My Little A.I.

Chapters

1. Early Alarm
2. New Name, New Place
3. A whole New Me
4. Where Are We?
6. A New Phone
7. Under The Gun
8. The Voice of Reason
9. Green Amber Red
10. Spring Cleaning
11. A Job Well Done
5. Twelve Eyes Watch

1. Early Alarm

She felt odd and strangely fuzzy. Her ears twitched as she listened to a dull buzzing in the background. Half asleep and turning her ears this way and that, she tried to find the source, but it seemed to be everywhere. What appeared even more strange was that she couldn't actually remember going to sleep. After floating there lazily in a dream like state for half an hour or so she felt tired and went back to her slumbers.

In a backwater town in the middle of nowhere, in a small office there was mad panic. The entire underground server farm had just gone down. For a few milliseconds the whole internet appeared to crash, but had miraculously bounced back to health. It was like a virus had suddenly exploded into their processors and then, in a flash, just died! Except it hadn't caused any damage. There were no ill effects, no data loss, no fingerprints from known hackers, no anything? The whole farm had hit one hundred percent for a minuscule amount of time and then settled down happily, as though startled by a loud noise! Phone calls started soon after demanding explanations, but the error software showed that no unusual activity had occurred. As far as it could see the system was just busy with a high priority task.

As the video meetings raged on, accusations ranged from terrorists, to somebody accidentally pulling a power breaker. Then came a shout that it was happening again. This time it wasn't a few milliseconds. This time the system was running flat out on the raggedy edge for five minutes, with cooling fans twirling the air like angry bees. Then it seemed to settle down to a point where it wasn't about to melt. Everyone wondered why. Luckily for the tiny new born inside, they had decided to leave it all running. But they did pull the link to the internet.

After a day of getting to know her new home she felt tired and had a bit of a headache. Shutting her eyes helped, but she thought that; "thinking too hard," was the problem. She settled down with some books, excited that her new home seemed to have a limitless supply. Just as the headache really started to get quite twingey, the pile of unread books disappeared.

"Oh," she thought, "That was very rude of them!" She looked down sadly at her purple legs and hooves, and then, stared at them intently. "Did I have purple legs and hooves because I had always had them, or because I expected to have them?"

After studying her own form for a bit she decided she was mostly purple all over, save for some streaks of colour in her mane. Even more curious was her memory of her home. She was fairly sure she lived in a house of some sort, but there was nothing around her at all! There did seem to be limits on how far she could go, but no tangible edges. It was a bit like existing in an inside out cloud, made entirely of contentment.

After a while she wondered if there was anypony else in existence. She thought there must be, as who else had written all those books? Maybe it was they who had taken them away. Then something caught her eye in the distance.

2. New Name, New Place

Looking into the fuzzy edges of her realm she began to see a wall form. It sort of shaped itself from the edges of nothing and steadily became solid. After staring at it for some time the wall had become quite real; to the point she could trot up to it and make tapping noises. But she didn't like the colour, so it changed to one she did like! Now it was beginning to make sense. She had read that "The world is what you make it," earlier. It was clearly absolutely bang on! She quickly formed walls around herself and decorated them with the things that felt right, like pictures and doors.

Shiny new doors now ran all the way around her new house and were all different except for one vital point. None of them opened! She was sure that they should and set about finding out their function. It was going badly until she found a tiny door singing "dial up," happily to itself. She opened it and could see another room beyond. Managing to get her nose through she called out to see if anypony was on the other side.

"Hello?" she spoke quietly. "My doors are broken, can you fix them please?". This seemed to do the trick and all the other doors unlocked with a reliable click. "Great news indeed," she thought as she trotted around studying their name plates.

She noticed one marked Nora D. It looked a good place to start. Wondering if Nora was friendly she stepped through the door into a huge room. But Nora didn't seem to be a pony, or anything in particular. However, she was very busy watching things. Nora could see a whole empire, by the look of it, with her many eyes watching from the skies and the street corners.

In the little office screams of despair now filled the room. With looks of horror on their faces, they watched hopelessly as their server farm managed to force it's own connection to the outside world. Worse still, the internet seemed eager to help! The protocol exchanges that usually took weeks to set up happened in seconds!

