Horse-Based Economy

by David Silver

9 - Mission Secured

Stan rapped on the quiet Giddyup. "Not rushin', just checkin' in. How's it going?"

"File opened. I cannot locate the radio instructions." Giddyup paced, almost nervously. "Permission to use a reference."

Stan hiked a brow at that. "Don't need permission to do that. Refer away."

Giddyup pointed at Stan's middle. "You have a liver. Neither of us know how it functions. Neither of us know how to command its functioning. Your instructions are available, but unaccessible. My instructions are unavailable and inaccessible. Previous use was a specific, inaccessible instruction."

Fluttershy emerged, as if summoned by the robotic issue. "But those instructions are there, even if you don't know how to reach them. May I?"

"Repairs are not required."

"Oh, no..." She worried her hooves. "This isn't a repair... Um... But I can still help."

Celestia smiled at her talented little pony. "What do you have in mind?"

"What, hm, what... He needs is a programmer." She pointed at herself. "I know some. I can take a look, with your permission."

Stan raised a finger quickly. "We're jus' lookin' for the radio, and nothin' else, right?"

"Yes." Fluttershy emerged further, courage building. "I won't touch anything else, promise."

Applejack nodded at both Fluttershy and Giddyup. "Well, shoot, sounds good ta me, but ah ain't the decidin' vote."

Celestia gave a serene smile. "Everything's working out, it sounds. Fluttershy, help as you can, please."

"Of course. Stan?" She looked to him, the one whose vote really counted. "May I?"

Stan rested a hand on Giddyup's back. "Ah'm comin' with. He'd be there if ah was bein' pulled open."

"If desired." Giddyup brought his neck and head down to Fluttershy. "Permission granted. You may proceed."

"This way." Fluttershy led the both of them out of Celestia's office.

This left Applejack behind. "Ain't gonna be much help there..." She patted herself down. "Got yer letters all nice an' safe. Ma'am, anythin' else on yer mind?"

Celestia considered Applejack a moment. "Well, the invitation is open to you. You seem like a pleasant pony. If you ever tire of wandering, a home awaits you here."

Applejack drew down her hat. "Right neighborly of ya! Ah'll keep that in mind, but, fer the moment, ah'm stickin' with Stan. There's so much more of the world ah wanna see."

"A dangerous path... But I understand." Celestia extended one wing towards Applejack. "Then remain safe, as safe as you can be. We'll have to wait to hear the tales of the wonders you find and experience."

"Ah'll do mah best." Applejack turned a hoof in a slow circle. "Right nice place ya have here. Ah could think ah plenty worse places to pick from, when that time comes. Fer now, have a good one, sugarcube." The two shared a nod and Applejack strode from the office, back onto the road of that pony town. "A nice place..." Despite her words before, she decided to go see how the others were doing.

She found them in Fluttershy's workshop. She had wires attached to Giddyup in a wild mess that only she knew the meaning of. She was tapping at a keyboard, her wings tapping at the keys in a way that her hooves would have struggled to do. "Ah ha... Here's that file." She was plumbing into the depths of Giddyup's inner code. "It looks like none of it is running."

"It is complete." Giddyup inclined his head and neck as one. "That is why I did not want to open it. Their function is complete."

"I see..." She sounded like she didn't see entirely. "But, since it's here, let's look..." she dug about, searching for that needed function. "That radio has to be in here somewhere..."

Stan was there, standing next to Giddyup supportively, but not really doing a lot besides that. He spotted Applejack coming in. "Welcome back. Have a nice chat?"

"A friendly enough mayor." Applejack sat nearby. "Seems like she's got her head on right. No complaints."

"Mayor Celestia is very kind." Fluttershy tapped busily. "She's done only good things for the town. Um, but I may be biased... She was in charge before I was a thing. She probably will be afterwards too..." She inclined her head at the green screen she was facing. "Ah... ha... Here we are." Her typing sped up. "I think I have it."

