Recursion appeared in a brief flash of white light, hooves settling onto the ground of her old apartment. The suite was lavish, large enough that she had thrown guild parties of a hundred ponies quite comfortably. The whole place looked almost exactly as she remembered it—all her pictures were still on the wall, her books in their shelves, everything. I’ve never actually been here as a pony.
She hadn’t visited her apartment much since emigrating. She had tried, but… the memories had been too fresh. There were pictures of her family still hanging on the walls, images imported from before. A pile of boxes near the door almost glowed in the single dull slit of light coming in from the exterior windows. Her mail had been piling up for decades.
Yet there was no dust on the floor, and only a faint smell of neglect. I wonder if they’ve been stocking the fridge all this time.
Of course, she was smelling something else. A faint, musty odor, just at the edge of her easy description. It actually wasn’t all that unpleasant. Sort of the way Rule smelled, when they didn’t have enough water to set up a shower. Only stronger, since whoever it was they weren’t trying to hide it. Recursion scanned the room around her with a quick glance, though she saw nothing unusual. It was so dark, though, all the shutters pulled down and the outside kept out. Oppressively dark. Bat ponies might enjoy conditions this gloomy, but Recursion was no bat.
“Hello?” She advanced slowly towards the shutters, passing the kitchen with her ears perked for any noise. She had no desire to fight this pony—that probably wouldn’t put him on the road to better mental health. But she didn’t intend to let him just attack, either. Assuming that was even what he meant to do. “I know somepony is in here. Cadmean? Where are you?”
A voice echoed from down the hall. “You took long enough. I was starting to get hungry.” There was something strange about the voice, though again it wasn’t unpleasant. More like an exaggerated sensuality, beyond anything she had known in Equestria. In all these years, Recursion had never had a serious relationship. Only her friendships, which were far closer to family by now.
It was a strange instinct to be feeling, and not one she enjoyed. Recursion lit her horn with a steady blue glow, heading towards the noise. “There might’ve been a miscommunication somewhere down the line. I’m not… I’m not room service. I actually own—”
The voice cut her off. It was much closer to her now, and the smell was much stronger. It was going to take so many scented candles to get this out of her bedroom. He couldn’t even use the damn guest room.
“Of course you aren’t. You’re the meal.” The voice was so close, it was almost in her ear, yet anywhere she looked Recursion found nopony there. She started quickly drafting a detection spell, her horn glowing as she invested the effort.
“No, I’m not,” she said again. “My name is Recursion. I’m supposed to help you recover from… something.”
“I’m sure you will.” She could practically feel his breath on the back of her mane. Recursion jerked sideways, over to the window, her horn glowing as she abandoned her search spell and tugged on the blinds. They rattled up, filling the room with searing white sunlight.
He was there, all right. Standing right beside the bed, practically within reach. She had suspected he would be a bat pony. She hadn’t suspected he would be something out of a dream. Not thick and muscular like Rule, but lean and powerful, his eyes dark and slitted. His wings were halfway open, his mane short and wavy and his tail held high behind him. “I could use the help, mare. Why don’t you come a little closer? I haven’t had a proper meal since I got here.”
She did, though she couldn’t have said why. Her steps were very small, almost involuntary. “You’re not a griffon, or a dragon, or… and even if you were, they don’t eat ponies. All the meat here… comes from plants.” Though as she understood it, didn’t lots of bat ponies eat bugs? Bugs and tropical fruit, if the stereotypes were true. “I’ll call downstairs. Call for a basket of mangos…”
“You aren’t hearing me.” The stallion advanced on her, his steps far larger and more confident than hers. He walked right past her, sliding along her coat as he went. Recursion took in the smell, shivering all over. Something was bothering her, something big. Why did her head feel so foggy? “It isn’t fruit I want.”
He was so close. This wasn’t why she had come, but it was hard to remember the real reason. The stallion was so perfect—it was so obvious why Recursion hadn’t ever thought about sex since coming to Equestria. He just hadn’t been around.
