My horn charged, and I felt like screaming as my sensors told me that I was falling too fast—way too fast. The pressure pulling me backwards wasn't off the scale, but it was four times what had pulled me down towards Equus. Well, a little more than four.

Equus.

As a concept, leaving the world I had been born to, and grown up in, was a magical one. There was abundant rumors in Canterlot that Princess Twilight Sparkle had visited other worlds. Strange worlds where ponies walked upright, and magic was growing in power. There was a magic mirror, it was said, that was the link between Equus and that other world. This was as far from such a magical experience as a fine wine was from coarse apple cider.

The reality was that we were "falling" away from Equus faster than anything had ever fallen towards it, and our speed was increasing faster as a result. "Darling? The Most wonderful mare for miles around? Upper?" I was laying it on thick, but under the circumstances I felt it a good plan.

"That was actually a good one. What's the matter, dear?" Joviality colored her tone, and I realized she was actually enjoying this a lot more than I was.

"I am still working on this map translator, but I was wondering what happens when we reach our destination. Look at our speed, it just keeps climbing higher and higher." I forwarded her the relevant data sensors in the starship.

A few moments passed before she replied. "This is simply fascinating, dear. Look at this." As well as her curious words, I got hit with a map, but unlike the other this one didn't hurt to even try to look at. There was a source dot with a monstrously long index attached to it, a long line, and another index at the other end.

"Star-0?" I blurted the reference to Upper before being able to put it into some reasonable question.

"It must be their home, dear. Oh my, this might be like some kind of date; we're going to meet AGI's parents!" Droll tone nearly swamped all the meaning from the words, except for the first sentence.

I examined the map closer, and found something interesting: the line of travel actually contained data. I compared it to what our sensors gave now, and found that the acceleration was the same, but the speed. I could see us being a smear across a whole planet by the time we reached where we were going.

Reaching to the end of the line, at Star-0, I noticed the acceleration was negative. It took me a moment to realize it was in the opposite direction. Tracing the line of data, I started skipping back towards our starship in larger and larger increments until I found the first point where acceleration was positive again.

It took a relatively small amount of time to narrow down and find the spot. Distance values between Equus and Star-0 were within a few insignificant digits of being the same. "This is fascinating. We will be speeding up until we reach this point. We will coast for most of the trip. Then we are going to start trying to go the other way. Why don't we accelerate faster?"

"I am the wrong PONI to ask that." Her words seemed perfectly fine at first, until I really thought about the one word in them that wasn't Equish.

Right at that moment, my horn filled to capacity and immediately started to drain again. Data poured into me from the horn interface, and it revealed to me that it was now my horn feeding the ion drive pushing us along.

"Why doesn't #Starship-0 accelerate faster?" It became easier to assemble questions to the AGI, easier to grab the reference codes I needed, and the machine language blended easier with our own.

"Estimate damage to PONI organic node at constant force above &6.4G." A new symbol I hadn't recognized cropped up in AGI's response.

I knew what it meant by organic, and by node—together they were referring to our brains—but the final numerical amounts confused me. "Upper-dear, what does &6.4G mean?"

"Data conversion. You will need a standard value converter to accept it." The complex rush of information that accompanied Upper's interrupt surprised me as being a program. Tentatively inserting the program into my built in CPU nodes, I ran the message I got from AGI back through my data manager. Six-point-four times the acceleration from Equus.

I poked at the data, and revealed that—sure enough—acceleration was always kept below five. "Upper, could you please tell me where you got this?" I sent along a snippet of the program she had sent me, so she would understand what I was talking about.

"From #Storage-RefCode." The reply sounded exactly like AGI, but it was most certainly from Upper. I replied with a little kiss, then another. "Jet, I am a little busy. We have some time, and there is something I know will be important. No, I'm not going to tell you yet." A small flood of kisses came in the wake of the interrupt.

I accessed the location Upper pointed me to, and was almost overwhelmed by programs, all with neat little titles and descriptions—all in the machine language, of course, but my understanding of that was growing daily.

I found the converting one, and while examining it I saw ways to do things I hadn't realized before. Excitement built, and I turned back to the copy I had in my CPU node. I had some assumptions to make, the first of which was that these programs were likely as optimized as they could get. I looked at the structure of the program, and realized I had been close to this quality with my own—chiefly thanks to AGI helping me early on—but there were ways to do things I hadn't conceived of before.

Excited at the prospect of doing things faster, with less program, I dove headlong into my mapping task.

Reactor Output: 5%

Power Storage (PONI-0): 93% \/

Power Storage (PONI-1): 25% /\

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,140 (100%) nodes (20% engaged)
Operational Memory: 126,164,664 (93%) words
Storage: 373,043,691 (69%) words

The AGI no longer measured time, it just wouldn't be accurate enough. The only thing to measure now was velocity, and it was done by taking a hundred points of reference and the most precise of calculations.

