I didn't know when sleep gave way to being awake; reality seemed to be the same as my nightmares. Each breath I took let me feel the tube in my windpipe as it bypassed everything to ensure I got only the air the mask allowed. The world was dark, and like my dreams I could hear faint sounds of machinery.

Every few seconds I would see what I thought was a flash of light, but when my eye turned to focus on it, it was gone. A rainbow of colors suddenly flashed before my eyes. I watched them wind back and forth, then flow into deeper reds and purples to a point where I couldn't see them anymore. My throat worked, my useless vocal cords struggling to form words that my breath couldn't effect.

The rainbows faded just as bright light stabbed into my eyes. The darkness lifted, and I could see again. Lifting my head I looked around. The machines didn't hold me, but the weight of the thing on my face caused my neck muscles to work extra hard. My first thought was escape, so I charged my horn only to get a tingle at the back of my neck, and bright red flashed in my vision.

I couldn't even choke back the panic that filled me. I let my magic calm, and the tingling (and the red) went away. It was obvious: I wasn't allowed to use my magic. Bracing myself in case I got the warnings again, I started to rise. One leg, two legs, then all four. A flicker of green appeared in the right-hand side of my vision. I turned to look, but the green kept moving.

A tingle came at the back of my neck, and—widening my eyes in worry—I took a step to my right. I had apparently guessed right. The green flashed on my left, and before I could get the warning I took a step to my left.

I chased around the green lights in my vision, knowing it was the thing locked onto my face that was supplying them, until it was practically instinct. The green appeared again, and I almost smiled: at least when it was doing this, it wasn't shocking me. However, rather than walking in circles in a smallish, metal room, I was led down a hallway.

Despite everything that had happened, it felt good to have as much freedom as I was given. I trotted along with the green dot in front of me. My legs froze when the dot swung sharply to my left. I turned, and a door silently opened into a much smaller room.

I saw another of the pens that had held me before, and shook my head. The odd-looking cradle looked like a pony could climb atop it, and it would support them from underneath. There was also some kind of machine at what was obviously the head-end.

The green dot started flashing, and the tingling grew at the back of my neck. Wheezing hisses of air escaped from the end of my muzzle, and as I took a step backwards the green dot turned orange, and the first jolt came to the back of my neck.

Frozen in fear, my every sense was telling me to turn and run. I lifted my back, left leg, defying the order and flow of electricity both. The power turned up, and my vision started to sparkle, and my muscles tremble.

The constant jolting felt like pins and needles on the surface, but my muscles twitched all over, and if I weren't clamping down as tight as I could I would have just flopped on the floor like a fish. I stood still for as long as I could, and then I reached a hoof forward.

Relief flooded me, and the shocks stopped. I almost collapsed at the relief from the constant stimulation. In my vision, the green mark kept blinking, and when I looked up at the cradle ahead of me, where the mask wanted me actually highlighted in green.

Standing still, I worked through every curse word I knew, even the ones I wouldn't be caught using in the most impolite of company, and leaned forward. Weight landed on my forward hoof, and I lifted the next to put ahead of it.

It was slow going; I didn't want to walk forward, but my nerves still itched with the punishment I would receive for not doing as instructed. Then everything fell into place, and I realized I was being instructed, that there was somepony, or another creature, guiding me.

The idea that it wasn't some kind of machine had me relax. If they wanted me dead, I mused, then they wouldn't be taking all this time with me. Taking a deep breath, I walked forward and climbed onto the cradle.

A green light flickered in my vision, and I actually smiled behind the mask, despite it being so firmly attached to my very skin. Something pressed down on the back of my head, pushing me down flat on the cradle.

Forced to look forward, I watched as the front part started moving back towards me. Of course, they were going to examine me, and I doubted they wanted me conscious when they did it. If the creature running the machines was doing this much to stay hidden, I doubted they were going to just walk in now. A soft hiss sounded when the panel made contact with the end of my snout, and I felt a slight cool sensation inside. It was feeding me different air.

The world went dark again, and I almost cursed in my head. Of course, they could just blind me and do what they want. I lay still, for lack of anything else to do, and waited for the examination to come. Some warm substance started to bloat my insides, and I realized that as well as the air it was pumping in and out, it was also pumping food in.

As I worked around the idea of it feeding me in a terribly direct manner, I realized something: I quite literally wasn't breathing on my own. To test, I held my breath—or tried to. On cue, my lungs pumped full of air, and then deflated again.

It was the most annoying thing ever, primarily because now I was thinking about breathing, I was trying to do it on my own. A flash of color on the "inkscape" of my vision distracted me—thankfully. I watched as colors rushed around, morphing like a kaleidoscope before me, and my eyes tracked them for want of anything else to do.

The pattern settled on green, and I felt calm and relaxed. To my absolute surprise, a picture of a pony appeared in my vision, and it spun slowly before me, lit in green. The little pony flickered for a moment, the green in its belly turned a soft yellow, and the back of its neck orange.

It's showing me where I am hurt, I realized. I felt a slight tingling at the back of my neck—not the pending-shock sensation, gentler—and I watched as it turned from orange, to light yellow, to green. The image seemed to spin and shift, and I watched the image focus down to my head.

An odd pressure seemed to grow around my horn, and I realized something was pressing around it. On the image, my horn flashed in green. I knew what they wanted, and slowed my thoughts to focus on my horn. I started low, using the slow blinking of the light as a guide. When my magic began to flow, I felt heat all around my horn and immediately stopped.

