Chapter the First
Twilight paced in her work area. Slowly. She occasionally glanced at her work. A metal contraption in the corner, nearly as tall as herself, but clearly not human. She'd been working on this for a few months, and it was just now starting to all come together. And if Twilight messed up the execution, she'd not meet her goal.
There existed a test, for computers, dubbed the Turing test. It pitted a computer against a human in a questionnaire, while a second human asked the questions. After the end, the one asking the questions had to determine which tester was human, and which was a machine, based on the responses given. The tester and the asker were cut off from each other and the machine. The questions were asked in text form, and only seen after it has been sent.
"Keep pacing like that, you'll leave a groove in the floor," Spike commented. "Why not have a seat and think about it instead?"
"I tried that, and it hasn't worked. Writing a script that tells it to use its best judgement isn't easy. It would need access to the dictionary, an understanding of what those words mean, better than adequate punctuation but not perfect. It needs to be like, 80% perfect, for it to pass." Twilight stopped and looked at the device again. Its lifeless components still, after a night of assembly. "Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have come this far."
"I couldn't have guessed that." Spike looked at the machine as well. "You might as well be speaking another language with all this stuff."
Twilight walked to her chair and sat behind her desk, twiddling a pencil. "I've been pacing for a while, and still- Wait... I just got the answer."
"Funny how talking it out solves the problem, huh."
Quickly, Twilight began scrawling line after line of text. Mashing her keyboard to input the information onto an installation disk. A few hours passed, and Twilight carried the finished disk to the lifeless device. "Here goes..." She turned it on, and waited for its processes to finish. She inserted the disk, and pulled up a keyboard. With ease, she input a few commands, the machine hummed rather quietly. The internal fans hard at work on cooling the parts. I don't expect to get it right the first time. But I can hope...
The on screen prompt showed successful installation. But Twilight wasn't done. She reached to the counter and did a second one. The program designated for communication, that tells it to use the words it knows. Then another after that, that allows it to store additional information on a temporary drive.
Finished, she stepped back, hand on her chin. "Now... Let's see if it can talk..." She booted up the program and waited.
"Good morning" she typed, slowly. The reply line flashed a few times, and a few times more, before displaying text. "Good morning" it replied.
"Mere mimicry isn't proof." Twilight typed it again, just in case.
"You said that already." it replied in moments.
"So... does it work?" Spike asked.
"It looks like. I might be too eager, so let's test this some more."
Over the next few days, Twilight took her time pounding out the dents and untwisting the code, trying to simplify it with the same results. Her hard work paid off as she managed to let it choose how long to wait before replying, add a function that displayed a real-time reply; as it replied, it showed sentence progression, and was able to allow for a few more errors in grammar and spelling.
Finally satisfied with her work, she looked at it with a smile. "Now, who to test it with?"
"Can it be Rarity?" Spike asked, hopeful.
"No. None of our friends. They're all too eccentric, but I /can/ have them be the tester. The one asking the questions." She started looking through the yearbook and looked over the images. "Let's see now... Recycle Pin, Octavia Melody... Normal Norman's a good choice... But we don't know him well enough."
"What about that girl from your writing class? What was her name?" Spike asked. "White, something?"
"White Crow?" She flipped to a picture of a girl with glasses covering her hazel eyes, and wavy dark brown hair extending far beyond the portrait. "Hmm..." She looked through the book again and found her in another picture. Near the back, in a group. The Writers' Club. "Well, she just might be the one we need."
~~~~~~~~~
"You want me to what?" White asked. Twilight had found her in the hall, walking to lunch. Her notebook held firmly in her grasp. "And how does this benefit me?"
"Well, uhh, you'll be helping me greatly. I mean, I could offer you some food and drink for your help, but I can't pay you if that's what you're asking." Twilight fidgeted, nervous she might say no.
" ... Food and drink? Do you have tea?" Twilight nodded. "How about food stuff?"
"Many bags of Chex Mix stashed away for long nights." Twilight ended her fidgeting, a bit more hopeful.
