//------------------------------//
// Chapter 23 
// Story: Sleeping in the Light 
// by Wheller 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 23


The change of scenery from the Ponyville Public Library was a welcome change to the passive observers. They found themselves in the Everfree Plains Missile Base, once more able to breathe easily. Reliving Twilight Sparkle’s memories of the so called ‘Tome of Alhazred’, had made the atmosphere very oppressive, and it had been difficult to stay focused. Somehow, some way, the book had been distorting Twilight Sparkle’s mind, and they were very glad to finally be away from it.

Dizzy took in a deep breath and gave Sparky a hug. ‘Talk about a nightmare’, she said with a sigh. ‘How does a book even end up like that?’

Sparky merely shrugged as she patted her friend on the back for comfort. ‘My grandmother talked a lot about magic when she told me stories from around this time, according to her, Twilight Sparkle studied all kinds of magic, I always thought she was just being silly, magic isn’t real, the ponies of this time merely misunderstood a unicorn’s telekinetic abilities to be magic, not surprising considering the society that they lived in actively discouraged scientific study... but maybe there was more to it than I originally thought’.

‘I’ve heard similar’, Hopely said with a shrug. ‘My basket case grandmother lived in Ponyville at this time too, and when I was little she liked to tell outlandish stories about things that happened, one of them was where she and her two friends, Lilly and Daisy almost got eaten by a roaring metal monster that flew over their heads, screaming in terror and laughing hysterically at the same time’, Hopely said with a sigh, shaking her head in disappointment. ‘She and her friends were the town gossips, and according to her, Twilight Sparkle had originally come to Ponyville to study “the magic of friendship” or some nonsense. Heh, Magic of Friendship, sounds like communism to me!’

Viola let out a sigh, smacking her hoof against her face. ‘Tell me something Hopely, why must you always default to remarks about communism?’ she asked, rolling her eyes at the earth pony mare.

‘Hey! Communism is a big deal, Guv!’ Hopely said. ‘Those psychos in the Præsidium are watching us closely, waiting for the perfect time to strike at us! You watch, I’m going to be the only one prepared!’

‘Sounds to me like Hopely inherited something from her basket case grandmother’, Kelso whispered as she leaned in close to Sparky and Dizzy, both of whom nodded their heads in agreement.

Though the more that Sparky thought about it, that wasn’t really fair to Hopely, especially with her experiences, she had repeatedly encountered agents of the Præsidium’s intelligence service, the NKVD. Sparky too had met the enigmatic Yuri, and the brutish Oleg when the duo had kidnapped Sparky, Dizzy, and Hopely, along with Grandma V, Señora Amarilla de la Manzana y de la Sidra, and her gryphon manservant Juan Carlos de los Reinos de Griffin y de los Reinos de Griffin in Manzanares, Hispaña Third Republic, and forced them to take part in the Leninov mission.

They found themselves standing in a small room that appeared to be a workshop. Half disassembled combots littered the room, and sitting on a small wooden workbench was a single spritebot that had been opened up to reveal its’ internal circuitry. Sparky couldn’t help but take a look inside to discover rows of connected thermionic valves. Such ancient technology! These valves had long been obsolete in the Republic with the invention of solid state devices, such as the transistor and the semiconductor. Solid state devices allowed for electronic devices to become smaller and less expensive, and most importantly, not as heavy, Sparky had visited the Ponyville museum of technology and had taken a look at an early republic era army field radio, which had almost been as big as she was when she had been ten years old. She couldn’t imagine lugging something like that around.

The pneumatic door opened up, and in trotted none other than Rainbow Dash, who had been quite frankly, the last pony that anyone of the passive observers would have expected to see in this setting.

Rainbow Dash glanced around the room, and took notice of the spritebot sitting on the table and took a closer look at it. She noticed immediately that one of the thermionic valves did not seem to be screwed in all the way, and reached into the robot’s interior and gave it a gentle quarter turn to the right.

More to her surprise, and frankly the surprise of the passive observers, doing so caused the robot to snap to life. The spritebot began to chirp and buzz and make all sorts of other noises as it began to start up.

