The Filly Within

by Detsella Morningdew

Chapter 7: Error

"Rarity! What are you doing?" Twilight pulled her friend away from the obviously sulking filly.

"I... I just had to make sure, Twilight." Rarity paused uncomfortably, finding it hard to meet her friend eye to eye. "You understand that, right?"

"Then you should have asked me! Just think about what she feels right now." Twilight took a deep breath, but continued before Rarity had a chance to respond. "No, I can't blame you for wanting... well, needing to ask. If my brother wasn't who I thought he was, I don't think I'd take it nearly as well. But if you had just waited a few moments, I could have told you that I already scanned her magic, both before and after. She isn't a... well, a normal unicorn, but there's at least a sixty percent chance that she was always this way. She actually came to me due to her complete inability to cast magic."

Rarity glanced back at her sister, still facing the opposite wall. "But..."

"Her friends also revealed to me that Sweetie here had something she needed to talk with you about. Before this whole incident. Rarity... she is not your biological sister, is she?"

Rarity looked quickly back at Twilight, her eyes widening. "She didn't know? But we thought..."

Twilight blinked. "You thought what?"

"Well, it was only around three years ago that we found her. We always just assumed she knew. She never really talked about her life before, so we all agreed that we wouldn't bring up memories that might be painful."

A chill ran down Twilight's spine.

"But if there is a different Sweetie out there... if she really was replaced..."

Twilight shook her head. "The probability of that has been getting lower and lower the more information I have." She looked at her friend with gravity. "And Sweetie needs you right now. She just confirmed that all her movements are now completely manual, probably from the effects of the lightning."

"The WHAT‽"

"Which means, she has absolutely no autonomic systems. She said she can't hear, but that probably just means she doesn't know how to hear anymore. Having her sister to lean on would help a lot, Rarity."

"I..." Rarity sighed. "You're right, Twilight. I suppose I have some things to apologize for. Even if... no matter. I still need to apologize."

Twilight nodded. "I'll have to leave you two alone for a bit. I promised I'd wake up her friends if something big happened, and I'm not going to let them spend the rest of the night worrying about her."

---

Rarity cautiously walked over to her now mechanical sister. Her appearance was... well, it was unnerving. As machines went, there was certainly a lot of artistry put into the "piece." Still, it was... well, it was too close to what her sister actually looked like.

Or is this what she actually looks like?

She snatched the paper and quill with her magic, bringing them back around to Sweetie's face.

Sweetie simply turned away again, refusing to look at her.

Rarity sighed, sat down on the hard library floor, flipped the paper over, and started to write.

Sweetie,

I'm sorry. I suppose I should get that out of the way first. What I said... the demands I made of you... they were quite rude of me. I panicked. While my concerns were reasonable, I did not think of what you might be experiencing at the time, something which Twilight corrected me on very quickly. I know now that you are Sweetie Belle. My Sweetie, and not some sort of replacement.

I suppose we have a lot to talk about, and as soon as you are able to communicate more easily, I will not shy away from such a conversation.

I am still in shock, and I cannot possibly imagine your own. I don't quite understand what Twilight explained you might be going through at the moment, but I do understand that you might need help.

I would be more than willing to do what I can. You are still my sister. I still love you.

I only hope that you can continue to do the same.

-Rarity

With her heart high in her chest, Rarity slid the letter in front of her sister.

---

Applejack answered the door irritably. "Twilight? What are you doing up at this hour?"

"Sorry, is Apple Bloom here?"

She narrowed her eyes. "That little rascal doesn't need to be up any more tonight."

"It's just that, well, something happened with Sweetie, and I promised her and Scootaloo that I'd wake them if anything happened while they were gone."

Applejack blinked, her irritation suddenly gone. "Sweetie Belle is hurt?"

Twilight shifted on her hooves. "Not anymore. Not that I know of, at least. It's hard to tell at the moment. But she wasn't responsive before, and I don't want Apple Bloom or Scootaloo to have to wait until morning to find out about their friend."

Applejack nodded quickly. "Does Scootaloo know already?"

She shook her head. "That's where I was going to go next."

"No, you're going to get 'Bloom to her friend as soon as possible. I'll go get Scootaloo. My gut tells me this isn't somethin' small."

---

Sweetie idly registered the paper in front of her. In fact, she physically could not ignore the visual changes she was experiencing. She could, of course, turn that sys_vision thing off again, but she did actually want to know if something happened.

That didn't mean she was going to read it. Sweetie recognized that face. Rarity was apologizing, and she wasn't finished being mad yet. Her sister always found some way to make her feel wrong about something.