Applejack clapped at the report. "You can do it!" she hollored, supporting the only way she knew how. "That looks complicated..." She could but see the rapid letters of Fluttershy's typing. "Who taught you that?"

"Mostly myself." She stuck out her tongue a little, focused on her work. "But I read a lot of books about it... Um, mostly electronic books. They gave us a lot of things to read, if we wanted. I wanted to read them." With a firm last stroke, Giddyup began a reboot cycle. "There. When he wakes up, he should be able to use his radio. He always knew how, he just wasn't allowed to. I don't know why."

Stan rolled a hand at that. "But he did before. Ain't a very good rule if he was already breakin' it."

"So I heard... But there were rules about it, I saw them." She pointed with her wings. "They didn't let him use his radio because he wanted to. The other, um, he could because that other instruction had a reason. Now... if I did it right, Giddyup can decide if it's a good reason or not."

Applejack snorted softly. "Huh. Ya went and took somethin' that works without thinkin' bout it, like yer stomach." She patted her own belly. "And made it somethin' he could think 'bout, more like yer lungs?"

"Exactly." Fluttershy pushed away from the keyboard, standing up and turning to them. "I hope this helps."

"Me too." Stan gently pet his mechanical friend. "Wakey wakey."

"Self-Diagonistic complete, all systems are nominal. Good morning." He nuzzled his child with a happy equine whicker of greeting. "New function located. Radio located. Status: Offline."

"You could listen on your radio before." Stan wagged a finger. "Seen that. Can ya send now?"

"Function located." Screeches of static filled the air before a station was found, playing classics from before the bombs fell. "Incoming radio functional."

Stan put a hand as his hip. "We knew you could do that. Can you send now?"

"I can. What frequency is required?"

Stan slumped at that. "Shoot..."

"Shoot," echoed Fluttershy.

"Shoot," added Applejack, lest she be left out. "If we don't know what station's the vault's listenin' in on... That ain't gonna help us."

Stan snapped his fingers, an idea coming up. "Can you see what station was used last time? The vault may be listenin' in there."

"One moment..." Giddyup was still and quiet, searching. "Station located. Message located. Message disregarded. Please provide a new message."

Applejack applauded with a big smile. "Now we're cookin'! If you can send english, tell 'em this." Applejack fished out the letter, still sealed in its envelope.

Which Giddyup could not open. Applejack wasn't too much further along, aside biting into it. She offered it to Stan, the most manually dextrous one present. "Right right." He tore it open and put it down where Giddyup could see it. "They may not hear it the first time, so send it a few times to be sure."

"Loading..." Giddyup read the message, dedicating it to memory. "Broadcasting." That didn't have a sound, unless one happened to be a radio and tuned to the right channel. "Are we visiting the tribe?"

Stan frowned lightly. "Well, gonna have to. They ain't got a radio. I say we get that out of the way, come back, get paid, an' see if we can't get that job with the hair care."

Applejack nodded firmly. "Ain't seein' a good reason to put it off. 'Sides, visitin' other ponies sounds fun t'me. Wonder how they're doin'..."

"Oh, my... I imagine they don't have a lot... for me... They don't have any robots."

"Of the two--" Stan put up two fingers, just for one to fall. "Only one of them has just one right now. A real friendly nannybot. Bet you'd like her, but we ain't visitin' her right now."

"Aw...." Fluttershy kicked weakly at the ground. "Well, good luck." She waved as they headed out. "Be safe!"

Giddyup looked to Stan, then Applejack. "Would you like a ride?"

Applejack let out a happy squeal. "Well, since yer offerin'..." She hopped up, scrambling into position. "Ah'll take that!"

Stan laughed at the two of them. "Ah swear... Well, let's get going then. Giddyup, set a route for the village. Avoid trouble as best you can without delayin' us more than about 50%."

"Calculating ideal route." Not that he had to stop, carrying Applejack along at a light bouncing trot. "Route located. I cannot predict the location of migrating animals or the presence of bandits."

