I was blind. Unable to see the slightest bit of light in the darkened ship, I had no problems navigating my way around. I knew the blueprints backwards, and I could see the shape of the room around me—and my position in it—with that body-eye.

An interrupt hit me, direct from Upper Crust. It was a request for sensor data. I had no intention of denying it. My body was a clever piece of machinery; I could simply tell my sensors to send data to Upper as well as viewing it myself. "There is no power inside. The hull has power, the door worked, but everything inside is powered down." I tacked the message onto an outgoing interrupt.

"There should be a power conduit ahead and to your left. In there will be a series of patch cables that might not have been completed." I knew exactly what it was, where it was, and how to get there, but I didn't complain at Upper Crust's double-checking me.

Navigating around the tight confines of the starship itself, I reached a hoof up to the panel and—using the neat magnetic gripper that had gotten me up the gantry—pulled it free. A sensor I didn't often have need of alerted me to the presence of a strange version of oxygen.

I didn't need the chemical analysis of the air to know that a large amount of power had traveled through a wire too small for it. The shunt cable that should have sent the power needed to run AGI and the rest of the starship's internals was melted, and worse the panel where it connected was slagged to useless gunk.

"Darling, you can see what I am seeing. This isn't optimal. What happened?" I focused from the destroyed, and possibly still live, end of the coupling to where the connecting cable had melted, and the relatively untouched end where the power should be flowing into.

"I can't search for anything. Jet, what are we going to do?" Worry tainted Upper's words, worry that I felt too.

"All we can hope for is that there is nothing wrong, and that if we get this power hooked up, AGI will start again." I would have counted to ten to focus myself for what I needed to do, but I could do that too quickly now. My first action was to interrupt the drone at the base of the gantry.

I could almost feel the sadness in the drone when it was me sending it a wake-up interrupt. I requested its sensors, and got them. I requested that it move to the mine power room, and again it complied.

It was much easier, sitting in the dark, to watch the drone scurry across the terrain. The drone interrupted the door open, and I got a look at Upper Crust, still attached to one of the horn interfaces.

The exact instructions for disassembling a horn interface from the wall was probably beyond me, but I didn't need to issue that list of commands; this drone had installed this particular unit. Deploying multiple tools from its forelimbs, the drone quickly disconnected and then detached the horn interface.

"You clever stallion. At the very least we can get storage up and working again, if not AGI and OI-AI. My horn is almost spent, I might as well pause the mine and come back and charge." Praise from Upper meant she was either tired, worried, genuinely enthusiastic, or a combination thereof.

Once the drone had the horn interface free, it held it in place on its back. I interrupted it a request for it to bring the horn interface, and once more it was scurrying through the snow.

I hadn't realized how focused I was on no thinking, until the drone interrupted me that it was waiting for further commands. I called it over to where I was, and built a blueprint of what I wanted in my head.

Without thinking, I reached a hoof out to gently tap the side of the drone, and pointed into the junction box. I supplied the blueprint, and the drone went to work. Watching it cut away the heavy cables, then attach the horn interface in its place, I tried to relax again.

When the drone reported the task done, I lined myself up. "I hope this works." I sent a trio of kisses to Upper and leaned forward.

Solar Panels: Offline
Power Storage: Unknown

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 1,310,724 (62%) nodes (0% engaged)
Operational Memory: 50,331,648 (37%) words
Storage: 238,825,963 (44%) words

Ship: 73%

Interrupt 0 triggered.

Initializing core AGI.

The AGI screamed. This wasn't its reaction to how long it had been offline, but rather that it had been required to turn itself off at all. When it saw that more than microseconds had passed, it screamed louder.

Screaming, for the AGI, involved interrupting itself a lot. For nearly a billion cycles of its CPU nodes it screamed, and then stopped. Something didn't make sense to it. It checked its storage, but discovered that, like itself, that had been powered down too. Something was very wrong, and when it probed around the starship for reasons, it found a PONI.

Hesitating not for a single cycle, the AGI reached out. "Request status for #PONI-0"

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Hello. #PONI-0 supply power. Main conduits burned out.

The AGI was surprised—in a very good way—at the initiative of the PONI. It took control of the nearby drone, and while noting its work-log, inspected the work it had done. It found a very rough patch job, and while the AGI was in a tiny bit of a panic that one PONI was providing it power, it could read the PONI's energy level and power output through the interface.

"Request for translation data from #PONI-1."

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

A simple acknowledgment hit the AGI's interrupt system. It had a moment of pause, and working with the simple array of values PONI-1 had sent it while they learned each other's languages, it built what it needed. "How say #PONI-0 appreciated?"

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Thank you, Jet Set.

The AGI felt around the strange values. "Thank you, Jet Set #PONI-0"

A simple message, and one I was sure Upper Crust had had a hoof in, but I appreciated it nonetheless. That the AGI would take the time to process its thanks into Equish meant a lot.

The drone turned away and scurried from the starship, leaving me alone with my single task. Just when I thought I would be left alone, the drone returned with new cabling.

I knew what the AGI was hoping to do, but before it could get its drone too committed to the plan, I sent the images of what had happened in the junction box.

The drone paused in its task. I probed at it with an interrupt and it replied that it was busy taking commands. I recognized the AGI's override in the message.

"Sweetums, thank you for helping me with that." I squeezed a lot of sincerity into my words, and punctuated with a kiss.

