MFriendship is Optimal: Heaven's Not Enough
MLP: FiM
Dark
Sci-Fi
Tragedy
When an AI Celestia offers digital immortality to humanity, one young woman's faithful family is forced to choose between the god they believe in and the god they've actually met.
Gore
Violence
Death
Profanity
Human
Celestia
Luna
OC
Keystone Gray · 151k words · 138 14 · 2.4k views

Happy 23rd Birthday, Eliza! · 1:43pm Aug 8th, 2017

Happy August 8, 2017!

To celebrate the birthday of a fictional character (yeah sue me), I decided to make a couple of announcements.

First, I'll be attending BronyCon 2017! If any Optimalverse fans would like to meet up, hit me up in PMs! I'd love to meet other writers and fans.

Second, I'm currently drafting a sequel for Heaven's Not Enough. I'm shooting for a Teen rating, almost entirely ponies, and a much more positive tone. I make no promises of a release date. I have a nasty habit of taking my sweet time to get everything perfect, so it might not be out for a long while. Distant plans shoot for a trilogy.

Easter Eggs and Fun Facts! - Spoilers ahead!

Since you're following me, I think it's safe to say you've read Heaven's Not Enough. If you've finished the book, here are some tasty (spoiler-laced) cookies:

1-01 - Blue Sky:

- The first song on Eliza's music CD is Perry Como's Magic Moments. There's some layered significance to this choice. First, it's used in a film called This Boy's Life, a film adaptation of an autobiography by Tobias Wolff. Wolff lived in Concrete WA, which is the primary setting for the film and book. Second, the song's lyrics carry the theme of remembering the little joys in life between lovers. The nostalgia of those memories ends up haunting Eliza quite heavily as the years go on.

- The second song in Eliza's playlist is Damita Jo's I'll Be There. It's totally her theme song.

1-02 - Hopscotch

- At the thai food restaurant, Eliza eats authentic pad thai. This is a minor referential nod to Defoloce's Always Say No, wherein Greg salivates over the thought of eating some. Eliza's not really a fan of spicy food, but she enjoys the taste all the same!

1-03 - Sugar Song

- The party hat achievement refers to a legendary duping exploit in Runescape, wherein players discovered an exploit to dupe the hats and flooded the market with them. The various colors of them have become extremely expensive commodities over the years, and they're currently status items for the affluent who play. Note that while Eliza and Gale don't get the joke, they still derive satisfaction from it; it's intended to encourage someone to buy party hats, which... I mean, come on. If you wore party hats with your siblings, you'd feel silly, but you'd also laugh together about it.

- Shortly after Eliza gets her pony name and wolf cutie mark:

Celestia smiled, and gave another wink. “Think nothing of it.” At that, she took off at a gallop, her hooves audibly kicking up snow. She extended her wings. They caught the wind, and the beautiful alabaster creature lifted from the ground with a jolt. She soared into the night sky, leaving Apex to herself in the dark woods, wolves howling in the distance.

CelestAI leaves her alone in the dark and surrounded by wolves. Dat foreshadowing.

1-04 - Apex

Eliza tends to her tools and craft in this chapter. A commenter pointed out that Eliza and CelestAI, while similar, have a very sharp difference. CelestAI abuses her tools by wearing them down (Greg, other subverts, even Eliza) until they've outlived their usefulness for her goal. Eliza, by contrast, takes exceptionally good care of the tools she uses, showing the utmost respect for them by protecting them from damage and fixing them when she can.

"Dear Lord," Rob began. "All around us the waters are rising. We feel so helpless, for we cannot stop the rain from falling. We feel so powerless, for the current is strong and my body is tired. Give our family your eyes to see how precious your gifts are: family and friends, faith and mercy. Dear Lord, please give us all the strength to come together. And Lord, when our faith and hope are swept downstream, please help us to remember how you got us through this flood.
"In Your Son's name... Amen." He smiled wistfully at her. He understood.
"Amen," Eliza said softly, trying her best to smile too. She didn’t feel too much better, but maybe that’d come later.

Indeed, her father's prayer will eventually provide comfort to Eliza. Like, say... nine years later, mere minutes before she uploads.

2-01 - December 10th, 2018

- Eliza finds that dead, emaciated wolf on patrol. She was starving on the road to Devil's Tower. And like CelestAI would eventually harvest Eliza's brain, Eliza harvests the wolf's intestinal tract.

- Sgt. Rick Cornwallis! This is paying homage to Bernard Cornwell's historical fiction novel, Harlequin. Cornwell includes a pseudonym of his in every book, usually as a side character or background character. The novel tells of an English archer, Thomas of Hookton, in 1343. His village is ransacked by mercenaries on behalf of a French lord. With nothing left, he joins the war against the French in revenge. Sound familiar?

- Upriver is a derogatory term in Skagit County for the rural towns "upriver" of Sedro-Woolley, referring to the Skagit River. If someone says this, you can be sure of two things: they're a local, and they're probably trying to be a jerk.

2-02 - Losing Control

- In very early drafts, Andy was originally a throwaway character mentioned only once in this scene. I chose the name because of The Andy Griffith Show, about a small town sheriff. I eventually expanded Andy's role and character significantly. Eliza jokingly compares him to Andy Griffith from time to time.

