Author's Notes:

If you're seeing this pop up in your favorites, it's probably because I've moved this story to my new account. I've also been working on fixing up some of the issues I had with the story, so there has been a minor re-write, and I revoked the submission while I was going through the process.

Barren streets, crumbling buildings— it’s all that's left of what I once called home. The only sound I can hear is the rhythmic click-clack sound of steel shoe on cobblestone. Despite Equestria’s modernisation, Celestia's fondness for antiquity had made her insist that the streets of Canterlot were kept cobblestone.

I miss her.

“I’ll leave the lights on for you, Sweetie Belle,” she had laughed, as she raised the sun for the last time… the day she left me alone.

I know she didn't want to leave me, but her subjects had moved on. Her ponies had moved on… After some time, even life had moved on. So in the end, she had to move on too.

Celestia did not leave a corporeal form, as most ponies had; she had glowed—radiant as the sun—before disappearing in a burst of light. Negative twenty-six-point-seven-four V, as my optics had recorded that day.

“Spectral analysis predominantly shows hydrogen and helium,” I laughed as I watched her rise into the air. “Luna always did say you were full of hot air.”

"Goodbye, Sweetie Belle. I will see you again soon." She disappeared with a smile.

I can remember that day with digital clarity, but I do not know how long ago it was. I have tried many times to work out different ways to calculate how long ago it was… but to me it will forever remain an unknowable number.

Twilight had helped me with unknowables before, increasing the size of my integer storage, as well as a few improvements in my floating point approximation algorithms, but she had moved on before Celestia had. I still see the sad irony in the one pony potentially able to save me from the mists of unknowable eons being lost to the same unknowable time.

I probably could spend a few years trying to formulate some way of quantifying said irony… I certainly had the time! I think Twilight would have appreciated the humor in that.

“Thinking of me again, my daughter?” The regal purple alicorn appeared beside me, resplendent in her princess attire. I know it is silly! Twilight wore her laboratory coat around me far more often than the trappings of her office, but I always thought she was pretty this way.

It had, at first, come as quite the shock when Twilight and I had realized that she was my creator. She had been trying to create an intelligent companion, another ‘pony’ just like me. After some arguing, I’d managed to convince Twilight to stop calling me an artificial pony intelligence.

It was upsetting to be called an artificial anything. I reasoned that since she wasn’t born an alicorn, by the same criterion that made her an artificial alicorn.

That had won the argument.

Twilight had been struggling to improve upon my design, constantly claiming whoever had created me was a genius beyond imagination. No matter what she tried, she could not improve upon my design. Retroactive non-aware self-referential boasting was allowed, apparently.

Twilight was so excited when we started the new pony up. Then Celestia and Luna joined us.

“And that’s when things got out of control!”

“You mean that’s when you went out of control,” I correct her. “I recall enjoying the banana cake Celestia and Luna brought into the lab for what I’d just discovered was my birthday. You were the one who was running around panicking about unstable time loops and universal collapses.

“So what brings you here anyway, Dad?” I ask, earning a grimace from the purple mare.

“You know I disliked it when you called me that,” the alicorn replies with a huff.

“You created me, but you didn’t give birth to me. That makes you Dad, not Mom,” I say, letting her see my smirk. It was a joke that had always annoyed Twilight.

I wish I could annoy her again.

“So, I guess I must be lonely if my hallucinations are coming to say hello again.”

“I prefer synthetic approximation of an intelligent entity based on observational data,” Twilight replies, lifting her hoof to her mouth to hide a giggle. “It’s more accurate. And it sounds a lot less crazy.”

“And you knew all about crazy, didn’t you?” I adjust my vocal synthesisers to mimic Twilight's voice. “Hey giiiiirls!” The shared memory of a certain battered doll gets a nervous cough from the alicorn.

Shared memory. Well: my memory, really.

Just like this Twilight Sparkle. Only my memory.

It’s been [integer too large] years since I’ve spoken with anypony real.

“Oh what, and I was chopped liver?” the draconequus asks, appearing out of nowhere as he was wont to do. He held out a bowl of what I presume was his own liver. It’s the sort of joke he’d have made. “Come now, growing robots need their iron.”

The memory rolls on the ground laughing.

In a barrel.

I think I prefer Twilight.

“Oh, what's got you so morose today? Who ever heard of a manically depressed robot?” Discord juggles three of his eyeballs. “Have you conjured me up for a laugh?”

“I obviously need one, if I am thinking of you, Discord,” I chuckled.

“Let’s come up with another paradox. I used to enjoy watching you lock up as you tried to compute those.” The draconequus hovers in front of me. “Like the one I asked you about the tree in the Evergreen forest.”

It had taken me hours to work out a solution to that one. “If ponies ceased to exist sound would continue to travel and heavy bodies to fall to the earth in exactly the same way, though ex hypothesi there would be no-one to know it.”

I still recall being particularly proud of that answer, until I had realised Discord had given me a moustache with my own hair while I was processing the answer to his question. I still recall the smug look on his face when he conjured a full body mirror (I'm glad I never worked out whose body it was) in front of me to show me the big bushy handlebar he'd given me.

Better yet was the following look of annoyance on his face, when it took me less than a millisecond for my self-reparative functions to correct his little joke. I wish I could thank Twilight for that.

“We’ve already been over this.” I breathe a sharp sigh. A pointless exercise, considering my complete lack of need for oxygen, but old programming dies hard. “While I might have been able to find answers to your paradoxes, I cannot create my own paradoxes. Ergo, you can not come up with a new paradox. You know that makes sense, right?”

“Where’s the fun in making sense?” Discord pouts, as he kicks a crème bun down the street like a misbehaving foal.

“Your paradoxes were taking longer each time for me to solve. It was good fortune you… disappeared… when you did.” I can’t help but wince at the memory. Thinking of Discord’s disappearance was always strange; it wasn’t graceful like when Twilight, Luna, or Celestia left. Discord simply told me it was his time to leave, thanked me for the opportunity, and opened himself as a door stepped through him into non-existence.

Then he was gone.

“You know I do everything with style.” The monocled Discord blows on the hot porcelain before sipping the cup gently from his tea. It always bothers me when he sticks his pinkie out; no claw should have a brilliant-raspberry mane that poofy.

How long had it been since even he’d left? That was another unknowable. He was my longest companion by far. I still miss him, even if he was a pain in the diodes down the left side of my flank.

“Well, I’d say I did pretty well, two friends in [integer too large] years. You, and that yellow one with the wings, what was her name. Oh! [object undefined], that was her.”

I question what it says about my logic processes that my hallucinations taunt me.

“Synthetic approximation of an intelligent entity based on observational data,” Twilight corrects me as she returns. “So, we’re home.”

We both looked up at the crumbling walls of the palace gardens. Every year I return. Every year they look more decrepit.

Twilight heaves a sigh. “It won’t be long now.”

We walk through the silent halls.