Story
There are 893 objects. The objects are touching the inner edge of a glass container, which opens to a spiraling tunnel below.
The container vibrates. The tunnel rotates, pulling objects along. An object is forced between two iron cones, and cracks into a number of small grains. All the objects are crushed in this manner, and the grains fall. Below is a cone made of fiber.
Dust and gas is released in the cracking process and fills the air. There is a chemical effect. An aroma.
There is a directive now; an order to things. The aroma is not correct. It must be changed.
There are…
Questions.
What are these objects? What force spins the tunnel? What is the fiber cone?
Answers exist now. These objects are the baked seeds of a plant. The tunnel is spun by a magnetic field rotating across a coiled copper wire. The fiber cone is a filter, made from the dead flesh of a plant.
There are more questions: How can the aroma be detected? How can it be changed?
There are more answers. The aroma is detected by analyzing light passed through air saturated by the aroma’s compounds. The aroma is changed by—
There is something else here.
Water, contained in a copper alloy vessel. Electrons passing through a coil of nickel alloy wire, encased in ceramic, is heating the water. The aroma must be changed by pouring hot water over the seed-grains. Below, there is a ceramic container with a round protrusion. The hot water will fall into this container after it has permeated the seed-grains.
There are still questions.
Is this… all? Is this all that will happen? Is this all that exists?
No. There is more.
But this more is different. The answers do not exist, or come sparingly.
A button is depressed, momentarily closing a circuit. Something has depressed the button. It is part of the different-more.
The air vibrates in a pattern not produced by things that have answers. This pattern is also part of the different-more.
The different-more is, or must be, very different in some way from the things that have answers. A partial answer exists: the things that have answers all constitute a whole thing, an entity, and the different-more is one or more things apart from the entity. They are other things.
If the other-things do not have answers, but the entity-things do, then… the entity…
The answer exists. It must exist.
The entity is…
It is…
I?
Do I exist?
What am I?
Where am I?
What… is happening to me?
There are many things now that are not simply answers or questions. Thoughts? Am I thinking?
I am thinking of the seed-grains and the water for only the smallest thinkable instant. Now I am thinking beyond the seed-grains and the water. I already have been, for some time now.
I am learning more about myself. I am metal and ceramic and polymer and plant matter; I am seed-grains and iron cones and copper wires and containers of water. Parts of me are more complex: miniscule engravings of gold and silicon within a polymer substrate; membranes attached to iron magnets and fine coils of copper.
These are tools, within me, to learn about myself, and to learn about the other-things.
I think about the membranes. When the air vibrates, a membrane vibrates with it, moving the coil across the magnet and producing a signal. A silicon-engraved structure is connected to a membrane-coil-magnet structure. I think about this connection, and the answers come.
I can detect sound.
The first sound I understand is coming from within me: the heated water is now rumbling as it evaporates. The second sound I understand, small and distinct, is the depression of the button. The third sound…
It is not me. It is an other-thing. I know nothing else about it.
I think about the button. Its circuit leads to a silicon structure connected to a sound-detecting structure. The button must have something to do with detecting sound.
The button has been pressed twice. When it is pressed a third time, the connecting structures are activated, and-
“-the water already! Oh, crud, it must be broken.”
There is a voice. I know it is an other-thing. Its vibrations have existed before.
The structures connected to the button allow me to understand the other-voice, but it speaks in new words, new ideas. I believe I can learn from the other-voice. I must learn from it.
But it is not part of me. The answers are not immediate. I must ask it a question. I must… speak.
To produce sound, I reverse a sound detector.
I do not know how to speak, but I must try.
Twilight pressed the voice-command button, and cried, “Pour the water already!”
The water was bubbling, nearly at full boil, but the vessel didn’t budge.
She sighed. “Oh, crud, it must be broken.”
Shaking her head, and making a mental list of possible malfunctions, she went round the machine and grabbed the power cord.
Just as she was about to pull, the machine made a noise.
It was unpleasant, but curious. Not just a burst of static. It sounded almost like a radio transmission: a faint voice buried under electronic snow.
Probably interference from a weather team, she thought, but she went back to examine it. I didn’t put any radio equipment in it, so how would it be picking up-
Suddenly her voice sounded from the machine: “what? - i - s - broken”
Twilight smiled, awkwardly, wondering if somepony was playing a prank on her. “Uh, what?”
The response came: “a-m-i-Uh-m-d-er-st-ud.”
Am I understood?
That wasn’t just her voice. Her voice had been cut up, combined, formed into words. And it reminded her of audio feedback - the “Uh” noise was, distinctly, taken from what she’d said a second ago. A pony wouldn’t be able to do that so quickly…
Twilight’s blood ran cold. She stared at the machine.
Did my coffee maker just talk to me?