Three is a crowd? No, ME is a crowd.
The patter of hasty approaching hoofsteps caused Rarity to glance up from her salad. Sweetie Belle was visible through the glass door of the boutique, galloping up the walkway at a full sprint. Harrumphing at having her lunch break interrupted, Rarity ignited her horn and swung open the door before Sweetie Belle smashed through it. Seemingly oblivious to her brush with disaster, Sweetie skidded to a huffing halt in the foyer.
“Good afternoon, darli-“
“That’s really fascinating, Rares.” Sweetie was panting and wild-eyed. “Did anything come in the mail for me?”
Rarity rolled her eyes, taking another bite of her salad and gesturing to a large box against the far wall. Sweetie Belle let out a squee before sticking her head back outside. “IT CAME!” She bellowed. “Get on in here!”
Rarity braced herself for the other two Crusaders to burst in and triple the noise, but surprisingly enough the only pony to saunter through the entrance was a grey, bespectacled filly whose name escaped her at the moment.
“Good afternoon, Miss Rarity,” the Earth Pony said politely.
“Stop yapping and start pushing, Silver Spoon!” Using a mix of her meager magic and even meagerer strength, Sweetie Belle shoved the package a few feet towards the door to the back storage room.
“Hee hee. Duty calls.” The pony apparently named Silver Spoon gave a mannerly nod to excuse herself. Rarity watched blankly as the two friends heaved their prize into the storage room. Then she shrugged and took another bite of her meal. Silver Spoon seemed like a well-behaved young lady, more than capable of balancing out Sweetie Belle’s wild enthusiasm. In Rarity’s experience, foals were best limited to duos. Once the number of fillies in a given venture went from two to three, shenanigans unfailingly ensued.
Silver Spoon watched in detached amusement as Sweetie Belle tore into the packaging with the excited ferocity of a manticore.
“So this is where all the bits I’ve been giving you went, huh?”
“Yep!” Sweetie confirmed through a blizzard of bubble wrap. “All your investment allowance went to me for those homework help sessions, and I went and spent it all on a new toy for both of us! Pretty shrewd business dealing, huh?”
Technically what they’d just done was money laundering, the exact same thing that got Applejack and Rainbow Dash in trouble a few months back, but all thoughts of guilt or concern completely vanished from Silver Spoon’s Mind when she saw the fruits of her ‘investment:’ a lifesized featureless robot the exact height and build as Sweetie.
“Wowie.”
“Don’t get too excited just yet,” Sweetie Belle chirped as she flipped through an accompanying manual. “You haven’t even seen me turn it on.”
“What... what is it?”
“The ad name was “imprint android’ or something. What it’s called doesn’t honestly matter. What it does though, that’s the cool part. Have a look.” Sweetie Belle presented the instruction manual’s centerfold as she explained each diagram. “Any unicorn can just cast a sample spell on the thingy with their magic, the inner whatevers copy their energy and voila! A walking talking robot version of whoever zapped it! With a personality and everything, I think.”
“This can’t be ethical.”
“Oh pshh-shaw,” Sweetie said, charging up her horn. “That’s spoilsport talk.”
“Where’d you find the ad for this thing again?”
“On the back of a trashy tabloid magazine that was under a bench at the train station.” Sweetie Belle took aim at the dormant bot. “That’s how I know this is gonna be awesome. No good story ever starts with a front page newspaper ad.”
Not giving Silver Spoon the chance to protest, Sweetie fired off a clumsy shot that shimmered and dissipated across the bot’s surface before soaking in. For a moment nothing happened. Then a rapid series of clicks and whirs adjusted the robot’s appearance from the inside out. A pink and purple perm appeared. So did a matching tail. Sweetie Belle was vaguely aware of Silver Spoon backing away cautiously while she herself leaned forward in barely restrained excitement. Finally, two artificial emerald eyes blinked to life and Sweetie Belle was staring at herself.
Her real self. Through the perspective of the robot.
“Wait a minute,” the robot’s voice murmured. “This is… this is…” The real Sweetie Belle stamped her hoof in frustration. “A total ripoff! This isn’t some self aware copy of me. It’s just a remote control doohickey I can see and talk out of.”
“Oh thank goodness. Aside from the illicit way we got the funds for this thing, our consciences can remain clean.”
Sweetie hung her head, all her steadily built enthusiasm from the previous few weeks gone in an instant. “I’m super sorry, Silver Spoon. I brought you over cuz I thought we were going to make a new friend. Instead I blew all your money on a life sized Skype toy.”
“I mean…” Silver Spoon trotted in an observational circle around the mechanical Sweetie Belle. “Buyer’s remorse aside, it’s still somewhat cool. Hey, if I boop its nose, do you feel it on your end?” She gave a few test taps.
