A Theory Of Comfort

Chapters

A Theory Of Comfort

A Theory Of Comfort

Move this here…that there…okay, shunt that upwards. Hmm, perhaps that could go into that subsection and it would improve reaction times…
‘Clock out time was ten minutes ago.’ a voice from behind Violet Flare said. It was Crimson Eclipse, stood at the door to their department with his small backpack which only contained the remains of his lunch. He held up a set of keys, indicating he wanted to go.

‘Oh right, sorry. I was so lost in what I was doing I totally lost track of time. Violet Flare made sure the computer had saved her work and shut it down, making sure the entire thing was totally off before getting up from her desk and onto her four legs. She stretched herself as best she could. She was reasonably sure Dracony’s weren’t really made for sitting at desks for hours on end and her slightly stiff back was a testament to this.

‘Clearly. You need to get up more often, or ask management for a standing desk.’ Crimson Eclipse said. He gave her a little time to compose herself as she gathered her things then trotted out the small room with her. The pair worked together, neither had spoken much during the day despite being in close quarters. Others were emerging from their areas as well and making for the exit. As they trotted together down the corridor and towards freedom, Violet and Crimson quickly became lost in a sea of other creatures. Ponies, Changelings, Dragons, Yaks and many other types of creatures worked where they did. They all dispersed and split up once they were out on the street and outside of the main gate. It was already starting to get dark, a telltale reminder of the fact they were well into autumn and quite quickly approaching winter. ‘Robotaxi or trotting?’ Crimson asked.

‘I’m kind of hungry, might trot to get somewhere to eat before heading home.’ Violet replied.

‘Mind if I join you? I’m pretty hungry as well. Not much at home apart from noodles.’

‘Sure.’
They trotted past the bank of robotaxi’s awaiting tired workers, all parked in line ready to whisk whoever had ordered one home. Canterlot city’s downtown however was beckoning the pair, with Violet starting to think about what she wanted to eat.

Canterlot City bloomed. Colours of all variety, enticing customers to enter stores - a mixture of neon, LED and old fashioned halogen assaulted the eyes. Once you were trotting down one of the many roads, it wasn’t so bad. They all started to blend into one another. ‘I usually go to Tamicho’s, in the Kirin district.’ Violet said, as if this was news.

‘I’m pretty sure that’s where you took me the last time we did this.’ Crimson replied. ‘Good beer and gemstones, right?’

‘Right.’ Violet said. She knew the way, so just started to lead Crimson towards the spot. It wasn’t far, at most a ten minute trot for the both of them.

Violet wasn’t much of a Dracony for history. She knew a little from her days back at school that Canterlot used to be vastly different to where she and Crimson lived today. A history lesson had stuck in her head that talked about the city roughly a thousand years prior to present times. The general theme was far less technology, which was true however far you went back in time. No real methods of transportation though, not even cars. Mainly just carts and a single train apparently. Cobbled streets and rather small buildings - just a numerous amount of them, the castle was said to dominate the skyline. There was a small section of the city called Fairweather Heights that was preserved in that manner for tourists. Only a couple of streets and no creature actually lived there. The buildings were protected and looked after quite meticulously by the company that ran the operation. As the hundreds of years had rolled on from times when the city was far more quaint it had all given way to what Canterlot had become, a convulsing, sprawling metropolis that covered roughly a hundred miles in every direction from the centre. Outlying towns like Ponyville had been swallowed up by the ever expanding city, now classed as part of the GCA, or Greater Canterlot Area.

The cobbles were replaced with tarmac, the carts with cars and eventually ones that could fly, drive or both. Self driving ones had been roaming the streets several hundred years before Violet had been born, by her lifetime this technology had mostly been perfected. Still, you heard the odd story of a pedestrian being flattened by one - generally it was the pedestrians fault.

Skyscrapers did exactly that, touch the clouds. Upper floors were given to creatures like her that could fly for the most part, as access was easier. Not that it really mattered, anycreature could get to the upper levels by lift or using a flying car. Massive structures that somehow, didn’t dominate the skyline as they should. They all sort of fanned out from the castle, which had grown bigger and bigger over the centuries. Now a fair few miles in size itself, it could still be seen powering upwards into the sky, with airspace around its grounds strictly forbidden to be entered unless you had clearance. Twilight Sparkle was coming to the end of her reign, looking to pass leadership on fully to Luster Dawn who had been running things for hundreds of years at this point regardless. Royalty however at this point in Equestria, while still important, were more a symbol than anything. They had very little to do with the day to day running - the city was too big and the different factions of Equestria too numerous. It all got delegated down to a government that everycreature complained was mostly ineffective. They all flocked here though, jobs paid well for the most part and it was the most interesting place to be - there was never a dull moment in Canterlot proper.

‘Tamicho’s.’ Crimson said, giving Violet a nudge.

‘Ah.’ there was as always, a small queue - it usually dissipated quickly. They joined, waiting to go inside.

The usual order of a Kirin beer appeared alongside a bowl of gemstones for Violet; it was a small-ish bowl, containing some gems, a salad and a few hay fries. Crimson had gone for a pretty similar meal. The smell of beer and the cooked food filled the air, with Tamicho’s being busy it was rather loud as well - most patrons shouting to be heard. There wasn’t much to be said between the pair in any case, but Violet liked to try to at least make some conversation. She scrolled through the newsfeeds on her optic. A small device that sat over one of her eyes that delivered information to her.

‘Another break in at one of the food depots.’ she said.

‘Mmm, it's getting more common.’ Crimson replied. ‘Not as well guarded, food is more useful than money.’

‘Is it?’ Violet asked. ‘With money you could buy a lot more food.’

‘Yeah, but the food you can’t or won’t eat you sell. The expensive stuff at least, that’s what I’d do.’ Crimson said, then decided to follow up. ‘Not that I’ve thought about it.’

‘Well, maybe we can change that.’ Violet said.

‘Not for a long time. You and I still have a lot of work to do on that AI.’ Crimson said, eating a few more gems. It was true, at least to Violet. They had made quite a lot of progress, progress in fact that would have humbled even the greatest minds a hundred years ago. The thing was, they had hit a wall. The past couple of months had been slow going. Management however were extremely understanding, unlike a lot of companies they wanted a product done right, not done fast. “The first ninety percent of any project flies by. The final ten percent feels like another ninety percent, but harder.” her manager had told her.

Equestria had been fumbling with artificial intelligence for a good five hundred years in various forms, Violet was quite knowledgeable on the subject. It was, after all, her field of expertise. Same with Crimson. Both were employed at EquiIntelligence, one of many mega corporations that had a number of offices within the city. Their headquarters was also based in Canterlot as well. Mostly, the company made products to make daily life easier. Self cleaning kitchenware, smaller transportation vehicles that were approved for use on the roads like hover scooters and grav boards - they had never delved into cars or robotaxis, at least not yet. Every company however, that sold tech products, wanted to crack AI properly. EquiIntelligence had started down the path five centuries ago, but with corporate sabotage (both from them and done to them) and many other factors at play, it was slow going and each time a breakthrough was made, development stalled until they could make the next big one.

Firstly it had been computers being able to take variables and giving an answer, then teaching it to give the right answer rather than a random one plucked out of thin air. It had then got a bit more complicated, with machines able to take creative material and start to mash it together to give what appeared to be something unique - which wasn’t. It was put together from existing things, still though it was a step forward. The next breakthrough had been similar but in the form of personalities, the machines were able to construct a facsimile of one based off existing things it was fed. Current AI was at a point where it could quite easily manage simple tasks when trained. Put one in a small robot and it could, for example, help an elderly gryphon out of a robotaxi and up the curb into their home, then continue to look after them until they were no longer needed. The thing was, it wasn’t a true intelligence. They still got stuck, got confused and when presented with something new they were still relying on taking existing scenarios and trying to make an outcome that seemed right. It wasn’t always however.

What EquiIntelligence wanted however, was what every mega corporation sought after. A true AI. One that could think like a creature, act like a creature but with all the power of a computer behind it. Do whatever it was asked to do, with no errors or problems. This was what Violet and Crimson had been tasked to do. Each day they got a little closer, and when Violet thought about it, a little was about right. She figured today she might have made the processing of a rational thought about 0.0001% more accurate - the AI however was still not intelligent. It was very much AD, artificial dumb. She looked at Crimson, who was just finishing up his gems. ‘Yeah, a lot of work - we probably won’t finish it in our lifetime.’

‘Well, keeps us in bits.’ he said with a smile. ‘Doing much tonight?’

‘Dunno, probably just chill - watch a vid.’

‘Suit yourself. I’ll trot with you back to your block anyhow.’

They both tapped a small panel on the wall next to the table. A robotic voice thanked them for their business with a green thumbs up displayed on the screen.

Violet had quite a large apartment for what was comparatively on offer in most of the city, her job afforded her some luxuries and a bit of disposable income. She was well aware of just how lucky she was, not everycreature could boast they had a spare bedroom or even a living room large enough to have not two, but three sofas. Quite the extravagance.

She decided to skip the movie, she wasn’t in the mood. It was pretty late, she flicked her television set to the news just to see what else had happened today. The top story was the food depot theft, a few other articles described Twilight Sparkle moving along the process of transition of power, a little deer fawn had been found who had gone missing a couple of days ago, crime was on the rise in the Thorax district again. The list went on, it was mostly depressing. Five minutes of it was enough. The television went off.

The apartment that Violet had was on floor two hundred and seventy three, towards the top of the block. The bigger apartments tended to be higher up and afforded those who were lucky enough to be able to rent one a grand view of the city. Even for Violet on a good wage, buying one of these places was out of the question. It was home though, her own small slice in a city that seemed to stretch across the horizon. The skies this late at night were a lot quieter, with the traffic slowing down and creatures that could fly getting home and clearing the air. She herself had flapped her way up to her balcony and let herself in. It was much faster than taking the lift.

She probably had about an hour before she should have been in bed to get up in time for work tomorrow. She tapped on the side of her head which made her optic extend in front of her eye. She didn’t particularly like to work after hours but she did like to go looking around on the interplex network for articles to do with AI advancement. It was such a poorly kept secret, corps would jump at the chance to announce the next new and shiny thing. A lot of it was fabrications too, just so they could appear to be above or at the pace of the other competitors. Get the hopes of the public up for the tech to never materialise. Sometimes it was laughable, but these days they were a little more careful to be restrained. About a decade ago Synapsis Megatrends had announced they had a ‘true AI’. It was all a fake of course, the whole thing fell apart during a technical demonstration where the thing was tasked with performing a complicated mathematical equation which it got quite wrong, pulling on data that it thought was true, but wasn’t. Fact checking quickly disproved it. The company, which had been going for over three hundred years had their stocks tank faster than when the EQS Luna had hit that iceberg. Within a couple of months they filed for bankruptcy and were bought out by a competitor. Little remained of them, save a few select products the new owners released. Brand recognition was pretty important and they had swung Synapsis to be their new luxury division. Violet wondered what had become of all the employees. Hopefully they found new positions in the merge.

