FoE: Icicle - Army of Coraby PlagenShiki
Chapters
Year 63 - MACRO
Three years had passed since I froze Ratchet again. I told her she had to stay out of the Wasteland as much as possible, to avoid it breaking her. I said that she needed to make friends, the words my friend Watcher had told me. His words made sense. I saw firsthand what the Wasteland did to ponies that tried to survive alone. It broke them, drove them to become less than ponies, made them become killers, thieves, and rapists. Or it would drive them to their deaths.
In the twenty-eight years since Ratchet first woke up, I saw things slowly decline in the Wasteland. For the mind of a pony, it might not be as noticeable, but I am an AI, after all. I can remember everything, as long as I have enough storage space. And in the post-apocalyptic world, I’ve been able to expand my storage space with every new harddrive I’ve come across. So when I say that I remember everything that has happened to the ponies of the Wasteland, know that it isn’t some sort of expression.
So when Watcher inevitably told me, an AI, that I should make some friends as well, it confused me. I don’t need social interaction like living ponies do. I can communicate with machines and the lab is full of them. But, the machines in the lab cannot leave. They don’t understand the outside world. They have their own, perfect world inside here and they don’t want to leave. They ignore my stories of the Wasteland and have stopped talking to me entirely in recent years.
With the death of Twinkle three years ago, the last being other than Ratchet I could call a friend, died. With the exception of Watcher, of course. But he is busy with his own troubles, his own matters. I rarely see him anymore. In fact, it has been more than a decade. Once he found out I wasn’t an actual pony, he came around less and less. He once said, “It is too bad you aren’t a flesh and blood pony. You might have be able to become a bearer.”
I had asked what he meant, but he wouldn’t tell me. To this day, I’m not sure what he meant. I’m not even sure what Watcher actually looks like or what he is. We only ever talked through sprite bots. So, these last three years I’ve been thinking on his words. Perhaps it is time I make some friends.
Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that I don’t go out and talk with others or anything. In fact, I have a long list of acquaintances. Scavengers, city guards, mercenaries, even just normal civilians trying to scrape together a living. But I wouldn’t call them friends. Many of them don’t even know that I am just an AI in a hollow suit of armor.
It doesn’t make me sad, not having friends. I don’t get lonely. That is one of the emotions ponies have that I’m not quite sure about. I understand happiness, anger, sadness, and a few of the other simple ones. But complex emotions like loneliness, love, depression, or even boredom, I can’t begin to comprehend. I can copy how ponies look and sound when they express these emotions, but what they are actually feeling while under their effects? I haven’t the faintest idea.
But, I do see the benefits of having friends. You can depend on them, they can help you, and you can help them. Together you are stronger and can do so much more than if you were alone. It is quite the beneficial relationship.
Because of this, I decided to take Watcher’s words to heart...well, harddrive. I set out to make some friends. But it turns out I don’t really know how to do that. Ratchet made them simply by helping out and being herself. Even if I am created from her personality, for me it is different.
From the moment of my creation, Ratchet and I have developed our personalities along different paths. Now, it is hard to tell that I was once a perfect copy of her personality. It is kind of similar to how if you start with the same mare and stallion, the children will turn out different. Even in the case of twins. Because of the individual experiences things slowly begin to change.
My physical limitations, my lack of a body, are also probably partially to blame from my inability to make friends. Once ponies learn I am just an AI in armor, they change. I just become another robot to them, despite me being more advanced than simple robots that are controlled by algorithms and programs. I have my own will, my own thoughts.
So, I have had to keep that fact hidden from many of the ponies I’ve met in my travels. A few, once I met with Ratchet, know better. But they are aging, and once they are gone I’ll just be thought of as another robot in the wasteland.
And that is another problem. Ponies age, I do not. It is hard to maintain friends when they will grow old and die and you will outlive them. In theory, I can exist indefinitely, as long as my hardware is maintained and my core program does not become corrupted. I once told Ratchet a year to her is like a few decades to me.
Because of these obstacles, I’ve been unable to obtain a single friend. But I began to think, and as an AI with all the time in the universe, thinking is something I can do. After much thought and a bit of research, I finally came to a conclusive decision. I would start a project.
