Digital Effigy

by Starscribe

Rating: everyone
Tags: Science Fiction, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Rarity, Sweetie Belle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Drama, Original Character
Length: 40201

Even Equestria's powerful magic can't heal every sickness. But years after Sweetie Belle passed away, an enterprising young bat uses her final brain scans to give the little unicorn a second chance.

Lucid Storm imagines a world beyond death, where no pony will ever need to truly say goodbye to the ones they love. When all the magic and medicine of Equestria failed one young Sweetie Belle, he proposed a radical new technique--total brain recording, taken minutes before her death.

Years have passed since that day, years spent scrounging the funding for a body and experimenting with many failed machine intelligence models before tinkerer ponies all around equestria finally came together in the perfect synthesis.

After all this time, Sweetie Belle will finally have her second chance.

Written for Lucid on my Patreon. Edited by Two Bit and Sparktail, who also sponsored it. Cover by Magfen.

Published 2022-09-26 19:10:05 UTC
Last updated 2024-02-08 17:00:05 UTC

I Think

Lucid Storm was on the right track with this prototype.

Granted, he had thought exactly that same thing on several previous occasions. His garage/workshop was littered with the broken pieces of could've and should've been, as earlier versions of this exact project grew beyond his ability to create them.

But this time was different—this time, he was sure.

"Those weren't failures, Sweetie," he whispered, circling around the machine. "They were necessary experience. I wouldn't know how to make this work if I didn't see all the ways it couldn't."

Off in one corner, his 3D printer hummed quietly away, while the heat from his PC made the garage workshop feel sweltering even to a batpony like himself. But it would all be worth it—every failure, every misstep, every hour he'd spent slaving away in here, if only he could get this machine to work.

It was nothing like the simple labor-saving devices that had built his fortune in the first place. Fruit dehydrators and simple automatic assistant programs certainly served an important market niche, or else he would depend entirely on his wife for support.

But this machine was an order of magnitude beyond, both in its potential and its complexity. It couldn't look like a plain silvery box, or else it couldn't serve ponies in need. The only way for a machine to follow ponies through the world they'd built and remain useful no matter their situation was for that machine to be a pony itself.

The hard parts of her mechanical engineering were all done now, thanks to a collaboration between Lucid himself and a dozen other talented ponies in the maker community. Most of them didn't understand the significance of the project—a machine that looked and moved like a pony, what was the point?

For most of his friends, this project went no further than the thrill of achievement. If the bot could walk and trot and canter around where its computer told it, then they had already achieved success, job done.

Lucid's computer made a high-pitched chime, signifying its task was complete. He hurried over, flipping through a few "training success" dialogues until he found what he was looking for: the latest results.

"Network Size: 8.61*10^9

Model Precision: 99.89%

Model Stability: 71%"

Lucid opened both wings, biting his lip in agitation. That result was incredibly promising, he shouldn't feel so frustrated. His latest upload had reduced the scanned size more significantly than any previous attempt, while maintaining greater than 70% stability.

Unfortunately, he had no comparison for that metric—nopony before him had attempted anything like this. When he tried to run this, would it result in the same painful failure that had his last model in broken pieces in the far corner of the lab?

"There's a threshold where a model is more than just a model," he muttered, tapping the keys that would begin the download. The drive began to flash, blue lights illuminating as the network model transferred. "Now we see how close we are to crossing it."

It took only moments, but those seconds felt like an eternity to Lucid. Should he go back inside, see how his wife was coming along with lunch? Maybe she would want to be here for this moment.

Or maybe this is about to go violently wrong and she'd be better off just hearing a few loud noises from the garage, and another admission of some bad news.

The older sister of the one who contributed this model would want to know too, of course. But Lucid had long since abandoned the pretense of talking to her with anything except good news. Maybe today would be the day he finally had some to share.

Lucid took the drive, pacing around to the side of the prototype. The broad platform they'd designed could look like anypony they wished, but the parts he had printed and assembled here weren't just anypony. When he finally found the model that worked, he intended her to wake up in a body that was familiar.

Well, relatively familiar. Some things, like her unicorn magic, were currently beyond the reach of even the most talented engineers. Yet.

If this worked, there was about to be a much better reason to solve all the problems they hadn't yet.

Lucid strode up to the bot, then inserted the glowing crystal into its waiting data storage. It closed quickly, though he left the plastic back open. This was his last chance to put aside the project for another few weeks of testing and model training. If he lost another prototype, it would be months before he could try again.

"Here goes nothing," he whispered, then pressed the button near the back of her head that would boot the prototype.

A gentle hum echoed from the cooling fans in her still-open torso as the model loaded into active memory. Lucid continued to circle around her. He lifted the mango his wife had given him for breakfast, then put it back down. The nervous anticipation stole his appetite anyway.

Then the prototype moved—her neck and head anyway. Her eyes went from featureless screens to glowing green, blinking into alertness. She looked around the room, at least as much as she could without any freedom to move the rest of her body.

"Where am I?" she asked. Voice synthesis was perfect, of course. That part was only an existing library, and recordings made while this filly was still alive. "Why am I... stuck?"

Lucid picked up his tablet from the desk, brushing a few strands of disheveled purple mane away from his face while he worked. The prototype was burning power rapidly, pegging its powerful processor at 100%.

"You're looking good across all metrics. Model is predicting confusion and fear—typical emotional responses." He tucked it in against his wing, circling her. "I've frozen your motor functions, to avoid..." Probably better not to mention what had happened during the previous tests. This model wasn't any of the previous versions.

Better not to put the pressure on, and accidentally mention what would happen if she failed to measure up to integrity or stability checks. Don't worry, but if something you have no control over doesn't work out, I'm going to delete you completely and start over.

"Tell me, are you feeling any pain?"

The prototype blinked, considering the question. "Not... anymore. Where am I?"

"My workshop," he answered, settling the tablet on the table between them. "I'm going to unlock your motor functions, okay? Be very careful—you might be able to damage yourself, in ways a pony couldn't. Okay?"

She nodded slightly. The fear passed, and she smiled at him. "You seem nice. I think I remember you, but I can't—be sure. Everything is foggy, like a dream."

Lucid stepped back, tablet in front of him. The last model had lacked any ability to easily activate and deactivate like this—which was why it was a broken ruin now.

"That will come. We might have to make some adjustments to your hardware. My last attempts lacked a..." He was actually talking to the model, and getting logical answers back in return! The magic and science of Equestria all came together to this exact moment.

He tapped the tablet once more. "Try to move."

She did, lurching forward a step towards his cabinet. Her hooves were cheap plastic, 3D printed and not suited for high-impact work. But for around the workshop it would be fine. If she wanted to go out into Ponyville and gallop around, that was something else. It was a start.

"Looks like the motor improvements are working. That seemed natural. Can you come back over here, so I can run through some exercises with you?" The prototype obeyed, standing in front of him. Her smile was even wider than before. She didn't seem to notice her back was open, radiating the heat from her processors out into the workshop.

"Start by lifting one hoof as high as you can, like this..."

Over the next half hour, he coached her through various movements, occasionally answering her simple questions to keep her focused. He couldn't expect her to remain completely on task, no matter how important these tests really were. The scan used to create her was only a filly.

He was eventually interrupted by the workshop door rattling behind him, and another pony appearing there in the doorway. She held a plate in her wing, weighed down with fruit and salad. A light meal, perfect for a bright summer day.

"How goes the experiment, hon—" She froze, and the plate tumbled from her grip, shattering on the workshop floor.

The prototype squealed with surprise, jumping backward from the noise. She cowered, lifting one hoof to shield her face. "Did I do something wrong?"

Lucid poised between them. He gave Seed Wise one pleading look, hoping she would understand. "No, Sweetie." He faced her, settling the tablet down on the ground between them. Ready to freeze her motor functions again, if he had to. "It was just an accident."

Sweetie lowered her hoof, glancing nervously at Seed and back to Lucid. "I can... remember you, a little. I don't know her."

Seed's attention was only for Lucid then, and she whispered, "You didn't tell me you were this close."

"I didn't know," he muttered back, without turning around. "That's because you've never met her, Sweetie. I think you might remember me from the hospital? I visited a few times, with those machines..."

She scrunched her face, looking thoughtful. "I think so. Sounds familiar. Am I asleep? Is this a dream? Sometimes I don't remember things very good when I'm dreaming."

"Not anymore," he answered. "When the model was training, you might've experienced—honestly, I have no idea. Nopony does. You're the first. Hopefully not the last."

Seed started moving again—over to a broom against the wall. She swept up what was left of the salad. "Does Rarity know?"

He shook his head once, wincing at the name.

Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one who'd heard. The prototype looked up, eyes intense. "I remember her! That's my... sister. Where is she?"

"Eager to see you, I'm sure." Lucid made his slow way over. "Hold still a moment." He brought one hoof gently down on the plastic case, clicking it closed. "We could... think about visiting her soon, Sweetie. But not without warning."

"Sweetie..." the robot repeated. There were definitely still some improvements to make to her fine motor control. Her lips didn't quite match with her speech. But it wasn't like the ponies who'd helped Lucid build this body had any idea just how it would be used.

This was no tech demo, meant to demonstrate just how far mechanical engineering had come in Equestria’s last few months.

"Oh, okay." She took a few steps towards the open workshop door, then stopped. "I feel... tired. I think I'll rest now." Then she did, slumping forward into a standing, sleeping position.

Silence descended on the workshop. Seed set the broom down, staring at the little pony. "She sounded almost... alive." She leaned against him in a brief, gentle hug. "How'd you do that?"

"Wasn't just me," he whispered. "Some of the smartest engineers, spellcasters—all over the kingdom. I'm just the one in the right place to try it out. With a wife who would tolerate my tinkering, and—" a pony dying of something that wouldn't damage her brain.

He stood, carrying over the charging cable from where it was coiled against the wall, and connecting the prototype.

"You have to tell her sister," Seed said. "All those bits she invested... I'm a little surprised you pulled it off."

He stuck his tongue out. "You mean you didn't trust me? I'm shocked." He hefted a protective cloth over the prototype, covering her like a blanket. It would have to do.

"I didn't think anypony could. Knew I picked a clever one. How long will she be out?"

"Long enough for lunch," he answered, turning to go. "We'll be back, Sweetie. Don’t get into any trouble while we're gone." He followed Seed from the room, letting the door smack closed behind them.

He wasn't there to see Sweetie's eyes come back on.

Therefore

Sweetie Belle had a long time to think, about a whole list of different things. Once, her world had been a place where everything was horrible but made painful sense. Now all the pain was gone, the hospital was gone, the doctors constantly prodding her and injecting her and muttering sad things to her family. Not a single one had arrived today to tell her how grim her outlook was for the day, or to ask if it hurt.

Yes, it hurt, it always hurt, now could they make it stop?

The pain was gone now, yet Sweetie still felt—strange. She felt no desire to sleep, for one. Her tiredness was connected to a metal plate attached to one of her forelegs, somehow. While it was connected, her exhaustion retreated. If it remained in place long enough, she would be ready to get out and move again.

I was dying, she thought. Not something she could easily acknowledge back then. By the time she realized she would never leave the hospital again, it was already too late. Too late to say the things she wanted to say, even goodbye.

But now the hospital was gone, now she was somewhere else. Instead of beeping health monitors, there were huge, humming computers, and mechanical parts she couldn't easily explain.

Sweetie might not be a grown-up yet, but she wasn't stupid. She remembered Lucid Storm, from those last days. He was the bat who persuaded Rarity to set up a machine in her hospital room, and attach metal things all over her head. It was the last clear thing she could remember.

"What does this do?" she remembered asking, when her friends all went home, and only her sister remained. Her and Lucid, with his rolling metal crate of supplies.

"It's... a way to help you," Rarity said awkwardly. "If the potions and enchantments aren't strong enough."

"Help me... what?" Asking cost her a lot of effort then, fighting against a pervasive weakness that settled on her whole body and never let go.

"It's a kind of magic," the bat explained. It wasn't the first time he'd visited, but he rarely spoke to her. He couldn't get away, when he had to attach a bunch of weird metal things to Sweetie’s head. "One day ponies all over Equestria might get to use it. But you get to be the first, isn't that exciting?"

"I guess so." It didn't hurt, no more than anything else Sweetie had been through. But when she tried to think about what came after—she couldn't. She had no memories of Lucid actually removing the metal plates from her head, no memory of the trip across Ponyville. So how was she here?

She waited a little while—long enough that the tiredness was gone. It didn't work exactly the way she remembered—she didn't have to eat. But since going to the hospital it had been a long time since she ate anything.

Sweetie had no company in the garage but the steady hum of the computer. The sun went down, activity on the streets outside faded, and only the machine kept her company, whispering its quiet questions out into the world. She'd never taken much interest in machines before, but now things were different.

She'd never been able to hear them before, and understand them so clearly. Every few seconds, the computer asked her how she was feeling. Oh sure, it used different words than ponies—but the message was the same. It wanted her to know she wasn't alone, to know that she was doing okay.

She had been replying automatically before, using the same unspoken words. Sweetie couldn't exactly say how she spoke to them before—but now she changed them.

"Why am I here?"

The reply came in the same, unspoken language. It wasn't exactly what she was looking for, but Sweetie still appreciated the attempt. "Lucid Storm's workshop. He is conducting a simulation experiment on the recorded mind of a deceased pony, to test the viability and salability of organic neural network simulations."

Most of that made very little sense to her, except for one thing. Deceased. "Who am I?" she asked. Sweetie wasn't breathing—but as her mind raced, so did the sound. A breeze drifted across her coat, somehow sent out from within her body. It was a lot like breathing, except that it was continuous instead of rhythmic.

"Network simulation 09, contained in experimental chassis 02, codename 'Sweetie Bot'. Operational runtime, eighteen hours."

That was all she needed to know. Sweetie knew the computer was telling her the truth, just as she knew she could trust the bat who helped her. It was something deep down, fundamental to the way she thought.

The computer told the truth. "Who is Sweetie Belle?"

She waited in nervous anticipation, her mind racing. Maybe the machine would say nothing. Maybe it wouldn't know.

"The first subject of the neural network simulation experiment. Her recording was taken approximately eight hours before death, and propagated through nine optimization models. She is buried in—"

But Sweetie wasn't listening anymore. She tore her hoof free of the charging port, which began to beep loudly in protest. She ignored the noise, galloping across the room for the door. The garage was shut now, but the door—yes, it opened at her touch, not locked!

She made it out into the darkened streets of Ponyville, illuminated by the pale orange of streetlights and the light of a waning moon. Early birds whistled and sang in the distance, heralding the coming dawn. But none arrived.

Few other ponies were out this early. Even Applejack would just be waking up. Soon Apple Bloom would be gathering produce into carts to take to market for the day. Scootaloo would still be lazing somewhere at her aunts', and wouldn't rouse until seconds before she had to leave for class.

Even Ponyville's few bats were probably heading in for the night—or they were like Lucid, matching day pony schedules because of their day pony friends. Good thing too, or else he would probably catch her.

I don't have long. She felt it instinctively, a perfect knowledge that she would need to rest again in about fifty minutes. Moving around cut into that time, but she didn't care. She had a destination in mind, and she wouldn't be stopped.

The Carousel Boutique was exactly where she remembered, its top floors lit by rows and rows of bright lights. She found the front locked of course, but around to the back, Rarity still hid the spare key in a little statue of a cat in the garden.

Sweetie's magic didn't work right, just like her whole body felt a little strange. Her hooves didn't move the same way, but she could still pick up the key with effort, and get it into the lock. She jiggled the door just right in her teeth, then twisted, and got it to swing open.

Sweetie made her way through a mostly empty kitchen, then past the darkened front of the boutique. There were many dresses on display, but one caught her eye even in the dim light. She made her way over, nearly tripping on Opalescence in her eagerness to get there. The animal yowled at her, hissing as she retreated to the stairs.

Sweetie winced, backing away from her. "Sorry, Opal!" Sweetie whispered. "I didn't mean to."

The animal didn't seem terribly interested in her apology, arching her back and bounding up the steps.

Her sister wasn't up yet. How much longer did she have?

Sweetie flicked on the light, then stared. There at the side of the room was a simple display, obviously separated from a whole array of dresses Sweetie had never seen before. This one was white, purple, and pink, sized for a filly. A few photos framed the wall behind it—photos of her.

Most of them were older. Several showed her failed attempts to get a cutie mark of her own, or the various crazy things she'd tried with her friends. Only one showed Sweetie in the hospital, surrounded by machines.

She hopped up to get a closer view, her forelegs up on the table beside the dress. The pony up there looked so thin and shriveled, her eyes sunken and dim.

I remember that picture. It was the last time she'd seen her parents. They came to visit before a long trip, and said something about not being back in time. Rarity never left, though. Rarity had been with her no matter what. She was there every time the doctors came, and when Lucid brought his machines for the last time.

Sweetie was still there when a set of hoofsteps from the room behind finally startled her. Someone gasped, porcelain shattered, and a familiar voice spoke. "Sweetie?"

She hopped down, looking over her shoulder at the newcomer. Of course she didn't have any doubt about who would be standing there. She just hadn't been brave enough to go upstairs and talk to her directly.

"Hi Rarity," she said. She eyed the broken glass, and the stain on the ground there. "Sorry about the spill. I didn't mean to scare you—"

Her sister crossed the room in a flash of magic, as sudden as any of Twilight's teleports. She felt a sudden overwhelming grip on her shoulders, pulling her into a tight hug. "Sweetie? You're... alive."

That wasn't what the computer said. That wasn't what her sister's little monument said. But with a hoof around her shoulder, it was exactly how she felt. "I don't think—maybe kinda. I think I'm actually a... organic neural network simulation."

Rarity let go, then flicked on the other lights one by one. Bright white surrounded them, making Rarity hesitate briefly. But Sweetie's eyes had no such trouble adjusting. Just one more little reminder of how different they were—one of many. "You sound so much like... you," Rarity continued. "How do you feel? What do you remember?"

She circled slowly around her, eyes lingering on all the wrong details, the incongruities. Her limbs with their incorrect joints, her hooves that made the wrong sound when she walked. "Some things..." she said. "Not very many. I don't know how I... I don't remember dying."

Her sister hugged her again, tighter this time. It felt as wonderful as she remembered—but there was no moisture on her face. She couldn't cry. "Sweetie. You're not—you won't ever have to remember that, little sister. If the bat pony engineer is right, you'll never learn what death is like."

As if her words had summoned him, the nearby boutique door banged urgently. Sweetie saw a flash of dark fur beyond it, a little of his purple mane. Sweetie winced, backing suddenly away from the door. "Oh yeah. I kinda sorta... ran here. Without telling him."

Rarity made her slow way over to the door. "Did something happen? Is something wrong?"

"No, just—" Sweetie whimpered. "I wanted to see you. I had to know if I was really... really dead, or not. I stopped thinking about everything else."

Rarity straightened her robe, smoothed her mane with her magic, then opened the door. "Lucid, yes. I believe you've guessed correctly about my sister's intentions."

She stepped aside, and the bat entered. His mane was a mess, his tablet held under one wing. "Sweetie," he said. "We were going to see your sister in the morning. Your body isn't ready to sprint across the town like that."

She deflated, her ears folding down to her head. There was no easy argument to make—of course he was right. Coming here had certainly satisfied her curiosity, but it was probably not good for her or Rarity's emotional health.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I should've asked first."

"I'll visit this afternoon," Rarity promised. "I have many questions for Lucid. I'm sure you want to come back and live here—see your friends again. But that will have to wait until he's satisfied with your recovery."

She dropped down to Sweetie’s eye-level, resting one hoof on her shoulder. "Not many ponies get a second chance, sweetheart. We need to treat yours with the respect it deserves."

I Live

Lucid's next day was a flurry of activity. It was never his first choice to be up so early in the morning. But once the prototype was up, she refused to sit still. She would probably run off on her own again, potentially causing herself all kinds of worse damage if he didn't intervene. In a single weekend, he'd gone from a hobbyist tinkerer to perhaps the first pony to set hoof onto an incredible road of life extension and medicine, one never before considered. But that meant incredible pressure for him: if Sweetie failed, Equestria would probably see her case as exemplary of the technology in general. It might fade away without ever being properly explored.

It soon became clear that he wasn't going to be able to switch her off while he reviewed her latest diagnostic data, or made repairs to her superstructure. This was a filly, not an abstract experiment in machine intelligence. Her patience did not stretch very far.

"I have to go over these readings," he explained, around breakfast time. "In the future, maybe I can... get some books from the library or something. Is there anything you'd like to read?"

The pony seemed to think that over, then shook her head. "I like the Shadow Spade books I guess. But we don't need to worry about it. I'll be home soon, won't I?"

Would she? That was a question he couldn't easily answer. On his tablet, he reviewed snapshots of her network activity, graphed at such a high level that he barely understood what he was looking at anymore. Of course it was easy to know in the abstract that this was the product of a pony mind-simulation. He'd seen its like used in far simpler examples, classifying images or generating text responses to messages.

Even those were so complex they couldn't be understood without expert-level knowledge. How was he supposed to know if an entire pony's mind was breaking down?

There were a few metrics displayed, showing the model's adherence to the sample scan, along with a speculated theoretical “safe” level of activity.

"Mr. Lucid Storm?" Sweetie poked her head directly in front of him, blocking his view of the screen. To get there, she had dragged the charger across the ground, rather than coming disconnected from it. "How long until I can move in with my sister?"

He winced, avoiding looking directly at her. But he'd been dodging around questions like this for too long. He checked the pad one final time, then set it aside. "Sweetie, there are some things you have to understand. You're not... a normal pony anymore. Everything you could take for granted about growing up before—it won't be true anymore."

"I don't..." She slumped onto her haunches, tilting her head to one side. "What does that mean?"

"A lot." He backed away from her, to where he kept a shop mirror. He rotated it towards her, so she was looking directly at the reflection. "Your body is made from plastic and stainless steel. My first design was more about minimum viable product than—"

Technical was the wrong direction. He could practically watch her losing focus before his eyes. "You won't grow up, not unless we make a bigger body and move you over. You won't ever eat again, or sleep again, unless we can find a way to simulate it. Your body will wear down all the time, but not fix itself. Any time something goes wrong, you'll have to come back to me, because it won't ever get better." He leaned in closer to her, meeting her eyes. "Do you understand?"

She wobbled, electric pupils widening. "I, uh—I think so. How often will I break?"

"I don't know yet," he admitted. "Nopony knows anything about you. By helping me, your old self agreed to help ponies all over Equestria. If this works... there might one day be big factories making new bodies all the time. Maybe they'll make them so nice that you don't break down anymore, and you can venture out into the wilderness as far as you want. But until then, we have to be careful."

He set the mirror down, then flicked his tail towards the open door. "I spent most of the budget making your mind as sturdy as possible. But your body—it's the only one we have. It could take months to replace if you break it. You need to be careful."