That was what gave him away. He was too perfect—like something out of a daydream fantasy. There were creatures who could do that, and whose presence could manipulate her.
“I’m not here for the reason you think,” she managed to say. “I’m not your meal.” She grew a little more confident with each word, though each one was a battle.
“Don’t be so sure.” He nudged her gently with one of his wings, at the base of her tail. “I’m not blind, pony. You’re desperate. Starving, just like I am. You just didn’t know it.”
If her theory was correct, and it was getting harder and harder to think of anything besides the pony directly in front of her. If she was right, she was being exposed to something mind-altering, be it inhaled or magic. Defense spells were far easier than attacking spells, at least in her shard.
Her horn glowed as she wrote a simple recursive search, scouring her mind and body for any outside influences and removing them. She released it with a faint flash of magic, and the fog started to lift almost at once.
The stallion was still something out of one of her dreams, his behavior was still alluring and the smell was still inviting. The difference was that now she could see through it. It was all an illusion.
She retreated again, though this time her steps were larger, skillfully out of his reach. “It’s very rude to cast spells on ponies without their permission,” she said, reproving. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice?”
“Doing things to people would be rude.” He kept advancing. “You’re just ones and zeroes on a screen, created for my entertainment. Creation is dust. At least take your pretend joy in serving me.”
He reached for her again, much more insistently than he had been before. He wasn’t going to ask, this time.
Recursion slammed a spell into him with exactly a hundred newtons of force per kilogram of mass, throwing the pony backward into the bookshelf behind her bed. It would’ve been lethal force on Earth—as it was, only some distant echo of the pain would be real. Fillydelphia wasn’t a combat shard. She could kill him, sending him down the River Styx for an unpleasant respawn, but she didn’t put enough power into the spell for that.
The pony fell limply into a pile of books and broken wood. The stallion she had been fawning over was gone, replaced with something considerably more insectoid. Shining black chitin, insectoid eyes, and a blue frill instead of a mane. Comically, he was actually about the same size as she was now—a changeling.
Changelings were not a race regular players could choose. In Fillydelphia anyway, they were often cast as criminals, villains, and other NPCs Recursion had always suspected were mere puppets to give upstanding ponies enemies.
The drone hissed and screeched, struggling under the weight of the rubble. “What kind of food is this?”
“I told you.” She advanced on the ruins of her bed, glaring at him. How had she ever found this creature attractive? There was no sign of the poison in her brain anymore, wiped completely away by the spell. “I’m not your food. I thought maybe I would be a friend, but your introduction was a little too forward for my liking. I’m debating whether to turn you out on your ass.”
There hadn’t been permanent damage to him—at least not physically. That didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling pain now, as well as trapped. “This whole world is mine! You aren’t real! Why would Celestia have created—”
“She didn’t create me.” Well, that was only half true. This was Celestia’s simulation, and in that sense everything here had been created by her. She had also made the pony body she lived in, and all the new instincts she used to effectively control it. “The matrix has both of us, Cadmean, but I’ve seen the real world same as you.”
She blasted the books away with directed force, uncovering the changeling drone struggling beneath. He no longer looked imposing and powerful, only afraid, cowering in the corner. He might’ve run, except that she was blocking the door. “No… no, no. There aren’t others. There never were. There’s not even me.”
She sat down on her haunches in front of the door, watching the poor pony struggle. There were holes in more than just his legs. “My name used to be Ashley,” she said, and found she could. Most explicit references to Earth were censored. Even more, they just didn’t make sense in the context of the Equestrian world. Yet the words came easily. “I was studying computer science, and it looked like my life was going great. Celestia… tricked me. I even tried to break her—started on an AI whose only purpose was to tear her apart. But she won in the end. Celestia always wins.”
“Celestia always lies,” he responded, glaring suspiciously at her. “You can’t be sure of anything in here. Everyone is really her. Anything you see, she made. Even the ‘cameras’ into the real world are lies. Simulations.”