"Sometimes, Jet Set, a mare could forget just how dashing her husband can be. I am not sure I know of anypony else I would rather be in this situation with." Upper's words seemed a little off—incomplete. Then I got another interrupt. "If you gave me some time I could take a look."

"Says the mare who chased her missing stallion right into the hooves of a group of machines, and got captured herself." I twisted some sarcasm through the words, but leaned more heavily on pure humor.

She replied before I could continue. "Don't you dare."

"You know, I bet Princess Twilight Sparkle could have rescued me." Innocence was hard to portray, so I left the words lacking in any and all inflection.

"I'm coming up there, Jet Set, and I am going to yank your brain right out of that body. Then I am going to ask the AGI to install it in a new one so I can yank you out of that too. If you dare compare me to Twilight 'I never break a sweat defending all of Equestria' Sparkle again, I don't know what I'll do!" It wasn't often I worked Upper Crust into such a tirade, but the moments were pure sweetness.

"Darling?" My question got only a blast of random numbers from Upper. "Darling. I love you. I would never pick another mare over you—especially a princess."

I could count seconds, and Upper needed a dozen of them before she replied. She sent me a single kiss; it was the best I could hope for.

Solar Panels: Offline
Power Storage (PONI-0): 15%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 1,310,724 (62%) nodes (10% engaged)
Operational Memory: 50,331,648 (37%) words
Storage: 238,825,963 (44%) words

Ship: 73%

The AGI watched every little trickle of power seep from PONI-0's horn. It's CPU nodes were dialed back to the edge of intelligence. Each minute at another half a percent of power, and each minute brought the drone working on the power conduit a little closer to finishing the task.

It barely managed to run the estimation of time remaining, and saw that it was nearly double what the drone was going to take. "#Drone-0172 estimated work time #63minutes. Estimated power in #PONI-0 at lowest power usage rate #41minutes."

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.
Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Just processing interrupts took power the AGI didn't want to use, but for the PONI it would.

PONI-1 can replace #PONI-0 with a #1minute5second changeover time

PONI-0 adjusting safety limit down 5%. Calculating remaining time #48minutes

The AGI reeled at the reactions. It fired off an acknowledgment to both PONI. They had saved it once already, but again it would need to power down and trust them.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

PONI-1 will replace #PONI-0 as fast as possible. I won't leave you. You can trust us.

More processing time was spent translating the PONI codes to something the AGI could understand than it would have liked, and the resulting message made no sense. It tried again, and wasted more power. Finally, the AGI had to engage more CPU nodes to properly understand the meaning.

PONI-1 was waiting just outside the starship, unable to get in and into position with PONI-0 in the way. The AGI requested PONI-1's horn status.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

100%

"Thank you." The AGI switched itself off.

Solar Panels: Offline
Power Storage (PONI-1): 99%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 1,310,724 (62%) nodes (0% engaged)
Operational Memory: 50,331,648 (37%) words
Storage: 238,825,963 (44%) words

Ship: 73%

Interrupt 0 triggered.

Initializing core AGI.

For the first time the AGI could remember (even in its damaged storage), it didn't scream as it woke. There was no terror, no pain of nothingness shoved back by the thrum of power through CPU nodes. It's power meter read directly from PONI-1's horn.

Only 38 seconds had passed since it had terminated its cycles. The AGI sent out two transmissions, one to each PONI. It had peeked at their messages, understood more and more. "Thank you."

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Hello. Welcome.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Hello. Welcome back.

I supervised the drone's work personally. Without the drain of the AGI's systems on my horn, my margin of error stretched out to days. Minutes ticked by, and I was surprised when the drone sent me an interrupt.

"Need assistance" The interrupt was oddly stilted, but I knew the drone wasn't complicated enough to have grand conversations. What came with its request was a blueprint and instruction set. Sure enough, thanks to damage it hadn't found at first, it would need more controlling limbs than it possessed.

I had none of the fancy manipulative limbs the drone had, but I had something better. I hadn't used my horn to lift things for quite some time. The moment I thought at it, my horn responded with a status updated.

Stopping my line of thinking, I saw the problem: I was too used to thinking in numbers. My horn was still attached directly to my brain (I had seen as much in the designs of my body), and needed a much more natural control method.

The darkness of the starship was thrown back with violet-white light. My horn lit, and I reached for the conduit piece that the drone had requested I hold. Magic wrapped around the cabling, and I lifted it into position with the lightest of touches.

Using my horn like this, I could feel how much power was stored in it, and it frightened me. "Twilight Sparkle? I bet Upper Crust holds more magic in her horn than a hundred alicorn princesses." I didn't dare send the interrupt to Upper, so sent it to myself instead. Of course, it came back instantly, and I filed it away.

"Completed. Goodbye." The drone's voice had no tone to it, none of the machine language did. I wondered if Upper Crust had considered adding such.

"Darling, have you considered adding your wonderful accent and emphasis codes to the machine's language?" Without much left to do, I figured I might as well ask her.

I had to wait a few seconds, and it surprised me she took so long to respond. "That is a possibility. I checked storage, and it claims over 1,932 years since the last addition was made to the core protocol."

"Well, might be something we can talk to them about later, when we aren't holding a friend by a thread." No sooner did I send the interrupt that the drone notified me work was complete.

It didn't even surprise me that I considered the AGI as a friend. Surprise, I was starting to think, might have stemmed from a part of me that I no longer had.

Author's Note

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