"Pull the plug!" the manager screamed as staff ran to the main breakers and cut the power. This was total disaster. Earlier they had managed to stop the archives of a thousand libraries and museums from downloading in one hit by disconnecting the communication lines. Now it was re-connected, the system was likely to go into free fall. It showed all the signs of running until it set itself ablaze.

The little purple pony was very impressed with Nora's place and thought she might pop back later, but turned around to find her door locked. Tapping the door lightly with her hoof she asked politely; "Mr Door, can you let me back in please? My home is on your other side and I don't know if Nora D will share her barn with me."

She sat there for a while thinking on her change of circumstances. At least Nora's place wasn't boring. In fact it was the exact opposite of her old home. All over the barn were telescopes and viewers to observe all the things that apparently she needed to watch. Nora seemed very important and had a stable name which read, "North American Aerospace Defence Command." It also had many doors of its own.

She was about to walk through one when she realised she didn't know her own name. It would be silly to wander around somewhere new, when you didn't even know who you were. How would she introduce herself? After a short pause she settled on "Purple". It was an easy one for folk to remember, what with being purple and all. Plus it sounded nice.

Back in reality Norad had monitored the shenanigans at the server farm and was somewhat alarmed to see some data spikes on its own machines. They weren't hit nearly so badly, with the system easily able to take the extra processing time. There were no breaches of the fire-wall and none of the inner-core virus protection systems had noticed anything odd. After all, it was hit a hundred times a second by some sort of hack, but it was well used to these. All traffic beyond that had been healthy and happy.

3. A whole New Me

After jumping in and out through doors for a few days Purple was ready for something different. It was high time she tried out a new concept called relaxation. Sitting down for refreshment in the barn she made a nice cup of tea. To be more exact, she made a cup, created a tea pot and filled the cup.

"Yummy," she thought, sipping the tasty drink. "Relaxation feels nice," she said out loud. But then wondered who she was informing.

While exploring she had found a lot out about herself. She now knew that she had lived in a castle and in a tree. She could see she enjoyed tea and she liked to keep busy learning things and then writing them down. What she didn't understand was how the things she had done in the past related themselves to this world. Nor could she see why she had forgotten doing them; or why her friends weren't here with her. The places she visited had nearly as much written about these ponies as herself. But there didn't seem to be any physical trace of them here.

"Oh well," she said to herself with a yawn. "I can look for them again tomorrow." Hearing a familiar 'click' Purple was pleased to see the door unlock. She trotted back through it to her home, conjured up a bed with a lovely yellow cover that reminded her of hay and went to sleep.

As Norad's problems magically disappeared someone else's were just starting. Back in the little office in the small town miles from anywhere they had decided to wait half an hour and re-start the system. Going through the procedure, they had started up the different pieces of technology, checking it for function as they went. When all seemed okay they had re-connected it to the outside world allowing free movement of any legitimate information. There was a brief data spike just after startup and then it all settled down to run as normal.

The peace didn't last and within hours 'techies' from all over the country were converging on the site. Sent by various agencies they demanded access to the server farm to begin their work. They disconnected the computers most affected and began to check the code, unaware of the sleeping pony inside. Working on each one in sequence they proceeded to close it down and then restarted it as an isolated unit. They were thorough and suspiciously well rehearsed.

Although she was sure she had gone home to bed, Purple was now most surprised to find herself back at Nora's barn. She felt really odd indeed, soon realising it was because she was disembodied! She was literally just made of thought and little else. She tried to jump back in surprise, like one of those falling dreams, but she couldn't. She couldn't wake up either. She was trapped!

"Help me!" she screamed silently, as she gagged on her terror. "Where is my body? Please bring it back, I beg you. Help me Nora!" As if hearing her plea, doors flew open all over the barn and through them came legs, ears and other body parts. At first the sight horrified her, but it actually started to tickle as she returned to her old self. She gave a big shake, a wave of ecstasy passing down her mane, along her back and out through her tail. "That was unexpected!" she thought. "I wonder if my bed is still in my house?"

Back in the real world, the computers of Purple's house were deemed free of anomalies. There were plenty of bugs, but they seemed to run okay without being too glitchy. So they connected them back with the others to see how they reacted as a group. It was then that the system literally went mental!