‘Diagnostics complete, begin recording’, the artificial voice of Emerald Sparkle barked loudly from the speakers on the spritebot's body. ‘Head researchers log, Doctor Emerald Sparkle recording, timestamp, 2259, 22/1/4006 ROG, I refuse to use that new calendar... Yes, Doppler, I know, stay on topic. Well, here we are. Spritebot, Durable, Subject Epsilon, SD-E is the only remaining prototype of the durable combat model spritebots. The Durable project was designed to increase combat effectiveness in Spritebots... a sort of just in case project. One of these days, that bitch is going to find out that I’m down here. I need something to protect myself with, especially once I hook myself into the mainframe, there will be no going back, once I get in, there’s no coming back out. Disconnection from the mainframe will result in brain damage, test upon test confirmed that. Without taking measures to protect myself when I am most vulnerable is nothing short of a death sentence. Well, that was the goal of the durable model spritebots, sadly to say, the project was a complete failure. Of the five prototypes, Subject Epsilon was the only one to remain stable. Subjects Alpha through Delta’s artificial personalities went insane, and unfortunately self-terminated. While the project was an ultimate failure, SD-E, or Sadie, as I’ve come to refer to her, was not. While not a true artificial intelligence, Sadie is able to emulate certain facets of personality and emotion common in ponykind, thus, is able to mimic happiness, sadness, disappointment, regret, et cetra, while these emotions are not real and not genuine, it leaves a avenue open for further research into developing artificial intelligence. Sadie’s artificial personality is even more advanced than Doppler’s, who would be jealous, except his AP hasn’t been programmed to feel emotions... Unfortunately, it will be quite some time until that avenue can be explored, with the durable spritebot project a failure. I have to start from scratch, I’ve had an idea that I’m very excited about, but I can’t afford to waste much more time. I have to finish designing the combat robots and hook myself into the mainframe by the end of this year if I’m going to have any hope of getting them ready for my grand design. EPMB’s minifacturing facilities, while advanced, are slower than mass production, with only being able to produce an average of 1.6 combat robots per year, I need to get started... this could be so much easier... if only I had access to the Fillydelphia Ironworks, as luck would have it, somepony cut the hardlines, isolating the Ironworks from the rest of the network, probably thanks to some idiot digging a ditch or something. This is Doctor Emerald Sparkle, signing off.’

‘Huh’, Rainbow Dash said to herself as she continued to examine the spritebot.

'That was... enlightening', Viola said as she examined the spritebot alongside the memory of Rainbow Dash. 'Now we know why Emerald Sparkle wanted Twilight to kill her instead of disconnecting her'.

'Live forever with brain damage', Sparky said as she grimaced at the thought. 'I don't think Twilight knew what would happen...'

Sadie, the spritebot lying on the table, began beeping at Rainbow Dash, trying to get her attention. Rainbow Dash looked down at the robot and noticed that its' rear access panel was lying on the work bench a few centimetres down from it. ‘You... want me to put this back on you?’ Rainbow Dash asked, as she picked up the rear access panel and held it in front of the Spritebot's eyes. Sadie beeped in a happy sounding tone, indicating that that was what she wanted.

‘Uh... okay, I’ll see what I can do’, Rainbow Dash said with a nod. She placed the panel on the open part of the robot, and picked up a screwdriver in her teeth, lucky for her, the screwdriver had a small magnet in the end and attracted the screws to it. Rainbow Dash worked carefully to screw the cover back onto the robot, making sure to attach it tightly. ‘Umm... okay, it’s on’, Rainbow Dash said when she was done.

The spritebot chirped happily at her and began to flap its' wings. Sadie rose into the air and darted out the workshop door and down the hallway. Rainbow Dash could only watch in awe at the robot as it flew off down the corridor, disappearing from sight. ‘I’m not sure if that was a good idea or not’, Rainbow Dash said out loud to herself. She gave a frown and set the screwdriver back down, and exited the workshop without another thought.