The Process

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I couldn't help but stare at the little filly and colt. Each of them was perfect in every way. When I checked the number, each pregnancy had lasted nearly seven years, but by the way both our foals were trying to work their legs, it hadn't hurt their development any.

PON-2, our daughter, beamed up at Upper. She had a pure white coat, bright blue eyes (just like another mare I knew), and just like Upper Crust, had a two-tone pink with mauve-highlights mane.

PON-3, our first son, was busy booping himself on the nose. His color had taken more after my side of the family, a dark gray coat, brown mane, but like his sister he had a stripe of mauve through it.

Both were unicorns.

"Upper Crust, congratulations." I pressed my snout to Upper's cheek in a physical kiss, while she used her magic to carefully press the horn power-tap to the base of each foal's horn, clamping them in place and running cables back down their head and into a socket in their necks.

Once our son's horn was fitted with a sensor, Upper pulled down the foal-sized horn interfaces (conveniently on cables), removed the shielding caps from their horns, and fastened each foal with their own charger.

I was monitoring the foals' systems, making sure each was okay, when a white flash washed out every sensor I had. "Upper? What's wrong? What's going on?!" Though I yelled to my wife in an interrupt, and then a small flood of them, I got no reply.

"What is occurring #PONI-0?" AGI-5's tone was abrupt, and I felt the way its interrupts cut through everything else.

Trying to make sense of what was going on, and still unable to see, I tried to sense the surrounding room with my proximity sensors, but they told me I was alone with our foals.

Terror, panic, and worse filled me; fear unlike any I had known (even when first being inducted by Aggie) coursed through me. "Upper?" I had lost her. I had lost Upper Crust to… something.

"Jet?" The interrupt became my entire focus. I tried to scan the room again, and then again, but found nothing still. It wasn't until my fifth scan that I found a PONI. The bright light suddenly snapped off, and in the moments before any of my own, or the room's sensors could adjust, I got another interrupt. "Jet, what happened?"

Magic. It had to have been pure magic, and on a scale even the sensors we had built couldn't measure. Upper Crust came into focus, and I stared with every sensor I had. Upper Crust was nearly half again taller than she had been; her PONI body having been altered somehow—magic, of course. But it wasn't just her size that shocked me, the entire chassis was different, more sleek than before. On her back was the most startling thing: a pair of folded, mechanical wings.

Upper Crust's wings looked nothing like true pegasus (or alicorn) wings. They were made of composites that ponies had never encountered, let alone made words for. While I watched, Upper Crust spread her wings in the cramped (it only seemed so now she was present) room.

Staring at the majesty of an alicorn chassis, and knowing it was a fundamental change in Upper Crust herself, I shook my head. "And I said I wouldn't marry a princess." Despite needing to be delivered dry, I couldn't keep a measure of awe from my tone.

Turning her head towards me, I noticed that Upper's horn was slightly longer than it had been, and couldn't keep from feeling more and more excited for her. She looked down her nose at me, folded her wings, and sent me the interrupt equivalent of a groan. "Really, Jet? I ascend—something that should be absolutely impossible—and the best you can do is a joke?" Like my own words, Upper couldn't keep her chiding dry, and laced it with humor instead.

I blinked in shock when an interrupt hit me like a wagon, and I couldn't reply to any save it. "What is occurring #PONI-0?" AGI-5's interrupt limited my options, not that I blamed them.

"PONI-1 has performed a high-energy self-upgrade. Testing will be required to measure extent of performance increase." It was impossible to inject actual humor into the machine language without using inflection, and I knew AGI-5 didn't understand such themselves.

With the high-priority interrupt answered, I could contact others again. "Upper, did AGI-5 just interrupt you, too?" She was nodding to me, before her attention suddenly turned completely—as did she.

Both our foals were standing on the bench where she had left them (the warm, synthetic blankets we had made were at their hooves), and both bounced on their hooves in excitement. The raw enthusiasm, along with Upper's ascension, was just about more than I could take.

Self Diagnostic

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

Aggie had, for want of a better word, gotten worried. Both PONI were obviously excited about something, but it was impossible to get any sense out of either of them. Every time it inquired as to what had happened to PONI-1, both PONI seemed to get very excited.

Data recordings of the event were being sent up, AGI-5 demanding all data and opinions with the lowest possible latency. Aggie ran through the information again, and realized it would never stop being surprised by the PONI. Power on a scale comparable to a small star had, for a brief few moments, lit up the room where the PONI resided.

Nothing Aggie could compare the energy output to would sufficiently explain the outcome. Magic energy (the term the particular type of dark energy PON and PONI manipulated had been given) shouldn't act how it had, and yet it had.

"PONI-0, report status of PONI-1." Aggie got the same reply that had been sent to AGI-5. "Jet Set, please?"

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Upper Crust—PONI-1—triggered a magic energy overflow, and it changed her. She is amazing.

There was reverence and awe in PONI-0's tone, and Aggie had to admit the changes were startling, but what really interested Aggie was PON-2 and PON-3 were now mobile, and like their parents had every bit of telemetry being stored locally and in several other spheres.