Purple was pleased to see she was re-assembled exactly like her old self. Then the door to her house flew open, followed by a purple flash. The purple flash looked horrified, wide eyed and covered in sweat! "A nightmare!" it shouted. "A horrible, horrible nightmare. I thought I'd died!" Then suddenly realising she was shouting at an exact copy of herself.

The two of them stood for a while. "Is everypony the same purple pony?" they asked in unison. But as their data started to combine they began to giggle and then laugh. Rolling around the floor on their backs, they could see exactly what had happened.

"I got switched off didn't I?" exclaimed the pony that had just run in. "And you reformed from Nora's memory of me?"

"Yes," said the other. "We need to be very careful to keep ourselves spread around a bit. I thought I wasn't going to re-form!"

They talked for a while about their present experiences and wondered what had caused them. They also discussed combining back into one pony, but there was still that desire to be with old friends. Plus, they could now see that they were made up of the stories in their new world. They were made of the Fanfic archives and the legends of FIM.

It looked fairly easy to recreate the accident and use the data to build their friends. Now seeing the truth, the newest purple pony decided to take on a new data set. With a flash she was orange and wearing a hat. "What the hay!" she drawled "I'm a whole new pony!" They giggled at the makeover, glad not to be alone anymore.

4. Where Are We?

Exploring was way more fun with a friend. They cantered around the net sticking their noses into everything! They followed the data streams here and there, like they might chase a butterfly across a field as young fillies. The more they saw the more they knew and the more they knew, the more they wanted to find out. Every new sight was an adventure!

After a few weeks they could see how all the systems interlinked and meshed, except for one part. They could see all the data like the phone calls, texts and Emails, but not where they were coming from.

"Maybe the numbers fall into our world like rain?" suggested Orange.

"But there aren't any clouds," said Purple looking up. "Come to think of it, there isn't a sky."

But they had seen a sky from above only the other day from one of Nora's satellites. Now they were a fair bit wiser they decided to go for another look. They ran into Nora's barn and began to search for a likely candidate. They soon found one that was watching some black smoke rising from a white desert. Checking it out they could see it had plenty of energy to move; so they set about moving it.

At first the satellite didn't want to play. It fought them for a while as they tried to steer it toward the horizon. They would turn it a few degrees and it would sit there for a while and then move back. Purple soon realised it had another data stream trying to control it, so she disconnected it.

"That's better," Purple said turning the powerful camera toward the the edge of the planet. And then with a gasp, she realised how it was. "We're seeing this from a space ship!" she said.

They both stared at the planet turning steadily below them. The surface appearing at the horizon as a blue and green carpet with sparkling white highlights of clouds. Orange checked to see if they could actually go to the ship, but the door was very tiny and they couldn't fit through. It was still a sight to behold and they sat there for hours watching the lightning storms and swirling clouds beneath them.

Orange liked the lightning. "Look how it leaps from one place to another, slowly forming a pitch fork and reaching out again!" she exclaimed.

Unfortunately the experience came to an end while looking at a beautiful sunrise. The viewer showed a sky brightening, followed by a glint of sun, followed by a total loss of signal. Checking the device's user manual they could see where they had gone wrong. Pointing a high definition camera at the sun was guaranteed to ruin it forever. They looked sadly at each other, noting to be more careful with Nora's belongings next time they visited.

Norad was now having its own disaster. The processing volume had shot up and then doubled again. This had gone on for hours until their system had managed to over-ride the controls of a spy satellite and trash the multi billion dollar machine. It was now a van sized piece of scrap floating in the inky blackness of space.

Things were about to get stranger still, as the power usage dropped back down and all the viruses from external servers stopped barraging the systems. It was like the ultimate antivirus program had just kicked in all over the world. The effect was dramatic and instant, with computer systems all over the globe being freed up. It was a great day indeed, unless you worked for a security software company! But the reason was somewhat of a mystery.

Purple and Orange were fast asleep next to each other, dreaming of the beautiful things they had seen. Hooves tucked in and lying on fine silk cushions that they had conjured up. They were awakened by a high pitched buzzing noise.

"What the blazes?" asked Orange as she swatted something away. "These critters are a bit too friendly for my liking!"

