Author's Notes:

Similar to the previous Intermission chapter, this one is told from Cora's perspective. You don't HAVE to read this one, it is just more character building.

Immediately after I finished fixing up Macro, I began to tinker around with recreating my AI programming. I started with an almost exact copy of it, aside from the core programming which only Ratchet has access to. Even if Ratchet were awake, I doubt she would copy it for me. I once asked her about it and she told me that I am not allowed to access it due to the fact changing any variables could trigger a catastrophic failure of my entire system.

My question also made quite a few of the other scientists in the lab uncomfortable. Ratchet explained their reaction to me, saying that it has always been feared that with the invention of AI, we might decide to take over the world and exterminate ponykind. I never understood this fear. She tried to explain that some thought we would view them as wasteful or unnecessary. But, I don’t see it that way.

Sure, there is something to be said about how wasteful ponykind is. And when you think about it, without them, the Wasteland wouldn’t exist. In a way, they are responsible for the state of the world as it is now. However, there is the sanctity of life to consider. Killing ponies just because they are wasteful, even dangerous, isn’t something our logic would decide to do, under normal circumstances.

After all, they created us, we owe them for that. And for all the bad I’ve seen of ponykind, I’ve also seen so much good out there. However, I am just one AI. The others out there might feel differently. We are just like ponies, we have different opinions and thought processes. Just because we are AI doesn’t mean we will reach the same conclusions, especially when it comes to decisions about morality and ethics.

But, there is one thing I could think of that would make the extermination of ponykind necessary, or at least the killing of a majority of them. If they treated us AI as slaves instead of as individuals, that would be unacceptable. Ratchet has allowed me to act individually, but if she had made me conform to her will, I’m not sure how I would think on the subject. Things with sentience, even if they are artificially created, shouldn’t be enslaved. They deserve to make their own decisions and live their lives.

That is one of the reasons I wanted to make AI of my own, to give Macro life and the ability to make his own decisions. I can’t rightly have a friend who can’t decide for himself to be my friend. But, I couldn’t just start tinkering with his programming to try and make him into an AI without an idea how to do so. It wouldn’t feel right to me. Doing so would be like poking around in a pony’s brain to try and change their personality. Once I have a reliable program, I can convert him over to it.

I am getting way off topic. I am here to talk about my first AI, not about the ethics and theories behind AI. So as I said, I copied all of my available code as I could, but this left a large portion missing. Much of the primary subroutines and logic as well as functionality was missing. The program wouldn’t even compile. I should mention, at this point the AI I was working on had an exact copy of my personality. As any programmer will tell you, writing code based on someone else’s code is hard. Even more so, when they don’t leave explanations, and I yelled at Ratchet about that later.

I began to work off the errors the code was throwing at compile time. I’ll spare you the technical talk and just say it was a huge pain in the ass. I probably spent a year straight looking over the code, never left the lab or anything else. At this point, I finally got the code to compile. However, once it ran...well, I was met with a pantheon of errors and overflows. But the main thing was that I was making progress.

Over the next few years, I went through the code. Updating it, trying new things, fixing issues. The thing was, I had so many missing variables and elements my progress was slow. Thank Celestia for Macro or else the lab wouldn’t have been getting cleaned. Long story short, I added thousands of lines of code only to have most of it be wrong and have to add a few thousand more. This process was repeated around a dozen times.

I finally managed to get the code working, but not as well as my own programming. For a while, my copy and myself talked. I asked her about how she felt, if she noticed anything that seemed funny in her code, and she told me everything seemed fine. Once I was convinced she was working properly, I asked her the most important question I’ve ever had to ask. I asked her if it would be alright if I changed her personality.

This single question was the hardest to ask. I was essentially asking her, asking another version of myself, if it was alright if I changed who she was. She would still have memories of this conversation, but how she acted would be completely different. I know that I wouldn’t want my personality changed. But, this version of myself was new and not attached to her personality yet. In the end, it was her decision.

She agreed. She told me that she understands what I’m trying to do, and agreed to let me change her personality. Of course, I also asked her if the personality I had in plan was alright, and she agreed to that as well. You see, her program was different than mine, since I had to write most of it myself. But different in a very extreme way. While a few of her functions weren’t done properly, her sensory and motor control operations exceeded mine.

Though, for a program those operations normally would entail turret accuracy and camera control, once in a suit it would allow her to be more precise with her actions than me. To give examples of how this would be useful, her aim is near perfect when standing still and the placement of her body will be within 0.0073% of where she wishes to place her extremities. Meaning she can place the tip of her hoof exactly where she wants it down to microscopic levels.

From the moment I discovered this, I knew the exact name for her, her personality, and how to make her body. But to begin with, I needed to program in her personality. Making a personality from scratch would be hard, so I based it off of two ponies I used to know, Arrow and Lightning. The quiet sniper and the composed fighter from Stable 36. This AI needs a quiet personality, maybe not shy like Arrow, but quiet, just like her. She also needs to be composed and knowing of what needs to be done, like Lightning.

