There wasn't a nightmare this time. There wasn't anything except a constantly changing pattern of colors, smells, and tastes that all blended together into a whole, and kept playing into me despite my state.

I woke on the floor, and despite being able to figure out the time, I ignored it. My legs were still sore from what the machines had done to me, but the action had a clear finality to it: my life was theirs. And now so was Hers.

My eyelids, or whatever the machine had done to them, twitched, and the darkness revealed I hadn't been moved, and was still lying beside the cradle. Upper Crust's leg still dangled just before my face.

Pushing, I lifted my body up, though something felt odd about my legs. Pins and needles seemed to poke at my hooves, but I ignored it for something more important. I looked at Upper. She slept peacefully, but if I had any insight into this place it was that sleep is almost never a release.

To my surprise, I saw a pony appear on my right eye, floating above and over the top of Upper Crust. It was green, with blue parts inside it. I leaned forward and nuzzled at her shoulder, wanting to feel her fur. Turning my cheek to the side—the one where cables weren't exiting—I rubbed against her, and treasured the sensation of touch. The pony image on my display remained, and I quickly went through each of the blue parts, now able to recognize what each did by some of the pattern they generated on my third eye.

Upper Crust had a replaced heart, lungs, and the new device that I hadn't been able to identify. Her snout hadn't been modified like mine yet, but there was a status on her horn. Leaving off my rubbing of her cheek, I walked around the cradle and saw the cables on her right side. One bundle of conduits trailed up to Upper's horn, and I knew there would be the implanted ring there, like the machines had done to me.

The pattern on my third eye shifted, and I saw Upper's shoulder twitch. Shaking off the odd feeling in my legs, I walked around to face her, and watched as two circles on the uniform mask faded, showing Upper's eyes through the material.

We stared at each other for nearly five minutes. She gazed at me, and I returned it. Just by seeing each other, I felt relief and could see she felt it too. We were together. But a green flash caught my eye, and I saw that the charging interface was indicating that I needed to be charged.

Lifting my forelegs up, I couldn't deny the odd feeling of pins and needles had spread up my legs a little. Upper made room, climbing off the table and watched as I took my place. As I lay down, I stretched my head forward; I knew all too well what the consequences were for not complying, now.

Pressure came down on my back, I felt the machines connects to the mask covering my face, the horn interface slid down and began pouring energy into me, but the new thing was a sensation of a connection at my neck. My third eye showed many changes, and—knowing the counting pattern from the time—I worked out that several values were going down. The sensation of my stomach filling revealed another pattern to be counting up.

If I could make a single vocalization then, it would have been a gasp. Something clicked in my brain, and the patterns for numbers no longer looked like patterns for numbers, they were just numbers—and those numbers were everywhere.

My third eye was a sea of numbers floating around. Everywhere I "looked" with that strange new sense, numbers appeared. Time. Power. Contents of my stomach. Several numbers that seemed to empty when my neck was connected, which considering I hadn't urinated in days, was likely something to do with that.

Each process of my body was being reduced to numbers. It was both majestic and frightening. The charge on my horn rose much faster than last time, and as I watched it reach full, it poured yet more in. Each time it charged me must be increasing how much I can store.

The more energy that filled me, the more one number went down until, just as I was starting to feel an odd strain in my horn, it reached zero—the flow of power stopped. The tingling in my horn now distracted me enough that I barely noticed the pins and needles in my legs. The pressure on my back released, and the connection to my snout was disengaged.

Upper Crust was at my side, pulling me off the cradle. I slumped sideways a little, and barely got my legs under me in time to stand on them. I hunted through the numbers, looking for anything that seemed to change as I moved my legs, but there was nothing.

Lifting my head up, fighting the odd weighty feel of my horn, I looked at Upper and tried to smile around the mess the machines had made of my face. A green light appeared in my vision, and I knew what the machines wanted: it was time to be their energy source.

Turning obediently for the door, I watched as a green pattern lit up Upper's right eye. Rather than aiming for the door, however, I could see—when she turned her head—that it aimed for the cradle. I wanted to plead with the machines, beg them to leave her alone and do what they would to me, instead. But they were machines. Machines didn't reason, they just did things.

I marched out the door, turning only to see Upper climbing onto the cradle. I had to wonder at how long I had been out that she seemed compliant. Tracing my memory back to the last time I had seen the time, I realized that it had been a full day. A shudder ran through me at the hard lessons the machines had taught me in just a day.

Somewhere along the way to the mining machine, the pins and needles in my legs stopped. I trudged on, feeling a little better that at least one problem had been solved. Entering the mining rig, I climbed up on the platform and pressed my horn forward.

The moment the interface connected I felt a heavy drain on my magic. But that drain steadily reduced, and finally I relaxed and watched the numbers.

An hour went by. Then another. I had worked out more numbers, the one that measured the power flow rate on my horn, another that measured the flow of my blood—I discovered because it had adjusted after my walk out, and then again when I started to do some stretched—and more still.

It wasn't until the fifth hour that I noticed a new green pony appear on the side of my right eye, and when I looked at it a different set of data came to me. Upper Crust's data flowed out, and I smiled to see it.