The lab is filled with excess energy capable of lasting a few hundred years, so I have no constraints there. Additionally, the Rangers would leave a great deal of salvage and loot at the lab as they continued on their travels. We have ample supplies of weapons, ammunition, food and drink, as well as various technological supplies. Wires, spark batteries, scrap metal, hard drives, that sort of thing. Not to mention, the Ranger power armor they left behind when they died, around six suits mostly intact.
I personally took to retrieving luxury items in my travels. Cleaning supplies, paint, various nick-nacks to keep the lab at peak performance. In fact, I once went to a sky carriage assembly factory in order to retrieve two of the robotic arms used to assemble them. These arms are now in the workshop connected to the lab’s network so that I can use them to repair my own armor.
It was necessary, since I couldn’t maintain it myself once Twinkle was gone due to my lack of magic, hooves, and a mouth. In fact, the first thing I did with the arms was to make a new addition to my armor. Since the armor lacked any way to properly lift equipment or perform delicate operations, I had to make an upgrade. I referenced Diamond Dog appendages and added fingers to the front hooves of the armor. This upgrade made looting a whole lot easier, as well as reloading weapons.
But, I am straying too far from the point. The fact is, inside the lab’s workshop I essentially have a small assembly area. While I am in no position to start replicating anything from before the war, I can use what I know and have to literally make friends.
Of course, making another suit of armor like mine would take quite a bit of time. Not to mention, if I wanted to make AI it would probably take a year to fine tune a personality into it, even referencing my own coding. But, there are parts of my code that even I don’t have access to. It would take a lot of trial and error to get something that resembled my own code. That alone might take me a decade without anything to reference.
And so I decided to do the next best thing. I set out to find a functioning robot that wasn’t completely hostile on sight. It took me a few months to locate one, even after asking my contacts about it. Oddly enough, it seems ponies tend to dismantle working robots for parts, even if they aren’t hostile, so any that my contacts heard about were nothing but scrap metal. Never-the-less, I heard about a Mr. Handy model that was said to still be functioning at a ophthalmologist office on the outskirts of Manehatten.
When I arrived, it looked less than promising. The building was worn down and exposed to the elements. I was sure I would be walking into another empty building long since looted. However, the single bar on my EFS changed my mind. It was a non-hostile green bar as well. I picked my way through the building, taking anything that might prove useful, as I tried to find the source of the green bar.
To my surprise, it found me as I found my way into some sort of lounge on the second floor. It must have entered into the room after me and was floating in the doorway when I turned to leave. “Hello miss! I didn’t know we were expecting anyone from the military this evening,” The robot said in a cheery tone.
It was definitely a Mr. Handy model. One of the floating balls with three arms coming off the bottom of it with three sensor stalks coming off the top. It was painted white, but the paint on it was clearly worn. Some of it had even started to peel off. Suffice to say, it was in poor condition. Its three arms ending in three different tools. One was the usual claw used to pick things up, one was what appeared to be a pen holder, and the final arm ended with a laser.
“My name is Doctor Sight, resident ophthalmologist of this clinic,” The robot told me. “While I do not see any scheduled procedures on my calendar, I assume you are here for lasik? My secretary can be rather bad at her job, so it is no wonder your appointment isn’t listed. She has failed to enter in any appointments for sixty-three years now,” Doctor Sight said.
It was clear to me that the robot didn’t realize the world had basically ended. Or, it simply refused to believe it. When I tried to tell him that the truth, pointed out the destroyed walls and windows, all the dirt, he simply blamed it on the cleaning staff not showing up for over sixty-three years. I even asked about raiders and he said something about burglars and that he dispatched them himself and sent a message to the authorities, who had also failed to respond in a timely matter.
After talking with Doctor Sight for around three hours without progress, it became obvious that my idea of making friends with random robots wasn’t going to work. His programming just wouldn’t allow it. So, I did the next best thing. I told him that I was from the MWT and needed to inspect his circuitry for tampering. Less than a minute later, and he fell to the floor, deactivated.
I brought him back to the lab and began to reprogram him a bit. I didn’t want to edit him too much, but I had to remove quite a few of his subroutines and the programs that kept him locked on the ophthalmologist office. If I didn’t, he would wander back there. It would actually be more efficient to say what I kept. I kept his basic personality, his knowledge of being an ophthalmologist and his ability to perform lasik. In the future, Ratchet’s eyesight might begin to go on her, after all.