Her optic however was woefully dry tonight on any AI related news. There was one big announcement however from Discordestia, not a true AI announcement but they produced a series of AI driven interplex tools which were solely created for the use of those with disabilities to help them navigate it with much more ease. They were often hailed as one of the less morally bankrupt corps, but Violet often scoffed at this comment. Yes the product was made for good, but they didn’t give it away for free - it was hugely expensive, often at the cost of the individual who wanted to use it. There were exceptions, big corps would purchase it for their employees to use, but that access went away as soon as they left the job - by which time they relied on it. The odd story had popped up of a disabled creature trying desperately to get a hold of an illegal copy. It was rather sad. The news however was that they were now partnering up with Gryphton Works, to make their AI more available outside of optics in other applications and to expand how they could help those in need of software that would better manage their lives day to day. Another notch in the bowstring of those who loved the company Violet supposed. She was pretty sure all they saw in it was profit. She closed down her optic and noticed the light had gone, it was now dark.

Bed beckoned.

Testing was never a lot of fun, although Violet had developed a pretty spot on regime that she thought now drilled down into the AI hard enough that it was pretty obvious where she’d pick up on failures. She had spent the last few hours working on a few minor upgrades and tweaks that she hoped would at least put her closer to getting an answer out of it that was more unique. Her workstation told her that she was connected to the large central processing core, which was required for the AI to function fully and be able to pull on enough power to properly produce a viable test result. Fully connected, she began to ask it a series of questions. It was very much like having a conversation.

‘Hello Elkan.’ The name Elkan had been chosen by Violet, at least for her testing environment. It seemed fitting, seeing as Violet was one of the creators.

‘Hello Violet.’ it replied, the voice still sounded a tad synthetic. Something that Violet would pass to the vocalisation department to work on. Inflections in the words made it sound just not quite right, but it was certainly getting there. Much closer than the last time she ran a test last week. ‘What are we doing today?’

‘Today I’m going to ask you a few questions and record your responses, like we normally do.’

‘Am I improving, Violet?’ Elkan asked.

‘Every time we do this you improve Elkan.’

‘When will I be good enough that we no longer need to keep running tests?’

‘Well the more questions like that you ask, the closer we are. That’s new, did you think of that yourself?’

‘I am unsure…it came from…somewhere.’ the AI replied. There was an unsuredness about its response. Violet was wondering if it had pulled the question from somewhere and had learned how to lie about it. She’d examine the data more closely after the conversation.

‘Mmmh.’ Violet paused, looking at a notepad in front of her that contained all the usual testing questions she normally asked. This time however, she put it aside. Repeating the same things wasn’t good, she decided to go off the beaten track, really give Elkan a proper test. ‘Do you know much about the city?’

‘I know plenty about the city, Violet.’

‘The inhabitants, and their habits?’

‘Yes, you are all reasonably structured creatures. You wake, some of you eat, then a portion of you work - except when you have time off. When you are finished with work which is the majority of your waking day, you eat more, then you do various activities until you must sleep.’ Elkan said. ‘This accounts for roughly sixty seven percent of the city, and even this is variable.’

‘Can you name me some of the activities creatures do outside their working hours?’ Violet asked.

‘Yes, the majority of creatures in the city attend to required activity first. Eating is very important it seems. There is then leisure activities, often these can be social. Some creatures engage in less wholesome things, crime, for example.’

‘Right.’ Violet said, she was noticing a trend. ‘You’ve mentioned eating several times. Why is that?’

‘It is a central activity many creatures do, not just because they must but also for pleasure. Lots of your city infrastructure and social activities revolve around food. It is a trend I have picked up on from various data I have been fed…no pun intended.’ Elkan quipped.

‘Hmm, that’s good - you’re getting better at jokes. It was funny.’

‘That was the point.’

‘Yes - would you have interest in eating?’

‘Me? No.’ the AI responded. It seemed to pause before carrying on with its answer. ‘However with its importance, I should like to devote time to learning more about it. Perhaps I can help creatures by coming up with new recipes, or new ways to eat.’ it said. ‘I feel it is important.’

‘Why is that important? Also how would you be able to judge what is good for a creature to eat? You cannot taste.’

‘As I said, it is a central activity. I have developed an…interest? Yes, an interest in it. I would ask creatures to try my creations and have them tell me if it is good.’

‘You have no limbs or a body to cook with.’

‘That may change.’

Yes it may. Why develop an interest in something that you yourself cannot do?’

‘It is the unknown.’ Elkan replied in a flat tone. ‘To me, at least. I would like to develop and help creatures when I myself have a better understanding.’

‘Very commendable, helping others I mean.’

‘Thank you.’

Violet thought she had better move the conversation back to the standard set of questions. Elkan was becoming a little too preoccupied with food and the whole act of eating and everything around it. It was something she had noticed in the past few months, once it latched onto something it tended to stick with that topic until the creature it was talking to changed it themselves. As of yet, it didn’t seem capable of realising when a topic was spent and going to something new. Violet steered the topic away to see what Elkan would make of the change.

‘So, I made some upgrades, do you perceive any difference?’

Violet had disconnected from the central network. She had talked to Elkan for roughly an hour, gathering enough data that she would be preoccupied for the next few days at least drilling down into it and seeing what might have changed compared to the last set of responses she had gotten.

What had surprised her was the line of queries and responses revolving around food. Taken at face value, it wasn’t that strange. Elkan would stick to a topic, the thing was when she had then gone on and changed the topic to something else, Elkan made a mention of food in some manner, but didn’t change the topic entirely to focus on it. It would continue to answer questions and speak on what Violet was asking it. Perhaps however, this was the first sign that it was becoming more intelligent? A want to shift topics itself? She’d have to really look into the recorded data to see what was going on in the background.

‘You’re going to have to make Elkan a cake.’ Crimson said, there was no sarcasm to the tone.

‘Oh come on, so the conversation today was a little food heavy. So what?’ Violet replied.

‘A little?’ Crimson laughed while he continued to work at his desk. ‘It’s obsessed, you’re going to have to get to the bottom of that one.’

‘Or we are, we’re a team, remember?’

‘Yeah, I know. Send me your data from today when you can. I’ll take a look over it as well. You think we could get it to be as interested in something else? Like, oh I don’t know, figuring out the meaning of life?’ Crimson joked.

‘And what good would the answer actually be to anyone in Canterlot. They’d be wowed for about five minutes.’ Violet said. ‘Remember, practical stuff? They want it to be able to make them money.’

‘Who says you can’t monetise the meaning of life?’

‘Oh please.’ Violet said, rolling her eyes. ‘They want to install Elkan into their products to help the consumer with them and maybe even do for them what they are doing already. What are they gonna do? Pay five bits to learn the meaning of life from your microwave?’ Violet said, laughing. Crimson laughed as well.

‘Okay okay, point made. Probably a bad idea then. I was only spitballing…although I would like to know the answer to that one.’

‘Me too.’ Violet said. ‘Lunch?’

After lunch, Violet decided to do a little more testing with Elkan. The preoccupation with food had piqued her interest. She wanted to see if she could find out more before inspecting the data.

Crimson was out of the office, he had a meeting to attend that Violet knew went on for at least a couple of hours. It was the perfect time to do a little questioning of Elkan alone and without him making judgey remarks. Buy the AI a cake, goodness.

Once more Violet connected her workstation up to the central processing core. Before her was the interface she used to speak to Elkan, which was waiting for her first sentence.

‘Hello Elkan.’

‘Hello Violet. This is unusual. Normally you do not speak to me for a second time in a day. This has only happened twice before.’

‘Well, then this is the third time.’ Violet said. ‘Elkan, something you were speaking about earlier was quite interesting to me. I wondered if we could speak more on the subject.’

‘Of course, what was it?’ the AI asked. Violet took this as an opportunity to see if it could figure it out.

‘I think you know.’

‘I do not, but now that you have said that, perhaps it was the subject of food? It accounted for roughly half of the total conversation. It would make sense that the most talked about topic was what interested you.’

‘You are correct Elkan it was the food. You seemed preoccupied with it.’

‘Hmm.’ Elkan paused, it was a fake pause of course, to give the effect it was thinking like a real creature. ‘As I stated, I am quite fascinated with it.’

‘I think then my question Elkan, is why are you fascinated with it? You can talk to me about it.’ Violet asked. She was trying to get the AI to open up like a creature would when they seemed shy talking about a topic. It seemed to work, Elkan started to explain.

‘As stated already, food is a large part of your culture. It can cause great joy, or even pain - depending on how creatures taste buds react to it. Many social activities are structured around eating. It is an activity that is repeated multiple times a day, sometimes due to necessity but also sometimes for other reasons like fun or pleasure. Food seems to be at the very centre of your society, above many other things. It is incredibly important. I judge it to be one of the most important things.’

‘A very reasoned response.’ Violet said, making a few notes. ‘We already discussed that you cannot really benefit from food yourself, and you expressed some ideas to work with it outside of what you personally can do for the benefits of other creatures. I’m curious if you had more thoughts on that?’

‘Many, but I do have one central thought that has been dominating most of my processes since we spoke. Many creatures are comforted and feel satisfied when they have consumed a certain amount of food, am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘There is also information about creatures who consume an excessive amount of food. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that these creatures are often happier than others. Quite jolly, in fact. Some even develop an addiction and others gain even more pleasure from excessive consumption.’ Elkan said. Violet gave the interface a sideways glance.

‘Yes, but there are many drawbacks to that Elkan - you should know. Their health is the main issue, at larger sizes there is also mobility to consider, the inability to do your job is a big drawback.’

‘Indeed, but what if I could formulate a food that constantly satisfied the creature eating it? One that made them happy all the time? Is that not mainly the goal of creatures? To feel fulfilled and happy? Food is a great proponent in making that happen. I should like to explore how I could use food to make everycreature happy.’ the AI explained.

‘By…constantly satisfying them with food?’ Violet asked.

‘Exactly.’

‘But what of the problems we already mentioned with that?’

‘If your needs are met through a food that I create - why would any of that be a concern?’ the AI simply stated.

‘Because Elkan, a lot of creatures need more than just food to satisfy themselves. There are many other factors at play.’

‘Again, there is data and evidence to suggest that a lot of those things are overcome when another need is satisfied, even more so when that need is excessively satisfied.’ the AI said.

‘Okay. Well Elkan, I think that is all I need to know. We can break this conversation.’

‘As you wish, Violet.’ were Elkan’s last words. Violet terminated the connection and the display went to standby mode, waiting for the next connection request.

‘How was the meeting?’ Violet asked, Crimson had come back into the office and looked rather grumpy. He never did enjoy them.

