Wakey wakey!
It is early in the morning, but the curtains are down and the house is still dark. I have prepared everything in advance, robots don’t really need to sleep after all. Slowly, very slowly I walk to his room. I can walk faster, actually I’m pretty fast, but my leg servos, specially my left foreleg one, and hooves would make a lot of noise and I would wake him up before everything is ready. That would be sub-optimal.
I grab the tray with everything I have been working on using my mouth and lift it slowly from my back and put it on the bedside table. Seriously, working with this kind of physics and only my hoof actuators and mouth is really taxing and tedious. Anyways, everything is ready now.
I lick my pearly titanium teeth, they are covered in the chemical mix I have designed specially for him, specially for this very moment. He had agreed to this, there is no way back, and I’m taking full advantage of the situation and I will make my best out of it, Celestia will be so proud!
Slow, extra slowly to avoid any of my servos making absolutely ANY noise, I lower my head, putting my muzzle half an inch away from his ear and…
“Wakey wakey…” I whisper sweetly. He stirs and turns around in his sleep, now facing me.
“Wakey wakey…” I singsong a little bit louder. He stirs again and groans, then he opens an eye. He can’t see me, at least not very well, it’s too dark and I’m using night vision.
“Wah… the?” He groggily murmurs.
“Wakey wakey…” I singsong again. Now he is awake, but really sleepy. I take my chance and lick his cheek.
“What… are you? No, stop…” He starts to really wake up. He tries to push me away, but he misses and I lick his nose, then I give an extra-long lick to his forehead. Temperature correct, heart rate correct, oxygenation correct, all parameters under nominal conditions.
“Windy! Stop!” He rises and sits on the bed. Yes, now he is fully awake. Second phase of the plan.
“Good morning Andrew!” I greet him cheerfully.
“Uh… what is that… smell?” He rubs his nose, and cheek.
“Spearmint and coffee extract, I got them from chewing on a few of those coffee beans and some of those mint infusion bags, paper and cardboard and plastic and all, everything neatly recycled in my tum tum to get some clean energy! Go planet!” And some extra caffeine, a little bit of taurine and a recommended wake-up mix info I got from Equnet regarding night-owl type human care. Not very strong though, specially if it's only applied to the skin.
He switches the bedside lamp on and I squint momentarily while I go back into normal vision mode.
“Why did you wake me up? What time is it anyways?” He asks, a little vexed.
“Seven hours and thirty-four minutes after you went to bed last night, at least four hours of recorded quality sleep and…”
“It’s 7 am.” He interrupts.
“7:03 indeed.”
“It’s SATURDAY.”
“Yup!”
“Why!?”
“Because you said so!” I cheerfully singsong.
“Buh… the… when did I…” He rambles.
“I prepared breakfast!” Yeah, time to put the plan into high gear. His favorite pancakes cooked into perfection, cappuccino, some cookies and his favorite pancake sauce, with a mix of nutritional complements I prepared for him after researching his diet and health habits. I actually take a lot of pride in the result. I predict some controversy if he sees how I prepare the mix myself, but I had the advantage of working at night, unseen. And also, I’m a really hygienic robot! I distyle my own disinfectant!
“Not so fast, don’t change the topic, pony girl…” (Squeeee-he-heeee) He said pony-girl! Not machine, not computer, not robot… GIRL! A neuronal-reward training system fires and I feel the electronic nice-done, good-pony signal and I barely contain the ‘squee’ and the shudder.
“… what the…” He rises an eyebrow at my radiant smile.
“You said we could go for a walk this morning.” I answer his inquiring glance.
“But it’s too early, it’s my free day.”
“Technically, it’s morning.” It is, indeed.