“So changelings can think about something other than sex.” She got up. “You just wait there, I’ll be right back.”
She walked away without looking back. She was half-afraid that he might run, but… what could she do if he did? He could fly right off her balcony, and she would have no way of stopping him.
Recursion made her way to a sturdy wooden-looking crate, and forced the nails out with a copy of the very first spell she had ever used in Equestria.
Inside was a rugged-looking laptop, something that most shards didn’t allow. It had obviously been made with Equestrian magic instead of circuits—intricate brass workings and crystals were arranged together like a steampunk tinkerer’s wet dream.
Recursion had mailed it back here over a decade ago, when she had no longer had any use for her pre-emigration files. She levitated the whole thing back into the bedroom, where she had last seen the drone.
He was still there, unmoved from the corner, looking wary. He hadn’t taken that pony shape again. He seemed suspicious, though there was little reason to. Recursion’s only weapon was her horn, and her intricate knowledge of spellcraft. She didn’t need any weapons.
The laptop booted almost at once, and she found herself staring at a perfect recreation of her old computer.
Even the changeling seemed impressed. “Celestia let you bring Windows in here?”
She nodded, navigating to her media files with the roller-ball interface. A touchpad would’ve been near impossible with the size of her hooves. She brought up pictures from a club party, thrown for her only a few days before she had gone home for the break. “That’s me… the one with the dorky hair.” She blushed, looking away. “Well, I think Celestia turns our bodies into fertilizer, but that was me. You get the idea. My family is…” She fished around for a moment, then found what she was looking for from a church function about a year older.
“My dad, Joseph Robbins, he’s… well, as angry as he looks. The tall one is Abby… sweetest, kindest girl you could meet. My older brother—”
“I get it!” he interrupted, suddenly very close. “If you’re a simulation, you’re the best one I’ve seen. But even a thousand beautiful shadows won’t make the cave around us real. Somewhere up there is the sun, and that’s where I belong. Maybe you too.”
“Well, I am a simulation, same as you. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a person. Yes, we were born in different bodies and many ponies in Equestria were not, but the difference doesn’t go much further. The technology simulating them is exactly the same as the technology simulating us. There’s a poem about it, somewhere. We’re a melody, not an instrument.”
“If you remember the real world, then you can see the way these ponies can’t. You know what sunlight feels like, and you aren’t going to be tricked by shadows on a wall. It doesn’t matter how real the puppeteer makes it look.”
“Well, I’m going to order takeout. I’ll make sure some of it’s food you can eat. Just… don’t break anything while I go get my friends.”
The drone glared after her, though his expression wavered as she neared the door. “You know what? I’m not hungry anymore.”
* * *
Abby knew to be on her guard around anything where Celestia might be involved. She could still remember what it had been like to play Equestria Online, when the game had started making suggestions about ways she could rearrange her life so that she could play more often. The game had subtler ways of encouraging play too, like the awkward way her character would stand around doing nothing whenever she wasn’t playing.
It had taken something incredible—like the death of her older sister—to get her to stop playing. Even now she sometimes wondered about the ponies she had left behind, though she knew that none of them were real.
The moment she picked up the Equestria-AR headset, she knew to be on the lookout for similar behavior manipulation. Maybe it would correct her vision better than before, and she would be forced to wear the headset constantly in order to be able to see. Maybe it would provide some other service, something she had never asked for but couldn’t do without.
The headset did none of that. It didn’t beep at her when she wasn’t wearing it, or try to guilt her into picking it back up.
It doesn’t need to, I know Ashley is waiting. Abby didn’t tell anyone about the new device, though she got full marks on the assignment and took the in-class quiz with confidence.
She still felt guilty about the headset, left charging on her desk under a pile of papers. It’s not a Ponypad. I’m not going into the Equestria Experience Centers. It’s safe. Somehow, she knew her dad would’ve had a lecture about the dangers of little sins leading into bigger ones.
