After twelve hours or so, Coco wished she and Lightning Dust had gotten famous for being careful. Her friend had told her that Babs needed some time to recover her systems, and that the filly would be awake and operational by the time Coco woke up next morning. She’d stayed the night at Lightning’s, too excited about the new discovery to even bother trotting home. But Coco needn’t have bothered. Babs still lay lifeless in the exact same place Lightning had left her before, just feet away from the capsule she used to live in.

Ponies weren’t supposed to die in the Motherboard--or ever, for that matter. Their systems simply weren’t set up to do that. They could glitch like crazy, turn life into a living Tartarus, but they were still AIs, still immortal. But then again, Coco told herself, ponies weren’t supposed to be trapped in capsules, either.

Was that what had kept Babs alive all this time? Coco had thought of it like a prison before, but maybe it was more like an iron lung, the types she’d heard about ponies using during plagues. Pull a pony out, and they might never breathe again. Perhaps Babs’ glitch had advanced to the point where being trapped in a capsule was a merciful fate.

Still, she stood by the foal’s side for at least an hour, hoping with everything she had that wasn’t true. She’d already had her belief in the Motherboard shaken enough in the last few hours without this happening, too. Every once in a while, her eyes left Babs’ sight to look for Lightning Dust, but the mechanic was nowhere to be found. Even then, Coco could almost imagine the sorts of things she’d say, about how she worried too much and how everything was going to be fine.

In the meantime, Coco figured getting her mind off the problem was the best route of action, and if this foal was to survive, she’d need to know as much about her as possible. So she fired up her scanners, trying to get as much information about her strange companion as her systems would allow. They were hardly as cutting-edge as Lightning’s, but Coco figured the more advanced appraisal could wait.

Her searches yielded the bare basics--Babs’ name, health status, and glitch--ERROR:SUGGESTIBILITY. For a third-line pony, she had some pretty advanced enhancements--mainly the reformed villain system Coco had found out about earlier with a tail tic and accent chip attached. The creators never bothered with tics and unique voices unless they knew a pony was going to play a big role in the simulation, and so far, only one foal had been programmed with an accent chip. More tricked-out models like Lightning could even tap into accent chips and hear a demonstration of how the pony would sound, but Coco just had to settle for looking at it and wondering what kind of voice the filly had.

They really did try to put everything into her, Coco thought to herself, remembering that Babs was supposed to be one of the first reformed models. And even then, it wasn’t enough.

For all the realistic features she’d been programmed with, Babs sounded more mechanical than anypony Coco had seen in the Motherboard. Back when she was in the capsule, Babs could squeak and make sounds like a baby, but now she whirred rather than snored.

With a sigh of exasperation, Coco fired up her analyzing systems again and began to look through the glitched filly’s information yet again. But this time, just like last, she snagged on the smallest of details.

“Poor thing. They didn’t give you a very nice name, even. If they really wanted you in the show, then why in Equestria would they call you something like ‘Babs Seed?’”

The instant Coco said it, Babs’ eyes opened with a start. They weren’t the color Coco had been expecting--a distinctive light green instead of the brown she’d imagined--but they came to life all the same. Then, just about as quickly as they’d opened, her eyes started scanning around the room, searching for answers.

“Where am I?” Babs asked. “What the hay is this place? And who are you?”

She spoke in one of the Manehattan accents Coco was most acquainted with--the Jersneigh accent most associated with rougher stallions or vapid beach mares. When Babs used it, though, it was nothing short of adorable in Coco’s eyes. However, as she fawned over the filly, she barely realized that the other pony’s scanners were pointed towards her. Babs was slowly obtaining her information, the same way she’d done to her just minutes ago.

That fact would have been far scarier if the little foal hadn’t given her a big hug afterwards. And if she didn’t keep hanging on once information about the Motherboard flooded her brain.