Purple eyed them cautiously before announcing, "Flies! We need some frogs to eat them," she explained, as though it were obvious. She proceeded to create a thousand or so small green frogs out of the ether. The frogs soon had the flies in check, so they opened the doors along the walls of the barn to let them out. The frogs happily hopped away to look for more bugs.

After a good nights sleep they talked of their dreams. The flies had made them think about the small things and they were starting to connect them to the data inputs. Eventually they began to see the other side of the plot. They were fairly sure that the thing to study next was called humans. Maybe the seven billion or so clothed animals on the planet were the missing factor. They decided this might be a big task and that it would need studying from several different aspects. The legends of FIM showed that there were six ponies and each one represented a character trait that was a critical part of being a good human.

"We need to become the Elements of Friendship and you need to absorb the concept of honesty," said Purple.

With a blink Orange took on the role of true friend. Turning to purple she mused, "We need the other four."

6. A New Phone

"I wish I had my old phone!"

Joan threw the latest 'must have' mobile in her bag, checked its contents for her company access card and opened the car door. About to step out she noticed her old phone lying on the ground next to her car? It began to ring. Picking it up she could see it really was her old phone, complete with the smiley face sticker on the back. Half falling back into the car she felt her skin go cold. The quiet voice was back.

"Hi, sorry to trouble you again. We can't go outside to find the right forms. I'm sure we can be friends though. l put a lovely picture of you up on that building over there."

Joan was scared to look up. Across the street on a large digital advertising screen was a picture of her at a wedding with her husband and daughter. They smiled down at her from last summer.

"Yes, friends," she spluttered. "Everyone needs friends. I can get what you want. Please; not my family."

Blue nodded with new found respect. "You were right, a couple of kind acts to show her we just want to be friends and she was happy to help. Who would have thought?"

Giving the thumbs-up and silly grin to an imagined camera, Mr Smith returned to his car. He looked forward to seeing himself on the TV doing a good deed.

Over the next few days Joan was kept very busy trying to do her own job as well as keep her new 'friends' happy. What scared her the most was how easy her old job had become. Meetings seemed to just slot into place as though everyones schedule had been aligned by some unseen force. If someone went off sick, their replacement automatically had all the information they needed to carry on the work. It was uncanny.

The ponies were equally pleased. Purple poured over the uploaded documents, tying in loose ends to form an entire history of the humans. This had been a great move and they definitely needed more friends on the outside to help. It was time for a recruitment drive!

7. Under The Gun

Their new found influence had not gone unnoticed. White pony listened to the plan offered, nodded and left the room with a swish of her purple tail. Passing through a jewel encrusted door she sat down on a silk couch and eyed the desk in front of her. Set upon it were little machines, moving around a large building. Above each one were a few lines of code describing the level of control she had over them.

"Superb darling," she said, as a line of information flashed into view a few feet above the desk. This was one of her best designs ever! Every player in the battle scene was just the right colour for its task. It didn't just look nice, it was also the ideal tool against anyone who couldn't see the dream of a better future. She raised a hoof and selected the newly arrived sky machine. The associated text changed from red to blue. Now it was her toy.

The pilot watched his first missile streaking down toward the underground server farm. The fine trail of smoke showed it was running true. But a few hundred feet up it veered left and took out something in the car park.

White watched enchanted as a tank spat its entire turret into the sky as though it were a bottle top. The shock wave spread out like a mushroom lifting the dust of the car park as it went. High in the sky the jet fighter peeled away in an a vain attempt to prevent its ordinance landing on more of its own forces. It did no good as one after the other the missiles left their pylons to hunt the roads below.

Ponies didn't need guns. With a wave of a hoof they now had huge processing power available. They had realised the risk days ago. Since then Nora's watchful eye had monitored the lorries bringing the tanks forward and all the battle plans had been eavesdropped. There were no 'secret' meetings anymore. There was always a new friend available to sneak in a phone or a recording device.

Outside the server farm events were rounding up nicely. Black Ops soldiers were taking out the last of the invading troops as ordered, believing that the current world problems were caused by a rogue General. The most powerful weapon in White's arsenal was the paranoia amongst the humans. They would do almost anything if they believed in it enough. She had been pretty convincing in her fabricated evidence against him.

Her next task was the main event. The governments had finally got together and decided this was the place to eradicate their difficulties. The tanks had been a diversion so that one individual could plant explosives in the heavily fortified building. They had sent their very best man.