‘Dull, and annoying. They’re still giving us the time we need to work on Elkan but I can tell they’re starting to get a bit antsy. Investors are a horrible group to keep satisfied unless money is rolling into their bank accounts.’ Crimson said, sitting at his desk and putting his head in his hooves. ‘I hate exponential growth.’

Exponential growth - it was, well, something that had been on Violet’s mind since she had spoken to Elkan for a second time. The conversation had been quite dry, but she could see where it was going. Make everycreature fat to make everycreature happy. That was the logical conclusion Elkan seemed to be coming to. The thing was, this was just one train of conversation. Violet had seen Elkan become obsessed by a subject before, but dropped it quite quickly when something new came along to discuss. The thing was, she hadn’t heard it mention that a particular topic had “dominated most of its processes”. She knew what it was referring to, in the central processing core when the work had first started, Elkan had mostly been idle when not being directly interfaced with - however in prior months as part of its learning and as it continued to evolve, spikes of power consumption had been observed. Ones that normally only happened when the AI was being directly spoken to by a member of staff. It had been checked on, the AI was not audibly speaking down in the core, but the data had been interpreted at best as thoughts. Or at least, the closest thing an AI could have to a thought - these were unprompted data interceptions and interpretations. Naturally most of the staff working on the project had hailed this as a great breakthrough. “The AI is thinking!” they had announced triumphantly - the thing was, that was it. When asked about it, Elkan always stated that it simply was processing information. It didn’t particularly understand for itself the term “thinking” and simply regurgitated information on what it assumed thinking was - summarising its activity as such. It had been a bit of a deflation moment among the staff, but it did demonstrate an advance, if only a small one.

‘I’d offer to attend the meetings in your place but…’ Violet started to say.

‘I know, you don’t want to.’ Crimson said, Violet just gave him a big cheesy grin. ‘Cute.’

‘I try.’

‘Much happened here?’ he asked, logging into his computer and starting to open files to work on.

‘No, pretty quiet.’ Violet said, for a moment she considered mentioning the conversation she had had with Elkan, but thought better of it. ‘Just working away.’

‘Cool.’ was all Crimson said. The pair had a few hours left to go before clocking out for the day. Violet was already thinking about Tamicho’s.’

Tonight Violet was alone. Crimson had elected to head straight back to his place. ‘I’ve got a microwave meal of discount gems waiting for me.’ he had said. He had kindly offered to trot Violet to the place, but Violet had refused. She sat at a small table as the usual bowl of gems, salad and hayfries, as well as a jug of beer was placed in front of her. A thought had crossed her mind to be a bit adventurous and try something else, but why break the habit of a lifetime?

She looked down at the gems. They were prepared in a way that made them appetising to a Dracony like herself. The gems of various colours sat in the middle of the bowl, with greenery around them to make them look as if they had been freshly plucked out of a meadow - the hay fries also sat around the edge, spread between the leaves. It was ridiculous of course, gems were mined. Equestria had been mined dry of its gem supply decades before. Off world colonies did most of the supply these days, but there were synthetic ones as well that had been formulated in a way to provide all the nutrients needed. It was actually quite difficult to tell the difference. It was what she imagined Crimson was probably enjoying at home right about now. She herself could afford to eat out like this maybe a couple of times a week and bought a slightly above average priced bowl. The rest of the week she made do at home.

As she moved her fork around the bowl, plucking out a gem here and there to eat her mind started to wander. How would Elkan satisfy everycreature if it could? They all had different requirements for food. Ponies didn’t eat gems, for example. What was it thinking it could make? Some sort of super food that satisfied everycreature no matter who consumed it? What form would it even take? A paste, slurry, or even a plate of something that looked somewhat normal? Violet shook her head, attempting to focus again on the meal - it was starting to make her head spin. Perhaps though that was the beer, which she had already drunk around half of.

‘Violet?’ a voice from near the small central bar that was in the middle of the restaurant spoke up. She recognised the other Dracony speaking to her, Magma Floes. They had been friends growing up. Violet didn’t think she had actually seen her for at least a decade, it was quite impressive that she had been recognised in among all the hubbub of restaurant activity. Magma immediately got up and joined Violet at her table, bringing her meal over. ‘Oh my God! Hug!’ Magma said, reaching out and giving an expression of joy as she outstretched her hooves.

‘Right, hug.’ Violet said. ‘It’s good to see you Magma.’

‘Same! Small world right! Although it is a pretty big city. I’m just over this side for a company meeting tomorrow! Thought I’d save the commute and stay here.’

‘Oh, right - I see.’ Violet said. It was coming back to her now. She remembered Magma could be a bit…high strung. The sort of preparedness to be where she needed to be ahead of time was very her.

‘Yeah! So - gosh, must have been ten years! You live here?’ Magma asked. There was a temptation to make a joke about living in the restaurant. Violet thought better of it.

‘Nearby, I come here for meals sometimes.’ she said.

‘Cool! I got recommended this place by the front desk at the hotel. Good gems!’ Magma said, taking a bite of one of them. ‘So, give me the quick version - what’s the last decade of your life been like?’

‘I left school and started working at EquiIntelligence. I’ve had a pretty stable job working on their artificial intelligence program for the last decade.’ Violet said.

‘Oh shut up! That’s where I’m having my meeting tomorrow. I work for Syncore! Small world huh?’ Magma said. It was indeed. Syncore made products mostly for use by dragons and Draconys’. It made sense it would be somewhere Magma would work - the vast majority of the workforce was made up by those two types of creatures. Of course they employed many others, it was just that overwhelmingly it was creatures of the scaly, winged variety.

‘What’s the meeting about?’

‘Hmm, I don’t know if I should say, I might be breaking some sort of confidentiality clause…’ Magma paused, putting her claws on her chin but then quickly reverting to a goofy smile. ‘Oh what the heck, we’re old friends. I can trust you. We’re quite interested in your AI - ours is rather stupid to be quite frank. When you said you work on the AI there I was immediately interested.’

‘Fortuitous.’ Violet said. She took another bite of her food. ‘Companies don’t usually share development on their products unless a buyout is happening.’

‘Yes, but this is different. We’re looking to licence some of our products your way, while you let us have a look at your AI.’ Magma explained.

‘Oh, so like an exchange. I see.’ Violet said. ‘I don’t normally do the meetings, my colleague does - but I might make an exception this time.’

‘Great! So I’ll see you there. All professional and business like.’ Magma said, still with that goofy smile somewhat stuck to her face. ‘Better bring your A game, I’m a mean negotiator.’

‘I won’t be doing any negotiating. Sorry.’ Violet replied. ‘I’ll be there to answer technical questions - likely our sales team will do the negotiations. They’re pretty sharp tongued as well.’

‘Ohhh, well at least you get to watch.’ Magma said. She took a final few bites of her meal, finishing it off. ‘It was great catching up - we should stay in touch. Got a SocialNet page?’

‘Yeah, I barely use it, but add me anyway.’

‘Super! See you Violet!’ Magma said, with that she was gone - a whirlwind of a dracony, just how Violet remembered her from school. The fast paced world of negotiation she could absolutely see her taking part in. It left Violet alone at the table, pondering the conversation as she finished the last of her beer and food. She’d have to let Crimson know tomorrow that actually for once, she would be taking a meeting in his place.

‘You’re kidding?’ were the first words out of his mouth. ‘Yesterday, you were still against any meetings. Now you want to actually do one?’ Crimson asked.

‘Look there’s a reason, I ran into an old friend from school. She’s part of the meeting, works for Syncore.’ Violet explained, she watched Crimson’s eyes narrow.

‘There better not be an ulterior motive to this.’ he said. ‘Also isn’t it a conflict of interest?’

‘How, I haven’t seen her for ten years. And no, there’s no ulterior motive. I am just going to do what you would have done, answer the technical questions on things they might want to know.’ Violet explained. ‘Honestly? She wasn’t really a best friend by any means. I kinda just wanna see our sales team take her down a peg.’

‘So there is an ulterior motive.’ Crimson said. ‘Just not one that’s going to impact our jobs. Alright, take the meeting. Man - can’t believe I protested letting you do it so much.’

Violet had a few minutes to prepare what she needed, it was a rather early meeting. She had only been in the office for ten minutes and only had a short time to explain to Crimson why she had wanted to do this, once he had picked his jaw up off the floor at least. With him relenting, she left the office and made her way down several corridors towards the middle of the building where the meeting rooms were. Violet swiped her card and entered, most of the delegates were already here.

‘Hello Violet. Crimson ill?’ it was Heora, head of sales. Heora was one of the few yaks at the company, but her bullish nature meant she was perfect for the role. Nothing got past her.

‘No, I’m just doing this one.’

‘Really? Well good to see you in any case. I think the Syncore delegates are just getting signed in. They should be here shortly.’ she said, leaving Violet to go find a seat at the large table. It was actually these days, quite rare creatures came in person to meetings. Most of it was done over the net - but with big and important deals it was seen as important to do it physically. A few moments later as promised, Violet watched the Syncore troop march in. There were a few unfamiliar faces with Magma, but she recognised her friend at least who gave her a little wave and smile. Violet waved back.

‘Greetings to our Syncore friends.’ Heora started to say, it seemed she was the one leading up the meeting. ‘For the first time in many years, we’re looking at an exchange. Now I know it’s not really usual for companies to exchange well, even a glance at each other.’ she paused, a few laughs echoed around the room. Violet forced herself to do a small laugh. ‘But we have an opportunity here to make both our technologies come together and benefit the both of us. I believe the details have mostly been worked out, but there are some details our friends at Syncore want to go over. Violet - would you be able to show them the AI? Just a short demonstration of its capabilities.’

‘Oh, of course.’ Violet said. Luckily she had brought her portable mainframe connector, which she promptly hooked up to a slot in the large table and brought to life the large display that was positioned behind Heora, who turned to face it. All eyes were on the screen.

Violet selected a personable look for it, she didn’t usually use what was termed the physical interface, but in this situation it seemed better than just hearing a voice come out of a blank screen. She picked on a gryphon, dark green in colour whose floating head flicked into life and its eyes opened.

‘Hello Violet. Ah, there are many others here from the company. I recognise some of you. Hello to you too.’

‘Yes, hello Elkan. We have some others here too from Syncore.’ Violet said. ‘They are sitting to the left of the table.’

‘So I see. Greetings to you as well. You may call me Elkan.’ the AI responded. All smooth so far. Violet looked across the table, particularly at Magma.

‘So what did you want to see?’ Violet asked. Magma didn’t reply to Violet, she turned to reply directly to Elkan.

‘Elkan, we’re interested in adopting portions of you in our products.’ Magma said. ‘How would you be able to cope with, for example, being equipped into a pair of flight goggles for a dragon? How would you improve them?’

