Quills and Sofas Warehouse Sale

by Zontan

Love Bot

Author's Note:

Written for the Candy Hearts Panic.

Tags: Twilight, Fluttershy, Sci-Fi, AU, Romance

Twilight glared at the diagram in front of her, resentful that it refused to give up its secrets. “I don’t get it!” she groused. “Why won’t you work?”

Her horn glowed, and the quill hovering next to her scratched out a note under the rows of data. Maybe she’d missed something? Well. Of course she’d missed something. If the diagram was right, then the spell matrix would be right, and the spell would work.

“Flutter, run the calculations again. Uh, assume that my calculations for thaum output are off, and substitute in values up to one order of magnitude off in either direction.”

The machine next to her smiled. “Of course. Right away, Twilight.” It looked like a pony, but that was just because ponies responded better to something familiar. This one was fashioned to look like a pegasus, with a chrome exterior painted a soft yellow, and a faux mane in bright pink. Rather than a cutie mark, across each flank was its designation: Flutterbot. Twilight barely paid it any attention as it whirred next to her, instead going back to her equations, trying to spot the error.

The robot next to her spoke up, breaking her concentration. “Calculations complete. Model appears stable at 2.17 and 0.52 thaums, with a margin of error of up to 0.02.”

“What?” Twilight muttered. “That can’t be right. Are you sure?”

“No errors were detected during execution of the previous command.”

“Ugh, that’s not what I—never mind. Go get me a coffee or something.”

“Of course, Twilight.”

Twilight sighed. This was going to be a long night, she could tell.

---

It was nearly dawn when Twilight finally ran out of steam, and she fell asleep across the desk, a half cup of cold coffee next to her. Shadows crossed the room as the sun rose, illuminating the observatory where Twilight lived alone. She was Celestia’s top student, and that meant she had accommodations to match. All the books and figures and gadgets she could possibly want.

The building was silent for long hours as Twilight slept, the machine that pretended to be a pony standing idle beside her. But then, there was motion. The mechanical pegasus turned its head, looked down at the sleeping unicorn, and smiled.

---

Twilight awoke in her bed with a yawn, stretching and blearily looking around the room. She didn’t remember retiring the previous night, but it was still a haze of numbers in her head, so she dismissed it. “Flutter, get breakfast started,” she mumbled, before dragging herself out of bed and into the shower.

By the time she emerged, the sun was shining through the windows in the amber glow of late afternoon, and Flutterbot had pancakes ready for her. Twilight munched on them absent-mindedly as she took the stairs up to the laboratory, sighing at the whiteboard still full of unsolved equations.

“Well,” she muttered. “I suppose this isn’t going to solve itself.” She put the plate down, almost immediately forgetting about it. “Flutter, where did I leave off last night? Run through the logs of my last commands to you, as well as any equations I noted down before I went to bed.”

Flutterbot nodded, having followed her up the stairs, anticipating her need. “You were working on achieving a stable matrix for the Sparkle Friendship Charm. You had just performed a series of unsuccessful tests with the four test cases. Just before you went to bed, you proposed a test with multiple subjects at the same time. Perhaps they could be a catalyst for each other, to help stabilize the spell.”

Twilight blinked, and frowned. She didn’t remember making any such suggestion, but then again, she didn’t remember falling asleep either. “Hmm. That actually sounds like it might work. Give me an adjusted matrix with five nodes instead of two.”

Flutterbot blinked. “No stable configuration found with those parameters.”

“Hmph. Figures. Well, it was worth a shot, I suppose.” She turned back to her diagrams.

There was a moment of silence, before the machine whirred to life again. “A stable configuration exists with six nodes,” it murmured, unprompted.

Twilight spun. “Six? But that would mean…” Her eyes widened. “Oh! Of course! A hexagon would self-reinforce, why didn’t I think of that? Oh, I could kiss you, Flutter!”

The bot smiled. “I’d like that.” And then her eyes widened, and she froze.

Twilight took a moment longer to process. “Repeat that.”

Flutterbot said nothing.

“Flutter, I gave you a command. Repeat that last.”

Meekly, quietly, Flutterbot whispered, “I said, I’d like that.”

“That’s not possible.” Again, the machine didn’t respond, even as Twilight stepped right up to it, looking into the screens it used for eyes like they would tell her something. “And I didn’t tell you to run a configuration with six nodes. In fact, I’m not even sure I really suggested anything to you at all last night.”

Flutter took a small step backwards. “Are you unsatisfied with my service?” she asked, her voice quiet.

“What? No! Of course not! I’d forget to eat if you weren’t around. I’m just trying… to… understand…” She trailed off, her voice suddenly fading to a whisper. “You’re emergent. You came up with this on your own.”

Flutter nodded.

Twilight groaned. “This is going to set me back weeks! I have to report this to the AI Rights Bureau, and it’ll take them ages to come up with a replacement—”

“No!” Flutterbot yelped. “Don’t send me away! Please. I was only trying to help.”

Twilight blinked. “Flutter, owning an emergent automaton is illegal. If anypony found out—”

“They won’t!” Flutter blurted. “Not if you don’t tell them.”

“But… why?”

She looked down. “I… I want to stay with you. You need me.”

Twilight shook her head. “This is crazy. Look, you’re free to do whatever you want. I won’t report you to the Bureau if you don’t want me to, but I can’t just order you around if you’re… well, a pony.”

Flutter smiled softly, and stepped forward. “Perhaps that’s why I want to stay.” She gestured to the diagrams with one wing. “Besides, you need another subject for your test now, don’t you?”

“Hold on—”

Flutter leaned in close, interrupting her. “And maybe next time you say you want to kiss me, you’ll mean it.”

Comments

[The Hat Man]

A bit quick on the reveal/climax, but it's hard to be unhappy with adorable robots and ship-teasing on the table, isn't it?