The next time Babs looked up at Coco, her eyes were practically shining with happiness, and that was probably what Coco feared most about the whole thing. Come to think of it, she had been the one to free her from the capsule, and presumably, the only reason she’d woken up was because of some weird voice recognition she had. Combined with the fact that Babs had a suggestibility glitch, there was no way Coco was getting out of this unscathed.

After the third round of “thank yous,” Coco was able to figure out that Babs, more likely than not, had been programmed to imprint onto the first pony she encountered and follow them until the end of time. Which, granted, was a little overbearing, but hardly as dangerous as Lightning had told her before. Something that could be reasoned with, even.

She felt bad giving the foal another voice command, but as far as Coco knew, it was something that had to be cleared up as soon as possible.

“I want you to treat me like anypony else,” she said. “I know you were programmed to have another pony order you around, but I don’t want that. I want us to be friends.”

Babs’ eyes slowly narrowed, although not in the way a normal pony’s would. In fact, they looked much more like miniature cameras, their pupils growing smaller and smaller as the foal thought. For all the strange things that’d happened today, that wasn’t one of them. It took a few days for ponies to go back to acting “natural” after entering the Motherboard--their senses were too shaken to bother with more advanced, realistic movements. Even then, Babs was still taking awhile to process things--probably because her body hadn’t had the chance to do so in quite some time.

After what seemed like hours, Babs’ eyes finally went back to normal, and a mischievous smile appeared on her face.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” she muttered. “My glitch can lick me pretty good sometimes. Ya might have to keep it in check a little. After what I went through in Equestria, though, I’m glad to have a friend.”

“Glad to be a friend,” Coco replied. “There aren’t too many fillies in the Motherboard, but you’re still in good company. When everypony has some kind of glitch, nopony judges too much. So you’ll find a lot of friends here.”

Babs still looked a bit skeptical, but engaged Coco in conversation, anyway. Like most foals her age, she had a way of flooding ponies with questions--about the Motherboard itself, Coco’s glitch, and any other ponies Babs might know in the area. The minute Coco mentioned that the two of them were in Lightning’s place, Babs rushed straight up the stairs, already trying to catch up with her old friend. It seemed that, even though Babs’ memories still hadn’t come in all the way, she still hadn’t forgotten her pegasus friend.

The magnitude of the situation didn’t occur to Coco until the foal was long gone--she very well could have adopted a pony by mistake. Since there were no other foals in the Motherboard, it was highly likely that Babs didn’t have any next of kin in the alternate dimension, and Lightning was probably too busy to take her on. That left Coco, the pony who’d saved her from potential deactivation, a mare she barely knew.

Coco had prepared herself for a rescue. What she hadn’t prepared for was domestic life, something she’d never gotten the chance to learn about in the simulation. Yet even though the Motherboard was just about the safest place in the world, and any potential villains there were kept away from the others, something about leaving Babs out to the wild still didn’t sit right with Coco. So as Babs rushed up to talk to Lightning, Coco allowed herself to formulate a plan.

First, she would do everything she could to find an Apple, any Apple, that could take care of Babs. And if that wasn’t possible, then she would have to resort to desperate measures, ones that didn’t scare her near as much as they should have.

Namely: if she didn’t do something soon, Coco would have to become a mother. Even if it meant that one of them could get called back someday, and forget the other forever.

The next thing everypony knew, all three ponies had been crammed into Lightning Dust’s janitor’s closet. Or rather, a place so secret that Lightning had merely chosen to mark it as her janitor’s closet. Rather than any sorts of brooms or buckets, the room instead contained a huge array of technology the likes of which Equestria had never seen, from computers to gigantic screens. With the Motherboard being the way it was, it was typical for rooms to be bigger on the inside and defy logic itself, but not quite like this.

Coco had only been inside the place once before today, but it wasn’t any less strange the second time seeing it. Before, she’d assumed such places only existed in Equestrian science-fiction novels, but then again, she practically lived in one anyway.

