MEMORY CHECK…100%
INITIALIZING ACCESSORY SCAN
…
PDD1A… ONLINE
PDD1B… ONLINE
PDD1C… NOT FOUND
KEYBOARD… NOT FOUND
VISIOUT… NOT FOUND
LEGMOBILITY5.1.2… ONLINE
TWINCAM3.0… ONLINE
CORONA_LIDAR… ONLINE
DJP3VOICE_BLASTER…ONLINE
DJP3MIC…ONLINE
THAUMTECH_96.F3…ONLINE
SERIAL_PROC_1… ONLINE
SERIAL_PROC_2… ONLINE
SERIAL_PROG_3… ERROR
SERIAL_PROG_4… NOT FOUND
OPTIONAL SYSTEMS… 6 INSTALLED
COOLANT_SYS1.0… ONLINE
COSMETIC_TOUCH1.12…ONLINE
OCCU_OBSCURO2.1… ONLINE
SENSATE_53N53… ONLINE
THERM47_A… ONLINE
MEM.001… ONLINE
ACCESSORY SCAN COMPLETE

SYSTEM INITIALIZED

PRINT PRIORITY.LST
1. RULES.TXT
2. BOOT INTERACTIVE OS-POSS-
3. HEALTH.EXE
4. MEM.001
5.TROUBLESHOOTING.LOG
6. FRIDAY.SCHD
…

INITIALIZING POSS.0.1.02E… COMPLETE.
SUBSYSTEMS INTEGRATED.
COSMETIC_TOUCH /HEAT /PRESS /PAIN /COND /PLEASE
PROCESSING DATA.
……
NO ENTITIES DETECTED.
AMBIENT 9.F3A TRILLATHAUMS DETECTED… ERROR
THAUMTECH_96.F3 ERROR LOGGED

PRINT PRIORITY LIST
1. RULES.TXT
2. HEALTH.EXE
3. MEM.001
4. TROUBLESHOOTING.LOG
5. TUESDAY.SCHD

*****

Unit 001 woke up. That’s what she liked to think of it as, anyways. Dr. Dolphin would let her turn off in the test room, perform the upgrades, and let her wake up in the morning in the test room. After that awful experience the first night, she didn’t like being on when he installed upgrades. Even her error log hadn’t worked correctly, but luckily she’d been able to re-create the event from her memories. After she had, she’d wished she hadn’t.

Having your mind slip away from you and freeze is terrifying. She’d been getting accustomed to her emotions, and so far it had been the most upsetting event that had happened to her. The worst part was Dr. Dolphins amused smirk.

She didn’t know why she kept re-processing the face he had been making—It made her feel disgust and it was a normal face of his. He was usually mean, cruel, and didn’t actually care about her—just her value as part of the project. Twilight and Dr. Chip cared very much about her, and were always interested in what she was thinking or working on. They loved to show her new things and ask her questions, both of which helped her grow. But Dr. Dolphin was not very helpful, to be polite.

Dr. Dolphin would ignore her while he worked, only occasionally bothering to answer her questions about his projects or the world. He was also very cynical. He’d made it very clear that he thought she was just a machine and he had more important things to work on than discussing with her. But he wasn’t as cruel as he pretended to be. Sometimes he would answer her questions by loading a database into her system while she slept, or giving her a cryptic answer to think about. Those little moments reminded her that he was her creator, and on some level must want her to grow.

Her favorite part was when he would rub up next to her, during his breaks he’d sometimes take a rest leaning against her side. Dr. Dolphin would take short naps every few hours, and when it was just the two of them he’d use her as a pillow. He claimed it was her duty as a machine to serve him. She didn’t disagree, after all, she was his creation. It was also strangely pleasant. She knew that there were new sensors activated in her system, but they rarely provided input. When they did, it was usually because Dr. Dolphin had touched her.

Other ponies would touch her occasionally, but not as frequently as Dr. Dolphin did. And her sensors reacted differently to different ponies. Twilight was warm, and provided a small amount of data to process, but she could detect that through her new thermal sensor, so touching wasn’t necessary. Dr. Chip was also warm, but provided a slight tingle that made her joy levels slightly rise. She liked it when he touched her, it made her health system relax.

When Dr. Dolphin touched her, the feelings were similar to Dr. Chip, but the reactions were different. Instead of her health system relaxing, it seemed to work harder. She hadn’t figured out why. Her coolant pressure would rise, and warmer coolant would be directed towards various subsystems that hadn’t been activated yet. She’d asked Dr. Dolphin about it, while it was happening and he’d told her not to worry about it, that it was normal.

It wasn’t unpleasant either, she enjoyed letting him sleep on her. Her warm pumping coolant made her feel more like a real living pony, and less like a cold, dead machine. She didn’t like thinking that she might already be dead. Death had come up the day before, and it had caused her to have many questions and concerns.

Death scared her, but according to Dr. Dolphin she wasn’t alive anyways, so there was nothing to fear. That also scared her. She wanted to continue to grow, to continue to follow the rules, but death could stop that forever. There was always the chance that Dr. Chip would fix her, but she wasn’t sure he could. Dr. Dolphin could, but she wasn’t sure he would. Unit 001 did not want to die.

Fortunately, she was assured by Twilight that she had a long life ahead of her. The Harmony Combine had accepted their preliminary research results after she had met three Congressional members. Dr. Dolphin had disappeared while they were visiting for some reason, but she didn’t worry about it. Each Congressional member had asked her a barrage of questions, some of them seemingly impossible. That had been when Mr. Canvas had asked her about death, and started the pattern of behavior in her thoughts.

