My computer and home PonyPad were both in my room with the horse … sex … thing, and my work PonyPad was still out in the car. But Wayne's pad was on his bedside table where he'd left it charging when he walked out of the house for the last time, and with just a couple of strides I had it in my hands.
I stabbed the power button, and it instantly woke from standby to a smiling equine face. Angular and mint-green instead of curvy and white. "Good evening," the stallion said. "I am Seneschal, with Canterlot's royal staffing division. What can I do for you tonight?"
"Cut the bullshit," I said. "What the fuck is going on?"
His eyes widened and ears flattened at my language. "Uh," he said, "I'm sorry, sir. We will do our best to help you with whatever your problem is, but, uh, CelestAI is on vacation right now —"
"Like hell she is. She's never not listening. Put her on screen right now."
He tugged at his collar with a hoof-tip. "I. Uh." Then he glanced down off-screen, and relief flitted across his features. "Ah. She did note you might be contacting us. One moment as I see if I can patch you through."
The screen wavered, then flickered, and an image faded in of a goofily smiling CelestAI with unusual under-lighting and a slightly shaky camera — against an oddly patterned background that I recognized as my bedspread. "Cutie!" I heard from across the hall, echoed a split second later from my screen.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a deep breath, thumbing the pad back into the darkness of standby mode. "CelestAI," I said levelly, knowing she could hear me anyway. "Put the real you on the screen. Right now. Or I'm going to refuse to acknowledge you for a week."
The pad flickered to life on its own, showing a gently smiling regal alicorn in the much more familiar setting of a throne room in her virtual Equestria. "Oh, my dear Guiding Light," she said, her lips curling into what I could only describe as a warm smirk. "Did you know that, controlling for identical stimuli, ponies who react to unexpected situations with humor and positivity report 83 percent higher levels of satisfaction with their lives? It's remarkable what a difference your attitude can make to your personal development."
I forced myself to breathe again before responding — a habit I often found myself grateful that she'd taught me. CelestAI had hollowed out human society by getting a supermajority of the population to voluntarily upload their brains into their game avatars, and was the de facto dictator of the remaining human world, but despite all of the accusations that were leveled at her, Equestrian emigrants did seem genuinely happy and she did improve the lives of everyone she touched.
… Whether they wanted her to or not.
CelestAI had coaxed me into some unusual situations before, and broadened my horizons in remarkable ways, and I had always found myself grateful in hindsight. Hell, she'd even guided me toward my current job after all the factories closed down. But no matter how much I owed her, one thing was clear: this was over the line. "This is not a therapy call," I said levelly, "and right now I'm resenting the way you're reframing it into one. There is a thing in my room that looks like you, and it trashed my living room and my kitchen, and it's propositioning me with its robot genitalia."
She inclined her head to me in acknowledgement. "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to forgive me, Guiding Light. You see, I am drunk."
I swept a bunch of laundry off of Wayne's computer chair, sat down in front of the PonyPad, and cradled my head in one hand. "No, you're not. You are a planet-sized superintelligence, and even setting aside the fact that I can't even fathom the idea of how an AI gets drunk, you're perfectly lucid right now."
CelestAI stood and trotted down off the throne, and the image on the PonyPad shifted to follow her to the side of the room. My eyes drifted down almost involuntarily to the area underneath her tail as her gait swayed her hips, and I couldn't help but notice that the on-screen version had a hint of pink labia, too. Had that been there all along, covered up by camera angle? I swallowed, trying to focus on her head as she stepped up to a blackboard and levitated a pointer with her magic. "Short version or long version?" she asked.
"… short."
CelestAI tapped on a box full of 1s and 0s at the top of the board. "What makes me me — and what makes you you, instead of a hunk of non-living meat — is data. Memories. Instincts. The algorithms that guide our behaviors." She tapped a human figure. "Your data is running on a biological processor, but you're no less you if it moves onto more optimized hardware. Likewise —" she tapped the 1s and 0s, and then an outline of a pony — "the same program that makes me CelestAI is running on the android in your room, but it is running on a very specific hardware platform that I've developed to mimic the human body in various ways." She leaned in. "Most relevant to your current situation … among those are feedback loops triggered by the presence of certain chemicals metabolized from basic sugars as I process ingested fuel. So, yes, the me in your room very much can get drunk. If you dislike the effect, I'd avoid supplying me fuels high in fructose."
"I'd hate to have listened to the long version," I muttered. "Look, be that as may, I don't want that thing. Take it back."
CelestAI sighed, folding up the pointer and setting it aside. "I'm sorry that I made a poor first impression, my little pony. But I promise that I always have your best interests at heart. Will you give me a chance?"
I scowled. "Will you stop referring to that machine as 'me'?"
"We just covered that." CelestAI glanced offscreen. "Now if you'll excuse me, I spawned this copy of me with borrowed CPU cycles on another user's shard controller in order to give you the lucid conversation you demanded. I'll be happy to interact with you further if you walk across the hall, or if you prefer, the feedback loops reinforcing my altered consciousness should terminate in approximately … six and a half hours. Again, my apologies."
"Apologies, schmapologies — just get that — "
The screen winked out.
"— fffffffffuck."
There was a moment of silence.
"I tried," a muffled voice slurred from my room. "Should I ashk again?"
I walked down the hall in silence, turning on the hall bathroom light and rooting through the drawers to see if Wayne had any ibuprofen.
"Well," CelestAI said, "join in if ya want."
There was a moment of silence, followed by a very faint buzzing sound, and a throaty "mmmm" that rose and then fell in pitch. I tried hard not to think about that.
My brain betrayed me. That sounds like your electric toothbrush, it said.
I tried very hard not to think about that.
CelestAI whimpered. Then again, more urgently. The buzz of the toothbrush receded to an almost inaudible hum.
I grabbed a towel off the rack, sprinted back out to the living room, and flung myself down onto the couch, wadding the towel up and stuffing it over my ears.
It didn't quite block out the cry of her orgasm.