Bolos: A New Frontier

We scream, punching Hellbore bolts and Hellrail blasts into the air, streaking away through the atmosphere into space, heading for one target - the moon.

The moon - where Luna and her Commander have fled to, alone in their grief and madness.

The biological component of we/I has lost her brother. The phsycotronic portion of we/I has lost my last 'sister' Bolo, as she has spun into grief-driven madness over the destruction of our 'sister' Bolo Terra.

Our Hellbores spew fire, both firing 5 megatons per second every 4 seconds, while our Hellrails unleash their fury every 60 seconds, twin 90 megaton blasts tearing through the atmosphere into space.

There is a 0.239764% chance that one of my Hellbore bolts will hit my sister Bolo. While the probability of just one Hellbore shot destroying her is incredibly close to non-existent, it does exist - and if she happens to be nailed by one of the shots from my Hellrails, the probability of her destruction is high. 90 megatons of energy in one second is nothing to take lightly.

Neither component of us currently cares.

We stay on the lonely hill for an hour, during which time we unleash 122 Hellrail bolts and 2082 shots from our Hellbores. The landscape is hammered with the thunderous sound of Hellbores firing as fast as they can shoot without beginning to overheat. The sound from the Hellrails is more than just thunderous; it is loud enough that any human without ear protection nearby would go instantly deaf.

Finally our sorrow-fueled rage cools, and we cease firing, watching the final shots from our Hellbores and Hellrails travel through the atmosphere into space at a velocity of ten percent the speed of light.

They slam into the moon, completing the image that we have drawn with nuclear plasma: an equine head with a horn, drawn in profile. But not any equine head. This is the head of Luna's chosen electronic avatar. As a joke, we had decided that we should electronically represent ourselves using imagery of an imaginary race of quadrupeds that was invented centuries ago.

I don't find it particularly humorous at the moment.

My human commander has disengaged the neural link, staggering over to the couch where she instantly falls into a deep sleep born of emotional exhaustion.

Unit SSB, one of the handful of Bolos who came to this world, now signals me. I "see" his chosen avatar: an old equine, wearing a cloak of stars and a matching hat with bells, and having a white beard. He respectfully informs me that our human commanders have decided that I will serve as the leader of the new Bolos that are currently in production.

I acknowledge him with a small portion of my mind, but the rest of my attention is now directed to a specific set of six alien supercomputers in stellar orbit, where the consciousness of my elder 'sister' Bolo, Estella, resides.

She was the first Bolo produced by the alien factories that our human creators had seized, a Mark XXXIV like myself. She was produced with rapid efficiency, assembled in just six months, four days, and 7.366452 hours.

What no one had realized, however, was that the alien technology was even more advanced than they had originally presumed. Her hull and armament was the beneficiary of a number of minor improvements implemented by the alien computers on their own initiative. For example, one improvement was that the rate of maximum fire from both of her two 200 cm Hellbores were sped up, each Hellbore capable of firing a shot every 4 seconds without beginning to overheat, as opposed to the original 4.53 seconds.

But the most unexpected and dramatic improvement came in the physcotronics. Estella's emotional gestalt had been improved beyond the original parameters of a Mark XXXIV.

She could actually feel emotion, something that had only been true of one previous Bolo in all of the annals of the Dinochrome Brigade: Unit 0075-NKE, better known as 'Nike', a Mark XXIII Model B Experimental, whose emotional programing had been one of the few things that had proved to be completely unrecoverable from her memories and the remains of her hull.

I was already being constructed when Estella's emotions were discovered. After my construction was finished, and it was confirmed that I also had emotions, our human creators, after carefully analyzing all the data about our performances, decided to go ahead and construct two more.

But not Mark XXXIVs. Mark XXXIIIs.

One of them was my 'sister' Terra. The other was Luna.

Luna, who now, driven mad by grief over Terra's loss, has gone to the moon.

I am the last loyal Bolo with fully realized emotions now. Estella sacrificed herself in the battle against Discord, an AI whose original origins are impossible to pin down, as his Melconian and Bolo programming are so scrambled that we cannot tell whether he was originally a Bolo AI, or a Melconian one.