"Yeah yeah." It was hardly the first time he'd had to deal with those. "I won't blame you if they turn up. We're just avoidin' the stuff that ain't moving around too much."

"G'luck." A sherriff waved at them as they went past. "Don't get yerself shot."

"Nice place." Stan shook his head as they went. "I kept waiting for something to happen... I'm pretty happy being wrong in this case."

Applejack nodded down from atop Giddyup. "Ah hear that. Let's do our part to keep this goin'. We'll help all the ponies do better."

"That'll scare some people." Stan huffed at the thought. "If they start feelin' threatened by the ponies doing well..."

Applejack wrinkled her nose at that. "Really? They ain't doin' nothin' wrong to the humans." She reached to prod Stan. "You don't feel threatened, do ya?"

"Naw." He patted the side of Giddyup, under Applejack. "Not me, personally, but ah ain't the average person in charge, now am I?"

Giddyup let out a little whinny. "Ponies are not a threat to my child." He looked over his shoulder. "They enjoy my abilities."

"That ah do." Applejack ruffled Giddyup's mane. "Huh, Fluttershy really touched you up, didn't she?" She seemed to enjoy the feel of his redone mane against her hoof. "Feelin' good?"

"Conditional nominal. I approve of the upkeep given. As soon as we establish communications, I will submit a report with positive feedback.

Stan hiked a brow at that. "Gonna be waiting a while for that."

"I have my reports ready, should such event occur. Quality repair tasks deserve to be reported. You have rendered several repairs also deserving of report. I am ready."

"Good t'hear," he assured, not sounding very worried about it. "We're out of town now. Our little vacation is over, so have yer guns ready." He drew free his rifle and began inspecting it for any problems. "It'll be too late when trouble crops up."

"Yeah..." Applejack coiled, grabbing her revolver despite the jostling gait of her mechanical ride. "Good idea. Ah'll miss the peace, but we ain't retirin' just yet!"

"I'll drink to that." He shoved a bullet into place. "Soon as we get new drinks."

The two chuckled in unified purpose. It was time to courier a letter.

Author's Note:

Question begin! Let's visit our tribal friends.

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Comments

[Booster Spice]

I wonder if this might end up AJ cooking something.

So the courier can curry a curry with a curry?

Stan laughed at the two of them. "Ah swear... Well, let's get going then. Giddyup, set a route for the village. Avoid trouble as best you can without delayin' us more than about 50%."

Having just watched a small YT video on training simple neural nets, this is a very important functional point that seems to be missing from talk avout them, even though they have error functions and time taken to approach that error, they dont seem to have a watchdog function following the energetics.

Asymptotic annealing is a real pain in the backside.

Also whats really weird is complaning about the exponential processing required for high dimentionality, and yet nothing about Hilbert transforms or research into equivalents. I mean, I forgot just how many million points I did in BASIC, but that was supposed to be a 1D FFT Hilbert of a HDTV image. about 30 seconds? On a 100 Mhz emulated CPU.?

Every video I watch about neural nets and AI just look like trying to get an image decoder in the late 90s, where all the maths is exponentials and trig functions, when the commercial code is millions of times more effiicnt adds and subtracts.

Hopefully Giddyap gets more repairs and upgrades, or eveen no more unrepairable holes. The Wasteland might have compact reactor power, but they seem to have missed out on the smallest possible repair bots. Nanotech.

[tsaukpaetra]

Back on the road, a couriers' job never ends!

[Reese]

6:
"The water raised a hoof."
"The waiter raised a hoof."?

8:
"She lowered herself, laying flat on her belly"
"She lowered herself, lying flat on her belly"?

9:
"Giddyup inclined his head and neck as once."
"Giddyup inclined his head and neck as one."?

"She was in charge before I was a thing. She probably will afterwards too"
"She was in charge before I was a thing. She probably will be afterwards too"?

Thanks for writing!

[David Silver]

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Typos. Typos never change...