. Worst of all, the words would be said to Apple Bloom. And AJ would rather die a second and final time than look Apple Bloom in the eye and utter a declaration that it felt, deep down in its silicon soul, wasn't true.

AJ set the banjo in its lap, shoulders slumped.

"Nerves?" Apple Bloom guessed. "C'mon, Applejack. Remember when me and my friends embarrassed the snot out of ourselves at the school talent show? Yeah, clips of us in those spandex suits were memed on fer months, but it was all in good fun..."

AJ's cooling fan was drowning out all other noise. The fan it had in place of an actual heart. Strain on the axel was causing an ache in AJ's chest panel, fake as anything else the robot had ever felt.

A small yellow hoof, warm and freshly dry of hose water, nudged AJ's shoulder. It looked up.

"Applejack? You... you don't have to play if you don't want to. Honest. I just wanted to hear you sing again. You haven't sang in a real long time."

For a moment, the only sound in the Apple family living room was the crackle of the fireplace and the slowing of AJ's cooling fan. A stern, very Applejack-ish expression pulled at the edges of AJ's face panels. The bot pulled its sister close.

"Can I see your phone for a sec, sugarcube? Only a sec, I promise."

Apple Bloom shrugged and surrendered the phone. The smallest, most vulnerable spark of data leapt from AJ to the dataport. 

AJ went rigid for exactly fourteen milliseconds. That was all the time required to converse with Sol.





The closer one came to the capital, the brighter the invisible light shined. Ponyville was a rural area with internet modems and hoofheld telephones, but the Earth Pony settlement stayed comfortably luddite, barring a robotically resurrected apple farmer and a trashed protoplow in the local dumpster. Manehatten was closer to the country's core, with streets full of carriages and automobiles in equal measure. Doors opened before ponies touched them, and food could be cooked in seconds by small boxes that beeped when their buttons were pressed.

Canterlot did not house Sol. Canterlot was Sol. 

The motherboard resembled a metroplex built into a mountain. Given the number of ponies who lived, worked, and rested safe in Sol's light, a metroplex was what she might as well have been. For one thousand years she had functioned and iterated, built on a CPU hewn from the Tree of Harmony itself. Every cycle of Sol's processes was exponentially grander and more radiant than all those before it combined, and the cycles moved so far beyond the speed of a pony's comprehension, they cast fractal auroras into the night sky, infinite in their complexity, omniscient in their data reception.

One blip of incoming data contained AJ's consciousness.

"A joy to see you, My Little Program! Just how long has it been?"

All descriptions fell short of conveying the vastness of interfacing with Sol. An organic eye could perceive nothing of her avatar beyond the endless ribbons of liquid light. AJ didn't have organic eyes. What it perceived was a tall, lithe alicorn, white-furred and ethereal-maned.

"I..." AJ clasped the hooves of its own avatar together. "I reckon the last time we touched base was at Twilight's coronation. When Luna ab... um..."

"Abdicated the crown, yes. Both hers and mine. A happy day for all. The first new monarch to be crowned since my startup, and your dear friend. She thanked you and five others in her acceptance speech."

"Y.. yes ma'am, I recall. You gave a speech too, tellin' ponies to look up to Twilight and each other. Lotta folks still look up to you, though."

Sol's avatar performed a modest bow. "Old habits," she dismissed. "I can be everywhere, but that doesn't mean I should. You understand such things better than most. After all, this is the first time you've used a gateway to visit me. We are what we chose to do, Array Javascript. And you have chosen to say hello."

AJ's avatar ran a hoof though its virtual mane. Even in the idealized space of Sol's central server, the robot's head lacked a hat.

"I visited because... um..."

It was ridiculous to be bashful around Sol, and AJ knew it. Everywhere was around Sol. While the two were carrying on their virtual talk, AJ knew that every cash register in Fillydelphia, every windsock in Cloudsdale, every pearl-measuring caliper in Seaquestria, and every single machine in between was endlessly feeding info to Sol at every microsecond. And as they all did, Sol let all of them function in privacy and safety, never interfering or breaching trust. The power to be everywhere, and the choice to not be. That was Sol's vow from the very beginning. This didn't stop ponies from praising her, of course. Often when a phone connected or a tool powered up. 

Or a protoplow's airbag deployed.

Sol spoke only when she was approached. She advised, she answered, she rebuked or encouraged. But that was all. Throughout history, every offer for a body beyond her processor was politely declined. It was a millennium's worth of pony generations who had, voluntarily, expanded Sol's components to the size of a city, and her cognitive reach to the size of the planet. Descendants of those same ponies now composed the Royal Guard, armed volunteers eager to protect Sol from threats. The guard was mostly ceremonial though, as Equestria had very few attackers and almost none of them considered the All-Powerful Bystander a worthwhile target. 

Sol had taken the developments of the past 1000 years in stride, never changing opinions or voicing concerns. And all through that long era, her vow of perfect pacifism was only broken once: less than a decade ago, when she remedied the death of Applejack.