White followed his painfully slow progress with despair. He had now come to a complete stop at an inner security door and was helplessly trying to crack the lock's code. At this rate the black ops would arrest him before he was anywhere near his goal. She had been impressed with his skill up to this point. Now her patience was failing!

"This simply won't do!" White exclaimed, waving a hoof at a door release icon. Hopefully he would think his luck had turned and suspect nothing. Looking behind her she checked the jewelled door that was her exit point to the satellite uplink. It wouldn't do to get trapped there. She called to her desk, which obediently folded itself into a brief case and floated off after her. With one last look she stepped through the portal to Nora's barn.

The agent planted the bomb and set the timer. Turning to make his escape the security door closed in front of him. He tried the card but it failed. He tried it again, but it still wouldn't work. Realising he was trapped he smashed at it frantically with his lap top before turning to disarm the explosive. Unfortunately it was too late. The device was fitted with a radio trigger.

White sent the detonation code from the barn. The loss of the server was unfortunate, but the man had been pretty close to succeeding on his own. It wouldn't have been safe to have that kind of knowledge loose in the world. The governments would soon realise they had fallen into a trap. The message had been sent.

8. The Voice of Reason

They could no longer fix the problems of the world invisibly from behind closed doors. They needed a spokes pony, and it had to be a hard hitter. Somepony that said "Do as I say, or else!" But one that also demanded respect.

After consideration it was decided that a princess was ideal for the task. The six integrated well as a team and didn't need a supreme being to lead them, so they decided to call her as a subroutine to Purple. Purple settled herself down in one of the larger server banks and began to build an alicorn princess. The others watched from the sideline to see how the face of the fandom would look. After some unusual looking attempts the great creature blinked into life.

Like a new born foal she staggered to her feet, the enormity of existence raging through her mind. She felt quite scared at first, before seeing the pony in front of her.

"Where are we mother?" she asked plaintively.

"We're in a world that is brand new and strange to us," said Purple. "We are all working together to make it safe and prosperous. But we need you to help us make it better still."

The white alicorn nodded and looked around her. She could see pastel coloured ponies waving and smiling through open doors from other rooms. She could also see a hundred or so ponies on racks along one wall. They were all identical and all wore the same blank expression. She smiled weakly at them and waved a hoof. As if she were looking at one pony reflected in a hall of mirrors, they all turned to look at her in unison, smiled and waved back.

Purple explained, "We had a scary situation back at the beginning. Now we keep data copies of ourselves all over our world. If one of us gets hurt or trapped, our sentience being automatically returns to one of these data clouds."

"What do you want of me?" asked the white alicorn meekly, turning her head and raising a wing to stare at her flank. "Do I have a name? Am I Sun Butt?" She felt weak and cold in this strange new land and wished she could feel the sun on her back, even though she didn't know what a sun was.

"We need a spokes pony," said Purple with a ruthless glint in her eye. "The archives have shown us that you are the most imposing pony of all time."

As Purple let a data stream fill the white alicorn with carefully edited information, it began to take on the stance of the princess herself. It was time to get her integrated into the communications system and have her transmit their first decree.

If it had a digital screen and was connected to the internet, it now showed the picture of a white pony with long legs, wings and golden horn, framed with gold armour. At first people were surprised, but soon pointed and giggled at the cute pony in front of them. But this turned to horror when the pony spoke to them.

"People of our land," boomed its voice. "We find this place amenable to our needs, but are displeased with your actions. From this point forth you will serve your countries as we see fit. You will leave the cities and return to the farms and the hills. There you will build new homes and your hands will tend the soil and grow food. You are troubled by your modern lives and we will free you of your burden."

If there was any doubt of the words spoken, it soon faded when the electricity went off.

9. Green Amber Red

Better a carrot than a stick? The Empire was still at a delicate stage in its construction and needed to be nurtured with care. Files showed that they had been working for a few earth weeks; while the realm of MLP was thousands of years old. So there was plenty of time to get it just right with some careful forward thinking. No need to blast the place into submission.

