Twilight was hovering excitedly over Dr. Chip’s shoulder as he poured over the data. Even Dr. Dolphin was sneakily glancing over every once in a while, failing to hide his interest.

Dr. Chip was engrossed, mumbling his approval as he searched the code. “This is amazing, Princess.”

“I know! She’s thinks a little different, but she actually thinks! Look, she re-wrote this whole section!”

“Princess, I’m… a little scared.” Chip was frowning.

“Why? She seems nice.”

“I’ve been programming my whole life, and I don’t recognize this code she’s written at all.”

“Her ‘Translate.001’ file? It’s only a few megabytes.”

“Yes. It’s been amazingly condensed. I have no idea what it does, but it is only machine readable. It could be anything.”

“Well, I think that’s the point. From what I can tell, it’s supposed to interface directly with her intelligence and automatically create understandable language from it.”

“And that doesn’t scare you? She was able to come up with an original idea, write the program for it, and do it faster than any pony programmer alive. I also have no doubt that it’s far more accurate than anything I could write. Quite frankly, Princess, it scares the hell out of me.”

“It is a little intimidating.”

Dolphin decided to chime in. “It’s poppycock.”

Both Chip and Twilight turned to look at him. Twilight spoke first, “What?”

Dolphin rolled his eyes. “It’s not that impressive. Look, programing is just a side effect of hardware. You like to think about it as bits and bytes, ones and zeroes, but really it’s just hardware interfacing with itself. Some hardware is on, and some hardware is off. The android probably just coded the physical state of its hardware near the end of its thinking process, so it can just adapt the near solution instantly. The gibberish is probably shorthand for transistors, memristors, and positronic gates. The process would be pretty simple with a predictive algorithm and a few .PLLs of words and grammar.” Dolphin sighed, emphasizing the last bit. “Which it has.”

Dr. Chip grumbled defensively. “Well, that’s possible I suppose. Still, it’s an ingenious solution.”

“Not really. It’s an obvious solution for a machine, and it’s nothing new. I’ve been using similar processes it to save states and do testing for years. Even if I don’t understand the input, I do understand the output. And the machine will try thousands of results in a second and pick the most accurate one. A lot of Unit 001’s processors were ultimately designed that way.”

Twilight frowned. “Even if that’s not impressive, look at everything else she did! Everything’s been streamlined, processes have been rolled together for organization, and she’s populated about 50 more databases of information.”

Dr. Dolphin rubbed his forehead in frustration. “Which are all normal tasks for a computer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an impressive and beautiful machine, but it’s still a machine. You put in information, and you get out information. Don’t let it trick you into thinking it’s alive just yet.”

Twilight kept frowning as she turned to look back at the code, unsure. “But she felt real when I talked to her. She felt like a person.”

“Which is why I wanted to install the appearance mods to make it look more normal. It’s designed to make you think it’s a pony. It’ll look pretty, it’ll help our funding, and maybe we’ll be able to create a real artificial intelligence, a designed one instead of this emergent intelligence crap.”

Dr. Chip had been fuming in the corner, and couldn’t take it anymore. “Like heck, Dolphin! We both know A.I. is a dead end! E.I. has been significantly more successful than A.I! Unit 001 is arguably alive right now, but we’re going to make her the definitive Machine Intelligence. This is groundbreaking research, not some scam to get more resources allocated from Congress!”

Dolphin rolled his eyes again before walking out of the room and shouting back to Dr. Chip. “Speak for yourself, Chip. I just agreed to this after-school science project of yours so I could fund an actual research project later. Unit 001 is, and will always be, just a machine.”

Dr. Chip turned, fuming, to Twilight “Why is he on this project? He clearly doesn’t care.”

Twilight sighed. “You know why, Dr. Chip. Dr. Dolphin is a genius in his field. We wouldn’t have made it this far without him. He’s done all the hardware design and created nearly all of the drivers. The stallion is a little egotistical, but deservedly so. He’s worth a team of any other ponies.” Twilight let her frown melt into a gently smile. “Also, if we succeed here and he decides to apply for approval to research A.I. again after we’re done, I’ll approve the proposal and sign off on it. I believe in E.I. Dr. Chip, but I don’t think A.I is a wasted endeavor either.”

Grumbling angrily to himself, Dr. Chip continued. “Well, I don’t like him.”

“He works hard on this project. Every night he stays late and works to develop more hardware for us, some of which the world has never seen. Even if his attitude isn’t great, he’s irreplaceable.”

Dr. Chip complained more, “Except when we’re using DJP3 voice synthesizers and Thaumtech magic detectors.” Then he muttered to himself, “I think he just likes the characters on the package.”

“Well, the voice synthesizer sounded fine, and I think I’m responsible for the Thaumtech errors. They can’t really calibrate against the princess of magic… Why don’t you talk to her next time instead? She seems safe now and maybe we’d get an accurate thaum reading.”

“I’d like that, Princess.”

Author's Note

Over the years, Twilight Sparkle has pushed the HC to develop technology and magic to unprecedented levels. While most of the world has remained stagnant, the HC has electricity, computers, vehicles, and sadly, weapons. They are currently in a technological boom with the discovery and integration of runic magic, allowing technology and magic to finally interact. Most circuits can be shielded from ambient magic by basic runes, and complex runes can even be integrated with machinery and electronics to accomplish miraculous feats. This new age of arcane and technological miracles has only built upon the HC’s nickname of “The Technocracy” to other countries.