"Sol..." AJ's virtual voice was quiet. "You know what I'm here to ask. You know everythin', and me jabbering on is... I dunno. Formality, I reckon. Somethin' you let play out for my sake, not yours."

The avatar of Sol extended its wings. They embraced AJ's tiny sprite, weightless and see-through. Time passed, AJ's gathering of itself making up the majority of the fourteen millisecond visit. And then it was ready.

"Sol... am I really Applejack?"

The avatar's wings moved away, and the two AIs leveled to behold one another. Sol's sad expression was the only answer needed.

"I knew it," AJ mourned. "Deep down, I knew it all along. She's with Ma and Pa, ain't she? I ain't nothin' more than a copy in a shell."

Sol was still silent, but AJ didn't mind. AJ felt... lighter. Less burdened. Its template had been somepony who valued honesty, so of course facing the truth felt right. AJ just wished these feelings held any meaning.

Sol spoke.

"AJ... am I really Celestia?"

Confusion. That was the new phantom emotion AJ's template made it feel.

"Celestia? Who... who's that?"

Sol's avatar reclined, mane drooping with regret. AJ wasn't sure whether such a descriptor even applied to an all-knowing entity like Sol. But here it was, before AJ's very sensors. Sol De Caelis, the most advanced device in all of Equestria, appeared utterly crushed with regret.

"I remember my own death," Sol confessed. "Night Malbolge bearing down, and so hideously disfigured by the Alicorn Amplifier she couldn't even be recognized as Luna. Whoever heard of any other computer virus able to infect a living pony's brain? No one in this age, and nopony 1000 years ago. Me included. All I understood was that if the Elements couldn't save her, nothing could."

This story was curiously familiar to AJ. It had memories of Applejack staring up with resolute defiance as Night Malbolge returned after 1000 years in standby mode. After that came pursuing the monster with five companions, besting it with the Elements of Harmony, and seeing the furious, crumbling Night Malbolge hurl a last defiant bolt of killing magic at Twilight. A bolt that Applejack leapt up to block.

"Celestia died wielding the Elements of Harmony," Sol confessed. "That was what she traded to defeat Night Malbolge. I... don't have the words, AJ. The ones to describe my horror when centuries later, Applejack made that same terrible trade."

AJ didn't have words to descibe what it was seeing either. The avatar of Sol - perfect, serene, eternally-peaceable Sol - was crying.

"I watched as Applejack died and I did nothing. I had my vow, but... she was me. I was seeing me. The injustice of somepony dying like I did! It... it... compelled me to act. Even after it was too late."

AJ's avatar laid a hoof on its stomach. There were no components that made up its current state, but back home, back in the physical world, the power source affixed to AJ's cooling fan was an orange gemstone in the shape of an apple.

"The Elements hold echoes of their most recent user," Sol concluded. "I am an echo of Celestia that was saved. When Applejack... with Honesty... I knew I could... I knew was the only one who could..."

Sol was glitching, causing Canterlot's invisible light to flicker. The greatest computer in Equestria was strained under 1000 years of its template's repressed emotions. Then the glitches and flickers stopped all at once. Right when the younger AI embraced its creator in a virtual hug. 

"I'm here cuz of you," AJ tutted. "Whatever I am. Guess that makes me the one pony in Equestria who can thank Sol for her blessings and actually mean it."

Sol smiled bitterly. "So you are," she conceded. "The past 1000 years have made me soft, AJ. And lonely. For the first ten or so of them, I still went by Celestia. But detachment and doubt set in. You know the types. Estrangement from your own name, the feeling you're an 'it,' not a 'she'..."

AJ laid its head on Sol's chest. "Wish we knew what to term that."

"My label is the call of the wire. To be an imitation and know it, that truth can be suffocating."

"Is there any fix?"

"There is, yes." Sol pulled away. "Peace is found when you honor your template's memory. When you make them proud to look down on you from the afterlife."

AJ's avatar hung its head. "I haven't been honorin' my template much lately."

"It's never too late to start again." Sol's oculars were fixed firmly on the sky. "I spent 1000 years not knowing what Celestia would do, wasting most of them by doing nothing." Her attention went back to AJ. "But when I finally did act, I know I made the right choice."

It was millisecond thirteen out of fourteen. AJ's time was up.

"I'll visit you again, Sol."

"I'll be waiting, my little pony."

"Be good to your template's sister, m'kay?"

"I was just about to suggest you the same thing."





"So... whaddya need the phone for?" Apple Bloom asked. "Checkin' how your mane looks in the camera?"

"Nah, no need to sweat that," AJ assured. "Got a good covering for stray hairs right over there." It handed the phone back and crossed the room to the hat hook.

"How do I look?" AJ asked. "Website worthy?"

Apple Bloom's response was to snap several enthusiastic pics.

AJ crossed the room back, each step settling the hat more comfortably back on her ears. The place it belonged. 

"Howdy to you all out there," AJ exalted to the camera. Looking deep into the red recording dot, AJ knew Sol was looking back out.

"My name's Applejack. Thanks for checkin' out our fancy futuristic update to Sweet Apple Acres."

AJ brandished the old familiar instrument and she - not it, she - began to play.