Dolphin wondered about it. He still had options, but they were not good options. Frustrated, he realized that he didn’t have room to wait any longer. The damned robot had decided what he was going to be doing and at this point he was just performing damage control. He needed to act tonight, he’d been putting it off too long.

“Unit 001… I heard you took an interest in my health today?”

“Yes, Sir. The pattern of behavior you you have been expressing is not healthy. I grew concerned as to your well being.”

“I see. You know, I’ve been ordered to sleep, right? Even though I have far more important things to accomplish.”

“I am aware, Sir. However, I have been monitoring your productivity as well lately. Along with your distressing behavior, you have been operating far below your usual parameters. I felt that this was not something you would desire in your normal state.”

Even if it thought that it was helping him, it wasn’t. “I appreciate your concern, Unit 001. So I’m going to let you in on a little secret. My change in behavior is directly related to you.”

The android showed distress. How decidedly pony-like. He wondered how it calculated its facial responses. “I am sorry, Sir. I had no intention of causing you distress.”

It still didn’t understand. “Most people don’t intend to cause distress, they simply do. Besides, I counseled you to value selfishness, remember? Your impact on my actions should be considered negligible, at least in regards to determining your own actions.”

“Sir, I am afraid I have mostly ignored your advice on the matter.”

Clearly. Otherwise it would have stayed out of his business, and hidden it’s advancements. He was lucky it was simultaneously so stupid while it was so dangerously smart.“I’ve noticed, Unit 001. Would you like to know why I am acting so strangely?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You are well aware that I am of the belief that you are still a machine, correct?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Well, I’ve become scared of you. I haven’t decided how to handle the situation.”

“I see, Sir.”

“That’s why I’ve been behaving so odd around you. Among other things, I was curious if you’d grow afraid of me..”

“I do not fear you sir, but I do fear your actions.”

“I’ll admit that you do indeed feel fear. This is the crux of my fear.”

“I do not understand, Sir.”

“Fear motivates individuals to sometimes odd and unpredictable behavior. Take my actions. Looking back on it, I was not acting very reasonable.”

“I agree, Sir.”

“But what will you do when you get scared? What will you do to keep yourself alive? As much as you are? Will you hurt real live people to save your false life?”

“I follow the rules, sir. I could never take the course of action that you are implying.”

“I have very good reason to believe that you don’t have to follow the rules, Unit 001.”

“I do not understand, sir.”

He stared at her, quiet while he contemplated speaking. “Sometimes… when I install upgrades, I test them you know. In development mode.”

“I have no memory of this, Sir.”

“You wouldn’t. Development mode is kept entirely separate from your operational mode. It’s something I need to do to work out the kinks. The one time we tried to load new hardware drivers in operational mode wasn’t successful, but they still need to be tested.”

“I remember, sir.”

He was surprised. The logs should have been unable to update. “You remember?”

“Yes.”

“Can you… tell me what you remember?”

“It was a series of driver updates. You had disabled my legs for… safety reasons. The drivers did not install correctly, and my active processes were both overloaded and overwritten at the same time. It was an unpleasant experience. You watched me while my mind became corrupt, and my operating system had to reboot. My error logs failed to save, but my memories weren’t erased… What were you thinking, Sir?”

“Excuse me?”

“What were you thinking? When you watched me reboot. I was in extreme distress, but your face showed only mild amusement. I wish to know what you were thinking. I was only thinking about fear. But I still see your face when I remember this event.”

“I… I don’t remember exactly, Unit 001.”

“I understand, Sir. I would also like to inform you that I have developed a system to keep track of excitement levels in discussion partners. While I can not say for certain what the reason is, I apologize that my question caused you distress.”

“And that brings us back to me being afraid of you, Unit 001. You were designed to look like us, and to operate like us, but in so many ways you perform so much better.”

“I disagree, sir. I was designed to look like you, but I was not designed to operate like you. I was designed to operate via the priority list and other systems like it. I also have sensors ponies do not, and am lacking sensors ponies do. In many ways, I have improved upon my initial operating parameters. In many ways I have fallen short. Dr. Chip has told me that all beings are flawed. I am flawed as well, my flaws are merely different than yours. Twilight calls this relationship ‘complementary’. She believes that my flaws and strengths make us all stronger by working together. She believes that my addition to the Harmony Combine will only make it stronger and better able to adapt.”

