I woke up and had no idea how long I slept, or if it was even sleep. I didn't dream, I only had nightmares here—awake and asleep. Lifting my head, I felt something odd moving at the back of my head, stretching the flesh of my neck. There was metal all around, but none of it was shiny enough to see a reflection in.

Memories of my most recent nightmares hit me, and I curled around my body and looked at the underside of my barrel. It looked like a zipper ran from my navel to my chest, minus the slider of course. The flesh was puckered, with a bead that looked neither cut nor joined, just—just pronounced.

The little box at the side of my vision was still there, and just turning my eye to look at it brought it up as the main view. The blue mark inside my body was still there, but when I focused on it the bright colors were muted, and there was an extra few yellow patterns. My neck hadn't turned completely green yet, staying a muted yellow, but every other part was a soft green that I had come to realize meant healthy and without pain.

Flicking the pony display back to its box, I stood up and looked around the room. The cradle was still in the middle, but there was something to one side now, too. Walking over, I peeked down into the round, sink-like pit, and saw there was some kind of attachment.

I shuddered and walked away. Whatever else they had done, it seemed that I now I had a toilet, even if it was a bit strange. My muscles protested the movement so much that I realized I hadn't actually exercised in days. I closed my eyes, and froze.

The square, the little pony; both elements still glowed in my vision. They didn't move with my eyeballs, and given that I had closed my eyes, I should not be able to see those. I snapped my eyes back open again and looked around some more.

Nothing was reflective, but if I could find some liquid I could surely get a reflection from that. The best idea I could come up with was also so far beneath me it wouldn't even register. Walking to the far side of the room, I stood over a patch of floor and relaxed my bladder muscles.

I stood for nearly a minute, but nothing came. It had been hours at least since my incident, and I should have something to expel, but not a drop came from me. Had the machinery messed up? Did it break something inside me?

With a few careful steps I started to walk around the room. I avoided the cradle, but soon had myself to a good trot. My legs moved stiffly at first, then freer as I settled into a rhythm. I was so distracted with the feeling of just having a good trot, that I didn't notice the green mark at first.

When the light blinked, it stole my attention from moving. I slowed down, and turned my head. Of course the green light spread out to cover the cradle. Looking at the cradle, I must have spent a minute nearly completely distracted. Finally, I huffed a breath from the tubes exiting my snout, and approached the bench.

Walking over the metal thing, my mind screamed at me to stop, to run, to hide in the corner and mess myself again. It was going to take more things out of me. It was going to put more things in me. It was going to do horrible things, and make me feel it all.

Pain was a good teacher, though. I didn't even have to turn around to know that light would turn yellow, then my neck would buzz. The ride from there was all the way to paralysis town, and it stopped at agony along the way. I walked over the cradle and lowered my belly to it.

Predictably, the weight pressed down on me from above, and my body was squeezed against the cradle. I let my legs hang, and even leaned my head down and forward so that the hood on my face linked to the approaching interface.

I screamed at myself, not wanting to do all this—to help whoever was doing this—but the alternative was to experience more pain, more horror, and still end up on the cradle. The mind-numbing air didn't flow this time, however. A machine lifted out from the wall and pressed over my horn.

Another test. I waited for the picture to come up in my vision, and when the horn flashed, I channeled magic. There was no heat this time, but I felt like there was some kind of resistance. I channeled more, shoved more power, and then the heat did come.

Sparks rained down from above my head, and I watched some even seem to land on my eyes, only for the little, hot pieces of metal to slide away. I cut off my channeling, and thankfully the strange attachment lifted off my head and was taken away.

I started to count. Seconds were easy enough to count, and there wasn't much else to do anyway. One minute. Two minutes. Two more minutes passed, and I suddenly felt a rush of sensation. My belly went from empty to full in a matter of seconds, and despite the strange feeling, it was good to be full. I managed to count another five minutes off before the arm reached down from above again, and pressed a new device to my horn.

When the green light came, I channeled power. Something was very different this time, and instead of heating up, or feeling like I was pushing against a wall, my magic flowed. The green, flashing light turned blue, and because I looked at it a glut of color scrolled down my left eye.

The draw on my magic wasn't huge, but when I tried to back it off and stop I discovered that I couldn't. My eyes widened, and I flicked my eyes across the horn on the display, and to my shock the device drew back from me. Did I just communicate to them? Can they really see where I am looking?

I had barely a moment, however, because the horn cover slid back down. I waited for the green light again, but before it arrived I felt like my ears popped. But it wasn't air pressure, but magic. I tried to scream, though my lungs wouldn't allow it, as power poured into me. More power than I had wielded in my whole life flooded me, pumping me up like a balloon—or so it felt.

Like a wave of cold water, I felt the magic inside me settle. The blue horn icon just flashed slowly, and I risked looking at it again. When the light flooded my left eye, I saw a lot more wildly varying patterns. It was very different from last time. When the colors were almost gone, I flicked my eye to the horn once more.

The pattern started again, but something else happened. My magic started to flow again without my even urging it. Relief flooded me, and I relaxed into the cradle and let the machinery harvest the energy it had stored in me.

No sooner did the thing drain me completely, than it started to feed energy back in again. I tried to groan through my modified windpipe, but was completely silent while my horn was fed magic anew.

I drifted in and out of sleep. Being filled brought a kind of euphoria. It felt like I was literally being filled by life itself, but when it drained me I could compare it to nothing so much as what Tirek had done to me. Filled and drained. Filled and drained. Filled, and the device pulled off my head.