I became so engrossed in watching Upper's magic charge and discharge, that I didn't realize my own was almost spent. When the interface drew back from me, I flicked over to my own status and saw that I still had ten percent left. Of course, I realized, it was using that energy to help keep me alive.

The urge to yawn hit me, and my chest seemed to jerk and clutch at my missing lungs. Lifting the leg on my right side, I started to slip off the platform, and my leg folded under me.

Tumbling sideways, I tried to call out in shock. Pain indicated that I had fallen, and my green pony got some new red parts. Struggling with an odd, new pain, I noticed something strange: my legs flickered from green to black.

Solar Panels: 43% efficient
Power Storage: 29%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,152 (100%) nodes (40% engaged)
Operational Memory: 92,610,232 (69%) words
Storage: 133,976,555 (24%) words

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

If a completely synthetic organism could tap dance, the AGI would have worked on creating a new drone to do just that. Its new part-organic was faring quite well, and was adapting to its inorganic additions, yet had only required minimal correction by the training AI. Added to that fact, the initial part-organic was now resting from its ordeal.

The network of devices the AGI had installed in the new part-organic were working perfectly well. Scans and diagnostics ran nearly constantly, and while they did the AGI also discovered the body parts that were vastly different between the two part-organics, that the training AI was insisting would be their reproductive organs.

When the initial part-organic—that the AGI was now labeling PON-0, or part-organic-network-zero—roused, the AGI spun its organs up a little more, bringing it to full wakefulness. Its mate, still on the maintenance table, was not being engaged by any machinery. Working on advice from the training AI, the AGI let the pair socialize for a few moments before sending a signal to PON-1 to leave the station, and PON-0 to enter it.

The changeover was perfect, and the AGI was proud of its new acquisitions. When PON-0 engaged with the maintenance station, it expelled some waste its various filters had built up, took on more organic fuel, and began charging its internal reservoir. When PON-0 passed their most recent maximum power, the AGI recalculated how much they could hold based on the rate at which they could still accept power.

A fifty percent increase in power storage spoke well for letting PON discharge their energy manually from time to time. The AGI disconnected PON-0 from the maintenance bay, and gave them instructions to take them to the power coupling at the mine.

PON-1, however, needed more work to bring it up to standard with PON-0, so it was instructed to climb onto the maintenance bay again. When both PON followed commands, the AGI fairly chortled to itself, even powering down some of its CPU nodes, now that less attention needed to be paid.

Mining was what the AGI had been built for. It had been dispatched, or so its storage told it, to seek out planets, moons, and asteroids particularly rich in ultra-high proton-count elements. It had failed in this mission when a strong force had grabbed its ship from the sky and thrown it towards the planet it was now on.

The planet was unremarkable except for the strange organics on it that had such an immense power density. The AGI's mission had quickly been changed, and now it was mining for equipment to repair itself, secure the PON, and build a craft capable of getting them all back to civilized space.

So it mined.

The moment PON-0's power rating reaching its last deci, the AGI shut down the mine and initiated disconnection. It didn't bother instructing PON-0 to return, relying instead on the information that the training AI had given it regarding mated species. PON-0 began to move, and climb from its position, when it fell.

Running a quick test, the AGI detected nothing wrong, but poked again, and yet a third time; which is how it discovered that the nerves in PON-0's motor units were non-functional. It sent this as a status to PON-0, and quickly dispatched a drone to its location.

PON-1 was instructed to vacate the maintenance bay, while PON-0 was slowly brought back. The AGI lifted PON-0 up and set them on the maintenance table, but their limbs didn't hang right. To the AGI's surprise, PON-1 assisted using its energy to carefully lift and move PON-0's body into place.

The intricate use of power surprised the AGI, and it filed the information away to be processed later. Clamping PON-0 down, it ran further tests, and found strange blockages in PON-0's limbs. The problem was obvious, now that the AGI could study the effects. When it had defended itself by shutting the pump in PON-0 down, the fluid in PON-0 began to thicken, and when pumping resumed, blockages had formed. Cycling the pump to high instantaneous pressure and back down again proved insufficient, and the AGI realized that the ends of PON-0's motive units were completely non-functional.

Solar Panels: 45% efficient
Power Storage: 15%

Self Diagnostic

CPU: 2,097,152 (100%) nodes (100% engaged)
Operational Memory: 92,610,232 (69%) words
Storage: 133,976,555 (24%) words

The AGI spooled all its nodes to full speed, and set about designing a replacement. While it planned, it had to work quickly to stop the spread of what seemed to be dangerous substances. The pump was working overtime to filter out more blockage matter from PON-0's fluid, while the AGI began with the front-right leg.

PON-1 was instructed to move back while the laser cutter went to work. One limb hit the floor. Then another. A third. Finally, the fourth damaged motive unit hit the ground, and the wounds of each were cauterized.

It had been a near thing, but the AGI had left some room while it worked, cutting away still-living mass to protect PON-0.

Adjusting PON-0's informational display, the AGI turned more nodes over to the task of designing replacements. The presence of PON-1, collecting the four discarded motive units, surprised the AGI. It immediately sent PON-1 directions to the waste disposal unit.

Author's Note

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