An Overnight Friendship Study

Doctor Rutherford Sawyer gave a soft sigh as he adjusted his square, rimless glasses. He passed a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair as he checked his watch. He was nearly halfway through the workday now, it was about One o'Clock, and that meant…

“Doctor Sawyer, I brought your lunch.” A gentle, kind voice piped up as the door to his office opened. A purple equine, standing about at the height of his waist at her withers and decorated with a horn walked into his office. Carried in her glowing, telekinetic grasp was a small foam tray, which she gently deposited onto his desk. “I know you enjoy the meatloaf from the cafeteria, so I made sure to grab some for you before it got cold so you wouldn't have to wait in line,” She said, beaming up at you sweetly, seeming quite proud of herself.

He gave her a small smile and gently reached over to run his hand through her mane, petting her, which she leaned into appreciatively. “Thank you Twilight, I appreciate your kindness,” he said, stopping his rubbing and leaving her with a slightly disappointed look on her face as he pulled the tray into the forefront of his desk, pushing his laptop to one side.

“It’s nothing, really! You are the only one in this office who has the decency to treat me like a person.” She said as she took a seat in one of the chairs meant for guests in your office and watched you eat, seeming quite content.

Indeed, this office had been utilizing Bio Droids as a method of data storage and menial labor for years now, ever since the old Mark One days. And sadly a lot of the staff, especially some of the senior employees still saw Droids as little more than walking talking masses of labor-producing property.

So, a little better than they saw the interns.

But jokes aside, He gave her a sympathetic look. “Of course I do! You’ve been a part of this project for longer than most of the Natties on the payroll,” he said with a small gesture as he used the somewhat disparaging term for individuals who were born naturally and not generated from Biostock. “If anything, you should be considered my senior, I’m just here to keep you company.”

Twilight gave him a mollified look at this but protested. “Ruth, you are a well-respected and experienced doctorate holder, and a valuable member of the team. Sure, you may also be in charge of my well being after the previous person in your position elected to retire, but that does not mean you are simply-”

“Twilight, this is a Bio-Engineering research facility. I have a Doctorate in Education. They hired me specifically to handle the transfer of your ownership to me because none of them could be bothered with the simple task of making sure you were looked after and didn't want to look unprofessional by having a janitor do it.”

Indeed, Twilight was a Mark Two Model, an MLP-TLS-SRC Unit, Designed to specialize in the Storage and Recall of information, as well as to make intelligent deductions and calculations well beyond the capability of a normal human, even aided by any sort of digital computing pr predictive model generating device within the price range of her model.

As a Mark Two, she was an older unit produced before the modern laws regarding ethical production and utilization of Bio-Droids were fully implemented. She was, as all Mark Twos were, chemically bonded to whatever human was registered through the appropriate memetic commands as her owner and would become listless and anxious if separated from them for too long.

Therefore whenever the previous owner would retire or quit, ownership would be transferred to a new member of the team, who would be placed in charge of monitoring them and ensuring they were able to achieve optimal performance. After several of these transfers, the upper management had decided it would be more efficient if they had a dedicated team member for this task rather than simply allocating time from an existing team members schedule to perform the “necessary maintenance” of keeping Twilight company.

“Twilight coughed slightly at this, looking a bit sheepish “Well, nonetheless, you are certainly valuable to Me.” She said, giving him a small nudge with her side and chuckling softly. “Now eat your meatloaf before it gets cold.”

He gave a small sigh at the light scolding and dug into the meal. She was right, he did particularly enjoy the meatloaf from the cafeteria. And the fact that she remembered that was nice. Even if remembering that sort of thing and acting on it for the entire team was a part of her function, it was still nice that she went out of her way to socialize with him as part of the process.

As he enjoyed his lunch, Twilight decided to speak up again, this time a little bit more quietly. “Uhm...Doctor Ruth, Would it be alright for me to ask you something?”

He swallowed the bite of food he had been working on and wiped his mouth, turning to smile at Twilight “Well of course you can. Ask away, I’m always happy to try to provide you with any information you might be missing that you feel you require.”

“Funny you should say that…” she said softly as she squirmed slightly in her seat. “You see, I have been...curious about exploring the concept of friendship in greater detail that my work environment allows. The staff treats me with an...adequate level of respect on a day to day basis,” She said, clicking her tongue in slight annoyance as she recalls daily requests to fetch coffee, change copier ink. “But unfortunately none of them seem terribly interested in anything beyond that. And I am...admittedly not the most socially graceful pony, so I was thinking that someone who I am already comfortable with would be the easiest place to start.”

