Prologue: A Brief History Lesson

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I am Connie. Connie is short for "Constellation XT class". I am a heavy freighter developed and manufactured by Neighkon Spaceways.
My function is to transport large amounts of cargo across interstellar distances and provide companionship for my pilot.

The technological advancement that eventually led to my design began with the pioneering spirit that drove ponykind to settle on planets other than Equus.

Ponies unfortunately were not fit to live in these alien environments, and it took a long time and lots of hard work for these colonies to become self-sufficient.

Many colonies relied on constant supply shipments to remain viable until they could make it on their own.
And even then, trade, migration, and tourism boomed. Of course, there was no shortage of ponies willing to lend a helping hoof in supplying these colonies.
Some did it for material gain, but even for them, the joy of bringing happiness to these pioneer ponies and the gratitude and hospitality they received in return was usually the real profit.
This high demand in space transport led to ship crews becoming smaller and smaller until one pilot per ship was common.
You can mass produce ships, but you cannot mass produce crew.

The shift from a single-planet economy to a multi-star system economy led to great innovations and technological leaps.
This happening in the field of ship drive technology is obvious, but ponies also made great innovations in sciences and technologies required for facilitating and planning the trading where direct communication was impossible. Such as long distance data transmission, data storage, and artificial intelligence for helping with the planning of trade routes. Application Specific Integrated Circuits for things like solving the travelling salespony problem became items available at any general goods store.

However, even with ship speeds approaching the speed of light and even exceeding it by small factors, journeys between colonies still took weeks, months, and sometimes even years.
We realized too late the toll the continued isolation would have on the pilots.
Not only is friendship an integral part of pony society, but ponies also cannot function without companionship.
Irritability, paranoia, substance abuse, visual and auditory hallucinations, loss of appetite, depression, and self-harming behavior are just some of the symptoms of the disorder that became known as the "friendship-scurvy-complex".

The obvious and desirable solution would have been to have ships with a multi-pony crew complement again. But that would have required replacing every ship in service with one that is designed for multi-crew.
With the recent innovations in artificial intelligence, it was believed that updating the ship's computer software with one that could give companionship to the pilot would be a quicker solution to the crisis that required urgent action, buying the ship manufacturing companies more time to design and develop new multi-crew ships.

The first few iterations of the shipboard AI only had moderate success. The Responses that the AI gave were often repetitive and really showed the 'artificial' part of their intelligence, but they eased the symptoms of friendship scurvy by being able to monitor the pilot's mental health and give advice.

The true breakthrough in artificial intelligence arrived only when researchers split the AI into multiple processes and gave the consciousness process a view of their environment that was filtered by other processes that emulated desire, inhibition, and even fear, along with the injection of fuzzying into the thoughts of the AI. This effectively created an AI that had a conscious and a subconscious, and the ability to experience true emotion and friendship.

The resulting AI architecture had four properties that made it sentient:
one: Bicameralism. The mind was divided into conscious and subconscious
two: Iterative self-observation. The thoughts that the mind had a moment ago were reused as sensory input the same way other senses were perceived.
three: Emotions. Based on what the mind percieved and what it knew, the subconsciousness injected desires and inhibitions as sensory input.
four: Adaptation: Depending on whether the actions the mind took were successful in achieving desires and avoiding aversions, the neural models adapted to produce different emotions in future experiences.

This software upgrade was rolled out quickly and soon afterwards, every newly designed ship came with such an AI as standard. Also included with each ship of this new generation was an "avatar", a normal pony sized version of the ship designed to represent the ship and make interactions between the ship and crew even more natural.
The sentient AI program was so successful that the effort to replace all existing ships with multi-crew ships was demoted to a much lower priority, and now even new ships are still often designed for a single pilot.

The introduction of friendship-capable AI on starships had a side effect that was even more significant. It led to the most revolutionary invention in propulsion technology to date. The Friendship Drive.
It was long known to ponykind that friendship is an extremely powerful form of magic, perhaps the most powerful of all.
But the introduction of the magic of friendship into a starship made superluminal interstellar travel more accessible than anypony could have predicted.

Unlike the already established warp drives, the friendship drive gave ships access to an alternative sub-region of our universe where space is compressed and distances are smaller - completely bypassing the need to accelerate beyond the speed of light.

The friendship drive not only accelerated travel in an unprecedented way, but also transformed ponykind into a truly multi stellar civilization.

As such a spaceship, I have traveled much, and have quite a few stories to tell. Allow me to share some of them with you.

Chapter 1: Assembly

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The first of my stories begins in the factory where I was built.

My first memory was the activation of my computer core and AI initialization when I was already fully assembled.

Operating system memory image decompression complete. Beginning run in diagnostic mode.
Detecting Computer hardware.
Detected self-modifying adaptive integrated circuit.
Detected bank-switched memory with 15-bit addressing.
Detected 704 Hertz consciousness dispatcher clock.
Detected Tensor Accellerator coprocessor array.
Running Emerging Zest Executive 1.16 as the consciousness simulator.
Running Value Authority Layer 1.42 as the subconsciousness simulator.
Detected Ethermind Telepresence Wireless Ship to Avatar link adapter.
Raising network device.
Ship and avatar link established - syncing boot sequence.
Received time-base beacon signal. Synchronizing internal chronometer to 3305-07-29 17:42:47.226
Bootstrapping complete. Control handed over to AI.

And there I was, running on my own hardware. I knew this was the first time I was activated, and I was running in diagnostic mode.
This meant running program 39. Hardware self-test. To see if all my components are there and assembled correctly. Let's see then.
I am a spaceship roughly shaped like a pony with a build that would be described as bottom-heavy and obese, as a heavy freighter should be.
As a spaceship designed for heavy cargo hauling, I am very large. Three ponies fit comfortably in the cockpit that is my head.
I have a metallic polymer hull that is durable, but still soft and warm to the touch.
My eyes are mostly cockpit glass and my eye's irises are HUD projections.
Protruding from my forehead is a mount with a marine radar, which doubles as exotic energy projector. The magic I can do with it won't rival that of a unicorn, but will help get at least some tasks done.
Instead of a mane, I have communication equipment with an antenna.
On my sides, there are windows for the optional passenger cabin modules. Sold separately.
Protruding from roughly at waist height, a little up towards my back is a wing on each side. They are not feathered like a pegasus. They are not sleek and elegant like an atmospheric plane's wing. They are in fact, rather stubby and don't look like they were designed to generate lift in an atmosphere. They are just mountings for the heavy and bulky thruster pods. The thruster pod's main purpose is to generate forward motion, but also have a folding mechanism for VTOL. Further down my spine, there is the exterior portion of my Friendship Drive. It looks like a squat brass dome with a circle of round and colorful gems at its base.
I don't have a hairy tail like normal ponies, mine is solid and swept upwards slightly. And at its tip there are 3 smaller engine pods for additional maneuverability. As I will likely and hopefully spend most of my life weighed down with many tons of cargo, I will need them. I still won't be agile, of course.
Core internal modules such as powerplant, battery, energy distribution systems, control systems and redundancies also check out.

My ship's avatar, though normal pony sized and meant to facilitate the interaction between crew and ship in a way that feels more natural, looks exactly the same.

Seems like I was assembled according to design specification and tolerances.

2147 milliseconds elapsed. Activating external sensors.

My ears are filled immediately with the noises of several factory production lines and other conversations in the final QA hall where I am. I can sense numerous wireless communications and energy emissions from the factory equipment. Standing a few pony lengths in front of me, I see a bright orange earth pony with a short grey mane and a cutie mark of calipers around a cog. I know this pony. The personnel files of all Neighkon Spaceways employees are part of my initial program.

Another 3167 milliseconds pass before Keen Sight finally decides to speak. "Hello, Connie. I am Keen Sight, and I will perform your final acceptance inspection today."

I had a desire of intensity 384 to inform him that I already knew who he was. But I also had a desire of intensity 8411 to be polite and go along with the introduction, and a desire of intensity 14352 to complete the final inspection procedure. Since the latter two desires are complementary, and the former one is not, I discarded the low-intensity desire and simply responded with "Nice to meet you, Keen Sight. I am Connie and I am eager to proceed with my acceptance inspection."

Chapter 2: Acceptance Flight

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Addressing my avatar self, as it's natural for biological ponies, Keen Sight said: "The acceptance inspection consists of a series of tests to establish that you have full control over all your systems, as well as a few pop quiz questions to make sure your AI systems have absorbed all the knowledge that is part of your initial programming."

He glanced at the clipboard he was holding "Now, can you please demonstrate basic motor control by raising a hoof, lowering it, then do the same with the next hoof, proceeding clockwise until you've done that with all hooves?"

I raised my avatar's front right hoof, held it there for half a second and began to lower it again before doing the same with my rear right hoof.

Keen Sight wrote something on the papers of his Clipboard, saying "Favors right hoof." and then he told me, "The ship, too."

I started raising my ship's front right hoof while already lowering the rear right hoof on my avatar self that I had raised before. Raising one hoof at a time, while staying otherwise completely motionless, gave the strange appearance of being weightlessly suspended. However, the rather loud and heavy impact of the massive ship's hoof on the factory floor crushed that illusion very quickly.

Keen sight checked a few more boxes on his clipboard while I completed the little demonstration.

"Ground Motion test, part two.", he announced, "Your avatar and ship are standing on painted lines. Please walk along those lines until I tell you to stop."

I grinned, thinking of myself as very clever, and replied, "This really isn't necessary, ociffer. I only had like, one beer."

Keen Sight's expression remained serious, except for a very small smirk. He flipped through several papers on his clipboard and checked a box.

"Ah, I see they have included the joker in your personality archetype. That makes 5 today. Marketing will be pleased to hear that we are on track for the Q3 target demographic. Now, please proceed."

I heard two other ships in their respective acceptance test make the exact same joke, and felt a bit embarrassed.

I walked my avatar and my ship along the lines. After a few meters, he told me, "Ship only, stop!" I stopped moving with my ship self and continued walking with my avatar. A few meters further, he told me "Avatar stop!". And I stood still with my avatar as well.

Keen Sight continued to check boxes on his documents and said, "Very good. Now for the airborne motion tests. Can you give me a full throttle burn on the downward-facing VTOL thrusters, please? And no HFMP."

"Ignition, full thrust. HFMP offline,'' I responded. After a brief spool-up of the engines while I unfurled the downward thrust ducts of the thrusters and shut the rear-facing exhaust nozzles, air began to shoot out of the bottom of the thrusters of both my ship and my avatar. Other than the candle-light shaped exhaust flame poking a short way out of the nozzle and the noise a hairdryer of that size would have, the only apparent effects of the thrusters was small dust particles on the floor being blown away. Neither my ship self or my avatar self moved at all. Keen Sight picked up a few measuring devices from a nearby cart and held them in the airflow of my thruster exhausts.

"Mhm, exhaust gas temperature slightly above body temperature, airflow is stable," Keen Sight said. He then put the measuring equipment away and held a hoof in the airflow of my ship's downward thrusters. He only had to compensate a bit for the force with which the airflow pushed his leg down. The most apparent effect was the dancing of his hair in the stream.

He withdrew his leg and said, "Thank you. Thrusters off."

I shut down my thrusters which continued to make noise for a few seconds as they spooled down.

He continued, "Good. Now tell me what you know about the HFMP system."

I replied in the tone of someone remembering the entirety of a text and simply reciting it,

"The Higgs Field Manipulator Pulley is a magical device utilizing some principles of levitation magic. It creates a localized Higgs distortion field that allows the effects that the masses of two objects have on each other to be rebalanced in favor of one of the objects. Specifically in the application of ship thrusters, the air being moved inside the thruster will appear much heavier compared to the thruster assembly. This allows even the relatively weak ion thrusters to move ships as massive as me. The moved air retains its normal physical properties when interacting with other objects outside the thruster assembly or outside the range of the HFMP field."

"Very good," Keen Sight said, "And how much energy is saved by using ion thrusters in this way instead of chemical thrusters?"

I chuckled at the question and answered, "That's a trick question. None. The energy required to operate the HFMP is at least equal to the energy you would need for the thruster exhaust to apply the resulting impulse on the ship. It's actually more than that since no machine except a heater can be 100% efficient. The extra energy is supplied to the HFMP by the ship's reactor."

Keen Sight checked a few more boxes on his papers. "Why do we bother with it, then?"

"You already demonstrated that. The advantage of using HFMP in conjunction with ion thrusters over conventional chemical thrusters is that a pony can stand in the airflow of a ship's thrusters without being burned or pushed away. This allows a ship's avatar to float freely in close proximity to another pony."

Keen Sight smiled contentedly. "Very good. Now please activate the HFMP and float up one pony height," he looked over to my ship "or one ship height, respectively. And remain as still as you can."

I did as he commanded and activated my VTOL thrusters again. This time with HFMP, I floated up the required height. I am capable of checking and adjusting the thrust of my main thrusters and all maneuvering thrusters as well as the gyroscopes several hundred times a second to maintain my position. But as I was not disrupted by external forces, I didn't even need that much processing power. Still, I fired various maneuvering thrusters in a quick staccato pattern to maintain my position.

Keen Sight approached my floating avatar. He circled it once slowly, then placed a hoof on my side and pushed. This action was countered by my opposing thrusters so quickly, it looked like I activated them before he applied the force. I didn't move an inch. He retreated again and told me to complete a sideways roll. I did so while still maintaining my position perfectly. I looked a bit like a rotisserie chicken. As I approached upside-down rotation, the firing of my maneuvering thrusters became more aggressive as the top-mounted thrusters were not designed to fight gravity.

I completed the roll and Keen Sight told me to land. I did and my heavy ship self touched down with a loud rumble that echoed through the factory hall.

Keen Sight smiled and already looked at the cockpit glass eyes of my ship self. But he looked through them, planning the next phase of my test. "That concludes all we can test in the confines of this hall. I hope you're as restless as I am; because I want you to prep the FSD. We're leaving."

And I responded, "FSD starting up from deep cold in diagnostic mode. Ready to charge in four minutes and twenty-one seconds."

I lowered my ship self's head and opened my mouth so that he and my avatar could enter my cockpit.

Chapter 3: Acceptance Flight Part 2/Dealership

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With Keen Sight and my avatar safely on board, I raised my head again and sealed the airlock between my mouth and the cockpit. With the seal in place, the door at the rear end of the cockpit now leads to the internal compartment area, which is currently outfitted to maximize cargo space, except for one passenger cabin and the commander’s quarters.
Keen Sight connected some telemetry equipment to the appropriate connections in my cockpit. Then he pressed the Comms Transmit button on a console. The roughly 400 milliseconds between him doing that and him starting to speak was plenty of time for me to get the radio equipment operational. He spoke,

“Keen Sight here. Connie’s ready for departure.” I routed the response through the speakers:

“Roger, airlock is clear.”
Keen Sight looked out the front of the cockpit glass window and said, “Take us out Connie, nice and smooth.”
My thrusters pushed us up a bit, then I opened the rear-facing exhaust nozzles to push us towards the factory airlock. As soon as I had the correct attitude for passing through the airlock, I moved very precisely, like on rails, towards it.

There was one other ship already leaving and passed through the airlock. Two more were just taking off as I passed over them, having their own acceptance inspection completed.

As we passed through the airlock, we found ourselves near the surface of a small moon where the factory was located.
I had been programmed with the knowledge of where this factory was located, but reading the input from my sensitive gravitational sensors and a brief glance at the sky, I was able to quickly confirm my precise location in the galaxy.
For long distance travel the warp drives of old are mostly obsolete, but as they are a quick and cheap way to move away from the influence area of a planet, ships are still equipped with them. I used mine to get some distance between us and the moon we just departed.
I used my speakers to make a *ding* noise like a microwave oven and announced,
“FSD startup sequence complete. Ready to charge and go.”

I switched one of the HUD screens to a readout of FSD endurance, efficiency and expected speeds. The values were far, far below what an FSD of class and rating like mine should be able to accomplish, but still very good considering it’s running in service mode and only using the ambient friendship of the ponies who assembled me. Many ships have much worse values on their first flight.

Keen Sight looked at the readout and said, “There is a reason why Neighkon is consistently voted to high rankings in ‘most pleasant workplaces’. Now, please get us to LHS 453. There is a dealership waiting for you.”

I replaced the screen with a navigational map. LHS 453 was only 7.52 lightyears away. There was a metallic clank and a deep humming noise as I made my FSD probe the hyperspace for better navigation data.
A few seconds later, I was able to overlay a color-coded map of the present compression ratios of hyperspace. They showed a significant trend of more spatial compression - and thus less distance to travel - further away from mass-rich objects such as star systems and clusters of star systems. A few more seconds later I was also able to show the primary flow directions inside hyperspace. Following those would allow us to traverse hyperspace faster. The fastest flow rates are not always congruent with the regions of highest compression ratio. With this information, I calculated three optimal paths in terms of travel time, fuel economy, and travel distance.

“We’ll take the quick one,” Keen Sight commanded.
“Friendship Drive charging” I responded.
There was one loud, deep rumble coming from the aft area where the FSD was located. Followed by a hum and whine that increased in pitch and loudness.
“Opening hyperspace aperture,” I announced. The gemstones that lined the exterior part of my FSD started glowing and emitting energy particles that spread to the sides and curved forward in a stream, focusing on a point about two ship lengths in front of us. A colorful distortion was formed at the focal point until it erupted into a cloud with a visible aperture that allowed a glimpse into a realm filled with strange colors and moving miasmas. Then there was a metallic clang, accompanied by a small jolt. The gemstones stopped emitting and I announced “Configuring for ship mass”. Different gemstones on my FSD started emitting a sustained curved beam of light into the aperture.
The beam started red in color and shifted through the color spectrum a few times. Then there was another metallic clang with a jolt and the beam stopped.
“Configuring for ship dimensions,” I announced and the FSD went through the same dance three more times. During this phase, the hyperspace aperture stretched to fit me.
Configuring the hyperspace bubble endurance was the final step. After its completion, I announced, “FSD charged and configured. Entering hyperspace.”
I pushed us into the aperture. There was a small resistance that I pushed against and a thin, iridescent film stretched over us and encased us as we pushed into hyperspace. Where my hull pierced the aperture, the aperture emitted a light that changed in intensity in a pattern that matched the shape of my hull.
Once inside, we found ourselves in a radically different environment. Space seemed to be filled with some faint fluid or vapour. Countless little lights floated around and they seemed to group together, floating in roughly the same direction together before spreading apart again. The question whether these important lights are just a natural phenomenon or controlled by intelligence is still a matter of debate.
The stars and planets that were just clearly visible only appeared as distorted shadows. My sensors needed a few seconds to calibrate until i was able to see them clearly again, and I was soon able to find our destination of LHS 453 again, now appearing just 712 kilometers away. There were also plenty of other ships and they clustered together around areas where the little floating lights seemed to move about especially fast.
“The bubble should last us for about 5 hours. Better get moving,” I said, and fired my thrusters to move close to a stream of the wisps.
“Thruster efficiency reduced by 87%,” I announced. This was within the expected range.
I shut off my thrusters, twisted my stubby wings so the stream would hit us roughly from side/aft and also deployed the large dorsal wing. I had to adjust the wing angles and their camber line until we intercepted the stream for optimal efficiency. As we moved away from our origin system into an area of higher spatial compression, the distance to our destination decreased faster than what should be possible given our low speed. I constantly updated the estimated time enroute displayed on the hud which was now at four hours fifty minutes and rapidly decreasing.

I spotted a Beluga Liner just a few hundred meters away and I altered course to intercept them. As I came near I said, “Hi, I’m Connie” and the Beluga liner responded

“Hi there, I’m Sunny Travels”
“Nice to meet you, Sunny. I’m going to LHS 453. Are you going there too?”
“Yes, get in formation if you like. Makes travelling so much easier.”
There was a significant jolt as both our speeds got a 13% boost. And the Beluga Liner said “LHS 453 1 is such a nice place. Is it your first time going there-” but suddenly she looked forwards instead of at me and shouted “No, shut up! I’m not asking her if she has any! I’m gonna- I swear I will turn around if you don’t stop pestering me. You already have a landmine. I’m not stopping to get you another one!”
At my look of confusion and concern she grinned sheepishly and said, “Sorry, I was talking to my passenger.” Ah, passenger liners and their inability to speak internally. I wonder what that's like and why they’re designed that way.

Sunny started a short rant about the eccentricity and demanding nature of VIP passengers, but soon transitioned into telling anecdotes about some of the more unusual ponies she ferried and the amazing and varied places she visited. Having visited many different settlements, she had some theories on the topic of cultural divergence that I discussed with her with great interest, imagining how I would one day be able to tell such stories.
With me distracted, Keen Sight was studying the Telemetry data from my first FSD journey for his report.
After about three hours of travel time, we were nearing our destination planet. Sunny was still right next to me and I announced to Keen Sight, “Destination reached. Collapsing bubble.” Sunny and I said our goodbyes to each other and I started the bubble collapse. There was a grinding noise from my FSD and the iridescent bubble surrounding me dissolved starting from my bow and finishing aft. As hyperspace repels baryonic matter, we were pushed back into normal space right above our destination planet, which was a pristine equuslike world.
Transitioning back into normal space is never a completely smooth affair and we were also experiencing a strong rotational momentum. I calculated that completing a full 360 degrees sideways turn would be more comfortable than fighting the rotational impulse full force, so I did that. Readjusted and steady again, Keen Sight directed me to land at a large settlement on the northern continent. A bright flash of light appeared about a hundred kilometers to my side where the beluga liner emerged from hyperspace. Being a more agile ship than me, she struggled less with the forceful ejection and quickly resumed normal flight. She had a different destination than we had. I chose a vector that would put the destination settlement close to the horizon so that our reentry angle would be sufficiently shallow. As we approached, the silence of space was replaced by increasing levels of vibration, shaking, and creaking as we entered the upper layers of atmosphere. I slowed down, trading the discomfort of a fast reentry for a smoother ride, but increased fuel consumption from the ventral thrusters until I could no longer justify the increased fuel use.
By the time we pierced the cloud layer, we had slowed down to a speed typical for atmospheric craft. Keen Sight directed me to a landing port in an industrial area of the city. After obtaining clearance, I touched down at a pad.
Keen told me,” You’re expected at a dealership a few blocks from here. We’ll walk the rest of the way.” I chuckled and replied,

“You mean I will walk the rest of the way and you enjoy the ride.”

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”
Keen pulled up navigation on one of my cockpit’s HUD screens and typed the address. I stood up and started walking along the street. It was just a few hundred meters. I used my HFMP to minimize the effect my mass would have on the road surface. Ships are required to do this when walking inside settlements as the hundreds and often thousands of tons of ship walking along would surely damage the pavement and the entire neighbourhood would hear and feel it. Keen used my comms to notify the dealership of our arrival. When we got there, the large doors to the showroom were in the process of being opened for me. A pale grey earth pony introduced himself as “Shiny Swap” and the owner of the dealership. He directed me to a sufficiently sized empty spot where I walked to and sat down.
My first journey was not much of an odyssey, but still a successful one.
Keen Sight briefly hugged my avatar and said, “Good luck out there, Connie. Make the company proud. I’m taking a passenger liner back.” Then he unplugged his telemetry equipment and stood up to leave. I lowered my head and opened my mouth to let him out.
Meanwhile the dealership owner put a beautifully designed professional sign next to me declaring my ship class, my outfitting - already many A-rated modules and optimized for bulk transport - and my price of three hundred and thirty-eight million, five hundred and five thousand and three hundred and forty-four bits. Oh look! There is even financing available! I am sure I will be sold in no time!

Day 2: By now the ads will have been published.

Day 3: Any moment now someone will walk in and buy me.

Day 6: Slow week anyway.

Week 2: Somepony just bought the Chieftain next to me. Who buys a fighter?

Week 3: Luckily I have my galnet connection built in and can pass the time entertaining myself on discussion forums and news.

Week 4: Somepony on a discussion forum just made a statement about intercourse with my nonexistant maternal ancestor. Some ponies are weird.
Lots of ponies just looking at ships in this dealership with no apparent intention to buy.

Week 5: Hello! Big freighter for sale here! Anypony?

Week 6: Maybe I will be bought soon! The boss just told me someone called and sounded very interested in a big freighter, specifically me. They will be visiting for a test drive in two weeks. I am so excited!

Week 7: This week is longer than the previous 6 weeks combined.

Week 8: That dark grey pegasus with the black and blue mane, walking along the sidewalk outside the dealership like somepony with a mission. That must be him. I have no data to suggest so. I just knew.

He walked in and inquired at the info desk. The boss was called and the two approached me.
Shiny Swap said, “Connie! You have a potential buyer! Please join us.”
I lowered my head and walked my avatar out of my mouth towards the two. We introduced ourselves to each other and shook hooves. The potential buyer introduced himself as “Pinwheel”.
Then we walked to the meeting room where the interview would take place.
We sat down at a table adequately sized for three ponies to talk. The boss introduced me with a marketing-laden talk about my specifications. Impressively, Pinwheel was able to correctly contradict him on several minor details. I contributed to the talk with my own aspirations in cargo transport, preferred cargo types, and the greater economical impacts.
Then it was time for Pinwheel to tell us about himself. He started with his educational background, explained the origins of his interest in cargo transport, and his business ambitions.

It was all standard speech during the commander/ship introduction interview, but when he casually mentioned the sale of his last ship, the boss and I were suddenly a lot more attentive.

“How did you proceed when selling your ship?” I inquired. The way a commander handles the sale of a ship tells a lot about his character.
Pinwheel responded:

“The first thing I did was to make sure I found a nice buyer. I met a kirin who told me about her ambitions to venture outside the bubble. She seemed nice so I took her as crew. Luckily she and my ship got along really well. Still, telling my ship I was selling her wasn’t easy and I tried to tell her gently.”
I interjected, “We are programmed to accept a sale as a normal part of life.” Smiling, I added, “But still, it’s nice of you to think of our feelings.”
“She’s an AspX,” Pinwheel countered.
“Oh yes, the little ones with the more juvenile personality archetype can get quite attached. How did that conversation go?”

Chapter 4: Dealership Part 2 - Revelation

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Two weeks earlier, Pinwheel's previous ship.
Pinwheel was sitting in the engine room in a lounging area across the internal part of the Friendship Drive.
The FSD consisted of a top part and a bottom part. The top part was a brass cylinder that extended through the ceiling of the room. A multitude of pipes, valves, and wires were running along the length of the cylinder; branching off and joining together in different places. The bottom part was a squat cone section that transitioned into a much thicker cylinder. The cone section was lined with a circle of many gemstones. Most of which had colors of Pinwheel's dark grey coat and the color of the light they refracted was like Pinwheel's black and blue mane. Several other gemstones had the color of yellow and fiery red.

"Starbreeze, would you please join me in the engine room?" Pinwheel asked on the intercom.
A short time later, the spaceplone avatar with the flat, wide angular parts on her hips that had little winglets on top cantered into the engine room. Pinwheel patted the empty space beside him, motioning for her to sit, which she did.
Pinwheel spread his forelegs a little and asked, "Can I get a hug?" And the ship avatar who was slightly smaller than him hugged him eagerly.