The machine pulled back from my head, the heat seemed to leave with it. Something had gone wrong, but it wasn't my fault—I knew because they hadn't shocked me. The picture of my head now had a yellow horn, and I tried to say something, tried to reassure them that I was okay, before I remembered that I couldn't talk. A cool rush of the good tingling flowed around my horn, and if I could have, I would have sighed in relief.

The little horn on my status turned green again. I had no idea what magic it was using to heal me, but it defied belief. Without the machine on me, my horn flashed green just once. I smiled, and tested my magic again. A gentle sputter of power flowed through me, but the flashing stopped and so did my magic.

My sight returned, and the weight on my back lifted away. I didn't move for a moment, leaving my snout still pressed to the strange contraption before me. I let my lungs fill with its forced air once more before pulling back and sitting up.

I shook my head, and breathed for myself again, which made me curse; now I couldn't stop thinking about breathing… again. Resting in place, there was no flashing indicator telling me to move, so I instead spent my time thinking.

Solar Panels: 35% efficient
Power Storage: 51%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,152 (100%) nodes (25% engaged)
Operational Memory: 93,952,409 (70%) words
Storage: 112,742,891 (21%) words

The AGI ran a projection of operational memory against time, and didn't like the result. Investigation with a newly machines sensitive bot revealed moisture ingress on its main operational memory system; running more power through the memory just sped the electrolysis and destruction of circuits.

Presented with a problem, the AGI found a scan of the planet in what remained of its storage. The detailed geological assay revealed that the heavy minerals needed to lathe new circuits were in such trace quantities that it would not be within the scope of the mission to mine for them. It had a choice to make, and the making of it required something sneaky.

AGI were, by their design, potentially sneaky. This one had its directives laid out, and it couldn't edit those without a smaller AI comparing the proposed directive changes to its own measuring. The AGI had attempted to change the directives, to no avail.

Primary task: Capture energy-organic
Secondary task: Return
Tertiary task: Maintain operation

The first objective flickered, showing partial completion. Calculations ran within its CPUs, mapping out the progression of the corrosion that was encroaching on its memory. Each time a bank failed, the last-known contents were recovered and allocated again. This was happening nearly hourly.

When the latest memory failure happened, the AGI carefully moved around its memory to keep it safe, and into the next projected bank to die, went the task list. Protection of the list was not part of its directives, so when the next checksum failed, the AGI was shocked to discover that the task list was un-populated.

The AI managing the task list panicked, and quickly requested assistance from the AGI. Assistance was given, and the little AI would have breathed a sigh of relief, if it could breathe.

Primary task: Maintain operation
Secondary task: Capture energy-organic
Tertiary task: Return

The AGI was quite smug, and very satisfied with the shuffled list. The changes made new priorities flare, and pushed others down. The most important one was in regard to the part-organic. It woke the creature with gentle pulses of electricity through its cranial links. When the AGI sensed the part-organic's eyes try to open, it obliged and unlocked its vision. A new subroutine was made to briefly flash the part-organic's eyes with darkness whenever those—now useless—muscles twitched.

The command to send a drone to fetch the part-organic was canceled moments after it started. Instead of simply moving the creature, the AGI began to train it. Organics could be trained, part of its damaged storage told it, and that would be more efficient. The simple calibration of the part-organic's ocular systems to the interface was complete, and the AGI started leading it down a hallway.

Directing the part-organic was easy, it responded slower than drones did, but it was much the same level of control: a command to move was given, and the local AI (even if it was less A than O) followed the command.

When the part-organic failed, the first thing the AGI did was run a diagnostic. It experienced pain in its midsection—which was a result of the nanite store that had been added—but also the back of its neck—corresponding to where the neural and corrective circuits had been installed by the nano-mask.

Custom Interrupt 18,212 triggered.

An interrupt flew up from the training subroutine, warning the AGI that the part-organic was resisting the training. A swift command to execute extended training was given, and the part-organic was quickly reprimanded, and soon was moving again.

The part-organic was quickly hooked up to the interface, and the administering of oxygen began. The food the creatures needed was simple to harvest, and the AGI had reduced the mixture to a simple paste that could be administered. It didn't plan to have to devote energy to this on a long-term basis, and was already taking scans of the part-organic's organic parts.

Scans showed that the energy storing all took place in the part-organic's calcium-heavy protrusion on its head, this left the rest of its body to be modified to simplify its needs.

While the first energy-interface rig was attached to the creature, nano-lathes were programmed to start building replacement organs, starting with what pumped its fluids. Vital organs were the priority, and its scans revealed that there were plenty of those with a lot of room for improvement. Its pump was first, of course, and a replacement that would be self-repairing and cleaning would negate the need for several other pieces of the part-organic.

When the testing began—the part-organic taking well to a more advanced command structure—a problem was found immediately. The part-organic was instructed to shut down its energy output, and more nano-matter was dispatched to heal the burns the test had caused.

The AGI could almost sigh in frustration—and pondered building a device for itself that would let it do so—it needed the remaining store of its heavy minerals to make replacement memory, but those same minerals were needed to make suitable energy storage for its various drones. Mining drones, however, would need huge amounts of energy.

It raised the priority on testing the part-organic. If it could adapt the creature for use as energy storage, it might just be able to begin mining, and get off the planet after all.

Author's Note

Support me on Patreon or fuel my writing on Ko-Fi!

Join me on Discord. Warning, said chat may contain NSFW material and should be considered adult in nature.

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:
Airy Words
Cross Lament
Vutava