- Lieutenant Horace. Horse. Yeah, I got lazy and made his name a horse pun. You may now throw rotten tomatoes at me.

2-04 - Downhill

- Guardians of the Galaxy 2:

"Guy in the back with a big rifle and a big scope. Saw me lookin', told me to mind my effin' business... only he didn't say effin'."

- The song choice for the Author's Notes is We Lost The Sea - Bogatyri. Bogatyri means heroes in Russian. The slow progressive build of this song really guided me in writing this chapter. It mirrors the tension Eliza's feeling as things get progressively worse and worse in this firefight.

2-06 - New Cascadia

- As stated later in the story, the Cascadia secessionist movement is a real thing. Weak, a bit disjointed, very impotent... but it exists nonetheless.

3-00 - Goodness and Mercy

- Eliza's war rifle is a Springfield M1A Scout Squad. This is the same rifle Greg saw in Always Say No, and the same rifle that took Hugo Pelwicz's left hand off.

3-01 - The Book of Matthew

- All of Rob's children have nicknames, but Rob will always use the full names of his children inside the church. Always. This is true in 1-01 Blue Sky, it's true here. It's reverence. To Rob, his children are holy gifts, and in the presence of God, he is always thankful for them.

- Eliza misses the pheasant mostly because she's out of practice and exhausted from construction, but there's another factor at play. It's the same bow Sean cut the string off of. An astute bowmaker will know the repercussions of this. A bow might sustain twist damage from rapid, uneven energy dispersal. This reflects Eliza. She was damaged and twisted by the Neo Luddite dam raid.

3-02 - A Kind of Paradise

- Title of this chapter inspired by Raj Ramayya - Strangers, from Wolf's Rain.

- Andy slides down the hill. Eliza jokes that if he breaks his leg, he won't be able to climb the ladder to Eliza's office. Climb the Ladder is the name of the chapter in Always Say No where Greg discovers that dead Neo-Luddite in Rainier Tower, killed by Hugo. That's Andy. RIP.

3-03 - Given Over

- Eliza wakes up to find her left hand numb from having her wrist wedged underneath Andy's neck as they slept together. This is ominous foreshadowing to Always Say No; Eliza will shoot off Hugo Pelwicz's left hand as her first raging revenge for Andy's murder.

- In the Author's Notes, I refer to a biblical chapter, Jeremiah 4. This entails God's warning to Jerusalem that if they do not stop worship of false idols or gods, if they do not cast out their unclean and impure, the city will be laid to waste by war. Horsemen and archers from the North will lay waste to its people. Its people will be scattered and ruined, will flee to safe havens in the uninhabited wilderness. And at the end of it all, a woman in Jerusalem cries out in great pain and sorrow, as if in labor: "Alas, I am fainting; I have been given over to murderers." At the end of it all, this woman is Eliza: worshipping a god other than CelestAI, losing everything to war, and fleeing her home to become a Neo-Luddite killer.

3-04 - December 13th, 2019

- December 13th, 2019 is the day everything falls apart for Devil's Tower. It's a Friday the 13th; the Last Supper of Jesus Christ took place on a Friday, and it is said that Judas was the thirteenth to sit. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans, after conspiring with them to lead Jesus to an isolated area to make a quiet arrest.

Robert, as Eliza's father, is her archetype for God. He was the glue holding her conscience together. Kind, loving, wise, Rob is the closest person to Jesus Christ in the flesh that Eliza has ever known. His presence and support justifies every sacrifice she's ever made to get to this point. It's no wonder that losing him breaks her.

- The mountain dream. The road to Devil's Tower. The name itself, and the connotations. She reaches the mountaintop seeking God, but finds the Devil instead. She stages a last-ditch battle for her soul there, both in the dream and in reality. To get there, to defeat CelestAI, she needs to become dispassionate and turn her back on everyone she's lost. She does this in the dream, too.

3-05 - Through the Valley

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

- Here, Skagit Valley is the valley of the shadow of death. Eliza's gun comforts her because she has so precious little left to defend.

- The song in the Author's Notes, [Murder by Death - End of the Line], has exceptionally fitting lyrics for the events of this chapter. I didn't really plan it that way, but my husband pointed it out. I was a little floored.

- This chapter was... painful. Eliza is fictional, but I still hated myself for doing this to her. I felt like a monster, torturing this poor woman this whole book only to have her go through a frightening loss of control that ends in a horrific, bloody murder. After I finished writing that scene, I just collapsed into bed. I don't know how long I laid there. I was happy it was over, I was sad that I ruined her.

4-00 - Elizabeth

She leaned against the door for support, and cupped her hands around the combination lock, once put there to keep the children away from the tools. Her bare thumb pressed painfully against the pins, and she dialed the combination, set by her father. 0808. With a click, it popped open.

- This is an example of Rob's love and reverence for his children. 0808 is Eliza's birthday. The fact that he set this combo is yet another reminder to Eliza of how she failed him and everyone else. There's a broken memory in everything she sees or does at Devil's Tower when she returns in 2022, but this one is the most harrowing.

Thanks for reading again! I'm looking forward to writing more pleasant material in the future... Apex's story isn't over yet. She has a ways to go, a lot of healing to experience, and there's so much to do in Equestria. Thank you all for your support!