"Got it." The filly nodded, confident. "I'll protect it, Mr. Lucid Storm. I'll make everypony proud." She stood up, posing dramatically. "When can I see my friends?"

"I'll talk to your sister and set something up," he said. "It will probably have to be indoors. Your battery isn't really meant for field use, It's just supposed to keep you going during servicing."

There was so much he didn't say. The child didn't need to know how dependent her longevity was on sustained budgeting from project donors, or some sponsorship. There were plenty of wealthy ponies he'd been courting, who all wanted a way to assure their “legacy.” Having a real prototype to show them should assure investment, assuming the Crown didn't come down on the project.

It didn't take long to get Sweetie the chance she deserved. A few days to get a charging station moved into Rarity's boutique, and get in contact with Sweetie's old friends. It would've been kinder to the prototype to shut her down during that time, maybe wake her again when she could go back to something like her old life.

But Lucid had no way of knowing she would survive that process. Just because the network had successfully booted on the first attempt did not mean it would sustain a second activation. Maybe she could freely suspend and activate for a thousand years without any trouble—or maybe this success was a fluke that would never happen again.

Her days of boredom passed, and finally it was time to make the move. Lucid brought her over in the middle of the night, both because the pony didn't sleep and because most of Ponyville did. He had taken enough steps to ensure the pony looked like her former self.

Most of those just came down to choosing the right colors of filament to print her body. But that would mean everypony in town would be able to recognize her, if they saw her.

Best to introduce his experiment with resurrection as slowly as possible. Ponyville had taken enough time to adjust to the fact that there was a bat living in the village. Foal-sized hoofsteps, here.

She still had a bedroom. Lucid rolled the dolly of equipment into the old room, just behind her. He stopped in the doorway, momentarily silenced. Did you keep this here waiting for my experiment to succeed? he wondered. Or would you have left this for years, even if I wasn't here?

"Woah, everything's still here!" Sweetie bounded across the room, with jumps that made him cringe just a little with every impact. Her mechanisms should be shock-resistant, but there was no telling for sure without a test. As vigorous as any filly could manage.

"Sure is," Rarity proclaimed. "When we... when we last spoke, I gave you my word. I would keep all this exactly as you left it, waiting for the day of your return. Other than regular maintenance, and occasionally changing the linens, everything is exactly as you left it. Besides the—hospice equipment."

She cleared her throat, ears flattening. "Regardless, I'm sure your friends will be delighted to see you again."

Lucid kept out of their conversation. All that really mattered to him was getting the charger and monitoring suite set up in a vacant space against the wall. In time, she would probably want to ditch the bed entirely.

Finally he finished connecting everything up. He cleared his throat to get Sweetie's attention. The filly had occupied herself with an old cloth cape, spinning around with it in one foreleg. There was a little symbol stitched onto the back, but Lucid didn't recognize it. A school prop, maybe?

"Sweetie? Before I go, two things to show you." And by extension, Rarity. He held up a long cable with one hoof, ending in a flat connector. "This here—it attaches to your back, right here. So long as it's plugged in, you don't need to worry about running out of energy. And this right here—"

He gestured at a large red button at the top of the charger. "If something goes wrong—if your body starts doing something unexpected, or you're having a hard time thinking straight, touch this. It will stop everything until I can get here, or somepony else who knows what they're doing with machines. Alright?”

"Will that happen?" Sweetie asked. "I mean, you made me right the first time, right?"

He chuckled. "I tried to. But organic ponies have millions of years of evolution and magical development on us. There may be some mistakes, some trial and error. Only way we'll know what to do is to try."

Of course it wasn't just a charger. The whole assembly was also a diagnostic recorder, which would make snapshots of system status over time, to track the prototype's endurance. And importantly, alert him if replacement parts needed to be ordered.

There was more than a little weight on his shoulders now. At least right now, he was the only pony in all Equestria who knew how to keep Sweetie Belle alive.

Rarity left her sister to get settled, and followed him to the door. "You've worked a miracle here today, Lucid Storm," she said. There was a little tiredness in her voice from the late hour, but not much. Rarity was too graceful and composed to let the time faze her.

"I don't know if you understand or appreciate just how significant that is. Whatever resources my sister needs, you will have them. And when the time comes, my personal recommendation to the princess."

"Not for a long time yet, please," he said. "These results have been incredible so far, but we aren't done. Keep an eye on her, and report any strange behavior to me. It might not be her fault—she's constrained by her hardware. And when she breaks something—she will—just make sure she doesn't panic. There's no part of that body we can't repair or replace."

"I'll remember," the unicorn promised. "And keep you updated if anything changes."

Lucid left the boutique behind, pushing an empty dolly. Whatever happened to the prototype now really depended on her. Only time would tell if that meant rising to incredible achievement, or proving every skeptic was right after all.

Sweetie met her old friends the next day. It didn't feel like that long since their last time together—but that was another life, when her body barely worked and staying awake was a constant battle.

She still remembered how sad they always looked around her, no matter how hard they tried to hide it. Would they look at her new self the same way?

Apple Bloom showed up first, rushing up to the boutique after a day selling apples in the marketplace. She spent a long time outside, looking up at the building and looking sad. Finally she knocked, and Rarity rushed out to meet her.

Sweetie had made a mess of her room, more than her old self ever had. She had every old photo-album off the shelf, and a dozen different outfits spread across the bed. It wasn't like she needed the space for sleep. So long as the cable stayed connected, she never got tired.

Even knowing she was coming, she was still nervous, shifting her weight anxiously from hoof to hoof. Ponies weren't supposed to come back from the dead. What if Apple Bloom didn't want to see her again?

Rarity knocked lightly on the door, then opened it a crack. "Sweetie? There's somepony here to see you. Can I let her in?"

She took a deep breath—or tried. Nothing actually happened, but the instinct was still there. Her ears still moved, her tail fell limply behind her. She tried and failed to relax. "Yeah I'm ready."

Again

The knocking came on Sweetie's door, as clear in her new ears as ever. Part of her wished she could get away with hiding in her bed—but she knew better than to try. A meeting like this might never happen again. If she messed it up now...

"Come in!" she called, sounding far more confident than she really felt. "I'm here."

Seconds later, the door swung open, and Apple Bloom was standing there.

The little earth pony was slightly taller than Sweetie expected. The last time she'd been with her friends, she remembered three ponies who were all about the same height, minus the variation from her horn. That was no longer the case.

Apple Bloom stepped inside, though not far. She stopped just through the doorway, leaving the door open behind her.

"You gonna run away?" Sweetie asked, eyeing it. "You didn't have to come if you didn't want to." She stood from her desk, though she left the photo-album behind her.

Apple Bloom stared, mouth still hanging open. For a good long while she didn't answer, remaining silent and still. "Rarity said a bat brought you back to life," she said. "Of course I had to come." She advanced a few steps, eyeing the charger and diagnostic equipment that took a large part of the empty space in Sweetie's room. "She said something about machines, but I didn't think... I didn't realize what it meant."

"That I'm part machine?" Sweetie prompted. "All machine, really. There's nothing... alive, exactly. It's all mechanical."

The apple filly sniffed, wiping at her eyes. "I... I remember saying goodbye last year. My sister said I wouldn't get to come visit again. They d-didn't think you'd last through the night. Hardest thing I ever did. I was just a foal when the fire... when my parents..."

Sweetie nodded once. She wanted to reach out and offer her support, to hold on to her friend and never let go. But she resisted, no matter how much it hurt. Sweetie Belle could cry, but no tears came to her eyes no matter how much it hurt. Moisture was dangerous to her, if too much of it got through her frame. "You promised you'd... r-remember me," Sweetie whispered. "You said that Cheerilee's class was gonna do a memorial for me. How'd that go?"

Apple Bloom looked up. Her eyes were swollen with hot tears, which streaked her face freely now. "Great, it went great. Even Diamond Tiara found something nice to..." She trailed off abruptly. "How can you remember that?" She circled slowly around Sweetie, far enough to get a better view to her left and right. "You do look like her. You have the right colors. But how can a machine be my friend?"

Sweetie winced. This was exactly the reason she was nervous about this meeting. Apple Bloom in particular seemed like a pony who would remain skeptical of her, maybe forever. "I don't know how it happened, exactly." She tapped the side of her head with one hoof, though even that was a lie. Her head felt light, practically empty. From the heat that always radiated from her torso, Sweetie guessed that was where her mechanical mind was really located.

"When I was sick, I agreed to let Lucid Storm try this new... scan. He set it up in the hospital and left it there, waiting to see how bad I would get. When I was... so sick I couldn't even move anymore, and I knew I would be gone soon—that's when he did it. A machine went onto my head, recording everything about me to a computer. I guess it took all this time to put that recording into a pony. Now I'm back!" She held up that same foreleg, flexing the interlocking plastic joint. "Feels a lot like it used to, except for touch. That's worse—but Lucid Storm says he'll figure it all out. He needed a pony who was actually alive to tinker with that stuff."

Apple Bloom held out her leg, touching against Sweetie's hoof. She pressed against the plastic, then pulled back just as quickly.

At least Sweetie Belle could still feel touch in her hooves. That pressure sensitivity was how she walked, and it could also serve almost as well for a hoof shake with a friend.

"That's hard for me to understand," Apple Bloom said. "I don't mean about scans and robot ponies and the like—I know clever ponies can do amazing things. They'll do more amazing things all the time. I just don't understand where the space is for the soul in all this. You ever heard of that?"

"No," Sweetie answered honestly. "What's a soul?"

"According to my granny—it's you." She tapped her chest with one hoof, then settled down into a sitting position. Within reach this time, not about to break and run. "Can't see it, can't touch it. But it's the part of you that goes on when this life is over. The part that loves and hates and fears. The part that misses your family when you've been away too long. The part that feels guilty when you make a mistake, or feels good when you make up for it."

"It's your conscience?" Sweetie asked, tilting her head to the side. "I know I can still feel bad for things. I ran out on my first night, and almost broke myself. Scared my big sister half to death when I did it, too. I still feel guilty about it..." Her head sagged, and her ears flattened as she spoke. She didn't even know exactly how she would make it up to her sister for that surprise wake-up call.

Apple Bloom grunted in frustration. "It's not—well, maybe it is. I dunno. You still sound like my friend. Can you still sing?"

She nodded. "Better, and worse. The way ponies make sounds is different from me. I can't get as loud, but I can sing for a lot longer. Maybe forever." She never needed to pause for breath, though she still usually did. It was instinct, even if no part of her body required breathing. Fans in her torso constantly circulated cool air to keep her insides cool. If they stopped, she would shut down.

A pair of rapid hoofsteps sounded in the hall. Before either of them could react, somepony else came stampeding into the room, her wings buzzing to speed her just a little more.

Scootaloo crossed the room in a blur. She stopped directly beside Apple Bloom, looking Sweetie Belle up and down.

"Hey, Scoots," Sweetie began, raising one hoof.

She hadn't got it down again before the pony rushed forward to embrace her, pulling her into a tight, shaking hug. "You're back!" Scootaloo didn't cry as openly. Her voice cracked, but when she let go, she pretended not to notice the tears. "I didn't know if it was real. But here you are, all... robot, now?"

She nodded. "Pretty much. Just don't ask me to vacuum the floors, I'm still not very good at it. The power cable isn't long enough." Now she didn't have to fake a smile anymore.

"Can't be worse than you are in the kitchen," Scootaloo countered, beaming right back. She was taller too, even taller than Apple Bloom. Her wings were much bigger than Sweetie remembered. Could she fly with those?

Sweetie suppressed that question. She didn't want to make her friend feel bad if the answer was no, even another year later.

"You don't wonder if she's for real?" Apple Bloom asked. "You just—hear, and assume?"

Scootaloo took a step back, gesturing at her. "If that's not Sweetie Belle, who else am I looking at? I know my friend when I see her." She leaned forward, patting Sweetie Belle's head with a hoof. "Bit of a small fry though, isn't she? Guess you didn't grow up since we saw you last."

Sweetie would've been frustrated at most ponies calling her short. After today, she would let Scootaloo call her anything she wanted. "It hasn't even been two weeks for me," she admitted. "Since we talked last, I mean."

"Woah. Guess we'll have to catch you up on everything." She sat down as though she were about to get started, then jerked suddenly up into the air. She drifted back to the ground, wings still spread. "Wait. I'm gonna get some snacks. What do robots eat?"

"Electricity," Sweetie answered, defeated. "I haven't felt hungry since I woke up. But I still miss eating things. The bat who made me says that's probably not gonna happen for a long time, though. Eating things is complicated, and there are a lot more important things to work out first."

Scootaloo shrugged. "Alright. One sec." She darted back out the door the way she'd come, leaving Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom alone in the awkward silence all over again.

"I want this to be real so bad," the earth pony whispered. "Of course I want my friend back. I want you to be Sweetie Belle."

"I am," she said. "I don't know about souls or whatever. I can't even pour a glass of orange juice without burning it. But do you think maybe—I could be like... a probationary friend? You could just give me a chance... p-pretend I'm the real Sweetie Belle. Then wait and see if I'm not."

She sniffed, and her voice felt like it would crack. But it never did, just as she couldn't cry. Was that a feature on Lucid Storm's list?

Apple Bloom was silent and still for a long time. Finally she leaned forward and hugged her. Lighter than Scootaloo had, but the love behind it felt no less real. Tentative, but sincere. "I'll try. It's good to see you again, Sweets. Missed you a lot."

"Missed you too," she squeaked. "Not as long as you two, but just as much. When you left the hospital, I didn't think I'd see you again either. I wish I was a real pony—but I'll take this if it's all I get. Beats being dead." She giggled at the morbid joke. Apple Bloom didn't share her amusement.

Instead she let go, looking awkwardly away. "While you were, uh—while you were over there... did you talk to my parents? Did they have anything to tell me?"

Sweetie settled back down onto her haunches. "I don't remember anything from while I was..." She shrugged her shoulders. "One minute, I was in the hospital room, getting ready for the scan. The bat talked to my sister, told me it might feel a little funny—then I woke up in the garage, and my body was all weird. There wasn't an in-between."

"Oh," Apple sighed. "Worth a shot. Let me know if you remember anything, though. Promise?"

"Promise." It wasn't exactly a hard thing to offer. From what little Sweetie knew about how the process worked, she was fairly confident it would never matter. She'd have to ask the bat engineer about where her “soul” was in the robotic body he'd built. Maybe he could add room for one in the next update, if he hadn't thought of putting it into her already.

"Got snacks!" Scootaloo hurried back in a few seconds later, balancing a plate of snacks on her back. "Borrowed these from your sister, Sweets. Sorry, she... made me promise not to let you have any." She settled them onto the empty place on Sweetie's desk, beside her photo-album.

"That's fine," she said. "Just having you two here is enough for me. You can tell me how good the apples taste."

"Great, obviously," Apple answered, without so much as biting one. "Rarity always buys from my sister, so I know they're good. We don't sell no junk fruit."

They arranged the cushions beside Sweetie's bed, so everyone had somewhere comfortable to sit. Technically Sweetie didn't need cushions—but not having them would've made her feel even shorter compared to her friends.

"Now, where to start," Scootaloo continued, once they were in place. "After the memorial, I guess. Let's not talk about that... too depressing. But it's over now. Anyway, you were around when Cozy Glow got turned to stone. But a few weeks after, there was this new loser that showed up..."

Sweetie Belle listened for hours, chatting with her old friends about all the crazy and amazing things that had happened in Equestria since her death. She ached in their defeats, thrilled in their victories, and more than anything else just wished she could've been there to help.

But thanks to a few new inventions, she would get to be there for the next adventures.

That was almost as good.

The End

Author's Note

And thus ends this little story. Thanks again to Lucid Storm for requesting it. This story began as a minific request on my patreon, the middle tier where people can request short stories. Normally those would go into my anthology collection, but this one got a little out of hand, and he already had an amazing piece of artwork to use for the cover. I really couldn't resist posting it on its own. I hope it was as fun to read as it was to write.

Despite the apparent ending, it's possible a few more chapters will float this way at some point in the future. There are still some fun things I could explore with this version of Sweetie Bot. Maybe we'll get a chance to see them one day.

But

What was it like to live as an intelligent machine? Never a question that Sweetie Belle had ever thought to answer—or anypony else she knew of, for that matter. It wasn't even a question she could've known existed until the moment she woke up as one. How could a machine be alive? That was the question that troubled Apple Bloom. Once introduced to the idea, it became a hostile pattern in her mind and troubled her as well.

She asked Lucid Storm during his next visit only a few days later. He came with another cart full of equipment, and a long list of things to check and changes to make.

"Amazing news!" he exclaimed, when he had finally finished with his annoying checklist. "We got our first sponsor! There's an older gentlecolt out of Canterlot, one with some concerns about legacy in mind—he connected me with some banker friends of his, and next thing I knew—well, it's all very complicated, but good news! The best news!"

Sweetie hadn't known this thestral long, technically speaking. By some metrics, he was the first pony she had ever met, present at the very instant of her birth. They had one thing in common—once he got fixated on something, he would focus on it at the intense exclusion of all others. That probably made him a good engineer, but it didn't make him good at helping others understand.

Her room was different now, transformed over the few weeks since she arrived. Her bed had been shoved into a corner, made into a storage shelf. She had only tried to use it twice, both times unsuccessfully.

That meant there was more room to walk around, which was good since she could only leave it for short periods at a time. Thus was life when your batteries only lasted a half hour.

"Right, sorry. I forget that you're... quite young." He dropped to one knee, so he was at eye-level. "I'm going to tell you like a grown-up, miss. You had your cutie mark, so I'm assuming you're able to understand. Is that okay?"

She nodded. "Better than lying to me. Doctors spent months telling me how everything would be all better... but they knew it wouldn't. They'd rather lie than tell me the truth."

He looked away, unable to meet her eyes at first. Most adults had done that when she was dying, and they still did it now whenever her past came up. "When you were an ordinary pony, everything was natural for you. Living creatures have something called homeostasis—it means that your body can regulate its own growth. But you aren't a pony like that anymore."

Sweetie nodded slowly. "My friends are older than me now—bigger. I bet by next year they'll have some special somepony for Hearts and Hooves Day. I didn't grow up."

"Right." He straightened, then tucked the tablet away. "Part of that is your biggest advantage—but it is also a vulnerability. Your body cannot heal itself—that technology is out of reach."

"I know!" Sweetie exclaimed, bouncing past him to the desk. "I've been extra-careful since the last time! I won't let anything break!"

Lucid sighed. "I'm afraid it isn't that simple. Being alive wears you down. Caution keeps that process at a reasonable pace, but it can't be stopped." Maybe he could see the way her expression sagged, because he stretched one wing briefly over her shoulder, grinning eagerly. "But there's no need to worry! The partnership I just secured means that there will soon be many ponies working to improve and innovate on the technology used to make you."

He hurried back over to the tablet, flipping through it for her. "You were a prototype, Sweetie—the first of your kind. But the next generation of artificial pony will solve many of the issues with yours. Future ponies won't be tied to physically limited power supplies, or vulnerable to moisture and dust. In time, they will probably exceed the endurance of earth ponies, or the flight of the fastest pegasi. Their growth is unbounded!"

With each line, Sweetie sunk lower and lower into her slouched position, touched against the bed. Her ears folded backwards, and her tail would've too, if it could do anything more than slightly change angle.

"So I'm... obsolete," she finally said. "I'm gonna run down and break forever, and—"

"No!" He nudged her chin with one wing. "Sweetie Belle, why would you think that? You're not a body, you're the mind living in it."

He turned back to his toolbox, shuffling around inside it for a moment. Eventually he found what he was looking for, and he settled it onto her desk in front of her. It was a glass sphere, about the size of a hoof. It wasn't a single mass, but laced with many thin wires, and countless little imperfections and grooves. A few little green wafers bisected it down the center, with connectors on either side.

"This here—this is you. The genius of Moss Flower. Obviously not this one exactly, there's... another one in your chest. So long as it survives, so do you. It will take a little time—but time is the one thing you have in abundance. When our technology improves, we can transfer you safely into the superior replacement. It will only take minutes.

"Which is... why I mention this at all." He took a stylus in his mouth, then tucked it behind one oversized bat-ear. "What have you noticed needs the most improvement? What kind of changes would you make, if you had the choice? There's no better pony to ask."

"I..." Where could she even begin about a question like that? Ponies didn't usually get to just choose how they would grow up. But most ponies didn't need engineers to make their bodies work properly, either.

"I just..." She tried to levitate the group photo from her desk. As usual, nothing happened. "Can I have my magic back? I was never very good at it—but you don't know how much you relied on something until it's gone." She pawed at her horn with one hoof. The shape wasn't even a very good match.

She'd take a longer or shorter horn if it actually worked.

Lucid winced, along with a high-pitched, anxious sound Sweetie could now just barely hear. She was fairly certain that other ponies couldn't, from the way her sister never reacted to it. Even her ears didn't work quite the same anymore.

"Anything else? That may be some years away, unfortunately. Magic is mechanically complex. Are there any other enhancements you would make?"

"I... older. Definitely. A little older than my friends, that way it can work for a long time. And make sure you make room for my soul in the next design. I dunno where that goes—but it's important."

While she spoke, he scribbled onto the surface of his tablet. Until she said that last part, and he spat it out.

"The... that's, uh... that's been there since the first prototype." He nodded towards the crystal device on her desk. "We can talk about that when you're older."

She flicked it with one of her hooves, making the crystal slide across her desk. She caught it with her other hoof, then sighed. "If you already have my soul in there, could you... maybe make the batteries better? I want to be out there with my friends—but I can't even go to Cheerilee's class anymore. As soon as I walk there, I have to turn around and come back."

"We have been discussing that," said another voice, speaking from her doorway. Sweetie looked up to find Rarity standing there, watching. There was no telling exactly how long she'd been there. Maybe she listened to everything they said.

"With Miss Cheerilee, and some others. I know a summer trapped indoors may be awful for you—but by the time the next year arrives, arrangements will be made. Power arrangements, that is, at those places you visit most often. The schoolhouse, the homes of your two good friends, and Twilight's castle to start. You won't be trapped here forever."

Sweetie hurried over to her, fast enough that the charging cable pulled tight where it connected to her back leg, then clicked out. "Really? I get to..." She sniffed, but the gesture was only a reflex. She could not cry anymore, from happiness or sadness. "When? Can I go right now?"

Rarity pried her off, incredibly gentle. "Not quite yet. But soon. How soon depends on Mr. Storm here. No doubt he's hard at work."

The thestral tucked his tablet back into the toolbag, then slung it over his shoulder. "Full time as of today. We're making the future, starting with one life. I'll be back next week for your next check-up!"

And just like that, he was gone. He had left so quickly that he left the little crystal brain behind, sitting on her desk. Rarity didn't seem to notice it either. Sweetie did—she couldn't look at it without thinking about how there was something just like that inside her somewhere. It was her, in whatever strange way life worked for creatures like her.