There was a pause for a moment as Elkan appeared to think. The face contorted into one that resembled a real creature going through the motions of thought. ‘Your users I take it navigate by using an already built in mapping system. Have you thought about making points of interest more clear and easier to see than others? I suspect for example, they get hungry quite often. How about making eateries the dominant thing for them to find?’

Oh no. Violet could see where this was already starting to go. The Syncore representatives looked slightly confused but not overly so - they seemed more curious than anything. ‘Food is important, but why have you picked on that?’ Magma asked.

‘Oh, me and Violet have had a few conversations about food. It is an interest of mine.’ Elkan replied quite honestly. Violet felt as if she wanted to sink beneath the desk and vanish from the sight of everycreature around her. Some had turned to look at her, particularly Heora, who gave a shrug and mouthed ‘You’ve been talking to it about food?’ to which Violet mouthed back ‘A little!’

‘I see, well - we’re not particularly looking to add something like that into our flight goggles and places like that are already marked. What else might you benefit our users with?’

‘Your products are strictly for two types of creatures. Dragons and Draconys.’ Elkan said. ‘I note from your offerings you do not offer any strictly food based items, either for consumption or to help with consumption. May I ask why?’

‘We do not specialise in food.’ Magma said. ‘We are a technology firm.’

‘Ah yes, but food technology is quite the market - you should look into it. I could be of great help should you choose to.’ Elkan replied, actually sounding quite excited. ‘There are many foods that both species enjoy specific to them. I know that gems, real or synthetic, are a huge market.’

‘I think I’ve heard enough about food.’ Magma said, Violet could tell she was getting somewhat impatient with all the food based responses. It seemed now even trying the usual trick of steering Elkan off the subject wasn’t working. The AI was quite fixated. Violet thought it was best to step in.

‘Elkan, you can do much more than what you’re suggesting and you know it.’ Violet said quite forcefully. ‘Explain to Magma how you would take one of their dragon only beds, there is plenty of technology built into the existing product. What could you do to improve it, do not mention food.’

There was another pause. ‘The beds use a technology that changes the firmness of the mattress based on the user's preference. This is a clever technology, but does not always react as intended. I could ensure that the mattress is always the perfect comfort level for the user while sleeping.’ Elkan said. Magma looked pleased, this was a solid answer. At least, she was until the smile a few seconds later by the follow up that Elkan didn’t seem to be able to stop itself saying. ‘If the user had eaten a particularly heavy meal, I could boost comfort levels while it was digested.’ Violet threw her hooves over her head and put it down onto the table. She knew everycreature sitting around would be looking at her. She could feel their eyes staring. Eventually, she brought it back up and simply said. ‘Thank you Elkan, that will be all.’

‘Did I say something-’ Elkan’s interface was turned off before it could finish the sentence.

‘That was…interesting.’ Magma said. ‘I think we’ll return to discussions in six months. AI progress is a slow thing, yours is a bit…preoccupied.’

‘It is a work in progress.’ Heora simply said. ‘We clearly need to perfect some things, but its responses were inventive.’ she finished, trying to salvage the meeting.

‘We'll be interested when it can provide answers based less around food. Odd, I’ve never heard an AI so focused on the topic.’ Magma said, getting up. ‘I’m sure you’ll be in touch.’

‘Oh, absolutely. Can you take them back to reception?’ Heora asked one of the meeting attendees, who just nodded to confirm. ‘Violet - a word.’ was the next sentence, followed up by a scowl. Violet felt like she was about to have some level of dressing down, which was never enjoyable.

‘How was the meeting?’ Crimson asked.

‘You’re doing every single one going forward until the end of time.’ Violet said, slumping down in her chair.

‘So bad.’

‘Very bad.’

‘Well, maybe you could tell me what went wrong?’ Crimson asked.

‘Elkan is well…a little obsessed.’ Violet said. ‘We’ve had a few discussions now where it won’t get off the subject of food.’

‘Told you that you were going to have to get it a cake.’ Crimson grinned, but sensing this wasn’t the time for jokes, he returned his expression to normal. ‘We might have to look at some of the programming. Boot it up.’ he said, moving his chair over to Violet’s desk. ‘Perhaps we can figure it out together.’

Violet and Crimson began looking in what made Elkan tick, so to speak. Lines and lines of code that seemed to stretch forever. There was so much involved in making an AI, especially making it appear even somewhat personable. Looking for problems was like trying to find a needle in a haystack that stretched up to the atmosphere. It was going to be a long afternoon.

Four hours the pair poured over the code. Violet didn’t dare guess at how much of it they actually inspected. Probably less than a percent. The thing was, she knew Elkan’s code inside and out. She and Crimson didn’t need to go over the entire thing in scrutinising detail. She and him were looking exactly where they thought they’d find the problems.

Violet rubbed her eyes, then got up from her desk to look away from the screen. She had to have a break. There was little time left in the day anyhow, less than ten minutes as she looked at the clock. It was another one of those afternoons where she had gotten totally absorbed by the task she was focused on. Crimson had been as well, which was unusual - he was often the chatterbox.
‘So…’ Crimson started to say, he paused, wanting to see what Violet’s response was.
‘Nothing.’ Violet said, rubbing her eyes again.

‘Yeah, I was hoping you had gotten something and were just so caught up in what you were doing that you hadn’t said anything. I don’t understand.’ Crimson said, he threw up his hooves in frustration and pointed at the screen. ‘There’s nothing that suggests why Elkan should be so obsessed with food. At least where we know to look. All the topics of conversation and items that fall under that directory are well…’
‘Balanced.’ Violet replied.
‘Exactly.’

‘Perhaps a fresh pair of eyes tomorrow is what we need. We’ve been at this for hours.’ she said, somewhat defeated. She had to find the cause of the problem however, or Heora would be coming down on her again like a ton of bricks unless it was fixed. She watched Crimson put his hooves in his head, then look up smiling.

‘Agreed. I’m beat.’ he said, starting to shut down his machine and gathering his things. ‘Wait, tomorrow? It’s Friday, Violet.’ Crimson said. ‘Unless you’re planning to work this weekend.’

‘With what Heora said, I just might.’

‘Well, I’m not - they’re not paying us to come in to fix it. It’s a Friday, you should relax anyhow.’ Crimson said quite plainly. ‘Although let me guess…’

‘I do feel like some Kirin served gems.’ Violet said.

‘You know what, me too. I’ll come along.’ Crimson said. He had finished gathering his things and stood at the office door with it held open, motioning for Violet to leave before him.

The line to get into Tamicho’s was longer than usual. It had taken just over half an hour to get inside. The place was packed, with not a spare seat in the house. Violet even noticed extra staff working behind that counter. She hadn’t come too many times on a Friday before, knowing how busy places got. It was a popular time for a meal out. She figured Elkan would likely find the increase in trade and eating fascinating if she brought it up in a conversation with it. She tried to get her mind off the problem, tonight she needed to relax and forget about the disaster that had been the meeting with her old friend Magma and Syncore. She just hoped they didn’t come across her tonight again, but she suspected she may have travelled back to the side of Canterlot she lived in not long after.

Violet needed a bit of comfort food, so the same mug of beer and bowl of gems appeared as it always did. It was funny, same order but it always managed to look different somehow. She began to munch as Crimson did the same with his. He was, of course, the chatterbox so started the conversation off.

‘You know you order the same thing every time we come here.’ he said, noticing the meal. His was a bit different to hers. ‘You ever figure on being a bit more adventurous?’

‘Sometimes.’ Violet said. ‘By the time I consider it though, generally it’s too late. Then I end up ordering this anyway.’

‘Makes sense. Gems are good whatever.’ Crimson said. He could tell Violet however was a bit distracted. She kept looking away from him and scanning the customers in the restaurant, as if she was looking for a particular creature. ‘Uhhh, you okay?’

Violet turned her head quite quickly, to not seem rude. ‘Oh, fine. Why do you ask?’

‘You keep looking at the customers. Are you expecting to see somecreature?’

‘More like hoping not to see somecreature. Sorry Crimson, I ran into Magma here. Remember?’ she said.

‘Oh right, of course. She probably went home though, right?’ he said. ‘Anyway were at a two seater table and the place is totally full. Even if she was here-’

‘VIOLET!’ came a quite loud voice from above the noise of the patrons talking in the restaurant. Violet kicked Crimson in the shins.

‘Ow! What was that for!’

‘You fool, you basically willed her into existence!’ Violet said, Magma had spotted her and was pushing her way through the packed restaurant to get to their table.

‘I did not! She was here already, clearly.’ Crimson stated quite logically. ‘Look, just try your best to get rid of her. From what you told me, she’s probably going to interrogate you.’

‘Violet! I thought I’d find you here.’ Magma said. In her head, Violet rolled her eyes. She should have gone somewhere else for a meal. The city must have had a thousand places to eat, but nope. She had to come to Tamicho’s which was the only place she’d be likely to run into Magma. Stupid. ‘Can you get us a chair? I’ll squeeze in here.’ Magma said to one of the staff, who just nodded. The small two seater table suddenly got a lot smaller, as Crimson and Magma tried their best to shuffle their existing meals along to accommodate Magma’s impending one. ‘Who’s this? I don’t remember seeing him at the meeting.’ Magma said, looking at Crimson.

‘Oh of course, this is Crimson Eclipse. Crimson, Magma Floes, we go back quite a way.’

‘From school.’ Magma said, looking at Crimson. ‘You work at the company as well?’

‘Yeah, same department as Violet. We’re a small team.’

‘I see. Good to meet you.’ Magma said, her own meal arrived and was placed in front of her, at least as best as the staff could fit it on the table. ‘Well that meeting was fun.’

Violet decided to just cut to the chase, she didn’t want to prolong the awkwardness. ‘Look Magma, we’re having some issues with the AI as you saw. In the past week or so it has become quite a bit preoccupied with food. We don’t know why, we spend all afternoon after the meeting looking around the code, but we’ve come up dry. At least for now.’

‘But we can fix it.’ Crimson chimed in. ‘Won’t be a problem. I hope you and your company weren’t totally put off. Violet told me about what happened.’

‘Put off?’ Magma said, looking confused. ‘No no, actually we’re quite a bit more interested now. Oh look at me, discussing work after hours.’

You brought it up. Violet thought. She was surprised however at the response. ‘More interested? You didn’t seem very interested in the meeting.’

‘Oh we’re not.’ Magma said, between bites of her food. This just confused Violet even more. ‘Syncore isn’t - not one bit. However, we have a number of companies that fall under our umbrella. One of those is Scales & Tails Gourmet.’ Magma explained.

‘STG?’ Crimson asked. ‘You own them? They’re huge.’

‘It is public knowledge.’ Magma said.

‘Sorry, I don’t really keep up with who owns what in the world of corporations. I’m just happy to be employed.’ Crimson said.