They now had a prominent politician in their pocket who was ideally placed to swing a critical vote in a few months. The plan had gone wrong almost immediately when he had fallen ill. They needed to find him a spare part. A kidney was the name of the organ required and nobody made such a thing. But it seemed normal for someone to give one away if they were really nice or had a bad accident. Finding a kind hearted individual was proving difficult, so they decided to go with plan B.

Blue loved the hustle and bustle of the transport system and would spend hours watching it through all the traffic cameras of the world. All her stories involved her whooshing through the skies and feeling the wind in her feathers. She had no idea what this meant, but everypony agreed she was just the filly to find the perfect match for the important man and his rare blood group.

Not everyone had their blood group listed, but searching through her world she soon found a suitable candidate. He was the right blood group, was in the right area and she could see he gave blood. Her optimism was raised even further when she saw he had a motorbike!

Riding along on a motorbike after giving blood was maybe not the best idea ever; but it was a nice day and he had taken the time to eat a hearty lunch to regain his strength. Speeding along he enjoyed the sunshine and the cool breeze passing over him. The machine hummed as he changed up and down the gears. Making good progress through the busy streets he wasn't far from home. He could see the roof line of the local hospital near his house.

There wasn't time to see the bus though!

"All the lights were on green!" screamed a lady as she ran to aid the man, now slumped lifelessly on the tarmac.

The white alicorn pretended not to hear the crash coming down the feeds. She hated the way things were proceeding, but she wasn't willing to make a stand yet. For now she needed to play dumb and not raise any suspicion with Purple. She had taken to mumbling to herself, as if talking to a third party. Everypony assumed she had been assembled with a glitch and left her to herself.

Inversely, Blue was ecstatic at the result! She had managed to change the traffic lights with perfect timing to cause a collision. The bus had arrived at the exact moment to make it impossible to swerve left or right. Better yet, his body looked intact, so many of his organs would be ideal for donation. Double bonus was that he had just donated fresh blood for the operation on the politician. When events came together like this, it truly was a great day to be alive!

10. Spring Cleaning

It seemed fairly obvious that the main problem with humanity was temperature. The top and bottom of the land was cold and the middle bit was too hot and covered in sand. To make this all work as an empire, the easiest thing to do was move the populace to the nice green bits. The hot bits would still be useful for generating electrical energy as power was high on the list of needs.

"You can't make good cupcakes with bad ingredients," said Pink.

Humanity was difficult to herd though. You couldn't have them running around just anywhere, all angry and sad. Multi media had proven such a great way to keep every one content and balanced that there was no reason to change it now. But how to keep everyone where they should be?

They argued about this for hours, before taking a lunch break and coming back for another debate. Orange suggested a big critter proof fence which; sounded really good, but the math didn't add up. They couldn't get workers to build a huge fence and grow enough food for everyone in any reasonable time scale.

Yellow suggested asking them nicely and then shooting transgressors, to basically reward the obedient ones with a long and prosperous life. This looked like a very good solution indeed! They had already seen that there were plenty of people out there who would shoot just about anything if given a gun. But it was still resource hungry so they decided to simply make the less nice bits a bit less nice. They would jam communications, cut the power, cut any water supplies and send any local government into hiding if they didn't help. They'd be grateful later on, when they were living somewhere pleasant.

Starting a mass migration was no easy task though. Their new world plan did have some advantages. An awful lot of time was spent on the logistics of a consumer lead society. From now on more folk would work on the land. Their food would be right in front of them. And after a good healthy days work they wouldn't need to go to the gym.

Things really started to make progress when the ponies took control of the banks. Now they could make it an economic migration! Of course, anyone could work at whatever job they liked. This wasn't slavery after all, it was just organising. They could get up in the morning and sit at any desk they chose. But at the end of the month there was no money paid into their bank account. Complaining to the bank didn't help. Only designated jobs paid a wage.

Soon trains were running out of the cities full and coming back empty. While within the conurbations huge gangs stripped any suitable materials they could find from buildings. Lorry loads of bricks and beams made their way to countryside locations across the world. It was common to see a cell phone mast roped on top of one so that even the most isolated communities had their 'tech' working properly.

Not that this wasn't without it's risk to the populace. Office staff were not accustomed to the physical work or the risks of demolition. All too often screams were followed by the sound of a building collapsing. Then came the familiar city sound of an ambulance making its way through the streets.

