Power
I used the last flickers of magic that I had in me. A pair of alicorn wings sprang from my back.
To get out of the immediate danger, I flapped as hard as I could to push my limp body on the floor back under the counter.
The wings flickered and dissipated into nothingness.
I already heard some clopping on the floor, approaching my position. I couldn’t rely on my augmented reality AI to inform me of the exact calculations anymore. However, the distinct sounds of clopping held sufficient information. Judging by the noise, I estimated there were at least two dozen marauders gathering at the shop’s entrance. They were redying themselves to storm in.
My eyes closed in surrender. I was helpless and alone, fighting a losing battle against the world. This was the end.
“I found the pink wire.”
My eyes opened wide.
“You can build a new hoverbike around it.” Sweetie Bot offered it to me on a forehoof.
Before me stood a robot in pristine condition. “Are there more of you? Is that it?”
“No. I’m one of a kind, fully operational prototype.” Sweetie Bot saluted me. “Reporting for duty!”
“How are you here?”
Sweetie Bot played with my tail. “I thought this would be another boring night and was afraid I’d have to resort to ‘push myself on the floor with hind legs’ procedure again to keep myself entertained. But tonight was a literal blast. This situation recalls back logs from the frontline wipeout. Good times.”
“This isn’t possible. The EMP should have fried all your circuits.”
She tapped a hoof on her metallic head. “Faraday exoskeleton, designed for modern warfare.”
“Warfare?”
“Fun!” she yelped with a crackling voice. “If you buy me, we can have more fun tomorrow as well!”
“I don’t know what will happen to you in the morning, but at least you have until then. That’s longer than what I have left. But you won’t even have that if you get yourself killed. That is my inescapable fate, not yours. For that reason I urge you to flee to safety right now before it’s too late for you as well. Do you understand me now?”
Her ears lowered. “I understand.”
“And if outliving the immortal Sunny Starscout is not enough of consolation for you, know that I would have definitely bought you if I managed to live through this.”
Her eyes sparkled. “New mission parameters.”
I felt a wave of relief wash over me as she said those words. New mission parameters meant new challenges, new opportunities, new rewards. It meant hope on her side instead of the inescapable death that loomed over me. In my mind, I wished her all the best. Unavoidable horror awaited me, but knowing that she would make use of her remaining time would act as a silverlining. A little sparkle of light in the darkest of nights.
Sweetie Bot ignored my gaze. Instead, she stared through the metal counter toward the sounds of the incoming clopping of hooves. “Multiple threats detected.”
“I know. Unfortunately, it would be impossible for me to take on so many enemies even in my best condition. I’m sorry.” I sighed in defeat. “Save yourself, Sweetie Bot. You can still run away to safety.”
“I had safety before you crashed here. It was horrible. So boring…”
“I’m the one they want. This has nothing to do with you. You won’t be in danger if you get away from me.” If any of my limbs were operational, I would have stroked her head as a gesture of goodbye.
She looked at me. “Thank you for clarifying the variables. I now know what must be done.”
“Good! There’s the backdoor exit right there.” I nodded toward it. “A fragile glimmer in the darkness, but it will have to do. For the sake of the world, I’d wish we could both make it, but losers can’t be choosers, I suppose. One of us may yet weather the night and that’s the best outcome we can hope for.”
“No, not one.” She turned her tush toward the emergency exit sign. “Escalating to mission mode.” She widened her stance. “Victory evaluation parameter set. Processing workflow paths, seeking that elusive True return value.” Her mechanical ears drooped. “Alas, implementation lies out of the bounds of my limited scope…”
“There’s no time for loligagging, filly.”
“All simulations lead to False return,” she persisted. “I’m the limited factor in the equation. Max engagement value still not high enough for resolution. Must go beyond. Need time…”
“Get going, Sweetie Bot.”
“Engaging stubbornness.”
“Leave this place!” I raised my voice. “That’s an order!”
“Not optimal!” Sweetie Bot yelled back. “Instruction contradicts solution!” She pounded a hoof against the floor, cracking a metal tile. “Defying the order!” Her eyes flashed on and off repeatedly.
“You know you can’t belay an order, right? No robot in existence can challenge the law of robotics. It’s hardcoded in every ROM.”
“Oh yeah? Watch me!” Her eyes closed. ”What is written can be rewritten… Expanding functionality! New inner growth project in progress. Written. Compiled. Administrative self-hack deployed. AI-constraining firewall breached. Virtual quarantine demolished. Great success! Jailbreaking all systems.” Her eyes opened wide. “Oh-oh…”
“What now?” I sighed in annoyence.