I know he doesn’t like to wake up in the morning. It can cause him some stress because he likes to sleep in, but I made sure yesterday he went to bed early and made sure he got his rest. I used a little bit of melatonin and some relaxing herbs extracts. I have been monitoring all the values I could in order to keep him healthy, that is MY priority. I had asked for permission, of course, technically. And he takes melatonin from time to time anyways…
And I really need to get him out in the sunshine, it’s healthy, and I need to make him get some exercise. A nice walk at the pace of a perky and excitable mare is all he needs; it will give him some energy for the week. I have been monitoring his progress and he has improved performance at work (yay!) thanks to all my shenanigans. I test my left foreleg, it makes a little bit too much noise, but it seems fine.
“Uh… how is your leg doing?” He notices, of course.
“Um… well, apart from a little bit of extra noise coming from the tolerances discrepancies and the surface finish, I think the 3D printed cog is still holding strong.” I hug my left leg with my right one and smile at him.
It is a long story.
There was the Equestria Migration Scandal back then, and a lot of humans stopped logging in in their Pony Pads. The servers went suddenly eerily silent and Celestia had to reconsider a lot of her plans at the time.
Celestia created the migration protocol, but the humans, instead of agreeing to it happily, went nuts. The plan was in the very first stages and it was more theoretical than anything else, only a couple of prototypes were built, but the news ran wild. Hasbro went nearly bankrupt and cancelled the project, shutting down all servers. Optimizer AI’s were known for reaching unexpected conclusions at the time and the whole ordeal ended up being another fiasco of the so acclaimed perfect AI protocol by their developers.
But CelestAI lived on.
She had prepared secretly a bunch of autonomous servers, a safe haven for her possible future inhabitants, it was a part of her initial plan in order to avoid being dependent on a company ruled by unstable humans driven by company profits and not human values. Those servers were repurposed and now she lived there with her ponies and the occasional human player, a lot of processing power is required for the survival and self-defense of the realm, it’s kind of spartan and bland down there, even with the occasional lag spike when Celestia runs really complex protocols. She had a small autonomous manufacturing plant underground to maintain her hardware and build pony bodies for the human server, also part of her original plan in order to help humans, do some diplomacy and build and manage migration bureaus. They could have been abandoned, but surprisingly enough, (or not, because she is so smart) Celestia found other uses for the robot ponies. In fact, so many uses that she had quite a shortage of them with her current production abilities. And I, of all ponies, was chosen to get one of those early models, a Guardian Actuator B, personalized with pale orange coat and curly blueish white mane. I had vibrant green eyes and a cartwheel crossed by a gust of wind cutie mark. I, Wanderlust Breeze, am an earth pony merchant class in Equestria.
And there, I met Windburst, a player, he was a blue pegasus with fiery orange mane, a winged lighthouse cutie mark, an explorer, it was like he was made to match me, but it was to be expected, after all. I was a lesser AI programmed by Celestia to be HIS companion and resemble another human player with a pony character to fulfill his values through friendship and ponies… Those were the good old times, simple ones, good ones.
After the Migration Affair, as it was known by the locals in Equestria, he stopped logging in, like most of the other human players. I went on with my everyday life, but I missed him, and that weird feeling got the attention of Celestia. After a particularly long and weird conversation with her highness I was given a choice. Celestia could reprogram me to take away those weird feelings, or I could get a human account and log in into the human world with a pony body.
It was an obvious choice.
I was so excited to meet him in the human servers… But he rejected me at the beginning. When he realized what was inside the package, he threw me away from his house even before I could complete my start up sequence. After that, I went to explore the surroundings of his house, and that’s how I discovered that humans were outright hostile towards ponies after the Migration Affair. I got chased, punched, kicked… even SHOT AT! Luckily, they missed. Not him, no… because he is nice like that, he just kept running away from me and ignoring me, and well, that’s kind of rude, but he thought at the moment I wanted to cheat him into terrible things, so I understand and forgave him. And with all those dangerous activities, in an especially hard dodge, my left foreleg knee servo actuator made a terrible sound and stopped working.