“No,” the bot sighed.”I don’t think this thing does much other than see and hear.” It gave Silver Spoon a half-hearted boop back. “And move, of course.”
“You’re really good and bouncing between the real and fake yous,” Silver Spoon observed.
“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle’s real self confirmed. “It’s weirdly easy. Feels like… I dunno, focusing your eyes, I guess? Switching between looking at something far away or close up. Does that make any sense?”
Silver Spoon adjusted her bifocals. “Complete sense, actually.”
“Aaagh, this sucks!” The bot declared as it paced past Silver Spoon to stand eye to eye with its pilot. “I had such high hopes for… ugh, darn packing peanuts…” Sweetie muttered, brushing the offending pieces of styrofoam out of her bot’s hair.
“Just shake its head,” Silver Spoon suggested.
The Sweetie Bot complied, its hair flip sending not only the packing debris into the air, but a small cloud of PVC dust as well. Sweetie’s real nose wrinkled. “A… aaah…” the bot visibly stepped back. “Choo!”
The real Sweetie rubbed her nose miserably as the bot frowned. “Well I can escape experiencing my own sneezes,” it reported. “That’s something.”
“It certainly is. Hm, there's an idea: If you’re ever bedridden with the flu, you can still attend class remotely by sending the bot instead.”
“No offense Silver Spoon, but please don’t suggest ways for me to use this thing to be more responsible. That’s like, the opposite reason of why I bought it. Although…” Sweetie sat on her haunches as the bot crossed the room.
"There might actually be something to that school angle you mentioned. Like okay, picture this: Here’s me, sitting during lecture looking like I’m paying attention to Cheerilee.”
The bot piped up from its position near the far wall. “But I’m actually back at home, doing arts and crafts, or trying on Rarity’s hats in the mirror… oh! Wait! Something even better!” The bot scooped up its manual and mimed flipping through it. “During test time, I can mentally pop out of the classroom to ruffle through the notes I took. I’d be my own lifeline,” both Sweetie Belles giggled in unison. “And nopony would know!”
“Cheating on classwork is dishonest.” Silver Spoon stated.
“Oh yeah?” the bot quipped as it crossed back towards the living fillies. “How about we put it to a vote then?”
“Why, that sounds like a great idea,” Sweetie Belle agreed. “All in favor of me never failing a vocab quiz again?” Two white hooves, one real and one plastic, raised in unison.
Silver Spoon sighed. “Looks like the yays have it,” she conceded with a thin smile.
“There we go. There’s the old troublemaking Silver Spoon coming out.” The bot sat in front of Sweetie Belle and bumped hooves with its twin triumphantly. “I know you’ve been trying to reinvent yourself lately, acting more straightlaced or whatever, but just doing whatever the rules tell you to do isn’t really any different than when you used to do whatever Diamond Tiara told you to do. It’s okay to just be yourself, Silver. Ease up and take things as they come.”
Silver Spoon looked down and closed her eyes contentedly. “It means a lot to hear somepony say that, Sweetie. But it’s hard, you know? You worry about being too mean, but ponies don’t like it when you’re too nice, either. Been feeling really two-faced lately, not sure which version I front as is the real m-“
“Oh my gosh Silver, are you seeing this right now?”
Silver Spoon glanced up to see both Sweetie Belles engaged in an elaborate game of patty cake. “I’m getting good at splitting my attention. Like, really good.”
Without warning, the bot hopped up to all fours as Sweetie Belle wrapped her forelegs around its neck, swinging around to straddle its back. The unicorn waved like a comically pompous princess as her robot self began parading around in a circle. “Good morrow fellow magistrates,” the bot drawled. “Please welcome Lady Sweetie Belle of Ponyville, accompanied by... well, herself I guess.” The bot bent its knees a bit to let Sweetie Belle hop off. “Did you wanna have a ride?” She offered Silver Spoon earnestly.
“I’m fine, thanks. I should actually probably be heading home before curfew. You know that since my mom’s a liability lawyer she’s an irrational worrywart about rules and safety.”
“Fair, fair. You want a snack before you go?”
“Oh, um, sure. If you’re offering.”
Sweetie Belle nodded to her bot. “You heard our guest, loyal sidekick: Go ask Rarity if she has any more of that salad she was eating.”
“Ma’am, yes ma’am!” The bot saluted before taking stilted, exaggerated marionette steps out the storage room. “Bleep blop. Bloob boop bop. Initiating salad acquisition protocols.” The door slammed behind it and there was a second of silence.
”Whoa, what in the hay?!” Rarity’s distressed shriek was so high pitched it pierced the walls.
“Oh my gosh, the look on her face!” Sweetie Belle remarked through a manure-eating grin. “Sorry to report she just spat out the last mouthful of her meal, but fear not Silver Spoon. I get the feeling we’re only scratching the surface of what can be done with this thing.”