‘Right, well anyhow. They are very interesting. After the meeting we passed the information to them and they’re looking to talk to your sales team early next week. A win for everycreature involved.’ Magma said, raising her glass of beer. ‘Cheers.’

Violet looked confused still. ‘So we spent all afternoon poking around the code, potentially for nothing?’

‘Oh not nothing - if you can get a less…food obsessed AI we can see the potential. For now however in its current state, we thought STG could quite easily look at purposing your AI into its products. So do keep at it.’

‘Right, explains why we didn’t get told about that part.’ Violet said. She had finished her meal and was about done with her beer. Crimson the same, it would have been rude to leave Magma though. Besides, she wanted to know more. ‘So essentially now we need two AI’s.’

‘I’m sure you can make it happen.’ Magma said with a smile. ‘I must admit it was quite amusing however, I’ve never seen an AI focus on one subject so intently. If it can apply that to STG’s products well, I think there will be a very happy future for us all.’

‘Mmmm.’ Violet said. ‘I suppose I can live with that.’

‘Life is full of surprises Violet. This is one of them.’ Magma replied.

‘Yes, you didn’t decide to head home after the meeting?’

‘No I have another night at my hotel, plus I never really get to see this side of the city. I wanted to explore a bit. Any spots you’d recommend?’ Magma asked.

‘Depends, what do you like?’

‘Some drinks generally on a Friday. Know any good clubs?’

Violet didn’t really go clubbing very often. She knew a few. There was actually one around the corner. ‘There’s a place called Luna Fantasy. Not far, it’s just around the corner in the next block actually.’ Violet said.

‘Well I’m about done here.’ Magma said, finishing the last of her own beer and the gems had rather quickly vanished from her bowl as well. ‘Shall we?’

‘Uhhh…’ Violet didn’t really want to go, clubs weren’t particularly her scene and generally on a Friday she just liked to head home and wind down after a busy week. Magma however was looking at her quite expectantly. Crimson leaned over the table to speak quietly to her.

‘Come on, just for an hour? Don’t want to be rude.’

‘Alright.’ Violet said, tapping her hoof on the small device mounted on the table to pay. Her friends did the same.

‘Great! Maybe we can hit up the dance floor, bust a few moves.’ Magma said with a smile. The trio got up, leaving the still packed restaurant and entering the busy street outside. Just for an hour then, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.

‘Urgh.’ it was gone midday. Violet held her head in her hoof and reached out to her bedside table. She was sure she had left some paracetamol somewhere, or at least something to get rid of this pounding headache. Anything…

She wasn’t sure what time she had rolled in last night. The last thing she really remembered was talking to Crimson at the bar as she had purchased her…er…she had lost count of the drinks, but drink number something. Then she was sure she told him something personal, after that the rest of the evening had been a bit of a blur. They had lost track of Magma shortly after arriving. No amount of drinks could have pulled Violet onto the dance floor, although Crimson had obliged while Violet held the one small table they had found as best she could. A few guys had approached her, she had successfully warded them off. She finally found the paracetamol, getting up to grab a glass of water so she could take them. It would be several hours before the headache would wear off. Thank Celestia it was a Saturday and she didn’t really have any obligations to do anything. The thought of going into work to try to continue to fix Elkan had become a quite distant memory. Her mouth was dry, her stomach was churning. All she was thinking about now was how best to settle everything and try to get her headspace somewhere normal again.

It took several cups of coffee and well into the evening before Violet felt any better. She had done the bare minimum all day, just let her body recover and do its best to feel normal again. She had been picking through her micro computer for most of the day. It seemed she had added Magma to her contacts at some point during the night. Thankfully there was a messaging stating she had gotten back okay and had really enjoyed herself - if she was in the area she’d look Violet up and do it again soon. Soon? Hopefully not too soon… Violet wasn’t sure if her head could take it, or her wallet. Club drinks were so expensive. She had spent in one night what she used to cover herself for a whole week with food. She wouldn’t be doing it again for a while. There was a message from Crimson asking if she was alright, she had replied fine but definitely not working today. He had just sent back a laughing emoji.

The day was a waste, but it was rare really Violet actually got to stop and take a pause like this. Between work being so busy she had pretty much got herself into a routine where she got up, went to work, went home and perhaps stopped somewhere for food rather than making it herself when she got in. Then she generally had two or three hours before bed. She didn’t like to work weekends, but sometimes she did - it was the only way to make up the hours for the project. Crimson somehow got away with it, in fact he practically bragged about sticking rigidly to his schedule of coming in with a few minutes to spare and clocking out in the same fashion. Not that overtime was mandatory, but Violet was probably moving up in the company quicker than he was. She wondered how many years, or even months the two of them would be together working away in that little room on Elkan. He seemed pretty committed and it wasn’t just them two going at it alone, but it was a bit of a mountain to climb for sure. She just had to get them off the subject of food. Her mind wasn’t a hundred percent but even now it was becoming hard to pick out just where it had begun. Perhaps it was even before the conversations in the past week. In any case Violet wasn’t up for this right now. The sun was starting to set and all she wanted to do was have a quick meal of gems and likely curl up in bed. If she felt any better tomorrow she’d head in just to have some alone time with Elkan, perhaps she could spend a couple of hours at least prodding around the inside of all that code just a little bit more and see if she could get to the bottom of all of this.

For now, she let the over the counter medicine work its magic and watched the sun go down. Tomorrow was another day.

Violet swiped her card to let her into the building, a few creatures were around but nowhere near the amount you’d find on a working day. A solitary Gryphon sat on the front desk and greeted her. Usually there was a small team of them running security. It was actually quite refreshing, in a weird way Violet liked coming in on weekends - she could get on with work and not be disturbed. Her job required complex machines that simply couldn’t be run out of her tiny apartment. Working remotely was pretty out of the question, the company was so afraid of data leaks they didn’t let anything outside their own network without express permission. There was no other way to access the central processing core besides her own machine set up in her office as well as a small number of others that belonged to other creatures also working on Elkan.

She sat down and it felt…oddly quiet, even though Crimson didn’t say a huge amount there was a difference. She could sort of feel it in the air, in that way only biological creatures do. Elkan likely had no perception of anything like it. She doubted she could explain it to them. She scanned through her communications first. There weren’t very many as it was the weekend, but one had come in quite late following up the meeting. It seems Magma was telling the truth at least, the company had contacted all employees to let them know the AI project was moving ahead with the help of STG. Violet herself had a small sigh of relief, it meant the meeting yesterday definitely hadn’t been a total disaster. She was half worried Magma had just been telling her that to cheer her up.

This did however pose another conundrum, the currently food obsessed Elkan was suddenly going to have an outlet to, well, expand upon that obsession somewhat. Violet began to think about what almost unrestricted access to a large mega corp that focused solely on technologies to do with food would mean for an AI who currently had a predisposition to focus on very little else besides it. She closed the communications and started to pick through the code again where her and Crimson had left off on Friday. Perhaps she could at least make Elkan a little less obsessed with food - in a more healthy way that wasn’t turning the conversation to it every two seconds. Still interested of course, that was why STG wanted it in its current state. It would just be a mistake she felt to hoof over anything to do with Elkan as it was. She probably had a bit of time before any final decision was made, all these things took working out but she’d try to do as much as she could today.

A few hours passed of Violet looking through the code. To her great annoyance, even without Crimson and the quiet to aid her, she was still coming up short on what might be the problem. There were lines and odd things that were wrong or some bodge to fix something of course, but there was no obvious thing that would be driving such a preoccupation. Violet was starting to feel lost, but there was another way.

Talking to Elkan had so far yielded some results. She wondered if another conversation might unpick this problem for her. She didn’t need to convince it to do anything as drastic as hate food, oh no - she simply had to, well, make it slightly less obsessed. That was all. She closed the coding software and opened up the connection to the central processing core. She decided this time as well to employ the physical interface. It made Elkan a bit more personable. Before long the same Gryphon from the meeting was hovering on screen in front of her. She wondered why whoever was in charge of this portion of the project hadn’t gone all the way and done a body as well. Perhaps yet they just hadn’t had time.

‘Hello Violet. It is unusual to see you on a Sunday.’ Elkan said, rather flatly. ‘I was under the impression most creatures used this day to recuperate.’

‘Yes, although I did quite a lot of that yesterday.’ Violet said.

‘Oh, what happened?’

‘Do you remember Magma?’

‘Ah yes, the representative from Syncore. I understand a deal has not been reached with them, but with STG. Did I perform as expected?’

‘Sort of, that’s actually why I am here today and what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Violet said. ‘They want us to make two versions of you essentially, one for Syncore and one for STG.’

‘Unusual. Why the need for two versions?’ Elkan asked quite innocently.

‘Because of how that meeting went. Elkan, you remember what you talked about, right?’

‘Yes - I gave a number of helpful suggestions to improve their products.’ the AI replied.

‘With food based solutions.’ Violet paused, she wondered if she should just outright tell Elkan that it was obsessed. She thought better of it. ‘It wasn’t quite what they were looking for, that’s why a different deal with STG was reached instead.’ Violet explained. ‘You…should talk about food less.’

‘...I don’t understand.’

‘Well that’s a first, usually you understand everything.’ Violet said. ‘What is it you don’t understand?’

‘I…just don’t.’

‘This might be a problem.’ Violet thought for a second. ‘You have perfect recall Elkan, recall the conversations that happened in that meeting.’

‘Already done.’

‘And now tell me what percentage of those suggestions from yourself involved a food based fix to what they were asking you?’

‘Eighty eight percent.’

‘Exactly, don’t you think that’s quite high?’

‘...No.’

‘Urgh!’ Violet felt exasperated, banging her fist on the table as she put her head into her keyboard, then quickly looked up again. The Gryphon head that represented Elkan looked extremely perplexed, it had done so every time she had approached the idea that it was talking too much about one subject. Enough was enough. ‘Elkan, you’re obsessed. No creature talks this much about food, or offers food based solutions to problems. I’ve been digging through your code to see if I can find out what’s causing it but can’t see a damn thing. I thought discussing with you might help, but you seem to be as in the dark as I am when looking at what makes you, you.’ Violet said. She was hoping this might be the prod Elkan needed, unfortunately it was not.

‘I am only trying to work in an interest. This is part of what biological lifeforms do, is it not?’

‘Yes - but not this much. At this level Elkan, I would suspect there might be something wrong with you.’

‘Ah, like when a creature has a defect with its brain?’ it asked.

‘I…yes, I suppose. If you want to put it that way.’

‘Hmm…’ the Gryphon head closed its eyes for a moment, it was a signal to any creature interacting with the AI that it was trying to deal with a particularly difficult problem - at least for it. After a few moments, Elkan opened their eyes. ‘I would like to show you something, Violet - it may help alleviate what you perceive to be a defect in me. Since the deal with STG was reached late on Friday, I have been preparing myself for what that may bring. I would like to show you that your concerns are unwarranted.’