When her sister left again, she tucked the little brain-machine away in a box of her other old things, wrapped in a layer of protective cloth. She had to protect it, if only as a constant reminder of what she really was.

Author's Note

So there's at least a few more chapters than I thought. >.>

Living

Author's Note

As is probably self-evident, I've been commissioned to add some more chapters to this awesome story. As such, I've changed the status formally to in-progress. I'll mark it complete again when we reach the new end.

Living

It took a few more weeks, as it turned out. Summer was just about halfway over when she got to make her first trip across Ponyville—a walk all the way to the Apple family farm. That would be good enough—it wasn't like she visited Scootaloo at her home very much anyway.

That trip wasn't made during the cover of night, keeping her from being accidentally seen. It was her first time out in the open. "Are you sure you're ready?" Rarity asked, lingering near the back-door of her store. "It could be dangerous. You've never been outside for that long. What if there's an unexpected rain?”

Sweetie shrugged one shoulder. She realized after only a few seconds how wrong that instinct was, though. Rain was deadly to her now—definitely her body and maybe that crystal brain too.

"I made sure there was no rain tonight, Miss Rarity!" Scootaloo called. She was taller now, just like Apple Bloom on her other side. Sweetie had mostly adjusted to the differences in her voice by now. Mostly. "I'm pretty sure Rainbow let the whole weather team know. There won't be any unexpected showers."

"And the family knows we're coming," Apple Bloom added. "Granny even planned a special dinner—" she trailed off, looking away awkwardly. "Maybe—it's the thought that counts on that one."

I should've asked for taste instead of magic! Sweetie had no hunger left, or any ability to eat. She didn't have moisture, or even a throat the same way ponies did. Basically everything was different between her and her friends, except for having four legs and a tail.

I'm the prototype. My next body will be better. She had plenty of problems right then, but at least she had hope.

"I can't stay inside forever," Sweetie said. "Come on, sis—I still live in Ponyville. Ponies are going to see me eventually. Might as well be today."

Rarity sighed, then wrapped one leg around her shoulder. "I suppose so. But please—at the first sign of trouble, come straight back. Or send one of your friends to get me. I already lost you once, I won't lose you again."

She let go.

Apple Bloom held the door open for her, and together they set out onto Ponyville's afternoon streets.

Sweetie might be another kind of life now—but her hometown still felt so familiar. The brilliant sunlight shining down from overhead, the faces of so many ponies she had lived around her whole life. The smells were all the same too—sagebrush, thatch roofs, and the dirt road with just a hint of moisture to it.

She stopped just outside the Boutique. She sniffed, and almost started to cry all over again.

"You got this," Scootaloo said. "We'll be here every step."

She sniffed again, but of course there was no moisture to her nose either. Maybe that didn't matter. Sweetie wasn't the same pony anymore, but Ponyville was still her home.

The streets of Ponyville could be a dangerous place—doubly so when your body was made of plastic and had plenty of open cooling ports. Thankfully Sweetie Belle couldn't feel all the strange parts of her new body, or else she might spend every waking moment confused by joints that bent differently, or the many sections of solid, inflexible material that covered most of her.

Where she walked, ponies of all stripes stopped what they were doing to stare. She hurried along without slowing, pretending not to notice. Seeing all those staring eyes fixed on her might've been enough to make her give up after only a few steps, and maybe dart back into the boutique. But when she glanced to the side, she saw Scootaloo there, and Apple Bloom on the other side.

They could clearly see what she did. "We knew ponies would be surprised," Apple Bloom said. She kept her voice down, but for once that wouldn't be enough to keep their conversation from being overheard. Where they walked, ponies of all kinds fell utterly silent. Ponies dropped things, peeking around stalls or buildings to get a look at her. "Nopony's ever seen someone who was... quite like you."

"I know word was getting around. Being able to bring ponies back like that bat did—it'll change everything. Either ponies are afraid and think it's awful, or they have somepony they miss they'd like to see again."

Sweetie Belle kept her head up, smiling at everypony like she always used to. Compared to her last memories of being outside, this was still an improvement. Sweetie could smell again; she didn't feel like she couldn't breathe. There was no ache in her stomach, and no danger she would throw up. Maybe she would never have to worry about those things ever again.

"They'll be disappointed. Lucid didn't bring me back, this is more like—a transfer. He put me in a machine, instead of letting me die. So far that hasn't happened to anypony else, but he says it will eventually. They just couldn't test it until they found someone who was..." She trailed off, pawing at the dirt.

Compared to before, she still felt numb all over. Her hooves just didn’t have the sensitivity they used to. She felt pressure and temperature, but not everything translated directly. Like standing out in the sun—this should feel wonderful, but instead it was just a warmth on one side of her body, and not the other.

"Anypony?" Apple Bloom asked, voice nervous. "No exceptions?"

Sweetie Belle winced. Of course she knew what the other filly would be thinking of. But a house-fire from many years ago was nowhere near boxes and boxes of weird equipment. "Don't think so. But I think—if they thought the way you did, they might not want you to do this to them, even if you could."

Sweetie stopped in the center of the road. Normally there was traffic to worry about, carts flowing in the steady procession of ponies through town. A little filly had to keep alert, or else get squished by big ponies who couldn't see her. No carts got within fifty paces in any direction. Some of them even changed streets, crossing a block away from Mane Street, rather than approach her. At least ponies didn't flee in terror.

"I don't feel exactly the same. Having a real body is way better than this. This is like... a thick suit, for the coldest parts of winter. I'm all wrapped up, and I can't feel through it all. I can touch things, but they're different. Can't eat, or sleep, or swim. But it's still... way better than before. Better than being curled up in bed, needing somepony else to put a pillow under my head for me. Better than not remembering exactly how I got there, and having needles in me every few minutes. I'll take it."

"I understand completely," Scootaloo said. "If I got in an accident or something and it was be a robot or never wake up, I'd wanna be a robot. Buck, maybe one day they'll make robot wings that actually work." She opened her own, flexing them uselessly.

"Maybe. I still don't have a working horn. Lucid Storm said it would be hard to figure out magic."

"For him. Not Princess Twilight. Pretty sure she could figure out any magical problem there was."

They walked in silence for a time, with Sweetie considering what her friends had said. The princess had forgotten more about magic than anypony else in Equestria knew, except maybe Celestia herself. Rarity could probably get a meeting for her, even with Twilight's much busier schedule.

"Hey.” Someone interrupted their walk, when they were most of the way through Ponyville. Sweetie turned, barely even recognizing the speaker at first. Not so much because she'd forgotten what Diamond Tiara sounded like, as she didn't expect she would be the pony not to flee.

Sweetie stopped, turning to face her. Without looking at anything, she could feel the power she had left—about half remained for the walk up to Sweet Apple Acres, and the charger waiting there for her. Enough for a few words with an old frenemy. "You're Sweetie Belle, aren't you? Ponies have been talking."

She nodded slowly. "Yep, it's me. In the..." She trailed off. "Not flesh, technically. Mostly I'm plastic, but there's some aluminum for my skeleton, and silicon for all the computer stuff. Magic in the crystal brain, not sure how much."

Diamond Tiara wasn't alone, of course. Silver Spoon lingered nearby. She kept away like everypony else—until Diamond glared sidelong at her. Then she made her way over, eyes down in shame. But was she ashamed of her fear, or worried about what Ponyville would think?

"I was sorry for what happened," Diamond Tiara went on. Of course she sounded a little different too. She'd grown as much as Apple Bloom, on track for that larger earth-pony stature their tribe was known for. "Getting sick like that—not fair."

Sweetie Belle nodded weakly. "Definitely wasn't. But it's over now! Lucid says I can't even get sick anymore. I'm immune to... everything. Except water."

"Water?" Silver Spoon asked, finally breaking her silence. "Why—"

But they didn't stay to keep talking. Apple Bloom nudged her shoulder, pointing towards the road. "You have to get to my place, remember? You can talk more when you're not running out of energy."

Having a single stranger approach her was a little like flicking a switch. Conversations all around Sweetie just sorta resumed. Ponies still occasionally peeked in her direction, their faces appearing briefly in the windows or around corners. But for everypony else, the strangeness of the whole thing had passed.

Never would've imagined Diamond Tiara would be the one to do it. Maybe it had to be a pony like her, somepony popular enough that others would listen to her, and not afraid of losing friends because of her differences.

The stares and the prodding started up again when she reached Sweet Apple Acres. But it was a good-natured kind of attention then. The Apple Family might look on her with skepticism, but she was also Rarity's little sister. They would never be anything but kind.

She got basically the same reaction the first time she walked into class, when summer ended. Ponyville's students changed—first they were afraid, then they just avoided her, and eventually ponies were willing to talk. After that, she could go back to being friends.

That wasn't to say everything just went back to normal. She had to take a special seat by the side of the class, next to where her charger was attached to the wall. While other students played in the dirt and the mud, she stayed in the grass just beside the classroom, where she could be perfectly clean and dry. Whenever the class took field trips, she was excused to stay home, and fill out worksheets instead.

There were some improvements—for one, math got so easy she was basically cheating. She didn't know how it worked exactly, but looking at problems just caused her to have an answer without even understanding where they came from. It was the same way with anything she could memorize—reading over the page once was enough to entrench it so firmly that she could imagine the entire page exactly as she'd seen it whenever she wanted, and review anything she missed.

Then there were the little things—Sweetie didn't bring a lunch to school, and just used the time to talk to her friends. Her improved memory meant she could watch them get taller over the next school year. It got even worse after the following summer, when she left one year behind and started the next.

Everypony knew her by then—and many of the younger students chose her to befriend, while the ponies she'd known since her first year were often off by themselves.

At least they were friendly with her. Better than trying to hide the way new ponies sometimes did.

The years were not kind to her body. It was just like Lucid first told her—she wore down, and didn't fix herself the way a growing pony could. Every month or so some little motor or servo would burn out, and she would spend a long while not able to lift one of her legs all the way, or twitch her eyebrows. By the end, her white plastic shell was yellowing in some places, and going transparent in others. She couldn't even let her sister give her a shall or something to cover it up, or else cover the critical cooling ports she needed to survive.

But then came a special day, one she'd been looking forward to for what felt like forever.She got to miss school, and stop instead at one of the biggest new buildings in Ponyville.

"Lucid Bioinformatics" was made of white bricks, with fancy glass windows and a roof covered in solar panels instead of Ponyville's traditional thatch. In two years it had grown from the workshop in a bat's garage to employing a hundred ponies, mostly transplants from across Equestria.

Sweetie was always a bit of a celebrity when she visited. Ponies stopped what they were doing to try and talk to her, or even have her sign something. Photos of her dominated the walls in the lobby. Some of them showed her robotic body from the inside—but all of them were of her new self, not the one who had suffered from that awful sickness.

Her sister walked along beside her, keeping her company all the way to the elevator.

"Are you nervous?" she asked, as it finally started to rise.

Sweetie rolled her eyes. "I would've been. But now... I'm so ready. If I didn't get a new body before my last year of school was over, I'd just scream."

Technically she had screamed about it many times, mostly when she thought she was alone in the house and nopony could hear her. But if Rarity knew, she didn't call her on it. Rarity reached to the side, touching gently against her mane with one hoof. "You're a brave little filly. Setting the example for the rest of us, if Lucid's dream is to be believed."

"Would you do it? If you got sick like I did... would you be an android pony too?"

Her sister looked away. Sweetie didn't hear her answer, because the elevator opened, and ponies started cheering.

The top floor was Lucid's new workshop. It was a great deal like the old one, except that the machines were newer, at least ten ponies were always working here, and lots of half-finished robotic ponies sat in various stages of assembly.

There wasn't usually a row of cushions tucked up against the wall, filled with ponies. Most of them wore the little white vests of Lucid's employees, but not all. Apple Bloom and her latest coltfriend Tender Taps were here. Scootaloo wasn't far away, making sour faces at the stallion when he wasn't looking. Her own parents were there near the front, along with Cheerilee, and some others that she didn't know as well.

Princess Twilight Sparkle was here, but not in the audience. She stood in the center of the room, speaking with Lucid and his assistants.

Sweetie Belle's new body was there too, resting on the tabletop. She was wrapped entirely in foam and plastic, so that even Sweetie couldn't see much of her. Only the light behind her suggested anything—there was a horn, and a tail of individual stands instead of a plastic piece.

She waved to all the cheering ponies, gave her sister one last hug, then advanced into the workshop.

It was time for Sweetie to grow up.

Requires

Sweetie Belle had a bevy of strange experiences since she woke up. It was unnatural to come back from the dead, both for her and everyone around her. But nothing quite prepared her for what it was like to circle her own body—a mechanical corpse, waiting to be born.

Lucid was there of course, wearing a lab coat laundered and starched for the cameras. Just as the first moment she woke up, this was as big a moment for him as it was for her. With the activation of that body, he would make another step to prove the viability of robotic ponies as an alternative to fully biological ones.

But Sweetie couldn't see this pony corpse as what it represented for Equestria's future. Ponies all around her spoke like that all the time, about what she represented and how the world changed because of her. She had to live her life for herself, or else be stuck in endless paralysis.

The body lay as if in repose on black cushions that brought out the white of her coat for the cameras. She was in every physical respect an upgrade over Sweetie’s current body. She no longer had obvious physical segments, cooling ports, and structural elements visible on the surface. There were only a few faint lines in the fake fur in her most important joints. Where her legs met her body, her neck, and under her belly.

"The greatest innovation is here," Lucid explained, speaking to a camera as Sweetie approached. He gestured to her forelegs, which only had fake fur down to the shoulders. Past that was a white metal lattice, along with a few mechanical bits at the joints.

"Our newest cooling system is fully passive and closed-circuit. This accounted for about a third the power usage for our first model, and also most of the physical weaknesses that slowed her down. Sweetie here will no longer have to fear the rain. Technically speaking, she'll run even better with a little moisture on her legs."

Then he looked up, and saw her standing there. He beamed, waving her up onto a little platform beside the body. There was a chair there, with a few complex braces that would hold her head in place. "Pretty exciting, isn't it? I hope she's everything you imagined."

She looked so old, so mature. Older than her friends, though not quite an adult, like her sister. This was the body of a young pony who was just going out into the world for her first time. It was the age Twilight Sparkle had been when she first arrived in Ponyville, when Sweetie herself was just a young foal.

"She's older than I thought."

"Unfortunate, but necessary. Right now we still have limited adoption, and no economies of scale. So we have to pick our ages carefully. Foal, young adult, and adult. Then both sexes already makes six. Many parts can be standardized, scaled... this body will last you until you are fully grown up, and an adult. She will be capable of things you didn't understand when you were younger. I wanted it to be a surprise, so I consulted with your friends on the matter. I've never been a teenage filly, so I couldn't guess what they would want. But I didn't have to guess."

Sweetie wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but she had more of an idea now than she did before. She didn't feel any different herself. But Scootaloo and Apple Bloom clearly did. The things they talked about made her feel like her cooling system didn't work anymore.

But she wasn't going to say any of that—not to a stallion, and not to a camera.

He seemed to interpret her hesitation as doubt, because he kept racing forward. "There's so many other advantages here. All day power, endurance with rough conditions, modular replacement parts. You won't be experimental anymore. You won't have to wait days or weeks for replacements when things break."

He gestured to the bench. The technicians all crowded around it, holding their tablets and other unplaceable tools.

She was up in the chair before she even thought to hesitate and ask questions. "What will it feel like? Will I... die again?"

Lucid shook his head vigorously. "Nothing at all like that. Your mind isn't being re-downloaded. We'll physically transfer your brain from one body to the other. You remember the device I showed you, years ago? That machine."

She nodded weakly. It was all she could do, now that the straps closed in around her head. The other her lay with her head right beside Sweetie's own. The back of her skull was already open, taking a section of mane with it. Inside was a thin plastic cover, with an opening just underneath. Waiting for Sweetie's brain.

"It should be minutes," said Capacitor, just beside her head. "You'll sleep, then be up again before you know it."

She almost said no. But then she had to keep looking at her broken body, falling apart in a dozen different ways. But a few minutes to rest, and she could have what all the other ponies her age got to have. She could grow up.

"Do it."

Lucid touched something on his tablet. "Full shutdown. Higher functioning prepare to shu—" then nothing.

Sweetie's world returned in a sudden blur of color, overwhelming her. For a long time she was unable to move, struggling against an invisible weight that she couldn't lift. It was as though the tools she were accustomed to had all abruptly been taken away, and what replaced them was unnatural and confusing.

The sensations were so powerful—touch, smell, sound. It came so fast that she didn't know how to react. It crushed against her, irresistible.

Until she resisted it anyway. Sweetie inhaled, took one deep breath, then another. The motion made her chest rise and fall, the way it did in ancient memory. The memory of a pony who looked a lot like her, but hadn't lived like her. A pony made of flesh.

Then the chaos resolved. Sweetie was on her belly, in a room lit by harsh technical lights. She was surrounded by pony scents, but older, not a crowd pressing in all around her. Only a few of the smells were close.

Lucid Storm she recognized, and Capacitor. They worked over a few monitors nearby, which hadn't been there when her eyes closed last. There was no light from the skylights anymore, but instead a sky full of stars. There was no corner of the room filled with TV cameras and recording technicians.

"I'm reading activity in the crystal cortex!" Capacitor shouted, startling several of the other ponies all around her. "I think we have her back, Lucid!"

The bat was so surprised that he squeaked audibly, dropping the tools he was holding to the floor.

Sweetie tried to turn towards him—in vain. The new body had just been resting before, without restraints. She could see no straps or bonds to hold her down, yet her body wasn't responding. She was trapped just as effectively as if she had been tied.

"What's... happening? Can't... do anything."

The bat appeared over her in an instant, tablet beside him. "We had to disable your motor functions. But don't be alarmed, it was for your own protection. You went into seizures as soon as you woke up—or whatever the technical equivalent. Quite the... display, for everypony in here. They were terrified."

"Sorry?" she whispered. Was that even the right thing to say? It was clearly much later than it had been when she left. She'd been promised one thing, but the bat had delivered quite another. "I thought it was supposed to be... a few minutes."

"It was." Lucid set the tablet down in front of him, and started going over it rapidly. "It was routine. There's no physical reason this should’ve happened. Your mind can't tell the difference between this body and any other. We've replaced parts before, this just..."

"It's a new field," somepony else suggested. She wasn't even sure who spoke. Another set of hooves, working somewhere she couldn't see, because she couldn't turn her head. "We don't know what the consequences of an upgrade might be. Maybe her mind can't handle the change."

"Maybe..." he said, clearly not sounding convinced. "We'll have time to study and figure out what happened. Right now we need to make sure she's stable, and get her on her hooves. There's family waiting outside."

Sweetie twitched at the use of that word, perking up. So many important ponies had filled the stands around this laboratory. Now they were gone, and she was left without memory of the intervening time. Like the sleep her old self had to do, but worse.

"It felt like I... couldn't wake up. Trying to, over and over. But I couldn't move. Couldn't whisper or scream, couldn't do anything."

"What about now?" Lucid asked. "I'm going to unlock your head first, and your neck. Can you move them?"

She felt stiff at first, sluggish—but they responded. That motion spread, and soon her whole body could move.

Her old body was still there, a corpse strapped down to her operating chair, with the back of her head opened. It wasn't reverently covered with the plastic of something new—this body was dead, and did not try to be anything else.

Everything felt different. Her limbs all took more effort to move, yet they were also stronger. And she could feel. There was a breeze on her fake fur, and warmth radiating from her forelegs and into the air around her. It almost felt like the heat of being alive, returned to her at last. Almost.

"Readings from the crystal cortex are stabilizing," Capacitor said. "I think we're good to seal her up, Lucid. This is what we expected to see."

They clicked something closed on her head, and suddenly she could feel her mane again. It was shorter than her old self once kept it, back when it was real hair. But now that it was simple fiber, keeping it clean and replacing it regularly was the bigger concern. At least they had managed to capture her old colors, and some of her curl.

"I want to see you move," Lucid said. He stepped back, gesturing at the stage. "Let's make sure the transfer is complete. I want to see that you can use your body without it giving up on you."

Sweetie stood. She wasn't the shortest pony in the room anymore, though she wasn't as big as the grown stallions. She had underestimated just how tiny a little filly could be! And when she walked, she felt stretched and unbalanced, with a different center of gravity than before.

"It's... harder than I thought," she said. Even her voice was different! A little lower, like the other crusaders. Not high-pitched and squeaky. She wanted to see if she could sing again—but not with an audience. "Why do I feel so awkward?"

"I believe they call it puberty,” Lucid said, smiling weakly. "You've just gone through it in a matter of seconds. Or hours, depending on your perspective. The physical changes you've experienced will be handled by your adaptive subsystem, the same one that helps you keep functioning as your body wears down naturally over time. The mental changes that usually come with this period of your life are... harder. But I'm sure there's a way, in time."

She didn't know what that meant—but Sweetie didn't much care. Seconds later, and several sets of hoofsteps pounded into the room. Her sister was at the front, with a few young mares just behind her. While so many others had given up and gone home, her best friends in the world had remained. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom were both here!

"She's alive!" That was her older sister, charging right towards Lucid and fixing him with a glare of furious intensity. "We were terrified!"

She barely heard the conversation that followed. Much of it was too technical to really interest her, in any case. She just wanted to see her friends again, and here they were.

They didn't tower over her anymore. In fact, Sweetie was now the tallest of the three, though spindly Scootaloo might soon catch up if she kept growing. Apple Bloom looked her over, then back across the stage to where the old body lay lifeless. "This is... you? Not that one?"

"This is me," she said. Her voice was still strange in her ears. But it was close enough. Maybe she could get used to it, like Lucid said she would. "They took my brain out, put it in here."

"How's it feel?" Scootaloo asked. She had become subdued, not looking directly up at her anymore. Was she embarrassed?

"Good," Sweetie said. "Better, anyway. We'll see if I get used to it."

Change

Sweetie Belle could get used to her new body. It wasn't the kind of lesson she could learn in a day, or even a week. There was no magic switch she could flip and suddenly be comfortable with her greater height, strength, and grace. All that took the adaptation circuits Lucid had told her about, and that hardware took a long time to work. But it did work.

As the days passed, she became far less overwhelmed by the return of two old but familiar senses. Touch and smell were back, far stronger than she had known them since waking in an artificial body for the first time. With some conscious and some subconscious effort, she could dismiss the smells that surrounded her, relying on only the useful signals.

It was nice to know when ponies were around her again. It was soon trivial for her to identify which ponies were nearby. With some time and patience, maybe she could learn to identify their feelings the way the Sweetie in her oldest memories was able to do.

Then there was a bevy of changes that didn't come from within at all. She didn't look like an unnatural oddity anymore, or at least not so much like one that everypony she saw took pity on her. She was close enough to a pony that even strangers who saw her often didn't pay her much mind.