She had more important things to do.

Namely, figure out how to hear things. She had deduced that since sys_vision restored her sight, albeit in a weird fashion, maybe she should look for other things labeled with that prefix.

She had found sys_audio pretty quickly, and turned it on when everypony was trying to talk to her.

All she had gotten was a rapidly changing number, like a lot of her other numbers.

Now that it was a lot more important, though, she was a lot more motivated to figure out why.

It was much harder to study now that the library was nearly empty, and her sister no longer was trying to talk to her. Still, from tapping her hoof, all Sweetie could discern was that louder noises made bigger numbers. Also bigger negative numbers, for some reason. It liked to switch from positive to negative really quickly, even in what Sweetie thought must have been relative silence.

Trying to analyze the patterns, however, quickly uncovered something far more unnerving. She had absolutely perfect recall of ALL the numbers, past and present. She had to go back a long way before it became even close to difficult.

Even more creepy was the fact that this was no longer giving her a headache. Just a metaphorical one from the frustration of not hearing things yet.

And a brief search of the labels revealed that all things related to "audio," "hearing," "ears," and various other synonyms she thought of all had some sort of non-zero number attached to them. She didn't have more things to turn on to make it work.

In other words, she could hear right now, but just like with her hooves, she had to learn how to actually make sense of things to use it. Why was vision so much easier than hearing? Magic illusions were always so much harder than just making magic music. Or at least that's what most unicorns told her.

She sighed internally, focusing back on the paper in front of her. She was still mad at Rarity. But at this point, she knew she was being unreasonable. Even if Rarity was still obviously wrong, she should at least hear her out. For certain values of "hear." Reaching out with a mechanical hoof, she pulled the letter closer and began to read.

Comments

[Changeling404]

UPDATE! YAY!

[SuperPinkBrony12]

Ooh, so this Sweetie Bot isn't necessarily the Sweetie Belle. So was there ever a Sweetie Belle and if so what happened to her?

[Dashie04]

I think I know what the numbers are.

It’s giving Sweetie the relative decibel range of what she’s hearing, which, come to think of it, would be terribly inconvenient.

[Replica Knight]

Heh cool

[Detsella Morningdew]

9886538
Sweetie Belle the robot is the Sweetie Belle that Rarity knows. "Sweetie Belle" was never a real pony. Where Sweetie comes from and why she looked so real before the accident has yet to be revealed.

[Detsella Morningdew]

9887009
She's going to have to get some help to make sense of it, yes.

[Yordna]

Well done so far. I love slow burn stories with competent writing.

[Cosmic Potato]

Anyone else notice that there are 1337 words? Nice gaming reference.

[Draco Dei]

9887009
Louder sounds wouldn't make negative numbers in that case. It almost has to be the displacement from rest state pressure of the air her audio sensors are currently detecting.

To say it anothe way, if your were graphing out the soundwaves on a peice of paper it would be the current y-coordinate of the pen drawing the line. (Would need to be a REALLY fast pen though).

[Dashie04]

9921233
Well, negative decibels actually work similarly to positive decibels, if GarageBand’s compression is telling me correctly, but it rather works in in reverse. Negative decibels rather leave more noise for the sound to occupy, and positive decibels simply up the noise.

[Detsella Morningdew]

9921233
To be more specific, the numbers she is receiving are raw values given to her by her microphones. The vibration of the diaphragm moves a magnet across a coil, which creates a current. The strength of that current determines the magnitude of the noise, and the reversal of the current generates the negative values.

And of course, the frequency of the vibration creates the pitches, but Sweetie doesn't exactly know how audio systems work, as widespread technology is not common in Equestria, and certainly not something as specific as audio equipment (though audio equipment does exist.) And really, even if she knew how it worked, interpreting it is another matter entirely.

There is a very good reason her brain interpreted the visual information in a few minutes, and she just gets numbers for hearing.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Huh. This never showed up on my feed. Glad I checked the story page. Great stuff in both talking down Rarity and Sweetie trying to figure out how to convert air pressure variation into sound. Looking forward to more.

[Prysmkitsune]

Like this, want more...also the song destabilized plays in my head when I'm reading this from the lightning strike on

[MJP]

Ok seriously how has on one made an android kikaida crossover with sweetie belle as jiiro and button and/or spike as mitsuoko, babs as ichirou and cozy glow as hakaider

[FridayPie]

It's alive!

Story, I mean

[Detsella Morningdew]

10118088
Yep.

[darklight731]

I really hope this has a good ending...