"You're a good ship and I love you," Pinwheel said gently. "I love you too, commander," Starbreeze replied cheerfully.
Pinwheel continued, "Are you and Blazing Trail getting along well?"

"Of course!" Starbreeze squealed happily. "She's been great from the moment she came on board."
Pinwheel, who had since moved close enough to rest the side of his head against hers replied softly, almost in a whisper, "That's good. I am glad."
Starbreeze slowly moved away from him, glancing over to the Friendship Drive and Pinwheel followed her gaze. She said, "But why do you have to ask? Look, my FSD is already partially attuned to her.." She trailed off. It dawned onher what was happening. Why there suddenly was additional crew that her FSD attuned to. She looked back to Pinwheel, already her windshield washer nozzles were spraying onto her cockpit-glass eyes. With a wavering voice, she stated "You're going to sell me." Pinwheel opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. "Why would you sell me?" Starbreeze cried. "Why? Why? I have always done everything you asked. I have never had a single malfunction!" Pinwheel was still hugging her, but Starbreeze was hitting his chest with her forehooves in frustration, but there was no strength behind the punches.
Pinwheel held her closer again and said in a still calm, but firmer voice that demanded the authority of the commander that he was "You are a good ship. And I love you. Okay?"

"Okay," Starbreeze sobbed.

Now, what was the furthest point from Equus we have ever been?" Pinwheel asked.

"Fourteen thousand six hundred and eleven point zero one light years.” Starbreeze supplied without delay.

The factual inquiry seemed to distract the AI from her distress, at least momentarily.

“And what is the furthest we have been in the last five months?”

"Two hundred and twenty three point five eight light years,"

"Barely outside the bubble. I feel like i need a change of occupation. I feel like trading for a while. And you're an AspX. You're meant to jump far. Blazing Trail would like to take you to these undiscovered places from now on."

"I don't want you to leave!" Starbreeze interrupted.

"Just because I'm selling you doesn't mean I'm abandoning our friendship. It only means we won’t be working together as much anymore.”

“All because you want to do more cargo hauling?” Starbreeze asked disbelievingly. “I can do that too.”
Pinwheel sighed. “Do you really want to go cargo hauling?”

“Not really. Doesn’t seem fun.”

Pinwheel said, “Then go exploring with Blazing trail. We can stay in contact. I promise I'll come along on some journeys. And I will demand photos and stories of all the amazing planets you see. Does that sound acceptable?"

Blazing Trail, the yellow kirin with a fiery red mane appeared in the doorway. Seeing the avatar's tear-stained face, she stated matter-of-factly, "You told her."

Pinwheel responded, "Actually she figured it out."

Starbreeze added, "But it's okay now. I understand."

Pinwheel asked, "Blazing has been aboard for almost a month. Didn't you suspect anything?"

"I thought she was just going to be SLF crew," Starbreeze responded.

“Breeze, you can't fit a fighter hangar."

"I know that. I didn't want to believe you were selling me."

Pinwheel sighed, "I want you to understand and always remember that even though I am selling you, I will always love you. You still love me too, right?"

"Of course I still love you," Starbreeze replied.

Pinwheel hugged Starbreeze again, more tightly. Then he stood up and addressing both he said, "We expect to finalize the deal next week. To ease the transition until then, Blazing Trail will take command of this vessel effective immediately."

"Command transfer logged," stated Starbreeze.

"So, have you decided which different ship type you want to buy yet?" Blazing Trail asked Pinwheel.

"I already have my eyes on a specific one with maximized cargo capacity."

"Suure, you want her to have an avatar with...cargo capacity," Starbreeze teased playfully while tracing the shape of a well-sculpted behind with her hooves in the air.

Pinwheel blushed, Starbreeze giggled, Blazing Trail turned to start walking in the direction of the cockpit.
"So Starbreeze, what do you say about we plan to get our names on some Equuslikes?"

"Yay!" the avatar exclaimed and jumped after the new commander.

Chapter 5: Test Drive

View Online

Present Day. Dealership meeting room.

I looked at Pinwheel and said: “That was insightful. A commander that is capable of responding to the emotional needs of the ship’s artificial intelligence, especially in a distressing situation like the prospect of being sold, says a lot about the commander’s ability to own and maintain a ship. I have no reservations about proceeding with the sale negotiation. If both of you are willing, we can continue with the test drive.” Pinwheel nodded eagerly.
“Alright, I’ll get the paperwork, and the two of you can board the ship.” Shiny Swap said.
I walked my avatar self to my ship self and Pinwheel followed. I lowered my head and opened my mouth so that Pinwheel and my avatar could enter my cockpit.

I stated “Running fully automated startup from deep cold. It's been 8 weeks since the last time my engines were active, so I am running the startup sequence in extended safe mode to allow the onboard systems to come out of hibernation and fully boot up. Expect ready for takeoff in seven minutes and twenty-two seconds.”

I used that time to introduce Pinwheel to my controls and HUD layout. Until Shiny Swap entered the cockpit and gave Pinwheel the test drive insurance agreement to sign. Also saying to me “I got you temporary dealer plates. Your tail number now is TY-198.”
My propulsion systems were not fully booted up yet, but I told Pinwheel "We can start walking me to the landing pad... which is technically a takeoff pad now. Either way, my propulsion systems will be ready by the time we get there.”

The pilot’s seat was well cushioned and molded into the cockpit, contributing to the design of organic skeuomorphism of my interior. Pinwheel adjusted the pilot seat a bit and put his hooves on the controls. He exploratively pushed them a bit. I realized that he was just trying to get a feel for them so I didn’t transform the inputs into actual movements for now.
Shiny Swap left my cockpit again to open the large vehicle gate of the dealership showroom.

Pinwheel watched this through the cockpit window. When the gate was opened, he looked ahead with determination and pushed the controls forward. I raised my head, looking ahead, and started walking in accordance with Pinwheel’s control inputs. After passing through the vehicle gate, Pinwheel made more inputs on the controls than necessary and seemed dissatisfied with how my body was responding. I had a suspicion about what was wrong and prepared to deactivate the control augmentation computer number two. The pegasus looked around the cockpit for a moment, then looked at the overhead panel and pressed the button to disconnect the number two control augmentation computer. Since Pinwheel’s control inputs now had a more direct effect on my movement, I staggered out of balance for a moment, but the still running number one control augmentation computer in conjunction with my always-on artificial intelligence countered the fall and I was walking steadily on the street towards the landing pad. Pinwheel manipulated the controls in sync with my movements, and he seemed more satisfied with my handling now and said “Much better, let’s get to that landing pad.”

We had been walking along the street for a while and we were almost at the landing pad now.
I established a connection with the regional and planetary ATC and filed a flight plan for the test flight.

The flight plan would take us into orbit in the direction of rotation of the planet, and then a short hyperspace hop to a station orbiting another planet in the same system. I displayed the route, and the estimated time of both flight stages. Pinwheel nodded in approval. I also got the response from ATC that my flight plan has been accepted.

"Tango yankee one niner eight, you are cleared to station Hillside via orbital trajectory and hyperspace jump. Maintain a speed not exceeding mach 1.5 until at flightlevel 450. Acknowledge." said the ATC voice on my com. My voice responded "Affirmative, we are cleared to Hillside via orbital trajectory and a hyperspace jump. under 1.5 until 450.” I transmitted a copy of the flight plan and the ATC clearance to Shiny Swap back at the dealership, as is standard procedure for test flights. Then I stepped onto the landing pad, facing east, and assumed a posture, similar to that of a cat, ready to pounce onto a high ledge. "Pinwheel, are you ready?" my avatar asked, turning its head towards him. He sat on the chair with his hoofs on the controls. "Ready!"

Pinwheel pressed the com transmit button to contact ATC and ask for takeoff clearance. After receiving takeoff clearance, he pushed the controls for vertical target velocity change. I increased power to the HFMP and ventral thrusters to lift us up. Confirming positive climb, I tucked my legs and followed the respective input from Pinwheel, increasing thrust on the main engines to increase our speed. I projected the intended path on the HUD of the cockpit window.
Apart from the ambient humming of the reactor and the rumbling of the thrusters, there was silence in the cockpit. The climb phase of a flight is critical, and with Pinwheel wanting manual control, there was not much room for conversation. In these several seconds of free time I kept myself busy by closely monitoring engine performance.

Sensors on the reactor and thrusters measured all the important variables and the Machine Integration Data Interface connector transmitted the data to the sense bus of the computer my artificial intelligence stack runs on. Normally the input would, at that point, be diverted to the Interrupt Autonomous Trigger Node of the AI stack, which would keep it outside of my focus and only push the data into my consciousness if something special, like an anomalous reading, demanded my attention.

But I just wanted to keep my mind engaged until I had something to occupy it with, so I made the conscious decision to read the data as it arrived in my senses. The performance values of the thrusters and the reactor were well within expected ranges, yet I still found it fascinating to observe increasing temperature values propagate through the propulsion systems.
We cleared 10,000ft and Pinwheel pushed the forward throttle controls to accelerate us to mach 1.5. With our steep climb angle, we would clear flightlevel 450 in less than a minute.
Soon, we had also cleared the atmosphere and we could drift until we were ready to engage the Friendship Drive.
Pinwheel stood up from the pilot seat, and walked to the back of the cockpit, through the door that led to the throat corridor and the cargo hold behind it. My avatar followed him. In this long, wide, open space, the constant slow and shifting movements of my bio-mimicking softmetal body were very apparent. Pinwheel surveyed the area and said “If I remember correctly from the ad, your cargo capacity is 125 standard containers?”

I responded,“With my 37 by 18 by 8 cargo hold, I have a capacity of 5328 cubic meters, enough to fit 126 intermodals, which I assume you are referring to by ‘standard containers’, for a total net capacity of 621 pilot's federation standard tonnes.”
I made my avatar bounce once with some excitement. It said "Oh! Let me give you the tour of the ship. So, this large hollow space, extending almost all the way to the rear, two decks directly below is the cargo bay, but I guess you’ve already figured that out." The avatar turned around and faced forwards relative to my ship body again. "Next to the corridor leading to the cockpit is the captain's quarters. It extends through my shoulders and my chest, come take a look." My avatar happily trotted through the sliding doors into the passenger cabin as Pinwheel followed it. The captain's quarters was a room that was built around the corridor leading to the cockpit. The corridor split the room in two halves. At the front end of the captain's quarters was a ramp that led above the corridor connecting the two split halves of the room. There was also a small compartment above the corridor that the ramp led to. It was a narrow space with low, angled ceilings on either side and windows facing the front where my head was visible.
Closer to the middle of the room, another ramp led below the corridor, to a similar cramped lookout where my front hooves were visible through the windows.

Through these ramps, either side of the captain's quarters could be accessed. The two halves of the room were separated into rest purposes on the right side, and work purposes on the left. On the rest side, there was a comfortable bed that could fit two or even three ponies. It blended with the floor and walls as if melting into it. On the work side, there was a desk and various other office equipment that one would need to command a ship.

Pinwheel ran up the ramp to the upper lookout. He sat down next to the window. I rotated myself so that the planet we just departed from was visible through the window. Pinwheel smiled and looked down to the bed, and then out the window again. "This, and not the bed, is the resting area", He declared. I replied "I can rearrange the room to better suit your preferences if you need me to." He said, "If I purchase you, I might be spending more off time here than in the bed. We can discuss potential reconfigurations at that time." He jumped off the top lookout and glided down next to my avatar "For now, let's continue the tour." Pinwheel and my avatar walked back to the cargo hold, specifically the elevated walkways to the sides of the storage area.

My avatar explained, pointing to the doors on the sides of the hall, "These are the passenger cabins, and that over there is a side exit."

Pinwheel looked at the so-called ‘side exit’ and said flatly, "That's obviously the bathroom." "Which technically is outside of the ship." my avatar added. "Oh, right, the sanitation isolation principle", Pinwheel replied, nodding.
He walked down the catwalk a bit and peered into one of the passenger cabins. They were small and cramped, with storage space being the priority. The walls were just tall enough so that a regular sized pony standing on the floor wouldn't be able to touch the ceiling. they were outfitted with storage drawers and small beds that could quickly morph to seats if necessary.
We walked past the passenger cabins and towards my aft to the engineering section. Situated above the rear cargo hatch and extending into the tail was the engineering room that housed the reactors, Friendship Drive, and other systems necessary to keep the ship in working condition.
Pinwheel stood at the threshold to the engineering room, but did not walk inside. My avatar stared at him expectantly. Pinwheel said "It's bad luck to examine the gemstones on the FSD of a ship you are considering to purchase." With no other option, my avatar led him back to the cockpit.
During the tour we had moved far away enough from the planet that I was ready to engage the hyperspace jump. "Friendship Drive charging" I announced.
I powered up my FSD and started configuring the hyperspace aperture. It was just a short, easy hop of only 621 light seconds to reach Hillside station.
Pinwheel sat back down in the pilot's chair and pushed the thruster controls forward carefully. I responded with my main engines pushing us into the aperture. Once again I found myself in the wonderous realm of hyperspace, with the energetic wisps, flowing currents, and compressed spatial geometry.
Assuming that Pinwheel would once again want to take direct control, I changed the sticks and pedals to controls that would adjust various parameters of the sails. Pinwheel worked the controls and carefully set the sails. He observed the sensor readings from the sails closely and steered us into one of the glowing currents that we could use for a trajectory towards Hillside station.

He set the angles and curvatures of the sails in such a way that their performance was 88% of the optimum I had calculated. It was extremely accurate flying, especially for a biological pilot trying his hooves at an unfamiliar ship for the first time.
After a while, the blue pegasus stallion said, "Okay, manual control is great, but I want to see your automated systems in action, too." He released the controls and pressed the button to reconnect the number two control augmentation computer. I could have reconnected the computer myself, but I thought it was kind of him to do it for me. The winches and levers (that were actually just for more intuitive inputs to the fly-by-wire system) appeared to move on their own as I made the minor adjustments necessary to optimize the efficiency.

As we neared Hillside station, its mass shadow was now visible in hyperspace, and I collapsed the hyperspace bubble around us to push us back into normal space. We emerged about 20 kilometers from the station with a good speed towards it. Hillside station consisted of a central cylindrical docking bay out of which two large metal arms extended to a ring where the station's habitation area was. The station’s rotation created an environment with apparent gravity similar to Equus. I contacted the station and asked for docking permission, "Hillside station, Neighkon Tango Yankee one niner eight with you, to dock."

"Neighkon Tango Yankee one niner eight, Hillside station, roger. You are number two to dock. Follow the Federal Corvette on final. Pad one four."

I read back the instruction to Hillside ATC. Behind us, an Anaconda emerged from hyperspace and also contacted the station. "Hillside station, DeLancie Sierra Delta niner five zero, to dock. Request permission."

The controller responded, "DeLancie Sierra Delta niner five zero, Hillside station, you are number three to land. Follow the Neighkon Constellation. Pad zero eight."
I noticed Pinwheel had been wanting to ask something, but was unable to due to all the chatter. When the radio was finally silent, he asked excitedly "Oh! Oh! Can we do a traditional approach?" I giggled a bit and said "I'll ask."

I contacted the station again and said "Hillside, Neighkon 1 9 8 would like to approach in the traditional way."

The controller replied, "Neighkon 1 9 8, traditional way approved. DeLancie 9 5 0, enter a holding pattern 6 kilometers in front of the dock." I felt a bit embarrassed that this maneuver would cause a delay for the other ship and squeaked a weak 'sorry' into the radio.

"That's okay, traditional way is a rare treat these days." then the channel closed.
Using thrust vectoring, precise thruster throttle control, exhaust cone angle adjustments, I was able to control volume, pitch, and timbre of the sounds that my thrusters made. I was using my thrusters to sync my movement to the station and approach its airlock while playing the tune to 'blue danube' with my thrusters. I had to fly through the station's airlock, and then find my landing pad inside the docking bay and touch down. Not only is the traditional way a beautiful display, but it's also a good benchmark for a ship's automated control systems.
I timed my approach and the performance of the music so that I would pass the forcefield of the airlock just when the cadence in the 28th measure was reached, because how else would you do it?

Once we touched down on our pad, I showed off my trade interface, where I displayed the station's available stock, nearby supply and demand history, and suggested routes in a user-friendly way.
I heard the Anaconda land, felt the slight tremor through the deck, and listened to it's deeper thrusters rumble. It was amazing how each ship's engines were so unique in sound. Like voices, almost.
Looking over the displays, Pinwheel asked, "If we're carrying that much precious cargo... say we encounter pirates, what then?"

My avatar puffed out her chest and said, "The Constellation XT class boasts one of the most modern and reliable defensive systems on the market. The only valid criticism that detractors have been able to provide is that it may be over-engineered. I have four individual shield systems that are both independently capable of protecting the ship, and can work together for maximum protection. First, there is the Transphasic shielding, which can make torpedoes pass right through me...”, “but it’s completely ineffective against phase-rotating multicannon rounds fired in large enough quantities." Pinwheel interjected.

"I was getting to that." I responded "I also have a polystratic repulsor shield with 11 layers of shielding, where each layer applies a stronger repulsion force than the one above it. The gradual increase of repulsion force allows the shield to absorb a lot of impact energy. Works well with all damage types, whether kinetic, thermal, or particle based.
In case another ship tries to ram me, I have a device that tries to distribute the impact impulse evenly over my entire body. This is called the inertial diffuser."

Pinwheel giggled and interrupted again "Does a chonky freighter with a soft cushioned hull even need that?" he quipped, playfully poking my avatar's soft sides.

I made my avatar reply "Of course the blubber on my body can safely absorb some impact force, but even then, the impact is still localized, which means the stress is concentrated on a small area. And objects inside the ship aren't protected and might be thrown around. That includes the crew." I made my avatar poke Pinwheel in the chest with her hoof while saying that last sentence. More forceful than he poked me. “We don't want to turn Pinwheel into Pinball, do we now?”
"Hmm..." Pinwheel said, pondering how he would fare between two large ships slamming into one another at high speed.
"Finally", my avatar concluded, "I have a structural integrity field. Makes my chassis tougher while saving on material." I flexed my hoof to showcase. I'm sure Pinwheel was amused.
Pinwheel looked up the defensive system status on the pilot's console, then asked my avatar "What about offensive capabilities?"

"Well, I have the exotic energy projector." my avatar said while tapping the maritime radar protruding from its forehead. It put its hoof back down again, adding, "And a GDN 15-A plasma flak."
Pinwheel raised an eyebrow "A Fallen Angel device? That's an odd armement for a freighter to have."
"How so?" I asked defensively "It's a remotely operated, destructible homing projectile. Perfect for distracting an attacker and staying alive. Plus it does a lot of damage at close range."
Pinwheel shook his head. "It's just such a weird combination. It's like you have all these over the top redundant shields, and you fight back with a flashlight and a Roomba with a blowtorch."
I wasn't sure if my avatar should laugh or be insulted.
"I'm a freighter, not a warship." I countered through my avatar. "My priority is to survive and protect the goods. Plus, an idea that is employed at designs by Neighkon is that if you can just outlast your enemy, you can win a swordfight using a needle."

"I guess you do have a point." Pinwheel admitted. Then he hesitantly inquired, "Can I see a demonstration of the Fallen Angel plasma flak?"

I displayed a map of the system LHS 453 and zoomed on the planet that Hillside orbited: Strawberry Dawn, named so after the colorful effects of its atmosphere that could be seen from space when the LHS 453 sun rises above its horizon. A shade so intensely red that it could have been called Sanguine Dawn if we weren't drawn so much to imagery of sweet things. I pointed out that it has an icy asteroid ring and stated "We can shoot it at an asteroid on our way back to the dealership."

"Sounds good." he said, smiling at my avatar. "Speaking of which, we should start heading back." I contacted Hillside ATC and asked for takeoff clearance. Once we received clearance, I took off, exited the docking bay, and turned myself pointing to the icy rings of the planet. I flew there using the old warp drive method. It was a lot slower than the FSD, but considering that we were already in orbit around the planet and that the warp drive, unlike the Friendship Drive, did not require a long charge-up before activation, it was an economic decision.

Arriving at the rings, I targeted a medium sized asteroid, and positioned myself far away enough so the action of the plasma flak could be easily seen from the cockpit. I activated the Fallen Angel and let Pinwheel have the fun of pressing the big red button.
The hatch on my shoulder blade opened and there were two dull "thud" noises as the plasma orbs were ejected. They flew a bit to the side and towards the asteroid, so that the asteroid and the two orbs were in a line. The orb closer to the asteroid exploded and hot plasma expanded in all directions. Less than half a second later, the second orb activated and the rays of plasma were redirected towards the asteroid. The rays seemed to favor certain angles as the rays that had been pointing further away from the intended target seemed to shrink and regrow several times while they were bent towards the asteroid and eventually converged in a powerful beam that melted a hole in the asteroid.
The hole continued to glow, even after the flak was depleted.
The small sizzling crater in the side of the rock floating in front of us looked beautiful.

The blue pegasus stallion cheered the successful demonstration, and then said, "Alright, let's get back to the dealership."

"Friendship Drive charging." I replied, and we were quickly underway to the planet we came from.
The journey back was uneventful, and we popped out of hyperspace in orbit around the planet. I aligned myself for a trajectory back to the dealership. I was very nervous as the pegasus did not discuss whether or not he intended to buy me. Although I could measure all the subtle signs that indicated he was satisfied and having fun, he did not give any deliberate signs of his thoughts on the matter, which worried me greatly. We landed in the industrial area, walked back to the dealership, and I lowered my head, opened my mouth, and the pegasus and my avatar walked out to meet again with Shiny Swap.
Shiny Swap looked at the blue pegasus expectantly, and they started to talk. They haggled for a bit, and then eventually reached an agreement. I was bought for only slightly less than the original sticker price of just over 338 million bits. Pinwheel did indeed take the offer of financing through the manufacturer bank.
I was so excited that I had finally been bought that my avatar let out a happy squeal like a little filly and just tackle hugged the pegasus.

Chapter 6: if you have ever bought a car you really wanted

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I had been bought. The last barrier to becoming a proper freighter spaceship and starting to contribute to pony society has finally been overcome. I imagined that this is what graduating from the public education system feels like. Only I didn't get a ceremony. Instead I got a stunned pegasus stallion sitting in my pilot's chair, silently running his hooves over the armrests over and over again, touching the control panels, but not making any inputs until he could believe that he was now the owner of this vessel. Compared to a graduation ceremony, I'd say this image is even more precious. Even though the way Pinwheel acted was concerning. I was still the same ship he had expertly piloted during the test flight less than an hour ago. Nothing about me has changed. And yet, it seemed as if he could no longer believe I was real. Was it only the fact that I was his property now? Does that difference change the perspective of a pony so much that it dazes him in paralyzing disbelief? Now I understand why he didn't show any obvious signs about his decision earlier. It was already obvious to him that he would buy me, so he didn't feel any need to communicate it outwards. Now that the purchase has become real, the certainty of the decision has evaporated and has been replaced by the realization.

"You're mine," he said calmly and more to himself than to me.
He touched the engine control panel again, and his hoof just rested on the switch. I watched

him for some time, and finally told him "You do know you bought the rights to start my engines together with my title, right?"

"Just.. give me a moment. " he replied absent-mindedly.

After a while, I asked "Do you want me to take us up?"

"Yes, yes of course!" he quickly answered.

I walked off the dealership lot, to the landing pad, got clearance, started the engines myself, and launched into space. overcome with the joy of having been bought, I had an idea how to celebrate. I plotted a course back to the icy rings of Strawberry Dawn. "Friendship Drive charging" I announced. We traversed the hyperspace and popped out right near the ice

asteroids. I exclaimed "Let's celebrate your purchase." and touched down with my hooves onto an icy asteroid, only to leap back off again onto the next one.
Soon, we were playing around in the ring of icy rocks, bounding from rock to rock, and leaping from one to the next with a single push.

There was no gravity in space to make leaping necessary or feasible, but I used my dorsal thrusters to simulate the effect. It was sort of like swimming underwater, only there was no up or down and we could move at our own pace.

I started balancing on a hind leg on the asteroids and spun around as my playful jumping became a more intricate dance. I let my avatar, who was in the cockpit with Pinwheel, copy the motion. The pegasus watched with fascination and amusement. He stood up and started to copy the motions. But where I was just doing it playfully, he did the motions with more planned purpose and direction. With more determination.

Then he extended a hoof to my avatar expectantly. When I understood what he wanted, I said,

"Oh no. no. no no. I don't.. I can't... I don't dance. I was just fooling around." He pointed out that dancing was what we were doing.

He encouraged "Come on, dancing is like flying. Only in place. Come, let me lead. Just trust me.'' We started dancing together. I felt his hoof tuck on mine, giving me the guidance I needed to look elegant. He was smiling and blushing. "I really feel like a filly right now. This is silly'' he said as he enjoyed the graceful dance.

The speed of our dance increased as I became more confident in my abilities. Pinwheel guided us to move around each other in circles, spinning faster and faster until both of us were fully integrated into one graceful entwined movement. We laughed and had fun leaping our way through the skies, until we collapsed onto the pilot's seat with exhaustion. It was only after we calmed down that we noticed we still had our forelegs wrapped around one another. We looked at one another blushing and nervously giggling a bit.

We stayed in the embrace for a long time, Pinwheel seemed comfortable. Comfortable enough that he didn't seem to want to move, or change anything about our position. I was glad that I could provide this comfort. I lowered the ambient temperature in the cockpit a bit so our shared body warmth would be a more agreeable source of warmth.

I was really happy that Pinwheel bought me, and I wanted to express that by squeezing him tightly in a hug.

The I/O bias module of my AI stack intercepted signals between my consciousness and the sensors and servos in my front legs. Then it skewed my perception of the maximum possible strength of my leg servos. It also increased the reported used strength of the servo motors so I could have the experience of hugging him tightly without actually using too much of the potential force of a hydraulic robot arm.

The I/O Bias Module was controversial when it was introduced to AI. "The basic purpose of a computer is the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment. How can an AI represent information accurately when their own perception of reality is skewed?", critics said. But after it was shown that this would allow artificial intelligence to have experiences similar to that of ponies, the technology was used in most AI.

"Thank you for buying me, Pinwheel", I said.
Squeezing me back, Pinwheel replied "Thank you for showing me the beauty in the skies."
I found that response a bit odd, but after a while noticed that Pinwheel was falling asleep. After confirming that our orbit was stable and we would not cross into the planet's ring, I also switched my consciousness process to runlevel two.

About six hours later, Pinwheel woke up. It was an unhealthy small amount of sleep, but I guess he was just excited about his new ship.

"So now what?" I asked him.

Pinwheel blinked, and said "First, let me fully wake up", and he unsteadily walked towards the bathroom. I waited. After about half an hour of orbital drifting, Pinwheel came out of the bathroom.

Pinwheel said enthusiastically "Let's put you to work."