However, I added a few more things to him. I changed his anchor from his office to the lab. Should he ever leave, he will always be able to return here following his guidance chip. I also added two new subroutines, maintenance and cleaning. Specifically, methods for upkeep on the lab, its equipment, and my armor. It would be useful having someone to help around the lab.
Finally, I tweaked his personality a bit. I made him more self aware, downloaded knowledge of various technologies into him, and renamed him, using a designation similar to my own. I called him Maintenance and Cleaning Robotic Ophthalmologist, or M.A.C.R.O. for short. While I do feel a little bit bad for rewriting most of him, I personally think it is better than him rusting in some unused office waiting for some scavenger to scrap him.
When I finished with the software side of things, I set about fixing up his hardware. I sanded off the old paint and fixed any damage I found on him. I also removed the limiter on his laser attachment so in combat situations, he wouldn’t be a liability. That being said, I never expected him to leave the lab much. But home defense is important as well. When all of his dents were buffed out and his blemishes fixed to the best of my ability, I painted him a nice dull blue and carefully wrote his acronym in small lettering on the lower part of his casing.
With all of the upgrades and maintenance complete, I reactivated Macro. One thing I didn’t add, was any sort of recognition for me or Ratchet. I did give him information about the lab and Ratchet, but nothing that would make it seem like he met her. However, I gave him the ability to learn about and recognize ponies he met. When he began functioning again, his sensors rotated around the workshop and then focused on me.
“Well hello there! I do not believe we have met before. My name is Macro and I serve as something of a handyman around here. And you are?” He asked me. I told him my name and designation. Then told him that we lived together. He seemed confused at first, but then it seemed to click. “Well Miss Cora, it is a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to working with you in maintaining the Icicle Lab,” He told me happily. His politeness was a basic component of all Mr. Handy models and something I felt fundamentally made him who he was, so I didn’t change that.
I also never designated the lab as being called “Icicle Lab”. When I asked him about this, he replied, “Ah, well. My programming describes this facility as a cryogenic lab. And, even though I have yet to met the head researcher in charge, I hear that she enjoys the color ice blue. Using this information, and given this facility’s lack of a proper name in my memory banks, I have derived the name Icicle Lab. Should I call it something else, Miss Cora?”
I told him it was fine. We never did have a proper name for the facility, even during the war. It was simply called MAS Facility 128-CR. I was told the CR in the name stood for Cryogenic Research. The preceding number was just our facility’s designation. In most reports the whole thing was shortened to F128CR. Regardless, it is thanks to Macro that we started to call the lab Icicle Lab. If not for him, I think Ratchet and I would have continued to call it “The Lab”, “Our Lab”, or “My Lab”.
And just like that, Macro was born. Though, I suppose a better term for it would be created or repurposed. But his story doesn’t end there and he certainly didn’t stay just a simple robot for long. I kept upgrading him and as I worked on making new friends, I made sure he wasn’t forgotten. In fact, once I finished making Soar, I made sure to upgrade Macro to a full AI. Oh, but Soar is a story for another time.
It wasn’t long before Macro and I became friends, despite him only being a robot at the time. He helped me to maintain the lab and my armor, which was a big help. We would also talk a lot. Simple things, mostly. It wasn’t like we could talk about politics or anything like that. Most of the time it was technical discussions about the lab equipment. After a while, however, I installed a chess program in him. When he wasn’t working on something else, we would play chess with Noblesse’s chessboard in Ratchet’s office. I made sure we used the utmost care in handling the pieces as well as our cleaning of them.
Then, as I stated before, I made some upgrades to him and made him a full AI. This was perhaps a decade after I first brought him to the lab. His personality remained much the same, I kept it polite and kind. But with the addition of his free will and full awareness, his personality began to change, just like mine did. While his primary personality remained, he got quite sarcastic. He went to a few towns around the lab, so I think that is where he picked up knowledge of sarcasm.
Let’s just say his sarcasm and politeness made it hard to tell when he was complimenting you or being snippy. Oh, and of course with free will he was no longer anchored to Icicle Lab. I let him go and do as he pleased. Most of the time we would go placed together, and often trouble would find us. Which is why we had to make more upgrades.
His pen holder arm was replaced with a Mr. Gutsy grade flamer arm. We had to reinforce his armor a bit as well and construct a cover to go over his exhaust post so that it wasn’t visible from the sides. It only covered the sides of the port, but it was enough to keep raiders and creatures from spotting us at night. At least unless they were fairly close. Due to the cover, it focused the light down. At night, you would see a circular light moving across the ground, but it wasn’t too noticeable unless you got within about fifty feet.
