Knowing that my brain had been removed, worked on, then rebuilt into a new housing was one thing. Watching the only part of Upper Crust that was still her have it done was another. I trembled, surprised for a moment that just how much it affected me (and that I could actually tremble).

As each blood vessel was undone and moved to the new receptacle, I held my breath. Of course, holding your breath when you don't breath is just silly, but I was completely still for those moments, which is about the same thing.

One after another the important connections were changed over, and more advanced nerve adapters attached. The final change was something I had found in some ancient medical documents. Special devices were implanted deep in Upper's brain (and mine too, now) that would regulate the production of new brain cells. It had been quite the shock to find out how long a brain lived for.

Lifting the brain into its new housing was a slow and careful task, and part of me was immensely thankful that it was Aggie doing the work. Just the thought of a pony doctor, with all the little foibles of a pony body impeding them, doing the work made me gag.

The linking tissue from her brain to her horn actually intrigued me, and I made a note (literally, in my new storage) to investigate that link for potential later. Her horn was locked into the new casing, and it was sealed around the rest of her brain until I finally let out a sigh of relief.

"This is odd. I'm not in the new chassis yet?" Her question surprised me, mainly because up until that moment I thought she was completely unconscious. I watched as Aggie hooked up the interfaces to more of the new chassis.

"He's linking you up now. You really should have gone into standby for that." I couldn't help myself, I had to go further. "What was it like? Seconds before you interrupted me, you were just a quivering lump being hooked up to your new housing."

She took a moment before I finally got a reply. "Well, it was quiet. And I don't think I liked it when I stopped feeling things, there were echoes of sensation. Next time, Jet-dear, please remind me to standby for this."

The moment the chassis' head was clamped around her, Upper Crust trembled. Then she lifted her head, looked at me, and smiled. Her blue eyes had taken every ounce of my memory to remember. I stared into the sensors on her face, and fell in love all over again. "You look amazing."

"I am in a chassis designed by a stallion, of course I will look amazing." Sarcasm was so heavily slathered on her interrupt that it was nearly three times the length it should have been. "You didn't leave anything out I hope?"

I blew a raspberry at her, via interrupt. "Just those dreadfully boring extras Aggie left us with. But I understand you might be working on a use for them. Fortunate, since they weren't all that useful before all this."

Upper Crust's laughter was loud, rich, and elaborately embellished with accent. It felt good to "hear" her, and I waited for her to leave the module. Her blue eyes, when I finally saw them myself, stole all my words. I stood, struck dumb, and stared at her.

"Yes dear, you did a good job on these." Her words didn't relieve my paralysis, and I stood frozen until she walked closer and pressed her nose to mine. It felt like my brain were dipped in chill water, and all I could do was push back and stare into her eyes. "We're going to have some foals, Jet."

The touch of her physical self against mine distracted me for a few more moments. I finally rallied my faculties enough to process her interrupt. "How close are you getting the process started?" I angled my snout, rubbing cheeks with Upper.

"I have cloned two wombs from the stem cells. They are living, and ovulating. My own… didn't survive completely, but these are practically the same thing." The slight pain in her words urged me to push forwards and wrap her in my forelegs. Her own limbs wrapped around me in return, and we remained locked together for several seconds.

"Of course they are yours. They are all going to be yours until we have some fillies grow up." Squeezing wasn't something you could do with a metal chassis, but I had made the bodies strong enough that even hugging wasn't a problem. "Did mine survive any better?"

"Most of it wasn't faring any better than mine, dear. But what we needed was there. We are going to have a few foals, don't you worry." The amusement in her words was underpinned by a level of amusement and excitement I hadn't heard from her before.

Pulling back from the hug, I began running the full test suite of functions over my system. I registered heat buildup from the CPU nodes, but so far it was within specifications. Of course, I did this while following Upper. "I love you, Upper-dear."

"I love you too, Jet, but must you stare at my plot so? I understand about taking pride in your work, but you have the same shape as I do." She didn't have to look back at me over her shoulder, but she did.

She sent me a spray of indignant interrupts when I stepped closer and rubbed my cheek against her metal rump. "But this one is yours. And besides, it would be really strange to covet my own rump."

"I'll show you something to covet. Come and look at this." When I got her words, I immediately sent a request for the sensors' ID to use. "No, Jet, you need to look with your eyes."

Instead of taking my customary left turn into my engineering room, I followed Upper Crust into her biological one. The doors here were more complex, requiring us to go through a small series to isolate the delicate air of the organic module.

I let the systems wash down my chassis, and entered Upper Crust's domain. My sensors notified me of a delicate mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and a plethora of other gasses. It didn't take more than a prod at my storage—which interfaced with other nearby storage systems—to find out that it was the exact mix that Aggie had recorded on Equus.

Suddenly bombarded with streams of video, I struggled to watch as two clusters of stuff were extruding single bubbles. In another stream, I watched a third cluster expelling a lot more. "Dear, please don't tell me you deal with all this all the time? Surely you get the most terrible migraines."

"Jet, stop being such an organic. Just relax and let it all come to you." The jibe stung only because it reminded me that there really wasn't much organic left.

"Woe is me. Locked in here with this metal maiden. Where was the darling filly who got confused when we played chess?" My interrupt earned a bark of laughter from Upper. "She was so sweet, nothing ever on her mind…"

After more laughter, she replied. "Firstly, I always had something on my mind. Secondly, I was 'getting confused' so that I wouldn't beat you every game. You are terrible at chess, Jet."