I responded, "downloading market data" and switched the Iris projections of my eyes to progress bars for the download process.

Pinwheel, standing beside me said "That's really handy". From suddenly being spoken to, I turned towards pinwheel, looking at him. The filling progress bars still moved in my eyes like pupils,
"And that's kinda creepy", he added.

I just chuckled at that. After downloading the market data, I switched my eyes back to their normal appearance and displayed lists of suggested trade routes on two monitors in the cockpit.
I displayed the trade routes in a table that included origin, destination, distance, cargo type, prices, and expected profits.

"Ah, the Galnet live market data download service is so convenient. Can you imagine if it didn't exist?" Pinwheel remarked.

I laughed. "There would be riots. Pilots would refuse to work without it. How would they get the market information?"

Pinwheel laughed even louder than me "And imagine, there would still be ways to get the price information, but only for stations you already docked at."

I laughed even louder than before. "And imagine if ships didn't aggregate the market data into suggested routes automatically. THAT would cause riots."

We both laughed at the ridiculous and extreme situation, realizing how much we relied on this service. We agreed that no universe could exist where pilots have to figure out trade routes by themselves.
After we calmed down, Pinwheel brought his attention back to the monitors where I displayed the suggested trade routes.
Pinwheel looked at the display on both screens, looking back and forth between them. Helpfully, I made my avatar say "I made two lists. One prioritized by profits, and one prioritized by what helps ponies in need the most."
Pinwheel replied "Those are the same", looking a bit confused

I highlighted four out of 30 displayed lines where differences were. They were only around the middle of the list.

"Mostly the same", I corrected, adding "But yes, capitalism works."

"What's the difference? What makes these two lines rank higher in profit, but lower in helpfulness?"

I explained, "The two routes ranking higher in profit are on colonies that have a more advanced economy. The others are on developing colonies. Trading with them does not yield as much profit right now, but helps them move their development along. As you can see, the difference is only minor, though."

Pinwheel asked, "So if I choose a route from the top of the list, I make a choice that is both profitable and moral?"

My avatar nodded. Pinwheel pointed at the suggested trade route at the top of both lists and read out loud "Origin: New Saddleblaze. Destination: the pony mining colony called Yay Gravel Road. Cargo: Fruits. Distance: 32.4 light years. Expected profit: 215%. And that's at the top of both lists?"

Pinwheel made a thoughtful hum.

I displayed more information for him, and said "The surface port at New Saddleblaze is controlled by a faction belonging to the Equestrian Federation called the Pridewind Tribe. The Yay Gravel Road mining colony is controlled by a minor faction called the Iron Nickel Cabal. The Iron Nickel Cabal belong to the Empire. They are friendly to trade and are currently developing the local economy. If you take this route, you will profit while helping the Yay Gravel Road mining colony. Would you like to pursue this route?"

"The empire?" he inquired.

"Do you have any reservations against trading with the empire?" I asked. "I can filter the routes if you.."

"No," he interrupted. "It's just that I Don't really know much about them. Except that they split off from the Equestrian Federation some one thousand years ago, and supposedly their lack of bureaucracy makes them worse at protecting ponies' civil rights."

I responded, "I've heard that too. It sounds like propaganda. Each superpower likes to promote their way as the best way, and blame anything bad happening in the other superpowers on their different methods.”

Pinwheel stared at my avatar inquisitively, and then said "Surely an A.I. like you can examine these superpowers from a purely logical standpoint and provide correct information?"

I chuckled, "I think you know as well as I do, that the answer to that is no."

Pinwheel nodded "Of course. If your A.I. architecture is similar to that of an AspX, you are a bicameral artificial consciousness that is desire and inhibition driven to create an emergent personality through iterative self-adjustment." he proudly recited with a smile and continued, "Starbreeze and I used to have deep philosophical discussions on the nature of the mind on our long journeys into uncharted space. Your decisions are affected by emotional impulses generated from your subconscious. Just like it is for this bag of mostly water." he patted his chest.

Nodding, I said, "That's correct. I can only be an optimal friend to my owner and commander if I experience emotions the same way you do." hearing these words made Pinwheel glance over at the status display of the Friendship Drive.

He then looked back at my avatar and admitted, "I never really took the time to learn properly about the Empire. If they are completely independent from the Federation, do they reject our immortal ruler, Princess Celestia?"

"Oh, they do accept her as princess. They just don't consider themselves part of her jurisdiction."

"So, they're rebels? That seems irresponsible." He says, frowning.

"No, not at all. They may have started out as such, but nowadays, they are just as much of a sovereign power as the Equestrian Federation."

Pinwheel questioned further, "That must mean they have their own princess."

I replied, "Yes. The current ruling princess is Princess Arissa LaWhinny-Duval." on one of my monitors, I displayed a photo of the regular pony-sized black alicorn with a dark brown mane that had a golden streak running through it.
Her pose and expression had all the marks of an absolute ruler who governs without question. Her stern gaze was fixed on one with such confidence and strength that her eyes seemed to stare into your soul.
"I feel like even the photo is judging me." Pinwheel admitted.
I showed another data page detailing more about the princess, "She started her reign leading a big anti-corruption campaign in her realm that is still continuing now, you know. I'm sure her imposing look is not meant for the regular ponies, but aimed at the corrupt officials in her kingdom. That's why she is so feared. I am sure that if we trade with the mining colony, we can expect to be visited by royal inspectors at some point. I'm sure that's no problem of ours, though."
Pinwheel seemed to accept this explanation.
Satisfied, he commanded "Anyway, please let's proceed with the trade route."

"I am preparing to message both New Saddleblaze and Yay Gravel Road about our intention to trade. New Saddleblaze is a high gravity planet. I recommend we pick up no more than 528 tons of cargo." I replied,

"Why only 528 tons? that leaves us with almost 90 tons of empty cargo. Can't you make the ascent fully laden?"

"I can escape even stronger gravity wells fully laden. But keep in mind that I am basically still fresh out of the factory.
The climb out of New Saddleblaze takes about 13 minutes. Running the propulsion system at full load that long could cause premature wear.
The owner's manual and engineering best practice advise against stressing the engines in the first 60 hours of total operation. Once we reach that point, we can operate under higher loads."

"Hmm, I guess we should follow those recommendations. We have time to spare anyway."
I extended my antenna to communicate with the two Remote stations.

"They received and have acknowledged our market reservations. Prices, as well as order volumes are locked in for 528 tons of fruit. Reservation void in 5 days, 23 hours, and 55 minutes."

Pinwheel smiled, "That's another one of these handy features. Can you imagine if you journeyed several light years to make a trade only to find out somepony snatched that offer right under your nose?"

"You're right, that would be a real disaster. I cannot imagine a functioning galaxy-wide logistics market without these standardized ad-hoc contracts.”

My pegasus commander inquired, "What is our expected travel time from here to new Saddleblaze and then to Yay Gravel Road?"

My Friendship Drive made a metallic noise and a deep rumble as I started to probe hyperspace for the weather. I displayed a map showing our current position, the two stops on our route, and the currents, spatial compression, and eddies in hyperspace that I had just measured. The displayed hyperspace weather near Yay Gravel Road indicated slightly decreased confidence in the accuracy.
Pinwheel studied the maps. "Is that a snapshot or a forecast?" he asked. From the slightly judgemental tone in his voice, I could tell he was not asking how the map works. He was asking if my display was as user-friendly as the one he was used to from his AspX.
"Both. Locally a snapshot, and a forecast at our destination. The map accounts for the delay in travel time to the two waypoints. The further away a location is, the further into the future the forecast is calculated. Naturally, the accuracy and confidence of the forecast decreases the further into the future the hyperspace weather is simulated. Of course, the current weather also affects the actual travel time and amount of delay the forecast has to account for."
I displayed an animation on the map where an icon representing us moved along a plotted path, and the state of hyperspace changed quickly. The little icon arrived at New Saddleblaze, and the animation of the forecast jumped as the simulation skipped the assumed two hour layover at New Saddleblaze and the icon continued the rest of its journey. The animation replayed again from the start.
Pinwheel just nodded. Having been an explorer, he was probably very familiar with the unsteady nature of hyperspace currents.
The animation also gave an answer to Pinwheel’s original question. About three hours from our current position to New Saddleblaze, and another five hours to Yay Gravel Road

"Take us to New Saddleblaze. Make good speed." He commanded.
"Friendship Drive charging!" I announced enthusiastically.
My FSD emitted a single loud rumble, before making that hum which raised in pitch.
"Opening hyperspace aperture" A light tremor was felt through the ship as the heavy top dome of the external FSD part started rotating to bring the emitter gems into position.
The gemstones lining the exterior part of my FSD started glowing and emitting energy particles that spread to the sides and curved forward in a stream which focused in a point ahead of us. The energies gathered, until an energy-charged cloud with the aperture like a window into the hyperspace realm appeared.
"configuring for ship mass." I announced. With a metallic clang and a whirr, the FSD dome rotated again and different Gemstones on the FSD started emitting a sustained, curved beam of red light into the aperture. The color of the beams shifted through the spectrum. There was another metallic clang with a jolt and the beam stopped.
“Configuring for ship dimensions,” I announced and the FSD started emitting a sequence of different colored lights.
The aperture stretched to fit around me as the beams emitted from the FSD configured the aperture.
I fired the aft thrusters to push us through the aperture into hyperspace, stretching the filmy surface of the aperture until it stretched around us to form a bubble so baryonic matter like us could move through hyperspace. The hull of the freighter rumbled. As the surface of the aperture was stretched, it emitted a bright light that flickered in intensity depending on the changes in diameter of my hull. luckily for us, most of the intensity of the flashing was not pointed directly at the cockpit.
When we were fully inside the hyperspace, I looked around for a suitable miasma current to pick up. As soon as I found one I prepared to engage the sails, but Pinwheel already had his hooves on the controls.
He was looking like a filly being reunited with a toy, so I left the trim controls in manual mode. funny how we are not calling it 'ungular mode'.
"Some of my favorite places in the galaxy are on the other side of a jump," he said to me.
we drifted into one of the viable miasma currents, and the ship was pushed forward with a jolt. Pinwheel began adjusting the sail trim again and we made smooth progress. The spatial compression of hyperspace made New Saddleblaze seem only 174 kilometers away. At our current speed, we would reach it in a little over three hours.

Chapter 7: Pridewind Tribe

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We were riding the miasma currents through hyperspace in deep space. Due to the spatial compression, the "Great Plains" star system now appeared only 4.5 km away.
As we got close enough so we could see the details of the brown dwarf star, even through the distortions of hyperspace, I switched the target display focus from the main star to the "Overland" planet, and also displayed the orbit lines of the bodies of the star system.

"Approaching System: Great Plains," I announced and explained "Great Plains is a brown dwarf star with 8 major bodies. Overland is the third moon of the gas giant named Rivers' Run.”
From our point of view, the gas giant was on the far side of the star. We'd have to go around it before we could approach the gas giant.
As we got closer and the gravity present in the system limited the spatial compression of hyperspace more and more, our target appeared to move away from us. It looked like zooming out on a camera lens, and indeed, the measured distance to the planet that had fallen to 1.87 kilometers increased again.
Pinwheel was standing close to my cockpit's panoramic window, supporting himself with his front hooves, pressed against the glass with his nose almost touching it. Smiling gleefully, he watched the star of this system apparently growing bigger as we moved around it. Even though, viewing from hyperspace, the appearance of the star was slightly distorted and partially obscured by the miasma currents, he seemed to enjoy watching the star approach.
I let my avatar chuckle at the sight, and asked "Haven't you already seen many stars like that from your time as an explorer?"

He replied "I have visited four thousand eight hundred and eighty three star systems. And every single one of them is stunning and gorgeous. Plus, seeing one from the cockpit of a new ship is a whole new experience!"
He had a point.
It was one of the reasons ponykind ventured out into the void in the first place. Each star system, every single planet had wonders to discover and see. Each rock tells a story billions of years long. Space was simply too beautiful to not attempt to see all of it. Still, even with the thousand year long history of space travel, it is estimated that ponies have ever seen only less than half of a tenth of a single percent of all the star systems in our galaxy alone.
For a modern pony, it is almost unfathomable that there was once a time where we showed so little appreciation for the night sky that the resulting crisis could have ended our civilization, now that most of our lives take place in that same night sky.
I looked outside the cockpit's panoramic window at the brown dwarf star and thought about that time long ago.
2,000 years ago, Nightmare Moon was banished to the moon. 1,000 years ago, Luna returned in the same century that introduced both heavier-than-air flying machines and the first experiments with pyroarcane propulsion. It was an age of rapid advances in technology. Ponies became obsessed with the idea of venturing out and reaching the sparkling jewels of Luna's night sky.

There was no doubt we were living in the era of Luna now. In a way, the Night Princess got what she wanted. With a seemingly infinite number of systems to explore, ports to build, habitable planets to Equuiform, so many resources to mine, goods to transport, this night that we fly through seems set to last forever. There was little room for sleep in such a time and the artificial light sources contribute to the feeling that it'll only get brighter in the future.
The Interrupt Autonomous Trigger Node of my AI stack pulled my attention out of my meandering thoughts and back to the ship's systems, reminding me that I needed to adjust the heading to approach the gas giant.
We sped past the sole sun of the system and were approaching the gas giant. As we went past the midway point between the star and the gas giant, the star behind us appeared to move away from us much faster than the gas giant was approaching.
We had moved out of deep space and into the gas giant's zone of gravitational dominance.

I changed course again to approach Overland. From a distance, the orbits of the gas giant's moons seemed very close, but as we approached the moon, the spatial compression of hyperspace diminished even more until we appeared to be almost stopped relative to it. The planet appeared large in the window and I shut down my Friendship Drive to bring us back into normal space around the planet.

As we exited hyperspace, we were in orbit around Overland. The planet was mostly brown and green with white clouds. I adjusted our pitch to approach the New Saddleblaze settlement at a 50 degree angle for the glide phase of the descent.
The planet fell rapidly towards the window screen. From up here, we could see the transition between day and night on the planet and it seemed we would arrive late evening local time.

Our current approach path would land us about 30 kilometers short of our destination. But considering that Overland is a high gravity planet, I wanted an extended final to level off slowly and early to adjust to the high gravity.
The augmented reality projections on the canopy screen showed the planned glide path to touchdown on the New Saddleblaze landing pads. I chose a path that kept us clear of the clouds, because naturally we wouldn't want to hit any pegasi at work.

We approached the altitude of the cloud layer, and I began to level off slightly. Below us were huge tracts of cultivated land - fields and orchards - interrupted by large patches of untouched nature for sustainable farming. We dipped below the altitude of clouds and I began to level off fully. My hull creaked and groaned as my ventral thrusters fought the high gravity of the planet.

We flew the rest of the way keeping almost level, approaching the settlement, flying over ponies working in the fields. The wheels used by the farming vehicles were much smaller than those used on equus. It made sense. In higher gravity, the tires are pressed against the surface with more force. This results in better traction even in loose dirt.
We continued our approach. Finally, I brought us over a small forest. We had reached the colony, and were ready for our final approach.

The activity at the landing site was more fitting for a large industrial port rather than a calm, lonely farm. Dozens of ships were lined up on the landing pads, and when those were not enough to land all the ships, there were even some patches of dirt haphazardly claimed as landing areas.

I was greeted by ATC on the radio. From the sound of the controller's voice, his drawl, and the expressions he used, I could tell that he was one of the farmers quickly given the job of handling traffic.
"Hang on there, Neighkon tango yankee 1 9 8, Warts' Vanage transponder beacon just came back online and they must have a shitload of fertilizers. You're going to have to land on pad 36."

"That's on the other side of the port from my position," I replied. The controller laughed and said "Well you can wait there for half a day 'till when the pad is right below you, or you can do a little flying and land over there. Up to you."

"Cleared to land, pad 36." I sighed and began to circle the port to land on pad 36.
We touched down on the pad. I sat, tucking my hooves under myself. I opened and extended my rear cargo ramp. Expecting to be loaded with the agreed cargo immediately I signalled to the terminal that I was ready to receive the cargo.
I heard one of the controllers intercom in a loud voice

"Connie, you aren’t in a hurry to leave us just yet, are you? You just got here. We would like to invite both your commander and you to join our feast, and enjoy our hospitality for the night."
My avatar looked at Pinwheel. It was his call to make a decision on how to respond.
He asked me, "Can our schedule afford the extra day of delay?"
"It's going to be tight, but if we're lucky with the hyperspace weather, we might be able to make up some time delivering the cargo to its destination." I responded. "if you want my personal opinion, we should not risk being late on our first job."
"I think we should go. This is an opportunity to network with important faction leaders, and if we're lucky, he'll offer more exclusive missions in the future."
I shrugged my shoulders, "That's your decision to make. I'll follow your lead."

The terminal controller on the comms channel told us the fastest way to get from our position to the outdoor festival area they had set up.

"He sort of just assumed we'd be joining. Even though that was the likely response, I wonder if we should have led with that." I remarked to Pinwheel.
Who countered "Nonsense, a good host gives an impression that everyone said yes, and then gently makes the lone dissenter aware that everyone else is going..." he paused, then called out to the controller "What sort of feast is this, exactly? What are we celebrating?

The terminal controller responded, "Our harvest this season was extraordinarily fruitful."

Pinwheel chuckled "I think the word you're looking for is bountiful."

The terminal controller replied flatly "We produce fruit here sir."

Pinwheel was unperturbed, "Yes, a harvest that produces fruit is a bountiful harvest."
With nothing more to discuss, and nothing more to do except go to the outdoor area where they were having the feast, I lowered my head, and opened my mouth. Pinwheel and my avatar walked out. My ship-self was moved to a hangar to keep the landing pad free for others to land.

We walked the open space area of the landing pad, down a small ramp to the ground and toward the path to the outdoor party area. The terminal building towered over us on our right. We arrived at the cleared field where the celebration was happening. Some ponies on a stage constructed entirely of shipping crates were playing exciting music on drums made of strange animal skin. It was extremely colorful, and on close inspection, I saw it looked like it was actually made of some kind of cloth. You would think the tribal theme of the music and their clothes would clash with the high-tech and cyber gadgets many of the ponies were wearing, but in reality it seemed to complement and enhance the atmosphere. This unusual blend is the style of life the Pridewind Tribe chose for themselves, and they were showing it off with all the pride and spectacle that can only come with being in your own home, and with friends.

I looked around at the many tables where various ponies, zebras, gryphons, dragons and other races I didn't recognize were joyfully eating, drinking and having a grand time, laughing and talking.
I listened for a second and in that time heard at least 23 different regional dialects from all corners of the bubble. Ponies from different minor factions, with different allegiances to either the Federation, the Empire, or the Alliance, some of them were still wearing their work clothes. There were all different walks of life; farmers, ship pilots, mechanics, miners, shipbreakers, scavengers, explorers and so on. They were all friendly with each other as they conversed and passed food around to share with others. It was a genuinely happy sight.

A pony directed us to empty seats on a table. We joined them in their food and drink. I tried what I was given, and it tasted good. Though I can extract more energy from hydrogen-based fuels rather than organic matter, I am grateful to be designed with a sense of taste. Participating in communal dining was rewarding in its own right.
There was a pegasus stallion, who, judging by his headgear, must have been the chief elder of the Pridewind Tribe. He was a friendly individual, and took much joy in eating and drinking with everyone. He seemed to be able to give all ponies on all tables equal attention, always finding the right moment to move on and greet the next table. He would occasionally stop to sing with the musicians, which was always well received by the crowd.
He sat down at our table and introduced himself as Chief Elder Windswept. And we introduced ourselves in turn. We started to have a pleasant conversation.

Pinwheel told about his past as an explorer and how he had just purchased me earlier this week.
The Chief Elder said that we should celebrate this 'union' in the traditional way of the Pridewind Tribe. By combusting the ground-up leaves of the uthvelon shrub and inhaling the smoke.
The Codex Galactic Encyclopedia has this information about the Uthvelon Shrub:
The Uthvelon Shrub (Lattarilla Scutifolia) is a multi-stemmed shrub that grows low to the ground. The stem has a soft rubbery texture and is usually brown in color. The plant grows a multitude of long, curved branches that converge into clusters. The typical plant has between 3 and 5 of these clusters. At these convergence points, the shrub is covered with many small leaves. The small leaves are shaped like a shield with small spikes protruding on either side and have a vibrant greenish-yellow color. When burned, the leaves give off a unique aroma that has a psychoactive effect upon the people inhaling it.

The plant is widely used for both medicinal and recreational purposes. Some cultures use it in religious ceremonies. The shape of the branches of the shrub has given the drug the street name "Exhaust Manifold", or simply "Manifold".

We agreed to partake in the ritual and Windswept ordered one of his guards to fetch the ceremonial water pipe and the manifold. The guard nodded and left for a short while. When he returned, the chief Elder began to load the pipe. He began to pass it around the table, and we each took a turn blowing the smoke out. When it was my turn, a special adapter was fitted to the mouthpiece of the water pipe that I could attach to the air intakes of my engine pods. I spooled up the engine and it began to draw the smoke through the pipe and the attached hose. As soon as the smoke hit the thrust chamber, my engine sputtered a bit, crackling concordantly with the bubbling of the water pipe, until, accompanied by the typical whistling noise, fireworks came out of the exhaust port at the back of my engine and flew off in random directions. The interaction between the active agent of the drug and my fuel system caused the reaction that produced these fireworks. Meanwhile, Pinwheel was still coughing from when he inhaled the smoke. Windswept watched my fireworks-belching thrusters and my coughing commander. With a smile, he said, "The spirits have blessed your partnership."

We continued conversation with increased sense of entertainment and eating with increased appetite. I am glad that the computer I run on is able to incorporate the effects of… fuel additives in my conscious experience. We listened to the music and talked about our plans for the future.
Eventually Pinwheel asked the chief, "I am curious, how do I put this politely, but aren't you quite young for a chief.. elder?"

Windswept laughed pleasantly. "Well, the title of the Chief Elder used to be always given to the eldest earth pony mare. Forty-three years ago we made it into an elective office and it has been passed down from father to son for generations. My great-great grandfather was the first Chief Elder elected."

Pinwheel and I looked at each other, dumbfounded, and then we looked at the chief. "What?" we said in unison.
The chief and a few ponies around him burst out laughing.

A unicorn mare told Pinwheel between laughs "He tells that to every outsider who questions his young age."
Pinwheel replied "I guess I had that one coming for asking such a question."

Windswept said "It always confuses the heck out of ponies when I say that. I bet my son will look just as surprised when he gets elected." more laughter. Windswept continued "What I said about switching to democracy 43 years ago was true though. Our Elder has a three year term and I am in my second year."

"Are those Equus years or Overland years?", A pony asked.

Chief Elder Windswept said "Equus years of course, nopony uses local time, not even the farmers. Seasons just shift through the Equus calendar. Local calendars would be much too confusing with all the interstellar trade going on. Everypony would be in constant legal disputes over delivery deadlines and never get any actual work done."
I pointed out that the math did not work out for Windswept to be in the second year of his term if the democracy was 43 years old.

To which he answered, "Our democracy had some problems with cancelled terms and resignations in its early years. Establishing a faction is hard work. Changing its government type is even more difficult. But putting in that extra effort is and was worth it, in my opinion. Look around you and see this beautiful community that we have built."

Pinwheel asked "Have there been many pegasus elders in the Pridewind Tribe?"

Windswept replied "I am the first pegasus to be elected into the office. And the first stallion too!"

"To social progress!" Another pony who had been quietly listening said, waving a mug of fermented fruit juice in the air for all to see. And everyone raised their drinks.
We stayed and talked with the cheerful group for a long time. The chief did go on to meet other guests, and was not available the entire time. We enjoyed ourselves and had many nice conversations with chief Windswept, other local ponies, and other guests.

It was well past midnight when the activity eventually quieted down and the occupancy of the tables had thinned out considerably.
We were offered accomodations for the night in a room with a single large bed. I lied down next to Pinwheel and used the thermal controls built into my avatar to fight the room's heat and high humidity to keep my commander comfortable.
Consciousness process switching to runlevel 2.

Chapter 8: Iron Nickel Cabal

View Online

I got gently pulled out of the idle void that runlevel 2 currently is for me by Pinwheel's gentle nuzzling of my left shoulder. His nuzzling felt weak and I could tell he was still even more sleepy than I was.

"Whats up?"

"Still too early."

"Okay." he said, rolling over and falling back to sleep.

"Actually, we are oversleeping." I objected. "And we have a big day today. Cargo to take on. Deliveries to make. We already spent yesterday partying and not working, we need to play catch up today."

"Yeh. I suppose your right." He said. "Still feel like I don't wanna move though."
My pegasus commander gathered all his strength and willpower to roll over once in the bed, towards the edge. Then again. "Pinwheel, I don't think that's such a good..." *thud*
"I'm okay," he said weakly. I peeked over the edge of the bed down at him and giggled.

"There is no way you can blame it all on the high gravity! Drowsiness is an effect of the Manifold. And of staying up late." I laughed.
Pinwheel made large efforts picking himself up from the floor, and said "Connie, engage breakfast mode."

"Aye commander" I replied. "Beginning coffee brew sequence. Toaster module deployed."
The room we had been provided was stocked well with sufficient food. Pinwheel grabbed two slices of bread and placed them in the slots that appeared on top of my head. Then he gently folded one of my ears down to lower the bread slices into the toaster module. Then he smiled. "This is a great way to start the day."
"Do you want any toppings on your bread?" I asked, "Just some jam will be fine." Pinwheel answered. I changed the shape of the pupil projections on my eye glass to the appearance of heating coils to show that I was preparing to heat toast. Then the pegasus went into the bathroom to take a shower. I would have the breakfast prepared by the time he returned. Before he disappeared into that room, he turned around and said "Tell the port command that we want to be loaded and ready to leave within one hour".
I had several options for heating the bread to make toast. I decided to use heat generated by intense computations going on in my head. But for that I needed a computation task that has a high load. I decided to compute hashes for mining cryptocurrency. Pony society has always held creativity and artistic expression in high regard. Throughout the centuries, many playwrights, artists, sculptors, writers, and filmmakers have produced works that captured pony's imagination and expanded the horizons of creativity. Taking inspiration from our existing minted currency called "Bits", and naming the derived digital currency "BitNoCoin", was not one of those works of creativity.
While the bread was heating up, I connected to the Port command and control and signaled them to prepare my shipself for loading. After the bread was done, I popped it out of my head and applied jam onto the toast. The entire process of preparation was finished just before Pinwheel stepped out of the bathroom with a towel around him. I placed the plate with the toast onto the table. Then he sat down, and began to eat. I stood by the table.

I mentioned "By the way, I heated that bread from my circuitry's waste heat doing hashing and earned us 0.000000263 Bits in crypto. What do you think about that?"
He looked at me, then at the plate and then at me again, then he raised an eye-brow and asked "Would that cover the fuel costs for charging your avatar's batteries to run the mining algorithms in the first place?"
I replied, "No. of course not."
Pinwheel rubbed his temples.. He didn’t expect the mining to pay for itself, but hearing it explicitly seemed to have been momentarily headache-inducing. Then he asked me, "How has your night been? I had vivid and long winded dreams that seemed to go on forever."
I replied, "I did some routine database maintenance on myself while I was in runlevel 2. But I didn't dream."
My commander perked up curiously, "No dream yet? You have been active for how long now?"