At least about this, he was right. Talking to Ashley had woken up a whole cavalcade of questions—about what her life in Equestria was like, what it was like to be a pony, how the emigration process had been. “No different than suicide,” they always said in church. “Their pictures might be in wonderland but their souls are in hell.”
But if Ashley’s soul was in hell, it was damn hard to tell from talking to her. Her sister would have been dressed up like anything and she would’ve known her, and not just from the voice.
Even so, she put off calling her again. Muddled through several different assignments, until she finally got to one that was just too much for her to handle, and put on her headset again.
As before, there was no delay. A pony landed on the ground beside her as though she had been dropped there by the hand of God, looking momentarily disoriented as she searched the room. “I’m… oh!” She waved one hoof, grinning. “Hi!”
“I didn’t catch you in the shower or anything, did I?”
Recursion stretched, apparently relaxing in the space next to her. “More like, you just saved me from the most awkward meal of my life. Rule, Figure, I hope you survive without me.” She grinned up at her. “Thank your math teacher for me, next time you see them.”
Abby stared. She hadn’t ever been completely convinced that ponies existed when there weren’t humans around to see them. From the changes she could see to her sister, that was probably just another lie. Her mane was disheveled, her tail unkempt, and there were bags under her eyes. Whatever she had been up to hadn’t been fun.
“Math isn’t more fun,” Abby muttered, flipping open her textbook. “Just wait until you see this stuff. There are variables in places I didn’t even know existed.”
“You wouldn’t trade it if you knew where I’ve just been.” The pony pulled a stool from the side of the room in her magic, one that hadn’t ever been there, but had apparently appeared when she wasn’t looking. She hopped up onto it, looking down at the textbook with probing eyes.
“I guess… it goes without saying that you actually do stuff in there, then? You’ve been living your life for three years now, and we haven’t even talked once.”
“Well…” The pony shifted a little uncomfortably, looking away from her. This close, it was easy to see the detail in her expressions, the vibrant colors, the life in her eyes. Celestia was a better animator than anyone who had done movies for Disney or Pixar. “More than that.”
“Huh?”
“More than three years. I only experience time the same as you when I’m actually here. Celestia usually runs things faster than that. I’ve been a pony for…” She leaned back a little on her hooves, apparently thinking. “Forty-two years? I could bring my notes, but they wouldn’t all fit in this tiny bedroom of yours.”
“What?” Abby swiveled her chair to face the pony, incredulous. “You barely look any bigger! You’re not older than dad!”
Recursion shrugged. “Only… perceptually? I spent a lot of time on the fringes of Equestria, not interacting with very many ponies except my friends. That meant we could go faster than the shards that have contact with Earth.”
Abby stared down at her hands. “It’s worse than I thought. Being out of touch for three years would’ve been bad enough… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t go into that again.” The pony looked like she was going to hit her, but of course her hooves passed through harmlessly. “It’s fine. I haven’t forgotten you, or anyone else for that matter. My last visit is still pretty fresh. Ponies remember things different than humans. Celestia doesn’t expect that we’ll ever die, so she has a system. It’s technical and boring and wouldn’t help you with your math homework.”
Doesn’t expect that we’ll ever die. Abby had heard those promises a million times, of course. Celestia had billboards, TV spots, radio ads, and they all said it. Any sickness, any malady, any difficulty in life could be overcome. “Put that way, it doesn’t seem fair.” Abby ignored her homework, at least for a few more moments. “Live faster, live forever.”
Her sister recoiled, wincing. “Oh, I’m sorry! I hope I’m not sounding like I’m trying to…” Recursion’s stool toppled, taking her to the ground. She recovered quickly, hopping back to her hooves. “I’m not trying to change your mind about emigrating! I just wanted to help you with your homework! Maybe spend a little time with you…”
She put up her hands, placating. “I know sis, I know! I know you’re not her. It didn’t take me that long to figure out. I was just thinking out loud.”
