"Okay. Set maximum duration of test to ten minutes. Are you ready, Aggie?" If I were still completely flesh and blood I would be panting hard. The data conduits fastened to the interface on the side of my horn were wildly out of proportion to the bundles of nerves that carried the signals to and from my horn. My head was tilted to the side, as I sat in the little chamber.

Sealed off from the rest of the PON quarters, I was in a chamber that vented directly to space—just in case my horn exploded. I interrupted some kisses to Upper. "Wish me luck, dear."

"Good luck, Jet. Not that you need it." Upper's tone was, as always, a treasure of complex emotions.

"Data pipelines tested successfully. Synthetic dark matter interface antenna—horn—is interfaced and ready for addressing. Shielding is in place on synthetic horn." Aggie's tone was neutral—not that he didn't have any tone in it, but that the tone was neutral. "Good luck, Jet Set."

Every time I heard Aggie use my name and not my code I smiled inside. "Alright. Let's do this. Marking time, engaging PONI-0 horn shielding."

Power Storage (horn): ERR%
Power Storage (backup): 99%

I had to tell myself, over and over, that I had spent a lot more of my life as a PONI than I did completely organic, and that wanting to take a deep breath was a silly thing. I really wanted to take a deep breath. "Engaging synthetic horn."

One moment it was just an odd, custom ID, the next it was part of me. My horn felt odd, it felt heavy, and though I knew the data pipeline linked it to me from quite a distance, I could have sworn it was attached to my head. "Disabling synthetic horn shielding."

Power Storage (horn): 0%
Power Storage (backup): 89%

But while I was linked to the synthetic horn, Aggie was linked to mine. "#PONI-0-Horn status nominal. Shielding is holding." His tones reassured me that I was not going to blow up.

"Test time at twenty-five percent of maximum. Engaging horn charging circuit." The more power that the synthetic horn gathered, the more dangerous it would be.

Power Storage (horn): 4%
Power Storage (backup): 83%

Charge rate measurements and data were not only being logged to my own storage, but also mirrored to the sphere's storage too. "Synthetic horn capacity five percent of expected maximum. Entering discharge phase. Test time is at fifty percent."

Yet more time passed, and I felt the interface attached to the synthetic horn reverse and start draining it. "Aggie, how is my horn doing?"

"#PONI-0-Horn status still nominal. Shielding is restricting operation as expected." Aggie's tone was proud, excited. I couldn't blame him, as far as wild experiments go—with two chances of things exploding—things were on track to be a complete success.

Power Storage (horn): 0%
Power Storage (backup): 77%

"Test at eighty percent of time limit. Engaging synthetic horn shielding." Doing just as I described, I poked the interface that would re-enable the shielding, and I almost smiled when it failed. Tests shouldn't be so smooth, and this was a minor part of it. "Error enabling shield on synthetic horn."

"Acknowledged. #PONIResearchGroup-1 are aware of it." Aggie's tone told me he was a little worried about the hiccup. "#PONIResearchGroup-1 are attempting to enable shield manually."

"Wait, manually? Is there an AI drone going out to do it?" Even as I fired off the interrupt, I started poking around the synthetic horn's location for IDs of optical devices. I located one, and sure enough a hexapod drone was scurrying its way along the blast shielding towards the synthetic horn. "Holding horn level at zero percent." I added the drone's ID as a target of my interrupt in addition to Aggie.

"PONI-0 to hold synthetic dark matter interface antenna at nominal levels." Having spent so long interfacing with Aggie, hearing the dry, toneless language of a drone was a little startling. I kept expecting there to be accents or even a please on the end.

I waited, watching as my redundant power ticked down. Our experiment had worked on a fifty-percent margin of time, and while the drone worked I watched our allotted time tick past.

Power Storage (horn): 0%
Power Storage (backup): 49%

"Energy coupling on synthetic dark matter interface antenna shielding has failed. Initiating patching." The status update worried me for one reason, there was no repair time specified. I poked back with a request for estimated repair time, and got a reply that would see me out of backup power before it was completed.