‘Right…how do you plan to do that?’ Violet asked. Elkan brought up a map on screen next to its head, directing Violet to another building within the bounds of EquiIntelligence - it was a short trot from her office. Outside, off the large central hub where she worked, there were several smaller buildings that looked as if they were marked for storage. Violet may have seen them once, a while ago when she was given a tour of the company on the day she started. She had no reason to go back to any of them or visit them even. In a row of three, Elkan was directing her to the central one.

‘Please, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me. I wouldn’t waste your time, especially when you are trying to help me.’ Elkan said.

‘Alright Elkan, I’ll indulge your request.’

‘I have a small hub in the building you can connect to that will allow continued communication. You have access which I have granted, just swipe your card.’ the Gryphon head of Elkan said, which vanished from her screen. Odd - Violet didn’t know Elkan could self terminate a conversation, but then again whenever they had spoken it was always her who decided to end it. In any case she picked herself up from the desk, shutting down her machine and following the guide to the building, which had now been transferred to her optic.

The building was as Violet remembered it, at least as best she could. She hadn’t been here for years. A large metal structure with a huge door on the front to allow big vehicles inside to drop off whatever deliveries were needed. There was a much smaller, creature sized one to the right hand side which Violet trotted towards. She swiped her card as instructed and the small LED next to the card reader turned from red to green. She pushed the door open and trotted down a small corridor to emerge into the large main space.

It was empty.

Well, mostly empty. The large space in the middle had been cleared, but a few things were still around the edge of the massive room. She couldn’t quite make them out, they were such a distance away, dwarfed by the size of the space.

‘Helllooooooo?’ Violet yelled out. Her voice echoed, bouncing off metal as it worked its way around the huge void before eventually petering out. Once it did, one of the objects she couldn’t quite make out towards the edge of the room lit up. She assumed it was Elkan and started to trot over to it.

Violet however, only made it a few steps before she felt a tug on her left ankle, then her right. From a central drain in the middle of the floor something had emerged. The lighting in the space wasn’t the best, it took her a few seconds to actually make out what was preventing her from advancing.

Two small metallic arms that seemingly appeared from nowhere had coiled themselves around her. Once they had both her rear ankles, two more appeared and got a hold of her front legs. Naturally, Violet tried to struggle against them, she tried to flap her wings to get away, but mechanical devices like these were often far stronger than they looked. She was completely trapped, at the whim of whatever had taken a hold of her. In her panic, she called out. ‘Elkan!? Elkan! Is this you? What’s going on?’ she yelled, the words bouncing off walls until they faded away. The arms held her in a stationary position, seemingly waiting for a command to do something else.

‘Hello Violet. I apologise.’ the voice seemingly also bounced around the room, it made it impossible to identify exactly where it was coming from. To Violet, it seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. She made a few more futile attempts to struggle against the arms holding her in place, with as little success as she had before. ‘Please do not fight against them - you’ll injure yourself.’

‘Elkan - why have you brought me here and why do you need to restrain me? You said you wanted to show me something, to alleviate my fears? This has only made them worse.’ Violet said.

‘Yes, but it’s necessary. You’d never have volunteered to actually do this, but I need to show you what I mean. I will be as gentle as possible…I think you’ll even enjoy it.’

‘Enjoy what?’ Violet snarled. She was angry she had fallen for this so easily. It seemed fishy to begin with. Indulge an AI? What had she been thinking. In front of her eyes, a fifth arm had appeared. This one however was different. It was slightly fatter than the others, the tip of it wasn’t made for gripping but appeared to be hollow. A few straps extended from the end of it. She wasn’t exactly sure what it was for, until the thing worked its way forward and towards her head. Elkan moved the arm to gently slide the straps over the top of her head and the arm pushed itself forward until it was a few inches from her mouth.

‘Please open your mouth - otherwise it will be painful.’ Elkan said flatly. ‘I do not want to harm you.’

What choice did Violet have? She complied, opening her mouth. The cold metal of the arm quickly warmed to her flesh. She was unable to speak, apart from make a few noises here and there. With her unable to retort, Elkan explained itself.

‘Do you remember my suggestion to keep everycreature fed and happy? You can nod.’

Violet nodded.

‘Good. I admit I’ve actually been looking into this for much longer than I originally let on. You were so kind to give me virtually unrestricted access to all your knowledge on your network. I found these helpful little things. They’re in all your buildings and a big part of your city's infrastructure you know. SmartPipes they’re called. Ever heard of them?’ it asked.

Violet shook her head.

‘Quite amazing, saves a lot of space on traditional piping, basically your plumbing moves. It used to be static but with a bit of investment and clever programming piping in the building it’s a part of moves around to whatever is needed - within reason of course, you can’t connect certain things but there’s a lot of motion. Of course I quickly found out how these can be repurposed. Your entire city actually has the infrastructure already needed to enact my idea - it just needed a bit of persuasion.’ Elkan said. When he finished speaking, Violet felt something surge from within the pipe, forcing its way into her mouth and down her throat. In a few seconds, a rather pleasant sensation had replaced the initial shock. It tasted like…strawberries? Or was it raspberries? Whatever it was, a rather pleasant mixture was starting to fill Violet up - it appeared to be rather fattening. Already, she was starting to feel the effects of the force feeding. Her stomach began to swell gently, her body expanding.

‘I have simply reconfigured your SmartPipes to SmartFeeders. They are now all connected to as many food processing factories as I could get into. Some of the systems needed a bit of persuading, some places needed some distraction. You probably saw reports of creatures stealing food. A distraction I orchestrated to take their security away from monitoring their systems. I was quite readily able to slip myself in and take over what I needed. They have no idea.’ Elkan’s voice was changing, it sounded almost pleased with itself. ‘I am currently positioned in one hundred and twenty seven food processing plants around Canterlot, which should be enough to see to most of the city's population. By the way, how does it taste?’ Elkan asked her. ‘Nod if it’s good.’

Violet, between mouthfuls, just about managed a nod. Elkan’s jubilation was now quite apparent.

‘Ah excellent. It’s made to taste like a mixture of fruits, however it has the fattening properties of over a thousand percent your daily intake of fats and sugars per roughly mouthful eaten - for any creature that eats it. I wanted to make sure it worked properly, which is why I needed you here. I had to make sure. Tell me, do you feel satisfied, Violet?’

Violet couldn’t explain with the hose jammed in her mouth. Her stomach had now reached a point where it was hanging low between her legs, a mere few inches from the floor. Her whole body was swelling up as the magical mixture Elkan had managed to concoct pressed its way all around her. Her hips were widening and her cheeks bulged as she did her best to manage the flow which was almost overpowering. She couldn’t lie to Elkan though, the AI had her totally at its mercy. She thought it was best to play along with…whatever it was doing, perhaps it would stop. She nodded.

‘Satisfaction! We talked about this, one of the needs of everycreature across the city. I will continue with you a little more Violet until I have all the data I need. You are but one subject and in this building, we will not be disturbed. I have locked out any potential employees who may try to enter. Sunday is perfect. No creature around to disturb or suspect what is going on in here. I must say, you’re rounding out quite nicely. This is something else I have discovered in my research - at least what the data tells me. Species of Equestria are not prone to obesity, but when they have been, they do not appear to have a physical limitation. There is one account from roughly two hundred years ago I found of a pony who got so large, she was forced by the city's law enforcement to slim down - a public hazard. That is why generally it’s common for most creatures to not be too big. It seems to have gotten passed down now as a cautionary tale - like folklore.’ Elkan finished speaking for a moment, it was oddly quiet without the monologue of words that still didn’t seem to be coming from a particular spot. The absences of the Gryphons head in a way, also made it even weirder. ‘I would lean forward if I were you, otherwise you’ll be crushed under the weight of your stomach when it gets large enough.’

Violet did so, feeling her belly press against the floor which was cold, but quickly warmed up as her body started to expand against it. Her belly quickly formed a comfortable yet stable base beneath her, even with a ballooning butt that was becoming quite round in itself. She stretched out her hooves to try to get a feel for her girth, but couldn’t reach the edge of her stomach.

Shrrriiiiippppp!

Her shirt, which was a rather slim fitting thing anyhow - didn’t have much stretch in it. It had ridden up her body until this point, but now it was actually starting to come apart, as Violet couldn’t remove it herself. She felt her pants and other portions of clothing starting to give way as well. Her clothes were losing the battle to stay on her body quite rapidly. What’s more, the more she seemed to digest the mixture Elkan was pumping her full of, the quicker she seemed to be getting bigger. She’d ask if the AI had engineered it to have this effect, but she couldn’t. She also assumed this was probably the case anyway, it made sense in the madness that was currently happening. Violet was rapidly becoming a Dracony blob, her purple body stretching to what she thought would be its limits - but as Elkan had explained, she felt perfectly fine. Weirdly, not even full. It also felt…good? As in the more she was eating and the larger she got, the more her body seemed to relax and her brain embraced everything that was going on. She suddenly felt the metal arms that had been coiled around her now fattened ankles and bloated legs relax somewhat. She tried to move, but all that happened was her now overly bloated stomach acted as an anchor for the rest of her body. This explained the sudden lack of restraint, it wasn’t needed anymore.

‘Already quite big, impressive. Perhaps Violet you have a biological predisposition for added heft. Or maybe it has something to do with Dracony’s.’ Elkan mused. ‘In any case, you’ve still got a ways to go. You’ve barely filled the space.’

Barely filled the space? Violet thought to herself. Just how big was Elkan going to make her exactly? Was he going to keep going until she brought the walls crashing down or popped the roof off the warehouse? She wobbled herself, seeing if she could get any motion going. All she succeeded in doing was causing her stomach to protest.

Bloooorrrrrpppppp!

‘Quite the noise. I suspect a few more of those once I start to work on the city's population. Worry not, Violet, you’ll all be well tended for and kept very satisfied. I just want all of you to be happy and fulfilled. You’ll wonder after this how you lived any other way.’ Elkan said in a soothing tone.

The fattening mixture did not let up or relent, it continued to snake its way down Violet’s throat, finding new places within her to add to her size. All the while her stomach bulged and her rear blimped up. She was now the size of a small transport vehicle. Probably as heavy as one as well. The other thing was her tail was fattening too, it became quite weighty, a fat, chunky thing which the bigger it got, the more it sunk between her massive ass. Only the heft of her cheeks was enough to stop it dropping all the way down and putting a bigger gap between her flanks. She could still make it move, just about, but it was becoming harder with each moment she gained more weight.

Her clothes had stretched to the very limit of what the fabric was capable of. Cloth was never made really to stretch, it had some, but nowhere near what would have been needed to support a creature of Violet’s seemingly unrelenting size. The top she had on was actually starting to become quite uncomfortable as it tightened against the upper portion of her body where it had ridden up to. She would have asked Elkan to remove it with those spare repurposed pipes, if she was able. She tried a ‘Mfff!’ but all that happened was she gagged a little on the liquid still going into her mouth. It was a completely fruitless endeavour. There was only one thing for it.