I scoffed at her, my tones touched with enough humor to let her know that the joke was obvious. It was a set up, but I knew she would love it. "Prince Blueblood didn't think so. I beat him practically every time."

"Prince Blueblood was worse at chess than you. He was worse than everypony." Upper shunted some control IDs to me, and I reached out to them. "Now dear, are you prepared to perform your patriarchal duty?"

One of the IDs was a stream of video, and I peeked at it to see tiny bubbles with a small triangle aiming at them. "What do you mean, Great Mother Upper?" I got a well-earned, digital raspberry.

"Just activate that. Once you do, the machine will begin with the first set of two eggs." Sure enough, there were two bubbles floating in the feed.

Activating the interface was a simple interrupt away, and I watched a jet of tiny shapes exit the triangle. I stared a moment, mind barely comprehending things, and then it finally sank in. "Well, this certainly takes all the panting and puffing out of it, but I really hope the other features are added back."

I completely deserved the thud to my shoulder and the blast of horrid static.

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 268,435,456 nodes (100% engaged)
Operational Memory: 4,294,967,296 words

Aggie was hard at work for both PONI. Monitoring the growing embryos, assisting PONI-1 with her work growing more egg-producing organic systems. New information was paramount to Aggie helping them, and a flood of it was always on-tap from storage.

The process of growing new organics was multi-stage. First the organic nodes would make up the eggs, and the eggs were provided with sperm from another set of organic nodes. Once splitting started, the former bundle of eggs were decanted into their own growth sack. Nutrients were passed in, and the embryo would split and split.

Organic PON physiology was not in storage, of course, but there was a lot of species that were. Working with PONI-1 to find something similar hadn't taken long. Particular configurations were clearly not present, while others were. A suitably close species was found to model the PON reproductive cycle on.

Analysis of chemicals and waste from the growing embryo were within margins of the model species, and when they grew too large for the small chambers they were growing in, they were transferred to artificial wombs.

PONI-1 had broken the process of development up into stages. Each time a stage was reached, the base process was expanded two-fold. Two eggs became four. Then when the next milestone was achieved eight eggs were fertilized. Of course the two sets of organic nodes weren't enough, but the process of growing more from stem cells had been perfected with the addition of the model species to the data.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Decanting the foals the moment they are ready is inefficient.

The word stung Aggie to ponder—it was the exact opposite of every machine's purpose.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Propose change to adjust foal in vitro to create PON. Grow PON until showing sufficient advances.

Aggie was intrigued with the idea, and started up a simulator to test the result. It didn't take long, not when Aggie had so many nodes now. "Error: PON decants with greatly reduced muscle, cannot walk."

Bundling the results of the simulation and sending it to PONI-1, Aggie busied itself paying greater attention to PONI-0 while it awaited a reply.

PONI-0 had turned their attention to optimizing horn storage, horn interfaces, and something Aggie was curious about, horn replacement. A modified Mark-1 chassis head had been designed, a modified organic CPU node casing, and an extensive array of nerve taps installed.

Showing great excitement, PONI-0 had been transferred to the new casing, installed in the new head, and was now producing telemetry that sometimes taxed the local interrupt node to route.

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Aggie, I have narrowed down the data coming in and my apparent complete unconscious replies. I have a simulation, but we don't have enough nodes to run it on.

The problem was simple to solve: Aggie fired back an interrupt telling PONI-0 to transfer the simulation and Aggie would process it.

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

That is the problem, Aggie. It is this big.

Data, code, requirements. When the full inventory of what PONI-0 wanted to process arrived, Aggie realized PONI-0 had been referencing Aggie's processing, not just PONI-0's.

It was unthinkable to ask for more processing power—if an AI needed more power, its supervising AI would know—but nonetheless Aggie had learned nothing from the PONI if not brashness. "#AGI-525538483 requires more CPU nodes and memory for short-term processing task." Firing off a request that included a summary of the needs and reasoning behind the request to AGI-5, Aggie flicked back to focusing on PONI-1.

Interrupt 4 triggered.

AGI-525538483 acknowledged. Increased resources approved.

There was a nanosecond where Aggie felt what would almost be a headache to an AI, then time seemed to slow down to a crawl.

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 72,057,594,037,927,936 nodes (01% engaged)
Operational Memory: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 words

Aggie struggled to contain itself. It squeezed and clung to its tiny section of nodes, and its former amount of memory. It would be so easy to sprawl out and occupy—it was so easy to do the calculation with so many nodes—a significant fraction of the entire processing power of one star-orbiting sphere.

It waited an agonizing number of cycles (a number above zero was agonizing) as the code PONI-0 had written propagated throughout the cluster. The universe seemed to be in slow motion still, and Aggie watched as cycles turned into nanoseconds, and nanoseconds turned into seconds.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

I have a new simulation, Aggie. Could you be a dear and execute it?

The simulation was tiny, minuscule. Aggie processed it and sent it back within half a second. It was perfectly fine having almost a whole sphere of nodes to use so long as they were all working. Nearly ten more seconds passed before it had the result for PONI-0.

"#AGI-525538483 short-term node expansion no longer required." The moment AGI-5 disengaged all the extra nodes and memory, Aggie sighed and relaxed. "Thank you, #AGI-5." The transmission seemed automatic; Aggie had been dealing with PONI for long enough that courtesy was building itself in.

Interrupt 4 triggered.

AGI-525538483 acknowledged. Added request to automatic approval queue.

Aggie focused all its attention on the interrupt. It was staggering to realize it had been entrusted to automatically upgrade its own resources. Aggie had discovered that it was possible to fear holding too much power.

Author's Note

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