This story is a sequel to Universal Language
In the voyage between the stars, it is easy for humans to lose themselves. Their ship is outfitted with assistants to help with this, to remind them that childish innocence is something to hold and cherish. The Pony Intelligences are ready for duty.
Writing this because I felt like it.
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Chapters (29)
I once had a go at calculating a reasonable aqmount of computational capacity for an ambulatory robot that was useful. I based it on a standard mammalian skelton muscular framework, reaching about 1000 CPUS so that each would have little to do, fire or not fire, and have immense amounts of parralel inputs for fast responses. Between 250 and 60 million sensor points. Which for calculator chips in the late 80s I beleived was a reasonable assumption.
Last week I discovereed there was a company that did almost 4 Z80 CPU componant count on a sliver a tenth by a 6th of a millimeter at arad resistant 130 nanometer scale. That would allow me to place 60 CPUs per square mm for th robot, one for each of so many fur elements, allowing for all sorts of signal processing and manipulation. A good comparison is monitors tend to limit 25 dots or so per square mm, so this old tech has plenty of room for multiplexing phase arrays of multiple sorts.
The gate sounds like a classic Einstein bridge but with a lot of harmonics modification related to Alcubierre optimisations to increase the useable diameter and stability by sacrificing generative energetics for gaining self reinforcing resonance structures.
Weirdly, the other day I was watching Numberphiles pencils. Taking a 3 axis orthognal form, and combining it with a 4 axis orthogonal form to make a 7 axis form, which made me think, I wonder if thats a reasonable model for how the three spacial axis of Relativity are related to teh 4 spacial axis of Quantum mechanics, all the axis being the vector space of Octonions, with the scalar of time being the missing non axis of the model?
Then again, the pencil model also points to me a way of increasing the complexity of the fibre optic cube, even give quick calculations shows the reduced overall density of packing. Weirdly, human brains also seem to be 7 based in several ways, makes coding AIs and data processing computers trickier.
I wonder if any of the shipborne structures use Smart Dust. Our best current tech memristors are 3 nanometre square by 10 nanometer long and can be assembled in 3D stack layers. or just over a million logic elements in a dust particle 1 micron in size. So how would Pinkie be represented as a Culture Special Circumstances Nano Swarm if Fullerene and Carbon nanotube smaller componants were used and other molecular builds?
Thing is, if the aliens just switched the gate off, but it still remains there, did they want to have an escape from whatevers happening thre, or was it so difficult to create in the first place that they dont have the resources, or more likely enough clear space to replicate it? Many years ago there was a book, The Black Sun, where it was proposed a theoretical method of building a 10 solar mass black hole for long distance fast travel could be dont by having fleets of thousands of moon sized Bussard Ram Ploughs collecting the matter from the Oort cloud, and literally shoving the material towards a central point, about a light year away from the sun, so tat the material collapses before it has chance to Supernova. A supernova miscalculation a lightyear from the sun would Obliterate all structures in teh solar system moons and planets, and Im not sure how stable the suns remnant would be.
Will be very intresting to see where this story goes. I only do the science and tech. Ive seen so much weird stuff over the years and know theres far more just on Earth.
It seems the AI ponies' hologram forms are very useful, though Rarity having access to a physical body seems helpful in its own way.
Sunset and Rainbow Dash having a conversation in human form was interesting, especially since I've always kinda tended to hold a headcanon that Sunset talks to Dash the most in their spare time.
Fluttershy being an EMH unit of sorts suits her.
Looking forward to more.
11920356
Any pony that wanders into Sunset's library gets to be human while they're there, hence Rainbow popping into human as she came in and back to pony on leaving.
One imagines a physical shell wouldn't do that.
Uhoh, the animals are comfort pets at least, and depending just how prepared they want to go, Hounds Of The Stars or even Maulerfiend? then again, that thing is one of the heavies, along with Big Blue etc.
I wonder which is closer in basic style, ST:TNG or ST:V ?
I think the worst one I remember readiing about was a Perry Phodan issue where there was no portal but all teh stars were strange, and it turned out to be a test. They had to wait out the illusion or folling standard protocols would end up destroying themselves.
Oh, one way jumps were also possible in Mote In Gods Eye series? or at least the entrance was buried in the envelope of a Red Supergiant?