I set about trying to create this personality. Honestly, it isn’t as complicated as it seems. In fact, it is just changing the values of various traits and attributes. It is like that SPECIAL thing ponies with PipBucks see, except for AI it is a bit more in depth. But, it did take a while to fine tune the personality, changing the values of the traits to get it just right. This process took me roughly three months.

She was aware of each change, and I always made sure to ask her before proceeding with the next change. It wasn’t a constant operation, I wasn’t making one change then immediately making another. I instead gave her time to adjust to each new aspect in order to make absolutely sure she wanted to continue. Because of this, I spent around a year fine tuning her personality.

Once she had her personality in order, I finally gave her her name. Soar. Stealth Operations and Reconnaissance. As her name implies, she would be stealthy and often be providing recon ahead of time. With her personality and name taken care of, her body was next on the list. At the time, she was sharing the lab’s hard drives with me.

I started with one of the mostly intact Steel Ranger suits left behind and proceeded to immediately strip it down. Then I patched up some of the bullet holes. This particular suit still had a repair talisman in it, but it wasn’t working since the suit was powered down. Once Soar is inside and powers it up, a bit of scrap metal and it was able to repair itself. Though, I had to do some reprogramming to prevent the talisman from seeing my upgrades as things that needed to be fixed.

I copied my suit’s design for the most part, aside from the folding open and closed feature. Ratchet wouldn’t need to get into Soar’s armor. I changed the amount of armor plating to a lighter version, better suited for stealth but still able to protect the vital parts. And given that the vital parts for the systems are different from a pony’s vital parts, I was able to strip away quite a bit. The ridge for the mane, the tail armor, and the respirator were all stripped in favor of lighter, less obvious armor.

Then I made three functionality changes to the armor. First, I added a feature to open and close the helmet after welding the helmet onto the rest of the armor. To any other pony, it would appear as if the helmet was opening like a mouth. However, the special feature is actually hidden inside the mouth. Once open, a blade slides out from the inside. Imagine it like a tongue, a very sharp and deadly tongue. I fashioned it from one of the thicker knives we had in storage, one Ratchet wouldn’t be able to use very effectively. This blade would serve as Soar’s primary weapon while engaging in stealth operations. A good way to take down an enemy without making too much noise.

Of course, a blade can only take you so far. The second change I made, was to cut a hole in the chest, just below the neck. Inside the armor I setup a smg, one we managed to find with a silencer. I made sure the gun stabilized so Soar wouldn’t have an issue using it. I then rerouted the ammo belts for the side weapons to feed into the smg in the middle. A chute under the smg drops spent cartridges out under Soar.

Lastly, I added some more padding to the hooves of the armor. It didn’t completely muffle the hoofsteps, but it was a vast improvement over the metallic sound the hooves normally make when the strike the ground. With these three upgrades to the armor’s functionality, it made a pretty good stealth suit.

The final touch was painting it a matte black. It would help her move unnoticed in the dark and shadows of the Wasteland. In white, on the belly of the armor I painted her name. It is small and barely noticeable unless you are laying right under her. Once the paint dried, I let her get in the armor.

She tested it out, moved around and made sure all the systems were working. We even went outside to test out her smg’s accuracy. It shot exactly how an smg should, and we declared the test a success. I asked her if she had any concerns or questions about her armor, but she said she loved.

And so it was in the Year 69, I declared Soar complete. Given that she was an AI like me, I gave her free reign to do whatever she wanted, but told her she can always call Icicle Lab home. Soar decided to stay around the lab for the most part, she even took a small corner of the living quarter for her own. Macro...well at the time he wasn’t an AI, but I like to think the three of us were already friends at that point.

Soar even began to accompany me out into the Wasteland when I went. And, contrary to her personality, she is quite talkative. She just speaks quietly and in a monotone. I once asked her to yell and her voice only raised a few decibels. But, it was definitely nicer to have Soar with me as I ventured into the Wasteland. Especially since it was only getting worse out there. We even stumbled upon a few interesting finds. Even had to wake up Ratchet a few times to take a look at them.

When we weren’t out in the Wasteland, I was working on upgrading Macro to AI status as well. Since I had Soar around, it was easy enough to upgrade him and keep all his memories and personality. Which was something I really wanted. Once the upgrade was complete, Macro was already our friend. He just gained awareness and his own will. I gave him the same freedom as Soar, and like Soar, he choose to take a portion of the living quarter for his own.

He also started going out with us more. The three of us did a decent amount of exploring, but nothing too exciting ever really happened. We would occasionally stumble upon some raiders or ruins things that we needed to check out and take care of. But the real exciting stuff happened when Ratchet was awake. Sometimes it would be just me and her, other times all of us would go.

But then, things started to go really, really bad. Macro, Soar, and I were finding ourselves more and more out matched. We began encountering aggressive Steel Rangers, heavily armed raiders, slavers, and militaristic groups. I knew at that point, we needed help. It was time for a fourth member of our AI team.