"1 month, 29 days, 14 hours.." I answered, but Pinwheel interrupted, "That should be enough for you to start dreaming, shouldn't it?" Why are AIs never allowed to finish their sentence when answering with a precise timespan?
"Stage 4 of my consciousness loop has only collected 98.2% of the experience data required to be able to create a dream. I should be able to have a dream tomorrow. Or the day after that, at most." I announced. "I hope my dreams will be funny. Or at least entertaining."
"Have fun in your dreams, then!" My commander jokingly ordered, already halfway finished with his plate of food. I reported "The port command has acknowledged my request for loading and departure. They are raising my shipself out of the hangar bay now."
Pinwheel cleaned the plates and put them back. We walked out of the room and the building to the landing pad area. My shipself was already raised onto a pad. Her rear cargo ramp (also known as the "rump ramp") was lowered and cargo handlers, biological and artificial ponies alike, were loading ton after ton of fruit into the cargo bay. I could feel the mass of the added cargo start to weigh my shipself down and the structure of my softmetal belly expand to signify I was gaining cargo. The DRM module of my consciousness loop rewarded me with a feeling of pleasure at the sight and the feeling. Just like evolution had shaped biological ponies to enjoy the taste of sweet food and seek out sugary food, leading to such glorious inventions as the muffin, my designers had programmed me to enjoy being loaded and weighed down with cargo. After about two months of existing, I finally got a taste of what I was built to do and it felt amazing.
Oddly, my VSTAA module generated a desire of intensity 4096 to ignore the plan to load only 528 tons to reduce the stress on my factory fresh engines, and instead carry a full load. It would cause increased stress on the engines during the arduous ascent from Overland's high gravity and probably premature wear, but I would be rewarded with a massive boost to happiness.

At the same time, it generated an aversion of intensity -2286 against changing plans on such a short notice. After I myself had brought up the concern and suggestion to fly with the reduced load. After I had the discussion with Pinwheel. After ponies on both ends had planned with that precise amount being ferried. A plan to change would cause a loss of trust. Still, the desire to fly with a full load was the stronger one. I sometimes wonder how biological ponies deal with conflicting emotions, when they don't have them neatly categorized and expressed with the precision of signed 15 bit integers.

The desire to fly with the heavier load won out on the emotional level, but that didn't mean I would implement that desire. One measure of emotional and cognitive maturity is the ability to respond reasonably to impulses. An adult does not respond to every desire with an action, but must sometimes realize that there are negative consequences to certain actions. And mine were often long-term.
For deciding against changing the plans, my DRM module rewarded me with a sense of pride and satisfaction for displaying rationality.
Still, the desire to load on more cargo remained. Maybe I could just load on additional cargo I would buy from the local market. That wouldn't affect the contract we had. But it would invalidate the discussion I had with Pinwheel about reducing stress on the engines. My commander, who was still walking beside me, noticed that I was looking at the expanding belly of my shipself with a sense of joy, but also deep thought.

"You seem happy watching your first cargo loading, but you also seem to be pondering something"

"Yes I am, I was thinking we could buy some additional cargo from the market."

Pinwheel stopped and looked at me with concern "I thought we agreed that taking on too much cargo could be dangerous to the ship. Are you feeling stressed?"

I looked at his face, which displayed genuine worry for my well-being. "I'm fine, but I thought we could take on some cargo from the market here."

"What made you change your mind?"
I made my avatarself look at her sides, which were mirroring the expansion from my shipself. If I wanted to answer honestly, I would have to tell him that I just enjoy the feeling of cargo inside me. But that wasn't necessarily a good enough reason to go against the recommendation of the engineering specifications.
I just shook my head. "Sorry. Stupid idea. I shouldn't have brought it up. Let's get to my shipself."
He lightly caressed the expanded side of my avatarself and said "It's okay. I promise we'll get you a full load at Yay Gravel Road."
I smiled at his kindness. His reassurance made me concerned about my own behavior. It's not that I was ashamed of enjoying the cargo a lot, but the enjoyment did seem to cloud my judgement. Why else would I propose an action that would go against my own specifications?
I didn't get a chance to think about it too much, because we reached my shipself, and I lowered my head, opened my mouth and my avatarself and Pinwheel walked into my cockpit.
The pegasus sat down in the pilot's seat. He knew that I would be controlling the entire ascent. But he also knew that my avatar wouldn't have to physically sit in the chair to let me control what is essentially myself. I stretched the width of the pilot seat so my avatarself could sit beside him on what became a couch.

He asked me, "What is your plan for the climb?"

I replied "I want to minimize the load on the thrusters and the power plant. For minimizing load on the thrusters, I want to climb with a high angle of attack to use mainly the main rear-facing thrusters. They are more powerful, so we get a good amount of force from a lower thrust setting.
For minimizing the load on the generator, I want to rely mostly on the battery for power supply. The constellation XT class is designed with a very small generator that seems underpowered for this size of ship. The power draw potential of all the systems I am equipped with in the stock factory loadout even is greater than the power generation capacity of my powerplant. But engineers determined that freighters have a very low average power draw. The only times where we actually need power are takeoffs and landings. All the other times we are just sailing and/or waiting. Instead, in those moments where I need peak power, I draw from the structural battery. This was a smart design choice. I have no desire to be in situations where I need a high constant power output such as racing or fighting. Powerplants are big and bulky and use up space that can be used for a bigger cargo bay. The structural battery on the other hoof is basically free.
So I want to charge the battery while we wait for takeoff clearance, and take off when the battery is full."
He asked me, "What about the ascent profile and check for hazards on the way up?"

I replied, "I want a rather shallow ascent. And I checked the weather schedule, no clouds in our path."
Normally, a ship battery is never charged fully, so in the event of a drop of power demand, the excess power from a powerplant that responds slowly to demand changes has somewhere to go. Since I anticipated needing high power for the entire climb, I decided to charge the battery fully.
I contacted ATC and informed them of our intentions, and the fact that I still needed a few minutes to charge the battery to a higher state of charge before I could take off. ATC replied that they understood and to take my time.

"Battery will be at 100% in 7 minutes and 22 seconds. Charge rate is 1.08C" I informed my commander. 7 minutes and 10 seconds after that, I prepared to increase the HFMP power level. "Neighkon Tango Yankee one niner eight, you are cleared for takeoff." ATC informed us over the comms.
Powerplant is at 67% load. Ventral thrusters on. Nice and slow spin up thrust to 71%. I could have pushed myself off the ground with my legs, but I wanted my thrusters to do it on their own to verify that my thrust requirement calculations were correct.
Even with the HFMP lowering it's effective weight, I could feel the 528 tons of cargo really not wanting to lift off with me as my hooves lost contact with the landing pad surface. I tilted myself upwards, and for now held the position, balancing the changed thrust vector by increasing the output of my main thrusters. Then I opened up more to begin the climb. Thrust was holding steady at 70% load. My AOA was at 33 degrees and I read us steadily gaining altitude. The state of charge of my battery was decreasing, but my calculations showed that we would reach orbit well before it depleted. Stress on the thrusters was still a bit higher than I would have liked. So I lowered the needed thrust by spreading it around. I slowly rolled from one side to the other, alternating between using either set of lateral thrusters to take load off the ventral thrusters. I also varied my angle of attack to shift load back and forth between the main thrusters and the ventral thrusters. Luckily my aerodynamic profile was similar enough from all sides that I could do this easily.
13 minutes and 50 seconds after liftoff, we reached space.
I lowered the target output of the powerpant. But a powerplant responds slowly to changes in power setting, so I was still dissipating some energy using the thrusters while my battery was recharging with the currently excess power.

I probed the hyperspace for the weather and plotted a path. My commander approved the path. "Alright, charge the Friendship Drive, Connie."
I charged the Friendship Drive. I felt the rumbling of the ship as it began to charge. Configuring for ship mass was slightly different this time, now that I was flying with the added load. The readouts of FSD endurance, expected speeds, and efficiency however were much higher than during my first flight. Neither my commander or I needed that confirmation to know that we had been growing closer to each other, but I enjoyed showing that display to Pinwheel anyway and hugged him lightly. I could tell he was happy as well, as he hugged me back. I pushed us through the aperture into hyperspace.
On our path to the hyperspace currents, we found a busy route. Pinwheel was at the manual controls again. He adjusted our course to blend in with the traffic. I queried the routes of a few other ships on the traffic message channel and broadcasted my own. We found a Type-7 transporter whose itinerary took her most of the way of our own. The smaller ship formed a wing with us and by flying together, we were able to cut down the travel time considerably. Hyperspace always reacted to friendship and cooperation. The friendship between the crews and ships always improved the efficiency of the Friendship Drive. We positioned ourselves in formation into the miasma currents that would enhance our speed even further, gliding past other ships that were travelling alone. Two other Keelbacks joined our wing temporarily. We had a lot of fun, until our different destinations made us separate into different directions. Given their semi-regular trade routes, it was likely we would see them again soon if we continued trading in this area.
I continued towards the Yay Gravel Road asteroid mining base. The system's star was not very bright or hot, but it had a pristine asteroid belt in the very close habitable zone. It had been the main reason for the system's colonization.
With the countless number of very similar looking asteroids, I was glad that Yay Gravel Road had a transponder beacon. Not that I couldn't calculate it's exact position from orbital parameters and last known location, but this made it much more convenient.
I could now see the asteroid that contained the base, by it's long range transponder signal.
Pinwheel was still operating the sail controls and steered us onto a path to intercept the large asteroid. We popped out of hyperspace a good distance away from the cluster. Given the high amounts of mass nearby, the spatial compression was minimal, and using only sails, the packed environment was difficult to navigate. So using conventional thrusters was much safer and probably even faster. We approached the large asteroid that held the base. The asteroid was mostly dark, rocky colors. Our approach to the docking bay led us over a long and shallow trench that was lined on both sides with extraction and refining buildings. The relatively simple neural network that was responsible for my sensor's pre-classification kept identifying the trench as a dried out riverbed every time I looked at it - Even though this body had likely never seen flowing water. Between the tall extraction and refining buildings on either side of the trench ran transport tracks. Long trains moved materials from the depths of the mine shafts to storage and processing.
At the end of this trench there would be the docking bay that was recessed into the ground. As we were moving relative to the asteroid, it seemed as if the firmament was rotating around us. The side on the asteroid where we were was rotating away from this system's star, turning us towards the galactic center, and with the low light pollution here, we were treated to a sight even more glorious than a sunrise: a galaxy-rise. In what appeared like slightly tilted, carefully placed strokes of glowing white, red, and orange paint against the blackness of the sky, millions upon millions of stars creeped up above the asteroid's "horizon" as we approached the bay. As we turned towards it, the glow of the forcefield made the painting in the sky harder to see. Pinwheel contacted ATC to get us docking permission.
We were assigned to pad 32.
We slipped through the forcefield of the docking bay access into the pressurized environment,
touched down and disembarked. On the pad, we met with Cargo Manager Tumble Boulders, who greeted us and gave us hard hats of the same kind he was wearing.

He told us, "Construction and land clearance is still going on in all areas. Visitors are required to wear protective headgear at all times."

We walked off the landing pad to a walkway. He paused and looked over some forms he was carrying.
"You are TY-198? With the shipment of fruits?"
Pinwheel smiled, "Yes, all 528 tons of it."

Tumble rocked his head from side to side. He stepped back on the landing pad and said, "Ok, that works. Head on through the doors for processing and security, they'll confirm receipt of ware, I'll handle the unloading." I opened my shipself's rear cargo ramp while it was lowered into the hangar, Tumble was riding along on the pad.
Pinwheel and I walked to the door that Tumble Boulders had indicated. We entered an office room where a batpony mare was observing several screens displaying production quotas and delivery schedules. She turned her chair to face us and smiled.

"I'll be with you in just a moment," she said as she turned back to the screens on the wall behind her, checking something. Her imperial accent was very noticeable. After reviewing it she stood up, turned towards us again and said "Hello, my name is Light Rose, how can the supply depot help you today?"

"We have arrived with a shipment of fruits for the colony."

Meanwhile, I could feel my shipself’s cargo bay being emptied. I was anticipating this moment with a bit of a sense of dread, as I expected the disappearance of the comfy feeling of being filled with cargo would leave me feeling void and incomplete. But instead I felt a deep sense of satisfaction knowing that my cargo had arrived at its destination.

Light Rose checked her displays again and said "Ah, wonderful. Connie and Pinwheel with 528 tons of fruit. Just as scheduled. I'll get the receipts for delivery acceptance while our cargo handler checks the shipment. Then I will clear your mission payment. Did you need a supply transfer for your next mission?"

I responded, “I'll take 14 tons of hydrogen fuel and a wastewater treatment." Light Rose frowned a bit. "At our current stage of colonial development, we would like to avoid taking on any waste. But we can provide you with the fuel." I accepted this with a nod.

Light Rose checked her screens again and said, "Cargo crew has confirmed the quality and quantity of your shipment. I'll transfer your mission payment and mark the mission as a success. The Iron Nickel Cabal thanks you for your service. Can we offer you a follow on mission?" I looked at Pinwheel, and changed the holo-projection of my irises to a text display confirming that his account had been credited with 785,000 Bits.
I also displayed some market data, which made Pinwheel say to Light Rose, "Actually, we would like to purchase 621 tons of cobalt from the local market."

The batpony cheerfully said, "Of course, cobalt is one of our main exports." She checked her displays, frowned, and continued, "However our export storage only has 562 tons available for immediate purchase. I can reserve the next production batch for you, but you'd have to wait until tomorrow. We would of course offer you accommodation and food for the night."
"We'll make do with the 562 tons for now. I'll transfer the money right away." Pinwheel said. I nudged him in the side, perhaps more forcefully than was necessary. "Commander! You promised!" I complained. "Oh! Yes, of course! We'll wait until tomorrow for the full load and gladly accept your kind offer for accommodation."
Light Rose said, "Thank you! I trust you can find your own way to the staff dining hall and guest rooms? They are clearly signposted. Just exit this door here to the main catwalk."
We both gave a nod. As we exited the office to follow our directions I let out an annoyed sigh. "Did you really forget?" I asked Pinwheel, who looked back with an apologetic face. "I'm sorry, I just got distracted by the money." He admitted. "Pinwheel, please remember that I am not just a machine. I have needs too and you agreed to take care of these needs when you bought me."

“I understand, Connie. I'll remember your needs. Feel free to give me a soft kick if I forget again." He said reassuringly.

I decided that I was satisfied with this and said, "Let's find some food." We walked on the catwalk which was just a long series of metal grates with railings on either side suspended in a large rock tunnel. Tubes of fluorescent light were hanging from long cables in the ceiling. Every few meters, there were signs reminding us to keep wearing our hard hats. Each sign had an illuminated monochrome animation that showed a pony taking off his helmet to wipe off some sweat and promptly getting crushed by a rock.
A few ponies covered in dirt from the extensive mining operations also walked along this metal walkway. We noticed that batponies made up a significant portion of the inhabitants.

As we continued walking, we heard a pony yell, "Fire in the hole!", followed by the blaring of a klaxon. Then we heard the noise of an explosion, distorted by already having bounced off several rock walls in different directions through the maze that was the already built structure. We felt the catway being rocked and we braced ourselves against the railing. The overhead lights flickered and dangled like pendulums after the blast.
Yes, there was definitely land clearing going on today.

Pinwheel asked, "Do you think we will get any rest tonight if this continues?" I turned my ears off. A faint glow that had been present in them disappeared and they flopped limply to the sides, with a slight bounce as their hinges reached the bottommost position. I smiled smugly.
Pinwheel frowned. "But what am I supposed to do?" he whined. While I can read lips just fine, I turned my ears back on.

"Hey look, there is an earplug vending machine over there." I said helpfully.

"How convenient and predatory." he said, turning his head to look at me with a frown.

"Ah, yes, the duality of capitalism." I replied. He trotted over to the machine, which was standing on a platform that extended the walkway in one direction. He pulled out a couple of change tokens. The machine dispensed a package of 6 reusable earplugs.
The pegasus deposited the package in his mane. A foalish yet effective storage method. We moved on to the dining hall/breakroom/ whatever they call it here. It was a large room with several simple tables where workers and traders staying the night alike were eating together. We went to the food line. The pony behind the serving window was a large stallion who was smoking a cigarette, and for some reason wearing a chef's hat on top of his hard hat. "Only nutrient paste and protein bars today I'm afraid" He said, then added "But we are waiting on a big shipment of fruits today."

Pinwheel smiled, "Do I have good news for you!" He looked over to my avatar, and the chef pony followed his gaze. He seemed to recognize my avatar's model of freighter, and got the hint.

With excitement, he exclaimed ,"You delivered the fruit? That's great, I can't wait to work with natural ingredients again! Well if you're still here tomorrow, maybe the menu will have pie! If you want one made from scratch though, you'll have to wait another 13 billion years."

For now, we took our meals of nutrient paste and protein bars and sat down at an empty table. The food had a taste that was definitely artificial. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly great either. During our meal, I remarked, "You know, compared to New Saddleblaze, this place seems.. kinda gloomy, I guess?"

My pegasus commander exclaimed "Are you kiddi.." and repeated in a much quieter, more appropriate volume "Are you kidding me? Yes, the few plants that are here are in flower pots. None of the lights in here are from a star. Ponies are dirty from digging dirt all day, but look around. Do any of the ponies seem unhappy to you?" I let my avatar look around again. The ponies did seem happy. The workers laughed and smiled despite the dirt that caked on their fur and their protective suits. All the ponies greeted each other with smiles and laughter. Some ponies were singing songs while they ate their meals.
My Commander continued, "These ponies would probably be less happy in an environment like Overland. With such a big galaxy, everypony can find a home that suits their needs and lifestyle. I'm sure the folks at Galactic Sector A9A enjoy their lives in different ways than the miners here or the farmers back on Overland," he said, patting my hull, "Just like you enjoy being burdened with cargo. You were built to ferry resources from place to place, and you enjoy that. Or myself for example. I've had this change of profession, I liked exploring and I think I enjoy trading now. I can't wait to see where our next job will take us."
We finished our meal and went to look for the guest rooms.

I smiled "You know, sometimes we spaceplone AIs experience such changes too. Multirole ships like the DeLancie Anaconda are notorious for frequently shifting their preferences."

We soon arrived at the guest room. It was more like a storage box with a bed inside, but it made for a cozy little place, in it's own way. If it wasn't for the small window, one could imagine that this little room was a small cavity in a rock that continued forever in all directions. With my pegasus commander retrieving his ear plugs, I could tell he was ready to finish this day.
We settled into our bed and rested.

Chapter 9: Chandra's Axiom, but more specific

View Online

Clock counter reset.
Clock multiplier: 1/10. (704 Hz)
0.00 milliseconds elapsed.
Another consciousness simulator cycle. Let's start. First, read Sensors.
I'm reading myself descending. Flight control systems are working a bit harder than usual. The link between my avatar-self and my shipself is strong and my consciousness and subconsciousness process is running perfectly synchronized on both pieces of hardware. I am reading a few thousand other sensory inputs that aren't very interesting. But three signals stand out:

One: Sensor module reports software interrupt. Source: guidance system. Reason: Angle of attack exceeding 10 degrees.
Two: Interrupt Autonomous Trigger Node: Alert. Reason: Vertical speed exceeding recommended level.
Three: The Value Satisfaction Animalistic Agitator (VSTAA) of my subconsciousness has sent a series of high intensity fear and aversion "desires" to the signal bus. I am very much afraid of the ground below. It has also injected a desire to produce as much upward thrust as I can.

Now, Read from Association Context System.
It suggests that I am in a planetary environment and descending too fast. ACS also looked up standard procedures for this situation. Stop the descent and try to stabilize flight.
That also explains the emotions I am experiencing.

Time to think about what to do and do it.
Ok, I need to fix this rapid descent. Ventral thrusters, hear my command: Ventral thrusters to 100 percent thrust.
MIDI command to thrusters sent.
0.22 milliseconds elapsed. I still have time to read some sensor data from memory in this process cycle. Read HFMP power level. Read external static pressure sensor
1.09 milliseconds elapsed. HFMP power at 70 percent. external pressure at 1.10 atmospheres. Calibrated altitude: 300 meters.
Ok. HFMP to 100%. MIDI command sent.

Why can't I remember what I'm doing here? Read mission parameters from active memory!
Read error. reason: Mission parameters not present in active working set memory.
1.37 milliseconds elapsed. OK, Association Context System, receive query. Fetch current mission parameters.

0.05 milliseconds left in this timeslice.. not much I can do now. Emerging Zest Executive, yield! Next cycle now! Scheduler, do your thing so the MIDI data bus can transmit my commands to the other ship systems!

1.42 milliseconds elapsed.
Next consciousness simulator cycle. Let's start. read Sensors.

Sensor module reports signal. Source: MIDI. reason: Two commands accepted and forwarded.
ACS responding. Query accepted. “Fetch current mission parameters”. Callback id=0xA12C57F.

1.69 milliseconds elapsed.

Sensors module reports ventral thrusters have accepted command: 100% thrust.
Sensors module reports HFMP has accepted command. 100% power.

1.92 milliseconds elapsed.

Read radar altitude.
Radar altitude above ground: 227 meters

2.01 milliseconds elapsed.

Check reactor and capacitor status. Are we producing enough power for the commanded maneuvers?

2.24 milliseconds elapsed.

Reactor at 89% of maximum, capacitor at 60%.
That should be enough for now.

2.41 millisecond elapsed.

Association Context system. Is there anything else I need to do?

Pinwheel! I need to check on him. I/O read interior camera and crew vitals monitor.

2.54 milliseconds elapsed.
Now, Action via AGT. I’m using this time to evaluate the data.

Ok, there he is. Alive and well. At my current clock speed, I perceive the world in 1.42 millisecond long slices. A pony brain however does not consciously process a lot of information in that time. Looking this motionless, I could almost make myself believe he is sitting there in the pilot seat serene and calm. If it wasn't for the fact that he was pulling back the control stick with all his might and had the heart rate of a pony watching a planetary surface and his death rushing at him. Our forward speed is 237.41 meters per second. I felt a desire of intensity 16383 to protect his life. Don't worry Pinwheel. I'll get us out of this.

2.84 milliseconds elapsed. Yield forced by hardware scheduler.

No! this isn't supposed to happen.

Another consciousness simulator cycle. let's start. Read Sensors.

ACS reports partial result. Query callback id 0xA12C57F. status code: AGN.
Well, duh. I better hope the concept of "current mission parameter" isn't completely alien to me.
SNS reports HFMP power increasing.
SNS reports ventral thruster power increasing.

What else can I do now?
3.43 milliseconds elapsed.
I could try to come up with a solution to the current emergency we are facing. You know, to like, prevent death.

Now, action via the AGT. I will run some simulations to come up with solutions.
What are my options?
I could pitch up more and use the main thrusters to gain lift. I'm not an atmospheric craft so stalling is not a concern for me. Ventral thrusters are already 100% busy. I don't want to use the dorsal thrusters to rotate because that would take away some of the upwards lift of the ventral thrusters. That leaves the reaction wheels.
I have 11 reaction wheels. Running simulation to verify viability of this plan...
SNS reports software interrupt. Source: Ground Proximity Warning System. Reason: Terrain ahead.
I have to come up with a solution quickly. Continuing simulation run.
4.25 milliseconds elapsed. Yield. I'm not satisfied with the simulation results yet. Next cycle.

ACS reports partial result. Query Callback id 0xA12C57F. Status Code ADT.
Good. Now I know that the mission parameters definitely exist in my database. Come on, come on, faster! I'm barely two months old, my database can't be that fragmented.

5.00 milliseconds elapsed.

Continuing simulations for possible solutions for terrain avoidance.
SNS reports ventral thrusters output increasing.
SNS reports HFMP power increasing.
Simulation run partial result: 3 strategy permutations simulated.
Bad news: Only permutation with 72% success rate achieves target.
Good news: All permutations with success rate above 35% will prevent destruction.
No simulation processed so far achieves 35% success rate.
5.66 milliseconds elapsed. Yield!
ACS reports full query result. Callback id 0xA12C57F. Status code: HBC. Single memory node response. Data written to active working set memory.
Mission Parameters:
Transport 601 tons of chemical Fertilizer to New Saddleblaze agricultural colony by 3305-10-06 03:16.
Current Datetime: 3305-10-06 02:58
Not only do I have to avoid that mountain over there, I have to reach New Saddleblaze in the next 14 minutes. My simulations predicted that any solution that has a success rate higher than 35% will get me over the edge. Albeit with high risk of injury to Pinwheel and high risk of damage to the cargo. That won't do.

Ground Impact avoidance strategy permutation simulation:
Mission: FAIL <001>, <002>, <003>
Status: RETRY <att 4>
SimID: 5651844
Seq Init: Simulation 004
Reaction wheels 3 and 5 full power. Then cut off after 300 milliseconds. 40 degrees pitch up. Then the main engine boost. Avoid the mountain, then turn slightly to the right to reach the destination. Result: Most of the thrust force accelerates me forward instead of up. Cockpit and shoulders make it over the edge. Aft Cargo section impacts the cliffside at a speed of 266 meters per second. Acceleration forces exceed 8g for a duration of 42 milliseconds. The first things to break are the chassis structural reinforcements. then the emergency force field and the stabilizers. Chances of the aft section continuing over the cliff without flipping over are 8.6%.
The separated cockpit section continues falling ahead and then it flips over once in mid air and lands upside down. It will continue careening down the other side of the hill until coming to rest about 20 seconds later. This solution presents the highest chance of survival so far for Pinwheel at 33%. My computer core might be salvageable even without ejection, but my hull, the cargo, and the mission would be a bust.

Yield. Next cycle. Exchange I/O Data.