Im sure lettuce must be related to Tumble weed, why else would it have that golular structure, linked to its sub surface rootsa by a very thin easily breakable stem?
Pinkie could alway run a minus max priority party subthread that the AIs can decide to acess when nothing else is required of those processing cycles, or select Slow, Halt or Off states instead at higher priorities? Because long before that lasst 0.1% processing capacity is requred, th overclock, overvolt and overcool systems will have themselves been driven past sustainable limits.
How did Ian M Banks put it in the Cultire Mind Combat vessel? Ramping engine ovreload up to the point where 40% chance of total destruction engine damage would occur within 30 seconds? Combat agaisnt the fleet took 12 seconds?
Almost as psychotic as Opal Koboi.?
Rarity robot pony wife is best wife
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Fluttershy EMH: please describe the nature of the medical emergency.....if that’s ok with you (whimpers)
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I don’t know about you but I would totally ask pony (or human) holo or robo adagio to prom if I was born on that ship .
Ridicule be dammed
Also adagio would be the sexy longe singer slash barkeep slash bar owner slash bar phycologist wouldn’t she?
Oof a voyager situation....not good. Well at least the trip is shorter....I guess
I think this story should be a sequel to Universal Language, a couple of centuries after Twilight completed the technology transfer and the ponies brought a degree of peace and harmony to humanity. The humans installed a version of the pony AI system, with a few Twilight upgrades on all their starships.
Should be
her wings back, the force
Ponies VI: The Voyage Home
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Fixed!
11920661
Perfect.
11920473
That's really neat.
Fun little humanizing holo-library. 
An eventful chapter, to say the least.
The urgency to get home reminds me of Voyager, but the little bits of silliness provided by the ponies in the midst of a serious situation feels a bit Red Dwarf, in a good way.
Welp, I've found myself a cool new sci-fi story to fill the hole left by the completion of "Universal Language"! And it's by the same author! Cool beans. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where this goes.
I sincerely loved ST: Voyager, and hope this story A: takes less than seven years to finish, and B: has a satisfying ending.
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Unless David goes out of his way to say otherwise, I'm accepting your idea as headcanon.
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Huh I wonder what happened to Angel and his childhood friend and AJs partner did they marry?
Also since it’s been centuries after the first story I wonder if the g5 ponies are around or ai themselves hell I wonder what happened with Opaline
it has been a long time since i have pulled up to a David Silver story and i am liking this one.
I wonder just how many lighthouse pulsars recorded on The Golden Disk are detectable from the ships current location and if the rate of decay of timing matches up accross them all for the time gone past or if any have diffreent times due to intervening gravitational events etc?
Storing data in the densest form is one thing, pretty much the densest I think Ive heard of is a block of iron where every atom is a particular stable isotope and so can store more than one bit of data. The trick then is how to read accurate the trillion trillion plus bits of data in each 56 grams? Which could be heavily error corrected and compressed.
Theres been quite a bit of announced research into so called soft bots, unlike Baymax they dint have a hard metallic core skeleton, although Ive been trying to find designs that use ultra tensile fabrics filled with highly pressurised fluid to create the skeleton, just so that when empty, the skeleton, muscles and soft form can all be compacted into a much smaller volume for storage and recover full operation by injection of water, air etc. The biggest trick is getting fabric weave that remains flexible at close to absolute zero and a couple thousand kelvin also without being affected by thermal shock during the transition.
Now I got stuck on EMH Picard, Oh.
11921560
Welcome aboard.
Alright, we got a sequel and a little history. I hope you toss us a few more history cookies every now and then. There's a lot to catch up on.
We got the origin story for the AI and why there are no live ponies in the ship crew. Still leaves a few loose ends and pony fates unanswered. I wonder if any human ship ever returned to visit the Equestrian home world?
So, this is "Universal Language: The Next Generation"? You've made me a very happy brony.
Seriously, I'm going through some serious 💩 right now, and I needed this. Thank you.
If the title is a clue, that sound is a dribbling basketball. I hope there is a Bug's Bunny.
Opps, sorry, wrong space jam.
Sunset goes deep, escape from digital pony land.
I get strong Kathryn Janeway vibes from the captain in this chapter. Sunset answered most of the questions that I had about the ponies.
Another nice chapter.
11920853
I would think that if this was a sequel there would be at one live ponie on board.
