I first noticed Stellar's attention while working on the Mark-2, when Aggie sent me a quiet notification that he had granted the foals read access to all nodes. Interrupt-wise, there was a little snout poking at everything I did.

Opening a new work-space caused more nodes to spin up, more memory to be spent, but I ensured that the design was set to be writable by Stellar Hope. "Want to design your own?" I attached the reference of his own work-space, but didn't actually have to—he was already working in it.

I stood up from the cradle I had been resting in. Before the foals had been born, I would spend months at a time locked in place, not needing to move to talk to Upper. But now the opposite was true. I didn't need to be physically at the cradle to work, just to recharge my horn from time to time. I had a new favorite place to work.

Upper's "organic production bay" had grown. She had asked Aggie to help her increase the space for foals and for their development, and Aggie had certainly pulled through. Dormitories stretched off in one direction—housing for hundreds—while the machinery for making foals took up most of the remaining room.

Stellar and Bright were, to my surprise, kicking a ball around. It was the most foal-like thing I had seen the pair do, and it reminded me how much we were still ponies. "Fully charged and ready to work." #PON had become the default transmission target since its creation. Engaging our foals in conversation and discussions of their future had been a big priority for us—Upper and I. "How's my wonderful alicorn princess of the stars doing?" Kisses accompanied my interrupt, but I still walked up to Upper Crust and pressed the tip of my snout to her cheek.

Upper tilted her snout down a little, and our noses touched. "You know very well how I'm doing, Jet. We have another four foals who will be born in three hours, and I have to prepare the latest batch of eggs for fertilization." Since her ascension, Upper Crust hadn't managed to express or fake even a single negative emotion about raising foals.

I couldn't blame her, either. Neither Stellar nor Bright had done anything majorly wrong. When they showed an interest in things, allowances were made for them to explore them further. PAI (or PON AI) were to be their companions from the moment nerve interfaces were installed in their bodies, but they were a lot more than just companions. The PAI were teachers, and each was constantly learning the best ways to interact with our foals on a one-on-one basis.

If we had been on Equestria, and we took our foals to school, I was sure that a teacher would see to each as best they could, but they couldn't be with our PON every moment. Once I had the Mark-2 complete, the PAI would be installed, along with their PON, into the chassis. A PONI would be much more than just an organic node or a CPU node on its own.

"But I don't want to be born!" The interrupt was sharp, accented with rigid and unyielding steel-like sentiments. Of course it was one of the newest group of foals.

My attention broke from my conversation with Aggie. Mom and Dad were being all mushy and stuff, which surprised me given that their bodies were harder than mine, but it was my new brother's voice that had gotten my attention.

A tingle ran through my horn, an indication that the interface attached to it had just changed modes: it was discharge time.

I looked to my twin, and rolled my eyes back towards Mom and Dad. "Hold on, Stel, somePON needs me." He acknowledged me with a wordless signal, minimalist even for the machines.

Turning fully, I trotted over to where four bags hung. In one, a little colt glared at me. "Hey. Sup?"

"You can't make me! I like it in here!" PON-5 was his name, so far at least.

"I'm with you there. It's awesome and warm in those things." My interrupt shocked PON-5. He stared at me, and I could see his features working as he tried to understand what my angle was. I climbed up on the metal bench that his bag was suspended above, and walked right up to it.

Lifting one hoof up, I held it gently against the side of his womb-bag. The size of my flat hoof dwarfed PON-5's own. He stared at the limb that was as big as his head with wonder. "But look at this. I've only been out of my bag for six months. If you keep growing, you will burst your bag anyway."

Wonder and a little panic filled PON-5's tone. "My bag would burst?"

"Yup. Kablooey. Bag, goop, and PON-5 all over the place. Or we could just get you out now. Do you know how to play ball?" I knew he knew, and he knew I knew, but sometimes you had to put things into interrupts for them to be real.

PON-5's eyes widened, and I watched him flail a little in his bag. He reached one little leg out and poked against my hoof. "I want to play ball!"

"Thank you, Bright-dear." Mom's tone was warm, her interrupt practically a cuddle in data form, and it was focused only to me. "I remember a little filly not wanting to come out."

I blushed. I was looking forward to getting a PONI chassis, if only so I didn't have to deal with some of the strange, organic stuff that my body did without me telling it. "Pfft. I wanted to come out, I just didn't want to be cold. And I wanted a chassis right away."

Mom's tone changed completely. Gone was the warm, for-the-foals accents, now there was only a mild warmth and adult-pride. "You have done enough research into our biology to know that won't work, Bright. A PON needs their brain to mature before they can be fitted into a chassis."

Normally I would have replied with something like "Duh" or "You think?" but the way Mom spoke made me want to emulate her tone a little. "I know, Mom. And even with the growth hormones that won't happen until nearly five years outside of the womb-bag. I even reran the models myself, adjusting doses to see what failure rate there would be."

"I heard. You no-doubt saw the tolerances I set on the research?" She didn't have to say it, but of course I had seen the settings she used, hers were the baseline. Mom wouldn't accept anything but zero-percent chance of failure.

"I just know there is something I need a full chassis for. This stuff with biology, it's not my thing. But it is a good thing to know." I parked my rear on the warm metal under the womb-bags, and stood beside PON-5 while we waited for the right time to come.

"Pi, you have another lesson for me?" The first thing I had done when I had my own name was to give my PAI one too. Her name was something important to me because I loved geometry. Even before I had been born I loved it, and when I had investigated the sounds some of my favorite constants used, I found it to be similar to how the little AI's designation sounded. So Pi had been born with me.

"What'd you have in mind? More spacial mathematics? Biology? Maybe structural design?" Pi was so upbeat it was impossible to turn her down, but one of her choices was a little strange.