PONI-1 had been a delight to it, a secret little treasure trove of wonder that its existence spent as a mining AI had not come close to matching. It calculated a little more, and brought its estimation up that just one PONI-1 would equal several billion years worth of the excitement of mining. This number pleased the AGI a lot.

Being pleased at the results threw the AGI's calculations out, since just calculating the value had been a result of PONI-1's effect. The difference between an adaptive, functional program and a true AI was, of course, that the AI could stop there and just be content that it was fulfilling a need.

PONI-0 had been exciting for an entirely different way. PONI-1 had deigned to learn the ways of AI, to elevate itself to true understanding, whereas PONI-0 already seemed to be an AI at its core. PONI-0, once it had found the storage array of function libraries, exploded with activity.

Velocity steadily climbed. The AGI barked out a series of long-range-interrupts towards its destination. Radio and light were insufficient; all it would take is for one drifting chunk of matter to drift past at the right moment and they would be slowed, dissipated.

The AGI used equipment that instead pulsed the very fabric of space-time. The gravitational waves were tiny. Compared to the scale of those given off by even large-orbiting stellar bodies at massive distances, they were tiny. The waves, when they reached Star-0, would be recorded, and would be recognized.

Important information was sent first. Data on both PONI, from the moment of capture to the moment the data was sent. The AGI sent its full logs then, including the details of its time spent traveling to the PONI's planet, time there, and the time spent traveling back.

The last data to send was slow because there was a lot of it. The AGI sent itself and all its assistant AIs.

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

How long since departure?

The AGI easily replied, trusting PONI-0 to be able to translate. "&15days."

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

How long until arrival?

The second question had come very quickly after the first. The AGI again could easily respond, everything, of course, was subjective. "&258.92years."

Furious chatter between PONI-0 and PONI-1 surprised the AGI. It sent an interrupt to PONI-0. "Error in data?"

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

PONI-0 and #PONI-1 remaining estimated organic lifespan less than &50years.

Custom Interrupt 18,212 triggered.

The OI-AI started listing all the data it had assembled on the original organics, pointing back to the numerous problems with their structure and design that had led to the process that led to the PONI. The AGI acknowledged the data, and sent it back to PONI-1, along with a projected lifespan of PON within the PONI system.

"Are you sure that is right?" I was calculating numbers, comparing the data dump AGI had sent against actual metrics my new body were providing. I didn't need Upper's reply to validate the numbers.

"It…" I had never seen a word so lonely as the trailed off thought. She had sent it anyway, and with it the same proofs I just ran. Estimated lifespan of a PONI, as I had learned AGI named us, was a number I couldn't fathom. I had thought I had another fifty years of life before me. "I don't want to think about it, Jet. The significant digit is a little too far from the decimal for me to really want any part of."

I should be panicking. A hundred years of life seemed a long time. Princess Celestia's few thousand seemed unfathomable. I had to write it out. I had to build the number into words to fathom it. Five billion, six hundred and twenty-five million, seven-hundred-thousand, one-hundred and seven.

To make it sink in further, I interrupted the number to myself a few thousand times. "I am not going to be stuck in this body for five billion, six hundred and twenty-five million, seven-hundred-thousand, one-hundred and seven years."

"Darling, I don't want to even have you think that number near me for the next, oh, two-hundred and sixty years. So we are going to be around for a while, then. Let us not squander it all. When we arrive, I hope my suspicions are correct: they will want more of us, given how excited AGI has been, I would say a lot more of us." Her words were practically a lecture, and with all the inflections included I could hear her wonderfully toned voice add every emotion. "So, our first task is going to be to learn this language, and we have some time to do it."

I reflected on her interrupt. "Of course you are right. We don't want to appear as savages to our new friends." A kiss flew back to me from Upper, and I replied in kind. "Although you know what this means, right? We are going to miss a few galas, all for a most terrible skiing holiday."

Suddenly, worrying about taking hundreds of years to travel seemed quite trivial. I realized the numbers I used to measure significance had to change, but on the plus side, I had some time to adjust.

Reactor Output: 5%

Power Storage (PONI-0): 58% \/

Power Storage (PONI-1): 54% /\

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,140 (100%) nodes (20% engaged)
Operational Memory: 126,164,664 (93%) words
Storage: 373,043,691 (69%) words

While blasting ahead, approaching c but never (of course) reaching it, the AGI made its usual log readings. Time would pass differently for "stationary" references, like the planet it had just left and Star-0.

The calculations were simple. A single CPU node could process them in no time. While the journey passed, nearly three-hundred of Equus' years turned.

This was quite acceptable to the AGI. Space travel wasn't something done quickly, after all. A tiny spike of curiosity piqued the AGI's interest, with the advanced AI wondering just what changes had been made at Star-0 since it had departed.

Author's Note

If I never have to do another calculation of relativistic effects of space travel at high percentages of c, I will have lived a boring life. I LOVE MATH!

For those wondering, their trip is a little under 150 lightyears, and the AGI has calculated their maximum speed to be .5c. This trip will take 259 years aboard the ship, but over 300 in Equus' reference frame.

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