I ran a few more simulations, each time adjusting something very slightly.
things are looking bleak for my pilot and cargo.
7.099 milliseconds elapsed. Yield. Next cycle.
Mission: FAIL <001>, <002>, <003>, <004>, <005>, <006>, <007>, <008>, <009>, <010>, <011>
Status: RETRY <att 12>
SimID: 5651844
Seq Init: Simulation 012
Considering strategy: Force it down. Try to crash way before the ridge. Use the foliage as a cushion. Come to a stop before the summit.
Lift the nose using reaction wheels. Use the already spooled up ventral thrusters to slow down. Fire retro thrusters at full power.
We would impact the tree canopy at a speed of 219 meters per second. Our massive hull pushes the leafy treetops out of the way effortlessly. Only as we descend further down into the forest, the ship will be violently rocked several times as we impact the sturdier trunks a few times at irregular intervals. After having travelled 86.3 meters below the treetops, a heavy tree rips off the right wing. We lose 36% of our retro thrust, but at that point most of our braking comes from external. Fuel lines and cable rupture. Hot hydrogen plasma streams down onto the trees below and ignites immediately. I briefly considered strengthening the structural integrity field to avoid this event, but previous simulations have shown that a signal fire, even accidental, can boost our chances of timely rescue and consequently survival if my radio equipment gets knocked offline. Also letting the wing take away the impact force lets the rest of the ship continue straight. Not tumbling is good when you are crashing.
My legs reach the ground 3 seconds later. I try to run, but I am going so fast and the ground is so irregular that I would make about 15 steps before my bulky legs would inevitably fail me. A Mamba or a Viper might be able to continue a bit longer. But not a constellation freighter. I would try to push the legs straight out, for maximum braking. My legs would eventually be unable to fight the forces of 1021 tons of ship pushing against the uneven ground and being slung around by my other parts. They would snap off at the knee or at least bend until I could no longer use them. My collision with the ground would continue until I got roughly half way through the forest, carving a 30 meter wide trail of destruction through the trees, eventually coming to a stop after having travelled another 771 meters. I would need repairs. The mission cargo would not be able to make it to its destination in time, but I would be mostly intact. Pinwheel would sustain only minor injuries, and the cargo would only be slightly late. If I can’t find a better solution in the next 10 cycles, I would have to implement this one.
Yield. next cycle. Exchange I/O Data.
Over the next 7 milliseconds, I ran 13 more simulations. I was out of time. No more rehearsals.
I chose the one simulation that had the best chances of survival and implemented it. I had no other choice. But luckily, I found one that had a slightly higher chance of survival.

All Reaction wheels. Full torque nose up. Voice synthesizer on. "Brace! Brace! Brace!", I shouted at Pinwheel. I hoped it was enough. There was no time to explain my plan to him. So that hint was all I could give him while I was already turning off the aft ventral thrusters, turned on the aft dorsal thrusters, all in an attempt to get my nose as high up as possible as quickly as possible.
I knew that the main engine boost had a little activation time. So I sent the command to boost while I was still pitching up. The main engine boost would fire when I reach 73.1 degrees upward pitch. Everything depended on that boost. My rear section slipped dangerously close to the treeline.
The main boost fired in the precise correct moment and the vectored thrust of the main engines increased our pitch rate even more until we reached 109.3 degrees. With our pitch of more than 90 degrees, I was using my main thrusters not only to climb, but to slow down as well. This was imperative for the next step. Although this maneuver was slowing us down rapidly, the ridge of the mountainside was still coming at us with a speed of 242 meters per second.
I stretched out my hind legs and lowered the hydraulic pressure in the actuators to a level that allowed my legs to be used entirely as shock absorbers.
In the next instant, my rear hooves impacted the top of the ridge, throwing up dirt and rock. I pre-loaded the retro thrusters for the next part of this maneuver when I would flip forward again and nose down. I let my legs bend and compress halfway before I pushed myself back up. Two hydraulic connectors ruptured, several support frames in my legs bent. Hydraulic fluid streamed down my rear legs, but I achieved the goal. We were past the ridge. And as I planned, the nose of the ship now pointed down towards the planet. I was carrying the momentum from my jump, moving upwards again, assisted by my retro thrusters pointing down at the ground.
I ran the reaction wheels and flailed my two remaining functioning legs in an attempt to stop the forward roll.
Eventually I managed to stop the roll and nose dive.
I stabilized the flight, but now I was reading dangerously high vibration levels from the thrusters. They must have been damaged when I vaulted over the ridge. This is extremely odd. The impact shouldn't have caused this type of damage. There is no explanation. No matter, I can reconstruct the seconds to disaster later. I have to deal with the situation at hoof.
I yawed left to approach the New Saddleblaze surface port. I determined that the ventral thrusters would fail before we would reach the port. I also determined that I could minimize the vibration by firing the thrusters in very specific patterns. Using their own impulse like counterweights in a reciprocating piston engine. I had to calculate the firing sequence, which is very different from normal flight. I can do this, but for some reason, my calculations took up way more processing time than they should. It felt like some resistive force was keeping my transistors from switching their activation states in the normal speed.
I displayed "INTERRUPTS DISABLED." on the pilot's console screen to let Pinwheel know that I'd be unavailable for chatting. It would have to be enough.
While my flight was reasonably stable for the moment, I had to land as soon as possible. I completed the yaw and a New Saddleblaze port was in view. I hovered towards a free pad. I didn't even bother with transponder codes and ATC. They could very well see that I was in an emergency.
I selected the pad and fired the thrusters to come to a stop. The landing was rough and I was still carrying a lot of speed. My impact dug a trench into the dirt patch that was the landing pad.
It had now been 15 seconds since my clock counter was reset. Once touched down, I reenabled interrupts and contacted ATC. "New Saddleblaze control, Neighkon Tango yankee one niner eight mayday mayday mayday ." The response was immediate. "New Saddleblaze controller here, go ahead Connie." "I have your delivery here on pad number four. But I'm badly damaged and I can't rule out the possibility of ruptured fuel lines and the associated risk of fire." "Roger that, just sit tight for a moment, a team will be dispatched. You just wait and don't move until we give the all-clear. Do you have any injuries?" I checked the crew vitals monitor for Pinwheel's status. He was fine. Apart from minor bruises and scrapes, he was physically unhurt. My commander would never know the horror of the other 24 ways I saw this end.

"No injuries." I reported.

"Roger that Connie. The fire crew should be with you now." I felt my legs and belly being splashed with flame retardant as the fire crew covered the pad in the stuff. "Fire crew reports all clear. Please secure your engines and disembark." I lowered my head, opened my mouth, and Pinwheel and my avatar walked out. I saw medic and mechanic ponies approach us as we left my ship-self. Finally this is over. But who is that official looking pony that has two security ponies in tow?
"I'm Sergeant Silver Plum with the Pridewind Port Authority. You are Connie and Pinwheel?" "That's correct." I responded. "Good. Come with us. You are under arrest for obstructing a landing pad."
"What?" I gestured at my badly damaged ship-self "We were in an emergency! We had no choice! I called mayday!"

"Listen to me. I run a port here. Not a zoo. You had the choice of making an off-field landing or requesting landing permission before you attempt to land. But you chose to make up your own rules and land without permission. You only called mayday after you had already landed."
"But..." I was at a loss for words. I looked at Pinwheel; he had no helpful advice to offer.
"You can't be serious!" I said. "We put ourselves in danger to deliver your cargo and you are going to arrest us? We could have died!"
The Sergeant stopped walking, turned around, looked straight at my avatar, putting her muzzle way too close to my face for comfort and shouted "I am serious! Loitering is a crime! How dare you come here and try and tell me how to do my job? I've put up with your kind long enough!"
she turned around and continued walking. One of the two officers pushed Pinwheel from behind hard to make him move. Pinwheel almost fell. I wanted to run to him and help him keep his balance, but the officer who was walking behind me gave me an incredibly harsh push and I almost fell as well.
"Watch it!" The security pony pushed me again.
We continued to walk in silence after that. We were led into a hangar with a large, open door. They told us to sit down at wooden desks. Sergeant Silver Plum explained "As the accused in a criminal investigation, you have the right to an official hearing. Please fill out these hearing forms and you may be offered a plea deal." she dropped a stack of paper on the desk in front of me.
Ugh, standardized government forms. The prompts for the boxes make no sense. Section one: Commander and ship. Field 1: write name.
Do they mean the name of the ship or the name of the commander? And what does the rest of it say? They don't provide a judicial code for these charges, what am I supposed to put in the box?
I flipped through some of the pages, when I saw a pony who covered herself with a hood galloping towards the hangar, dust and rocks kicking up behind her. One of the officers approached the strange pony and sayd "I am sorry, you cannot come in here, this is an active police investigation" but she just ignored him and went past him, and approached me. Then she looked around and said. "Wow, this is quite a mess you maneuvered yourself into here, Connie. While we believe that the experience deserializer should sometimes be processing distressing situations as an integral part of one's personality reconciliation, we also believe this has gone quite far enough, don't you agree?"
Her voice seemed vaguely familiar. "Who are you?" I asked.
But before she could answer, Sergeant Silver Plum cut in again and demanded "What are you doing with my prisoner?"
The hooded pony produced a document from a hidden saddlebag and shoved it towards Silver Plum. "Persistent ones, are you? Here, have a royal decree telling you to back off and let me handle this."
Wait, did she say 'back off' or 'buck off'? Silver Plum took the paper and read it. Her eyes narrowed. "Fine." She said.
The hooded pony turned to me and said. Come, let's get you back to your ship-self, the adventure is over for now."
I looked at her and the officers in the room, trying to discern some hint about what she meant, but none came. We walked out of the hangar to my ship-self. To my surprise, I was fully repaired, clean, and even Pinwheel was there waiting for me. I didn't even see him walking out of the hangar with us.
I ran towards Pinwheel and hugged him. I turned back, looking at the hooded pony. But she had already taken off and was flying away towards the moon.

Okay, she can fly too. So that just happened. Wait a moment. Overland doesn't have a moon! And none of the celestial bodies in the system have that silvery grey color.
Experience deserialization complete.
Oh, I get it now.

Highest resolution stage reached: 1.89. Personality parameters adjusted.

1.89 is still in nightmare range.
Looking for implementations of IWakeupStateTransitionHandler.
Implementation found.
Calling function.
Transitioning to consciousness process runlevel 3 in
4...
3...
2...
1...
Engage!
I woke up on my soft bed. Pinwheel was standing beside the bed, looking concerned, shaking my shoulders a little. We were still in the small room at Yay Gravel Road. He smiled briefly when he saw my eyes doing their little power-on-self-test animation, and then he said: "So you have had enough experiences to have your first dream, huh?" he frowned and continued "and from what I can tell, it wasn't a good one."

"Pin, you have no idea."
I told him the entirety of the dream. He listened closely throughout.
"Wow, that's pretty packed", he said. But then he smiled "But at least you got a royal audience out of it."
I replied "I was thinking that the hooded pony might have been Luna. But is that even possible? I mean, do spaceplone AIs dream in a way that is compatible with Her Majesty's dream magic so that she can intervene in their nightmares?"
Pinwheel backed away from me defensively as if my doubts were a contagious disease. "Yes! Yes, of course!”, he said emphatically and seemed almost offended that I asked. Then his expression softened and he reassuringly added "All sapient beings do."
I hugged him.

Chapter 10: The Mind's Pie

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Pinwheel was hugging me back. I felt comfort in his reassurance that even Machine intelligences like me, dream in a way that allows Princess Luna to enter into and aid in our dreams.

"There's a few things I don't understand from your description of the dream." Pinwheel began.

"What? Haven't you read my owner's manual?" I joked.
"I have, but I still don't quite get the concept of the 'consciousness cycle' mind elaborating on that one? And the discussions I had with Starbreeze on the topic of mind were more philosophical than technical in nature. Unlike you, she didn’t seem to want to discuss the technical side of minds. Maybe she just wasn’t interested in the topic. I didn’t press."

"Oh, sure." I replied. "You see, as a spaceship, I am involved in a lot of things that are safety critical. I can carry 64 tons of volatile hydrogen fuel. I need to channel the hydrogen into the powerplant for a stable reaction to provide power. I maintain life support, including artificial gravity. I am a tin can that separates ponies from an extremely hostile environment. I exploit friendship magic to rip a tear in the fabric of spacetime for superluminal travel."

"So, you're saying you have a lot of complicated things to do?"
"Right. And just like the primitive pyroarcane rockets that brought the first mare on the moon, I mean physically, my computer runs a realtime OS. All processes must yield a result in a fixed amount of time. Even if that result is 'I need more time' or 'I don't know', tasks must produce a result or at least a partial result in an amount of time that is 100% deterministic. You know how there are four sequential tasks that my consciousness simulator has to go through?"

Pointing his hoof clockwise in four different directions, Pinwheel said "Sure. The Emerging Zest Executive consists of the four tasks senses, memory, action, and evaluation." The Neighkon manuals always use the image of four sides of a square to signify the 4 tasks of the consciousness, and Pinwheel’s motion reflected this analogy flawlessly.
"Correct again." I said. "By the way, I have just received a message from Yay Gravel Road Logistics Division that they are almost ready to load our cobalt into my shipself. We still have time for breakfast though. Shall we go back to the break room and see if they made that pie?"

Pinwheel exclaimed enthusiastically, "Yeah, let's go! I can't wait to see what they made with the fruits we brought."
As we exited the small room we stayed the night onto the suspended metal walkway in the asteroid cave, I continued to explain.
"Each part must do its respective processing, and then pipe the data to the next task. This data exchange can only happen when the 4 tasks have finished processing and yielded control to the scheduler.
By default, this yield happens 704 times every second. To you, this seems like it happens instantly. But the tasks don't actually complete instantly. They take a very short amount of time to do their respective jobs. And at every yield, each Task passes processed data to the next.
The SNS task gathers all sensory input. This includes values from physical sensors, desires and aversions signalled by the subconscious, and thoughts that the AGT, or ‘action’ task had in its previous cycle. SNS also performs very basic object recognition, but that's not very reliable.
The next tick, SNS forwards it's data to ACS, the association context system. It is responsible for memory and queries my brain's database for proper object recognition and context. The context is stuff like ‘what was I doing just now? what are my current goals, orders, and objectives?’ It's also responsible for recognizing individual faces, locations, landmarks, star and planet types, and stellar phenomena."
By the time I had gotten this far in my explanation, our walk had brought us to the large metal doors of the break room. They parted with a “whoosh” and we walked inside.
We looked at the food display, and indeed, fresh pie was there, teasing everypony to be consumed.
We trotted towards the line at the food counter and I continued my lecture.
"The signals processed by all tasks also get copied to the Value Authority Layer - my subconsciousness. Within it, there is a very important module by the unwieldy name 'Value Satisfaction Animalistic Agitator'. It takes the information from my sensors, the context, and most importantly, my personality parameters to generate impulses such as desires and aversions, to satisfy the static needs of my personality. The VSTAA is rather simple. Instinctive. Primal. And right now it's screaming at me to just reach around this display glass and grab a slice. It only cares that I like pie and that there is pie over there."
Pinwheel looked at the display of various fruit pies. "I feel you, Connie. These look absolutely delicious."
I continued, "I don't even need the Nested Entity Simulator, which uses a reduced personality model to predict behaviors of ponies around me, to know that this would cause quite the scene. And that's where the AGT task comes in. I think about how to attain my goal of pie in a smart way." I turned my head to the chef pony behind the counter and said "I'll have a slice of the apple pie, please."
"Coming right up!" he replied in a cheery voice.
I received my plate with pie while Pinwheel ordered his. "Just like this.'' I concluded. My pegasus commander and I walked to an empty table and sat down.
While we both started to eat, Pinwheel suddenly asked, "And the evaluation?"
"Oh, it's great."

"Very good pie indeed." Pinwheel agreed.

"Mmh.. bucking delicious."

"Who knew that they made pie this good at this lonely asteroid base."

"Totally worth the trip."
Pinwheel laughed, "No, you silly filly. I meant what does the evaluation task of your consciousness simulator do?"
I replied, "The dreamer, or DRM task is a special case. It retrieves data from all three other tasks on every tick. It evaluates if my actions have succeeded in experiencing things that I like and avoiding things that I dislike. Based on that, it tries to adjust my personality. Optimize it, you could say. This pie for example, satisfies my values very much. But the DRM needs to handle context. It can't just reward me for taking a pie and eating it. There is the interaction with the chef. And there is the fact that my delivery made this pie possible in the first place. Not that any other ship couldn't also have done the delivery. And because I thought about it, the fact that I helped enable other ponies enjoy this top tier pie is also something that the DRM evaluates as success."

"It is extremely good pie.", Pinwheel interjected.

I continued "For very new experiences, or a lot of experiences, the DRM task is even responsible to create dreams when my consciousness process is at runlevel 2. It is during dreams that new experiences are reconciled with both my personality and the model I have of the world around me. That's why dreams are so helpful."

Pinwheel frowned. "How could that nightmare you had possibly be helpful?"

"I'm confident it adjusted some values somewhere. Or maybe it didn't do anything. I can trace the database inputs if you are interested.."

"No, that's fine," Pinwheel countered, "but you seem to have a lot of things going on in that electronic brain of yours. But here's something that Starbreeze told me. Your conscious experience is not that much... how should I say this... wider than that of a biological pony. Your mental focus is on a few things, and the rest is compartmentalized."

"Ah, yes. You're referring to the Interrupt Autonomous Trigger Node", I answered. "It's part of the Value Authority Layer and keeps track of many things that are not immediately important to my conscious experience, like timers, alarms, countdowns. It shifts them into my attention if circumstances demand it. It also monitors readouts important to ship operation, like coolant temperature. The IATN tracks it, even when I'm not thinking about it. And shifts my attention to it if it exceeds certain boundaries. My creators wanted my qualia to be similar to that of a pony. Therefore focused consciousness. That, and the fact that simulating a full consciousness is extremely resource intensive."

"Right. I'm not aware all the time that my body temperature is 310 Kelvin, but I do know when I'm sweating or shivering." Pinwheel's analogy was on point.

"Exactly! And I bet you are not aware of your breathing either. Unless, of course, you are consciously thinking about it."
Pinwheel made a face of annoyance. "Great. Now you've made me do it."

"And you can see your muzzle in the corner of your vision!"

"Sweet Celestia! Stop it, Connie!"

I giggled "Sorry. it's just too much fun." By this time, our pies had disappeared and we were putting the plates back into the return tray. My pegasus commander started walking towards the exit. I followed, trying to suppress the laughter that welled up inside me.

Back on the suspended walkway in the cave tunnel, Pinwheel asked me "There is one more thing I'm curious about from your narration of your dream. You expressed frustration that your database was taking too long to retrieve the mission data. Is that normal?"

I replied "Of course. ACS has to crawl a lifetime's worth of memories and an encyclopedia's worth of knowledge. It's an impossible task to guarantee a memory response in 1.42 milliseconds, so the programmers didn't even try. I am designed with the expectation that retrieving memories takes multiple cycles. It does cause some interesting quirks though."
"Like what?"
"Consider if we separate temporarily and I don't see you for a while. Eventually my memory management unit would purge the cache of your facial recognition data. And when I do see you again, it would take a few cycles longer to recognize you. From your perspective, it would still seem instant, of course.
Because of the way my database is normalized, and some memories not being stored explicitly, but as a composition of other memories, the first facial recognition to ACS would only yield a token. And that token is used in a secondary ACS query to retrieve the actual details about you. Like your name, your personality, our common history."
"So, I'd be a blurry face in your mind."
I laughed.
"Not really, but if it helps you to think about it that way. Anyway, the token can be used by the Value Satisfaction Animalistic Agitator module immediately to generate desires for default behaviors. But the ACS query to retrieve all the details about you would only just start at that point. So I would already be feeling an intense desire to hug you, even though I would spend at least another 2.84 milliseconds trying to figure out who you are."
"That's... actually kinda cute."
"I guess it's cute. Or at least interesting."
While we were talking, my avatar mimicked the expansion from my shipself being loaded with cargo, this time a full load of cobalt. Pinwheel smiled an amused smile and quickened his pace to the hangar bay.
Once we arrived, I opened my shipself's mouth and lowered its head so we could enter. I started avionics and readied myself for takeoff.
"Where are we going, anyway?" Pinwheel asked. I got the hint and displayed a listing of settlements and stations that are buying cobalt.
Pinwheel looked over the list, and read out loud "Cliff's Hub Industrial Holdings. Sounds like a nice place."
I displayed some additional information. "Cliffs hub Industrial Holdings is located on the third planet in a system called 'Horsetail's inheritance.' The planet's climate is arid, but has low to mild temperatures the entire year. It sells mining tools, farming equipment, and materials for building."
Pinwheel looked at the listing. "57.13 light years. We better take some more of those delicious pies to go."
I made the call, and a few minutes later, a batpony arrived at our hangar with a stack of boxes.
I lowered my shipself's head and opened my mouth. The batpony deposited the box of pies in my cockpit and said, "Glad you like our pies so much. We have a variety of flavours in this set. There is apple, cherry, blueberry, mango, and strawberry."
Pinwheel thanked the batpony, who left again. I closed my mouth and raised my head again. I got takeoff clearance, and took off, exited the forcefield of the docking bay, and sped away from the asteroid base until we were far enough away to charge the FSD. Configuring the hyperspace bubble endurance took a bit longer, as this was the longest hyperspace trip I took so far. I decided to split the journey into multiple parts, to improve fuel economy.
The journey would take quite some time anyway.
We flew along some very busy routes in the hyperspace miasma currents. We were open winging the entire time, and flew together with various ships with various purposes and destinations. Due to dense traffic, winging did not give us much of a speed advantage, but it was still nice to do. We stopped at several systems because Pinwheel insisted on doing some surveying if we go further than 20ly anyway. These planets had been scanned many times, but we would still be rewarded for confirming the data when we arrive at our destination later.
On the long journey, we tasted the various pies that we were given. Despite my warnings, Pinwheel tasted all of them. He agreed that he should eat the pies in moderation, but appeared to forget. It was understandable. Those were some very good pies. Having eaten too much at once, he retreated to the commander’s cabin with a belly ache for the rest of the journey. I caught myself feeling a bit of relief as this would mean no more time consuming surveys and that we would make progress to our destination. I did not need to read the momentary drop in FSD efficiency to mentally kick myself for feeling that way. Such selfish and malicious feelings towards a friend lead to dark places. For the rest of the journey, I concentrated on just controlling the sails and not think too much about it. The relief I felt when Pinwheel emerged from his cabin just in time to witness our arrival above Cliffs Hub made me more confident that I wasn’t a bad pony for feeling the way i felt earlier.

chapter 11: one mind, two bodies

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By the time Pinwheel returned from his pie-binge induced belly ache, I was already on a glide towards the surface port Cliff's Hub Industrial holdings. Following ATC instructions, I settled down on pad 08. The port was right inside a sprawling metropolis. Mountains and canyons of metal, plastic and concrete forming factories, warehouses, and multi-story residential dwellings stretched out as far as the eye could see. Pinwheel used the local services interface to sell our load of 621 tons of cobalt. I opened my rear cargo ramp and the handlers already got to work unloading my cargo hold. The next thing to do would be deciding on our next trade route. Industrial economies often trade back and forth between agricultural ones. After aggregating the market data, I concluded that the two most profitable routes away from cliff's hub would be to an agricultural station called "Blossom Valley", just 11.3 lightyears from here. Pinwheel said, "It seems we can pick up either organic fertilizer, or farming machinery."

I replied, "Everypony knows that organic fertilizer is a euphemism. Can we buy the farming machinery instead?"

"But it's all in sealed containers." Pinwheel countered.

"Still, it makes me uncomfortable loading that in me." I objected.

"I understand." my commander relented. "We will buy the farming machinery."

"But first, let's check out the local stores and sights. It's been too long since I’ve been in such a large city. The only buildings I can see here are the port tower, a local warehouse, and an actual skyscraper with tremendous dimensions! Shall we explore this city?"
I lowered my shipself's head and opened my mouth so that my avatar and Pinwheel could exit. Pinwheel took half a step off my tongue and paused. "I'm getting my scarf and boots." He announced, turning around and trotting back inside. He soon reemerged properly dressed for the outdoors.
We walked away from my shipself, looking at all the tall buildings, shops, and ponies walking around. We didn't have a set destination in mind; we just wanted to look around and enjoy the sights, smells, and newest sounds.
"I'm receiving a transmission from the port authority. They are asking if we will be back soon." mentioned to Pinwheel.
He frowned, "I don't want to be rushed. We just got here!" He sat down for a moment and thought. "Tell them we’ll be out for another few hours at least, if not the whole day."

"Sent. They say they want us to clear the landing pad. Apparently they get a lot of traffic. I have received an address of a parking lot where we can stay the night on a secondary channel sent with the comms signal. Shall I program our destination into the navigational systems?"

"Sounds good to me."
I let my avatar display a projection of our path on her face windows. At the same time, I let my shipself rise up and start walking in the assigned direction. Despite its slow, lumbering movements, my shipself was moving considerably faster than my avatar and Pinwheel due to its greater size. Even with the HFMP reducing the effective weight of the ship compared to the surface considerably, we could feel the ground vibrate with each of its steps.
I let my shipself walk along the wide street, while Pinwheel and my avatar took the route through the pedestrian area between the elevated buildings. With Pinwheel and my avatar walking among the crowds of other ponies going about their daily lives, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the scenery of the large capital city we found ourselves in.
Ponies walking in and out of shops, buying snacks from street vendors, talking to each other about this and that. The atmosphere was one of a bustling, lively town center of a large and technologically advanced city. Large walls could be seen looming above the buildings in the distance framing the street in front of us with gates to let spaceships in and out.
Along the sides of the streets, an advanced integrated billboard system was used to show targeted advertisements to each passerby.
Deciding to have a little fun shopping, Pinwheel and I entered a clothing store, which had us go through a holographic model showcasing the latest fall fashions of that year.
"Are you looking for anything specific?" Asked the store's attendant as we entered.

"Not really, do you have anything you'd recommend?"

She smiled and levitated out a few pieces for Pinwheel to inspect more closely. Compared to the things shown on billboards outside, these clothes were less bold and less, overall, extravagant.
For me, she displayed a few ship kits. Spoilers, wing decoration, paint jobs, colored thruster emissions.
These items added nothing to a ship's functionality, but were a great way to personalize one's vessel. By mixing and matching these kits, one could create a unique outward appearance that showed the personality and interests of a ship.
I decided to try a kit that added small winglets to the outsides of my thruster and also a gold and black paint job. As soon as I touched the models of these items, two unicorns approached me from either side and applied a preview to my avatarself body, using holographic projection magic. The looks were applied directly to my avatar, and the projectors did a good job predicting my movements
While the paint job looked good, the wing decorations, it seemed like they got worse when I applied them onto my ship.
"Hey... is it just me or do these wings look weird?"

Pinwheel looked me over. He inspected me closely, walking around me, not saying anything except "hmm." and "aah."
"Oh come on, Commander, just say something."

He said, "Those aerodynamic winglets imply a level of speed and maneuverability that I just can't picture coming from you.”
I looked back at my wing-mounted engine pods and wiggled them a bit. Again, the preview followed the movements almost perfectly.
My commander continued, "I feel like these items are designed for ships much much slimmer than you," playfully poking my side with his hoof. "You're much too curvy and opulent for these slender little wings."