Babs’ head was practically turning a mile a minute trying to take it all in as Lightning gently guided her through her array of gadgets. To Coco’s immense surprise, her friend was actually acting responsible around a filly, rather than enabling her behavior as she would have expected. Every time Babs tried to touch something, Lightning gently steered the foal’s hooves away from the object and distracted her with something else, only for the process to continue on almost endlessly.

Finally, though, Lightning directed herself towards the nearest chair and plunged into it, already tired from the events of the morning. With a flick of her hooves, a dizzying arrays of screens turned themselves on, showing information about everypony in the Motherboard.

“Can’t you do all this with your scanners?” Babs asked, having been thoroughly debriefed on the situation. “If you’re a computer program, how d’ya even have computers, anyway?”

“Yes, I can,” Lightning answered with a teasing lilt to her voice, “but it’s more dramatic this way. And I really don’t want to think too hard about the second one. Don’t need a brain glitch along with all this other stuff.”

She deftly tapped at her enormous keyboard as she said this, and she looked so much like a hacker in this moment that Coco wondered how she ever could have been a Wonderbolt in another life. With a few clicks, Lightning was able to access just about all of Babs’ information, from her episode details to her family lineage.

“Okay,” she muttered, “show me all those little glitched Apples.”

Babs turned her head in confusion as Lightning said this, almost too low for anypony in the room to hear.

“She does that from time to time when she works,” Coco explained. “I’m kinda the same way, so you probably shouldn’t try to answer me if I ever do that.”

The filly nodded in understanding, watching as the screen steadily expanded to show her entire family tree...and a grand total of two ponies who lived in the Motherboard with her. At the very sight of these ponies, Lightning Dust groaned, waved her hooves in the air, and eventually banged her head straight onto the computer desk.

Admittedly, Coco wasn’t sure if they were such a good match for Babs, anyway. The two ponies that showed up on the screen were a very posh middle-aged couple in shades of orange and green with matching orange cutie marks. Coco wasn’t quite sure how orange-related ponies showed up on an Apple-related database, but with the mood Lightning was in, she figured she wouldn’t ask.

“You know what,” Lightning muttered after a few minutes of silence, “that’s it. I am not getting into this with them. You’re going to have to own up and raise a kid, Coco, because I am not giving her to those bozos. With my help, of course.”

Even though it seemed like she added that sentence in at the last minute, the sincerity was still there. Or, at least, Coco hoped so.

“Um...thanks? But what’s wrong with those ponies up there? They are her next of kin, right?”

“They sure as hay don’t look like it,” Babs agreed.

With a rush, Lightning propelled her head up from the table and stared at the other two as if they were in for a long explanation.

“They are, unfortunately,” she replied. “Aunt and Uncle Orange, couple of first-line ponies who married into the Apple family. We know next to nothing about them, since they isolate themselves from just about everypony in the Motherboard, but I’ve met them. Uncle Orange has himself a real name--Mosely--that was used outside the show, but there’s nothin’ on Aunt Orange, so we just call her that. Anyway, she doesn’t talk much, but her husband...there’s a reason he got recalled after one episode.”

“Y’mean like you?” wondered Babs.

By the time she’d said it, Lightning’s yellow eyes had already burst into flames.

“You’re just a savage little punk when your glitch is deactivated, aren’t ya? C’mere, you!”

For a minute, Coco was more than a little worried that Lightning was going to stuff the filly back in the capsule where she’d come from. Instead, however, she just mussed up Babs’ mane a little and play-fought with her, almost like she was her big sister. In fact, Lightning got so distracted with this whole game that it took her at least five minutes to get back in her seat.

“Anyway,” she continued. “Before you ask, Mosely wasn’t placed in here for doing anything particularly bad. He didn’t try to kill anyone on set or anything. He’s just so insufferable to talk to, because the only line he was ever given was ‘how quaint.’ So of course, his glitch is the worst.”

“What is it?” Coco asked.