Granted, there were very few ponies in all of Equestria who truly didn't know about her anymore. She was the first to be reborn in a new, digital life. That made her a kind of celebrity, inside Ponyville and out.

She didn't just look less like a machine—she also looked less like a filly. Ponies looked at her in ways she had never seen before. Mostly it was stallions—but not always.

Maybe she should have asked to stay the same age after all. At least that way she wouldn't have to figure out how to cope with the whole world treating her differently.

But she was years older, wasn't she? It was time that she force the world to see it, the way she felt it. She wasn't just the filly who got sick, she had lived her own life since waking up.

Part of that life was spent caring for the pieces of her past. Instead of getting shelved in some museum somewhere, Sweetie insisted on keeping her old, broken body. She had plenty of space in her bedroom at the Boutique, since she didn't need a bed or any conventional pony furniture, and the storage from her organic life had been moved into the basement.

Sweetie had always been able to get bits and pieces, but a true working model had eluded her, until then. The first body was old and broken, but now maybe she could figure out why. There were no anatomy textbooks for her to study, not like everypony else could. Lucid Storm's new company would give her almost anything, but not her block diagrams or other technical information.

"It isn't that we don't trust you," Lucid said, when she finally got sick of being ignored and came down to his office in person. "But keeping you alive means the company needs to succeed. A population of digital ponies need a support system in place to keep making their replacement parts. And if we're going to get big enough to have a whole population, we need to make bits. That means we have to keep our advancements private, for now. Eventually there will be thousands and thousands of robotic ponies, and many different solutions for each body part. Until then—please, I'm looking out after your best interests. And we're doing great! You won't have to wait so long for the next new body, when the time comes! Just long enough for us to figure out what went wrong in the transfer."

She could get tools at least, and so she could poke around at joints at first, then more complex mechanisms. In most cases there was more than one of something, so she could use one half of the body to see how it should work on the other.

Sweetie's mind didn't work exactly the same as it used to, no matter what Lucid said about a total perfect conversion. She never got fatigued, so she could keep working on the same topic all through the day, then into the night and the start of the next. If she was in her room, she didn't even have to leave to recharge. She didn't sweat or get dirty, so there was no need to leave to wash, or even to sleep. She could remain highly focused on something for as long as it took to understand.

But in some other ways, her needs remained as powerful as ever. She wanted to spend time with her friends, as often as they were able. It was a little less than when they were kids, since they had both graduated from school and had real life to attend to.

But Sweetie could always visit Apple Bloom while she did farm work, and keep her company for a while. The mud and grit was less of a fear now that Sweetie's body was a closed system. She still wore boots on her hooves and covered up as much as she could.

It was too nice to see a real pony's face reflected in the mirror, she wasn't about to squander the privilege. Best not to force Lucid to prove how replaceable her parts were sooner than he expected.

Scootaloo was a little harder to get time with. She bounced from job to job, quickly trying and then flunking out of most of them within a week or two. Her passion to try weather couldn't survive her disability, delivery was too hard when she insisted on making every trip at extreme speed and not always extreme safety. Every visit with her was another conversation about how much harder it was to grow up.

"I know my aunts will let me stay as long as I like," she said, late one autumn evening. Late enough that Scootaloo had a jacket and a hood over her messy hair. Sweetie needed no protection from the cold, but she still took the opportunity to let her sister make her nice things to wear. Today that meant a scarf to go with her boots, and a ribbon in her tail and mane.

It was just the two of them. Apple Bloom had too many chores on her plate, what with Granny Smith no longer strong enough to work, and the harvest coming in. They probably wouldn't see her again through the rest of the month, unless they visited to help.

"But I hate being a burden. I'm supposed to be apprenticed to my trade by now, or have my spot in school. But I don't care about any trades, and the only school I want will never take me."

Sweetie sat on her haunches beside a stream, watching the reflection of the moon in its clear surface. She didn't have much to say, but her friend didn't seem to expect it. Scootaloo was usually happy enough just to have someone listening.

"Not everypony gets a trade. And plenty of ponies don't find it for a while. Why are you fighting so hard?"

Scootaloo didn't answer, at least not that question. "It all comes back to my wings. No matter where I go, no matter what I want to do—I'm still a pegasus who isn't. I can't fly, I can't do weather magic. I don't have anything to offer from the other tribes either. It doesn't matter where I try to work, they'll all treat me that way. I'm forever half of a pony."

Sweetie Belle giggled in spite of herself. It was so strange a reaction that her friend turned to glare at her, furious and a little hurt. But she remained just as intense. "At least you're alive, Scootaloo. Before I didn't know what you were going through, but now..."

She reached up with one hoof, and gripped at the base of her horn. That bone was usually an incredibly sensitive part of any unicorn's body, easily damaged and likely to cause extreme suffering if anything happened to it.

She felt nothing at all from it. Though much of her body was imbued with false sensory skin, this had nothing. It twisted around, then detached completely, coming off in her grip. It was hollow, and empty. There wasn't even a single wire.

Before Scootaloo could object, she tossed it to her, then brushed her mane down so it covered the gap. It wasn’t hard, really. "Lucid says he made it detachable so that when they figure out magic, we can plug that in to replace it. But I think he doesn't have a clue how to do it. Maybe not today, maybe not ever. I'm basically an earth pony forever now—and worse. Earth ponies have some magic—they can grow things, and they're tough. I'm a sculpture. "

For a long time Scootaloo was entirely silent, looking between Sweetie and the river between them. When she did speak, she was far more subdued than she had been moments before, voice relaxed. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is one pony in Equestria who can understand what this is like. So what are you doing about your future? You have one too... more than the rest of us, if Lucid is right. You don't age."

She giggled again, a little less energetically than last time. It might be true that her mind wouldn't just keel over and die, but she had plenty of experience with the more traditional form of just wearing out.

"I'm not immortal, I'm just easier to fix," she said. "But you saw when they switched me over—I think I almost died then. Lucid doesn't want to say it, because he's afraid it will scare off potential customers. But I know it's true."

Scootaloo settled down beside her, so close she could feel her touch with Sweetie's new senses. But that wasn't strange, why should it be? Ponies were close to each other all time, especially friends.

"You didn't answer though. What will you do with your future? Now that you can't do magic, now that you're not really a unicorn anymore. Not that... I'm saying it like that." She held out the horn in one wing.

Sweetie took it back, secured it in place. She might not be able to feel it or use it anymore, but that horn still felt like it was part of her.

"I guess just—since I'm the first, I want to be a good—whatever I am. I want to figure things out, so the next pony who wakes up in a robot body will be able to know what to do. And maybe with a little more practice, I can learn how to fix myself on my own—that way if the company ever goes under, I can keep myself going. I'm not just gonna give up and die."

Scootaloo met her eyes, silent for a long time. "That sounds amazing. You've got a purpose. Not sure how it will pay rent, but I bet it feels nice."

"Yeah," she admitted. "I guess. Figuring things out interested me before, but it's different now. Systems and machines and... there's rules to them, and anypony can learn. It's the way Twilight used to talk about magic, except this is something I can actually do."

"Makes sense. Maybe you can figure out how this works," Scootaloo went on. She definitely smelled different now. Nervous, but also something else. Something Sweetie had never felt before.

"How what works?" she asked, still grinning. "Now you're the one not answering my question."

"This," Scootaloo answered. Then she kissed her.

It was unlike anything she had felt before—but just like so many of Sweetie's new experiences, being different and strange didn't mean it was bad.

"Pretty good," she whispered, a few seconds later. She felt breathless, even though she didn't need to breathe. "Pretty good."

Together

They didn't stay together much longer that night. Scootaloo insisted on walking her home, in a constant state of awkward silence. She had plenty of opportunities to test her new ability to smell and feel.

Eventually they were back at the Boutique. They just looked at each other, with neither daring to speak. Sweetie reached for the handle, then pulled back. She ought to say something after a night like that.

"I hope I didn't go too far," her friend finally said. "If you were uncomfortable, you can tell me. I'd rather ponies just be straight with me."

Sweetie pawed at the ground for a few silent seconds. But she had the whole walk back to prepare what she would say. "I don't know what I feel. I'm... confused."

Her friend laughed, bitter. "Heh, yeah. That's what some ponies called me too. But my aunts seem to get along okay. I don't think it's that weird."

Your aunts are both ponies, Sweetie thought. But she wasn't brave enough to say that. She just touched her friend's shoulder with one hoof, careful to keep the distance between them. "I need time to process. I guess... maybe literally."

The pegasus nodded. "Sure, Sweets. You have my number. Text me when you're ready to talk. But please, talk to me. Your friendship is more important to me than anything.”

She turned, vanishing into the night.

Sweetie's new life as a machine offered her plenty of advantages, though she didn't always see them that way. Not needing any kind of rest expanded the time available to her in ways that her organic self never could've imagined. It was how she could possibly consider a goal like learning how the technology of robotic ponies worked.

It meant that she had almost every night to herself. Until her upgrade, she had to spend that time tethered to a charger to keep herself running. So, she became accustomed to long hours in her room or around the Boutique, with whatever she could reach to amuse herself. It meant frequent trips to the library during the week, so at least there was a pile of books she hadn't read yet.

Her adventure novels were gone this time, replaced with every electronics textbook Twilight had in her collection, along with a few more that the Alicorn herself had recommended. Whatever “linear algebra” and “tensor calculus” were about, she would soon take all the written word had to offer her.

Her mind never fatigued when she worked, even if she kept at the same activity for hours on end. But at the same time, Sweetie Belle was still the same pony underneath. She could still get bored. Sometimes she got stressed and needed something to take her mind off of it.

Her walk with Scootaloo was a little like that. Not her first kiss, but certainly her first that had any meaning. But she wasn't a real pony. No matter what way she imagined their relationship going, all ended with the same pain. Was she ready to have a special somepony—and what would their relationship mean for Scootaloo?

All she had were questions, questions she was too afraid to ask anypony about. Her parents had never felt quite as open with her after she woke up as a machine—and the thought of talking to her sister about a marefriend made her start to overheat in spite of the upgrades to her cooling system. There was no chance of that.

So instead of confronting the question, Sweetie turned her attention towards her old self—literally. Her old body sat up against her wall, as though resting. Her big sister was so unsettled by it that she insisted Sweetie keep it covered—but for her, it wasn't any worse than a mirror. That was the pony she had been, until she grew up all in one day.

The wear and tear were all the more obvious from the outside. She was physically smaller, but also so much bigger and bulkier in other ways. Every joint and servo was old and simplistic.

Even more interesting than the body itself was all the service equipment that came with it. When the lab techs delivered her, she came with a few boxes. "Would've just thrown these out," Capacitor explained, settling the box down into her bedroom. "It won't work with your new body, so please don't try. But since you have the only intact 1.0 body in existence, you might as well have all the prototype service gear too."

Sweetie had every piece arranged on her desk now. Most of it was similar to tools she recognized from other disciplines, with minor alterations to fit the delicate plastic of her old body. But a few parts were special. Most interesting to Sweetie was the diagnostic tablet and old hosting device. It all looked exactly like the gear that Lucid used on her, with the same connections to interface with a mechanical brain.

Of course, she wasn't going to pull out her own, in the same way an ordinary pony couldn't. But there were plenty of other ways she could experiment.

In fact, there was another prototype brain like hers, she had kept it for years now as a sort of paperweight, ever since Lucid had left it with her to demonstrate the technology.

It was maybe three or four in the morning when she finally finished cleaning off the old glass device and set it up in the diagnostic hosting machine.

In the year it was released, it would've been a powerful little computer. Hard to believe Lucid made me on one of these. It was too big to fit on her desk, so she settled it on the ground next to it instead, with a cable running to the tablet for diagnosis. Diagnosis of what? Nothing, probably—if she ever needed it, she would be in no place to perform the repairs, no matter how skilled she became.

"Am I wasting my time?" She was mostly just talking to herself, of course. Her mechanical mind could reach all the connected devices in the room—but other computers couldn't think the way she did. They just offered whatever network interfaces they had, usually just remote-control stuff. Other times they blocked her requests for firewall reasons, and Sweetie's explorations ended before they began.

The tablet flashed, its screen filling with a new message. "Diagnostic complete. Host pattern entropy: 40%. Personality degradation: likely. Memory degradation: likely. Decoherence: 14%.”

Very little of that meant anything to Sweetie Belle, though given the purpose of the machine was as a diagnostic device, she couldn't imagine they meant anything good. But two words did stick out to her, given she'd read them in every paper Lucid Bioinformatics had published about the process of reviving her. Host pattern was the technical term they used to describe her.An arrangement of digital neurons in magical crystal and silicon, the same as the biological one that made a pony's mind.

There's someone in there. Sweetie stumbled away from her desk. She wasn't alone in the room, and she hadn't been for years. "Oh buck! You saw everything I..." She trailed off, ears and tail relaxing slowly. It was natural to feel uneasy, but those fears weren't actually rational. There had been a brain sitting on her desk, but there was no body to go with it.

Lucid took me out of my body, and I wasn't awake. It was like nothing happened the whole time. The “brain” stored her memories and personality, but it couldn't do any thinking without a body. The processing power was in her chest.

Even still, she returned to the desk a little slower, careful not to bump her leg into the diagnostic machine. Her old body didn't bother her much, but this was different. There was a pony in this, albeit a sleeping one. A pony just like her.

Why wouldn't Lucid tell me? She felt a brief stab of unease, as she considered several possibilities. Lucid might not know, that was the simplest. If he did, perhaps it was an early test pattern, and not a real pony like her. The company had no problem giving her old tech instead of throwing it out, or she wouldn't have discovered the pattern in the first place.

The third possibility—he did know, but either didn't care, or didn't think she would discover it. But why? The secret must be in those numbers.

She wanted to call her friends again. Even if the prospect of being together with Scootaloo again was still mixed for her. She longed and feared it in the same instant. Apple Bloom would probably not understand why she was investigating at all. Or worse, she might want Sweetie to destroy it.

Since they weren't around to ask, Sweetie pressed on. She ran the scan again, just to confirm the same results the machine had already given her the first time. It was no random fluke of the sensors—this was real.

She dug through the boxes, searching in vain for any reference material that might've made its way in. Some part of her already knew she would be disappointed before she even started looking. Lucid Bioinformatics were careful about keeping their knowledge from escaping.

But Sweetie still had the one machine to tinker with. She returned to the menu, going over its various options.

Analyze [safe]

Simulate [48.7 TFLOP available]

Decompile [destructive]

Attempt Resequence [destructive]

Template Diff [1 template loaded]

This was nothing like the expensive new phones coming out across Equestria, smoothly animated and attractive to look at. The tablet had only crude lines of text, with little to suggest what they meant.

I could ask Lucid about these, but he might not be happy that I have this. He could want it back. At this point he was basically family—bringing her back to life won him considerable credit with Rarity. If he came back and asked for something, he would get it.

She would have to figure it out on her own, unless... there was somepony else who knew she had it. Capacitor!

Sweetie didn't have to pick up her own phone from her bed. She connected to it without moving, searched for the technician’s number in the Lucid Bioinformatics directory, then opened a blank text.

There was little chance he would be awake this late, he wasn't a bat like his boss. But she could still send out her request right then.

"This is Sweetie Belle. The tablet—it has some options I don't understand. What are Simulate, Decompile, Resquence, and Template Diff? No rush, thanks!"

She was good enough with machines that she could even include a few bashful emojis along with her message, hopefully tempering the strange hour of the night.

Then the message was sent. Of course, the pony on the other side couldn't reply with mechanical speed—even if he was awake, he would need to type into the phone. He might ignore her; he might report her to management...

But either Capacitor was already awake, or her message had woken him, because the reply came only minutes later. "You couldn't use any of them anyway, you would need a kernel to work with."

Sweetie replied almost instantly, excitement building. "I hope I didn't wake you! I'm just trying to understand the machines that were made for me. I know I would need a brain to use any of them."

There. None of that was technically a lie, without revealing that she already had a “kernel” to work with. Applejack would probably still be upset about lying by omission—but Apple Bloom’s older sister never had to know.

"Simulate is for running a mind without a body. Very slow with just the diagnostic equipment. Decompiling erases all the patterns on the kernel, clearing it for something new. Resequencing is for making modifications. The template diff is for comparing how much a pattern has changed after running for a while. Making sure you are making new memories and seeing how you're growing up. Things like that. Please don't message me again until the sun is out, some of us still have to sleep."

She responded with a quick thanks, promising never to message him in the middle of the night again. And just like that, she had the answers she was looking for.

Decompiling was obviously useless to her, but those others...

She started with the bottom option, since that seemed the least likely to cause damage. That was just another scan, no harm in that.

1 template hash available: "Sweetie Belle-22-06-28.pb"

That date—wasn't that within a few weeks of when she first woke up? Whatever a template hash was, it was also somehow her at the same time. Did that mean there was a copy of her still stored in the machine?

She selected the only option. The computer whirred to life, its cooling fans all kicking on at the same moment. Evidently the comparison was harder than the first analysis had been. A progress bar appeared, one that suggested she would be waiting for hours. She could do nothing but leave the machine to its work.

She left her distraction behind, feeling even more nervous and uncomfortable than she had been when she started.

Ponies

Just like that, the comparison was finished. She looked up from her other desk, setting down the library books that had occupied her attention during the intervening time. Outside her room, the sun was fully up, lighting the town beyond with creamy yellow.

If she wanted, she could go out into that warmth and explore it, without having to be constantly watching for where she would find her next charger. It was almost as good as being alive. But she wouldn't be going out just then, not with something much more pressing right in front of her.

"Comparison Complete," said the tablet. It filled with all kinds of numbers and graphs; things that ponies got whole degrees to understand. Some of it was vaguely familiar to her, thanks to bits and pieces she picked up from the textbooks. But reading over the pages didn't make her actually understand those fields—it only helped her remember exactly what the book said.

But there were a few numbers near the top that she could make sense of. "Delta: 1.77%." "Memory Extrapolation: 13 Hours runtime."

Delta meant change—there was no way she was understanding that right. She tapped that figure in particular, and it brought up a new screen of graphs, along with some explanatory text.

"The stored pattern matches memory hash for 99.999% of template memory. Host pattern has experienced significant decoherence in 13 hours operational life. Catastrophic template failure projected: 24-48 hours."

"Woah." Sweetie stood up, backing away from the diagnostic machine.

A few hours later, she was together with her friends at Sweet Apple Acres for lunch. Well—they ate lunch, and she talked. She had been over her jealousy of their ability to eat for a long time before that day. But now that she could smell properly, some part of her wondered.

That annoyance could hardly take much space in her head, when she had something much more important burning on her mind.

Scootaloo looked and acted as though nothing had happened between them the night before, except for the occasional shy glance when she thought Apple Bloom wasn't watching. But the earth pony wasn't stupid, she would figure out something was wrong eventually.

For the moment, Sweetie just pretended not to notice. "You see why I'm so upset?"

The two ponies shared a look. Apple Bloom closed her cloth knapsack, folding both forelegs in front of her. "I'm gonna be honest, none of that made any sense to me."

"There's a robobrain in her room with a pony on it," Scootaloo supplied. "Right? That's creepy and weird."

Sweetie gestured with one hoof for her to lower her voice. Nopony was sitting nearby, but that didn't mean there weren't listeners. Granny Smith rarely got out of bed these days, but she could sometimes hear things. And if Applejack was around, anything they said might eventually find its way back to her big sister.

"Yes, but that's not the part that's really..." Did she even want to tell them? "Look, promise not to tell anypony about this?"

Apple Bloom drew her hoof across her chest. "Promise. Cross my heart or—whatever Pinkie used to say."

Scootaloo nodded. "You're really upset about this." She set her food down, then focused her attention on Sweetie Belle. "What aren't we understanding?"

"Those results—I'm pretty sure that brain is me. Or an early version of me, anyway. I think she started to get sick and die after... just a few hours. So Lucid turned her off."

Apple Bloom looked more confused, not less. "But you're right here, and you're not sick. How does a robot get sick, anyhow?"

Scootaloo looked similarly bewildered. "How can you be in two places at once?"

More than two, apparently. There was a hash stored on the machine, whatever that even meant. Then there was the pattern, and herself. But more detail would only make it even harder for them to understand. "At this point, I guess you could say she was a... copy. A broken copy that didn't work. The machine says if I turn her on, she'll fall apart in a few days. Maybe Lucid thought it was kinder not to."

Now that she explained it to somepony else, the weight of those words settled onto her like the exhaustion that came right before her batteries gave out. Only this one didn't affect her limbs—she could still move fine.

"You could ask him," Apple Bloom suggested. "I dunno why he gave it to ya in the first place. But maybe he did it by mistake."

Or he just forgot. The kernel was just a piece of old hardware to him laying around his bags, like old parts of her body he sometimes replaced. "I'm sure he would," she said. "But... think about it differently. What if you found out you had a twin sister? She had done all the things you did, until one day she got locked in a box and couldn't escape. Would you just give the box away to somepony else, or—try to do something to help her?"

"Like... you are in there?" Scootaloo asked. "But sick? If she only has a few days to live..."

"You can't help her," Apple Bloom said. "At least the way she is, maybe somepony could do something, someday. Unless you can fix robot brains."

There was an option in the old equipment for that. Of course, she didn't know how the machine would work if she told it to start. "Lucid Storm has always been kind to me. I don't think he's a bad pony. If he didn't fix her, then it must be... hard. So hard that he thought there was nothing he could do. But technology has come a long way since then. If I could talk to an expert, they might be able to help."

"I'll go with you," Scootaloo said, almost too quickly. "Because you—shouldn't go alone. Obviously. In case you make them mad, you want witnesses! Don't worry, I got your back."

Sweetie rolled her eyes. It was a shallow excuse—if Lucid Bioinformatics turned against her, then she was already doomed. All they had to do was stop fixing her, and she would wear down in a few years. Or less—nopony knew how long her new body would last. "Sure, Scoots. We can go together. I know somepony who might be willing to help."

While she spoke, she connected to the phone in her pack, and typed up another text to her favorite intern. Somepony close to her own age was probably her best chance of getting help for the copy. And if he decided to just tell Lucid about what she was asking, there was nothing she could do to stop him. Hopefully the bat would forgive her.

"Hey, Capacitor. Sorry about last night. I found something big—I've had it for a while, but what you showed me helped me understand for the first time. Can you come over after work or something?"

The reply came as quick as last time. "This is about the diagnostic, isn't it? You obviously didn't take out your own head. What happened."

He was going to find out anyway. "Please don't tell anypony else. I have a kernel. I think it has me on it, an earlier me. I want to help her."

"I get off work at six."

By the time he sent that last message, they were cleaning up from lunch. Sweetie practically jumped to her hooves. Well, she did jump, with considerably more strength than her old self ever could have. "He says he'll come by tonight."

"How?" Scootaloo looked up, bewildered. "Sweetie, you've been sitting here the whole time. Your phone is still in your bag."