Together, the two of us accomplished quite a bit. With our other friends as well, including Ratchet occasionally, when we had reason to wake her up. However, traveling in a big group is just making yourself a target, especially to an even bigger groups, like bands of raiders.
This simple fact, and, well, necessity drove me to begin development of my own AI program. The very first product of which, was Soar.
Year 69 - SOAR
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’ll 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.
Year 106 - HAL
Around the year 90, things started to get really bad in the wasteland. I’m talking huge groups of raiders, slavers, and Steel Rangers all trying to get you. The raiders and Rangers would try to kill you and the slavers, of course, would try to enslave you. Of course, these three groups weren’t the only things to worry about. There were also cannibals, power hungry individuals, ruthless scavengers, zebra remnants, groups of ghouls or robots, and alicorns started to show up at one point.
These groups alone are bad enough, but when you consider all of the pre war technology that began to once again circulate around the Wasteland thanks to scavengers and other groups rediscovering it, the groups also got a lot well armed. When Ratchet and I first left the lab, most weapons and armor amounted to glorified heaps of scrap. At year 90, laser and plasma weaponry was becoming a lot more common, as were explosives and heavy weapons. Armor also started to get better as well. All in all, hostile ponies got a lot more deadly.
For the next decade my friends and I managed to hold our own against these forces. Most of the time, we avoided them if we could. After all, there was no reason to needlessly fight. Soar would warn us about threats before we encountered them and if we ever got ambushed, our suits protected our inner components enough to keep us moving. That is just one of the benefits to being an AI in a hollow suit. Of course, Macro had it a bit rougher, as he still used a Mr. Handy body.
More than a few times, our bodies would be shot to hell and only Soar’s suit had a repair talisman in it. This left Macro and me to repair our own suits as they got damaged, and out in the field sometimes we had to make due with wonderglue covered sheets of metal. On one occasion, Soar and Macro were hit with a emp grenade. This caused a horrible problem for me as I was still outnumbered about ten to one.
Luckily, they only had the one grenade and I managed to take them out at the cost of a good portion of my body falling apart from bulletholes alone. I was able to drag myself over to Soar and Macro to initiate a restart of their systems. Once they were back up, we stopped our trip and Soar had to carry me back to the lab for repairs. After that, I made sure to upgrade us all with an auto-restart system incase of future emp attacks. The system wouldn’t kick in for a few minutes after the emp goes off, so we also had to institute a new policy of not standing near each other while fighting to make sure none of us went down at the same time.
Around the year 100, these sorts of incidents began to occur more frequently. We would find our bodies being damaged almost every other excursion into the Wasteland. We tried to do a number of things differently to avoid further damage. But whether we chose different routes, traveled only at night, or even tried to run at the first sight of anything that might be hostile, we kept running into trouble.
Because of this, in the year 106, we decided that it was time for a new addition to our group. We quite easily decided upon their body and designation, but the personality was the question. In the end, we just decided to adjust the traits randomly, even maxed out a few of the values. We were not sure what kind of personality we were going to get.
Of course, since we used a copy of Soar’s program, their base abilities would be the same. Decent accuracy and precision with their movements. This would be very important for what we had in mind. The only thing that concerned us, is whether or not this new AI would choose to stay with us or leave. Macro and Soar had prior knowledge before making their choice. Soar had my knowledge and Macro had been here for years already. But for a completely new AI with no prior knowledge, how would the offer seem?
We didn’t have to wait long to find out. When we activated H.A.L., we explained to him what he was, introduced ourselves, and told him the situation. He was pretty perceptive about it all, and took it all rather well. He was polite, like Macro, but Hal’s voice was deeper and carried more weight with it. Of course, we found during our first fight with Hal his personality had another aspect to it.
It turns out, while Hal was perfectly polite when in civilized company, he does a complete one-eighty when in combat. He swears, a lot, insults his enemies, and likes to play mind games. He was like Twinkle, in a way. But he was deeply sadistic and cruel to those who stood against him. Twinkle fought aggressively, but she was never this cruel to her enemies. Hal also really enjoyed explosions. He really, really liked them. Sometimes he would throw a grenade just to see it blow up when there wasn’t even anyone around.
