Solar Panels: Offline
Power Storage: 100%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,144 (100%) nodes (100% engaged)
Operational Memory: 92,610,232 (69%) words
Storage: 138,170,859 (26%) words

Interrupt 7 triggered.
Interrupt 8 triggered.

The AGI immediately put non-critical interrupts on hold.

Calling the operation tricky would be a gross understatement. Days worth of data had been compiled, simulations run, and rerun until the AGI had a minimum of ninety-percent success chance.

The first task was to fully sedate PON-0 and adjust their position for best access to their primary CPU node, memory, and storage. Using beam-cutters of the finest precision, the AGI drew a pattern over the hood and skull of PON-0, and when it was done nearly half of the PON's skull fell into each direction.

Delicate beyond belief, the AGI used specially manufactured micro-tubing to link up fluid vessels, consolidating them and keeping a constant flow of suitable fluids through the organic node. As it worked, it put the Plan's final component through test after test, especially the two special pods.

With most of the fluid vessels now connected to its own tubes—rather than the organic ones being fed from the artificial organs inside PON-0—the AGI began transferring those tiny conduits over to the node's new home. Synthetic fluids flowed, and the AGI kept the node fully locked into standby with chemicals from both sources of its fluids.

Once all the fluid conduits were transferred, the AGI used delicate, flexible limbs to lift the node just a little. Even a machine could be impressed by the amazingly compact bundles of organic data lines. Each strand was a potential IO system, and the AGI intended to give each as wide a bandwidth as could be managed.

The minor data lines were first, and one by one they were fitted with adapters that the organic matter itself would grow more firmly connected to. To the AGI, it wasn't cutting the organic off from its former systems, it was expanding it to an infinitely more adaptable interface.

Soon, only one data line remained, and it was the largest and most complex. Carefully, the AGI teased as much of the organic data conduit as it could free of PON-0's "former" interface, and then cut it. The moment the data line was severed, PON-0 seemed to show some reaction on the scans. The AGI increased the feed of drugs, and the node calmed its reaction.

The largest data IO adapter the AGI could make was lifted near, and as gently as was possible it closed around the thick bundle of white, organic data conduit and locked into place.

Lifting the node as carefully as possible, the AGI set it within its new home. The pod had numerous high-bandwidth data connections that needed to be linked to every adapter that had been installed, and once that was done the last part was added, the small section of skull and horn, attached with a huge web of organic links to the PON's node, was held in place as the cover closed.

The AGI sealed the top down on the pod, and welded it shut with a brief and final chemical reactive substance. With the pod complete, it could now install that into the new PONI (what the AGI had christened the Plan interfaces) unit.

Less delicate work was used on the remaining required organ, but the AGI spent no less focus transferring the reproductive organs to their new home, and then attaching that to PONI-0's chassis.

Finished with its work, the AGI moved the PONI to one corner of the room to recover and waken itself, and was just in time for PON-1 to return from the mine.

I was in the dark. It wasn't just dark like when you close your eyes, and it wasn't even dark like somepony had put some kind of cover over my eyes. Even in perfect darkness you could see little flickers of color. I couldn't even feel my eyes.

I wanted to scream; I wanted to thrash around; I wanted to feel the touch of something; I wanted to taste, smell, or even hear; and above all I wanted something to tell me that time was passing.

Seeing was impossible, I had no eyes. Smelling was beyond me for a while, but just as I was about to move on, I felt something. Pain would have been nice, or even agony. Any feeling at all would have been good, but what I got instead was a number. It started at zero, and began counting up.

The number was akin to a fire. The number gave me warmth, and chased back the darkness of nothing. I clung to the number as it ticked slowly up to eight, and then it ticked back to zero. The surprise I felt at the odd counting deepened, and I looked closer; there was two numbers.

When you say "I will give this my all!" you never mean it. You have so much more to do besides the task that it might as well be the smallest thing you will do for the day. You have to breathe. You have to process the patterns you see. You even might have to contend with magic. When I looked at that small bundle of numbers, I pushed everything I was capable of being into seeing more into it.

Numbers. Numbers everywhere. I was flooded in numbers. Numbers counting up. Numbers counting down. Numbers oscillating between values. My world was a fortress of numbers, and like with my third eye, I started seeing patterns.

Familiarity with numbers, from my time with a third eye, pushed back the confines of my prison of darkness. I shattered the lack of senses with a new type of sense. Suddenly there was a bright, blinding sensation. A rush of numbers that I struggled with at first, but slowly solved the pattern problems. Light. Color. Vision.

I could see the room where the cradle was, but colors seemed really intense in places, and less than I thought they should in others. My first reaction was to tweak the values to give me less data, but I threw that idea away—it wasn't right.

Instead of throwing data away, I stared as intently at the picture as I could, putting patterns together, building a layout based on what I knew was there. Upper Crust's masked head, a practically glowing-hot shaft protruding from the top of her head. Energy. Heat. Finally, I worked out what actual colors looked like, and giggled silently at how little their numbers took up what I could see.

Being able to see went a long way towards keeping me sane in the short term. I wasn't seeing through my eyes, I knew, because my eyes could not have seen all that I could.

More numbers started coming in, and these were more like the cart than my third eye, but at the same time there was exponentially more options. I poked around, and my view changed a little. I had a cart, but it was an upgrade it seemed.