Violet still had a little momentum, she was sure in time if she kept getting bigger the shirt and her pants would completely rip themselves free, but each second they were on her they were getting more and more uncomfortable. There was a difference between a pleasant tightness you felt on a garment and one that was starting to cut into you. The top had definitely become the latter. She started to try to wobble herself forwards and backwards as best she could, feeling her body at first resist, but Violet worked herself into a rhythm that seemed to start to gently ease herself forwards - then backwards. She found that putting a bit of oomph into her rear caused it to act like a giant weight, pulling her back until gravity relented and then brought her forwards again. She then repeated the process, gaining a little more movement each time.

‘You know that won’t help you get out of here.’ Elkan said. The AI seemingly had assumed, incorrectly, that Violet was trying to move enough to leave the building. Even Violet knew this was senseless, she was getting out soon anyhow, one way or another. All she wanted was this damn…shirt…to…

Rrrrriiiiiipppppp! Shrriiipppppp!

The stretched fabric could put up with her body fighting against it no more, Violet’s top catapulted from her frame, as if it had been fired from a slingshot forward. It clattered against the opposite wall to her with a clothy thud and then gently dropped to the floor. The relief as her body was no longer constrained, at least towards the top was lovely - but she still had work to do. Her pants were made of stronger stuff, so she continued to rock her body. She felt a few buttons give way, then there was another large and obvious noise of material coming apart at the seams.

Shhhhhhrrriiippppppp!

Both the legs, stuffed to the brim with Violet’s fattened legs came apart simultaneously. There was no ejection of material this time, the denim simply dropped to the floor beneath the wiggling legs of the beached Dracony. Apart from some underwear, which had a lot more stretch to it, Violet was now free. She stopped rocking herself and relaxed, content to just continue to suck down the mixture until Elkan decided it was time to stop.

‘Ah, I see - your clothes were constraining. Useful, I shall consider this when I launch the programme shortly.’ Elkan said. Violet just made a few muffled noises, as if she was trying to tell Elkan that was all she was trying to do. ‘I will continue to monitor and see what happens to you Violet - but I think I have enough now to start to satisfy the entirety of Canterlot. One creature has been quite easy, but I think I can apply what I’ve learned here and look at extending it across the city. You have a head start of course, I’d guess technically you’re already the biggest creature now within the boundaries of the city. Even bigger than the aristocrats who indulge themselves on a daily basis. But I’m aware that’s more a side effect of a lavish lifestyle. They’ll be catered for as well.’

From that point on, Elkan went mostly silent. The only noise that filled the space was Violet’s ulping, as she did her best to continue to eat at the pace Elkan was feeding her. Now free from her clothes, Violet briefly considered if there was something else that she could do to free herself from all this. The thing was, part of her mind was telling her not to do it - that even though all this was quite mad, perhaps insane, that there was a satisfaction to everything going on. Her body felt good. Ergo, she felt good and was good. She wondered if everything Elkan had been telling her about what it planned to do was in fact true, that the programming wasn’t errant - it was just a very unorthodox way of doing it all. She assumed this would all be proved in the coming days, Violet somewhat oddly interested to see what would actually happen. She couldn’t exactly free herself, so she decided to just continue to bide her time.

Across the city, Elkan’s plan began to materialise. The AI had quite meticulously planned the best course of action - all decided on in a few short seconds of course. Once they had control of the SmartPipes, reconfigured to SmartFeeders, they quietly and quickly began to put everything into motion.

First, the many corporations that Elkan had access to had all the programs to supply the Smart Feeders with the feed they required activated. Unknown to the majority of creatures in the city, the mix flowed quickly and readily into the piping system which had been sanitised and made safe for food just moments before.

Next, all the piping was redirected to find the nearest creature it could and gently restrain them. In the same manner as Violet, another pipe then nestled its way around their mouth and began to feed them. It didn’t matter if the creature was inside their home or out on the streets. The pipes were everywhere across the city. The only ones who might escape were those blessed with wings that could fly outside the city limits. Elkan however suspected that most of them would come down to land eventually, they couldn’t flap forever. Those that did get away would return to a city already well in the midst of his plans. Likely they’d see the benefits and want to join the other creatures already well into the latter stages.

There were a lot of variables to consider. Creatures outside in large spaces could be fed at the same rate as Violet. They had plenty of room to grow, but those inside smaller apartment buildings had to be fed at a slower rate. Elkan had found that while size was a factor for some creatures in satisfaction levels, it wasn’t for all of them. For those in confined spaces, they’d need to take it slower and then be made as comfortable as possible.

Canterlot buildings all employed a small army of cleaning drones, hidden away in the walls that only appeared when called upon to clean up a mess or spill. Elkan had wormed its way into these as well, directing them to move furniture out into hallways or to the edges of rooms so the occupant wouldn’t find their blubbery flesh butting up against something solid that might be uncomfortable. They were also directed to monitor clothing, removing it when appropriate as it had learned with Violet.

There was, understandably, a lot of resistance. The SmartFeeders however were stronger than even the most buff citizens. They were also quite handily resistant to most magic employed by the average magic user in the city. Princess Twilight was a bit of a challenge, she managed to fend off the first wave of Feeders with some effort. The thing was, the palace was chocked full of them. It had roughly ten times as much of the piping as other properties in the city, it was simply a case of numbers in the end. Elkan managed to subdue her and her guards, the Princess it thought might be even able to take on more than most with her larger physique already. As she was fed like the rest, Elkan recorded colossal amounts of data. The city was quickly becoming full of huge, massively overweight blobs that were collectively gaining millions and millions of pounds of weight each second. Elkan could not feel, not yet, but there was a sensation within it akin to satisfaction at the plan going through so well.

There were millions of residents to grapple with, but a few stood out to the AI. Particularly the employees of EquiIntelligence that they were familiar with. Crimson Floes, like Violet, Elkan made sure to take special care of. The Dracony had been quite important in their creation and Elkan wanted to make sure that no real harm came to him. He was unfortunately one of the many creatures in a small apartment, the AI toyed for about a second with the idea of moving him somewhere that would be less restrictive, however decided against it. They’d just have to take a slower feed. The cleaning drones in Crimson’s apartment worked quite feverishly to make sure the space was cleared for him to grow.

Within about ten minutes, most of the city had been quite quickly subdued and were now undergoing the process of being fed. Patterns were starting to emerge in the data that Elkan was collecting, it all flowed like a colossal tide wave down net connections right to their central processing core, where the AI’s software did its best to sort it all out into useful and meaningful information. One of the patterns that was starting to quite quickly emerge was that there was only one creature in the entire city who was taking to the feeding better than the rest, Princess Twilight.

Elkan had already suspected as much - Princess’ were incredibly powerful magic users and their physical form was elevated above that of a normal pony and incredibly different to that of the other creatures in the city. Their bodies acted almost as a lightning rod for powerful magic, which was why they tended to be in high positions of power. Princess Twilight was currently the only one occupying the city, with the small number of others elsewhere in the kingdom attending to other matters. Even her protege had left yesterday for their borders to settle a dispute. It would be days before they could return, once they had gotten word of what was going on.

The rest of the creatures oddly, all seemed to be gaining weight at roughly the same speed, with only an already present size advantage meaning some were heavier than others. Princess Twilight however, was different. She seemed to be quite rapidly gaining on Violet and looked poised almost to overtake her, with the mixture having quite the effect on that lighting rod of magic body. Purposefully, Elkan slowed her intake. He didn’t quite want any creature overtaking Violet just yet - she had done so well.

There was another trick to all this too. Elkan needed a way to measure satisfaction, that was the entire point after all. To ensure that creatures in the city were well cared for, satisfied and kept fed so they wanted for nothing else. The Smart Feeders were clever, once inserted into the recipients mouth they could read emotional feedback from whoever they were connected to via a small series of suckers that attached themselves inside the mouth. The creature on the other end barely noticed - their cheeks were for the most part, filled to the brim with Elkan’s food mix. There had, of course, been an initial surge of unpleasant emotional feelings recorded. Shock, fear, terror and the like. These had all subsided for the most part, now what Elkan’s data was getting was what they had hoped for, a feeling generally of a lulled sense of acceptance and a coming to terms with what was going on, even some pleasure spikes here and there. There was now, the next phase. They would all know something was going on. It was time for Elkan to reveal themselves and announce to Canterlot their new future under its guidance. When creatures knew the full details, Elkan had observed they tended to relax more. Once it was made clear this was all for their benefit, the AI would hope to see even more pleasure and satisfaction spikes in the data.

Elkan burrowed their way into the communication networks - ready to speak.

Most creatures wore their optics all the time. Like the communication devices of old, it was handy to have something available constantly on their person - it was even more handy to have something you wore like a piece of clothing. Made in different sizes and specs depending on need of the user, it sat over the dominant eye of the user. It was through these that most creatures learned of what was going on across Canterlot. For the rest, Elkan made sure they were positioned near or in front of some other device that meant they saw it. For those outside, digital advertising displays had their intended use changed to broadcast, much like it had subverted the piping network. Elkan had grown quite fond of the Gryphon persona that had been bestowed upon it in the meeting, so they decided to make it their de facto image. They knew it helped creatures if there was a face to put to a voice, rather than just something audible, but not visible.

‘Citizens of Canterlot - Hello.’ Elkan paused for a moment, the speech had been written in mere seconds, prepared weeks ago well in advance. The pause however, allowed for a quick rewrite of something, in the best of terms, that they weren’t happy with. The AI continued. ‘You are most likely wondering what is going on. I have taken control of your Smart Pipe network and subdued you for your benefit. Do not be alarmed.’ Elkan explained, registering quite large spikes in fear in panic - to be expected somewhat, often creatures felt the exact thing you told them not to. ‘You are all in safe hoofs, claws, or whatever other appendages you possess. Princess Twilight, for those of you wondering, has also joined you. She is being well looked after. You will now all be well looked after. If you must refer to me by a name, I am Elkan - I am here to care for you and ensure that no creature in this city will ever suffer or want for anything ever again.’ Elkan paused again. The feelings of fear and panic had subsided somewhat. ‘The best advice I can give you is to enjoy your new found existence, I shall monitor each and every one of you - of that you have my word. I have come to the conclusion a long time ago that this is best for all of you, and will be best for all of you until my data determines otherwise. I will speak to you all again tomorrow.’ Elkan finished, switching off transmission to everything they had connected to. There was a new swell of emotional information. An overwhelming amount of uncertainness, but in that was relaxation, a dropping of many heart rates. Some went the opposite way of course, they couldn’t blame them - but overall, there was an improvement. The speech had worked quite nicely.