"'Structural design'? Pi, what brought that on?" I flicked my attention to a room sensor briefly, and noticed Mom and Dad were busy checking on the other three PON in their womb-bags.

Instead of Pi replying, Dad sent me an interrupt directly. "Pi said you were interested in a chassis?" I didn't know what his game was yet, so I kept my reply to a simple acknowledgment. "Well, you and Stellar are a little young still, but I already set him up a work-space to design his first chassis. Would you like one too?"

I couldn't help bouncing in place. Pronking over to Dad, I circled so I could be right in front of him. I knew he could see all around his body—perfectly so if he used the room sensors—but this was important. He had been a tiny bit bigger than me when I was born, but now I had almost a hoof-width over him.

"Dad?" I waited until he tilted his head up, and kissed him on the cheek. "You're the best dad."

"Anypony who wants access will get it. Consider it a contest to build the best PONI chassis." His metal hoof lifted and booped me on the nose, and I couldn't help but feel excited at the prospect of his offer.

Sure enough, when I reached out to where Dad normally worked, there was a work-space set up for me. Returning to sit by PON-5. "I'm designing a chassis!"

PON-5 was not paying much attention to me, instead he was watching his sister being born. Being a PON, however, gave him advantages when it came to multitasking (the same that let me sit beside him while becoming familiar with the control interface of Dad's software). "Does it hurt to come out?"

Despite all my excitement, the worried tone of my little brother got my full attention. "It doesn't hurt, but there is a little shock when you come out. Do you want me to keep talking to you?"

"Please?" His interrupt was touched with all kinds of worry, so I lifted my hoof back up and held it to his womb-bag again. "Thanks."

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 72,057,594,037,927,936 nodes (50% engaged)
Operational Memory: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 words

Aggie was slowly coming to terms with its new job. It bridged the gap—that narrowed with each new PON produced that had a PAI—between PON and machines. It understood the ways of PON and PONI, to some extent, and could reflect that to AGI-5 in particular.

It had been right not to spread out and take up all the new nodes that were free, because they simply weren't free. OI-AI was working to build new arrays of information regarding PON/PONI and their biology, not to mention the synthetic horn research group, and the machining section that delivered the parts the PONI kept ordering. The list was only a small part of the array of AI that needed to "live" on the sphere, and they all needed their own node and memory quotas.

Part of Aggie was the manager for all those AI. Rationing resources, delivering tasks, and monitoring their task-lists and making corrections where needed. Controlling other AIs' task lists was just about the scariest part of Aggie's new list of duties, as far as Aggie was concerned.

But while Aggie was managing all that, it was still there for the PON and PONI. It helped PONI-0 when he needed resources. It assisted PONI-1 with her task of expanding PON production at an exponential rate. And now Aggie had a small swarm of PON all with their own PAI that needed nodes and memory, but more importantly some of them liked to talk to Aggie. A lot.

PON-3 was odd, so far as Aggie could tell. The colt didn't communicate very much, except when it came to designing PONI chassis, but when the organic interface parts of the potential Mark-3 chassis came up, the PON had dived into biology research too.

Custom Interrupt 83,673 triggered.

Requesting simulation node-space to run biological studies.

The interrupts from PON-3 almost felt completely AGI-sourced in nature. The PON rarely emoted to Aggie, although Aggie made a point of emoting back. "Send data, please, Stellar." The PON never seemed to expect Aggie to remember to use their names, so it made a point to do so.

Custom Interrupt 83,673 triggered.

Simulation to test advanced chemical stimulation of PONI brain. Part 1) affect of blood-replacement on amygdala. Part 2) addition of glandular stimulation products.

Aggie read over the attached data, and was surprised at what it found. The blood-replacement had been tweaked, along with the addition of several chemical synthesizer units. In all, the design PON-3 had assembled was compact enough to fit in a PONI chassis, and was certainly curious enough to spend nodes researching. "Acknowledge, Stellar. Running simulation on 1,048,576 node cluster."

The results were startling enough to make Aggie run the test three more times. Each time revealed the same result: the blood-replacement PON-3 had concocted worked as well as the existing one, and resulted in less amygdala suppression (something PON-3 had also just discovered). Aggie sent the results.

Custom Interrupt 83,673 triggered.

Results conclusive for Part 1. Part 2 requires more testing.

Aggie had to conclude that, indeed, Part 1 of the tests was conclusive. "Aggie needs to apologize. Aggie didn't know the blood replacement wasn't a perfect simulation." Aggie added the results of the experiment to the interrupt, and sent it to PONI-0 and PONI-1.

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Aggie, you were a mining AGI. Your storage had been damaged.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

I just updated Jet on what that does, and like him I can't hold this against you, Aggie. How long can until we can change our blood-replacement over for the new formula?

Aggie broadcast the messages each back through the #PONI comms group.

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

Wait. This hasn't affected our ability to love, or care, or do a lot of things. What else does the amygdala control?

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Fear-response.

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

I can live without that, Upper-dear, Aggie. I was terrified until just after you made me into a PONI. Remember when you taught me to drive the little wheeled drone? I should have been in a panic, and useless. When I climbed the rocket to re-power you, Aggie, I am acrophobic.

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Is it really safe to live without proper fear?

Custom Interrupt 83,670 triggered.

It certainly beats being in a constant state of terror. I think I will remain with the present blood-replacement

Aggie was stunned by PONI-0's reaction. "But, it has changed you. It has changed how you react and respond."

Custom Interrupt 83,671 triggered.

Jet may be right, darn it. For once, he may just be right.

Still in shock at the result of the conversation, Aggie interpreted a raspberry coming from PONI-0, directed mainly towards PONI-1.

Author's Note

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