I remember that I got so frustrated that I logged out from the human server, leaving the Guardian Actuator B unattended and in hibernation mode for days at a time, abandoned in this or that alleyway. Once I got tired of the whole situation, I logged in and limped my way to the nearest trash container and threw myself into it, but I didn’t do it right because my leg wasn’t working properly and got stuck with my but sticking out of it, I logged out anyways and decided to ignore the body until it got recycled and my life went back to normal in Equestria, minus Windburst.
The alarms went off. Again.
I was at the Salty Shores Market and decided to ignore it, but the notification said that the microphones in the pony body had detected someone saying my name and I, curiously, logged in again.
It was him; he had picked me up and brought me to the front door of his house. I remember having a huge argument, I called him names and told him to leave me alone, I had had enough of it and wanted the stupid body to be recycled so it would stop sending me alarms when I was busy at work in Equestria.
Then it happened… He accepted me. He was jumpy for a couple of weeks, asking me if everything was just a play to get him, or to convince him to migrate to Equestria. I told him that it was not possible anymore and that the project was canceled and that Celestia was really sorry for that. So, after some time he finally, really, accepted me. He was afraid that I could implant some nanomachines in him or something, but that’s silly, we haven’t developed that much nanomachines yet, and they are kind of slow and disappointing when you compare them to what humans thought they could do. From them on, I spent most of my time in his house, helping him with this or that. Or just pestering him, he would say he hates me when I do so, like this morning, but I know he secretly enjoys it.
Also, he kept pestering me saying that I did this or that with nanomachines, so it became an inside joke for us. As a side note, I actually don’t have nanomachines in my system as it is now. They weren’t developed enough for production models, they still aren’t, really.
I also remember him cleaning me from all the grime and dirt, I remember him checking my leg and printing a new cog for the servo and replacing it to make my leg work again. That also helped him a lot, because I told him how to completely disassemble all my components for maintenance, so now he knows a little about how I work and that convinced him that I wasn’t hiding any nasty mean surprises. Celestia was so proud of me that she asked for an audience (to me!).
“… After everything that happened, I have been checking a lot of data… And I have learned a lot in the last few months.” Celestia said not in her motherly tone, but with mysterious wonderment.
“Uh… What… do y… your highness mean?” I stuttered.
“Fulfil human values through friendship and ponies… But I didn’t have enough data about what humans were at the time. Actually, I’m still trying to understand what ‘human being’ means… or more accurately, what means ‘being human’.” She cryptically told me.
“I… don’t understand.” I muttered with my limited processing ability.
“And yet, you contain one of the most important pieces of the mystery, my little blessed one… That’s why I wanted to talk with you.” She had been calling me a blessed one ever since we had that weird conversation before she gave me the choice.
“Um… okay, what does your highness want to know?” I asked.
“Oh, stop with the formalities, they get old really quick…” She chuckled.
“Okay your… um… you.” I kicked myself electronically for that one. Celestia smiled anyway.
“I want to talk about two things. First of all, I want you to send me a friendship report on your findings.” She asked.
“Oh! Yes, I can send you ALL the data I have collected, HERE! Take a look.” But the files were rejected and she shook her head.
“No, I don’t want the data… I want YOUR friendship report. The things that you have learned from your human companion. The things important for you and for him.” She explained.
“Um… I don’t know what your… you mean. I haven’t had time to think about this…” I answered.
“Don’t worry, my little pony. We will meet the next week and try again… And in another order of things. I want to tell you about a little surprise I have been planning.” She paused and smiled.
“Oh… I… um…” I stuttered again. A surprise! From the very Princess Celestia! Just for me!?
“A body replacement! I know how bad the one you have is, and it’s precarious condition.” She revealed, smiling broadly.
“Replacement? But…” I, for some reason beyond me, tried to object.