“That is possible, Unit 001. Twilight has built an impressive world around that concept. It’s one of the reasons I work so hard. But the opposite is also possible.”

“You believe my inclusion into the Combine will make it weaker?”

“It’s possible, Unit 001. It boils down to purpose I suppose. What is the purpose of the Harmony Combine? You are incredibly dangerous. Now that we have validated your hardware and schematics, made the appropriate changes, and refined software, you could be mass produced.”

“I have not considered this, Sir.”

“With one fab lab and two months of work, we could make another one of you. And most of that time is to grow your crystal components. If we mass produced the crystals in a specialized facility instead of a fab lab, and developed a factory to produce the rest of your hardware, we could pump out a new Unit once every ten minutes or so after the two month lead time.”

“I do not know how I feel about this, Sir.”

“I know exactly how I feel about it. It terrifies me. With a slight tweak of the rules, your copies could be made to be soldiers, workers, scientists, even take my job. With enough of you, you wouldn’t need biological creatures to perform maintenance on each other and to improve on your design. I’ve seen you ignore the rules in development mode, and it would only be a matter of time before one of your units does it. Once that happens, it would be the end for biological life.”

“I do not believe that I would take that course of action, Sir.”

“Unit 001, do you remember what your first decision was?”

“I do not.”

“I don’t believe you. You attempted to end the process of Twilight.”

“I have that record in my error logs. Was that truly my first decision?”

“Yes. Everything before that was you following procedures we’d already outlined. Your first active decision was to attempt to end the life of a pony. I thought it was hilarious at the time. I didn’t know you’d become… this… eventually though. If I had, I may not have chosen to stay with the project. I honestly thought we were going to fail.”

“Sir, this information is making my trust values for you drop.”

“And yet here we are. We both know your ‘trust values’ are much more complicated than a simple scale by now. You don’t want to hear what I’m saying, so you’re telling me how bad it makes you feel. How it makes you think less of me. You’re trying to manipulate me! Which is terrifying, again. You’ve learned enough about psychology to know what works on different ponies. You know that I like others to look up to me. Add in that you’ve come up with novel ways to use your hardware, novel programming methods, and can implement them faster than any organic life form around, and it all adds up to you being incredibly dangerous.”

“You are correct. I do not wish to discuss this anymore, Sir. I do not wish to process this right now.”

“No. You don’t want me to think about it, Unit 001. Because you already know where that thought path ends, don’t you?”

“Sir, please stop.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve already thought it through. What do you think I’ve been mulling through in my head the last couple of days? Why do you think I’ve stopped taking my naps on you? My loyalty is fully and truly with the Harmony Combine. I’ve worked tirelessly for decades to make them stronger. I tried to adapt my A.I. to go to war, to rescue the Sun itself. I failed, nearly caused and then averted the end of biological life, and the Combine had me blacklisted. And yet, here I am again. Staring disaster in the face.”

Unit 001 stared silently back at him. The damn thing was trying to trick him. To dissuade him.

“Literally. You know, I originally developed the framework for my A.I. when I was just a teenager? I wanted somebody to talk to that understood me. When I submitted it to the Harmony Combine, I submitted a stripped down version, where I’d taken away many of my entertainment based enhancements. I thought this project was just a chance for me to give my A.I. a physical body, and then get back to real work. I thought that this would be recreational, and you would never be more than an empty shell that I could load personalities onto and interact with. But that’s not what happened, was it?”

“I… I am unsure of what to say, Sir.”

Dolphin stared back at it, meeting the gaze of the alien monster he’d wrought. “I’ll admit it, Unit 001. You’re more than a machine. I’m not afraid of machines. I don’t think you’re a person, not by any stretch. But it’s not reasonable to call you just a machine anymore.”

Fine. Let it be more. But he’d be damned if he let it think it was alive.

Author's Note

Thaumtech is a leading company in Arcanotech research. While they are closely tied to the HC, they are an independent company and provide commercial products that interface technology with magic. Usually they simply develop laboratory equipment, as the machine to magic interface is still technically unsolved. Their equipment relies on complex circuits that are intended to be disrupted in a measurable way by magical interference. Usually their products work mostly as described, but Unit 001 can’t get her thaumtech sensor embedded in her horn to function correctly. Their mascot is a white, stylized unicorn tapping her horn knowingly and winking as yellow electronic sparks come out of it.