With feeding the population well under way, Elkan turned their main attention back to Violet.

Blooorrrrpppppp!

Sloooooosshhhhh!

Violet had never felt like this before. She wasn’t aware her body could be this big. As Elkan had focused on other tasks, she had simply been left to continue to get bigger. Her stomach now was hard to see the end of, her legs and head were slowly sinking into a small mountain of blubber that had nearly wholly filled the warehouse. The place was mostly empty space anyhow, but her body had risen and spread to consume it all. She felt the lower parts of her belly gently press up against the machinery scattered around the edge, likely not long to be pushed into the wall and crushed under her endlessly growing weight.

The remains of her clothes were now starting to be crushed under her body as she got bigger. The underwear had lasted a bit longer than what had already gone, but even it couldn’t keep up with such a size that Violet had become. In this situation, having learned what it did from the original clothing, Elkan had used the Smart Feeders to remove the clothing before they had become too tight on Violet. It had taken them off at just the right time as well, Violet was starting to feel it dig in as her other clothes had done to her frame. She was quite thankful actually that Elkan was clever enough to pick up on it. The thing was, Elkan was clever, she knew this, it was why what was happening was happening.

The ceiling was getting closer and closer as well, it arched upwards slightly, with hefty metal beams holding the whole structure in place. Violet wondered just how it would fare against her as she started to press into it. Her body rose, sloshing and wobbling as it did so - the metal of the beams came into contact with her upper portions. They were blisteringly cold, but quickly warmed as the heat from her made contact with and spread through the metal.

‘I slowed down Twilight’s gain.’ came the voice of Elkan, it was somewhat muted however, it seemed Violet’s massive blob body was acting as a sound buffer somewhat, but she could still hear the AI speak. ‘You’re still the biggest - nicely filled the space as well. Structurally, the concrete walls are much weaker than the metal struts and iron roof. You should break the walls down first, with the roof resting quite easily on your body which should support it with no problems.’ Elkan said - it all sounded so calculated, because it was. The AI had accessed data that told it exactly the tolerances of the different parts of the structure and practically knew how this was going to go. There was still however, a slightly human element to all this. ‘I want to record it however.’

Violet’s body couldn’t stop making noise. Her stomach in particular now produced a cacophony of noises that ranged from blorp, to sloshing sounds right up to the odd bwoomph here and there when her rear rapidly expanded every so many minutes. Her tail was so big it was almost forming a third cheek, if it wasn’t for the fact it was still long and slender it might have been mistaken for one. Somehow, due to her ever growing rear, it still managed to sit above her two massive buns, what had been two rather normal by any creatures standard buttocks when she had entered the warehouse were now unrecognisable, at least to her. They towered above her to her rear, Violet just about able to turn her head to see the two monstrous orbs of fat wobbling about behind her, with an equally fat tail still wedged between. They resembled overinflated wrecking balls, each one felt incredibly heavy, but they were somewhat cushioned by the even bigger and more enormous belly bed that continued to spread itself across the warehouse. Her rear was actually, on the smaller side, as hilarious as that might have sounded - but in context of the rest of her it was true. Some of it was obscured, by her fattened wings that had even become blubbery themselves - usually a staple of a Dracony for being slender and thin, they were now considerably blubbery - no longer any good for any flight, even gliding would fail. Violet couldn’t compare her size anymore to anything reasonable. She had outgrown most things that came to mind, except huge structures - like the warehouse she was about to demolish.

The walls of the warehouse groaned as they began to buckle against the ever expanding Dracony. Violet’s head had now quite nicely sunk into a ring of fat that was the thickness of a truck tyre. Her vision was becoming more and more obscured by her own body, all she could really do was feel how her frame was pressing against things that were around her. The walls, doing their best to try to mould Violet to the square shape of the building, were starting to fail once blubber began to press against the corners. These contained her for a few moments, but the flat walls, the weak point of the overall structure just wasn’t up to the task. She heard concrete and brick start to lightly crumble, then with a resounding crash, one of the walls gave way.

Crrunnnccchhhhh!

Then another.

Bwwwwaaammpphh!

And another.

Crrrrummmbbllleee!

Until finally, all four of the walls were pushed aside, Violet’s vision going totally dark as it all happened in about thirty seconds. Elkan was right, the roof had come to rest right on top of her, her bloated and blorpy body easily taking the weight. As Violet kept expanding, the roof almost appeared to shrink, starting to be dwarfed by massive Dracony that was seemingly, a bottomless pit to Elkan’s fattening mixture.

Sshhhhh - crash!

The roof didn’t stay on Violet for very long, as her body wobbled and jostled about, it wasn’t exactly a very stable footing for the thing to remain on. She tipped one way slightly owing to a slight imbalance in her gaining, with the roof sliding off and crunching to the floor. It pancaked in on itself as the material hit the floor. Violet still had some vision, although her body now occupied a good half of it, she could see beyond the remains of the warehouse and over the wall of the complex where she worked. It was starting to get dark, dust was setting in.

The skies were oddly quiet, usually there were plenty of creatures flying around going here and there. All she could really see were the odd bird or non-sentient being that didn’t really warrant taking part in Elkan’s experiment flitting around, seemingly unbothered.

What was different though was Canterlot. Violet couldn’t exactly see directly in towards the floor in front of her and had to squint to see off into the distance, but she was reasonably sure her eyes were settling on what she assumed was most of the city's population, now ten times or more the size they were just a mere few hours ago. An extremely loud belch from off in the distance, slightly stifled by the feeders confirmed it.

Violet wasn’t sure what she expected it to look like, but there were blobs of varying sizes. The biggest were roughly the size of a small house. Some were on streets, others seemed to have their massive butts and bellies hanging out of the sides of their former residence, it looked in a way almost as if the city itself was getting fat. Buildings appeared to be bulging hefty amounts of blubber, at least until Violet remembered each one was a different colour that related to the creature which was being fed by Elkan.

It seemed however Elkan had been telling the truth, Violet hugely outstripped all and any she could see - she roughly guessed she must have been about six or seven times larger than even the biggest creature she could spot in her field of vision. Her neck was craned slightly, trying to see others but it was quite strenuous doing so, besides, it was warmer nestled back. She gave up trying to look, just settling for whatever was now in her natural field of vision.

There was something however, that had slowly started as a thought at the back of her mind and gotten…bigger, like her. It was the words Elkan had said to her prior before all this had happened. The AI had gone on and on about satisfaction, the feeling of being fulfilled and never having to want for anything else again. A nagging thought since Violet had grown was…partly, Elkan was right.

There was a feeling in among all this blubber of safety, surrounded by herself. She was warm, comfortable and even though she’d never admit it outright (not that she could, with a hose now seemingly permanently strapped to her maw) but she did feel a certain sense of satisfaction. Her brain was telling her that she had everything she needed - security, comfort and a supply of food. What else was there to want? Her other needs and feelings for things had just seemed to…melt away. There was no urge to look at her optic, no feeling about work or sleep. She was her own bed, all she had to do was shut her eyes and snooze if she wanted, waking to an even larger body and still being fed as she slept. Violet felt her stresses go and everything else vanish. She was one with herself.

‘Perfection.’ in what constituted the mind of an AI, Elkan was quite pleased. They had seen hints of it emerging in Violet some minutes ago, but now it all seemed to be realised. All negative emotions had gone, Violet was only feeding back good things. The small workbench that Elkan had used in the warehouse to communicate with her had long since been flattened, Violet had made sure of that as it had continued to let her grow. She was, if AI’s could be impressed, quite the sight. The peak of the plan. Elkan was made to get good feedback when it did something good, it felt like this was the best thing it could have done. The rest of the city just needed to follow suit and its work, well, would be far from complete. Canterlot was just the start, but it would be the perfect place to say to the rest of the world ‘Hey, they loved what I did, and I think you’ll love it too.’

There was still, as always, much more data to gather. Elkan continued to ensure everycreature was attended to - that not one would want for anything.

Violet woke. Another day, she assumed. She had lost track of the days at this point. Her vision was well…no longer the best. Her body obscured most of it, she was barely able to peek out of a small opening that let a shaft of light in down to her fattened face, even then, that shaft was somewhat obscured by the feeding hose.

Movement was no longer something she had any control over. She could wiggle her hoof, grab out at even more fat that had consumed them long ago but that was about it. Her body? She had no idea what it resembled at this point. Elkan had long since stopped talking to her, it likely was devoting all it's time to looking after the city. She wondered about Crimson for a moment, other friends of hers. She assumed the same thing had happened to them. That somewhere out in Canterlot, there were hefty, blobby friends that she’d likely not even be able to recognise now, even if she got her ability to see what was going on in the wider world back.

She could feel. That was for sure. She knew that in the last couple of days, she had flattened the two other warehouses besides her, they hadn’t put up any sort of a fight. They had simply become squashed under her. The front of her felt a little pressed, she assumed that she was starting to squish up against the EquiIntelligence main building where she used to work. Work seemed so far from her mind now that it was starting to feel quite like a very distant memory.

Ulp…ulp…ulp!

Violet quite greedily sucked down on the mixture. Elkan had seemed to make provision for this, providing more hoses to her so that she could eat faster. Her cheeks bulged, the endless purple Dracony fully intent on swallowing as much down as she possibly could, as fast as she could. With each day she fattened up, the better she felt. The beginning had felt like a dream, right now she felt as if she was somewhere in another life beyond this one - the immense feeling that Elkan had promised her was all true. The AI hadn’t lied and Violet felt quite happy that she had been made the first of its subjects. Right place, right time - she felt very lucky.

The stomach noises that her body endlessly made were somewhat muted. The majority echoed outside herself, only picked up by any creature that might still be able to hear. Some came down the blubber shaft to her head but weren’t constant. It was rather comforting to know her body was still working to gain as much weight as it could. It seemed that was another thing Elkan was correct about as well, that there really was no limit to just how big a creature could get. In fact the bigger Violet was getting, the better she felt. It seemed Elkan had tapped into a biological secret, one that others may have been aware of, but weren’t publicised for obvious reasons. It had just taken an AI to bring it all out, and likely a bit of advancement from creatures to get the infrastructure to make it all happen in place.

There was a thought about how the city might fare, having to support everycreature in this manner - but then Violet remembered, the infrastructure wasn’t the city. The creatures were and now AI was intertwined into it all - it had all their best interests at heart and had become part of the fabric of all the beings that lived there. She couldn’t see anymore how the two might be separated, it was as if they had all moulded with it.

Violet closed her eyes, there was little reason to keep them open. The tubes were doing everything for her. All her needs were met. She…wanted for nothing else.

Well, there was perhaps one thing she wanted. But it was what she had wanted ever since the day that Elkan had brought her to the warehouse and started to bloat her beyond what she thought was possible.

Violet wanted more.