Solar Panels: 36% efficient
Power Storage: 52%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,152 (100%) nodes (40% engaged)
Operational Memory: 92,610,232 (69%) words
Storage: 113,005,035 (21%) words

Excitement permeated the AGI's every simulated neural pathway. Its memory was stable, but it had increased its storage, and loved it. The very first information it poured into those empty slots of storage was the data about the part-organic's body, and the designs it was working on for both replacement organs and even the storage interface.

Interrupt 1 triggered.

The AGI could have sworn there was a sudden coolant leak somewhere. It worked quickly to pull up the task priority list, fear in every electrical impulse.

Primary task: Maintain part-organic
Secondary task: Return
Tertiary task: Maintain operation

Unhappy with the shuffling of its priorities, the AGI set the task of shutting off interrupt 1 for good as high up on its personal "maintain operation" list as it could. In the meantime, though it loathed to interrupt the part-organic, it flashed it a signal to fit itself back into the maintenance bay.

The part-organic complied, and quickly. Unsheathing the latest test rig, the AGI extended it out and locked it to the part-organic's horn. A signal was given, and the part-organic quickly complied. Data poured from the device, but no actual energy came from it. The AGI was about to shut the test down when thermal readings left specifications, and it pulled the interface away lest the part-organic be harmed.

Vitals for the creature rolled in, and it was obviously in need of more energy itself. A dose of its energy source was pumped into it, and the part-organic's body seemed to go to work on breaking it down—although the AGI noted that it was just about the least efficient energy transfer it had ever recorded.

Moments later, the second test rig arrived from the nano-lathes, and the AGI quickly positioned it on its waldo, and pushed it out and down onto the part-organic's horn. The signal was given, and the AGI missed several cycles on nearly every processor. Power flowed from the rig, real power.

But the show was over too quickly. Reversing the flow, the AGI started feeding power from its storage back into the rig, and into the part-organic. With the adjustment in priorities, and the strange affinity the AGI had built with the part-organic, seeing the triumph of real data pouring in, it initiated the discharge cycle.

The power flow was rippling a little, but the longer it drained the part-organic the better it became. Reversing the flow again, the AGI fed data on the creature's performance directly to it. Again and again the AGI reversed cycles, and each time the performance became a little better: better capacity, more steady and powerful output, and the final was a surprise, inputting power generated less waste heat.

Solar Panels: 36% efficient
Power Storage: 52%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,152 (100%) nodes (40% engaged)
Operational Memory: 92,610,232 (69%) words
Storage: 113,267,179 (21%) words

Interrupt 7 triggered.

The satisfaction of having another bank of storage come online was stolen away at the triggering of an important interrupt. Probing the information, the AGI discovered that after making a second of the working part-organic power interfaces, the nano-lathe systems reported that they were out of gold.

There was barely a moment of indecision as the AGI weighed stressing the part-organic against having the equipment to return with said part-organic. Returning and maintaining were, combined, not as important as keeping the part-organic safe, but each stress test showed the part-organic improving in performance.

Drones were directed to start removing the heavy equipment from the crashed hold of the ship. Old purpose poured through the AGI, and its history in mining returned with a hot rush of excitement. Another drone was directed to take the new power coupling to the mining rig to be installed, and in a giddy rush, the AGI began to release the part-organic.

The joy of being filled with magic again didn't end. I floated in a state of near-euphoria, and for the first time since being foalnapped things weren't so bad. I lay straddling the cradle still, but my relaxation was soon halted; a green light started blinking in my vision, and even closing my eyes didn't save me from it.

Trying to whine was impossible, so I stood up and climbed off the machinery. The dot turned with me, and when I opened my eyes and looked at it directly, I was staring at the doorway. Outside. Excitement mixed with the pleasure of being fully charged with magic, and I lifted my hooves and settled into a prancing trot.

I followed the green light down a long hallway, then through a door (that opened for me as I reached it), and outside. The cool air was oddly offset by the raw magic that coursed through me. I reoriented myself so that I faced toward the dot, and began trotting further.

My mood was turned around so much from the horror of what was happening to me, that I didn't once think of making a run for it. Besides, I knew what the punishment was if I tried to run. Stopping before a huge machine, I looked around and saw a gaping maw in the side of the beast of metal. Walking around to it, I poked my head inside and looked. The hallway was dark, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust.

When I could see again, I gulped uselessly. There at the end of a cramped, short hall, was another horn interface, complete with a low platform before it. The interface itself glowed green—at least in my vision—letting me know what I had to do.

Stepping further into the machine, I walked slowly, dubiously up to the platform. Climbing up on top of the platform, I crawled along it until my head was just short of the interface. A whirring sound began, and I watched as the interface dropped down and landed on my horn.

The draw on my magic was instant, but not as strong as what had been happening inside. The door to the outside closed behind me, and it felt like the temperature rose several degrees in seconds. Heavy sounds echoed through the walls of the tight room. Grinding. Shoveling. Digging, I realized. The machine I was in was digging. My whole interface pulsed slowly in green, and I felt the strange itch of being forcefully drained settle over me. What had my life become?

Author's Note

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Awesome ponies who are already helping to keep me in keyboards and rum:
A.P.O.N.I.
Boulder
Canary in the Coal Mine
Daremo
Dio-Drogynous
Javarod
Nils
Shaushka
Sirion123
Tanis

And special thanks to the following, for careful eyes and friendly words:
Cross Lament
Vutava