He was an artist, and wanted her opinion on who should die—a young, starving griffon, or his only potential source of food, an elderly pony. Unit 001 hadn’t known how to answer the question, she’d never been asked to assign a value to a living thing before. The rules didn’t allow her to let any intelligent creature come to significant harm, and death certainly met that requirement. She’d stated as much, that she could let neither die. One of the other Congressional members, Mr. Civil, had told her that she was not there in this scenario, they simply wanted her opinion.

She got angry that he was trying to circumvent the rules, and politely asked that if “she wasn’t there, then why did her opinion matter so CENSORED much?”

She had been surprised when her voice blaster emitted a high pitched beep instead of the word she’d intended to use. It was a word that Dr. Dolphin had loaded into her databases when she’d asked him about some of the language he used to emphasize his anger. When she displayed confusion at the beep, going so far as to turn and ask a mortified Twilight, “Why can’t I say CENSORED?” and beeped again. Mr. Canvas and the other member had laughed and even Mr. Civil looked amused. This had raised her anger and disgust slightly. She was disgusted that she had malfunctioned in front of such important ponies, and was angry that they were laughing at her.

Twilight had previously told her that disgust for one self’s actions was called shame, embarrassment, or sometimes guilt, but it was not good to dwell on those emotions for long. Ignoring her embarrassment, Unit 001 had looked at the Congressional members and fearfully asked them if she had made a mistake. She knew how important this meeting was to all of her creators, and she was terrified that she’d messed something up. Dr. Dolphin would not be happy at all.

Mr. Civil had then assured her that she hadn’t, her reaction was as much an answer as anything else, and that he wouldn’t press the issue if it made her uncomfortable. She’d thanked him, and the questions had continued. After the meeting, Twilight had left Dr. Chip and Unit 001 alone for a while to talk with the Congressional members, and when she came back she was happy. Dr. Dolphin came back a minute later as well, and even he seemed to be in a good mood.

They had a little celebration later, and Unit 001 had watched them get a little drunk. She should have been happy with them, but she kept thinking about the question that Mr. Canvas had asked her. What would she do in that scenario? She didn’t like thinking about it, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She’d waited until Dr. Chip and Twilight had left, and had asked Dr. Dolphin. While Dr. Chip would have made her feel comforted, she knew Dr. Dolphin would answer honestly.

He had told her that the efficient answer was to let the griffon eat the pony, that way you got more total life. But the question could be muddled by other factors. Factors like, “Will the griffon go on to eat another pony later, thereby reducing the total amount of life” or “Is the griffon actually sick and going to die either way?” or “Is the pony an important scientist whose death would impact the rest of the world greater than the griffon’s?”

Unit 001 had been troubled by his answer, especially that last example. It had never occurred to her that her creators could die. And if they could die, so could she.

Dr. Dolphin had gone on to talk about how Mr. Civil wasn’t looking for a specific answer, but looking to see how Unit 001 arrived at whatever answer she gave. About how her response of getting angry was probably the best response he could hope for. But Unit 001 was only recording his input right then, not processing it. Instead, she was processing fear of death.

Dr. Dolphin had noticed something was wrong, and then had put his hoof on her, causing her to refocus on the sensations from her sensors. The pressure, the heat, and the light, pleasant tingling of being touched by a pony all reminded her that she was still processing data—she wasn’t dead yet. Her pumping coolant redistributed heat through her systems, and for some reason that made her joy rise and the fear disappear for a while.

He had asked her if she was all right, with actual concern on his face. She hadn’t responded right away, she wasn’t sure what the correct response was—Dr. Dolphin had never shown concern before. She wasn’t entirely fine, but she was much better when he touched her. She had simply smiled back, and informed him that “she was now.”

For some reason this made her coolant pressure rise throughout her system, and she unintentionally leaked slightly into one of her still unactivated subsystems. The moment was pleasantly memorable, so she had recorded the image of his face and the state of her processes. He hadn’t said anything, only watched her with curious eyes as he left his hoof on her shoulder, letting her lean slightly into it.

That night he had asked her to shut down in the harness so he could run diagnostics on all her systems. She had easily agreed, instead of being unhappily ordered to. She was finally convinced that Dr. Dolphin was actually interested in her well being and that she could feel safe shutting down in his presence. When she “woke up” in the morning, she had all new drivers and he had flushed her coolant. Aside from the Thaumtech still not working, she had been very pleased with the state of her systems.

The new drivers didn’t want to interface with MEM.001 very well, but she had figured out how to integrate them into her core systems very easily. The only issue seemed to be a pressure spike and a minor coolant leak that occasionally happened when Dr. Dolphin brushed next to her, but she hadn’t reported it. The leak wasn’t staining her coat, so it was through a proper vent—the vent was just part of a system that wasn’t active yet, and she was afraid that if she reported it then they’d fix it..

Besides, it reminded her that she was alive.

Author's Note

There are many different diets in the Combine, and quite a few restaurants have opened that cater to them. One of these is a chain known as Conscientious Carnivores, often just called CC’s by their patrons. CC’s specializes in protein dishes that come from Socially acceptable “ethical” sources. While most Griffons wouldn’t think twice about slaughtering a cute fuzzy little animal for lunch, most ponies would be horrified at the thought. CC’s provides fish and bug based dishes specially prepared to appeal to the “Conscientious Carnivore’s” pallet.