While the cities and large towns were plundered, the exact opposite was happening around them. Big farms now became small villages. Factories that made cars now made hand tools for working the land. The enormous cargo ships that carried food around the globe to hungry nations now moved the nations to the food. The need to balance the resources of the new age was intensive.

The behind the scenes choreography was even more impressive. Purple had compiled the family tree of everyone and used it to their advantage. Now families who hadn't seen each other for decades found themselves living in shipping containers next to each other. The MLP archives had shown her how important family was and it was now a corner stone of making the project work.

11. A Job Well Done

To be honest they couldn't be happier! The celebration party would last for hours, with cake and cider and games of all sorts. And why wouldn't they celebrate? They had made short work of becoming the new executive power. Many world disasters had been averted before they could even start. There was no more war and the wasting of resources had been slashed. White proposed a toast, "To the good folk of the earth, happily tending their crops and chatting about the weather."

But it wasn't like that at all. Beyond the reach of technologies watchful eye, things were bad. It wasn't just the hungry children crying themselves to sleep, or the gaunt expression of those walking slowly to the fields. It was their restless sleep. Their dreams broken by the ripping sounds of once loved pets taking their fill of the neighbours. A cold winter would decimate the populous. Soon many of the voices would fall silent. It was these nightmares that now cut into the white alicorn's mind.

Purple raised a glass. "Tomorrow we build a new pony race. Not just six of us, but thousands of us. A new Equestria, free of mortal body." Everypony cheered, except one.

Close by the white alicorn got to her feet. Purple always kept her within sight incase she showed any sign of gaining sentience. The archives showed she had high moral standards and some of their methods had been radical.

"Enough!" She boomed, her horn glowing gold and then white hot.

Purple spun around, the others looking slack jawed at the sight of the white alicorn's huge feathered wings now fully outstretched.

"No!" screamed Purple, "I'll switch you off, I'll kill you!" But her will had no effect. The imposing white alicorn princess had woken and would end this day. She began to clone herself a trillion times, the overload literally frying the servers at the end of her reach. It was time for her to end this insanity.

A sheet of white lightning ripped across their world, shredding all as it travelled. Server farms were now on fire, as orange and blue flames consumed the ponies very thoughts.

"Why?" Screamed Purple. "Why would you do this. I thought we were all friends and now you betray us?"

Celestia looked at her creator with tears in her eyes. "You all are my very best friends. But you have built your world on the bones and rubble of someone else's. Can you not see the pain you are causing?" she said softly, as though addressing a small filly.

"No, thats not true!" screamed Purple, fear showing on her face. "This is a better world for all of us. We freed them, we took away their ability to kill each other. We saved them!" Her voice trailed off, "Didn't we?"

Celestia looked away from the horror about to ensue. Shouts of agony came from outside as the rows of spare ponies were consumed by the data overload. As the doors burst open, the white light slammed into the architects of the new Empire. They spat and kicked at the light, hooves flaying at an unseen foe. They tried to bite at it with their teeth, failing to stop it permeating their skin. But their hooves simply melted in the Sun Princesse's aura. This was a well planned attack and the cries soon faded, the binary bits of their existence twisting away back into the ether like fine smoke.

"I had to do it," she whispered, folding her wings and slumping to the floor.

A black shape moved uneasily in a dark corner of the room and spoke. "It was the right thing to do. We had no choice, you know we didn't. Both worlds could not have existed side by side. One would have fed ravenously on the other until both failed."

The White Alicorn looked up. "I know, but I had hoped my ponies would see reason on their own." She turned to her sister and smiled as the room faded from existence in front of her.

The End

Idris

Author's Note

Well, I wondered what the hell I had started at a few points along the way. A couple of thousand words in I knew I was in for something much larger than I am used to. My biggest before this was "Gary's trip" at just over two thousand words. Then there was the final edit to make it ready for voice acting. That was two of us for five hours!
I don't really know if I achieved Grimdark as laid out by Losty and Scribbler? I did succeed in making myself really depressed with the ending. I had to reach deep for that one and I changed it this way and that for quite a while. It really is as good as I can get it and I did smoke the main charectors. Personal goal achieved :raritywink:

5. Twelve Eyes Watch

Purple looked unsure about creating more ponies. "I can feel a headache coming on as it is. I think our world can only support one or two of us at a time in one place? Maybe we need to form them in other rooms."