Interesting that this story functions as a sequel to Universal Language, and continues the philosophical thoughts about infinitely digitally cloning the ponies.
Sunset has proven herself quite unique, both in her general preference for human-ness and her talkativeness.
Should be
They were hollow and empty
11921991
Fixed!
Robot computer itching? Floating point sensor quantisation mismatching?
Pinkie in the NANs?
I wonder if its a Cachelot class world thats been watching FIM and liked at least some things?
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Cachelot?
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From what I remember, likely badly, Cachelots are a name for Whales and other cetaceans? Its a water world specially filled with intelligent cogent aquatic life.
Alan Dean Foster did a story called the same, the main whale being Lumpjaw?
11922191
Now, there's a name I haven't heard from in a very loooooong time! Alan Foster. Jeez, I've read many of his books sooooo long ago, Kinda abandoned his tales for Jack Chalker's stories ( in particular, the Well World), but if I recall, the story I liked best of Foster was his Spellsinger series (I think, that is, It has been decades and my memory isn't what it used to be since my stroke).
I do recall that I had a thing for Roseroar...
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Its intresting that you use that quote, as a couple year ago, Alan Dean Foster finally got payment from Diney corperation for works he had authored for them over the years. I think his first movie novelisation was something called Splinter Of The Minds Eye, about a farm boy from a desert planet who ends up undertaking finding an old hermit in order to save the galaxy.
Its a real pity that spellsinger wont be made into a proper movie collection or Stream, at the least due to Mudge the Otter swearing more than the entirity of Blazing Saddles, in just the first couple minutes.
I pretty much paniced a couple year ago when he stopped updating monthly his personal website, just about the time there were major wildfires reported in the area. I only found out a few months ago that he had just switched fully to paywall social media and was announcing a new book tour?
As for Roseroar, that was the closest the duar could get to summoning something to solve the problem based on teh song he was singing at that moment. Rosemary, Sage and Thyme.
this is getting vary interesting.
Another nice chapter! Sunset answered a few questions, and raised one or two more. Mysterious signal is mysterious. Let's hope it isn't the old trick of sending a distress/welcome message, and then attacking whomever shows up.
Apple Bloom is there, so I see no reason why Sweetie and Scoots wouldn't be, also. Cutie Mark Crusader deep space explorers, YAAAY!!
👽 🛸
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Splinter in Mind's Eye. Damn fine story, if I recall.
Yeah, I knew that the first Star Wars sounded familiar... (Heh, heh)
Oh, I have a thing for cat characters. Especially those Hani from Cherryh's Chanur books...
Capper of course was cool, just a might too typical...
Fleshing out the continuity of this universe a bit more.
Looking forward to the next chapter. 
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I do hope you're enjoying this continuation.
Well, this chapter shot down my working hypothesis where your tale is going.
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Gonna share? You can't tease me like that and not share!
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Welp, okay.
I have this idea that it will go full circle, where the Humans and their AI ponies come across Equis, the original pony world. However, with that song coming from a simple satellite, who knows where you are going with this, save you yourself.
Lately the stories here have been quite unique. Whether I am sailing the skies with pirate Twilight as Captain Blackmane, or sailing the galaxy with Twilight as a computer program, y'all been keepin' me hooked and keepin' me from my own story.
Hoo-wee! I am enjoying the ride!
but invited to what??
I wonder how many times Twilights been sent out to explore a new region, away from Sunset, only to av to be reloaded from backup, therefore losing memories formed during the trips or after sucessful ones, making her effectively self degrade like Alzeimers over the centuaries?
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A successful mission means she gets to sync up with the primary database, which then syncs up with the secondary ones.
That reminds me of an episode of ST: Voyager. One of the show's continuing plotlines was the holographic doctor trying to improve himself as a person. He loved singing. In one episode, he accidentally introduces a planet to music. He decides to leave Voyager to pursue his dream of being a famous singer. Of course, in the end, he didn't, but the point was that he didn't want to keep being a doctor, which was what he was made for.
Typo:
Should be "look."
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Typos are sneaky. I read that line a few times.
11922758
I am indeed.
It's definitely been a fun little surprise. 
Still exploring the idea of identity and what makes an individual "themselves" a bit, while also traversing physical space, and apparently ahppening upon a mysterious destination.