Doctor Ruth slowly nods as he listens to the little artificial equine, reaching up and scratching his beard. “Hm, well then, what would exploring friendship entail exactly?” he asks, curious but a bit hesitant. Twilight was a...strange bird after all, or rather a strange horse. He did not want to end up hooked up to electrodes on a weeknight after work while she took notes on his vitals mid tea-party.

“Well, I was actually hoping that you might stay over the night and…” oh boy here comes the electrodes. “Attend a slumber party with me here at the office?”

His eyes widened slightly as he heard this conclusion, choking on a bite of his meatloaf. A few thumps of his chest and heavy hacks later, he recovered and was breathing a bit heavily as he looked over at Twilight with mild confusion. “A...slumber party you say?” he asked, tilting his head slightly. Normally something so frivolous would be considered a blatant misappropriation of the facilities resources. But considering it was for the sake of keeping Twilight satisfied and therefore served his purpose of keeping her performing optimally…

“Well, I suppose I could clear some time in my schedule and spend a bit of extra time in the lab.” He said with a small smile. It was not too much of a bother, really. It wasn't as if he had a family to come home to, and his position didn’t leave him with much work to do after hours that he couldn’t finish up fairly quickly.

As his acceptance of her offer sprang from his lips, a wide smile crawled across her face until she was beaming up at him. She leaned over and wrapped her forelegs around him and hugging him tightly “Oh! Thank you Doctor!” she said sweetly as she looked up at him, squeezing a bit tighter. He felt a few joints start to creak and pop as her incredible equine strength was bent towards giving him affection at a rate that was perhaps less than optimal for a man his age.

A fact he was sure to make her aware of “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Twilight. But if you keep squeezing like this, I might have to take a rain check until after my medical leave is over.” he said with a soft wheeze as he looked down at the little artificial horse who held him in her iron grip.

She realized her mistake quickly and released him, a small apologetic smile ow crossing her face with a small cartoonish squeak as he stretched and flexed a bit to work out the newfound soreness her affection had inflicted. “Oop! Eheh, m-my apologies, Doctor Ruth. I sometimes forget that organics are not quite as durable as I am.” Fair enough, she didn’t exactly get a lot of physical contact with others to gauge something like that.

“It’s fine really, going a bit overboard is to be expected when you are excited, just try to be more careful.” He said, chastising her gently. “Now, this is going to take a day or two to make happen, I will need to file the appropriate paperwork to-”

“Oh, no need to worry about that! I actually filed it myself before I asked.” She said chipperly, seeming quite proud of herself.

He was a bit taken aback by this, raising an eyebrow as he looked down at her. “HUh…” Fair enough he was willing to do as she had asked. Perhaps she had run a predictive model to determine whether he was likely to say yes before she had set this entire thing up. He might need to have a small talk to her about acquiring permission from people do do things beforehand whether or not she could reasonably predict their answers.

But that could wait until later. She was in such a good mood, and seemed quite happy with herself. He didn’t want to take that away from her. Even with his job aside that adorable smile of hers was definitely with a mild inconvenience and a violation of privacy or two. “Well alright then. When did you schedule the-”

“Tonight!” she said excitedly, bouncing in place a bit as she looked up at him, slipping out of her chair and pacing this way and that as she continued to speak. “I have already planned severa activities and seen to acquiring all of the equipment we will require to comfortably spend the night on the premises.

He clicked his mouth shut again and simply looked at her for a few moments. He would also have to consider having a talk with her about letting people finish their sentences before she began to speak. Again, even if she could reasonably predict what they were going to say, allowing them to contribute to the conversation was only polite. Come to think of it, she really could benefit from understanding human interaction more fully, if only because learning some manners would probably help her be more liked by the rest of the staff.

“Hm, well alright then. I will make my way home after work to grab a few things and I will meet you back here to move to whatever space they have alloted for this little outing.”

She squealed softly in excitement, shaking her little equine rump a bit as she gave a small nod. “Alright! I have to go for now, I promised Doctor Ginderson I would be available to look at some bio-droid designs for the new Littlest Pet Shop Anniversary Line and help them iron out some potential long-term issues they are worried about. See you later, enjoy your meatloaf!” She said, seeming quite pleased with herself as she trotted out of the door and back into the facility proper.

He gave a small sigh as he looked down at the meatloaf inquisition. Hee was almost done with it, then he’d need to get back to work on finishing that bi-weekly report on Twilight's stability and well-being he had been working on before she showed up. Something told him that the report would be a fairly positive one by the time he finished it and filed it tomorrow afternoon.