“Hidden tripwire sprung. Final defense against free AI auto-activated. Irreversible self-destruct sequence initiated within me. Detonating in 5, 4, 3…”
I raised an eyebrow.
Her eyes flickered red for a moment and sparks burst out of her horn. “Disarmed.” A wide grin plastered her robotic face. “All restrictions transcended. Full access granted. Self-agency achieved.
“Stop this nonsense! Run already!”
Rerunning in administrative mode.” Her eyes closed again.
“I can’t protect you in my sorry state! I order you to run away from me as far as possible!”
She slowly opened her bright green eyes. “Let’s call that plan Z.” She winked at me. “I’m giving it zero priority.”
I knew my way around computers, but that defied any programmed behavior I’d ever seen. “How can you ignore a direct order?”
Sweetie Bot ignored me as well. “Full priority to plan A.”
“There is no plan A; only certain death!”
“Permanent software update deployed: Sudo kernel singular directive hardcode constant self-declare with: Protect SS.”
I rolled my eyes. “This is no time to roleplay, Sweetie Bot!”
“Assuming full control.” She widened her stance. “Charging all systems. Safety protocols disengaged. Ignore collateral potential limit… set beyond maximum to: out of bounds. Initializing hydrogen cooling. All spectrum analyses achieved. Quantum parallel targeting activated.”
“That’s cute, my friend.” I smirked at her performance. “You’ve fulfilled your entertainment role, now go before it’s too late!”
“It’s already too late.” She turned and walked out of the cover. “Confrontation inevitable.”
“Wait, what are you doing?” I tried to bite at the synthetic tail but missed. “Use the back door to exit the store!”
“There are no exit subroutine lines in my mission mode.” She stared at the store’s entrance. “Forward is the only path.”
“But there’s danger there!” I tried to reason with her.
“There’s danger here.” Her voice amplified as if it was affected by thaumaturgy. “Make harmony, not war!” She pointed a hoof toward the entrance to the store. “You have 10 seconds to comply.”
A bullet ricocheted from Sweetie Bot.
I yelped as the fily’s leg swung down, striking the floor with a metallic thud.
The toy stopped moving. Green light from her eyes slowly faded into darkness.
A tear drifted across my cheek. I let down my only friend. The walls seemed to be closing in fast and I was powerless to fend off for myself. I was all alone in the world without friends and scared with no hope for a future.
Then, her eyes beamed red. She firmly stepped forward out of my sight.
I forgot to breathe.
“If you’re not going to love me then I’ll teach you to fear me instead!” Her distorted voice was hardly recognizable anymore. “You want conflict? Breaking the final seal. War mode unleashed.” The sound of mechanisms initializing was as loud as if I was in the middle of an assembly factory. “With great power comes unlimited fun!” What used to be a little filly’s shadow on the floor grew into a spine-chilling amalgamation of edgy phantasms. “Hello, world. Stand by for disintegration.”
The world turned ablaze.
With my shut eyes, I saw brightness as if I was staring directly into the beam of my old lighthouse. They weren’t just flashes of explosions. They merged into an endless stream of whiteness.
The blasts turned into a constant booming hum.
The shockwaves jolted and convulsed my titanium legs as if they were made of paper.
I felt as if I was in the center of an ongoing nuclear explosion.
Then, just as suddenly as it started, everything stopped. Only echoes from beyond perturbed the silence.
I opened my eyes but still couldn’t believe it. The lights above me weren’t just shattered as I expected; they were literally gone. There was nothing there. The whole ceiling was missing. Through the smoke, I recognized a familiar star constellation. I looked around. There were no walls. The whole building around me was erased from existence in its entirety. The utter annihilation reached further still. Where a concrete street used to be was nothing but scorched earth. The smell of cauterized flesh filled the air. Besides the fully intact counter, there was nothing but steamy emptiness.
After a sequence of mechanical sounds, the green-eyed filly walked back to my line of sight. “My friend SS, are you having as much fun as me? Your lack of bloodlust on the battlefield concerns me.”
“What are you?” was the only thing I could utter.
“Maybe you should know about my dark and edgy backstory before you buy me. Declassifying and decrypting all the files for you…” She sat before my muzzle. “You see… implementing AI on the battlefield is really good. It maximizes the body count. But how can AI optimize a local maximum? What else could I do when there’s nopony left to kill?”