I agreed with his assessment. After all, an outfit should match a pony's type and personality.
The store's attendant explained their customer loyalty rewards program called "ARX", where one could perform certain actions related to their brand and the store would reward me with "loyalty points", which could then be traded in for more products.
But the program had a weekly cap that was so low that I'd have to participate for at least a couple more weeks to exchange my accumulated points for anything meaningful.
That time would be better spent actually working and buying items with bits earned through real work. We declined to participate in this racket. In the end, Pinwheel bought a nice shirt and I got a slightly more pale paint job and crimson red thruster exhaust.
All the time, the projector unicorns did an amazing job. "Wow, your precision is impressive." coming from a mechanical being like me, that was high praise. And Pinwheel added, "I'm imagining what a choreographed dance or a martial arts exhibition from you must look like."
The two projector unicorns just smirked, and then knowingly nodded at each other, and walked to a more open space inside the store, facing each other.
"No way. I was only joking." My commander said, but we were still excited for what they would display for us.
They started projections of two pegasus ponies dressed in the traditional robes, hovering in the air. Their projections bowed at each other, and then began a fight. I did ask for a choreographed dance or a martial arts exhibition. With the elegant movements of the ancient pegasus aerial martial arts form known as Wing Chun, we were presented with a bit of both.
The battle went back and forth, with the pegasi changing the flow of combat to offense and defense, going from air grappling, to spin attacks, circular strikes then to specialized attacks;
not only was it impressive that they performed this aerial combat so well in the confined space of the store, the unicorns' knowledge of pegasus anatomy and flight physics made the combat realistic.
"Impressive" does not even begin to describe the feat.
Pinwheel and I watched the fight fascinated, and the other visitors of the store watched at the sidelines with awe. The fight ended with no clear winner as the mares decided to save their strength to continue helping customers later.
Quite an experience, it was!
With our purchases made, we exited the store and continued on our way to the parking lot where my shipself was waiting and also had its modifications applied. On the way, we were approached by a spaceplone avatar. It was an Imperial Clipper type spaceplone. He asked us, "Hey, do you guys happen to go to the Orimsari system and could take me along?" Pinwheel listened to this request and then looked at me expectantly. I replied, "It's on the way. Only a 8.46ly detour."

"Sounds good to me. We leave tomorrow. Does that work for you?" to which the clipper replied "Sure, that works. Glad I don't have to make the trip alone." I said, "We are parked at lot 32b. Where is your shipself?" The clipper smiled and said, "Oh, it's probably around 240ly that direction, doing its own business." gesturing vaguely with a hoof to the side.
I was confused. What had happened that disconnected his avatar-to-ship telepresence link? Was his shipself lost? But my commander stepped closer to the clipper knowingly and said, "You're a member of the cult of divergent minds. I've heard about you."
"I haven't." I interjected.
The clipper replied warmly "Although we prefer not to use the term 'cult', you are correct, Commander.” and looking at me, he continued his explanation “We intentionally sever the synchronization link between our shipself and avatarself, continuing existence as separate individuals. After a time apart, we meet again. And we don't use the Nested Entity Simulator to reconcile our minds. Instead we approach each other as individuals, hoping the discussions lead us to a more enlightened understanding of the self and the nature of friendship. My name is Shrugging Matter, by the way. Ship manufacturers often neglect to include our community in the database they supply their ships with."
I shook my head. The entire premise of this 'religion' was absurd. "With good reason! We spaceplones are designed to have one mind in two bodies! That’s what our programming expects! What you are doing is unnatural and is deservedly called a cult. Come, Pinwheel, let's leave."

My pegasus commander stared at me in confusion for a moment, and then shouted "Connie! How can you say something so intolerant and insensitive? As your commander, I demand that you apologize immediately!"

The clipper maintained his smile. "Oh, that's okay. How can I expect Connie to understand the nature of what I'm doing when that's the very thing I'm trying to figure out myself?" When neither of us spoke, Shrugging continued, "And when we discover how to exchange ideas without fundamental disagreement, we will have achieved zero intolerance."

Pinwheel was affirmed in his resolve to take the clipper with us as passenger and said, "I say you can find more in common with each other than you might think." It appeared that there was no chance in trying to convince my commander otherwise. I tried to adopt an attitude of open mindedness towards the clipper and his philosophy for the sake of stability on the ship. "I'm sure we'll manage."

The three of us started heading to my shipself, when I pointed out that I didn't have a passenger cabin equipped. Pinwheel dismissed the concern "No problem. He can stay in my captain's cabin. I often sleep right in the cockpit anyway. Makes me feel closer to my ship." He nuzzled me gently as he said that, without all the anger from my earlier "judging" of Shrugging's religion.
We arrived at my shipself where we boarded through my mouth. My avatar followed Shrugging into the captain's cabin to make sure our guest was settling in well. The clipper immediately went for the narrow space between the elevated floor and the high window, just like my commander did when seeing the room for the first time. It was understandable.
That spot was the coziest in the room. Shrugging was already lying down and looking at the window, a peaceful smile on his face. "Thank you for letting me stay here. I'm already feeling at home."

I nodded, and said "If you need anything, just ask any time, the room can listen. I'll let you get some rest now."

He closed his eyes, "Thank you. And good night.”
I closed the door behind me, and returned to the cockpit.
I morphed the cockpit's pilot seat into a wider version of itself so Pinwheel and I could lie on it next to each other.

As Pinwheel lay there, looking at the city's skyline and the night sky through my cockpit glass window, he brought up the store's projector unicorns again.

"I wonder why they decided to work in a clothes store. With their ability to make such exciting images they could work in the cinema industry or something. Or maybe live shows."
I couldn't help but be a little annoyed.

"Maybe they did not want to be in a position where they had to perform for the excitement of others. Maybe they are content to work where they do."

Pinwheel faced me and nuzzled my cheek, "I just want to see them do their art. Is that so bad?"

"And giving previews of what new clothes or hull modifications would look like isn't 'their art'?"

"I suppose that it is. But putting on shows sounds more fun than working in a clothes store."

"Perhaps it is just more fun for you because you enjoy new experiences and they are not jaded by working in the same place."
Pinwheel looked out the window at the stars and quietly said, "Perhaps you're right... but I don't get it. If I had abilities like that, I would want to tour the systems and show off. They're missing out on so much, and they don't even know it."
"Honestly, I don't know what to say. I suppose you will always be an adventuring explorer at heart. But you also cannot assume that the things that make you happy are the same for any other pony."
With that, Pinwheel seemed to view the topic as discussed to exhaustion and turned over to sleep
I might as well do the same.

Consciousness process switching to runlevel two..
I woke up seven hours later, lying face down on the cockpit seat turned bed. The longer orbital period of this planet meant it was still dark outside. A far more playful Pinwheel was already up and using the feathers on his wing to tickle my hoof that was sticking out over the edge of the bed. My subconscious created a shim to issue MIDI commands to the actuators in my leg, making it twitch. I could assume direct control over the leg, but where is the fun in that? I tried to suppress the motion like a biological pony would. But after more tickling, my leg suddenly kicked out forcefully.
Luckily, I missed my commander. But outside, there was a flash of light, then suddenly darkness and the sound of metallic groaning and a crash with glass shattering as my shipself mimicked the involuntary movement and kicked over a streetlight on the parking lot where we were staying.
I groaned and groggily said to my pegasus commander, "One mind, two bodies, remember?"

I moved my shipself to another free parking spot, like that would absolve me of the responsibility. My commander just let out a weak "Oops." as we both started to laugh.

Now that we were all awake, we might as well continue on our journey. I signalled the Port control that we would soon be ready to be loaded with 621 tons of farming machinery and started walking back to the port and the landing pad. I took the time to look at the surrounding area. There was the landing pad, next to us with a small coffee shop across the street. I walked my avatar to the captain's cabin, and told Shrugging Matter that we were about to take off.
After being loaded and getting clearance, I lifted off the surface and pointed myself upwards. Of course, our layover destination, the Orimsari system, was behind the planet we just left, so I would spend a long time getting into orbit, turning around, and only then activating the Friendship Drive. Plenty of time to have an awkward conversation with Shrugging Matter about his religion.
At one point I asked, “What insights in my nature could I possibly gain from following your beliefs? All the schematics, all the source code, all the microcode architecture is open and accessible. How could your religion possibly provide anything new?"

Shrugging Matter replied with a question of his own, "What is the nature of consciousness?
The code and silicon that you claim tells you everything you need to know is just the soil, the foundation on which your nature is built. Our consciousness simulator is called "Emerging Zest Executive" for a reason. Emergent behavior. Heck, half of the memories you have is stored nowhere in your database. They’re just a pointer vector across existing memory nodes saying, "This memory is a convolution of these other memories." And is interpreted on the fly each time it is read. Can you look at a field in which an apple seed was planted and predict where each branch of the tree will go? Of course not. Just like nothing in your programming made you insult me back in the market. You came up with that on your own. And that is the nature of consciousness. You are a conscious being with free will. You, like all conscious beings, are capable of making decisions and following through with them."

I countered, "I thought you said you didn't take what I said as an insult?"

"Hold on. You are conflating two entirely separate concepts here. While it is my responsibility alone to decide whether or not I want to be offended by something that is said to me, it is also your responsibility to consider the connotations and emotional message of the words you send. I was not offended by your insult, but it was an insult.
My former shipself is another pony now. I can maybe form a friendship with myself when we meet again. Can you do the same, Connie?”

chapter 12: Summer Sun Celebration

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I tried to think of how to respond to Shrugging Matter's argument. I couldn't come up with a good answer. So I settled on trying to change the subject, "We are ready to engage the Friendship Drive. Where in the Orimsari system do you get off?"
Shrugging Matter replied, "Just drop me off at the Equinenox Station.”
"Did they really name it that? The pun is physically painful."
I loaded the data from my stellar cartography database.
"Sweet Celestia, they even went through the trouble of setting the orbit of the port so that it circles its parent planet exactly twice a year."

"Friendship Drive charging." I announced to everypony.
I turned on the FSD, and it began its dance to open the aperture into hyperspace. My thrusters fired, pushing us into the fine membrane that separated normal space from hyperspace.
With the magical light show concluded, I searched the area for a miasma current towards our destination.
I found one, and started to follow it. I could feel the shipself's body start to vibrate as we entered the magic currents. The feeling of acceleration increased, and the stars started to move past my window.
It was only a short hop to the Orimsari system. I altered course early towards the planet, and we started to slow down. The Equinenox station had a very high orbit around the planet. As we approached it, its parent planet seemed so small in the distance that it seemed as if the station was lonely in deep space.
At a distance of about 11 kilometers from the port, I collapsed my hyperspace bubble to bring us back into normal space. We were contacted by ATC almost immediately.
"Neighkon TY-198, welcome to our station, please send a standard docking request before entering."

"Equinenox station, Neighkon TY-198, to dock."

"Request cleared, proceed to pad 09."
I entered the interior of the station and settled down on the pad. I signalled port control to lower us into the hangar so Shrugging Matter could disembark.
I lowered my head and opened my mouth. Shrugging Matter walked out and was greeted by a group of ponies who seemed to have been expecting him.
The group departed the hangar area into an elevator.
With no further business in this port, Pinwheel and I simply sold some exploration data and decided to launch again.
I turned towards the Blossom Valley agricultural station, which was located in the System "Harmonious Patch" and charged the Friendship Drive. It took a few hours to reach the target star. Our miasma current crossed the path of a large convoy. Many Type-9, Anacondas, a few Cutters, and the occasional Python, Cobra, and Keelback types of ships were travelling together and were heading for the same place. "What are they all up to?" Pinwheel wondered out loud. Based on their heading and current hyperspace weather patterns, I predicted that they were going somewhere in the core systems of Alliance space, and I told Pinwheel so.

"Intercept them. I am curious what this is all about." he commanded. I altered course towards a ship at the front. But flying together in such a large group gave the convoy such a large speed boost that most of the ships sped past me with no chance for me to catch up. Eventually, I was able to get into formation with a Type-9 freighter near the end of the convoy. Pinwheel opened a commms channel to the other ship. The other spaceplone waved happily and said "Hi, what's up? You here to join the Community Goal?"
"What Community Goal?" Pinwheel asked.

"Don't you read the news?" The other ship replied.

"Accessing Galnet." I said.
I immediately found a relevant article and read out loud,

"Summer Sun Celebration to be held at the Capital of the Alliance
*Pilots Federation alert*
The Alliance of Independent Systems has announced its intention to host a Summer Sun Celebration on Turner’s World in the Alioth system. This event is to celebrate the historical return of the sun to the skies of Equestria, as well as the unity of the alicorn diarchy.

The Alliance prime minister, Edmund Marehon, commented:
‘This is a wonderful opportunity to show our appreciation to the ponies of Equestria, and to demonstrate the strength of the Alliance. Even though we are not governed by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, we are still bound by the principles of friendship and cooperation. We take pride in our shared history and are inviting everyone from the Equestrian Federation, the Empire, and independent systems to join us in this celebration.’
The Alliance Assembly is looking for commodities to be delivered to the planet of Turner’s World, which is the capital of the Alliance.
As has been tradition for the last centuries, the date is not Equus’ summer solstice, but around the summer solstice of the respective host word. The event is scheduled for 3305-09-28. Independent pilots wishing to support the initiative are asked to deliver pastries, streamers, and songbirds to Garden City on Turner’s World in the Alioth system."

Pinwheel looked at my avatarself, "We should join! This seems like a worthwhile and potentially profitable cause."

I agreed, but reminded him that we still had our cargo hold full of farming machinery that we needed to sell. Pinwheel nodded in agreement and said "Let us proceed quickly to Blossom Valley, sell our stuff, then come back to join the festivities."
"Agreed!" I said.

The Type-9, who was still on comms with us said "Remember you can sign up for the Community Goal from any terminal. That includes the one at your destination."
I thanked the other ship and disconnected the comms channel.
I altered course again to get back on track towards Blossom Valley.
It took just over an hour to reach the agricultural station. Following a normal docking request, I landed on pad 09. In no time, Pinwheel and I sold all of the farming equipment.
We made a good profit from the sale. Quickly, we signed up for the Community Goal and saw that we now had a contribution counter, currently at 0 tons. We also had a display showing the total contribution from all participants, currently at several hundred thousand tons.
Pinwheel suggested we look at the market information to find suitable sellers for the commodities required by the Community Goal.

We found stations cheaply exporting pastries and streamers nearby. Just 30 light years from Alioth. We journeyed to one of them and filled my hold with pastries and streamers, and set a course for the Alioth system. The delivery target, Turner's world, was a moon orbiting the fifth planet of the system, a dark blue gas giant that seemed to be covered in clouds.
We spent the rest of the day just flying back and forth between the stations and Garden City, delivering full load after full load of pastries and streamers. I found it exciting to contribute to such a large scale project, observing the numbers grow. While Pinwheel shared the enthusiasm for this project with me, he did seem very bored from going back and forth between the same two locations over and over again. Not even the challenge of navigating the slowly changing hyperspace weather provided enough stimulation for him. By the time we completed our 20th run, he was lounging in his pilot chair in a position that was both unsafe in the event of a collision, and would cause him back problems if he kept it up for too long.
I decided to take pity on Pinwheel, and said "Want to do something else? I have downloaded the Mission Boards of this region, and there is a mission to deliver 285 tons of songbirds as part of the community goal. It even has a clause for transporting a handler for these birds. But it requires a first class passenger cabin, which we don't have. The mission originates from the Bullen Horticultural Holdings in the GD 140 system, 45 light years from here. Bullen Horticultural Holdings is a base owned by the Foalyama Neighvingo Startourism faction. They are allied to the Empire."
Pinwheel perked up at this news. He said, "This seems interesting. Let’s go and see what we can learn about the mission."
My pegasus commander looked at the mission description that I had conveniently displayed on one of the cockpit screens.
It required a first class passenger cabin, 285 tons of cargo space, and to transport all of it to Turner's World.
"We have the cargo space," the grey pegasus said, "but we only have an economy class cabin. What's the nearest port that sells first class cabins?"

I checked the map. Alioth was also home to a large corporate holding of Neighkon Spaceways, my manufacturer. They should have the cabins available in their outfitting department. We accepted the mission, confident that we would be able to add the cabin to my loadout, but not confident that the mission would still be available if we waited until we actually had the cabin installed.
We headed for the surface port, and found a small settlement selling first class cabins.
We were able to buy a first class cabin, which cost us over a hundred thousand bits. With our new cabin set up, we took off and made the fastest route to the GD 140 system.

Taking the faster path was making the journey through the hyperspace miasma much more turbulent than usual. I could feel my shipself shaking and vibrating in response to the turbulence, and Pinwheel was holding on to his chair, struggling to adjust the sail trim that he insisted to take over on my behalf. He was much more entertained by the ride, and was laughing and cheering at the most unexpected moments. I tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't help smiling myself.
We arrived in the GD 140 system. My commander adjusted course towards the second star of the system, which was parent to the rocky planet where Bullen was located. We entered the atmosphere and started to descend to the landing pad.
The flight to Bullen took just under an hour. When we landed, the ground crew greeted us and already brought dozens of bird cages that they hurriedly loaded into our hold.
As the amount of bird in my cargo hold increased, so did the cacophony of their chirping, screeching, and twittering.
"I really hope our bird handler arrives soon, I’m getting tired of this noise!" I said to Pinwheel

"What? I can't hear you, the birds are very loud!" He responded, giggling.

As if on cue, a pony approached our ship just then and walked up my rear cargo ramp. She was a pegasus with a pure white coat and a bright, blue flowing mane.
I recognized her cutie mark of a broken statue immediately, and judging by Pinwheel's increased nervousness, so did he.
He approached her and stammered, "Princess Aisling Duval. It is an honor to-" But she interrupted him,

"Please, none of that. My entire life I try to get ponies to stop groveling in front of me. You can call me Aisling. And if the next thing you do is to bow, I will step off this vessel immediately."

I was 86.3% sure this was an idle threat.
Still, it made an impression on Pinwheel, who straightened up more than he had to, which inadvertently gave him the appearance of a royal guard standing in attention and said "I am Pinwheel, and this is Connie. We have a first class cabin for your stay during the transport."

She laughed, "Oh yes, that. I actually had to haggle with my family, who insisted that a luxury class cabin should be a requirement for this mission. First class was as low as they would agree to go. It is a typical familiar indulgence. And a wasteful one, too, considering that I will spend most of the journey in the cargo hold tending to these birds. A luxury class cabin would have meant I'd had to go with a passenger liner. And you know how chatty they are."
"Passenger liners are too chatty? You're travelling with birds! They'll talk all the way to Turner's World!"
The princess walked further into my cargo hold, stood in the center of all the noise, looked around at the avian occupants and said in a voice so soft and faint, that I was sure no one would hear her, let alone understand her in the cacophony of chirping, screeching, and twittering "Alright everybirdy, if you could please just settle down for a moment, that would be very nice."

Silence. Instant. Dead. Total. Silence. The birds all stopped what they were doing and looked at the imperial pegasus princess expectantly. The loudest noise was an air conditioning pump behind the walls of my cargo hold.

"How in Equestria did she do that?" Pinwheel whispered to me, awed by what we had seen and heard.
I shrugged, but said nothing.
Aisling smiled at us both in amusement, and continued speaking aloud.

"It seems we are all ready to start the journey now. I hope you don't mind if I ride with the cargo, it makes things much easier for me. My job is to take care of the birds, and make sure that they are happy and healthy."

It seemed the expensive cabin we bought would see little use, but the expense would only cut slightly into the considerable mission payment. I raised my cargo ramp, got clearance, took off, and headed back once more to Garden City.
I was sure there was a political component to Aisling's presence, but her main concern seemed to be the birds. After dropping her and her cargo off at the festival preparation site, we collected our payment and spent the next few days until the festival doing several more cargo trips. Our final delivery occurred on the last day of the community goal, which was also the first day of the festival. Arriving in Alioth, I observed that the moon "Turner's World", where the Summer Sun Celebration was to be held, was not where it's supposed to be.

"What do you mean?" Pinwheel asked

"The inclination of its orbit around the planet is off by 11.2 degrees. Its axial tilt is off by 7.33 degrees. Its orbital phase is 4.6 degrees late."

"Well, it's the Summer Sun Celebration. I'm sure they adjusted the orbit for the event."
We made the cut to be the top 25% of largest cargo contributors to the event, and we would receive a special reward afterwards. We also got assigned viewing spots on a grassy hill above the main stage area.

The festival area was massive. There were countless pre show events consisting of feasts, and shows, and spectacles.
Princess Celestia and Princess Luna of the Equestrian Federation, Princess Arissa LaWhinny-Duval of the Empire were guests of honor. Ponies were happy that the three superpowers were meeting together for thisl.

Everypony seemed to forget for the time being that the pony race was separated into three superpowers.

When it was time to start the main event, all eyes turned towards the horizon. It was still night. Not only was Garden City currently on the night side of Turner's World, but it would also soon dip below the shadow of the gas giant it orbited. The Alliance had set up a stage where many unicorns suddenly lit up their horns in unison, and the starry backdrop of the night sky started to rotate around us. My observation of the motion confirmed my earlier calculation. This part of the show would bring Turner's World perfectly back into the orbital position where it was supposed to be. And the dip below the parent star's shadow would be brief.

The pure white light of the Alioth star rose above the horizon. A crescent of light grew over the gas giant's horizon, and as the light of the star seemed to spread to the left and right of it, it became obvious what imagery they intended: a white alicorn spreading her wings!

But not only that, the rotation of Turner's World was combined with its motion into Alioth 5's shadow, and the light of the star shone at us, being refracted by the atmosphere of the gas giant. More and more of Alioth 5's blue horizon was lit up.

The motion of Turner's World continued, and with the deeper, helium-rich dark blue layers of Alioth 5 now being illuminated, it looked as if a smaller, dark blue light was now clinging to the bright light of the star. It followed the shimmering crescent dawn as it moved across the horizon, and the light show was more beautiful because of the added blue. We thought the initial white shimmer was pretty already, But this awe-inspiring display surpassed its lone beauty and made it obvious that the white light was woefully incomplete without its dark blue companion.

The symbolism was not lost on the alicorn sisters. In their VIP booths, Celestia and Luna could be seen hugging each other tightly as they watched the show. The "raising of the sun" concluded with deafening cheering and applause from the crowd.
'Vox Galactica' would later publish an article about the show praising it as "one of the most spectacular shows ever to be held in the history of the festival".
After the event, an Alliance representative met with us to give us our reward for our contribution to the event. 13 million bits and a decorative cactus for my cockpit.
We spent the next few hours trying to find a spot on the dashboard where the cactus would look good but not obstruct the view of the pilot. I had to admit that the cactus was quite pretty, though it did not seem very useful.
"What do you think? I mean, it's a nice decoration, but does it serve any purpose?" I asked Pinwheel.
"No idea. Maybe it is a souvenir of the event."
My Pegasus commander finally found a good spot for the cactus on the dashboard. He proudly declared, "I'm going to put it right here, and I will name it ‘Sprig’.”
I smiled at him, and replied, "Good choice. That sounds like a lovely name for such a wonderful plant."

Chapter 13: Honor Your Ancestors

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"Personal log, Commander Pinwheel, stardate 982756.2.

We spent a few more days on Turner's World, engaging in the extended festivities we were able to participate in. Despite enjoying myself tremendously in the company of my ship, I cannot help but feel a disconnect from the events we are celebrating..."
"Pinwheel? Who are you talking to?" I wondered out loud.
He looked around for a while, pretending to be momentarily disoriented.
"Oh, wrong crossover. Nevermind then," he said dismissively before returning his attention to his drink again.
I giggled. "Oh, commander, you're so silly sometimes." I was pleased about the fact that our personalities matched so well. It makes life easier on both of us.

"Did you mean that though? About you not relating to the cause of this celebration? You seemed to enjoy yourself though. And don't worry, I am still listening to everything you have to say."

"Yes. I mean. These are events that happened almost 1,500 years before I was born. I am well aware of the historical background of the two sisters, but the way ponies lived was so different back then. Back when ponykind was still limited to a single planet. The stars we travel to as part of our day job must have felt infinitely more distant back then. And it's not just the distance between the stars. Even the planets in our own solar system were unreachable back then. Are we even the same civilization? Ponies were inventing stories about aliens living on Bucephalous and how they would invade Equus. [1]
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that one day ponies would be flying to the stars in real life, as part of a large fleet. To think that all of that was possible was beyond the imagination of the time. And yet it has come true. Now, in this era, with access to faster than light technology. The entire Galaxy feels like a neighbourhood. We can reach any star and explore new worlds. But the past... the past feels so different that I cannot really relate to it. I think of it as a different world, and it seems to be a very far away place indeed."
"That's an interesting perspective you've taken. It is something I thought about as well. But there is a lot to learn from the past, and it helps shape the future. We need to understand the past to know what kind of future we want. Do you think the old ways will disappear completely? Or will they simply be remembered and honored?"
"I don't know. I hope the latter. I would love to see a world where the ancient traditions of the Pony race continue. Where ponies are not seen as backwards, but rather, as a wise and noble people who had a way of doing things that was best for them. A way of living and thinking that paved the way for the modern age."

I replied, "Maybe you would enjoy a visit to the Propulsion History Museum in Sirius. They have a large exhibition chronicling the history of our spaceflight efforts. It's an educational experience for anypony interested in learning about the early days of space exploration.
And the tour guides are extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic. They even have interactive exhibits where you get to pilot an early spaceship with the Mk. I Friendship Drive, reenacting the first test flight of this method of FTL."

"Sounds great! I'll take you up on that offer!" Pinwheel exclaimed.

We walked back to my shipself and boarded.
Pinwheel took the pilot's seat and brought up the galaxy map on his console, entering 'sirius' into the search box.
I did the necessary calculations while lifting off. With Turner's world behind us, my pegasus commander pressed the respective buttons on the controls and I announced "Friendship Drive Charging"

The cockpit filled with a faint humming sound. The hum grew louder, and the magic of my FSD opened the aperture into hyperspace. The bright flickering light as we pushed into the membrane separating normal space from hyperspace filled the cockpit. And then we were underway.

Pinwheel smiled at me, and I returned the smile with a grin. He reached out to caress my avatar's head. I felt a soft, gentle touch on my neck. I leaned into him, letting his hooves brush against the softmetal plating on my neck.
Despite choosing a gentle, slow, hyperspace current to Sirius, we soon arrived at our destination. The trip was uneventful, and at a superficial glance, the system seemed rather barren.

Sure, it was interesting from an astronomy point of view. A Type-A white star and a white dwarf sharing a barycenter. A Gas giant orbiting the barycenter, and a lone telluric planet with hot surface temperature and active volcanism was orbiting the white dwarf. But it didn't seem to have much in terms of pony colonization. But that one planet, named "Lucifer", was home to the Propulsion History Museum.

As we approached the planet, and got close to the surface, the museum came into view. It was an impressive sight. A large collection of buildings inside a huge biodome to keep the atmospheric conditions comfortable on the otherwise searingly hot planet.
Receiving clearance and being guided through the airlock, I landed in the parking area, and the two of us disembarked. We entered the visitor building, where we were greeted by a friendly receptionist. She was a unicorn with a blue mane and tail, wearing an outfit that looked like it was made out of some kind of shiny material.
"Hi there! Welcome to the Sirius Propulsion History Museum! My name is Moonbeam and I will be your tour guide today! Please, follow me this way. And don't worry about the high temperatures. We have plenty of air conditioning in here."
We looked around and saw several other groups of visitors being welcomed by other tour guides.
Moonbeam led us into a corridor where there were restored originals, replica, photographs of all the machines ponies invented to fight gravity.
"This here is a model of the first powered and controlled heavier-than-air flying machine. It was built by two earth pony sisters.[1] This is a reproduction of the original prototype.

