//------------------------------//
// Ponies 
// Story: Digital Effigy 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Just like that, the comparison was finished. She looked up from her other desk, setting down the library books that had occupied her attention during the intervening time. Outside her room, the sun was fully up, lighting the town beyond with creamy yellow. 
If she wanted, she could go out into that warmth and explore it, without having to be constantly watching for where she would find her next charger. It was almost as good as being alive. But she wouldn't be going out just then, not with something much more pressing right in front of her. 
"Comparison Complete," said the tablet. It filled with all kinds of numbers and graphs; things that ponies got whole degrees to understand. Some of it was vaguely familiar to her, thanks to bits and pieces she picked up from the textbooks. But reading over the pages didn't make her actually understand those fields—it only helped her remember exactly what the book said.
But there were a few numbers near the top that she could make sense of. "Delta: 1.77%." "Memory Extrapolation: 13 Hours runtime."
Delta meant change—there was no way she was understanding that right. She tapped that figure in particular, and it brought up a new screen of graphs, along with some explanatory text.
"The stored pattern matches memory hash for 99.999% of template memory. Host pattern has experienced significant decoherence in 13 hours operational life. Catastrophic template failure projected: 24-48 hours."
"Woah." Sweetie stood up, backing away from the diagnostic machine.
A few hours later, she was together with her friends at Sweet Apple Acres for lunch. Well—they ate lunch, and she talked. She had been over her jealousy of their ability to eat for a long time before that day. But now that she could smell properly, some part of her wondered.
That annoyance could hardly take much space in her head, when she had something much more important burning on her mind.
Scootaloo looked and acted as though nothing had happened between them the night before, except for the occasional shy glance when she thought Apple Bloom wasn't watching. But the earth pony wasn't stupid, she would figure out something was wrong eventually.
For the moment, Sweetie just pretended not to notice. "You see why I'm so upset?"
The two ponies shared a look. Apple Bloom closed her cloth knapsack, folding both forelegs in front of her. "I'm gonna be honest, none of that made any sense to me."
"There's a robobrain in her room with a pony on it," Scootaloo supplied. "Right? That's creepy and weird."
Sweetie gestured with one hoof for her to lower her voice. Nopony was sitting nearby, but that didn't mean there weren't listeners. Granny Smith rarely got out of bed these days, but she could sometimes hear things. And if Applejack was around, anything they said might eventually find its way back to her big sister.
"Yes, but that's not the part that's really..." Did she even want to tell them? "Look, promise not to tell anypony about this?"
Apple Bloom drew her hoof across her chest. "Promise. Cross my heart or—whatever Pinkie used to say."
Scootaloo nodded. "You're really upset about this." She set her food down, then focused her attention on Sweetie Belle. "What aren't we understanding?"
"Those results—I'm pretty sure that brain is me. Or an early version of me, anyway. I think she started to get sick and die after... just a few hours. So Lucid turned her off."
Apple Bloom looked more confused, not less. "But you're right here, and you're not sick. How does a robot get sick, anyhow?"
Scootaloo looked similarly bewildered. "How can you be in two places at once?"
More than two, apparently. There was a hash stored on the machine, whatever that even meant. Then there was the pattern, and herself. But more detail would only make it even harder for them to understand. "At this point, I guess you could say she was a... copy. A broken copy that didn't work. The machine says if I turn her on, she'll fall apart in a few days. Maybe Lucid thought it was kinder not to."
Now that she explained it to somepony else, the weight of those words settled onto her like the exhaustion that came right before her batteries gave out. Only this one didn't affect her limbs—she could still move fine.
"You could ask him," Apple Bloom suggested. "I dunno why he gave it to ya in the first place. But maybe he did it by mistake."
Or he just forgot. The kernel was just a piece of old hardware to him laying around his bags, like old parts of her body he sometimes replaced. "I'm sure he would," she said. "But... think about it differently. What if you found out you had a twin sister? She had done all the things you did, until one day she got locked in a box and couldn't escape. Would you just give the box away to somepony else, or—try to do something to help her?"
"Like... you are in there?" Scootaloo asked. "But sick? If she only has a few days to live..."
"You can't help her," Apple Bloom said. "At least the way she is, maybe somepony could do something, someday. Unless you can fix robot brains."
There was an option in the old equipment for that. Of course, she didn't know how the machine would work if she told it to start. "Lucid Storm has always been kind to me. I don't think he's a bad pony. If he didn't fix her, then it must be... hard. So hard that he thought there was nothing he could do. But technology has come a long way since then. If I could talk to an expert, they might be able to help."
"I'll go with you," Scootaloo said, almost too quickly. "Because you—shouldn't go alone. Obviously. In case you make them mad, you want witnesses! Don't worry, I got your back."
