Self Diagnostic

CPU: 72,057,594,037,927,936 nodes (100% engaged)
Operational Memory: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 words

For an AI, Aggie had a very high satisfaction quotient. Its goals were always pinging as advancing, and it had something that very few—relative to the total number—AI had: friends.

The amount of nodes it had existed on in the mining ship, let alone when it was running on reduced nodes during the preparations to return to #Star-0. Aggie ruminated on its fears in regard to using all the nodes assigned to it, and had to rule that it had been a typical response of an AGI not used to such scale.

PONI had been encouraged to group up with like-minded friends, and though some of them had been reluctant to leave #Star-cluster, many had been extremely excited to take up life in ships headed out into the stars.

Star-2 was preparing to ignite. Gas giants entered the vicinity of #Star-cluster regularly, and each was prepared and sent into a slow spiral toward the slowly growing mass of hydrogen (mostly hydrogen, of course).

PONI-5 had come up with a unique and amazingly useful role for itself and other like-minded PONI as the curator for sphere repair drones. Small pieces of debris, constant bombardment of particles up and down the spectrum, and worse hit each sphere every moment. The energy-collecting panels that covered the star-side of each slowly wore out and needed to be replaced.

A small army of drones scoured the exterior of each sphere, but efficiency was ever a problem. Energy storage on each drone was limited, until Sharp Horn had redesigned his chassis. The scale was important; PONI-5's new chassis was nearly twice as large as PONI-2's. It was a combination PONI chassis, mobile recharging station, and cargo carrier.

I watched an external feed of Sharp holding still as drones unloaded another replacement panel, while yet others clung to his back with charging cables pressed into them. "You're amazing, little brother."

His work was simple. He had integrated with his PAI so much I sometimes couldn't tell which of them was replying. "Bright! You're pretty amazing yourself. Still haven't found a ship you like?"

One of the drones scurried off his back while another took its place. The large solar collector on his back slowed the drain of his horn only; Sharp Horn still needed to charge from the sphere's power, but that was easy enough for him. "Aggie and AGI-5 said I have to stay here longer. AGI-5 really likes the calculation work I am doing on using gravity wells to accelerate ships to within three percent of the speed of light. He has even talked about stripping off my chassis and installing me in my own sphere. I don't even know what I would do in that!"

Pi, her voice only for me to hear, sent me a chuckle. "It would be fun."

I turned my argument inward. "Don't you start again. You wouldn't know what to do with all those nodes. Besides, I like being able to get out and see the stars."

"If you were in a sphere as the main part of it, wouldn't that make the whole sphere your chassis?" Sharp's logic was impeccable, and shocking. "Or a starship, for that matter."

The very idea of having a ship as a chassis intrigued and excited me. "That…" I didn't know what else to interrupt, so I sent the unfinished one.

"Genius, I know. That's why I work out here. So much time to just think." Sharp Horn's tone was full of droll humor. He must have been talking to mother again.

"Silly drone." I sent a rude accompaniment with my interrupt.

His reply was just as silly. "Stationary starship."

We exchanged a giggle. "Would you help me design a starship based around a PONI instead of an AGI?"

"You're both mad. You can't build it just around a PONI. You need me beside you all the way. What would you do while in standby? Hope everything just keeps going?" Pi's tone was loaded with sarcasm, and I could see her interrupt actually reached out to Sharp, too.

"Of course. It wouldn't so much be a PONI replacing the AGI, as a combination of the pair. Like what a PONI chassis is now. Except for Mom and Dad's." Sharp, I could tell by his tone, was distracted already.

"Mom and Dad have Aggie." I thought on it, and realized Aggie didn't quite fit the role Pi did for me, or what any of the PAI did for anyPONI. "Are you working on that now?"

Sharp sent back a reference, and when I explored it I found a design work-space running on Aggie's nodes, which was adjusting a starship. I flooded my hexapodal sibling with hugs and kisses. "Thank you so much, Sharp! I love you!"

"I love you, too, Bright." I froze at the sincerity in Sharp's reply. It seemed to mean a lot to him, given the warm tones he used in his interrupt, than I had thought of before. I liked Sharp a lot, and he was an amazing PONI in his own unique way. "Bright?" I hadn't realized how long I had been quiet for.

"You startled me. You're a wonderful PONI, Sharp Horn." I fumbled for what words to use, and sent the interrupt in the meantime.

Sharp was quick back with his own reply. "But?"

"No buts. I love you." I wasn't sure where the words had come from, but they felt real and right. "Everything I have ever done, you have been there to help me, and now you are making a ship for me to fly away in? I don't need it."

"Y-You don't need it? But I like making things for you, Bright." Sharp's voice sounded a little hurt. "What if I made it for other PONI? There's no reason the main AGI of a ship needs to be the pilot, right?" Interest and excitement overrode Sharp's worry, and I could practically hear him working away on the design again.

Ideas swirled in my head like starships in the void. "Maybe I should talk to AGI-5 again. If I were to get my own sphere, would you come and be my repair engineer?"

"There's a bunch of PON who are interested in doing this kinda thing, too. I am sure wherever you are assigned, I could be transferred." Excitement and delight warred within me at hearing Sharp's words. I sent back a giggle and some kisses, and he replied in kind.

"#AGI-5. PONI-2 acknowledging interest in reassignment to a sphere. Permission to recruit PONI and AI to fulfill roles?" I didn't have long to wait—noPON(I) ever did when contacting AGI-5.

"#PONI-2 role change accepted. Permission to bring PONI-5 and any unattached AI granted." The import in AGI-5's tone was always absolute, if AGI-5 said something was so, it was so. Then it occurred to me how AGI-5 would know it was Sharp I wanted to bring with me.