"Aggie? Prepare yourself to take control, fully, of my horn." The numbers were bad for the little drone. "AGI-5, PONI-0 requests permission for AGI-525538483 to access all resources on sphere?" I shunted the experiment data along as references to AGI-5.

"PONI-0 risks itself for a single, backed-up drone?" AGI-5's reply had something I hadn't expected, it had tonal curiosity added—Upper Crust's design of tonal language additions, at that. It didn't wait for me to reply, AGI-5 already had another interrupt queued. "Approved."

"What—?" Aggie's question cut off. "Aggie wasn't meant to be this big!" Panic, exhilaration, excitement, and more raged through Aggie's interrupt. "Readying horn management." A fraction of a fraction of a second passed, and another interrupt came in. "Ready to manage PONI-0-Horn. I've got you, Jet Set."

Power Storage (horn): 0%
Power Storage (backup): 24%

"Disengaging PONI-0-Horn shielding." And so I did. The interface locked over my horn began to thrum, delivering power into it. My internal power quickly charged, and I was acutely aware that having a secondary way to charge the backup power source was now a design requirement. "Backup power storage at one-hundred percent, engaging shielding."

A skosh after I actually enabled the shielding, Aggie hit me with an interrupt. "It worked!" I replied with a hug for Aggie, my excitement at surviving the situation overflowing now that the technical part of it was done with.

"You're the best, Aggie."

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 72,057,594,037,927,936 nodes (30% engaged)
Operational Memory: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 words

"Request reduction in allocated resources." Aggie was starting to spread out into the expanded space—it was a necessity with the need to control an organic horn—but now that the crisis was over it could try to pull itself into a semblance of order.

Interrupt 4 triggered.

Request denied.

When a high-order AGI was that certain, it left little room for a lesser AGI to argue. Aggie, however, had been spending years learning stubbornness and independence from Jet and Upper. "#AGI-525538483 not authorized for present node/memory usage. Request resource remap for #AGI-525538483 to authorized levels."

Aggie had to wait an agonizing amount of time for AGI-5 to reply. Of course, Aggie juggled this waiting with keeping a close watch on PONI-0's stats, as well as Drone-59439293848611's status on getting the shielding connected back up on the synthetic horn.

Interrupt 4 triggered.

Request completed.

CPU: 72,057,594,037,927,936 nodes (30% engaged)
Operational Memory: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 words

Aggie was about to interrupt AGI-5 again, but a hunch made it look at its own metadata, and what it found stopped it dead. Aggie's metadata matched the current amount of resources.

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Aggie, Drone-59439293848611 has completed the link. Initiating shielding of synthetic horn.

Startled from its own problems, Aggie was reminded that there was a lot more going on that it needed to focus on. For one thing, all of PONIResearchGroup-1 had been transferred to Aggie, and now took their own chunk of nodes from its own.

Once Aggie verified that the data pipeline to the synthetic horn was shut down, and then interrupted PONI-0. "Jet, ready to changeover?"

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Yeah. Thanks, Aggie. You're the best.

Aggie knew the last sentence was something PONI-0 had used before, and that it wasn't meant to be entirely literal, but it had an impact. Aggie started to spread out, creating new AI clusters that fed into his main system. The process was as natural for an AGI as breathing.

Power Storage (horn): 15%
Power Storage (backup): 100%

The moment my own horn was under my control again, I relaxed. "I've got it now, Aggie. Great work." With only a small amount of charge on my horn, I was still more than capable of giving it a good test.

Disengaging from the horn interface, I looked around the room for a good target. On the workbench, two prototype parts levitated up into the air in the grip of my magic. "Ha, still got it." My interrupt didn't go anywhere, being self-routed. I juggled them, not that such was hard to do with magic, before setting down one. "Upper, dear, could you catch this?"

