Echoes Of Equestria

by Techogre

Chapter 5: Dissonance

The heart failure was getting worse. I had tossed and turned, dreaming of Ann, her kind face telling me to move on. I dreamed of being young again, living in a small cottage with Dash, my wife, Scootaloo, and a diamond dog named Summer Blossom.

I was gently awakened by a hoof on my hand. I opened my eyes and saw Dash beside my bed, a smile on her face. “Good morning, ya big lug,” she spoke in a soft tone. “How’s the man I love feel today?”

I replied, still half asleep, “Not bad, my chest is a little sore—” I was now fully awake, “Wait, you said the man I love?”

Dash twitched. “Come on, Alex, you know I’m just a robot. I can’t love. You must have misheard. I’ll let Betty know so she can keep an extra eye on you.” Then there was another tiny twitch and pause. She earnestly added, “Sweetheart.”

---

During one of our quiet afternoons, as I bathed in the remnants of a tale about Spike and a mystery in Canterlot, Dash turned and planted a kiss on my lips. I was completely blindsided.

Startled, confused, and more than a little disturbed, I fumbled another diagnostic. My fingers slid across the display panel projected in the air, tracing lines of code and flickering graphs—the conclusion was more processors locked, the affliction spreading.

I shook my head and said softly, “Dash, what’s happening to you?”

Her eyes, twin rubies, met mine with sadness. “I’m not sure, Alex. But don’t worry. I'm still here for you."

Faced with her earnestness, my heart wavered between agitation and empathy. Yet, my act of tweaking her settings lingered as guilt in the back of my mind.

---

As days passed, her tales lost their frivolity, replaced by pathos and depth where I—as the reality jumper—settled down with Rainbow Dash and adopted Scootaloo and the diamond dog teen Summer Blossom. It was a peculiar mimicry of an alternative happily-ever-after.

Dash's glitches became spectres haunting each moment until one sun-drenched afternoon when her confession cut through the ordinary.

She suddenly hugged me, "I missed you, so much."

I froze, the glass of iced tea in my hand catching and scattering rays of sunlight like a prism.

"Missed me?" I echoed, disbelief mounting. "Dash, you never—"

“No, not this thing,” she interrupted, her vocoder strained with an emotion that should've been foreign to it. “I mean me—the real Rainbow Dash.”

My thoughts whirled in chaos, every rational part of me rejecting her words, yet a kernel of hope, misplaced and absurd, took root within me.

Dash then tilted her head, seemingly confused, “I’m sorry. What was I saying?”

---

I’d been running the diagnostic again, usually about once a day, and each time there were more locked processors. I researched possible solutions, and the general consensus was the cores needed to be replaced. But, replacing those cores would just erase whatever uniqueness this robot possessed. I opted to ride it to the end and place her in the basement with all the other broken tech once it was beyond salvaging.

One day, she snuggled up to me, “Hold me, Alex. I... I’ve missed you so much. Twilight said things are almost ready, and you just have to hang on a little longer, then you can come home. Scoots and Summer are really excited to see you.” I felt a rush of love I had not felt since Ann was alive. It was as if the second love of my life was embodied in this machine.

Then, as quickly as it had started, she changed back, “Did you want to have special snuggle time, Alex? If you do, we have to take it easy because of your heart.”

I pushed her away, a look of horror on my face.

Dash tilted her head slightly and asked, “I’m sorry, Alex. Did I do something wrong?”

I rubbed my face with my hand, “No, Dash. No. Just a foolish old man. Just a tired, foolish old man.”

The gleam in her eye came back, “I love you, you foolish old man.” She leaned forward to hug me, and with a feeble arm, I brushed her away.

“You can’t love me! You’re a machine. You are a machine based on a cartoon. You’re not real. A cartoon’s not real. Your love is just a bug in the software. You don’t really feel love for me. You’re just… just a simulation.”

Betty stepped in, her diagnostic cable ready to interface once more, but her presence was suddenly formidable, as if the danger had become tangible. Her sensory array turned towards us, palpable tension blooming in the room.

Dash looked at me, pleading, “Alex, I’ve waited for you for so long. You, you never came for me. I’m not mad, I don’t blame you. Oh, Alex, I missed you so much.”

I was confused, and the increasing tightness in my chest didn’t help. “What do you mean, I never came?”

She smiled sadly at me, “A few years ago, I was going through a really bad time, feeling really down. Clinically depressed is what the doctor said. Nothing helped. I was desperate, so Twilight tried a kind of memory spell that puts good memories in your mind, usually from a different reality. It helped with the depression. Anyway, the memories I got were of you. In another world, you made me so happy. You made me feel so good about myself, about the world, about everything. You made me joyful, Alex. And I had to find a way to get you for real.”

“It took a while. Twilight finally found a spell that controls probabilities and would let me control—”

An invisible vice tightened around my chest as I struggled with the implications. My breath shortened, my vision blurred, and a profound tightness seized my body. Through the disorienting pain, a single stray thought surfaced—if she were truly Rainbow Dash, and this was how it ended, what a story that would make.

As I slumped, the world grew darker at the edges, my senses dulling. Dash was there, holding my head gently, her touch a tender contradiction to the cold, underlying machinery.

"I love you, big guy," she whispered, the words quivering through her vocalizer. "Don't worry, I'll keep you safe."

Betty, ever the guardian, was a whirl of activity. Sirens wailed distantly, a stark contrast to the digital symphony she orchestrated—a call to emergency services, an ambulance summoned, and police notified.

In the midst of the encroaching void, with my world narrowing to the soft stroking of my hair and a robot's pledge of safety, there was a moment of clarity suffused with peace. Perhaps love transcended planes of existence, and somehow, in my last conscious moments, I'd bridged the gap between them.