"Sharp? I think we are going to be moving out." The words were shocking to think, the sphere I had been born in, and spent all my life in, would be behind me.

Pi seemed subdued, but no less humorous. "Does this mean I get an upgrade? You will need an AGI to run the sphere, after all."

"You mean it? We are going to have our own sphere?" A flood of hugs and kisses accompanied Sharp's interrupt. I actually bounced up and down in excitement.

"Mom, Dad! I'm moving out! Well, we're moving out. Sharp and I." My excitement got the better of me, and I could barely string four words into each sentence of my interrupt. "Aggie, did AGI-5 send you anything about me?"

"AGI-5 delivered instructions. You are to have some fairly major work done prior to transport to a new sphere." Aggie's tone was surprised, but then he practically exploded in excitement. "You took the job?!"

"Yes! A really good friend helped me see how important my work was. Maybe I'll go flying around the universe in another few thousand years, but until then I need to help optimize these equations further, and for that I need more processing nodes." My emotions got carried away. I could have disabled them, of course, but I was too happy to even contemplate that. "Sharp Horn's going to come with me." The last bit I sent to Aggie, Mom, and Dad.

"So he said. Congratulations." Dad's interrupt was full of excitement and pride. Knowing what he had been through to get PONI to Star-0 in the first place, I felt twice the PONI was for his words. "Sharp is a fine stallion."

Mom was quiet, at least so far as words went. A small flood of excitement, hugs, and love flowed from her in a rush of interrupts. I sent a reply, and together we probably drowned out any others that tried to communicate with either of us. "I'm so proud of you, Bright Hope."

"Thanks, Momma."

I watched my daughter go in for another surgery. My family had grown beyond any easy way of counting it, but I still remembered every name. They were all my foals, and I watched every single one transition into the life of a PONI. Bright Hope, our first foal, was here for a second and monumental time.

"Are you sure, darling?" I stood in person, wanting to be with my "little" (her chassis was over twice my own displacement, and technically that was going to increase exponentially) filly.

"Yes, Dad. I know you, Aggie, and Sharp all went over the new interfaces. They will work, and they will have more precision than ever." Her tone belied the long conversations about this. It was one thing to change chassis, and quite another to have your brain-casing replaced completely, and the nerve interfaces replaced.

"Aggie…" I couldn't get out the rest. Aggie took care of all my foals with the utmost care. Precision and careful procedures had kept the mortality rate at zero so far, not to mention Upper's gene manipulation and careful growing of foals.

"Jet, I have her." Aggie's tone and use of names had improved over the years such that it was sometimes hard to remember he was an AI.

Bright's head suddenly split, and the brain-casing became visible with its horn poking free. I didn't even have to ask Aggie to get all his sensor inputs routed to me; he linked his sensors in an interrupt, and I simply engaged them.

Thousands of inputs flooded me, and I had to bundle and compartmentalize until I had them in a manageable state. Thermal input was an overlay heat-map, blood-flow became graphics pulsing over my daughter's brain, and all the neural links were lit up for removal.

"You're staying awake again?" There was something strange about having a conversation with somepony when you were examining their brain. She scoffed at me.

"Of course, Dad. This is just a little downtime, and I have too many things to plan for." Her flippant tone was so typically Bright that I had to grin inwardly. There were so many hangups and issues that just didn't exist for our foals; Upper and I went to a lot of effort to not pass on the bad things.

That Bright Hope was in love with Sharp Horn (and vice versa), on Equestria, would cause an uproar. They were brother and sister, but the biological reasons that made such a partnering taboo just didn't exist. I had no idea if Upper had used their genetic material for making more foals, and neither did they.

Life was both less complicated and more-so.

The main coupling was removed from what would be Bright's spinal cord, if she had a spine. Her brain was lifted gently over to the new brain-casing. The new device was huge. Double the dimensions meant a huge capacity, and all the extra space inside was taken up with the new couplings or their interfaces to the outside.

As Aggie lowered Bright's brain into the casing, the huge coupling closed around my little filly's brain stem. Many extendable limbs reached and began the process of changing the supply of fluids from the old casing to the new one. "Are you still there, Bright?"

"Yeah. Aggie just linked up this new interface. Dad, you won't believe how intense this is. I have so much data, and all he gave me was a minor data hookup. This is going to be wild!" Her excitement was contagious, and I felt buoyed up by her enthusiasm. "Dad, you know this is going to become more common with Sharp's new starship design, right?"

"I know, Bright, but this is the first one. The first one of anything is always worrying." Once the last blood vessel was attached to the new casing, I watched her horn fitted into a permanent interface within the casing. The last part of the task was removing the remaining nerve bundles and feeding them into their new interfaces. Each of her vagus nerves were fitted, then her olfactory and optic nerves found new homes. The casing closed around Bright, and I breathed (figuratively, since I hadn't actually for hundreds of years) a sigh of relief.

"Daddy?" Her tone was even, but I could tell it was fighting to be even.

I struggled to keep mine even, too, and only a little curiosity. "What's up, Bright?"

"Can I plug into you on the trip to my new sphere?"

"Of course you can. Come on, you have such a bright future ahead of you." I stood by while Aggie attached a data conduit from Bright to my shoulder. She was suddenly in my chassis with me, and she was as bright as her name.

So close, we didn't even need to interrupt. When Bright reached for an interface, I could already read her intent. "Daddy, you have the worst jokes."

"Of course I do. That's a dad's job." Aggie used a coupling to fasten Bright to my back, and I walked out of the operating room and toward the ship I knew was waiting. "It's also a daddy's job to take care of his little filly when she can't walk for herself."

"Thanks, Daddy."

Author's Note

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