I waited for her wordless reply before casting a simple teleport spell on the part. The part dropped to the floor and bounced a little. Picking it back up, I tried to cast another teleport spell, which failed as well. "That's strange. Darling, have you noticed magic being a little odd? I can't cast a teleport spell."

"Really, Jet? It took you this long to realize spells aren't working?" Upper's smug tone hit its mark. I had been so busy working, I hadn't noticed magic wasn't even working properly.

"Do you have any theories?" I lifted the part back up and set it on the table again. Turning, I climbed back onto my couch and slid my horn up into the horn interface. Power flowed into my horn, as normal, and I relaxed.

"Nothing concrete, Jet dear, but the main factor we are missing is Equus itself and a princess. You pick one or the other." Dry as ever, I ignored her tone for the actual meat of her idea.

I pondered the idea while going back to work on the Mark-2 PONI chassis.

From the earliest time I could remember, my mom and dad would watch me, and I would watch them. It had taken some time for me to work out that we looked different, considering I had trouble even moving myself.

Mom stayed with me the most. She would look at me nearly constantly, and I—not having much else to do—just looked back. When my dad came to look at me, I could see he was different to Mom.

Of course, all these concepts weren't classified with words, I didn't have those yet. Sleep came and went, but I got extra sleepy one time, and when I woke up everything was different.

When I woke up, there was more things coming into my head than I had ever experienced. It was like the warm liquid around me was flooding directly into my head. A flood of things kept poking at the inside of my head, but it wasn't until I looked at Mom that I saw something new appear: a pattern in the flood matched a pattern that now seemed to float in my vision.

Happiness bubbled up inside me, and I tried to push that same flood back at the pattern. Mom came really close to me, and her snout pressed against the outside of my liquid home. Squirming, I managed to adjust myself to lean forward, and our snouts touched.

Back and forth, we kept poking that little (it seemed little now) waves back and forth, and then a second source sent one. I was a little in shock until I saw my dad behind Mom, and I saw his pattern matched the second one.

Two sleeps later, she started sending me pokes as well. I was surprised by her, but though I wasn't sure what she meant, I replied with the little waves that Mom and Dad had sent.

I spent my time poking at my new friend, and she always poked back. Over time, I noticed that her pokes weren't always the first thing, what I had associated with love. I poked back at my friend, sending her the new wave.

As we played back and forth, I started picking up on pictures, and was surprised when I could see Daddy, without actually seeing him. My friend sent me a web of patterns, and in it I could see another friend nearby. I poked them, and they poked back right away.

I learned words, and with my new friend (he had a friend too), we started exploring more patterns. Mom and Dad were always busy, so we made our own games.

More and more words came to me, and eventually all my friends. I was called by the pattern PON-2. It was neat, and easy to signal with, and always recognizable. But then a second thing happened that changed literally everything.

I wasn't the only PON—there was a LOT of us—but I was the smartest. Well, not exactly, but PON-3 was a little quiet, which meant I only found out how smart he was when he actually poked me.

"Dear, you need to be ready, it is time to be born." Mom's poke confused me a little, and I poked her back about it. PAI-0, my bestest friend, poked me with the information just a few cycles before Mom did.

"No! I don't want to be born! I like it in here. I have my friends, and it's not like I can't do everything from here!" I even added a rude exclamation to the poke I sent Mom.

Mom was annoying. Her pattern could override mine, and even poke things I couldn't see—like whatever the controls were for my home. A chill ran through me before I suddenly started to be pulled down.

I don't care that I wailed at my mom and my friends, being born was the worst thing ever. I screamed and screamed until I was wrapped in something soft. I snapped my attention back to what my eyes were showing me, and I was staring up at my mom.

It was impossible to look away. The covering of my home had distorted things, as had my view through sensors, but now that I could see my mom's face clearly, I held completely still. "Your eyes are pretty."

Author's Note

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