"As fun as it sounds... Alright. I'll help. When do we get started?"
~~~~~~~~~
The following day, White Crow and Twilight met up in the latter's work space. It being a large room, there was plenty of space to move around. "Cozy place you have here, Twilight."
"I make it mine." Pictures of family and friends adorned the walls and desk. "Makes me think clearly when I have my friends around."
Since yesterday, she had been installing the same program used for communication on another computer, for the human portion of the test. She also got some help with moving the machine to another part of the room, to allow White to sit beside it.
"The tester will be sitting outside, and I'll be passing between the hall and here, keeping an eye on everything."
"When are they getting here, anyway?" White asked. "And you said you had food?"
Twilight walked to a pantry and got out a bag of Chex. She also got a gallon of sweet tea from her mini fridge. "Hope you're alright with cold teas..."
"Yeah, I am." She took the bag, opened it and started munching. White took off her backpack, set it beside the desk she was to sit at, and looked at the computer. "You made all that yourself?" She pointed at the machine she was to test against.
"Sure did. Took me a month to secure all the pieces and fit them together." Twilight took out her phone and messaged Sunset Shimmer, who arrived a few minutes later. She knocked. "I'll be right out." She looked at White. "You ready?"
"Let's get on with this."
Twilight opened the door and let her in. "Glad you could make it. I need your help. I'd do it myself, but I'd have an advantage."
"What do you need? You weren't explanatory in your text." Sunset walked inside, saw White, and waved, earning a wave in response.
"I need you to ask questions with this." She held up her laptop. "Those two will answer. Your task is to determine which answer came from which participant: the machine, or our human, White Crow."
Sunset sighed. "Is that what you've been working on this whole time?" Twilight nodded. "Alright, I'll help. Where do I start?"
~~~~~~~~~
Outside the room, Twilight set Sunset up with her laptop. "Just type a question, about anything. You'll get replies as they're typing, Oh, and the reply order isn't set, so it's whoever decides to type first that appears above the other. I'll be able to monitor, and you'll make your guess using the last responses. So if you point to an answer and say machine, then I'll compare that to the last responses given inside, and see if you are right. Alright?"
"Aright..." Sunset looked at the laptop and thought. What do I ask? A few clicks later, she hit 'enter'.
White, inside, looked. "'Hi.'? Greeting me, huh? Alright. Hope she makes it more interesting than this." She replied with, "Greetings."
Sunset looked over the answers. "'Greetings.' and 'Hello.' You picked your person right. I have no idea who she is. So I can't use that to help..."
"I picked you because of that. It'll help the test."
~~~~~~~~
After several dozen questions, Sunset rested her fingers. Twilight had been looking over the logs at the responses given, and comparing them to Sunset's expressions. Confident, she stated, "Have you reached a conclusion?"
"Hmm... One more. 'Are you self-aware?' Let's see the answer."
Inside the room, White had gone through a whole bag of mix, and several cups of tea. "'Self aware'? Hmm... Well, I can't prove that, so..."
Outside, Sunset received her answers. "That doesn't help me much. 'I can't prove I'm self-aware.' versus 'There's no way to tell.' That's tough." Sunset pressed her hand to her chin. "But, I'm gonna say... This one..." She pointed to the first response, "This one's the machine. I'm like, 62% sure."
"'I can't prove I'm self-aware.' huh?" She went back inside and looked at the machine.
In text it wrote, "There's no way to tell." She got it wrong! My machine passes for a human in its first test! "White Crow, thank you for your participation. Feel free to have another bag."
"Thanks for having me, it was tons of fun. Some of the questions didn't make sense, so..." She put on her back pack and walked out with Twilight. "You're Sunset Shimmer?" She nodded. "Thank you for your help."
"No problem." She looked at Twilight. "Well? Was I right?"
Twilight waited, then shook her head. "No. White Crow gave you the response you selected. Which means the Machine passed the test."
Sunset shrugged. "Passing one test is great and all, but how would it do against the rest of our friends asking the questions?"
Twilight slowly looked at White. "Don't suppose you want to help a little more?"