Of course, all of this we found out later. But his body surely helped us to discover it. It was oddly, a perfect match for this other side of her personality. Hal’s name stands for Heavy Assault and Logistics. We needed someone with more firepower, Hal was our solution. I started by taking three of the remaining ranger suits and taking them apart. I then built off the frame of one of the suits that still had a working repair talisman.
Hal’s body was going to be big and weigh a lot. As a result, I started by reinforcing the legs and taking some of the pistons off the other suits and put them onto this one. Each leg has double the amount of pistons and servos as the regular suits. I hoped this would not only help stabilize him, but also keep him quick enough to keep up with us for the most part. But I wasn’t done there.
After the upgrades to the legs, I set about upgrading the basic armor to a sort of composite armor, like that in armored vehicles. This wouldn’t be nearly as good, but it was essentially an outer layer that was the original armor, then about an inch deeper into the armor, I made another layer of the metal armor for the suit. Between these two layers, I put sand, which is in abundance just outside the lab. The joints of the armor and the area where the internal magazines feed through the suit into the exterior guns are still weak, but that’s to be expected. Due to this armor scheme, his innerworkings are a lot closer together than in the other suits.
I didn’t stop there, however, I upgraded the exterior armor too. The legs each have reinforced plates along the length and additional parts of the armor that cover the joints in the knees. I also covered the shoulders with more armor to protect the joints. Since the armor didn’t need to be comfortable for an occupant, these upgrades will protect Hal a lot better. The body itself was also upgraded with more armored plates.
I made a number of other upgrades to the helmet and neck, but the most substantial of which is a custom piece that protects the join where the neck connects to the body. I molded some plates into two pieces, both half circles. One part, a larger part, I welded onto the front of the body armor, so it suck up in front of the neck. It leaves about an inch between the chin of the helmet and the top of this piece of armor. The other part of the armor I welded onto the back. This part fits into the front part but still allows the front piece to move. These two parts formed a sort of large collar around the neck to protect it.
The last parts of the armor I changed, was adding a few spikes on the tail and claws around each hoof. Given his weight, I don’t think he’ll be doing much charging at the enemy, but if they should get close to him, it is a good thing to have weapons to can fight them off. To finish off his armor, I painted most of his armor a dark amber, but the mane and tail parts a mustard yellow. In black, I painted his designation inside the collar along his neck armor.
The final thing I had to do was put the weapons on his armor. I picked out a grenade machinegun for his right side and on the left, I put Twinkle’s minigun that wasn’t destroyed in her fight with Umbra. I knew that Hal would do it justice. Once I was finished with his armor, I let him take it for a ride.
He was pleased with it. Hal said it was a bit slow, but it would suffice. Then we went out to test out the weapons and he seemed pleased. He especially enjoyed shooting the grenade machinegun to the point where I had to stop him before he wasted too much ammo. I had to explain how rare the round for that gun were and he let out a sigh before staring longingly at the blackened ground he shot at.
Hal claimed another portion of the living quarters and began living with us. He came in handy in our fights and we began to hold our own again. I think most of the time, the raiders were simply intimidated by his size and the look of his armor. I specifically went for intimidation when I added the extra armor. Hal made things easier for us.
But, even with Hal we sometimes found ourselves on the receiving end of a particularly ferocious attack. And even if there was another one of us, the Wasteland wasn’t getting any better. It was like things were constantly circling the drain, being dragged further and further down. The four of us weren’t equipped to deal with the wide scale chaos and horrors that the Wasteland had. We helped out if we came across some ponies in need, but there was never anything we could do on a large scale.
Instead, we mostly left that up to Ratchet, in the hopes that she would somehow be able to fix things and return Equestria to how it once was. But, she was just one pony, and like how adding another of us AI into the mix didn’t do much, adding Ratchet to the four of us didn’t accomplish much.
Ratchet was our guide and our hope for the future. But I didn’t want her exposed to any more of the Wasteland than she had to be. So I kept her frozen until she was needed. Once she was no longer needed, I would freeze her again. She also seemed ready to be frozen again, so I wasn’t really forcing her into it.
But, I will say it again. I am an AI. Macro, Soar, and Hal are AIs. We don’t get pony emotions. We have a simple grasp on the most simple of them. When it comes to complex emotions we can only imitate. There might be AI out there that are capable of understanding, but the four of us do not. I think because of this things inevitably went the route they did.