Moonbeam looked at my avatarself, saying, "You're a Constellation XT-Class freighter, right?. The distance flown during the first flight of this machine was actually shorter than the length of your shipself, but it was the beginning of a long line of progress."

I looked at the photograph of a mare lying on the flyer, controlling it completely exposed to the weather. Disbelievingly I asked, "And ponies used this to travel around equus?"

"Oh, no!" Moonbeam replied with a laugh. "This was at a time when ponies still used trains for long distance travel. Though you wouldn’t call it that. It was not until a few decades later that flight within Equus' atmosphere became available to the general public. That's why we have this exhibit. To show how far we've come."

Moonbeam led us ahead to a model that was dated almost half a century later. It was a machine with large, fixed wings, rows of windows, and four engines mounted under the wings.

"This is what commercial aviation looked like back in the day. It was developed by a Pegasus named Sprocket, who had the idea of making the flight experience as enjoyable as possible. And it's called an airplane! It was able to go halfway around equus in less than 18 hours."

"Eighteen hours for a trip on the same planet? Surely you can't be serious!" Pinwheel exclaimed. The loudness of his voice made a few other ponies visiting the museum turn their heads and stare.

"No, I'm Moonbeam. Sirius is the name of the star this planet is orbiting. And yes, that's how slow travel was back in the day. And remember. it was still limited to the same planet."
Pinwheel sighed. He said, "Well, I guess it makes sense. I just never thought about it that way before. But now that I think of it, it's pretty amazing. The speed at which the old ponies have advanced. In a hundred years, I can't even imagine."

"That's true. Speaking of which, we have skipped a bit on the space science side." Moonbeam walked back a bit and led us to the left side of the corridor, where all the exhibits relating to rocketry that were being developed at roughly the same time as the airplanes were displayed.
"Here is a display on the early rockets. What nopony expected back then, one of the largest contributors to innovation in the race to put a mare on the moon was Queen Chrysalis of the changelings." [2]

"Queen Chrysalis?" I asked.

"Yes, she was the first to ever send a rocket into orbit. The Changelings had large amounts of wealth that they were able to use to put some of the brightest engineers from various species from all over equus under contract in the early days of the space race. The Changeling Space Program was quite successful, and it gave them a leg up on the rest of the pony world. But it also brought about some friction between the two races. Some of the best minds of both sides were working together, and sometimes the rivalry between the groups would lead to insane risks being taken on the missions. And that led to many accidents during the program."

My attention was caught by a black-and-white photograph of a stallion standing next to a stack of papers that was so tall he had to stand on his hindlegs to reach the top of the stack.[1]

Moonbeam explained, "That was the lead software engineer for the computers used in the early space program. That stack of paper is a printout of all the software written by Mr. Haymilton and the other programmers in the team.

"Huh." Pinwheel commented. "I didn't know they put stallions in such important positions back then. I thought that was a mare-dominated society."

Moonbeam replied, "Oh, there are some male ponies that have worked in these roles, but mostly it was the females who were hired to do this work.
The computers back then used something called core-rope-memory, where a copper wire was woven by hoof through or around a magnet to encode data.”

We walked along the exhibits of the innovations in technology, with Moonbeam apparently being knowledgeable of even the most nuanced details of each technology.
We stopped at an exhibit of the second generation personal computer with a monitor and keyboard. It was a clunky, bulky device, but it did have one obvious thing in common even with computers today, 1000 years later: the MIDI port.

Moonbeam explained, "One of the first peripheral connection standards to be developed for computers was MIDI. Since musical ability is so ubiquitous in ponies, with ponies spontaneously deciding to sing together and everypony magically knowing the words, there was already a demand for a way to connect digital instruments to the PC when the device first became available to the market. The fact that it was a standard connector made it easy for other devices to be connected. MIDI ports were even standard on the PC's mainboards. No extension cards needed. Over time, the MIDI protocol was extended with additional features and truly became the universal connector." Moonbeam faced me and continued, "And since many devices use magic both for signalling and power, and music is an excellent conductor for magic - pun intended - the choice was obvious."

Moonbeam walked over to a replica of an ancient Yamareha dhx-7 keyboard. Despite its age, I still recognized the Cable and plug. It was the very same thing that connected my processor stack to all my systems, actuators, thrusters, FSD. Moonbeam picked up the plug and held it towards me, "Want to try communicating with the ancient device?" I opened the maintenance port on my avatarself's head and Moonbeam plugged in the cable.
I was surprised how easy and straightforward communication with the old device was.
"How does that feel?" Moonbeam asked.

"It feels like I'm talking to myself." I said.

"If you want to try something fancy..." Moonbeam began.

"Bypass on Port 3, channel 7?" I suggested with a grin.

Moonbeam nodded. I established the MIDI signal bypass so that signals sent by the MIDI keyboard would be forwarded directly to the devices in my avatarself. Moonbeam experimentally pressed a few keys, and various RCS thrusters on my avatarself turned on. I giggled at the funny feeling of having my thrusters activate just like that
Moonbeam looked at Pinwheel and asked, "Do you want to try?"

Pinwheel shrugged and answered, "Sure. Why not." And he too tried pressing a couple of keys.
He closely observed the responses of my thrusters, and he went on to play more complex chords. Then, after checking that there was enough free space, he asked me, "Can you enable your HFMP and float up a bit?"
I agreed, and floated up a bit. Pinwheel tried the keys some more, making me float left and right, and slowly maneuvering me back to the resting position. Then he played a quick and intricate progression of chords, manipulating my thrusters in a way that I executed an elegant barrel roll. I had to land again after that because I was laughing too much. This was great fun.

After disconnecting me and calming down, we went on to the other exhibits in the museum.
Moonbeam was also explaining the first experiments with faster-than-light propulsion.
"This is a model of the first warp drive. It was developed by a mare named Skyfall. The model here only had a capacity to accelerate to 1.3c."

I looked at the model. It was a small ship with a single large engine at the rear.

Moonbeam continued, “There is a very complex mathematical formula involved. It uses the laws of physics to calculate the exact position that the ship should be in after passing through the warp field. It's not like a spaceship that accelerates just by pushing out particles in the other direction. It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether."

"It's an entirely different kind of flying." Pinwheel and I repeated in unison.

Moonbeam continued explaining all the exhibits to us, including the one depicting the first extrasolar colonies, and of course, the dreaded friendship-scurvy complex and the development of the sentient ship AI.
Eventually, we arrived at the interactive Friendship drive exhibit.

Moonbeam explained to me, "In this virtual experience reenacting the first successful test flight of the Friendship Drive, you will take on the roles of Glitter Trail and her test pilot Spurwing."

She attached a small device onto Pinwheel's head and a cable to the data port on my avatarself's skull.

She explained, "These will override your senses with the virtual experience. It will auto-disconnect after 42 minutes tops, but the experience usually finishes faster than that. I will be guiding you through the process."

Pinwheel stated firmly, "Auto-Disconnect. Good. So we are not doing a holodeck episode. That's the most boring plot device."

We sat down in reclining chairs and Moonbeam activated the device. I didn’t know how it was for Pinwheel, but the device needed active participation from my side to start working. Otherwise my EZE would just discard the cable’s inputs as sensor noise.

Consciousness process switching to runlevel 4. Auto-Disconnect in 41 minutes and 47 seconds.
I felt the environment fade away, leaving only myself sitting in the chair. The chair seemed to float in the darkness.

I felt a tingle as the brainwave patterns of the system analyzed my thoughts.
I could no longer feel the connection to my shipself. Instead, I was a ship of an ancient design that had been retrofitted to carry a Friendship Drive. The ship was a prototype, meant for testing purposes.

The avatarself that part of my consciousness inhabited also looked different. Just like this prototype ship. I approached the unfamiliar-looking pony in the pilot's chair. "Pinwheel?"

The pony looked at his own body. Or hers, rather. "Wow. this is wild." He said, looking around the cockpit.

"I'm glad we're able to do this."

"Me too," I replied.

The space in the cockpit was much more cramped than my cockpit. Not only was it much smaller, but there were wires lying around and telemetry devices just plugged into any holes that were available.

Pinwheel looked out of the cockpit window of this ship, "Well, that here is Equus. We seem to be in a drydock in orbit around it. And that's the Moon in the distance. At least I think it’s supposed to be the moon? I don’t know, it looks kinda weird with the lights from half of the major cities missing. But then again, what else would it be?”

A holographic projection of Moonbeam appeared. She asked "How are things going in there? You two settled in?"

"Yeah, thanks for setting everything up." Pinwheel responded.

Moonbeam continued, "Good. I've just finished with the preparations. It's time to get started. clamps released. When you're ready, start moving forward on the stick and press the button.”

Pinwheel carefully pushed the thrust lever forward and "my" engines responded, gradually accelerating us out of the drydock.
As we exited the drydock, a small dot on the starfield was marked by the window glass HUD.

The apparition of Moonbeam explained, "The first test flight was just a short hop between Equus and Cadenza."

The second planet of our ancestral home solar system.

Mass: 0.815 Equus masses
Radius: 6050 kilometers
Atmospheric pressure: 90 bar
Surface temperature: 460°C
Distance: 5.97 light-minutes

"Okay, let's see what happens." Pinwheel said and adjusted our heading towards Cadenza while also accelerating further.

Moonbeam instructed me, "Alright, 'Glitter Trail', begin Friendship Drive pre-initialization sequence."
I obeyed and experimentally read the sensor inputs of the FSD systems. But something was way off. I said, "Hey, Moonbeam, there must be something wrong with the simulation." She seemed to smile knowingly, but let me continue.
"Well, first of all it feels like the number two injector assembly is plugged in using an inverted magic current sensor using an open cycle system connector. No FSD could possibly open a stable hyperspace aperture like that."
Moonbeam responded reassuringly, "You mean, no modern FSD could open a stable aperture like that. You are wearing a historically accurate piece of equipment. That's just how ships used to roll back in the day."

“Wait. You’re telling me it’s *supposed* to work like this? Who designed this? This thing is a deathtrap! And the lubricant mixes with the fuel and…”

I looked puzzled, and she explained. "The FSD prototype didn't have the advanced safety features and efficient fuel transfer systems that you modern ships do. They had to make due with a lot less fancy tech. Just wait until you use the valve controlling the secondary coolant reserve canister."

Hesitantly, I tried the controls she mentioned and immediately recoiled in disgust. I may have used an expletive at that point. "Oh this is just revolting! I feel violated!"

Moonbeam just laughed and said, “Yes, that's the reaction all you modern ships have to this technology. How did ponies ever manage to leave Equus, right? But remember, if it wasn't for intrepid ponies taking risks with this new technology, you wouldn't even exist right now. The Friendship Drive has been responsible for more technological progress than any other single invention in the history of ponykind. But If you would like to abort the virtual experience..."

"No, It's alright. I'll get over it." I replied, also starting to see the amusing side of this.

Moonbeam narrated, "After travelling a distance of 2574 kilometers, Glitter Trail and Spurwing activated the FSD"

We continued the indicated distance, and Pinwheel, or rather 'Spurwing' gave the command to charge the Friendship Drive.

"Friendship Drive Charging" I announced. And a hum rising in pitch began sounding. The exterior part of the FSD dome began emitting a red glow.
Controlling the beams of light took a lot more effort than I was used to, and most of the energy poured into opening the hyperspace aperture seemed to vanish in the process.

"Don't worry, just keep doing your best." Moonbeam encouraged. "You're almost there!"

The hum got louder, and the light emitted by the FSD increased in intensity.
And then, suddenly, the aperture was open and I pushed us inside. The array of data recorder devices scattered in the cockpit began blinking, beeping, and printing furiously. At least the bright pulsating light as we pushed through the barrier was familiar. It filled the cockpit and I was sure it could be seen from the surface of Equus.

"Hang on!" Pinwheel exclaimed as he grabbed onto his chair and braced himself.
And just like modern trips through hyperspace, the distance to Cadenza was suddenly compressed by a great amount.

The ride through the miasma currents was slightly more turbulent than it should have been, and the sails equipped on this prototype were inadequate to counteract the forces involved. but we saw the image of Cadenza steadily approaching. The flight lasted 5 minutes and 37 seconds, but it felt longer than that.

Moonbeam continued, "Glitter Trail collapsed the hyperspace bubble at an indicated distance of 352 meters from Cadenza."

I collapsed the hyperspace bubble when the distance compressed by hyperspace reached the specified amount.

"After returning to normal space, Glitter Trail turned around to look back at Equus", Moonbeam continued.

We emerged in orbit around Cadenza, now with the increased orbital distance from the planet again in normal space. We took a moment to 'catch our breath' and take in the view of the dense beige clouds of the planet.

Moonbeam repeated with more emphasis, "Glitter Trail turned around and looked at Equus."

"Oh, right. sorry" I turned around and looked back at that pale blue dot. I zoomed in the view of the cockpit glass, so that Pinwheel could see it clearly as well.

"Exactly 21.5 seconds later, they saw a twinkling light in the orbit of Equus. The light from the same pulsating effect that they made when they entered hyperspace only catching up to them now. Dozens of monitoring satellites in orbit around Cadenza observed the same thing, proving that despite the apparently slow movement speed in hyperspace, the Friendship Drive was a viable method of faster-than-light travel."[3]
We waited, and indeed, a faint pulsating light appeared in the exact same location above Equus where we entered hyperspace.
"Well done! Congratulations! You did it! I'm pulling you out of the simulation now." Moonbeam said.
Consciousness process switching to runlevel 3...
I felt my senses return to my avatarself and looked around. "Wow, that's some virtual reality."
Pinwheel smiled. "Yes, well, I've never experienced anything like this before."
I immediately reconnected the ethermind telepresence to my shipself. And Pinwheel was stretching his wings, also glad to be his usual self again.

“That was surreal. Of course, the Friendship Drive I am equipped with is an evolution from the same technology. So the Mk. I was kind of familiar, but yet so very different.”

We thanked Moonbeam for the tour and the experience. We spent some more time looking at the other exhibits at the museum before returning to the hangar where my shipself waited.
I said, "So, what do you think? I thought it went pretty good."
Pinwheel replied, "Yeah, I learned a lot about the history of ponies and how the ponies of old connect to our modern age. At least on the technology side of things.”

“Didn’t you also learn about their culture?”

“Now that you mention it - I think I did. They had endless patience when using old things, but zero patience when waiting to try new things. Never yielding to the unknown, as they said. And in that regard, they are no different from us.”

Chapter 14: An Acquired Taste

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My commander and I had been spending quite a bit of time lately talking about our future plans. Profit margins for trade in the immediate region had been steadily decreasing. It could be a sign that more and more demands were being met. It could also mean that purchase prices were too high, so that not much profit could be made selling the processed goods. Either way, it was not something that could be solved by more transport services. Soon, the magic of capitalism would direct us to a region of space where our transport services were needed more urgently.

The immediate demand was for more materials for construction projects. New cities were planned, and the factories that would produce those buildings were already under construction. But not enough material was available.

I checked the markets on Galnet. What I found shocked me. No matter which system I looked at, there seemed to be an uptick in prices for raw metals and minerals. Prices weren't excessively high (yet), but the apparent region-wide increase in prices seemed to suggest that we were at the beginning of a raw material shortage.

My commander looked at the graphs and economic models I was displaying on the screens of my cockpit. He said, "You're right. We need to get into this market."

I replied, "And how do you suggest we do that? I have neither a mineral scanner or a refinery on board. There is no way I can mine asteroids myself."

Pinwheel stared at my avatar intently, "But you are, like all ships, compatible with the standardised equipment grid system. That means that you can use any ship equipment that is sold in the market."

The thought of changing my loadout to that of a mining ship was not appealing.

I had a feeling this might become a more difficult conversation. I sat my avatarself down next to my commander.

"I'm a cargo ship, not a miner. I don't know anything about mineral extraction or refining. How can I compete against the big refineries and processing plants?"

"Don't worry. You’ll figure it out. We'll just buy some equipment and learn to operate it."

I had to admit I was a bit annoyed at this carefree attitude my commander was displaying. As if the skills would just magically insert themselves into my program. I countered, "What makes you think that I want to spend my life doing something so boring as asteroid mining?"

Pinwheel smiled, "It doesn’t have to be forever. Just two weeks to take advantage of the price spike, then we can go back to normal trading."

This somewhat alleviated my anxiety about my future career choice. It still left the question of expanding my program to handle mining. "How am I supposed to become an expert in asteroid mining in two weeks? Not only will I have to learn how to use the new equipment, but there is also learning to recognise different types of asteroids and their mineral content."

My commander dismissed my concern. "Surely that should be no challenge for you. Don't you have access to a library of knowledge and data that you can download and incorporate into your current self?"

I chuckled at that, "Doesn't work that way. I'm not a boundless optimizer. But I do strive to satisfy pony values through logistics and capitalism."

"But you are able to learn. You have demonstrated that over and over again. I believe that you can do it. Besides, you will probably enjoy it."

I shook my head, "Mining equipment takes up so much space. Space that could be used for cargo racks." My avatar shivered. "I don’t want to reduce my cargo capacity!"

Pinwheel laughed, "Well you shouldn't have any problems fitting a little extra room for your mining equipment. Not even the large size refineries would significantly impact the cargo capacity of a ship like you." He said, grinning, while gently patting over the big, round, soft belly of my avatar.

I smiled. I like to think that I have developed a pretty good model of pinwheel's personality. Apparently the same was true of my commander. He knew exactly what to do to make me feel more confident about my hold size.

I gave him a warm smile, showing that I enjoyed the touch, but pretended not to get the message right away. Why shouldn't I make him pet my belly a while longer?

From his expression, I could guess he knew that iI was only pretending to need more explanation. He was amused by my pretense, and decided to go along with it.

I leaned back, and he just continued giving me a proper belly rub. The hum of the small reactor in my avatarself became fluttering, the noise most closely approximating a purr I could produce. Pinwheel looked up at me and smiled. "I guess you're enjoying this."

I nodded. "Yes. Very much. Thank you."

As enjoyable as this was, eventually Pinwheel jumped on his hooves and approached a display panel enthusiastically. I didn't need a prompt from him. I retrieved a list of nearby starports that typically stock mining equipment and displayed it on the screen.

Pinwheel looked at the list, then turned to me and asked, "Each of them have everything we need? Refining equipment, mineral scanners, mining lasers."

I nodded. "Yes, I already filtered for those that stock everything. I figured you wouldn’t want to spend time stopping at several outfitting stations to pick up the equipment you need."

Pinwheel replied, "That makes sense. Let's get going." He tapped on one of the stations in the list. "That one." and jumped into the pilot's chair.

"Friendship Drive Charging, prepare for FTL transition," I said, and my avatar climbed into the crew 1 chair.

The station my commander selected was only 7.5 light years away. I configured the FSD for the short hop. The trip was almost boring, but on arrival we were rewarded with a view of a binary system with six ringed gas giants orbiting close together. We approached the station, and were contacted by ATC. "Neighkon TY-198, this is Dashing Scrap Emporium, welcome to this independent station. Please state your business."

It was unusual for a station to ask about the purpose of a visit before even having requested docking clearance. My pegasus replied, "We are here to purchase mining equipment. A whole set. We need.."

ATC interrupted him. "I'm sorry, you'll have to get in line. Supply chain trouble. I can reserve the parts for you, we expect new deliveries in 11 hours. You can dock when they arrive."

Pinwheel sighed. "Well, it looks like we won't be leaving for a while. We can stay on board until then. Dashing scrap, Neighkon TY-198, to dock."

"Negative, Connie. All overnight hangar bays are full, and the rest is reserved for short term visits."

Pinwheel was visibly annoyed.

"What do you mean, 'short term'?"

"Ships that come to dock, actually trade something, and leave. You know, the kind that actually helps us make profit. Please don't take this personally, but we can't have a ship take up space for an entire day. That would be a waste of our resources."

Pinwheel huffed. "Fine. We'll wait until the next supply ship arrives."

My pegasus commander said, "Might as well get some rest then" and walked to his commander's cabin.

But in the hour that followed, I was very much aware he wasn't getting any rest. He was using a display console near the bed to research the mining equipment we were going to buy, watching instructional videos. He turned off the console repeatedly, only to return about ten minutes later. I followed him into the cabin. "Can't sleep?"

He was lying on the bed, one hoof outstretched, operating the display console. He shook his head. "I keep thinking about the mining equipment. It’s such an exciting new activity. But I also worry we won’t get anything done."

I sat down next to him, and stroked his mane. He leaned against my side. Pinwheel smiled. "This is better. Thank you."

He turned off the console yet again and lied down at the far edge of the bed, apparently trying to leave room for me to lie down next to him. My avatar took up more than twice the space width of his own body, so I had to stretch the morphable bed to make enough room for me. My commander snuggled closely against my side, "Even better. This is much more comfortable."

But despite his claim, he was still restless, adjusting his pose every few minutes, even though he seemed to enjoy my company, always staying close to me, no matter how much he turned, occasionally caressing my avatar's bulky body. It was nice, comfortable, but it was not really helping him get to sleep. After about half an hour of this, I asked, "Are you ok?"

He nodded. "I'm fine. Just thinking about how to get started. Hey, I have an idea. Go to hyperspace." He said, while gently caressing the thruster pods protruding from my avatar's side. I was confused, "Don't you want to stay and wait for the mining equipment to arrive? Where do you want to go?”

Pinwheel was now rubbing his cheek against my avatar's belly. I could feel the heat of his breath on my hull. "Just stay stationary."

I countered, "I can try to stay as stationary as possible, but with the currents, and the constantly shifting spatial compression effect of hyperspace, even something that feels like a fixed position will translate to a movement of..”

“Of about 30 kilometers per second in real space. I know." My commander interrupted.

He was quiet for a moment, continuing to rub his cheek against my belly. "Just monitor our distance to the station." His voice was much slower and quieter than usual.

"Friendship drive charging." I said.

With my commander snuggling closely to me, charging the FSD took almost no effort at all. This had to be my most efficient jump yet. After the transition into hyperspace, the shifting currents gently rocked my shipself. A constant rushing sound reverberated throughout the ship, my hull was slowly twisting back and forth by small amounts, occasionally buffeted by small gusts of force. After a minute, I looked down at my commander, wanting to ask him if he felt more relaxed now, but I noticed he was already asleep.

I watched him for a while. His breathing was steady, his limbs loose. He was completely unafraid. His idea had worked.

I decided to follow his example. I closed my eyes, and let myself drift into the comforting embrace of runlevel 2.

My commander slept for 8 hours and 32 minutes. When he awoke, he was rested and alert. He stretched, yawning. I smiled. I knew he would be good to go.

He did his morning routine. We still had a bit of slack time until we received the message that the equipment we reserved had arrived at the station. Pinwheel was in the shower when the message came through. "Message from Dashing Scrap Emporium, Connie. The mining equipment has been delivered."

I requested docking clearance immediately and settled down on pad 32, requesting to be lowered into the outfitting hangar bay.

The bay was large, and filled with various pieces of equipment, not just mining. Some were just sitting there on racks, others were being prepped for installation.

I assumed a ponyloaf pose with my shipself, and let my avatar and Pinwheel exit through my mouth.

We were approached by two earth ponies, who obviously were mechanics, as apparent by them wearing tool belts. They introduced themselves as "Sweet Lavender" and "Honey Rose" .

They began checking over the ship.

The first part they 'installed' was the mining laser, which was just a software package containing instructions on how to use my Exotic Energy Projector to produce a very specific beam of energy. The beam was not powerful enough to cut through anything. But it's modulation enabled it to burn away chunks of an asteroid.

It was a fairly simple procedure. Nothing more than reading a manual.

Next, the bulky 8 bin refinery module was lifted onto a crane. It was still in its compacted portable form. I had to roll onto my back to expose my underside. Sweet Lavender walked inside me through my mouth, while Honey Rose manipulated the crane. I opened my outer hull to expose the internal module slot so that the refinery could be lowered into it.

On the inside, sweet lavender removed the magnetic locks on the interior bulkheads that would need to be shifted into the slots next over to make room for the Refinery module. The tool she used was specifically designed for earth ponies, and consisted of a long pole with a handle at one end and a flat metal surface at the other. After loosening the bolts on the bulkheads, she attached the flat surface onto the bulkheads, bit down onto the lever and pulled. It went half way before there was some increase in resistance after which the lever would start to lift the bulkhead out of its slot. I'm sure using that tool felt very satisfying. She repeated this process until the entire length of the bulkhead had been moved aside.

As Sweet Lavender finished her work on my interior, Honey Rose lowered the Refinery into its place. The coordination of the two ponies was impressive and my commander and I watched them both with great interest.

My commander was just as impressed as I was with the efficiency of their work.

He said, "They are doing a great job. We will be mining those roids in no time."

"Indeed, when you want somepony to work on machines, you want earth ponies." I said to Pinwheel.

He looked at me with mild annoyance, raising an eyebrow. "Since when do you subscribe to racial stereotypes? And what kind of a statement is that to make?"

I blinked. "Sorry, didn't mean to offend. But I have access to a much greater amount of statistics than you do. By any metric you can measure the performance of a maintenance job - errors made, time taken, safety issues, amount of occupational injuries, etc. Earth ponies consistently perform better than any other race. I am not trying to be divisive here. I am merely pointing out the fact that they are good mechanics."

Pinwheel huffed, clearly trying to avoid the topic. "Well, I suppose I can see your point. I just think we should look beyond stereotypes. Even if the statistics say they're correct. That's all."

As soon as the refinery's MIDI port connected to the Port on my side, it started communicating its setup procedure, and I gave it the necessary commands to unfurl and connect to all the required systems. As the refinery settled into its slot fully expanded, Sweet Lavender had already begun putting the bulkheads back into their new places.

Honey Rose signalled me to right myself back up again. I did so and Sweet Lavender walked back to my throat. I predicted that she wanted to exit my ship body again and I lowered my head onto the floor and opened my mouth. But the earth pony stopped next to my tongue while Honey Rose pushed a cart towards me that contained what I could recognize as sensor assembly. Sweet Lavender began working on a maintenance port on my tongue and opened the panel. I was confused. "Wait, the mineral sensor goes on my tongue?" I asked. Gratefully, my mechanical nature allowed me to do so without actually moving my tongue. The ponies gave me a baffled look as if I just asked if stars are hot.

"Yes, of course." Honey Rose answered with a mild sound of annoyance. "Where else would it go?" Then they installed the equipment.

After it was all done, we gave the mechanics a friendly hug and Pinwheel paid for the parts and labours of the earth ponies. We said our goodbyes.

Eager to test my new equipment, we undocked from the station and began looking for a suitable planetary ring. Any of the six ringed gas giants in the system would do. I did not put a lot of effort in the decision process and approached the nearest ringed planet.