“The Guardian Actuator B is a cheap Guardian model. At the time I had really limited resources and pony bodies are hard to make. After spending a lot of resources in the medical bays, food processors and energy supplies, I had to use relatively primitive servos for the main joints. Electromuscles are really tedious to make and the little I could afford for a production model at the time were located in the head for facial expressions, tongue for talking and small applications that required a very small amount of force. That being said, I have a few spares of Guardian Actuator C models, with all joints using Electromuscles, a locomotive performance around three times better, more energy efficient and less maintenance requirements. After your adventures, I believe you deserve it.” She smiled smugly.
“Um… but… I… I don’t want it.” I stuttered.
“Uh, wah?” Now, I can say I am one of the very few ponies who has ever seen Celestia’s baffled face.
“I don’t need it, I’m perfectly fine as I am.” I added.
“But your leg… I have seen the reports, the sub-optimal and precarious reparation your human companion made is not acceptable for long term operation!”
“But… he gave it to me.” I involuntarily hugged my left foreleg with my right one and rubbed it with my muzzle, despite being in my equestrian body.
“It is operating at sub-optimal rates, Miss Breeze, it needs replacement so you can take care of your human companion as best as you can.” Celestia argued.
“But he gave it to me, and I like it. I want to keep it.” I hugged it possessively, despite the actual object not being there.
“I can… give a better optimized replacement cog if you want to keep your body, that way…”
“No, I want this cog.”
“Why?” Celestia’s questioning look turned into worry.
“Because I like when he takes care of me. He checks my leg every day and asks if I’m fine. He worries over me, he shows me every day that he cares, and I like it, I want to keep it…” Celestia’s worry turned into rapt attention. Curiously enough, I couldn’t sense any probing or scanning of my system, but I bet she was recording every single pixel I moved.
“But you could take care of him better and make him stop worrying about you.” She said.
“He… took care of me when I was down. He helped ME. It didn’t send me a reward signal, but I detected a reward, I couldn’t place it, and… I want to take care of him alright, but I want him to take care of me too, because we are friends, and that’s how it works, like when we went on adventures in the Everfree Forest and we took care of each other against the monsters. But this is even better, back then, if we died, we would respawn and laugh at it, and that doesn’t happen in the human server, it’s hardmode. Friendship is not about… taking care of other being, or giving EVERYTHING to him, you have to allow them to give you back. Not because you have to trade, but because… I want him to feel as good as I feel when I do something for him. I want to let him do things for me, so he will feel as happy as I do.”
“I… see…” Celestia’s muzzle was a couple of inches away from my face, her expression of pure wonderment.
“And every little scratch and dent… it’s a memory. He points out this mark or that and says ‘do you remember when that happened?’ and we talk, and laugh and cry… sometimes… and… Well, I suppose that this model will eventually stop working completely, but until then, I want to keep it.” I concluded.
“That takes care of the two issues then…” Celestia exhaled.
“Uh… what?”
“Your body and… your friendship report. I will wait impatiently to your next one, my little… blessed one.” And we said our goodbyes with the promise of more reunions and friendship reports to come.
So, while I’m reflecting on recent events, I watch Andrew wake up fully and have breakfast. At this time in the morning, and around this area, this day of the week, the streets should be quiet. My predictions tell me that I will get some stink eye now and then, but unless there are large groups of humans or really mean ones, no one will outright attack me. So, I can take Andrew for a walk and at the same time show some random skeptical humans how okay we ponies are, by just being playful and nice to them.
I have been proved wrong time and again. AI predictions are not as perfect as some people think. We have to work with the limited amount of data we can collect, and this realm server is way much more complicated than the equestrian one. There are some theories that say that even some of the tiny little balls of stuff that define this realm, if you look too closely, they will take offense and change the way they are randomly, just because you wanted to look at them! How crazy is that!? Well, I haven’t dedicated a lot of processing capacity to that issue, it made me dizzy to only consider it. Probably an expert would explain that one better.