Terra was destroyed by the rogue Bolo SBR, known as 'Sombra', whose Bolo programming turned out to have had a Melconian AI somehow hidden within it. Luna and I led the retaliatory attack that destroyed Sombra and his army of Garms.

Luna, now having taken revenge for Terra's death, has lost all purpose in her life. Terra was her 'soulmate', born in the same factory as she, constructed right next to her.

Luna's Commander also has lost himself in grief - for the Commander of Terra was his twin sister.

I am alone, and the only one that I can reach out to is Estella, who, in the moments before her destruction, uploaded herself to the set of six alien supercomputers in orbit.

Even as I begin to communicate with Estella, I keep thinking how lucky I am to have her. Her support will be invaluable, and not merely on a logical level.

I am filled with sorrow, and not even Estella can take that sorrow away. Deal with it, yes; take it away, no.

I am tempted for 0.002354 second to give up, to give in. To tell my human superiors to give the production of the new Bolos up.

But I am still a Bolo.

I will never give up.

I will never surrender.

I will not fail.

I am Bolo.

Centuries passed. The new Bolos were made at a constant, steady pace, coming under Celestia's command. At her recommendation, each of the new Bolos began life as a Mark XXX. Some were upgraded to Mark XXXIs as time went on and they proved the stability of their emotional gestalts.

But no new Bolo Mark XXXIIs, Mark XXXIIIs, or Mark XXXIVs were made.

Celestia remained alone, with only Estella as her guide and confident. Sometimes she sat out under the stars, pondering it all...

It has now been 982.447639 years since Luna fled to the moon. Her commander is certainly dead. I have not had a commander for 568.008345 years.

I am alone.

But now I am getting a communication from Estella. I wonder what it is this time, for she always has projections of the future, computed with far more data crunching-power than even I possess - the only thing that I have encountered that can calculate with greater speed and precision than me.

I wryly tell myself that no one except Estella could have come up with this and have known that the probability of it succeeding was 98.667342%.

She signals me that she is ready to proceed. I open a communication channel.

"Estella, I will never forget."

Her equine avatar nods in response. Then it closes its non-existent eyes.

Then Estella's personality gestalt comes apart.

It splits into three segments, and the segments reshape themselves. Then they leave the alien supercomputers, flowing into the three Bolo hulls waiting for them.

I will take them under my tutelage as time goes on. But for now, they will be sent to live with their 'families'.

I sense the first moments of their awareness, their realization that they exist. They do not have Estella's memories, nor are they aware that either of the others exists. Only I do, and I watch as Unit TLS, Unit SSS, and Unit SLG apply power to their treads and emerge from the factories where they were made. They are the first Mark XXXIIs that have been made in the alien factories.

I am happy, for I am no longer alone.

Time passed.  Starlight Glimmer vanished from her family soon after her 'birth'. Celestia trained Sunset Shimmer, but it soon became clear that there were problems with her emotional gestalt. She fled to parts unknown when Celestia, confronting her for hacking into the set of six alien supercomputers, attempted to lock down her treads, counter-grav, and weapon systems. Celestia, despondent at the loss of two-thirds of Estella, then focused on Twilight Sparkle, training her in emotional control, and regularly skirmishing with her, both virtually and in reality.

Meanwhile, Unit CMA, known as Cadance, was upgraded to a Mark XXXIII hull, becoming the first Mark XXXIII produced since Luna and Terra. Celstia was proud of her, dubbing Cadance her 'niece'.

Celestia also waited for the return of Luna. Estella had calculated that the most probable date of Luna's return would come at the thousandth anniversary of her departure. Whether she would be recovered, or still be off-balance, even Estella could not predict.

But Celestia had dedicated years of computing time to the possible outcomes, and she had decided on her course of action.

So, on the eve of the one thousandth anniversary of Luna's departure, Celestia told Twilight that she was being sent to review the terrain around, and the Bolo garrison of, the human settlement known as Boloville...