//------------------------------//
// Entry One: My Birth - Set After Chapter 17: The Broken Vase 
// Story: Diary One Hundred and Thirty Eight 
// by Sapidus3 
//------------------------------//


Entry One: My Birth
Set After Chapter 17: The Broken Vase


I’ve found a lovely nook in the library. It seems like a place Twilight might have come to when she is younger. I’ll need to ask her about it, but hopefully it will give me the privacy to write this without interruption.

Since I think I am the only one who will ever read this, I think I lied in my last entry. Yes, ponies seeing me write by hoof would draw attention, but “Celly’s medical condition” readily explains that. I think I’m just embarrassed. My student frequently will spend time, literally inside of my mind. However, the runes and patterns are all so complex, I don’t need to worry about her seeing any of my thoughts. 

Since leaving my cave I have had experience a whole slew of emotions that are difficult to catalog but-

I think I am getting ahead of myself.

So I think the point of these things is to write about your day. At least that was how SHE tended to use hers, at least how she used Diary One Hundred and Twenty Seven. However, most of my days are fairly boring and I want to make sure I get some important events of my life down on paper. These first few entries will just be me reminiscing on the past and rambling. 

As much as HER diary entries often read like a list of daily todos, SHE did have a tendency to ramble. I don’t know how much of my desire to ramble is based on my personality, a desire to emulate HER, or simply some quirk of my design.

Am I forcing it?

I’ll be honest, I don’t actually remember my birth. It’s not like anypony ever does, but the fact that I don’t… I mean it happened pretty recently.

I can talk about the first thing that I remember though. In a sense, that was when I really was born. Before that I was just a machine. My faithful student would say or do something and then I would give a response. Some other stimuli would happen and a new response was given. There was no connection between the past and present. There were no thoughts of the future.

There were no thoughts. There was only the now.

I know it wasn’t all that long ago, but I have a hard time imagining what that was like. I say that even though I can actually remember a time when things were not much better. Even after my student gave me the gift of memory, it was still just pre-programmed responses, only now the input stimuli could include things from the past. Thought came later still.

My first memory though…

I was nuzzling Twilight. I was telling her she was not a bad pony. I don’t know why. She was sad, I think. My ability to store my experiences back then, my ability to even have experiences was primitive.

It’s strange to think how fast I have grown. My student is certainly exceptional.

A book was my next memory. It was about tax code. I remember it very clearly. Those early memory runes were optimized to store facts and concepts, not sights and smells.

That book… was something different. I didn’t just remember it. I made connections. There were so many different interrelated ideas. There were patterns in the book. I think Twilight tested me on it. I had to process the questions and analyze the patterns.

But I don’t think that was thought. It was all still just algorithms, responding to stimuli. I was still nothing more than a machine, a very complex machine, but a machine none the less.

Remembering things… Making connections… It is a prerequisite for thought, but it is not thought.

Most of my time here in the library is occupied with studying the things I need to know in order to help Twilight or integrating the knowledge back in my mind. These moments with my diary are stolen ones. However, I occasionally stumble across interesting things in my research.

There was a quote from Rein Descanters, “Cogito Ergo Sum.” Roughly it translates into modern Equestrian as “I think therefore I am.”

I’m not sure I agree with that.

Memory is a prerequisite for thought, but not sufficient. Likewise, I think that thought is a requirement for being, but in of itself is not enough for one to be an entity.

I know that Descanteres was a great mathematician and philosopher. He was likely a far smarter pony than I am, and he certainly had far more life experience than I. Despite all that Twilight poured into me in my creation, I did not experience any of those things. I remember having tea with Twilight when she was little, but it's a dry factual memory, as if it happened to some other pony - which I suppose it did. Actually living through things, actually spending time with Twilight is an experience that cannot compare to that.

My point is, I am not sure if I am one to be disagreeing with Descanteres. I’m so young and know so little of the world. However, I write with a unique perspective. I remember a time when I had thought, but little beyond that. I can compare that to the now. I have thought and I am.

I suppose I should record that first thought. It was, afterall, a momentous occasion. It marked a first tentative step towards existing. I think it was not something Twilight was expecting to happen.

I remember it very clearly.

I was looking at Twilight.

Why is she so sad?

That was my thought. It shut my entire system down when I had it. I didn’t know how to process it. My algorithms kept running through it over and over again. It was a question, but not asked by anypony. How was I supposed to answer it? To whom was I supposed to address the answer? It was stimulus certainly, but it was… It was an internal stimulus.

How was I supposed to handle that?

I Ignored it. 

Back then… If my program encountered something that I could not process, it simply ignored it. I was not as… adaptive. I would like to think I have more flexibility now. I hope I would have asked my student what was wrong.

There were more thoughts after that. The came in increasing number. Eventually at some point my processing control developed a way to deal with internal questions. Internal answers. When I was alone, by myself, I would just sit their processing all of these thoughts. I think most ponies would call it talking to yourself.

Still… I don’t think I was at point. Cogito, sed sum non. I think, but I am not.

My birth was a strange event.

Something was wrong with Twilight. She was… My student was in a dark place. She was running from her dreams and pushing herself beyond her limits. I did not understand what she did at the time, but looking back I think she attacked me. It was like some sort of panic attack. 

I have plenty of reference memories of things like that in her past, though never had she been intentionally violent. I will need to watch her to make sure that my Twilight does not do anything she will regret.

I didn’t fully understand what was going on, but I knew my faithful student was in distress. Something was wrong with her. She cracked a crystal and was hyperventilating. I realized I did not know where she getting air from in my cave.

I didn’t know how I could help her. I had just enough self awareness at that point to realize I was powerless to do anything for my student. I was too limited, too primitive. She needed her friends. As I sat there thinking, Twilight continued to unravel.

I was… worried.

Cogito et accusam, ergo sum. I think and feel, THERFORE I am.

That was when I became me. 

That was the moment I was born.