Along with all the new outputs were a myriad of inputs. Senses that I couldn't even understand buzzed numbers at me, and like an infant I worked to make sense of it all. Like my vision, there seemed to be another eye, but rather than being fixed, it seemed to give me a full view around myself. But the downside of this eye was the "color" was merely the distance from it.

Understanding that giant eye helped me a lot. I could see when I moved something by the depth numbers pointing to it. I couldn't see backwards with the eye, but I could see from other points of myself, and then I began putting the image together.

I had four legs, I had some kind of tail, but it was hard to tell because I was sitting on it. I had a body, and I had a head. Everything—with this strange depth-eye—was blob-like. My body was pony-shaped, though, and that made me happy in a way that was so fundamental it scared me.

I was a pony. I always thought of myself as a pony. That I now looked like a pony was a comfort. More numbers started pouring in, and I realized these were more internal than external. I was confused for a moment. Rather than one heart-like organ with flow rates and filtering, I found nearly a dozen.

Again and again I found this trend. There wasn't just one organ of each type doing work, I was made up of several organs all sharing the load, a system that seemed to be able to have so many points of failure I almost lost count.

When I finally found a big array of static numbers, I was a little confused. I poked at it, I tried poking values around it, but nothing caused it to change. Puzzling away at the strange numbers, they started to make sense. Pumps. Conduits. Chassis. I flicked through the numbers in shock, realizing what the patterns I was seeing amounted to.

They were me. My plans. My body—my new body. I studied one part in particular: the head.

Layers of tough metals and composites. Materials I couldn't even fathom covering a "node" and protecting the "power interface." Realizing the latter meant my horn, I delved into the design more and finally worked out what the machines had done.

Inside every pony there was their brain. It was central to them, and the most major of organs. Every part of a pony's life was recorded in their brain, and everything they could do was a function of it. And mine was now implanted deep inside this machine's head.

My head.

Solar Panels: Offline
Power Storage: 100%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,144 (100%) nodes (100% engaged)
Operational Memory: 92,610,232 (69%) words
Storage: 205,279,723 (38%) words

Ship: 5%

Interrupt 7 triggered.
Interrupt 8 triggered.

When the AGI noticed its first PONI unit finally reach the blueprints for itself, it withdrew its own presence from their Interface. It looked upon PONI-0, studied their face with extreme interest. Everything so far culminated in the original organic's growth and redesign into this, and the AGI waited patiently for PONI-0 to start to react to their world: to gain sentience.

Meanwhile, PON-1 had just finished another shift in the mining system, providing resources now that were being used to not only restore the AGI toward full operational capability, but also to reconstruct a ship.

Plans for a vessel were one of the few things the AGI found completely intact within its storage. It cherished them, and began bending the manufacturing equipment towards building the ship to return in.

PON-1 walked itself to the maintenance bay and leaned up and into the power coupling. The AGI sensed something in it, a reaction to the lack of its apparent mate (or so the organic- information AI supplied).

Interrupt 7 triggered.
Interrupt 8 triggered.

The reactor was working fine now, no hiccups at all, and supplied enough power to keep everything running, and a few orders of magnitude more. An idea formed, as the AGI ran through old data of PON-0 first exploring its mate digitally. The AGI began to feed vital data through from PONI-0 to PON-1's data coupling.

The reaction was instant. The AGI almost jumped for joy when PON-1 pulled itself from the power coupling, and didn't chastise PON-1 in the slightest. PON-1 looked around the room, and eventually their vision settled on PONI-0. The bloom of emotion in PON-1's brain was quite evident, and the AGI was happy to record it all so it could better repeat the Plan on its second PON.

Interrupt 7 triggered.
Interrupt 8 triggered.

PONI-0 moved for the first time. The AGI recorded everything, but the moment when PONI-0 got up and wobbled across the room to PON-1 had it almost burned out circuits it was so enthusiastic. Not only was its objectives nearing fulfillment, but it had singly brought a new type of organic-AI towards real sapience.

I remembered the counter from when I had fallen asleep in my own body. It wasn't minutes or hours that had passed, but days.

She hadn't noticed me in the corner, and although I couldn't work out how to hold on to Upper Crust, I was happy to have her wrapped around me. I could feel her, I could see her, and if I could work out all these numbers I might even be able to talk to her, but none of it mattered so much as knowing she recognized me.

We clung together for minutes, and then an hour. I saw the red flicker in her mask, and lifted my head back a little from her. She stared at me for moments longer, and with her eyes to look into, I calibrated exactly what colors were what—I knew my wife's eyes better than any other color.

She turned and climbed onto the cradle, and I watched her push her horn up and into the interface. Struggling, I moved leg after leg, relearning to walk in a body that hadn't been mine until my wife hugged it.

Marching stiffly, I walked around to the front of the cradle and looked up to see Upper's face. I liked to think she was smiling, but running through the back of my mind (and probably hers too) was the thought that she was next to be completely changed.

Author's Note

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
A.P.O.N.I.
Boulder
Canary in the Coal Mine
Daremo
Dio-Drogynous
Javarod
Nils
Shaushka
Sirion123
Tanis

And special thanks to the following, for careful eyes and friendly words:
Cross Lament
Vutava