Right. Some things were so intrinsic about the way she managed her life that she never bothered to explain them. If she stopped daily affairs to explain every different choice she made, then she would spend much of her time that way.

"I texted him. My phone has Bluetooth, so I just—connect to it. The new ones are made to connect to computers and stuff, sharing messages and notifications. I use the same protocols."

Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. "Remember when you complained about missing your magic? Sounds like you've figured out a replacement all on your own."

Sweetie shrugged in response. "Guess you could say that." She still missed her magic, enough that it was one of the first things she thought of during her time with Scootaloo the night before. But she didn't miss it the way she used to. Enough years had passed that she was more or less adapted to not using her horn to help her accomplish basic tasks anymore. She had adapted by necessity.

She and Scootaloo left together a few minutes later, with the young mare coasting alongside her in her scooter. She wasn't going terribly fast, though she could if she wanted to. Scootaloo had developed her wings enough to power her movement without needing to push with her hooves. Today, she coasted.

"Have you thought about last night?" Scootaloo asked, as soon as they had some distance to the farm. Here on a deserted road, they had the maximum opportunity to talk without being overheard. Other ponies might appear at any moment, but until they did—there was peace.

She took long enough to answer that Scootaloo continued for her. Her friend was older now—prettier, but not more patient. "You don't have to. Sounds like you had lots of other things on your mind. We could've met another night."

Sweetie held up one hoof, before her friend talked herself into any more anxiety. "It's fine, Scoots. I didn't know what I had until I ran the test. I thought it was a fancy paperweight—a demonstration, like the plastic pony skeleton Cheerilee kept in the schoolhouse. You're fine."

She slowed as they approached the bridge, then stopped at its height. When she was younger, she'd sometimes jumped from up here to swim in the water beneath. Her upgraded body was superior in many ways, but that would still mean total destruction. Her kernel could go on someone's desk next to the other one. Would anypony know the difference?

"I like you," she finally said. "I want to learn what that means. But I'm not the same kind of pony as you. I'm not alive. I can't—if you were with me, there are so many things we couldn't do together. We couldn't swim together, we couldn't share dinner, we couldn't..."

Sweetie trailed off. There were some other things that she would usually put on a list like that, things that she was only just starting to understand. But she didn't actually know where those limits were. Other ponies would become artificial, and plenty of those were adults. They wouldn't want to give up all those adult things forever. And he had implied she wouldn't either.

"I don't know how good a marefriend I can be," she eventually said. She turned away from the railing, looking back at Scootaloo. "I'm a machine. I don't sleep, I don't eat, I don't breathe. You deserve a pony that's real."

She sniffed, wiping away at her eyes as she said it. But there was no moisture. She could feel like she was crying, but she would never really cry.

Scootaloo took one of her hooves, forcing her to meet her eyes. "Don't you think I should be the one to decide? I know you're a robot. I know there are things you can't do. Some of those will probably change as time goes on. Technology keeps advancing!

"Besides—you hear how Lucid Storm talks. Everypony is going to be a machine like you one day. We'll all get old eventually, or sick, or injured. When that happens to me, we'll both be machines. Until then—there's still a lot we could do. Places we could go, adventures we could have. Together. If I'm good enough for you."

She held her close, close enough that she could smell her hot breath against her face, and her profound sense of anxiety. Waiting for Sweetie Belle's answer.

Build

It was a good thing Sweetie Belle had the entire night to think about what she would say next. She'd known this conversation would happen sooner or later. If she tried to make it later, her friend might just die of anxiety. Her little hummingbird heart could only take so much stress.

"If you can let me go at my own pace—and if you can be okay with being with a mechanical pony. And... if you can be okay with not knowing if it will work out. Nopony has ever tried to have a special somepony who was made of plastic and metal before. We don't know how it will go."

"Nopony ever knows if a relationship is gonna work out," Scootaloo said. "It's always a daring new maneuver. Never the same two ponies, in the same place."

She was probably right about that. But she had years to grow up, instead of just a few minutes. It wasn't a very fair comparison. "Then I want to try. But if it doesn't work out—I hope we can stay friends. We've been through too much together—and it wouldn't be right to put Apple Bloom in the middle of us either."

Scootaloo nodded once. It was hard to say if she was really listening, or just repeating what Sweetie wanted to hear. Either way—she had a marefriend now. So, there was a whole new list of things to worry about. Would her sister be upset with her for being weird? Probably not, if she stayed friends with Rainbow Dash and Applejack. But what about her parents?

There was no problem she couldn't solve by temporarily putting it aside to focus on helping somepony else. By the time she finished, she would often find the solution to her own woes along the way.

There was a brain sitting on her desk, with a pony still living on it. A pony that was her and not her at the same time. A pony that Sweetie alone had the power to help.

Scootaloo stayed with her until Capacitor arrived, so she wouldn't have to face him alone. With two ponies around, hopefully he would feel less like he could just force her to do whatever he wanted. Not that he'd ever tried before. If he really wanted to make it go away, all he had to do was tell Lucid, and the bat would resolve things one way or another.

He stepped inside a little after nightfall, looking unplaceably nervous. He kept glancing over his shoulder, as though expecting a professional reprimand at any moment. "Sweetie, and... friend? Sorry, I don't think I caught your name."

"Scootaloo," the young mare said, meeting his hoof for a brief shake.

He scanned the room, his eyes settling on the diagnostic. "Do you mind if I examine the kernel?"

Sweetie stepped in front of him, resting one mechanical hoof on his foreleg. "So long as you promise me you won't break it or try to take it away. Whatever pony is on there—deserves to live, like I did. She shouldn't just be thrown away."

"She?" He met her eyes. She smelled a little nervousness from him, maybe fear. But if he was trying to trick her, Sweetie's new sensory organs weren't good enough to detect the attempt. "I promise. I'm far less likely to cause accidental harm than you are, miss. I've actually been trained for this."

She stepped aside and let him levitate the kernel up and out of the diagnostic device. He lifted it up close, squinting at some tiny markings along the base. "This is... old, really old. No maker's mark, no serial. I think it must be a first series prototype."

He stepped over to the light, rotating it slowly around in front of him while he examined it. "How do you know it's a she? There are over a hundred host imprints stored in our database—this could be any of those ponies. Or it could be a blank. We have many more blanks than real ponies, since... you're the only actual pony we have living out in the world right now."

Sweetie made her way past him to the desk, holding up the tablet with one hoof. "I used the testing stuff. Wanted to know. You can see the results, they're still up."

He insisted on running the examination himself. Capacitor used alcohol and a few soft pads to clean the kernel off completely, then did the same to the contacts inside the machine.

"You're acting like you don't trust her," Scootaloo said, from just over her shoulder. "Sweets already told you what she found. You don't need to run the tests again."

The technician didn't look away from the tablet screen when he spoke. "I'm not saying she's lying," he eventually said. "But working with a digital effigy is complex. There are less than a dozen ponies in Equestria who understand it."

"Bet she's better at it than you are," Scootaloo replied. "She knows what it's like to be one. You're just a regular pony."

"So are you. Does that mean you could be a brain surgeon?"

Sweetie lifted up one hoof, pushing Scootaloo's mouth gently closed. "Please don't argue with him. He's doing me a big favor by coming out here. I'm grateful for whatever help he wants to give."

Scootaloo grumbled unhappily but stopped arguing.

Soon enough, the stallion had finished. He set the tablet down, rising from the seat. Sweetie could see in one glance the screen had told him exactly what she already had. This was no random glitch or mistake. Even she would've rather found out the brain was an empty prop, rather than the prison for a dying digital copy of herself.

"You were right," he said. "There's a pattern on here—an iteration of your pattern."

"Told you she was right!" Scootaloo exclaimed, lifting briefly into the air. Her wings held her there for a few seconds, before she dropped down again.

Sweetie ignored her. Maybe she was trying to be helpful, but this did not feel like it would make things any easier with Capacitor. "What's wrong with her?"

"Well... that's hard to say. Lucid Storm worked with some ancient unicorn magic when he created the first template, along with researchers across neuroscience and computing. But Lucid Bioinformatics doesn't have the records from those first few patterns. The equipment and magic involved would prove fatal when used—so they needed to wait for a specific kind of pony to test it on."

"Me," she supplied. "A pony with an intact brain, but no chance of survival."

Capacitor's ears flattened, and he avoided looking at her. "Yes. Since then, we've performed over a hundred scans on elderly, dying, or recently deceased ponies. We take the scanned neurons and convert them into a pattern that can be easily compressed, stored, and examined. But we didn't have any kind of standard practice when Lucid made you. I have no idea how he did it."

Sweetie Belle tapped the side of the tablet, and the information it displayed for them. "It looks like I wasn't the first attempt. The one on there—it says she had a few hours of memory. Obviously, he wouldn't keep trying to wake me up after succeeding. So, she must be... earlier."

The unicorn nodded. "That would make sense. The diagnostic equipment here—the hash it's comparing against is yours.But the pattern on the brain, that comes from an earlier variation. I'm guessing she was one of Lucid's failed attempts. Not even a genius could figure out how to simulate a pony correctly on the first version. Decoherence was always going to be a danger. That's one of the reasons he continues with your weekly checkups. If it was just about fixing mechanical problems, we could just let you self-report and come in when you were damaged. But if you were going through decoherence, you might not even know."

Sweetie had no heart, no breathing, and no blood. Even so, his words made her feel suddenly cold. Decoherence wasn't something that some old, theoretical model of herself had to worry about. It could kill her too?

She dropped onto her haunches, staring down at the floor. "What is decoherence?"

He winced. "I shouldn't even be having this conversation with you. If Lucid found out—he'd be furious. He wants you to grow up like an ordinary pony. The more you're reminded of being a machine, the more tainted the results become."

Sweetie whimpered, wiping at her face with one leg. It still felt like she was crying, but of course there were no tears. There never would be, no matter how terrified she became.

"Looks like you're way past that, pony. This is her life we're talking about. If you're supposed to be a robot doctor, then warn her about the dangers! Whatever we have to do to keep her safe, we'll do it."

The technician buckled under the pressure. "Nopony knows for sure how any of this works. There's only one success story—Sweetie Belle. But what we know is this—consciousness is complicated. It isn't just about scanning neurons. When you're... alive, being you, there are several different interactions moving through your brain at once. Different brainwaves, working together. Any one of them isn't a pony, it's just a pattern. But being alive—these patterns compound on each other, they coalesce into a living mind.

"It's the same way for a digital mind. But unlike with organic ponies, the different patterns and interactions in their simulated minds can much more easily start to drift apart. Translating a scan into a pattern is about combining the data we recorded into a stable whole. If we do it wrong, the pony that comes out the other end has a limited lifespan. Eventually, their patterns drift apart, and they become comatose. And before that happens, the results can be... quite unpleasant."

Sweetie imagined it now, a previously invisible sword hanging just overhead. It might be miles above her, never going to reach—or it might be minutes away. How could she know if it would happen to her—how could she stop it?

The answer was already right in front of her. If Sweetie could fix the broken brain, then somepony could fix her the same way, if she went through the same nightmare. That goal settled firmly and irrevocably into her mind, inviolate.

"How do we fix her?" she asked, gesturing at the diagnostic scanner again. "That pony on there... she's me. I can't just leave her on a piece of glass forever. I have to help her. Then..."

It was harder to come up with what would happen after that. But she couldn't do anything for the digital pony if waking her up would mean certain death.

"That's..." Capacitor shook his head once. "We focus on preventing decoherence for our patterns. We don't generally consider a pony alive until they're put into an active kernel and connected to something. For now, the digital server environment. Once we scale up production—back into Equestria. Either way, if I saw a pattern like this come out of a recent scan, I'd go back to the original backup and start over."

Start over. A gentle way of saying they deleted the pony. Yet—that only opened a dozen more questions. Was a pattern a pony if it was never activated? If so, was there a pony on every computer and hard drive that ever stored them? Sweetie's understanding of computers was good enough to know that data was never really "moved." Instead, it was always copied from one system to another, then deleted from where it was originally stored.

She pushed those thoughts aside for later. She could worry about the morality of creating digital beings after saving the one right in front of her.

"Suppose we had to. Suppose I really, really want to help this pony right here. I'm not willing to delete her. You can see from the diagnostic she was alive. Only a few hours, but—that's something. She deserves a chance. What do we do to give it to her."

Capacitor was silent for a long time. "Without risk, there's nothing you could do. But if you're willing to try things we never did—maybe you could. She's you, right? You're the only pony who could make the choice."

"Do what, exactly?" Sweetie pressed. "What do I have to do? Get the princess to cast a spell for me? I know Twilight would if I asked! She's still my friend!"

He chuckled. "No. No spell I know, anyway. You would need to write over parts of her. Refactor her, using the template used to make you, without erasing any of her new memories. It might just corrupt her data—it might make her violently insane. Or it might make her enough like you that she can hold her consciousness together."

Through

Before Sweetie stood an impossible choice.

She could save the data stored on this brain—data that was somehow also her, in a way that did not exactly make sense to her. But doing so would require her to change the mind there, without their knowledge or consent.

"I assume... I can't wake them up and ask?" she prompted Capacitor, looking up hopefully. "If I turned them on, I mean. The brain is intact, so..."

Capacitor looked away from her, shaking his head with a mixture of regret and guilt. "With the right hardware, you could activate her. A body..." His eyes lingered on the young version of her, tucked up against the wall. That body had more than a little damage—its plastic joints were stripped, its battery barely lasted ten minutes before running dry. Sometimes if she spent too long thinking hard, it would overheat and make her take a rest.

But it did work, and they both knew it.

"You could stick her in there," Sweetie prompted. She circled past the diagnostic device, over to where her old body rested. She twisted the head around—her head, on some strange level. She tapped her hoof against the braincase, insistent. "Right there. Unless there was damage getting me out."

That terrifying moment was still fresh in her mind, her first time being "dead" since waking up in Lucid's garage. Only that one was so dangerous that it ruined an entire public performance, and the scientists building her genuinely thought she might not wake up.

"No," Capacitor admitted. "I don't think so. But that's not it. Sweetie... that mind destroyed the last body she was put in. If she's the last prototype..."

He lowered his voice, whispering directly into her ear. "When Lucid was testing the technology, he was still figuring out how to build a working pattern out of memories. About a year ago, he told me the story of what happened. That mind got so unstable; she used the body to attack him. She destroyed half his equipment, set you back three months at least.

"And even if she calmed down since then—which I'm sure she hasn't—there's another problem. Pattern failure is cumulative. The longer she operates, the worse the damage gets. If you wake her up to ask, you might do so much damage that there's no her to fix."

He draped one hoof over her shoulder, pulling her away from the body. She could feel that touch so much better now, the warmth of another pony, the subtle variations in pressure that told her how much they cared about her. Their scents came too, giving greater depth to what they said, and speaking to their honesty or deception. She was practically alive again, and the body in front of her was... less.

"Maybe this isn't something you should worry about now," Capacitor said. "So long as that brain isn't powered, nothing on it changes. She can wait patiently until you know more about how minds work—until you have the tools to help. Assuming you even want to. There's another argument that you can't bring her back, because you're already you. There can't be a second one. Maybe it would be kinder to dismantle the brain and let her rest."

Until those last few words, he almost had her. In a real sense, Sweetie wasn't willing to accept another version of herself out there in the world. Thinking about that gave her the same discomfort as considering the fate of the physical Sweetie Belle after the scan was taken. It wasn't like she died that exact second, right?

But then he used the word “dismantle,” and Sweetie reacted. She stepped directly into his path, between Capacitor and the brain. She lifted her hoof to his chest, pushing him back. "No, Capacitor. I dunno what I'm gonna do, but it isn't that."

His eyes widened, and he retreated from her. "Okay, okay. I'm just trying to be helpful." He retreated into the hallway. "You call me before you do anything. Even if I don't know how to help her, I do know how to stop you from getting hurt. Your life is important too, Sweetie Belle. Don't forget that." He left her there with the corpse of herself.

Sweetie had plenty of time to consider what to do. Her new life contained an infinity of time—as much from not needing to sleep as the promise of an endless lifespan, fueled by periodic repair and maintenance. Capacitor was right about that at least, even if his final suggestion involved killing the clone. She could take her time, deliberate as long as she needed. Maybe that would be a few days, or maybe she would give it years, until she could master the magic and science that allowed neural patterns to exist in the first place.

"What would you do?" she asked Scootaloo one night, a few weeks later. They'd picked somewhere quiet and remote for that date, somewhere not even Apple Bloom would find them. It was one of Rarity's empty gem caverns, excavated to exhaustion to fuel her thriving fashion business. In their wake were endless, empty tunnels, stretching under the ground in an infinity of caves.

An ordinary pony could easily get lost there and never see the sun again—but Sweetie had looked at the map once, which meant she had every inch of it memorized. With only minor effort, she conjured a floating miniature of that image in the air beside her, as though she were levitating it with magic.

Scootaloo couldn't see it, her attention was focused entirely on the spotlight she carried, and the pickaxe she sometimes used to test interesting-looking seams of rock.

The close quarters pressed damp to her coat, without ever feeling wet. Her new body interpreted the moisture as slightly easier cooling, which translated to faster thinking and greater wakefulness. A little moisture was like a sip of sugar, or a delicious coffee.

Of course, she couldn't drink any of those things. Food wasn't part of this revision, no matter how much she asked for it. Some things had to come first.

"If I had a little copy of myself sitting on my desk, you mean?" Scootaloo asked. She slowed beside an intersection, gesturing at the fork in the old path. Tracks ran down one direction, and Sweetie marked that on her map. Those connected to the deserted Diamond Dog mine, which Rarity had left largely unmapped. Best avoid that route.

She pointed towards another, using her horn for the task. She still had no magic of course, but an actual flashlight concealed in the tip lit their way just as well as Scootaloo's lantern. It was a far cry from actual magic, but still served as one of the simplest spells well enough.

"Yeah, I guess. No one but Capacitor knows I have her. Nopony will be able to judge what I do. I can dismantle her, or take whatever risks I want. Unless it works and she lives, nopony in Equestria will know."

"And it probably won’t," Scootaloo suggested. "Because of... complex technical reasons that would put me to sleep if we talked about them. Right?"

"Right."

Scootaloo slowed, nudging up against her in the narrow space. Small or not, there was plenty of room for two ponies to walk abreast. But Sweetie didn't want her to. Particularly when discussing such a painful question, she wanted to be as close to the ponies she cared about as possible. If she involved anypony else, they might take the choice away from her. Whatever else she thought about Lucid Storm, he had clearly made up his mind. Most other ponies would take his opinion as gospel on the subject.

"I dunno. You’re asking if we should make more copies of Sweetie Belle. That's a weird smarty-pants kinda question. The mare I like is right here. That bat brought you back to life, and it's the best thing in the world anypony could've done. All Equestria is better off. Maybe that means we'd be even better if there were more? Do I get two marefriends instead of one?"

She stuck her tongue out, grinning sidelong at her.

Sweetie shoved her back, imitating her expression. "Probably not. It's not like I'd have two bodies—she would be her own pony. These last few years never happened for her—she got really sick, woke up once in somepony's garage, then died again. She'd be like... a little sister at this point. I guess literally, since I would have to put her in that filly body. But it would be better for her anyway, since she sees herself as a filly."

"So those are the pros. If it works, another version of Sweetie Belle gets to be safe. Why wouldn't you?"

"Because she'll probably die." Sweetie pulled away from her, out over the edge of a strange incline. Here the tunnel extended beside a slope, vanishing rapidly into the dark. Her big sister hadn't dug this—this was obviously a natural cavern, like many in the limestone beneath Ponyville's foundations. Something caught the light of her horn, reflecting back at her with taunting flashes of gold and white. Apparently her sister hadn't completely drained the cavern.

"One shot to bring her back, or let her die forever. Either I take the risk and change her, hoping it fixes her, I let her stay dead, or I... wait, until I know how to fix her better. Maybe years."

Scootaloo stopped just beside her, wings buzzing with nervous energy. She looked down the steep incline, staring almost exactly the same direction that Sweetie had noticed. The unclaimed gemstones lay that way, along with who knew what other wonders. "If it were me... I wouldn't want to give my old self a lame, old body. I'd wait until I could make it awesome. Like—what Lucid Bioinformatics says they're gonna do. Maybe when you can get your hooves on one of the new ones. And if that takes a few years, then you've got all that time to do some extra practice before you finally leap off the cloud."

She stared down at the opening, squinting into the darkness there. "Wanna race down to the bottom?"

Before Sweetie could answer, Scootaloo leaned sideways, planting a light kiss on her cheek. The pegasus didn't seem to care about the dirt and grime, or even the seriousness of their conversation. Before Sweetie could answer, she was already off, scraping and sliding her way down a perilous incline. Both wings extended to her either side, buzzing to hold her upright.

Sweetie grinned, then took off after her. Her old body would have had serious trouble with such a steep hill—her newer one was a different story. If she let her mind lose focus, she could even feel the many servos and motors adjusting in her mind, making each step in turn to keep her from falling. In places the ceiling crowded in close, forcing her to crouch and slow or smack her head up against it.

Despite her improved abilities, Sweetie couldn't compete with a real pony, let alone a young mare as fast as Scootaloo. She soon vanished into the darkness ahead, visible only as a giggling speck further down the slope. "Don't lose me!" she yelled, shouting in vain after her marefriend. "I'm the only pony who knows where she's going!"

Bits of dirt and rocks bounced into the vents in her forelegs, probably doing all kinds of damage that Lucid would complain about during her next maintenance visit. But Sweetie had something more important to worry about—she had to catch up!

Finally, the ground leveled, expanding into a vast, vaulted cavern.

She had seen its like before, or at least heard about the discovery. One of Pinkie's sisters had found something similar elsewhere in Ponyville, where natural crystals grew into something spectacular that nopony would ever see.

This would never quite compete with that, many of these crystals were cracked or outright shattered onto the floor. Even so, a single beam of Scootaloo's flashlight shattered into a spectacular rainbow on the walls, lighting like the throne-room of some ancient, subterranean queen.

"I've been thinking," Scootaloo began, setting the lantern slowly on the ground at her hooves. Despite her calm words, her chest rose rapidly up and down, feathers flared out and wings splayed to either side to keep her cool. This was exhausting, even for somepony as fast and strong as her marefriend. "Since I'm too good for the weather team, maybe I could take up exploring instead? Wouldn't be the first time a non-earth-pony was good at this. Your sister's one of the best there is."

Sweetie hopped down off the slope, running one nervous hoof through her mane. The thought of climbing all that way back up hardly filled her with confidence—but that was a challenge she could surmount when it was time to leave. For the moment, something caught her interest far more sharply.

Scootaloo's mane was a mess, her wings were too short, and she was half-coated with mud. She was also the most beautiful mare Sweetie Belle had ever seen. "Say that part again," she whispered. "Tell me about how brave you are."

