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.

Next Chapter: Year 69 - SOAR Estimated time remaining: 18 Minutes