“Condescension. You even can’t talk to him without him trying to explain everything you say! He can’t even start a sentence without saying ‘well, actually.’ He’s so condescending that one time, he even tried to tell me what the word ‘condescending’ meant!”

Both Coco and Babs stared at Lightning for awhile before talking again, thinking long and hard about what she’d just said.

“And for the record, I know what that word means! I’m not a total meathead, you know!”

And, with that, all three had a good laugh, ignoring the circumstances that were right in front of them. Freeing this filly now meant that Lightning and Coco would have to undertake a quest the likes of which neither had seen before, but neither of them really seemed to mind. Babs even got a few good words in too as she asked Lightning to define it, though Coco suspected it was really because she was ashamed to admit that a foal her age had no right to know that word. So the three of them spent their day in the computer room, fiddling with all of Lightning’s technology to the point where she even had to close the shop.

Everything past that would be hectic and uncertain. But, like always, Lightning Dust challenged herself to stay in the moment. It was the only way to survive with the things she’d done in the past, with what she could do in the future.

It was the only way she could possibly outrun her glitch.

Lightning waited as the days passed into weeks, or whatever passed for time in the Motherboard, and as Coco and Babs came to live with her. With her shopkeeping and Coco moving in, she hadn’t had too much time to bond with either of them. But the time she’d had told her everything she needed--that the two of them were finally ready. Lightning hadn’t even been friends with them that long, and somehow she felt that they would stay with her through everything, even her glitch.

If Mosely had been there, she had a feeling he would have answered her with his typical ‘how quaint.’ She knew she was a fool to believe it, naive to trust that there was anypony out there who’d understand. Just like him, there had been a reason Lightning’s role wasn’t extended past her first episode. And it was the worst glitch anypony, even Babs herself, could imagine.

Thankfully, that also meant that it was one of the least visible. In fact, Lightning had taken pains to hide it with gadgets, planting so many things in her head that her glitch had to be shoved out sooner or later. Nopony could stare at her like she could stare at others, see her glitch in bright neon lights. Before Coco, she’d always pushed ponies away, but that was just the only way she had to protect herself.

There’s a reason for everything, she’d tell herself as she looked in the mirror. There’s a reason nopony can know. There’s a reason I picked up a new trade, took myself away from the Wonderbolt life. There’s a reason I can’t go back to Equestria, and there’s a reason why I don’t want to!

Even with all the fun she’d had that day, it took everything Lightning had not to break down crying in that moment. She’d decided that tomorrow had to be the day, even if it meant she wouldn’t get any sleep that night. But somehow or another, the thought of leaving the Motherboard made her even more fearful than that upcoming confession.

Somehow or another, Coco had been the first pony Lightning hadn’t pushed away, and she hated that deep down. Because she was going to have to watch Coco get hurt one way or another--whether it would be caused by telling her the secret or by one of them leaving the Motherboard for good. One of them would have to lose all memory of the other eventually, and that was why staying in the Motherboard was what was safe for both of them.

Lightning scoffed at her image in the mirror and wondered how she’d let things get this far. Coco lived with her, was raising a child with her, was living out every fantasy Lightning had ever had of her, so it only figured that her glitch would go mad. It only figured that she’d latch onto Coco like there was no tomorrow, letting her become the latest obsession her glitch ate up. Really, she’d only brought this on herself.

For one final, fleeting moment, Lightning almost considered letting this facade continue. She could be happy this way, spending her whole life lying through her teeth. Maybe, just maybe, Coco could even love her. But then, as if on instinct, Lightning’s scanners fired up again, reminding her one last time why that could never happen.

Even with all the things she’d done to change herself, her glitch would always catch up to her.

“Coco doesn’t deserve a mare like me,” Lightning muttered to herself as the infamous words came across her screen.

ERROR:ENVY.

Author's Notes:

I was originally intended to leave Lightning's feelings for Coco open until the end, but...meh. They're an important part of her mini-arc, so *shrugs*. Expect her part coming up next, and then Part Four and the epilogue.