The Story of Dr Sine

The Story of Dr Sine: 4

4 Months later

Dr Sine walked into the central AI chamber. Many technicians in lab coats were looking at the prone form of 3.0, the new AI system that they had been testing. She was based on the same pony that 1.0 and 2.0 had been, Evangeline, and was basically an improved version of their software. Dr Sine was not surprised to hear that many attempted activations had already failed. The same had been the case for 1.0 and 2.0, with the flood of data their minds received on activation, they often went rampant immediately. Dr Sine was going to observe from the one way glass as Sky Nova tested her verbally for rampancy. On all the other tests, she had been fine for a few minutes, then when a few trigger phrases were used, she showed her true colours at last. Blaze, his robot companion stood behind the glass window with him, watching. Blaze had never been rampant upon activation, because he wasn’t based on a real pony. He was truly artificially intelligent. He started as a blank slate, and from prolonged interaction with Dr Sine and his co-workers, he had developed his personality. The other scientists were a little wary of Blaze at first, but he had grown to be accepted and now nobody even gave him a second thought. He had even been a huge aid when they had worked on sentry turrets. Celestia had been aware of the rise in militant groups throughout Equestria and had commissioned Equestria Labs to design non-lethal sentry guns, as a deterrent to guard key locations around her castle. The work had gone slowly, because their AI couldn’t distinguish between friends or foes quick enough and was easily disabled. The redesign into filly or colt sized bodies for easy storage made it easier to have a younger AI, so they took a copy of Blaze’s programing and used that. Since then, Equestria Laboratories Stationary Sentry Turret, or EQLSST’s had performed exceptionally well, and Celestia had personally congratulated them after the turrets fended off an attack from the Children of the Nightmare. Naturally, Dr Sine had argued with his elderly father about this, as the two didn’t share the same views. Sine’s father called him a fool, and a servant of the tyrant, and Sine argued that he wasn’t responsible for the failure, but his father’s poor leadership. The truth was that he was warming to Celestia, she had showed him kindness, and helped support him on the facility, and he was grateful. He was beginning to see that his father had been wrong to hate the princess, and that he had been wrong to believe him.

Dr Sine was broken from his memories by a cheer from his fellow scientists. 3.0 had finally responded to the trigger phrases with irritation, but were prepared to give Sky a chance rather than using violence. She was now correctly configured, and was ready to aid the facility in its operation. Dr Sine smiled. It was another achievement under his belt, and he was quite the veteran scientist now. He put his arm round Blaze, and the robot followed suit.