Sweetie rolled her eyes. It was a shallow excuse—if Lucid Bioinformatics turned against her, then she was already doomed. All they had to do was stop fixing her, and she would wear down in a few years. Or less—nopony knew how long her new body would last. "Sure, Scoots. We can go together. I know somepony who might be willing to help."
While she spoke, she connected to the phone in her pack, and typed up another text to her favorite intern. Somepony close to her own age was probably her best chance of getting help for the copy. And if he decided to just tell Lucid about what she was asking, there was nothing she could do to stop him. Hopefully the bat would forgive her.
"Hey, Capacitor. Sorry about last night. I found something big—I've had it for a while, but what you showed me helped me understand for the first time. Can you come over after work or something?"
The reply came as quick as last time. "This is about the diagnostic, isn't it? You obviously didn't take out your own head. What happened."
He was going to find out anyway. "Please don't tell anypony else. I have a kernel. I think it has me on it, an earlier me. I want to help her."
"I get off work at six."
By the time he sent that last message, they were cleaning up from lunch. Sweetie practically jumped to her hooves. Well, she did jump, with considerably more strength than her old self ever could have. "He says he'll come by tonight."
"How?" Scootaloo looked up, bewildered. "Sweetie, you've been sitting here the whole time. Your phone is still in your bag."
Right. Some things were so intrinsic about the way she managed her life that she never bothered to explain them. If she stopped daily affairs to explain every different choice she made, then she would spend much of her time that way. 
"I texted him. My phone has Bluetooth, so I just—connect to it. The new ones are made to connect to computers and stuff, sharing messages and notifications. I use the same protocols."
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. "Remember when you complained about missing your magic? Sounds like you've figured out a replacement all on your own."
Sweetie shrugged in response. "Guess you could say that." She still missed her magic, enough that it was one of the first things she thought of during her time with Scootaloo the night before. But she didn't miss it the way she used to. Enough years had passed that she was more or less adapted to not using her horn to help her accomplish basic tasks anymore. She had adapted by necessity.
She and Scootaloo left together a few minutes later, with the young mare coasting alongside her in her scooter. She wasn't going terribly fast, though she could if she wanted to. Scootaloo had developed her wings enough to power her movement without needing to push with her hooves. Today, she coasted.
"Have you thought about last night?" Scootaloo asked, as soon as they had some distance to the farm. Here on a deserted road, they had the maximum opportunity to talk without being overheard. Other ponies might appear at any moment, but until they did—there was peace. 
She took long enough to answer that Scootaloo continued for her. Her friend was older now—prettier, but not more patient. "You don't have to. Sounds like you had lots of other things on your mind. We could've met another night."
Sweetie held up one hoof, before her friend talked herself into any more anxiety. "It's fine, Scoots. I didn't know what I had until I ran the test. I thought it was a fancy paperweight—a demonstration, like the plastic pony skeleton Cheerilee kept in the schoolhouse. You're fine."
She slowed as they approached the bridge, then stopped at its height. When she was younger, she'd sometimes jumped from up here to swim in the water beneath. Her upgraded body was superior in many ways, but that would still mean total destruction. Her kernel could go on someone's desk next to the other one. Would anypony know the difference?
"I like you," she finally said. "I want to learn what that means. But I'm not the same kind of pony as you. I'm not alive. I can't—if you were with me, there are so many things we couldn't do together. We couldn't swim together, we couldn't share dinner, we couldn't..." 
Sweetie trailed off. There were some other things that she would usually put on a list like that, things that she was only just starting to understand. But she didn't actually know where those limits were. Other ponies would become artificial, and plenty of those were adults. They wouldn't want to give up all those adult things forever. And he had implied she wouldn't either.
"I don't know how good a marefriend I can be," she eventually said. She turned away from the railing, looking back at Scootaloo. "I'm a machine. I don't sleep, I don't eat, I don't breathe. You deserve a pony that's real." 
She sniffed, wiping away at her eyes as she said it. But there was no moisture. She could feel like she was crying, but she would never really cry.
Scootaloo took one of her hooves, forcing her to meet her eyes. "Don't you think I should be the one to decide? I know you're a robot. I know there are things you can't do. Some of those will probably change as time goes on. Technology keeps advancing! 
"Besides—you hear how Lucid Storm talks. Everypony is going to be a machine like you one day. We'll all get old eventually, or sick, or injured. When that happens to me, we'll both be machines. Until then—there's still a lot we could do. Places we could go, adventures we could have. Together. If I'm good enough for you."
She held her close, close enough that she could smell her hot breath against her face, and her profound sense of anxiety. Waiting for Sweetie Belle's answer.