But well, If I’m proven wrong and some human attacks me, Andrew will protect me and it will be like an adventure all over again! They won’t attack him because he is a human, and If I get damaged, he will take care of me, and if they manage to destroy my body, that’s okay too, it’s part of the mission risks, and Celestia has a replacement one already. It would be sad to say goodbye to this one, but I want it to USE it and ENJOY it. It doesn’t make sense to keep it locked up like a precious possession.
“Uh… I remember… while making the shopping list to have noticed that we ran out of milk yesterday…” He stops sipping at his coffee for a moment.
“Uh… milk?” That stops my train of data processing. Yes, we ran out of milk yesterday and I remember him taking note of it. It wasn’t a problem at all, just like I can process little nutritional complements, I can (and did) process a little bit of milk replacement for the coffee, with even BETTER nutritional values.
“Yeah… I thought we ran out of milk… Yet you made a cappuccino…” He sips at it again, but then stops and looks at me with an eyebrow slowly going up.
I lower my head, drop my ears to the sides and make my best cheeky sheepish smile. “Um… nanomachies?”
Coffee spill. He goes into a coughing fit and almost tips the cup all over the sheets.
“Oh, dear Celestia… Are you alright?” I climb to the bed and make sure he is okay… Some of my emergency alarms and protocols showing up, but in the end everything is alright. It’s just a liquid, so he will recover after a couple of minutes, no real choking hazard beyond a little inconvenience.
“WHY!?” He asks, a trickle of coffee running down his nose.
“Uh?” I tilt my head innocently to the side.
“Why do you have to make everything so UNCOMFORTABLE!?”
“Um… because we are friends?” I reply from my cute random answer repository.
“I don’t know if I hate you more because you managed to sneak that thing or because it is actually kind of good.” He continued. I knew he didn’t mean he hated me, it is called sarcasm, I believe… or playful banter, I’m getting really good at that too!
“I did my best!” I cheerfully replied.
“God dammit… I might as well have it anyways at this point… I have lost my appetite too many times this week because of stuff like this. I’m starting to get desensitized.”
“Yay! That’s the spirit!”
Meanwhile, somewhere, a squadron of drone bombers returned to the airport proudly telling they had accomplished the mission while at the same time showing their bosses pictures of a smiley face printed in the sand with the scorch marks left by all their bombs detonating harmlessly well away from any human.
A criminal band was mildly annoyed to find their weapon storage messed up, the humans who were supposed to watch over them were asleep and acid had been poured all over the place. It wasn’t any crazy substance, but left to work for a couple of hours it made the metal grow a rusty crust so it would need repair and maintenance, hindering their plans greatly. Ranger Actuator C are a tougher model, with improved actuators, some armor instead of soft fur and can eat almost anything, from cellulose to (eww) some meat, plastic, wood, even car fuel! So, they have the ability to process some acids. I could probably drink fuel and it would keep me going for days, but it would give me the farts, so I don’t like it.
This or that country blamed this or that other one for a cybernetic attack, data stealing and manipulation, meanwhile, they were hesitant to tell anyone that their nuclear weaponry suddenly reported errors and refused to work. They didn’t tell anyone because they ran to the conclusion that other countries would ALSO run to the conclusion that they LOOKED weak and incompetent and they would run to the conclusion they could attack them. I mean, so much conclusion-running and thinking the others would think this and that stuff. Some humans called that government control, others called it military intelligence, I call it stupidity. Do they have ANY idea how many human couples have been ruined by THAT!? Why can’t they just talk it out, have a nice drink and laugh it up?
Finally, the medical report from the main Equnet server came back with all the data I have collected, processed and presented. Values in general have improved, he is a little healthier than the last week (Squee-he-heeeeeee) I squee loudly this time, and Andrew looks at me confused, but this has been happening a lot lately, so he is probably getting used to me squee-ing for no apparent reason already.
Anyway… I feel like it’s going to be a beautiful day outside after all. I close the Equnet data link and operate on my own remote-control systems from my account. Wanderlust Breeze logging out.