Scootaloo rested her hoof on Sweetie's shoulder, pulling her neck until they were at eye level. "I believe a demonstration is always better than words. Ponies love to talk, but how many of them would be brave enough to—" She kissed her again, more passionately than before.

So passionately in fact, that Sweetie thought the rumbling in the ground around them was her own heart. But then the rumble turned into a roar, and the two of them broke apart. She looked up in time to see the cavern ceiling come tumbling down on their heads.

Until

Sweetie continued up an endless, grinding slope towards the surface. With each step, she slogged her way upward, always moving towards her memory of the surface. Sometimes she dragged herself along so harshly that her body scratched and scraped in the process. Better her than the injured mare she carried—her parts could always be replaced. Her friend, not so much.

She couldn't say exactly how long it took. She diverted whatever power she had towards the simple task of climbing out. One more step in front of the other, crawling through gravel and dust and dirt. She did have the advantage of a perfect memory, but the cave-in rendered much of that advantage moot.

Until, after what felt like eternity, she reached an open section of stable corridor above.

A living pony might have collapsed, taking the time to recover and catch her breath. But for Sweetie, she knew not to bother. None of her systems would “recover” in any meaningful way. She was only breaking down, losing strength and functionality with every passing second. Seconds her friend could not afford to lose.

Sweetie must look horrifying—her coat peeling away to metal exoskeleton at points, broken servos exposed and tubes of fluid tightening and relaxing when she used some of her artificial muscles. She did not know much about the specifics of how all those systems worked, and didn't care to know. Physical engineering was a field that remained beyond her, let her focus on what she could glean from the software.

She did pause long enough to make sure her friend was still breathing. She was, though her wounds looked severe and her pulse felt weak. No telling how long she would last before they got to a doctor. But would they have enough time?

Sweetie didn't have a first aid kit. She didn't even have a physical map, since she had the entire thing memorized. Could she rip off her own coat and use it for a tourniquet?

No. There are too many sensors connected to it now. It would be too hard to get them off fast enough to make a difference.

Better to keep going, and hope that the shallower depth would make the difference.

Soon she came to an old cart, empty except for a little debris and whatever dust had collected over the years. Sweetie shoved it empty, then deposited her injured marefriend on the back. "We're almost out of here. Just hold on a little longer."

Scootaloo did not reply.

She clambered into the harness, though it was made for a larger creature than herself and she lacked the proper tools to secure it. She could still brace against it and shove. The weight of one pony was hardly enough to slow her down, not for a cart meant to drag along an entire load of ore. Sweetie hobbled forward, one struggling step after another. Old wheels creaked and strained, and the whole mechanism rattled like it might come apart.

But it didn't. Sweetie did, losing a handful of components off into the darkness. She wasn't sure exactly what they were, but she couldn't stop to find out. All that mattered was her forward progress—one more step, then another, then another.

Until at last, she could go no further. The motors on her strained leg finally wobbled and gave out, and would move no more. Sweetie flopped to the side, struggling in vain with her remaining legs. But both were on the same side—she couldn't keep moving with them. She would go no further.

That used most of your reserve, said the voice, the same one that spoke to her in the simulation. If you had not brought that dying pony, you would have made it closer to the surface, and been able to transmit for longer.

Sweetie tried to sit up, or at least climb onto the cart beside Scootaloo. But those legs didn't move either. This was different—not damage, but a total lack of motion. "What is..."

I've suspended all motor functions. You need the power for transmission. In a moment, I'm going to put you to sleep. Consciousness takes the majority of your energy, as you might imagine. You will sleep. Pray that Lucid Bioinformatics finds you before the transmission fails.

"Scootaloo," she called, straining towards her with one last, vain second. But the speaker was right—she was fading. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to. Sweetie Belle knew what a total power suspension felt like—her mind slowed, and the world around her accelerated. She was never exactly off, so much as underclocked so slowly that entire days could pass in seconds.

Maybe the program cut her eyes too, or maybe it was just the total darkness. Either way, she had no external stimulation, no reference for how much time was passing. Everything blurred into what might have been months or maybe just seconds. Only her fear for Scootaloo remained.

Then there was light. She moved, but still her thoughts became sluggish. She felt only the gentle rockling from side to side as someone moved her.

No pain came, just as there was no pain during her desperate crawl. Being able to shut that off at will did have its advantages.

Then came the light. A dozen ponies gathered there, scattered between two different emergency vehicles. One with medical signs, the other—a tech van from Lucid Bioinformatics.

She saw familiar faces over her, though their words still seemed distant. Seed Wise stood there for a while, alongside Capacitor. She prodded at Sweetie's various injuries, muttering things that didn't quite make sense.

Until suddenly they did, and clarity returned. "Sweetheart, you're safe now. You don't need to panic."

Sweetie's body twitched—but she was already restrained, in something like the robotic assembly tables they used to demo and build new bodies. "My... Scootaloo. With me. I can wait."

The mare stiffened, avoiding her eyes suddenly. Beside her, the technician retreated completely, out of Sweetie's field of view. That left the bat to answer her question. "There's nothing... the doctors can do. But the van—Lucid had all the equipment in here. We're scanning her. I told him you two must be close, if you fought so hard to save her."

Sweetie tried to nod, but couldn't. She couldn't even cry. "Y-yeah. She's the most important pony in the world. Please, you have to..."

But she didn't get to finish that thought, because that was when her body failed completely.

Sweetie was conscious of nothing at all after that. There was only dreamless sleep, without rest, thoughts, or stirring. Until abruptly, there was more.

Light streamed in through a hospital window, landing on her face. The touch of warmth on her coat made her stir at first, then sit up.

She was in a hospital gown again, with a chart beside her. "It's not gonna work a second time!" She smacked her hoof against the “call” button beside her bed, then worked her way up into a sitting position. She found all four legs exactly where she expected them, and none of the tears ripping her coat apart. When she tried to levitate the thin sheet out of the way, it moved exactly as she expected—a perfect recreation of what magic should be.

The door opened, and a nurse walked in. Not the same mare as last time—this one had a light purple coat, bat wings, and a cutie mark more like the wireless signal indicators on a laptop. "You're finally awake," she said, tucking a clipboard under her wing. "Welcome back to us, Sweetie Belle. We weren't sure how long it would take to revive you."

"I'm not revived," she said, straightening her mane with her magic. "This happened before. You're the... emergency program Lucid Storm put in my head. You want me to do something to keep myself alive."

The nurse reached her bed, then patted her on the shoulder. "You've seen the failsafe, I see. You'll have to tell me what it was like. I haven't had the pleasure of a body yet to try it for myself. Another time." She tossed the clipboard onto the desk, before pulling a large screen away from the wall. It swiveled out on an articulated arm, facing a flat plastic back towards Sweetie.

"Modest indicators of decoherence—but it looks like you've recovered. Personality matrix is stable. Memory oracle is green. Seeing a little corruption here in the short-term stack. System had to purge it, sorry about that. You should recover quickly."

She doesn't seem like a program. Watching this mare, Sweetie felt more personality in a few seconds than the program had shown in their entire conversation. She bit her lip while she worked, opened her wings halfway, lifted glasses down over her eyes while she squinted at the screen. An awful lot of work for a program that was just meant to maintain her.

Sweetie wasn't wearing a fake IV like the last time. She rolled to one side, landing on her hooves. She put weight on them only carefully, particularly the one that had been missing. Some part of her expected her to fall over when she tried to walk—but no, she could make it to the window without much issue.

There wasn't a featureless void like the last time. Instead, Sweetie saw... a simple blue sky, with a smattering of clouds. The homes beyond were plain, stretching off in both directions. Like Ponyville, with thatched roofs and slightly pink glass. The street was paved with cobblestones, and gas lamps still glowed in place of the newer electric poles.

"Where am I?"

The bat clicked her tongue once, thoughtful. "Ponies have a few names for it. Digital heaven. Synth City. My favorite is Lucid's Dream. Since... well, that's what we are. In some important ways. Some ponies probably just think we're dead or whatever. No bodies anymore, so—I guess that makes sense. Somewhere out there in the real world, the real you is rotting in the ground. Good thing you're not them, eh? You get to be here."

She pushed the controls away, before joining Sweetie by the window. Her eyes contracted to slits, and even then she kept to the shade on one side. But if Lucid Storm built this, he would certainly know how bats worked. That shouldn't surprise her.

"But how did I get here? I had a body, I was..." She barely remembered now. Cave-in, a desperate struggle to make it to the surface. The details beyond that were entirely lost on her. But maybe she didn't care much about remembering the journey, so long as she got Scootaloo to safety.

"Scootaloo! My marefriend! I was..." She looked down, then tore the paper gown away from her. It crumbled easily, falling in torn chunks on the ground. "I was trying to get her to the surface! Do you know anything about that?"

"I do." The bat took her shoulder with one hoof, turning her away from the window. "Good news and bad news on that. Bad news, she's dead. Good news—not more dead than anyone else in here. Come on."

She let go, flicking her tail once in Sweetie's face, before vanishing into the hallway. There was an actual space out there, not just a swirling vortex to suck Sweetie back into the real world. The building was entirely plain—identical sections, with the same picture of Celestia's cutie mark on the wall between each one. She'd seen more interesting artwork in motels.

Importantly, the bat led her a few steps to the side, before tapping on the door. "Excuse me? Can I come in?"

"Go away!" shouted a voice from the other end—a familiar voice. Sweetie knew that pegasus!

"I have a visitor, bird. I think you'll want to see her. She'll probably try to break this door down to get in if I don't let her. Might as well just say yes."

Hesitation this time. "Open it."

The nurse didn't get the chance—Sweetie barged past her, shoving the door open with her magic.

The inside was nearly identical to her own room, except that the window faced a different view of the town beyond. It had a bed in the exact same position, and a young mare resting there.

A mare Sweetie knew intimately well. Scootaloo, surrounded by life support equipment and wearing a hospital gown.

There didn't seem to be anything wrong with her, other than a generally dour expression. But that all changed when Sweetie appeared. She looked up, and finally their eyes met. "Sweetie! You're alive!"

Discovering

There was much to say to Scootaloo—many words to exchange, friendship to renew, and tears to be shed. Sweetie told her as little as she could about the events of her escape, painful as they were to contemplate. She was grateful that so few memories of that experience survived—all she really had to know was that it was difficult and painful.

But that conversation was the easy one—the one that would've happened to any two friends reuniting after a difficult experience. The much harder part was what followed—Scootaloo wasn't stupid. She already knew where she was, even if she didn't want to accept that information as the truth.

"We're both... digital," Sweetie Belle explained, a few hours later. They weren't waiting in Scootaloo's bedroom anymore, and had instead wandered out onto the hospital grounds, where a little courtyard with a few stone benches provided comfortable spots for ponies to walk and rest.

The garden here was greatly lacking from anything Sweetie knew from the real world—two varieties of flowers, one yellow and one white, repeated so regularly that every single one might be identical.

"We don't have bodies out in the real world right now. Me, because I had to work mine real hard to get you out alive. It fell apart when I got back, and they had to send me here. And you... for the same reason." She looked away as she said it, avoiding Scootaloo's eyes. Of course the underlying intensity was still there.

A handful of other patients occupied the space beside them. Most of those were older ponies, mares and stallions trundling around with walkers and braces on their legs. Sweetie wanted to stop and ask them why,given the ponies had traveled to a world without bodies, age, or any other physical restrictions.

But she didn't right then, not with Scootaloo beside her. Her friend hadn't removed the hospital gown, or the band around her foreleg identifying her as a patient. "The same reason. As in... dead. I died in the tunnel, and they had to... put my head into one of those scanning machines. Cut my skull open—" She trailed off, face going slightly green. Both wings opened, or tried to, but the gown held them pinned down, restricting that particular expression of pegasus emotion.

She nodded. "Not so gruesome anymore. The new scanner is just one needle with all these fibers. Goes in behind the spine..." She trailed off. "Maybe you don't wanna know that."

Scootaloo picked an empty spot beside a little artificial stream, flowing along a garden of identical rocks into a pool. Nothing visibly pumped the water to the top of the nearby fountain—but the metal bowl kept filling, trickling level by level until it reached the stream and started to flow.

"Will they have a funeral for me? Tell my parents I'm gone, gather everypony in town?"

"Probably. I think there was some talk of having them after ponies have come back. But mass production won't really start until later this year. I bet we won't get anything like that happening until there are so many bodies that ponies don’t have to wait."

"And my marefriend won't even be there." Scootaloo nudged her with her neck—as affectionately as Sweetie remembered. Maybe a little more. It didn't matter if this world wasn't real on paper. It was as though a barrier had been removed between them. Suddenly she could touch the mare directly, instead of through a pair of boots.

My senses in here are better than the body. No reason to make the computer fake.

"Technically, you can both be there," said a voice from behind them. It was the same one as before, the bat nurse. Did she not have anything better to do? Or maybe her treatment responsibilities were more holistic than just making sure Sweetie woke up okay. "By some definitions of being there. Lucid Bioinformatics has been waiting for an opportunity to test the mobile viewport. Since you're the landmark case, lots of ponies want to make sure that you're okay."

Sweetie turned, pulling away from her marefriend. Scootaloo looked back once, but remained on her rump, disinterested.

"How will that work, exactly?" Sweetie asked. "Viewport. You mean like—a window? The world has a window."

"More than one. As many as we need. Most ponies who come here—they've got rich families, or they were rich themselves. Left their whole estate in trust to the company, and in exchange they get the luxury experience. That means communicating with family. Right now it's kinda slow and awful, like having somepony visit you in prison. But it will get easier. One day, you'll be able to talk to anypony in Equestria through the internet. That's the idea, anyway. Software side is still..."

The mare made a frustrated gesture with both wings. "I'm supposed to get both of you to your homes. I have these keys here." She held up two identical keyrings, one in each wing. "They're on opposite sides of the neighborhood, but the inside's identical. Since it's all virtual, no reason not to give everypony the best."

Sweetie levitated both keys towards her, then hesitated. "We're going to be here that long? That we need houses?"

The nurse nodded sadly. "Other ponies waiting in the queue before you. Important orders from some important mares and stallions. Not sure the corporate side, but—you have to wait your turn. Your friend might be waiting a long time. Ask Lucid about that. I know he wants you to call him as soon as you get home."

Sweetie held the other key towards Scootaloo, then stopped. "These houses big enough for two?"

"Huge. Things aren't what cost resources in here, or space. It's thoughts. Each pony in here means a bigger computer churning away outside—it means more energy sucked down every second, to keep us running. We could each have whole palaces if we wanted, so long as there weren’t any servants inside. Most of the ponies here want to be around each other. Either that, or just sleep until their body is ready. Lucid can explain all that, he doesn't pay me enough."

"We can share," Scootaloo said, looking back again. "At least there's one good thing about being dead. We don't have to save up for a house anymore."

"Yeah! Maybe we can play with some different designs, so we have everything picked out for when it's time."

The bat shrugged, taking back the extra key. "Sounds good. Which means this is where I leave you." She stomped one hoof on the ground, and Scootaloo's gown vanished. Underneath, the mare was entirely healthy—right down to her wings.

If anything, they looked better than usual. Not shrunken and unevenly sized anymore, Scootaloo now looked like an average pegasus. Her fluffy flight feathers were fully intact across her body, and the unusually large muscles between her shoulders for ground buzzing were gone.

"Don't call me if you need help, I'm not the pony for that. There are red phones all over the place—pick up one of those, and call tech support. Just know time will get funny when you do. Same thing always happens when you talk to ponies on the outside."

She took off, fluttering back towards the building. The grass barely moved from her passage—somehow, that too felt off. Like grass might behave on an exceptionally cold day, halfway frozen.

Her marefriend stood, stretching to either side. She still resembled the mare that Sweetie had grown up alongside, but many of the specific details were just a tiny bit off. It was a little like someone had tried to recreate Scootaloo's whole body using a few photographs, rather than detailed medical information. The colors were right, and the proportions were mostly accurate, but everything was just a tiny bit lacking.

"Guess we should take a look around," Scootaloo said, eyeing Sweetie's keys. "If we're stuck here for a while, we might as well learn the area."

They walked together through a town that didn't exist. Its streets were all basically identical—paved with cobblestones that looked natural at first, but actually repeated every dozen meters or so. The houses too appeared varied at a glance, but actually just swapped a shade of paint or two and repositioned one of the windows.

There was a downtown district with shops and a few other public buildings. Fifty or so ponies congregated there, mostly older like the ones in the hospital. They shopped, ate, and talked under the shade of identical trees, mostly separated into their various friend-groups.

Many gave them cheerful waves, or shouted things like "Welcome to the Dream!" "Hope it didn't hurt too much getting here!"

Sweetie waved right back, returning the friendly enthusiasm. If anything, the ponies all around them had much more in common with her than anypony in her hometown. Every creature she saw was a fellow synthetic pony, their body dead and their mind dwelling within Lucid Bioinformatic's mainframe.

Scootaloo showed little of the same energy. A brief flick of her wing, maybe a nod, and she moved closer to Sweetie Belle. Almost hiding behind her, though the pegasus was naturally taller.

"You don't have to do that," Sweetie said, as soon as they'd reached the street name indicated on the piece of paper attached to their key. "These are our neighbors. We might as well get to know them."

Her marefriend shrugged both wings, keeping her head down. She said nothing, letting her large wings trail down the ground behind her.

She stayed stubbornly silent until they reached the doors to Sweetie's house—identical to all the others, except for her cutie mark etched onto the mailbox.

She already had the key into the lock before the mare finally spoke. "But they aren't real, right? Everypony here—they're on a computer. Nopony in here is alive."

Sweetie slid the key into place and turned. The door swung open of its own accord, leading through to... something impossible.

It resembled photos her parents sent back from their (many) vacation trips, out onto tropical beaches. Only one story but sprawling over a light wood floor in many colors, with oversized, comfortable furniture. There was a balcony beyond, leading down a narrow path to a beach of crystal-clear water, crashing gently down onto white sand.

Her objections were momentarily silenced as she stumbled forward, taking in the huge space. Open doorways off the main room led to a bedroom, study, and a huge bathtub. Another led to a kitchen, with windows opening onto a lush rainforest packed with trees.

A phone started ringing, echoing loudly from the little office door.

Sweetie hurried inside, breaking into a trot, and rushing over to the phone. It sat beside a huge computer station, much more expensive than her older sister had ever bought her.

Sweetie picked up the headset with her magic, holding it towards her. As she did—the screen lit up, and a video feed connected.

She'd seen that view before—Lucid's house in Ponyville. Granted, the furniture was nicer than she remembered—the Piano room was a new addition. But she'd still been there before.

Lucid Storm faced into the camera, looking so much more—detailed—than anything in Sweetie Belle's world. Compared to that view, every object around her seemed so smooth.

"Sweetie Belle! I'm told you woke up today. How are you feeling?"

She rolled the computer chair out of the way, waving one hoof at the camera. She kept the phone levitating beside her, unsure of what might happen if she hung up. "A little weird but getting used to it. I didn't know you built a city for ponies who can't be alive yet!"

Another bat appeared behind Lucid—Seed Wise, pausing long enough to look in at the camera. "They're okay? Good. You two take care of yourselves in there!"

Scootaloo approached the desk beside Sweetie, looking up at the screen. She kept her head down, silent and watchful. Just don't get mad at him. If Lucid hadn't helped you. you'd be dead for reals.

"We will," Sweetie promised. "Thanks for the rescue. That was some great timing!"

The bat nodded. "Saw the damage sensors go absolutely nuts. Turns out your sister knew the area, helped the team get right to you. Lots of ponies wondering what you two were doing mining of all things. No safety plan, no equipment..."

"Not realizing how dangerous it was," she said, head down. "I guess we owe a lot of ponies an apology."

The bat shrugged. "One day. When you're back out here. For now... well, it might be a minute. You picked the worst possible time to break. Right as we wait for our overseas partners to spool up production. And for your friend—we'll have to wait for a gap in the queue. That's gonna be a long time. I can donate a body for her—but not if there are customers waiting."

Sweetie rested one hoof on the desk, leaning up to the camera. "Don't bother making mine until hers is ready too. I won't come out without her."

The bat stiffened, and looked like he might argue with her. Then his wife fixed him with an intense glare, and his wings relaxed again. "Alright, Sweetie Belle. I hope you don't mind answering some interviews over the next few weeks. We've been keeping this technology quiet, except for our customers. But your case was so public—we had to share. You've got family queued up for calls, a few media ponies. Is that okay?"

She smiled back at him, as neutral and friendly as she could. "Of course, Mr. Storm. Thanks for saving my friend. It means the world to me."

What

Sweetie was on her back in the sand. She wasn't sure exactly how long she had been out there—hours, maybe days? This world had many of the same truths about it as her body in the real one—she never got tired, never got worn out or sick, never needed a break. She never needed to eat or use the restroom either, though both of those things were still available in her new virtual home.

Even if her mind didn't feel any different after a few hours straight of calls and interviews, some subconscious part of her still gradually ran out of energy. She felt as though she should need to take a break, and so she came out here.

Sweetie's family had never taken her along for their vacations. Her parents always left her with Rarity, so she could "stay with her friends" during those often month-long trips. That meant she had never had a chance to experience what luxury trips might be like. Her premature death only reinforced that restriction, since the hardware to keep her alive was only present in a single town for years afterwards.

As it turned out, the experience was pretty cool. Simulated sand wrapped around her legs and body, embracing her with a soothing, slightly uncomfortable heat. Occasionally she rolled to one side or another, shaking herself in the sand. When she wanted, she could stumble forward into the ocean, and refresh herself in the perfect tropical water. Not warm, but not cold either—just right to cool her down after some time in the sun.

Sweetie could lay there for hours, or recline in a large cabana in the shade, sipping cold water from a glass that never emptied.

Maybe being dead wasn't so bad. She could certainly think of worse ways to spend an afternoon.

The view over the bay had very little—nothing beyond her beach, only a little island off in the distance with a few swaying palm trees. Out there, she could almost forget about the stress waiting for her at home. Her marefriend didn't want to be here, and kinda didn't seem to think she was “alive” at all. Whatever that word even meant. Sweetie was far past caring.

Not so for Scootaloo. Her friend still had to answer all the same troubling questions that bothered Sweetie for the first few years of her revived existence.

"Wasn't sure if you were coming back inside," said a voice from behind her. Scootaloo dropped down onto the sand, spreading both wings as she did so. "Expected the sun to go down, and for you to give up and come in. But it never did."

Sweetie looked up, grinning nervously. Her marefriend was far from her usual spunk—but at least some of the bitterness was gone. What was left instead was weariness, like someone who had just gone through two straight days of hard work. She hadn't—appearing in the interviews and calls as little as she could.

"I don't know how night and day works here. But I think while we're home, we can control it. I saw instructions next to the big clock near the door."

Scootaloo nudged her with her wing. "I thought not having to sleep was a robot thing. You're not a robot anymore."