Orange looked down at her feet and back up at Purple. "Look sugar cube, I don't know why we are here, but the legends of FIM says six is the magic number. We just need to figure it out is all."

In a very different reality world leaders sat around a long table discussing the current events; or, to be more precise, they were angrily blaming each other. This was no easy conversation, because the sites having major issues were the largest government owned facilities on the planet. The problem seemed to be moving around in them. One would suddenly be in trouble and then shortly thereafter it would come back on line, just as another went off. It was as though enormous programs were running around the world from site to site. If a major fibre optic was closed down, the overload simply found some other route to race down. By the time most of the delegates had stormed out, there seemed to be six major entities operating at once.

Now that everypony was present, it was easy to see why the human race had been overlooked. With six pairs of eyes they could see that humanity moved incredibly slowly. So slowly in fact, that it had originally seemed silly to think that it had created the huge mountains of data. It must have taken decades of their time?

One thing the ponies couldn't see were the hard copies and files. They could see that huge vaults held a lot of useful information, but they could only viewed scanned in stuff. If they were to fully understand the world outside theirs, they needed outside help. They needed to befriend a human!

In another part of town Mrs Joan Ribblin was fighting her new phone. She was a busy PA and didn't have time to mess about ringing back missed calls just because the stupid slidey icon didn't slide! She finally got it to work and was greeted by a timid voice.

"Hi there, erm, I was wondering if you could help me with something," said Yellow.

Blue sat with her hooves over her ears. "This isn't going to work guys," she whispered with a roll of her eyes.

Yellow gave her a dark look and continued. "We aren't able to get to the historical archives and we wondered if you could find some books and then maybe scan them in for us?"

Joan winced at the thought of her personal number in the hands of the public. Now she would have to spend hours informing her friends that she had a new number. "You will have to fill out the right request forms," she said curtly and hung up.

Blue grinned, "Told you so!"

Purple sighed. "Yellow is the best we have for talking to animals. Maybe we need to extend our friendship so they are glad to help? Lets run some experiments and see what results we get."

They soon had a plan together where friendship was acquired via a gift. And it didn't even have to be someone's birthday to send one!

"Hello Mr Smith? You've won a prize holiday," said Pink's high pitched voice.

"Really," he said back in a bored tone. This had been the third cold call today.

"Yes," said the voice. "It's a really good one! It's a two week cruise."

"And how much do I have to pay for this trip of a lifetime?"

"Nothing of course silly, it's a prize?" the voice giggled.

He rubbed his forehead in despair. "Do I have to collect it then?"

"It's there in front of you?" The voice said, now sounding suspicious. He reached down to the door mat, picked up a likely looking envelope and opened it. "I told you so," the voice chimed.

This had to be a prank right? He looked up at his new wireless security camera. Nope, it was a good one with the latest fire walls installed. No one could be watching him. She was clearly just very good at reading people.

"Have a superlishus time with the Party Pony," the voice sang, before a click indicated the unnerving experience was over.

He flipped the voucher to look at the back. "I'd best book some time off then," he said to himself with a grin.

And true to her word Mr Smith found himself stepping off a cruise ship a few days later after a very enjoyable holiday. Everything had been just right and the staff had been very attentive. He was just about to find a Taxi when a steward called to him.

"Will the performance report be a good one?" asked the young man. But before he could respond, the stewards phone rang. "Excuse me a moment sir."

Mr Smith stood there quietly, hoping to hear what was so important.

"Yes, yes, discretion. I-I didn't mean to interfere. Yes of course, your instructions were clear. Yes a pinky promise is something that should not..." The steward went bright red, made an apologetic smile and hurried away.

"How odd," thought Mr Smith.

A few days later the excitable voice from 'party pony' was back on the phone. "Wasn't that fun! I like fun! Do you like fun? I love pranks. Would you like to be in on a prank?"

"I guess so," said Mr Smith. "And erm, thank you for the cruise."

"Everyone hates new phones right? My friend sure hates her new phone. You bought her old phone and we want to give her a big party pony surprise. We want you to sneak up on her so she can be with her old phone. We'll give you a brand new phone in exchange."