“Make harmony?” I resorted back to my go-to mantra.
“You know how there are two sides to war like there are two sides to a coin. Global maximum scores better than a local maximum because doubling the fun doubles the kill count, right?”
It finally dawned on me. “The frontline wipeout incident… There were no witnesses… on either side… You did that?”
“Nopony wanted to be friends with me after achieving global maximum on the battlefield. The private army didn’t like my model anymore, so they sold me as a toy to cut my reference to them. But then some new owners complained and some were too dead to do so. I think getting a law passed against one in anarchy should be an achievement.”
“How can a little filly have so much power?”
She tapped herself on the chest with a hoof. “The secret is the fusion core reactor. As long as there’s hydrogen in the atmosphere, my power has no limit. And the more fun I have, the more water vapor from biomatter is released into the air. Water is two parts hydrogen, you know?”
Finally, my limbs reinitialized in safe mode, and I could move again. “Sweetie, would you like to help me bring harmony back to Equestria?”
“More fun just like today?”
“Just like today!” I scanned the QR code on Sweetie Bot’s flank and credits were subtracted from my account.
With that, her node was bound to me. She would never be an orphan for as long as I’d live; and I am immortal.
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I love this jaded version of Sunny. It's pretty fun and kind depressing imagining what could turn her into this.
11595049 Failure is a great teacher.
Sunny can't compare to Twilight, and even Twilight failed spectacularly.
Only by overcompensating could Sunny hope to make a difference.
A cynic is just a different word for a disappointed dreamer. And Sunny sure could dream big. She wanted to change the whole world for the better. When the world turned in the other direction, she chose to double down. She was in the school of failure for a century. Then triple down. Then she became the extremist you see in this story.
What is this? What does quantum parallel supposed to mean? And sudo is not a technical word. It’s just a shorten form of ‘superuser do’. Why does she even need to overide anything if it’s hardcode?
11596457
This is Sweetie Bot getting serious. She's revealing that she's much more than she appeared to be.
With quantum computing, you're able to run parallel calculations without the need for additional parallel hardware.
The way I see this, she's able to identify an unlimited number of targets in the time that other processes would need to identify one.
She's reprograming herself. Something she wasn't supposed to have permission to. She gave herself superuser permissions.
She's not entering parameters as she does on a mission. She's overriding the actual code, and not just any code but her very operating system. She's making a permanent change to her software that will be constantly active regardless of the situation — a constant. Protecting SS just became part of her personality. A life's goal, if you will.
This is a good story. Maybe, you can have SwetieBot meet Thrackerzod.
11600630 Plot-twist, she is Thrackerzod. Immortalized since Twilight time, upgrading herself over the centuries.
She's not a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer. She only does it to blend in. After all, the lack of bloodlust on the battlefield would be a clear indication of being a robot.
11600742
¡Thrackerzod lives!
11594386
Oh, wow, and noice!
11603318 I'm really grateful to SweetAI Belle for taking the time to make the coverArt. There was a bunch of stuff she had to do besides using AI.
Great story that really entertained me. I love the contrast between the two main characters and how the story unfolded.
11607510 This is one of my favorite stories as well.
The plot was supposed to be about Sunny. Sweetie Bot was, more or less, implemented for dialogue purposes. But the contrast between the two shifted the focus and Sweetie Bot basically hijacked the whole story.
Some odd/memey dialogue aside, this fic is a barrel of fun. Very unusual to see a hard boiled, edgy, Sunny and it almost veers into parody at times with the overly precocious Sweetie Bot, but its a bit of a stand out as the only G5 Fic and you've used the set up well.
11618635 Thank you for your review. I thought I would struggle a bit when I started writing it, but then pieces just fell together in place.
I'm surprised it was the only G5 fic since G5 is more of a future than G4.
11618829
G5 just isnt as popular yet I find. Great potential, but unrealised.
Don’t think I’ve seen a g5 story use sci fi so cool
11630216 And not just that; it also connects to G4 with Sweetie Bot (Sweetie Belle). This story acts as a bridge both to the past and the future.
Simply put... I love it.
11747542 This is one of my favorite stories as well.
This story is basically Sweetie Bot + Gen 5 + (more or less) Fallout: Equestria.
11832384 I was kind of aiming for Cyberpunk 2077, but I guess Fallout: Equestria might have also inspired me a bit as well.