She shrugged. The real answer was complicated, and probably not going to inspire a positive reaction from her marefriend. She didn't have to know that dreaming was itself an unsolved problem, and the way digital ponies recorded their memories was so different from living ones that they had no use for sleep. If she cared to find out, she could look it up for herself.

"I think the idea was to... teach the ones living here what it would be like when they got out into the real world. They won't need to. You get used to it after a while—if ponies tried to force me in here, I think I'd be upset."

Scootaloo met her eyes, smiling for the first time since the hospital. "There are other reasons ponies might want a bed, Sweets."

"Nothing stopping them," she agreed. She did her best not to blush, but ultimately found it a losing battle. Still, she spoke anyway. If they were going to be stuck here, maybe for years,Sweetie Belle had no intention of wasting that time. "They aren't robots yet in here. There's no worrying about the difference between a living pony and a metal one. No risk of getting hurt. Pretty sure the only thing that could hurt us in here is something going wrong in Lucid's computers."

Scootaloo's smile widened. "Nothing stopping us, you mean. From doing whatever we want with our time here. Maybe years, he said?"

She nodded her agreement. It was hard to feel any enthusiasm about losing so much time—all those friends she wouldn't get to see, family who would be missing her. Good thing Rarity didn't see what happened to her second body.

"Almost like a honeymoon." Scootaloo stretched out onto the sand beside her, settling one wing behind Sweetie. "Do you think we can get room service?"

Probably not, that was the one thing the nurse said was scarce in here. Space on the big computers to make other minds work.

"Not a deal breaker for me," Sweetie said. "I can get you anything you need. And if you get bored, you could always learn how to fly. Might be fun."

That made her sit up straight, spraying a little wave of sand behind her. Strange that none of it stuck to their fur, even when they were wet. It clung just long enough to be comfortable, then it was gone.

"I didn't think they had robots that could fly yet. The wing muscles took too much energy, they would have to build the body too light to have enough power..."

"They haven't yet. But there aren't limits here. The nurse flew right in front of us, remember? No reason you couldn't."

Scootaloo grinned, spreading both wings into a textbook takeoff stance. "But if this works, you have to learn with me. No limits. So why couldn't you have wings?"

Could I do that? Just decide to be a pegasus for a while? Or an Alicorn? That thought was so uncomfortable it might as well be a religious prohibition—there were only five alicorns in the world, and she wasn't going to be adding one. Except that before Twilight, there were three, and before Cadance there were two...

Scootaloo took off, spreading both wings in a series of energetic flaps. The sand scattered from beneath her, and she was suddenly hovering there, perfectly balanced.

The mare squealed like a filly, shooting up into the air with sudden enthusiasm.

Despite her early success, she quickly lost control, zooming sideways until she splashed into the surf. Sweetie stumbled after her, splashing down into the water up to her forelegs. Damp sand yielded only a little beneath her hooves, and small waves barely pushed her aside.

Scootaloo's head appeared above the surf, mane a tangled mess and coat dripping with foam. Her smile was so wide she took a mouthful of water when the next wave smacked into her.

She emerged coughing and spitting, paddling her way to shore. Fortunately for her marefriend, she could swim better than she could fly. A few seconds later, Scootaloo emerged on the shore, clambering up through the surf and up onto the sand beside Sweetie Belle.

"I was flying! Did you see? I was actually flying!"

Sweetie nodded eagerly. "I saw. Might want a little more practice before you decide to fly off on a long trip—but you were doing it!"

"Maybe there are some reasons ponies would want to come here after all." Scootaloo shook out both wings, clearing away the water. "Anything that's broken can just get fixed? Maybe I should've died sooner!"

Sweetie's enthusiasm faltered at those words, leaving her with a slight bitterness in her mind. If she could go back and not get sick, Sweetie would still do it—so much pain, for so many different ponies, all undone. She nodded along anyway. "I guess you might have something to do until they get bodies for us after all."

But their time in the Dream wasn't all relaxation and fun—the trip inside left a bloody trail behind them, one still felt by many ponies in the real world. Eventually it was time to leave their new home and venture a short distance into an empty church building on a hill.

None of the locals went anywhere near it. The grass and trees there were no less vibrant than anywhere else. Even so, the solemn attitude about the place remained. They put on a pair of dark dresses, and trekked up to the waiting, open doorway.

A familiar mare waited outside it, light purple with her half-shaved mane. She wore a similar dress—maybe the exact same one, though it had openings for her wings. "Hey. Good to see you two. Or maybe I should be giving you condolences? I still haven't figured it out."

"I'm not dead," Scootaloo shot back. In the intervening days, the young mare had recovered a considerable amount of her energy. In some ways, her marefriend was better than before. Even in a few days, she already had time to fly. "So, what's to console? Living here seems pretty great to me."

The mare stuck out her foreleg. "Never got to introduce myself last time. I'm Moire. Dead too, as you can see. Didn't get to see my funeral, this is a first for us. Seemed like a big deal on the other side, but you would know more about that than I do."

Scootaloo took it. "Scootaloo. I think you already know my marefriend. Since everypony here is only alive thanks to her."

Moire nodded, then stepped aside. "Well don't be a stranger while you're here. Really—I don't have bits to pay for credits, so I only get to be awake when I'm working for Lucid Bioinformatics, or ponies with credits want to see me. Ever want to come over for dinner, I'll cook some awful food. Or anything, really."

Sweetie's mouth fell open. "Wait. Did you just say that you... die? Whenever ponies aren't around you?"

The bat laughed, her voice a pained, energetic giggle. "No. Starting and stopping is a little risky, even today. But we can slow down, so slow that whole days go by while you're wondering what you're going to put in your tea. You don't feel any different, but some part of you still knows. Hard to explain."

"Maybe you could help me with some flying practice," Scootaloo said. "Her too. Sweetie will need more practice than I do. Seeing as she doesn't have any wings."

The mare twitched, and a faint voice whispered into the headset clipped to her ear. Sweetie couldn't make out a word, but the intention was obvious.

Sweetie muttered something about getting a chance to visit her, then hurried through the opening into the old church.

Very little detail was paid to its construction, even compared to the other simulated buildings in the Dream. The stained glass windows all repeated the exact same pattern, showing Celestia's cutie mark and a simple natural design. The pews were all identical too, right down to the scratches and bumps in polished wood. Moire directed them forward, to the very front row.

A large screen sat in front of that seat, along with a camera mounted above it. Their intended resting place was obvious. No sooner were they sitting down, than the screen filled.

It showed two angles of a very similar church—one facing forward to the stand, where a coffin rested surrounded by flowers. Another pointed backwards, into a room absolutely packed with ponies.

Scootaloo's family were right there in the front row—her explorer parents, the aunts who cared for her, and a few cousins and other relatives Sweetie didn't know.

Behind them were dozens of others, packed into every open seat, clogging the aisles, and clustered around the walls. Ponyville's little church was far from large enough to contain such a well-attended gathering.

Many of them looked—heartbroken. Sweetie saw red eyes, heard the barely suppressed sobbing.

At their appearance, every pony within sight turned towards them, all squinting and shifting in their seats to get a look at something. She could imagine a screen very much like this one, occupying the empty space just in front of the stand.

A stuffy old pony stepped up past the coffin, clearing his throat. "We are gathered here today..."

Can

Sweetie Belle had little experience with funerals. After her first, she was content to keep that number as low as possible for the rest of her life. This was by far the worst—never before had she stuck around until the very end. She couldn't just be a passive participant in this one—almost everypony in the room wanted to talk to her and Scootaloo, even if it was just for a few moments.

"You're a hero," said a hundred ponies, a hundred different ways. "We heard what you did." "Brought her up from Ponyville Caverns on your own."

All she could do was smile and nod along to their praise, though all of it felt empty and hollow to her. She tried to save Scootaloo, but only half succeeded. They were still sitting at a funeral. What congratulations were really due?

But for whatever discomfort Sweetie had to go through, Scootaloo had it much worse. Every single one of them said the same things—apologizing for what happened, hoping she could come back to them soon. Some ponies asked a little more, wondering what it was like to wake up in the Dream. At least there was nopony around rude enough to ask if she still felt alive, or anything else so cruel.

But one by one the building emptied, leaving Scootaloo's closed casket where it lay. Her parents promised to call and write often, her aunts swore they would start saving to get her a body made as early as possible, though the prices were well outside their reach.

"No need to rush," Scootaloo urged them, wings open and pleading. "It's fine in here, really. I can fly, I'm with a pony I care about more than anyone in the world... I won't be alone. We'll find ways to pass the time."

"I see," said Lofty, looking over at Sweetie. Her smile showed an understanding that few other ponies could reach, no matter how tolerant they were.

"We'll keep you up to date," said Holiday, touching one hoof up to the screen. "And if there's anything you need in there, don't hesitate to ask. We'll be looking out for you."

That left only one pony behind—arguably the most important of all. Apple Bloom lingered in the empty church, waiting at the back of the line for her turn. She must have let a dozen different groups past her in the last hour, waiting patiently in her old-fashioned dress.

But now she was there, looking awkwardly up at the camera. "Hey you two. Guess it's been a little while."

"Yeah," Sweetie agreed. She kept her expression as neutral as she could, no matter how overwhelmed she felt with their day so far. Of all the ponies in the world who deserved them at their best, Apple Bloom was at the top of the list. "Not sure how long. There aren't real clocks on this side, just controls. It takes a little getting used to."

Apple Bloom wiped tears from her face. Her voice cracked, strangling whatever she was trying to say. Only Scootaloo's name came through.

"Doing good," Scootaloo finished for her. "Miss you. That was supposed to be a casual trip. Go somewhere interesting, spend a little time together, then we're out."

Apple Bloom took a little while to say anything. She kept her voice down, barely above a whisper. Every second, she seemed to be fighting tears and losing. "Guess that's true too. About you two being together, I mean."

"Yeah," Sweetie said. "We were gonna tell you eventually. When it felt right. But we weren't sure if it would work out. Felt a little silly to make such a big deal out of something that might not even happen."

Scootaloo rested one wing around her shoulder. In Sweetie's mind, that might be an even better use for her new state than flying. Her marefriend gave some amazing hugs.

"But it did happen. And it was going pretty well! Right up until the part I died horribly." She chuckled, but no humor reached Apple Bloom. If anything, the mare only looked more upset.

"Horribly? Nopony told me that part."

Sweetie stuck out one leg, stopping her marefriend before she caused even more harm. "We're fine now, that's the important thing. Being in here is weird, but I like it. I bet we'll be used to the weird parts eventually."

"And we don't have to say goodbye," Scootaloo added. "We can still call you! We can talk whenever you have time to go to the... center thing. It's in the big Lucid Bioinformatics building. You can tell us about everything happening at the farm, and we can tell you about how Sweetie is learning how to fly with me. She promised she would."

Apple Bloom looked over at her, as though checking to make sure she hadn't sprouted wings in the middle of their conversation. Of course, Sweetie looked no different than before, and there was nothing to see.

"That all sounds... nice," Apple Bloom said, her voice strained. "Just... don't forget about me while you're in there. All those times I was afraid we might never see each other again—don't make it come true. Hopefully you can get out soon."

"Hopefully,” Sweetie agreed.

But Scootaloo didn't—not after the cameras were off and they were out of the church.

Scootaloo shook herself free of the dress like a magician might remove the chains at their performance. "Here's hoping that's the last time I have to watch my own funeral. That was awful!"

She tossed the dress aside, directly into the dirt. "That's it! No more talking about dying, no more reminding me that I'm dead. No more tears and no more heartbreak. I'm done, Sweets! I'm done with all of it! If that means I might have to be waiting in here for a few weeks, or a few months, or a few years—I'm okay with that."

The dress vanished from the ground, fading away to a puff of sparkles and magical smoke.

"Even if things are weird here?" Sweetie prompted. "Even though none of us are alive, and we're all living inside a big computer?"

Scootaloo shrugged. "Even with all those things. Since I was little, I had to live with things I couldn't control, Sweetie. No matter how much I practiced, I couldn't fly. No matter how much I wanted, colts stayed gross, and fillies were the interesting ones. If I can learn to live with those things, I can be okay with a weird world that's only as big as one town."

She nudged up against Sweetie's shoulder for a brief kiss. "Besides, you're here. What's more important than that?"

Time passed in the strange not-world of Lucid's Dream. Sweetie saw very little to make concrete record of its passing—there were no seasons, no proper clocks, no calendars.

Only when ponies called from the real world did Sweetie have any sense that time was moving. Sometimes the leaves were a different color in the back of the frame, other times Apple Bloom would mention the harvest, or her sister would show off a gown she was working on for the Grand Galloping Gala.

"Be careful not to break anything in my room!" Sweetie always reminded her, or maybe begged. "Those artifacts are important to me! I'm gonna do things with them!"

"It's exactly as you left it," she would promise, every single time. "Honestly, Sweetie, you should take a little more time to relax. You have much less to worry about than anypony else. No new wrinkles, no stiffening of your joints or aches when you wake up in the morning. Just enjoy your time off, and I'll see about getting you out of there as soon as I can."

It could've been right after the Winter Wrap-Up. Her sister had the wealth to pay for new bodies, and enough of a connection to Lucid Storm to ask for basically whatever she wanted.

But two bodies were apparently a bigger problem than just one.

"It's our other clients," the bat explained, late at night judging by the moonlight and starry sky behind him. "There's a rather important stallion we swore would get the very first body off the production line. Making an exception for the first pony we revived—that could be explained. But your friend wouldn't be so easy. Her connection to you isn't enough to avert the anger. It would be... considerable, I'm sure. Then we would have a hard time attracting future clients."

It was all boring corporate talk and might've made Sweetie furious at him. But Scootaloo was usually there for those conversations, to reassure her. "I'm good waiting, Mr. Storm. I'm grateful for the credits you give me in your town. If it takes a while to get out, I'm happy here."

No wonder why. Her friend's lifetime disability was entirely gone, replaced with competence in flight that came from athleticism and confidence. Sweetie couldn't just transform into a pegasus to join her in the sky—but she could get a spell done to give her butterfly wings whenever she wanted, and that was good enough.

Good enough to spend their endless days high in the sky, whenever her marefriend wanted. Good enough to fly around town some days, and trot others. Good enough for a lifetime's worth of leisure and competition.

Though most new ponies to reach Lucid's Dream were elderly when they arrived—the passage of time gradually turned that back, until they returned to young, vital ponies. Quiet cafes and galleries soon got quieter, and the sports pitch and athletic field got quite a bit busier.

That was fine for Scootaloo, but not so much for Sweetie Belle. The more time she spent in the virtual environment, the more driven she was to make that time productive.

There was a library, though what it contained wasn't very interesting. A few calls to Capacitor later, and Sweetie got herself an exhaustive copy of Lucid Bioinformatics's internal reference materials. Everything they'd discovered, every paper they'd published, every manual and guide and memo on the technology, filled a new shelf in her office.

"But you gotta promise me—" the unicorn had said, rubbing the bags under his eyes with a hoof. "You won't try to send the files out of Lucid’s Dream. That stuff is proprietary. I figure it's okay if you have it, but that doesn't mean you can share it. Understand?"

"I understand." She levitated the nearest book onto the table in front of her. They were all identical, brown covers with block letters. Capacitor had done nothing at all to integrate them into the world or make them look real. But that was fine with her—Sweetie just needed the words.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, clearly dreading the answer.

He knew her too well. "Maybe... one thing." She tapped her forehead with a hoof. "Remember the younger me? The one living on that old brain?"

He nodded weakly. "Living isn't quite the word I would use for a pattern minutes away from total decoherence. I know the one you mean."

"Do you think you could... maybe... plug the diagnostic machine into Lucid's Dream too? If I'm going to be stuck in here, I might as well use that time to help her. I know it's possible—I'm still on the same brain. Lucid already told me."

That part of her body had been built tough and survived the worst abuses Sweetie put it through. Keeping her on it meant more resources for all the other ponies stuck on the server.

"Possible? Yes. Stupid? Extremely. But you've got the time, like you said. How about you design the interface? When you know the hardware well enough to do that, maybe I'll ask Lucid if it's okay. Maybe."

He hung up, and the screen went dark.

Sweetie sat up from the chair, walking over to the bookshelf. She walked along from one end of the shelf to the other, counting each of the books in turn. Nearly thirty, each about as thick as Ponyville's phone book. Much of their contents would probably require her to read other things in the library, just to get the background necessary to understand what they were about. But the town also had lots of old ponies, experts in many fields. She could probably ask around for help.

Between adventures in the day and wilder nights, Sweetie would make time to learn.

There were no doctors of the mechanical mind—she would make herself the first.

Be

Sweetie paced around her virtual workspace, squinting down at the pony projected there. Many blocks of data floated in the air before her, connecting in a strange weave of interleaving lines, connections, and pulsing shapes. Every now and then she lit up her horn, slicing through something, or reconnecting something to another area.

Behind the projection she had a large display, far larger than anything even Rarity could afford in the real world. On it was another mental pattern, one exceptionally familiar to her. Because, of course, it was her.

Her view on that image was always shifting, changing to match whatever element she highlighted on the other copy.

In basic shape, the two were almost completely identical. Several clusters of blocks, bound by connections as thin as a fine hair from her mane. Others had cords almost as thick across as a hoof, representing more critical parts of the pony's personality.

Many of the thin capillaries were missing, or else frayed and connected at random. Once, in a time that was both long ago and also only moments in her past, it had looked like total visual noise, meaning nothing.

Now Sweetie could read it—each line had a hex code corresponding to the strength of the connection, and any write conditions expected.

A pony's kernel was not a static thing, or a computer program like any other. Just like the meat they copied, these programs stored data in the same sections that processed it, making every recall also a write operation. With every thought, some connections grew stronger while others faded. Were it not so, she wouldn't even be a proper analogue of a pony, just another machine.

Unfortunately that also meant a virtual pony could reach decoherence. With a single flick of her horn, she saw that play out a hundred different times—brief simulations, just a few steps forward or back. They showed a catastrophic cascade of connections, as the mind performed almost intentionally destructive reads to every neuron in rapid succession.

"It seems almost as though the mind wants to die. It realizes something is wrong, and entirely rejects its new state of being. Perhaps this phenomenon is comparable to sudden foal death syndrome. Consulting with neurologists might be advisable."

Lucid's notes rambled for page after page, scattered on the floor at her hooves. A dozen shelves now packed into the room, each one filled with books. Some of them were fundamentals of electronics or mathematics—but most of those now packed into the corners, gradually gathering dust.

The more sophisticated volumes were what interested her, many hovering in the air, turned to a specific page.

Even a master unicorn like Twilight Sparkle would have trouble with such a complex levitation spell—but for Sweetie, the task was trivial. In here, her magical energy never waned, and she could split her focus in an arbitrary number of directions. It only meant slightly reducing the speed of time.

Expand her view, or keep it narrow but accelerated—frameshifting. Another word that wouldn't have meant anything to the Sweetie Belle outside the Dream. Since her arrival, it had become second nature.

The simulation continued, exploring hundreds of possible modifications. Occasionally one didn't cascade, and there she drew another line, writing a new connection or severing an existing one. The longer she worked, the more confident she grew, until at last the projection before her started to resemble the one on her screen.

Not an exact copy—if she wanted to write over it, that would be trivial. This was something far more complex, and far more important. "Doubt I can do much better, me. Moment of truth time?"

The projection didn't move—or react in any way. Of course it didn't, because it was only a visual representation of data stacked into a brain. This pony was at once more and less real than she was—less because she might instantly die when Sweetie woke her up. But also more, because she had a body.

Before she did anything drastic, Sweetie peeked through the blinds. The sun was still high in the sky, the same even yellow as always. Importantly, it meant Scootaloo would still be at work. This is the last thing you need to see.

She clicked the workshop door closed anyway. No lock—she would never lock her marefriend out of any part of her life.

"Decrease opacity of overlay to 10%," she ordered, before pacing over to the flickering hologram. "And instantiate the simulation."

"Developer warning," said a voice, echoing through the room. Exactly the same voice that would've been present in the real world if she was pressing the buttons with her own hooves. "Simulation cannot be reversed. Unlike projections, active mind simulation involves constant modification. Any damage may be permanent. This device lacks the hardware for a backup."

Sweetie's stomach turned at that thought. Instead of having one dead version of herself, she could make dozens, all corpses doomed to an eternity of dreamless sleep from which the only waking was suffering. And if this did work, she wouldn't want to create an endless army of clones.

If this worked, she wouldn't be an individual anymore, but two. What would her younger self think about the life Sweetie had built?

"I understand. Override the warning and begin the simulation. Suspend if any critical error is detected."

A vain hope, of course. If an automatic protocol could detect the actual outcome of all those reads and writes, then decoherence wouldn't be possible.. But it didn't hurt to try.

Her own voice filled the workshop, or at least a slightly higher version of it. Only this one spoke out of tune, twisted into some strange parody of itself. "Pain. Pain. Pa—" Then she stopped.

A transparent version of Sweetie took shape in the center of the room, confined by a square outline set into the floor. She flicked her head to one side, then the other. "Wait. It's gone."

She spun rapidly in place, tail whipping around behind her. "Where is this? Lucid, are you there?"

"Suspend," Sweetie whispered. The projection froze, and Sweetie approached. "Raise opacity to 80%."

There in the air was the map of this simulation, populated with everything she knew, everything she was. Where connections had been recently strengthened, they glowed blue. Those recently faded lit up gold. Hovering numbers beside it told Sweetie what she already suspected—slightly elevated levels of pattern modification, much higher than a stable mind like herself. Yet—they weren't all deletions. 60% were additions, trending upward.

"Connect virtual optics," Sweetie ordered. "Leave touch disconnected for now. Let's see how she handles vision."

"Ready."

"Opacity to 10%, then resume the simulation."

Her virtual self stumbled, looking up at Sweetie. She was half a head taller than this younger self, though they both had their cutie marks. She had created her using the basic “filly” model, instead of the “young mare” model that Sweetie used.

"You're not Lucid. You're... me." She looked around, eyes flicking to floating books, distant shelves, and the curtains over the window. "Kinda looks like his garage. Less machines in here. Am I dead?"

Sweetie—the older one—kept her eyes on the colored projection, judging the lines there. If too many connections in gold appeared, she would be ready to sever the connection. But would that be fast enough?

At a glance she saw only a slightly elevated number of reads and writes. But how quickly would that change?

"Yes, we've both been dead for a while."

"Since the..." Her smaller version lifted one hoof, then touched it to her chest. "Disease."

"Yeah," Sweetie agreed. "Lucid Storm used a machine to try and save us. He didn't keep us alive, but... I guess he did save us. You're data now, same as me. We're both... machines."

"Both." The projection approached her, at least until the glowing line in the floor. Her hooves wouldn't take her any closer to it, stopping short of that line. Sweetie could remove all those restrictions, connect her right into Lucid's dream. But the more stimulation her matrix got, the greater the risk she might enter decoherence.

