Familiar

by AlphaStrike

Summoning

The summoning circle glowed with magical energy, alternating in purple and green waves.

"Pure coincidence", Twilight thought. "My coat color-"

A premature breach in the fabric of reality established a connection to another world. It wasn't forbidden magic, she reminded herself. Just scary and unpredictable and might kill her. It was actually a simple spell, and getting better at magic wouldn't really improve her odds of success or safety. And since she was the type to do it anyways when her magic learning plateaued again, it might as well be now. That way, she could get a few extra years' benefit from the ritual. At least, that's what she told herself.

A bright flash, and then- Nothing. Nothing stepped through the circle. The spell had fizzled out. Perhaps, she thought to herself, the creature on the other side had magically rejected the summoning. In which case she might face retaliation.

"What an ingrate", she thought to herself. "Equestria is one of the most developed places in the multiverse. I was probably giving them a huge improvement in living conditions, more than enough to compensate-"

"Hello? Who is this?", a voice in her head said. "Are you a horse? I'd normally be pretty upset at being dropped into a new dream like this, but you actually saved me from a nightmare about my teeth falling out, so I guess I owe you one, Miss Dream Horse."

This wasn't good. "Oh. Uh, I"m a pony, and I've summoned you-"

"Hi, Miss Pony. Do you mind explaining to me why I'm so lucid in this dream? Also, I see a door labeled 'Twilight's Degenerate Fantasies'. Should I open it or?"

"NO, GOOD CELESTIA DON'T TOUCH THAT DOOR!"

"Too late", the voice said. It sounded very smug.

Twilight heard a door creak in her head, and some light footsteps. It sounded like a bipedal creature walking on carpet.

A little less shocked now, she decided to ask the first question that came to mind. "So, uh, what exactly are you?"

She could hear cabinets opening now. "Oh, nothing special. Just a human, early 20's, decent job at a startup. Good thing I work out, otherwise the whole digging through your fantasies thing would be a lot harder. Some of these cabinets are really rusty, you know."

Twilight didn't know what was going on, but was very scared. Some things weren't meant to see the light of day. "Please stop. T-that is some very personal information you're going through right now."

A shrug. Wait, how did she know that? "Sorry, chief, but I'm in a dream right now, and you're a figment of my imagination. Trying to strain too hard when I'm lucid dreaming makes things fall apart faster, and it feels like it's still pretty early in the morning for me. Let's just get through this so I can wake up on time and get to work rested."

Twilight struggled to think of an argument to get him to stop. If he thinks he's dreaming, maybe she can threaten him somehow? No, she don't know how long he's going to be in her head. What if he turns hostile and tries to take over her body? Twilight involuntarily shivered a little.

"Hey, you OK there, little buddy? The whole warehouse was shaking just now. Was it because I was looking through the folder labeled 'Repressed Memories of Sexy Babysitter'?"

Wait, what? "No, that doesn't even make any sense. I never had feelings for Cadance! Besides, she's married to my brother now."

"A likely story. I suppose that means nothing would happen if I remove the mental block, right?"

"The what?"

"The mental block. Literally the wooden square labeled 'Mental Block'."

"Where even are you right now? Did you say a ware-"

And then, memories of her childhood crush on Cadance suddenly flooded into her mind. "SWEET CELESTIA, this is bucked up! Was that why I was so passive aggressive on her wedding?"

You could hear snickering.

"This isn't funny!"

Poorly suppressed laughter now. Twilight started to cry a little. She was so fucked.
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And then, he was gone. For all of two minutes.

"Did ya miss me, kid?"

"I think we all got off on the wrong hoof. My name is Twilight Sparkle. What's your name?" You said, in your most enthusiastic voice. Him liking you may literally be the difference between life and death.

"I'm uhh... Mike. Mike Hawk."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Mike. Where did you go just now?"

"I woke up. Right now, I'm sipping coffee, waiting for my toast to uh, toast."

"So, do you now know that I'm not a figment of your imagination?"

"Not really, no. Schizophrenia sets in around my age, and I had an uncle with it. This whole situation is actually freaking me out a little."

You didn't really know what to say about that. What was schizophrenia?

"How about this? Do your people know how to rapidly factor the product of two prime numbers?"

You sighed. Math was never your strong suit. You really hoped 'Mike' didn't think any less of you for it. "Uhhh... Trying every possible prime?"

"Scratch that, I'll pull up a random number generator."

You hear clacking in the background. It doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard.

"I'm going to read out two 8-digit numbers. Get back to me when you calculate their product."

"Whah? That's going to take forever! Can't you give me shorter numbers?"

"I can't be sure that I didn't do shorter ones subconsciously or some shit, I don't know. Besides, that's your problem, isn't it? Get cracking."