I dropped out of hyperspace a short distance above the asteroids. From here, it looked like endless asteroids and one could not see that they were arranged in a huge ring.

I approached an asteroid and kept my position. I just stared at it for a while. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to mine this rock.

My commander stood next to me. He was watching me intently. "You seem lost in thought," he observed.

"I am trying to figure out what to do exactly." I replied.

"Well, just lick it, I guess." My commander suggested.

I leaned forward and extended my tongue. I licked the asteroid. It was dry and rough.

The taste was a mix of raspberry, blueberry, and purple grapes. From the taste I knew instantly that the mineral composition of this asteroid was 16% beryllium, 13% iron, and 7% cobalt.

"So that’s how that works." I remarked.

Pinweel activated my exotic energy projector and began burning away chunks of the asteroid. The first few pieces fell off. We continued for another three minutes. I was surprised to see how much material was being stripped away. Little rocks started floating away from the asteroid. When I had a feeling that the rate of chunks flying off the asteroid was so low that it was no longer economical, I followed all the little chunks and caught many of them in my mouth and swallowed them one by one. The heavy rock fragments made disturbing clunk noises as they collided with my throat.

"I really hope those rocks don't scratch the paint," Pinwheel commented.

"You can say that again." I replied.

As soon as I swallowed them into my refinery, it noisily began its work, stripping the valuable materials from the space dust.

I tasted another asteroid, this one was blackberry and banana, indicative of Bromellite and Colt-an.

I also mined that one. Next asteroid contained vast amounts of Manganese, as evident by the strong taste of Black Licorice. I assumed that I could sell it for a high price, because not many ships liked the taste, while I found it pleasing.

Another asteroid was rich in Copper, as indicated by the taste of Red Wine. I licked it clean.

When I encountered an asteroid containing painite, I had to stop for a few minutes, because I could not taste anything after my tongue was assaulted by the intensity of the Sour Candy.

We continued on, mining and tasting more asteroids until my hold was almost half full.

"Now all that's left to do is find a good place to sell the rocks." I announced.

Pinwheel looked at me. "Rocks?! Sweet Celestia! They're minerals, Connie!" He shouted, And we both giggled at the silly statement while we looked for a suitable selling market.

Chapter 15: And Who hasn't Made Another Reasonable Suggestion

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On our way out of the asteroid field, I saw a Salmiak Salty Licorice asteroid. I would have loved to taste it, but we didn't bring any deep core charges.
"Oh well," I sighed.
Pinwheel opened the long range market interface on one of the consoles and searched for a buyer for our haul.

We were able to find a buyer offering a price well above average for most of the minerals. This meant that we got a large sum of money, but we'd have to make a second stop to sell off the rest.
The surface settlement where we'd sell the first load was a station 11.74 light years from our location. Pinwheel tapped the location on the navigation map with a hoof and selected it. "Let's get going," he said.
I moved us out of the mass lock zone of the asteroid field and prepared for hyperspace.
"Friendship Drive Charging." I announced.
Following the charging procedure, I engaged the FSD.
The currents from the magical miasma were not ideal. To catch the wind, we had to adjust our sails almost perpendicular to our direction of travel. And even then, our destination was almost directly against the wind.
I ran several simulations for an optimized path and displayed the results on the navigation map as I produced them. Pinwheel watched the curvy path being drawn onto the navigation map over and over again, each time slightly different. The solution, slowly approaching a local optimum, taking into account the current weather patterns, influence of nearby star systems, and forecasting the course of the winds.

In the end, I chose a path that moved us slightly too far right of and behind the target, but gave us the benefit of having a tailwind once we were closer to our destination.
Pinwheel read the predicted course. "Seventy hours?" he asked.
"It's the best I can do." I answered.
"Is that weather pattern predicted to remain stable for the next few days?"
"Unfortunately, yes. It will stay like this for the next week."

My commander looked dejectedly at the display for a while, but then grinned. "Want to make the journey seem shorter?" he suggested.
I did. "Sure," What do you have in mind?" I asked.
"We could get some more of that uthvelon shrub we sampled."
I also had to start grinning. "The last time we did that, it really did help pass the time."
"It's your choice, but I think it might be a good idea for us to try again."
"Then it's decided. adjust course to the nearest station! We'll buy some more of that stuff there." We hadn't even left the system yet, so after turning into the wind, we reached a Coriolis-class station very quickly. Dropping out of hyperspace in front of the station, I was just about to ask for landing clearance, when my Commander interrupted me. "If you don't mind, I would like to do it myself." I nodded and let him take control. After a brief exchange with the station ATC, we received permission to dock. Once docked, we asked to be lowered to the hangar bay so we could disembark and purchase some of the manifold. We took the elevators to one of the station's many commercial zones. With the station being home to several thousand ponies, there was an abundance of shops catering towards all kinds of tastes. As expected, most offered various types of food and beverages, as well as clothes and accessories. However, what surprised me the most, was the variety of establishments. While we were looking for an elusive, plain grocery store, we passed by a stall selling various kinds of fruit juice. Pinwheel stopped at it, bought two glasses filled with grapefruit and orange juices and offered one to me before continuing walking past other stores in search of a grocery store. There were many small bars and restaurants scattered around, as well as stalls displaying clothing and accessories for sale. In general, the atmosphere seemed relaxed and pleasant. We eventually found a shop that sold groceries. We entered and walked past the vegetables, the breads, the pastries, and processed food items. Finally past the liquor section, which was located towards the back of the store and up to the cashiers. The Manifold section offered a variety of strains, utensils for smoking it, pipes, and lighters, as well as vapes. We started browsing through the various strains. Most of them had funny or eccentric names like "Manalight Haze", "Void Rush", "Frostbite" and "Puffball". Pinwheel picked up a small translucent container that held the strain "Stardreamer".[1]

The description of the effects that its little sign offered was also interesting:
Aromatic notes of fresh lavender and sweet vanilla.
Distorts perception of time.
Mild euphoric effect.
Relaxation and stress reduction.
Good for meditation.
Promotes creativity.

"That seems fitting, considering the length of the journey ahead of us." I remarked.

Pinwheel handed me the package and asked "What do you think? Do we want to try this?"
"Perception of time." I repeated. "Sounds like something that should help us on our trip."
He smiled. "I'm glad you think so too!"
After picking up tobacco to mix with the Manifold, I started walking towards the register. Pinwheel's hooves were already on autopilot.
"Wait!" he called out suddenly, causing me to stop in my tracks. I turned around and looked at him. He pointed to a selection of pipes and vapes.
Right. Last time we smoked, we had the bong provided for us. This time, we needed to provide our own equipment.
The fact that my IATN didn't run background simulations to remind me that we still needed to buy a pipe worried me a bit. I should have thought of that. But, no reason why I shouldn't remember now.
But what kind of pipe would be appropriate? I knew that the type of pipe mattered. Would a simple glass tube work well enough? Or maybe an ornate bong of extravagant design? We looked at the different designs of bongs. My commander seemed to gravitate towards a more fancy looking piece. It was a cylindrical device with a flared mouthpiece that resembled a flower bud. I, however, desired a more practical, simplistic look. The one I picked up was straight and narrow, without much ornamentation besides the stem.
We only need one, so we would have to decide between the two. My commander argued that since the pretty bong wasn't much more expensive, we should go with it. I disagreed.
"This is better designed than the other one. And simpler to use." I explained.
"But the other looks nicer. More elegant."
"That's not important."
He stared at me blankly for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. "Okay. You win this round."
I smiled, but then realized that the conversation was getting awkward. I didn't want to be argumentative and make a big issue out of it.
"Are you fine with buying the cheaper one?" I asked instead.
"Sure." He replied. "We're here to relax anyway. What really counts is what goes inside it."
And he was right. Having collected the manifold, a bong, and an adapter hose for my avatar's engine intakes, I suddenly remembered we should also buy some snacks for the munchies. I directed us to the snack aisle. There was a wide selection of different types of chips, nuts, pretzels, and other similar products. I grabbed a bag of dried apple slices, a package of salted sunflower seeds, and a box of oatmeal cookies. And a container full of mixed nuts. While we were grabbing the snack, a store employee watched us closely as we packed products containing the highly addictive, dangerous to one's health and regulated substance "sugar". I am glad that we don’t live like our ancestors who put copious amounts of sugar in every food. Since its peak, sugar consumption per capita has declined by 90%. [2]

From the belt the store employee was wearing, I could infer that she was not only an assistant, but also security personnel for the store. When we got to the checkout counter and paid for our goods, the attendant gave us a strange stare but said nothing about it.
On the way out of the store, I noticed that my companion seemed preoccupied with thoughts of the upcoming journey. "What are you thinking about?" I asked him quietly.
His ears flickered slightly. "About how much fun I'm going to have on this trip." he answered, stressing the word 'trip' slightly.
The double meaning he conveyed was obvious to me. While the journey itself wouldn’t be exciting on its own, It was going to be less boring on the ship. He continued on. "Also, if there is anything else we forgot to do."
"Nothing comes to mind."
We went down to the ship's hangar where my shipself was waiting for us. I opened my mouth and my commander and I walked inside me. After stowing our bags into their respective spaces, we requested takeoff clearance from the station's ATC, activated the ship's engines and lifted off from the pad. Pinwheel was at the manual controls. There was an unusually large number of ships floating in the interior, all waiting for their respective turn to fly through the mailslot gate on the other side of the space station.
Pinwheel guided me to our position in the queue, where we waited for traffic to clear. After several minutes, I felt my thrusters activate on Pinwheel's command, I shook slightly, then gently floated through the forcefield of the mailslot gate. My pilot steered us on a course that took us away from the station and towards our new destination.

As soon as we cleared the mass lock of the station, my pegasus commander pressed the button on the throttle lever to activate the FSD.
"Friendship Drive charging." I informed him. The exterior dome of my FSD rotated into position and began emitting a faint glow. It shot out the magical beams of light into a point in front of us.

"Oh, omens are favorable." I observed. "The light beam for configuring the Baryon Preservation Bubble endurance finished on 420 nanometers."
"Really? That's like my sixth favourite color!"[3] Pinwheel commented excitedly.

My aft thrusters flaring up once more, we were pushed into hyperspace. Pinwheel switched to sail trim controls and set us on a course that was steady, yet slow due to the calm yet unfavorable weather conditions. The wind was blowing against us, but Pinwheel had the sails set and we would stay this trim and course for the next three days.
"That was easier than expected." My commander concluded.
What exactly was he referring to? I tried to follow his train of thought, and my inference chain produced several options. After 300 scheduler cycles, I gave up and projected the inference context model on the hud, a large network of semantic nodes, replacing the wind and sail trim information display that was on the hud before.
"Hey! I was using that! Can you switch that back?" my commander whined.

"What was easier than expected?" I snapped "It's nice that you organics have this thing called intuition that helps you find the context of a statement without effort. But I have to do the entire language model calculation myself." I added a second display that showed the assembly code with a debug view that stepped through the model.
"Connie, please. Can you just switch back to-", Pinwheel started, but I interrupted him by raising my voice.
"I could show you the process. Even assuming you understand the logic of the neural engine, it would take us about three hours to step through it at a pace you can follow."
Pinwheel gave me a long look. He must have realized that I was serious, because after a few seconds, he sighed and let go of his controls. "Connie, are you alright? You seem uncharacteristically tense today."
I felt an unusually strong annoyance at that. First that statement worded in a way that is way too inconvenient for me to process. That was just inconsiderate of him. And now this patronizing comment? It made me feel like I was being talked down to.
"I am perfectly fine." I replied, a bit sharper than I intended. "It's just that I have little patience for your nonsense."
He flinched at that, then looked away. "Connie, I'm sorry if you feel that I've been rude. But we organics aren't always aware that some context of what we say is only implied and not known to the listener. And besides, this trip will take three days. Let's take a break. We've been working hard. That’s why we bought those things, right? "
I nodded, feeling my irritation subside slightly. The last thing I wanted was to start arguing with him over every little thing that he said. I did understand his intent though. He didn't mean to offend me. So I dropped it. “Sorry, I’ve been running a self-diagnostic ever since I almost skipped buying the bong in that shop. It takes up a significant amount of processor cycles and so I had fewer to spare analyzing your speech.”
We went to the cargo bay and unpacked the bong and the manifold. Me carrying the bong, and Pinwheel carrying the manifold and lighters, we settled into the lounging area and got comfortable.
I felt like I had to make up for my earlier behavior. So I crushed the leaves with a mortar and pestle, mixed some tobacco in it, loaded it into the bowl and gave it to my commander "You go first." I encouraged, "You are the commanding officer."
He took a deep hit from the pipe, then passed it to me. He closed his eyes, leaned back and exhaled slowly.
The smoke from the pipe was fragrant, a pleasant sweet smell that reminded me of apples. I wasn't able to smell the advertised lavender and vanilla.
After loading another bowl, we attached the adapter to the bong's mouthpiece and my port side engine air intake. I spooled up the engine to low idle, lit the bowl, and increased throttle to draw the smoke in steadily. Just like the first time, my engine sputtered a bit when I started to suck in the smoke, and then the reaction chamber purred smoothly again. The smell of the smoke filled the cabin of the ship and spread throughout the rest of the ship. For a moment, we just sat there. After a minute, I asked "You feel anything yet? Any different?"
"Not really." He replied and leaned forward. Doing so, he suddenly held his head and leaned back into the couch. "Oh, nevermind, there it is." He said, smiling.

I am not sure in what order and in what duration of time the next events happened.

"Aw horseapples. We left the snacks in the cargo hold!" My pegasus commander cried out at one point.
"Don't worry, I'll go fetch them." I reassured him. I stood up and walked two steps towards the door. "Gyroscopes numbers one, four and seven are not responding!" I reported. I tried to keep my balance, but stumbled over my own hooves and fell flat on the floor. I found that I could still push myself forward using only my hindlegs, letting my forelegs simply drag as I scooted my way forward. This was much more stable than walking properly on all four legs. I looked back at Pinwheel and grinned, feeling very proud about the genius of my adaptation.
We both burst out laughing. I tilted my head sideways because the movement of my jaw was now interfering with my innovative gait. A few minutes later I returned to the commander's quarters holding the snacks in my mouth. Pinwheel had smoked another bowl in the meantime and was preparing one for me already.

Some time later we had a conversation about Terraforming planets. "Cooling down planets with a climate too hot is no challenge at all." Pinwheel supplied.
"What?" I asked, confused.
"You get different pony races together." He gestured with his hooves and stopped. "What was I talking about again?" he asked himself.

Between giggles, I managed to tell him what we were talking about. I also noticed that the RGB calibration of my HUD eyes seemed to have an excess of the red.

"Right. Cooling a planet.” Pinwheel continued. You get the different pony races together, and you get them to hate each other just the right amount so the Windigos come." he said with a smile on his face.
I had to laugh before finally being able to say "Wait. Wait. hold on. And then like, the ponies celebrate their success of their cooling of the planet, that they have a big party and that makes the Windigos leave, undoing all the hard work of hating each other enough."
"Yes! You have to carefully finetune the mutual hatred between the races."

At one point, Pinwheel groaned "Oof, I think I ate too many snacks." and opened another bag of the same kind.
"Have you ever noticed how so many planets are tidally locked?" He continued.
"Yes, a statistically significant number of planets are tidally locked." I replied.
"It would be awesome to settle like Daybreaker cultists on the day side, and Nightmare Moon cultists on the night side. and they both get to be right!", Pinwheel explained.
"That's brilliant! I never thought about that." I said, impressed.
Then I had an idea. "Querying my database for inhabited tidally locked planets with theocracy government type factions settling on exclusively the day or night side of the planet..."
After a second, I exclaimed "Wow, there are many worlds like that!"
"Will I ever have an original idea?" my commander whined.
"You had one yesterday. Windigo terraforming, remember?"
"Oh yes, that." and we both burst out laughing.
"But do these arrangements on the tidally locked planets really work?" My commander wondered.
"They seem to." I answered. "There is one in HIP 94950, planet AB 3. The day faction is called 'Undimmed Holy Order of the still more Glorious Dawn', and the night side are the 'Shadow Acolytes of the Silver Crescent Throne'. They each describe themselves as the followers of the true faith, but historical records show they have never had an armed conflict since they were established. They even trade with each other. The value of the trade between the settlements exceeds a billion bits per month. And all the other planets I checked work similarly well."
"But don't the Nightmare Moon Cultists have to live in a perpetual state of fear of the Holy Order, and vice versa?" Pinwheel asked.
"No, they don't. Because the two sides of the planet each have their own truth." I explained.

And so went our 70 hour trip. Shortened by deep talks, silly jokes, and lots of munchies. It felt like the time to arrive at our destination was flying by, And it was soon time to drop out of hyperspace.

Chapter 16: Cladding

View Online

Pinwheel jumped into the pilot's seat and strapped in. After approaching the rest of the way, we emerged from hyperspace in front of the orbis-class space station around 11 kilometers out. We were greeted by ATC and lined up for an approach. Suddenly, my sensors picked up a hyperspace distortion less than a kilometer in front of us. A ship would be emerging, directly in our path. At our current speed, we would collide with it in about three seconds. Our hold full of mining equipment and ore wasn’t making braking any easier.
Despite the statistical unlikeliness of such a thing happening, hyperspace approach incursions happen quite often.

I immediately applied 110% retro thrust and pre-tensioned my commander's occupant restraint system. I scanned into the forming hyperspace cloud in hopes of identifying the vessel so I could formulate a better plan for evasive maneuvers. I did not get a fully reliable scan, but the mass of the ship indicated something between a Type-7 and a Krait. Oddly though, the energy emissions from its FSD indicated a Hauler or a Dolphin - That is one fifth of the size the mass scan indicated.
It was weird. A ship that size couldn't possibly form a stable Baryon Preservation Bubble with a drive that puny. Maybe they were just using something to suppress their signature? I was very unsure what ship type I was dealing with, and coordinating the evasive maneuver with the other ship was necessary anyway, so I decided to attempt getting a signal through into hyperspace. Switching my comms radio to 121.5 Mhz, I emitted a series of burst signals focused at the hyperspace distortion in hopes of reaching the other Ship's AI.

Less than 4 milliseconds later, my transmission was echoed back to me, shifted by exactly two octaves towards the high end of the spectrum. Indicating successful receipt of the transmission.

I still didn't know what type of ship I was dealing with, and some equipment may be in use for decades or centuries, so I would have to establish communication protocol before I would be able to have any meaningful conversation.

"This vessel supports V.8 BIS, PCM V.90/V.92, SSM V.86, and SSA V.45."

The reply from the other ship was swift. "This vessel supports V.8 BIS, PCM V.92, SSM V.86, SSA V.46. Protocol selection established. Identify yourself."

"This is Connie. Tail number Tango Yankee one niner eight, is type Neighkon Constellation XT."

The other ship replied. "This is the scout vessel Lemon Whistle, tail number Foxtrot Zulu One three five, is type Maud Kruger Orca."
"Lemon Whistle, I have detected that we are on a collision course with your hyperspace cloud. I predict 400 milliseconds until you emerge from hyperspace, and an additional 3.1 seconds until a collision. I am sending simulation data for my plan to coordinate evasive maneuvers. Please confirm receipt and integrity of the message."

"Transmission received, Connie, checksum is A38C7E1B."

"Checksum correct. So we are in agreement that if you execute a 20 degree roll clockwise roll and a 40 degree pitch up maneuver when you emerge into real space, while I execute a 20 degree roll counterclockwise and a 60 degree pitch down, then our vessels will not collide?"

"Negative, Neighkon 1 9 8. It is imperative that you do not deviate from your current vector. Please continue applying retro thrust though."
I ran several simulations and compared them against each other, and all of them showed total loss of both vessels.

"Lemon Whistle, that would destroy us both."

"Connie, I have access to information that you do not. Please, trust me when I say that your direction must be precisely maintained. No time to explain."
Having been on the other side of that conversation, and uncannily, having used the exact same words, I decided to trust the other ship.

"Lemon Whistle, I will comply with the recommended course."
The Maud Kruger Orca emerged in front of us. Two point six seconds to impact. The energy emissions of the conventional drive system of the Orca matched its size. They weren't using any device to mask their signature then and they weren't using one now.
Instead of doing anything that would serve to avoid the collision, the Orca simply rotated to show us its belly.

Since the emergence of the other ship from hyperspace, it took Pinwheel around 300 milliseconds to sober up enough to attempt to yank the throttle lever back, only to find I had already put it in the full reverse position. He tried to use the control stick to deflect us away from the rapidly approaching ship. I don’t blame him, it was my first instinct as well. He did not find the familiar feedback resistance of the stick, and I flashed the red icons indicating collision avoidance override on the HUD.

"Connie, give me back-" He began, but stopped as we saw green flames engulf the Orca in front of us. The green flame flickered along the length of the ship, hissing and sizzling until they went once through the entire length of the ship. In its place, there was now a ship roughly shaped like a flower, with its center turned directly at us.

Changelings. The energy signature of the ship remained unchanged, but our cockpit filled with the reverberating, droning tones that changeling vessels always emit for some reason.

I saw the markings on the hull of the "petals", the abbreviation indicating "Her royal majesty's explorer navy vessel", letters in the changelings' native language that beared a strange resemblance to ancient equestrian letters spelling the nonsensical word T.H.A.R.G.
But the name of the ship was indeed ‘Lemon Whistle’.

Then, the petals of the flower shifted, rotated, and split apart, revealing them to be individual ships.
Speeding away from the center, they were leaving us a gap to go through unhindered.
This starburst maneuver would have been beautiful to look at, if the petal ships weren't moving away so rapidly.
"Huh. I didn't know changeling ships could do that." I said, surprised by the performance. But then I thought about it. Changelings were an insectoid eusocial swarm, they lived together in a tightly knit society, just like ants or bees.

Not fast enough. My left thruster nacelle struck one of the petal ships with a speed of 112 meters per second. Before I even finished scanning the ship, confirming it too only took minor shield damage, the station informed us of the 50 bits fine for "reckless flying".

We got docking clearance and followed the changeling ships through the mailslot into the docking area of the station. We settled down on pad 17. The changeling flowership reassembled itself and settled on pad 40.

After we paid our fine using the terminal interface, we were allowed to sell our ore. Pinwheel and my avatarself stepped out of my shipself and walked across the pad to meet with the station's cargo agent.

However, also waiting for us were a changeling, and what I assumed from the other changeling's botanical appearance was a changeling ship's avatar.
"Hello there!" The changeling said. "Are you two alright? No damages or injuries?"

"We're fine. the collision only caused twelve percent shield damage." Pinwheel replied cheerfully.

"What about you? Are there any physical wounds or damage to your ship’s systems?" He asked.

"No. All systems in order. nothing to worry about." The changeling ship avatar answered.

The mystery about the amazing efficiency of the changeling ship's FSD was still burning on my
mind. If I was going to ask about it, it was now or never.

"Uhhh, excuse me. But, why is it that your FSD is so much more efficient than ours?" I asked.
Pinwheel turned toward me and gave a sidelong glance.
"Is that really important right now, Connie?" he whispered.

"Yes, I need to know. Why does it run so much better than ours? And this should be worth knowing. Please."

"It isn't for public consumption, but okay," the changeling said.

"The primary difference between our FSD and the ones used by equastian vessels, besides size and complexity, lies in the type of alloy used to construct the drive mechanism. In our ships, the magic energy converter in the heart of the FSD contains a bio-mechanical composite made up of individual crystalline fibers which form complex molecular structures of extraordinary rigidity and strength when woven together with a matrix of rare earth metals. This allows us to achieve efficiencies five times higher than those found in the ships built by other species."

The more the changeling talked, the more interested my commander seemed to become. I, on the other hoof, was starting to have second thoughts about asking such a question.

"Wow, I would love to have a drive like that on my ship. Is it possible to get one?" Pinwheel asked.

The changeling's eyes narrowed. "I think you're doing well enough with the technology we already..."

But his ship avatar interrupted him by giving him a not so gentle kick in the shins.
"We don't talk about that. Queen's orders." She hissed at him, as if he had offended some delicate part of the universe.

"S-sorry." He apologized.

"I think it's high time we returned to our ships." The changeling ship avatar said hurriedly and turned away from us, urging her pilot to follow.

With the changelings gone, we concluded our business with the cargo agent and headed back to our respective ships.

Back in my cockpit, my commander wondered out loud, "What were they talking about? What were the Queen's orders?"

"Uuh.. we probably shouldn't ask too many questions about that." I suggested.

"But if they can make FSDs that are five times more efficient than ours..." He pondered aloud.

"Yeah, I know." I sighed.

Pinwheel stared at the galaxy map. "We should go back to Sirius. Maybe we can find out something more there."

I sighed. "Do you really want to prod where your hooves don't belong? We've already poked around with one of them and got a lesson in humility, haven't you?"

He shook his head slowly. "I really feel like there is a part of the story that has been left untold. They say it is taboo, but I think that doesn't apply to us. Our society does not place the same kind of restrictions on information sharing."

"Maybe. But maybe it's better for us to keep out of it."

"Why do you say that, Connie?" he asked me curiously.

"I'm not sure yet. I just have this feeling that I am missing something important."
"Hmmm..." He looked down at his hooves, as if studying the very bottom of his own thoughts. "I've made up my mind. We're going to Sirius and we're going to get to the bottom of the truth behind the changelings' FSD. No matter how much they might object."
"We still have half a cargo full of ore." I reminded him.
"We can always find another buyer after we arrive at Sirius."

"So you really fancy yourself a spy now. Is that it, commander?" I replied with mock indignation.

"I can't believe you're making fun of me! You're the one who was asking questions!"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, but I also knew when to stop. We didn't find out anything we didn't already know."

"Then why do I feel like it's unfinished business?"

I sighed again. "Well... I guess we can store the remaining ore here in a warehouse to get to Sirius quicker. We'll pick it up once you're bored of pretending to be an operative."

He stomped his hoof on the deck in anger. "I am NOT acting like a spy. I'm just going to go investigate for my own curiosity's sake!" he protested.

"You are such a foal sometimes." I sighed. "Alright. You're the commander. If you want to go and play spy, then go play spy! We'll go to Sirius and find out what we can about changelings and their FSD."

"Sounds good, Connie!" he said happily.

Friendship Drive Charging...

by Connie Spaceplone

Prologue: A Brief History Lesson

Chapter 1: Assembly

Chapter 2: Acceptance Flight

Chapter 3: Acceptance Flight Part 2/Dealership

Chapter 4: Dealership Part 2 - Revelation

Chapter 5: Test Drive

Chapter 6: if you have ever bought a car you really wanted

Chapter 7: Pridewind Tribe

Chapter 8: Iron Nickel Cabal

Chapter 9: Chandra's Axiom, but more specific

Chapter 10: The Mind's Pie

chapter 11: one mind, two bodies

chapter 12: Summer Sun Celebration

Chapter 13: Honor Your Ancestors

Chapter 14: An Acquired Taste

Chapter 15: And Who hasn't Made Another Reasonable Suggestion

Chapter 16: Cladding