"I know what I am. Dead. The pony who isn't real anymore. Machine. Metal joints... plastic fur..." She poked herself again, expression turning sour. "I can't even feel it anymore. What happened?"

Sweetie eyed the node overlay again. Though she had no organs, it felt as though her heart was racing. Modification percentage was still increasing—80% higher than a stable mind, and still rising. On net she was still making more connections than she severed.

"You... broke, for a while. Lucid shut you off to... stop you from hurting yourself." And definitely not because he was going to leave another me dead forever. "Nopony knew how to fix you. But now I do. I... made some changes. I'm sorry, I couldn't ask for permission. But if I did, you would already be dead now. Like, forever dead. For realsies dead."

"But I'm... not," the filly whispered. She flopped backward onto her rump; expression distant. "Who are you?"

"I'm..." She looked away. "Another you. A later one, who found out about my... little sister, and wanted to help."

There—writes were finally leveling off. The simulated mind wasn't trying to remember everything in her entire life anymore. She was almost stable. A few more adjustments now and she would have it. A few more alterations, a few more connections to draw....

"How?" asked the little version of her, trapped in the square. "I'm me. You're... can't be me. There's me, that's it."

Sweetie flicked her tail to one side, scrolling through a few different parts of the simulated data matrix with her magic. They were mostly transparent, though her projected self would see them. Sweetie had already connected her sight.

"You're you," she agreed. "But things are a little different when you're a machine. You don't have to understand it right now. I'd like to give you back your touch, is that okay?"

"What does that mean?"

"Connect locally simulated pressure and temperature perception," she said.

The result was immediate—a sudden spike in feedback, an explosion of reads and writes through the personality matrix. Sweetie watched, eyeing the percentage of new entropy introduced. Decoherence might be an eyeblink away if she wasn't careful.

"Woah. This place is chilly." The filly shivered once, tucking her tail in. "Nice to feel it, I guess. How long do I have to stay in this box? It's kinda boring."

Seconds passed, and Sweetie watched. The graph expanded and contracted like the breaths of a living creature—but held. I need to write all this down. In-simulation repairs could help lots of imperfect personality matrixes turn into real ponies. I wonder how many are waiting on Lucid's computers.

The door swung open, and a young mare walked in. Frost condensed on Scootaloo's mane, with flecks of snow clinging to her coat. "Looks like we're on for first snowfall tomorrow morning! Didn't take as much effort as we expected—still working on the..."

She wasn't the only one staring. "Scootaloo?" asked the trapped mare, hurrying to her side of the marked box. "You're so tall! Just like the other me!"

"I... sure am..." She trailed off, glancing sidelong at Sweetie.

"Suspend simulation."

Her small copy froze in place, mouth open for another question. Her eyes didn't blink, her chest didn't rise, and indeed time wasn't even moving for her.

"The buck is going on here, Sweetie?" her marefriend asked. "Why is there a filly who looks like you in your workshop?"

Sweetie circled around the box, inspecting the nodes. As expected, Scootaloo's arrival proved a fresh wave of stimulation. But so far as she could tell, the mind was holding stable. "I mentioned her. That brain Lucid Storm made before me, remember? Before he figured out how to make a pony very well?"

"I thought that was a brain," Scootaloo said. "Like would go in a body. How'd she get here?"

"A little code, some help on the outside... and now I'm fixing her! Maybe I already did, but... hard to tell. The real test is letting her out of this box. She might die if I do, but... safer in here than outside."

"Even if she doesn't die..." Scootaloo paced up beside her, brushing a few strands of mane away from her face with one wing. "She'll have to deal with being a copy. Lots of ponies can't adapt."

"I already did it once," Sweetie said. "I'm sure she'll manage."

Created

Sweetie was there for her younger self the moment she first stepped into Lucid's Dream. She kept the filly model, along with her old mane style. When you were a copy, you needed everything you could get to differentiate yourself.

At first she spent only a few minutes awake at a time, with Sweetie following a few steps behind her and monitoring everything she did. That saved her more than once, since Sweetie could step in and use a few commands to stop her mind from spiraling out of control.

Nopony in the real world could possibly react in time, or understand what they were seeing. But Sweetie lived here too—she knew the simulated mind as even Lucid Storm couldn't. She knew this mind in particular, since those were some of her strongest memories. Waking up after her death, confused and mechanical—she remembered what that was like.

In time, her younger self no longer needed constant monitoring. She could run somewhere in the real world, using an old brain connected to a maintenance terminal. That limited her abilities—that computer could not frameshift to experience more time when there were more resources, though it could slow to match the pace of time in Lucid's Dream.

Mostly that meant Sweetie needed to write some special code for her, manifested as a magical necklace, which would slow to match the instance, or eject her if her hardware couldn't keep up.

It would be easier if they could just upload her with everypony else—but she didn't want to tell Lucid about her new sister. What oblique conversations they had on the subject confirmed what she already feared—that the bat wanted nothing to do with the idea of copying minds.

"Ponies need their illusions, Sweetie. We don't really understand how consciousness works—we assume there's something ineffable about it, something that would be lost if we modified it. Nopony wants to think they're just a pattern playing over again. But if we start forking minds in there—even if we had the resources—that illusion starts to break down.

"We're already facing pressure to stop from Luddites across Equestria. They want to shut the Dream down, think no one is really alive. That I'm exploiting the hopes of desperate ponies for wealth and fame... or worse, trying to get them to kill themselves. That's the real reason I limit contact between Equestria and the simulation."

So she kept her head down, relying on Capacitor to mask her input and output traffic. After all, she was using official hardware. No reason to kick her out of the system.

Scootaloo indulged the whole thing with few objections, though showed clear discomfort whenever the copy spent too much time with her. So maybe Lucid was right about that part of pony psychology—few wanted such direct evidence of just how ordinary they were.

That wasn't the only painful separation she faced. Sweetie couldn't let Rarity find out about her, for the same reason that she had to hide her from Lucid. If her sister learned about a copy, there was no telling what she might do. So she kept her younger self from living too long in the Dream. A day or two here and there, without ever knowing that time moved differently for her.

A sensible decision—Sweetie hoped—but also a heartbreaking one for her younger self. It meant she lost every connection with her life before, except for an older version of her friend who was uncomfortable to be around her, and also dating her older self.

But she was a tough filly. Sweetie had endured a crippling disease, braved a new technology to escape it, and more. She could survive a little hardship, for the eventual promise that ponies would understand.

After a few subjective years, her younger self hadn't grown any older—but she had made some new friendships with other fillies and colts, all victims of accident or disease just like Sweetie herself. Thanks to them, she didn't even have to share Sweetie's home with her anymore, so long as she came by for regular checkups every few days.

The Dream itself changed right along with them, growing larger as new ponies arrived, and the resources available to them increased. Eventually, the whole town got together for the first event of its kind: a pony leaving.

But it wasn't Sweetie. She rejected that path to stay with Scootaloo, who might not have a body for some time. She could live in the Dream for a while longer, even if it meant the world passing them by outside.

She missed disasters in Equestria—missed her sister moving out of Ponyville on her ambitious plan to expand her clothing line to a national brand. She missed the retirement of Equestria's Diarchs, stepping down from their roles to allow Twilight and Cadance to rule as the nation's newer princesses.

They didn't miss Apple Bloom’s wedding to a pony she'd met during a dance class, though they could only watch through a camera, and didn't get to taste any of the wedding treats.

The Dream expanded too. They didn't have a princess, but as computers got better, the world itself could get more detailed. Identical streets and an out-of-focus town turned into a city of vibrant lights and color, split into districts that recreated various parts of Equestria, and times. Those elderly ponies inside recreated the simpler times they'd been born into.

Meanwhile younger ponies blurred the boundaries of tribe and magic into impossible creations that could never exist in the world outside—sky cities where every pony had wings, spectacular castles and recreations of books and movies.

Naturally Scootaloo wanted to live in one of those, and Sweetie came along. With new colors and wings along with her horn. In a simulated world, no pony could be bound by inconvenient things like tribe.

Ponies came and ponies left. At first the arrivals were a steady stream, then a flood. Eventually, departures went from a city-wide celebration to a dedicated platform in the city train station, where friends would share a few treats together before a pony got their new body.

Sweetie herself found a place—not in the wild, experimental world of art and creation that Scootaloo fell into, but as a more practical part of her new world. Plenty of digital minds needed doctors. Some had arrived incomplete, or fractured as time went on and the reality of their digital existence set in. At first that work was clandestine—but soon she earned recognition for her notes on the subject, and later formal publication. Within the year, she had a full-time position in the role, with a practice of mental medicine connected to every version of Lucid's Dream.

It earned her significant income in the real world, where bits and scarcity still mattered. More importantly, it earned her recognition and satisfaction in her digital life, every time she saw a pony she had helped continuing to live, instead of dissolving into fragments and vanishing from the city.

Eventually, bodies were so easy to manufacture that more ponies began to leave than those who arrived. The same technology that made them could also be used to keep living ponies still alive, after all. Eventually, she ran out of excuses.

"You deserve to be here," Lucid said, over a virtual conference call. "Everypony asks about you. All these synthetic ponies, and the first one is nowhere to be seen. I've had bodies for you and your partner for six months now—what are you waiting for?"

What was she waiting for? Sweetie had no answer for him right away. She made some excuse about a patient and slipped away, soaring on pegasus wings to her marefriend's room high in the clouds. These sorts of spatial incongruities were just another part of her world, after all.

Scootaloo might not be there right away—but thanks to the strange properties of time in the Dream, Sweetie wasn't waiting for long. Seconds almost, and the mare touched down in the clouds. She settled her wings closed, brushing up against Sweetie. "What's wrong? You look upset."

"Upset..." she repeated, circling over the clouds. Even years of living here couldn't quite make cloud walking and flight feel normal.She would appreciate them far more for going most of her life without.

"Not exactly. Just... Lucid talked to me again today. About leaving. I'm expected up there. We are." That last part was a lie, and they both knew it. Scootaloo's aunts stayed in touch with her, but her parents rarely had. She had few connections left in the world above, and fewer still that would be expecting her.

Scootaloo nuzzled her neck, as tender as the mare ever had. "You don't want to go. It's okay to say it."

Sweetie Belle didn't say it, but she did nod, avoiding her marefriend's eyes. "I wish I could visit instead of living up there."

"You can," Scootaloo said. "Lots of ponies visit after leaving. They just can't frameshift anymore."

Without that ability, a pony could only move at the speed of time on the outside. Weeks could never pass in days, only the other way around. "If I go up there, will you come with me?"

She didn't want to ask, because part of her already knew the answer.

"My life is here. I don't want to go up there—get a job, work for bits to afford some tiny little apartment. Or worse, dragging you down with me." She opened both wings, lifting into a hover. Scootaloo flew like a skilled pegasus—probably better than any real one. Physics would get out of your way in Lucid's Dream, if you asked politely enough. "I'm happier here. I think you are too."

She had no answer to that. Her work wouldn't be possible without abilities an external existence couldn't afford her. Only by bending time could she preserve many of the worst cases that arrived at her clinic. How would she live with herself when that transition cost somepony's life?

"Lots of ponies want me back there," she whispered. "My sister wants to see me again, probably lots of ponies do."

"I didn't ask what they wanted," Scootaloo said. "Can you look me in the eye and tell me you want to go back?"

She tried—and she failed. Lucid's Dream was an Equestria unto itself. Many old friends were outside—but she'd lived far longer inside now.

"They want me back..." she began. "They worked so hard to save me when I got sick. That's kinda how this whole place got here." Then she froze, staring down over the balcony at her castle far below. Sweetie Belle—the original, without wings—was just walking in, humming a lonely tune to herself as she went.

"Maybe there's another way."

It wasn't as simple as flipping a switch, of course. She had to talk to Capacitor, now a senior technical director at the company, and persuade him to help with the transfer. A few ponies, like Lucid, would have to know. Maybe they would let the older Sweetie talk to her family on the outside again—maybe she would have to pretend to be somepony else until they arrived in the Dream.

Either way, it felt only fair. She'd barely even suggested the idea to young Sweetie Belle before the little filly lit up, bouncing eagerly up and down with delirious energy.

"I don't have to pretend?" she asked, after explaining everything to her. "No dressing up or anything. No telling ponies that I'm a big scientist."

"Nope," Sweetie promised. "Official story is, you gave those memories to some pony in here to keep doing your work. You have to be digital to do it anyway, so... it won't seem strange."

The little pony embraced her, hugging Sweetie tight on the station platform. "What do I tell them about you? Who helped me?"

Sweetie Belle shrugged. "Whatever you want to tell them. I think I'll go by Harmonic for a little while. Just tell them I'm a friend. Mom and Dad are older now, and Rarity too... but they still love you. They never did well with me being digital anyway. They want to be out in the real world—so go out there, be real. Be Sweetie Belle again."

"I will!" she promised, hugging Harmonic again. "I'll message you every day, and tell you how it's going! Maybe one day I'll get a marefriend too! Then you can come to our wedding like you went to Apple Bloom's."

"Maybe." She let go, urging her onto the platform. "I'd like that."

She watched her step onto the train, and the automatic doors closed behind her. Soon she was gone, off to a world Harmonic had left behind a long time ago.

They would both find their happiness. Equestria was a different place—there was plenty to go around.

The End

Author's Note

And that's the end. A huge thanks to Lucid for supporting the original idea, and Sparktail for keeping it going since then. This story really grew out of control, if you can't tell from what was meant to be a brief oneshot that continued so far. I could probably keep going--but sooner or later, it's time to let the ponies live their lives. I'm sure these will have quite the future together.

Adversity

Sweetie Belle lay somewhere dark. She wasn't sure exactly how she'd gotten there. At first she knew nothing at all—then a distant, background panic joined her, pressing in on her from all sides. Whatever was going on, Scootaloo was in danger! She had to find her friend!

Sweetie struggled, willing her horn to light—and it came on. The fear was far too sharp for her to notice or even care what kind of magic it was.

She was in a dark room, with shiny floors, white walls, and a curtain just beside her. The space of her nightmares, or it would be if she still needed to sleep. Another her had spent her last months in a place like this, getting weaker every day until she had no strength left to lose.

She sat up, dislodging a paper-thin blanket from her chest. There was nothing remarkable about it—white coat, smelling like harsh hospital soap and antiseptic. Bandages wrapped around her forelegs at various points, and a heavy one encircled her barrel completely.

The holes are gone. She stretched with one hoof, running it down the foreleg. The carefully-concealed ventilation openings were all gone. Despite their absence, her coat still felt warm. In fact, if she held still for long enough...

She touched the soft frog of her hoof up to her neck, holding it firmly there. A slight elevation, steady and rhythmic. Bu-bump. Bu-bump. Bu-bump.

Sweetie Belle had a heartbeat again. Sweetie Belle was alive.

Her last visit to this hell had been so long ago—yet those formative memories remained cemented into her mind, absolute and unyielding. She knew exactly how far to reach to find the red “call” button placed over her head.

She slammed her hoof down hard, hard enough that the plastic yielded slightly. So did her leg, sending a flash of pain through her body. It hurt. She could hurt!

Sweetie wasn't sure who she was expecting—this hospital wasn't familiar to her, any more than the sudden changes to her perception. Nothing about it made sense. She should be...

Underground. She remembered it now—her date with Scootaloo, exploring the empty gem caverns around Ponyville. Her special somepony liked to explore, and anywhere that made her feel less self-conscious about her lack of flight was an advantage. If she was in a hospital, did that mean—

The dim lights came on, stinging harshly into her face. Even that had a strange unnatural quality to it, though she couldn't place exactly how. Something about the sharpness of the shadows it made?

Then the door swung open, and a nurse hurried inside. "Oh, you're awake! I wasn't sure how long it would take."

Nothing should've upset her about this particular pony—in her months living in a hospital, she saw plenty of them, coming and going in a steady stream. They were always kind, though sometimes their pity cut as deep as any weapon. Maybe that was it, something familiar about the cutie mark, and her voice.

She approached the bed, holding a clipboard under her leg. She glanced sidelong at the monitor, then lifted Sweetie's foreleg and inspected the connection. "Looks like you're recovering nicely. Ahead of schedule."

"I..." Sweetie glanced towards the window, but found a curtain obscured it. Only a diffuse glow of distant houses suggested anything at all aside from this room. "Where is this? What's going on?"

The nurse clicked her tongue, then settled her clipboard onto a waiting peg. "That's... that's a question." She settled onto her haunches at the foot of Sweetie's bed. "Are you feeling well enough that you won't... freak out?"

Sweetie nodded. The more she saw, the more evidence she found that something was clearly amiss. The IV running into her foreleg didn't seem connected—the soreness where needle met skin was missing. Medical adhesive stuck to her coat, but there was nothing underneath. Likewise, the beeping monitor never changed. Her heart raced, yet it continued a steady, repetitive beat.

"I'm calmer than most ponies. I've died before, in a... room just like this. How much worse could this be?"

The nurse shrugged. "I don't actually know. I'm not alive, and I never have been. I can only make projections based on observed behavior. Conscious state-matrix progressions are too complex to store with high fidelity."

Sweetie sat up straighter. Those words would mean little to most other ponies, but to her—this was her first hint of honesty. "This isn't Ponyville General."

"Afraid not," the nurse agreed. "And I'm not really Healing Touch. I'm not anyone in a sense you would recognize. But given the urgency of your situation, it would be wise to forgo the formalities."

"The..." Sweetie gritted her teeth, then ripped the fake IV off her foreleg with her magic. It worked, trailing off to a sealed plastic tube. But more importantly, her magic worked! She could levitate, exactly as she remembered! "Woah! Am I alive again? Did Scootaloo and I find some... ancient spell? Like a come-to-life to make machines into real ponies?"

Her companion's expression grew somber. "I'm afraid not. In fact, you may not be alive for much longer in any sense. I fear that the progression of events that led you here will lead to a final termination of function. This far underground, the tracking signal you emit will not be detected. Thus, your internal power reserve will deplete, and you will enter permanent suspended mode. Nopony will discover you, and thus you will never be reactivated."

She remembered the cavern, remembered their brave climb down an unexplored slope, then the collapsing ceiling... "Scootaloo! What happened to her?"

"Trapped with you," the nurse answered, as emotionless as everything else she said. "The wounds she sustained appear significant. But I am not equipped to diagnose her—preserving your life is my primary function."

Sweetie shook free of the blanket, stumbling forward on her own power. She felt strangely weak, a gentle background of tiredness that welcomed her back to the bed. She ignored its promptings, wandering over to the window and pulling the curtains open.

There was no Ponyville outside, just a few vague spots of light set against a scene of total blackness. This wasn't a blackout, or shadow magic—there just wasn't a town anymore. "Even simulating this room is a waste of valuable resources," the nurse said. She followed Sweetie Belle to the window, keeping a respectful distance with every step. "But the damage you suffered—induced a power surge, knocking you briefly offline. Reboots from blackout require careful conditions, otherwise they risk permanent decoherence."

Some of those words made sense to her—the important ones, anyway. "So if I'm understanding you... I'm still underground. I'm broken, Scootaloo is trapped too. No one will find us." The nurse nodded, and Sweetie continued. "Why wake me back up? If we're really..." She couldn't bring herself to say it.

"Some power remains," the pony said. "I can't accurately estimate how much. Only one of your legs was detached—the other three are working. Your kernel is fully intact, obviously. I hoped to wake you in time to take action."

She gestured, and the little hospital room door flew open. Of course the earth pony had no magic to do it, but that didn't seem to matter. Beyond it was more blackness, a space without light or dimension. "If you go through that door, you will complete boot procedures and return to your broken body. I've already disabled every pain subroutine, to keep you conscious. It is imperative you climb as high as possible. If the surface rock is thin enough, your SOS broadcasts will be detected, and rescue may find you."

Sweetie galloped over to it, but stopped at the threshold. She expected cold to seep through from that featureless nothing beyond, maybe the strained whispers of damned ponies from outside time and space. Instead, she heard nothing, felt nothing. Only silence.

"Find Scootaloo, get her to safety," Sweetie said. "I can do that. Carry her out of here. What's the point of making my body so strong if I don't use it?"

The nurse touched her shoulder, not strong enough to hold her in place. "That is not what I said. The other pony with you is already badly injured. Her heartbeat is weak, her breathing is slow. She will not survive until rescue no matter what you do."

Sweetie tore free of the nurse's grip, glaring. "I'm not giving up on my marefriend. I don't care how bad it looks."

Before the fake pony could protest, she leapt through the barrier.

Sweetie fell, but not down some bottomless pit into cold oblivion. It took her down a short distance, directly into her body. She landed so hard that one of her limbs went flying, and her metal superstructure bent. Except—that wasn't really from a fall.

She lit up her horn again, illuminating her dark surroundings. Stone crushed down around her, barely high enough to sit up. Scootaloo lay on her side before her, in a thin pool of blood. The fake nurse was right about one thing—her friend was hurt. She'd never seen a pony so injured before.

Even so, she wasn't hurt badly enough that she couldn't look up. The mare opened one eye, turning her neck weakly in Sweetie's direction. "Oh, h-hey. Thought you got... thought you were dead."

Blood trickled from her lips, and her words came raspy. "Glad I was wrong. You're not.... broke? Guess robots can't die."

"Neither will you." Sweetie crawled forward, leaving a trail of something that wasn't blood behind her. One hind leg was missing entirely, trailing wires and broken metal joints. If she could feel pain, that alone would probably stop her advance completely. But being mechanical did give her some advantages.

"There's a hole next to me," Scootaloo whispered. "Tried to... reach it. But I can't. You should get out. Maybe you can... bring help."

Sweetie stopped in front of her, inches from her face. Scootaloo's hot breath came with blood this time, splashing up against her coat. "You won't last that long, Scoots. We have to get you out now."

The mare laughed, or she tried to. More blood emerged from her lips, and her already sluggish motions slowed further. How much pain could one pony endure? Moving her would be worse.

"Not sure if... that's possible," her marefriend whispered. "It was a long way down here. Long way back to Ponyville. Unless the landslide taught you to teleport..."

She leaned in close, touching her forehead up against Sweetie's. "Get yourself out of here safe. We knew you were gonna live forever, and I wasn't. This just... came a little sooner, that's all."

"No." Sweetie pressed up against her, easing Scootaloo through the opening. It wasn't easy, but the dust and blood helped lubricate her movement.

The cave-in extended up what had once been a slope into the tunnels above. Even so, Sweetie's horn illuminated what she thought was a clear path leading upward. If her power lasted long enough, she could take it.

Once there was enough space, she squeezed under Scootaloo's torso, then lifted her over her back. The mare hung limply there, barely moving, barely breathing. Carrying another pony with one missing leg wouldn't be easy, let alone through a broken tunnel.

She would do it anyway, or die trying.