"Are you doing this just to mess with me, Mike?"

"Are you one of those communications majors who takes algebra classes in college, Twilight?"

A moment of silence.

"I... I took algebra a year ago."

More silence.

"Am I talking to a literal child?"

"Hey! I've been considered a legal adult for more than a year!"

"So that makes you, what, 19? Yeah, you're still a literal child."

"Ughh!"
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"That took you an entire hour? Well, you did get the correct answer. So points for that."

"And how would you know if I got the correct answer? Aren't you suppose to be at work?"

"First of all, we have a stupid disease going around, so everyone's been working from home for the past month. Second of all, we have calculating machines that can do math very fast. My job is actually working with those machines."

You've heard of such machines being designed, but never actually built. "So you mean like an automated abacus or something? How fast are those in your world?"

"That's a... weird comparison, but i guess it works. And it took me far longer to input the numbers than it took to calculate. So 5 seconds vs. a milisecond or whatever. My personal machine is actually capable of, what, 30 billion such operations a second?"

There is no way that's physically possible. "You're messing with me again, aren't you?"

"It would sound like that to someone not acustom to computers, wouldn't it?"

You thought for a moment. It what he's telling you is true, then you can maybe can use it for something.
"So, uh, what exactly can you do with a 'computer'? In my world, I mean."

He shugged mentally.

"You never did tell me much about your world, Twilight. What level of technology do you guys have? Also, you never did explain why you summoned me or whatever."

"Oh, that. Well, I needed a familiar to advise me on magical experimentation. It's a pretty dangerous spell, and generally results in a creature from another world appearing in mine. I've never heard of something like what we have happening though."

A pause. "Were you trying to kidnap me, Twilight?"

"Well, Equestria isn't that bad of a place to live, and there are ways for you to be sent back."

Technically you weren't lying. The return spell would just most likely kill him. But he didn't need to know that part.
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"Alright, I got you. So your world is still mostly pre-industrial, but only just. You guys have steam trains and rail, but they're very recent. And then there's the whole magic thing, but it doesn't seem to make your society very different from mine, minus the whole cutie mark situation."

"Something like that."

"So the question is, how are we going to make this whole thing work?"

"That's really vague."

"I know. But I'm talking to a magical pony girl with daddy issues, so I'm not too bothered by that."

Ouch.

"I mean, we're able to communicate through our mindlink. But is there anyway for us to increase the bandwidth? Either way, we need to find a way to make this whole thing... profitable. Out of all the possibilities, at least one should put some cash into our pockets, right? Maybe I can crack ciphers for you or something and you can hire some writers with the profits? That way, maybe I can get published or something."

"I'll get back to you on most of that. And how would cracking ciphers make bits? I mean, it's a nice way to earn ourselves some money from mathematical prizes, but I just don't see the practical applications of adding numbers together really quickly, no matter how fast you can do it."

"Oh, ye of little faith. Tell me, do your people have anything like a stock market?"

"Well, most companies aren't publically traded, but we do have commodity futures. Contracts for the delivery of oranges in a month. Stuff like that."

"Let's just get you nice and rich for now. You can pay me back later."

You still had no idea what was going on, but this was going a lot better than you expected.
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"Right, and then you adjust the biases at each iteration through a process called gradient descent."

Mike was trying to teach you how machines could learn to predict the future.

"Sooo... it's like methodical trial-and-error, am I right?"

"Yeah, something like that. We've made great strides in the process over the course of the past decade. In fact, even our most complex board games are now dominated by algorithms.

"But how can a machine understand a game as complex as chess? Don't you need high-level reasoning and logic in order to just understand the game?"

"And who's to say it can't? Besides, you only really need to calculate a stupid number of ways a game can go in order to win against a human opponent. Pretty sure that's how the first machine to beat a chess world champion was designed."

You pondered for a second.

"Would it really be cheating if we entered into a chess tournament? I mean -"

"Yes. Unless we only used the machine in our preperation or something. Why cheat when we can do things the legal way? By the way, did the academy accept our entry for the prizes?"

"Oh, yes! It's nice how simple it is to calculate limits and integrals like that. Converting it to our terminology did not take long at all."

You hear him chuckle. You don't know why, but it made you uneasy.

"Now, Twilight, I'm helped you plenty over this weekend but you need to repay me."

"And how do you want me to do that?"

"Well, as it turns out, I knew some degenerates from college who can put me in contact with people who want to commision written smut."

"No. No, please. You're not seriously thinking of selling my... private fantasies to some neckbeard, are you?"

"I- what? No, I mean, I was hoping you could hire someone in your world to write them for me. I have to note that the more disgusting the request, the higher the pay, so I suggest you find someone with a strong stomach."

Merciful Celestia.

"I'll see what I can do."