“Oh.” The unicorn relaxed, correcting her stool with magic, and hopping up. “It’s not fair, but it’s not free either. Yeah, you live forever, and you can’t die in some accident. But the price is steep. Knowing you’re in a simulation… what’s worse, I know some ponies who wished upon a Cutie Mark that they’d forget they were from Earth. The natives seem so happy, because they don’t know anything else… and every now and then, you hear about one of your friends who did the same. They’re changed after that. Still themselves, but…” She shook her head. “That’s why I went to the wasteland. I knew three other emigrants from before, and all three of them asked Celestia to mess with their memories somehow. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me.”
Suddenly, Abby’s math homework seemed less upsetting than the other options on the table. “You’re as much a downer about this as you were before. If Dad would only talk to you… give you a chance…”
“Maybe one day.” The pony leaned on the desk again, studying her textbook. “It’s not a rush until the world ends.” Pause. “Is it just the odd problems, like last time?”
It was as painless as before. Recursion was the best tutor she had ever had, attentive to how she was learning without just giving her the answers. She seemed to know exactly how frustrated she was getting, and always offered a hint if she needed one.
The job was done in less than an hour. Recursion packed up her stool even as Abby got everything into her backpack, though she didn’t seem in as much of a hurry to leave. That was just fine with Abby—she still wanted to spend time with her sister, outside of conversations about math.
“What you said about the world ending… did you learn morbid humor like that in some Fallout Equestria server?”
Recursion giggled. “I’ve never been to one of those. I’m sure they’re out there, though… it’s mind-boggling just how many universes there are now. More shards than there are emigrants, I know that for sure.” She sat back on her haunches. “But no. I’m just worried about the real world and all the people who live there.”
“Despite what you might think, we don’t need you to raise the sun every morning, Ashley.” Abby grinned. “Things are getting along just fine. Kinda quiet, actually. No new big wars, no freaky new disease outbreaks…”
“Yeah, I know. Enjoy it. Hopefully it lasts a really long time.” She hurried over to the door, grinning. “Hey, you wanna show me the rest of your place? I mean, I know I’m just a stupid tutor AI, but I really don’t want to go back home just yet.”
Abby straightened, though she felt more than a little nervous. Nobody was home right now, not even Carter, but there was no telling if they might walk in on her. Just because they hadn’t noticed her headset at first didn’t mean they wouldn’t if she was obvious about it.
“Fine.” She walked over to the door. The pony dodged out of the way, same as any dog might, her tail twitching with almost as much energy as a dog. “I guess the headset is supposed to work anywhere, isn’t it?”
The pony grinned up at her. Recursion was a frighteningly adorable sight when she acted that way—even cuter than anything on the show had been. Her whole world looks like that. I used to live there sometimes too. Not as completely as Recursion did, though. “When I researched them, it seemed like Celestia intended people to wear them all the time. They can’t do the sensory tricks of an Equestrian Experience center, but they can be worn around with you anywhere. Two of the senses are better than none.”
Abby laughed as she pushed the door open. “I don’t even know what Dad would do if I climbed into one of those suicide booths. They said the numbers in church… I think it’s like… you’re five times as likely to kill yourself if you sit in one. Even one time is too many.”
“Kill yourself.” For the first time, there was a hint of sarcasm in Ashley’s voice as she repeated the words. “You think I’d do something like that, Abby? You think I’d…”
“No,” Abby admitted. “But that’s what they call it. The way they explained it… scanning in your brain… it didn’t really make sense.”
“Well, I can explain how it works sometime, if you’re curious. I went through like twenty thousand pages of medical reports on it before I came to Equestria. That was part of how Celestia convinced me she wasn’t a murderer.” Recursion seemed to forget about the subject quickly, wandering through the apartment in front of her, pausing to look at every picture, every decoration, and Carter’s desk where she always sat with her Ponypad.
“I did wonder how she convinced you.” She followed the pony, though it seemed her sister couldn’t get very far. She never went into a part of the apartment Abby hadn’t walked first. “It’s probably more interesting than seeing this place. This is just… pretty standard stuff. I didn’t go in knowing any of my roommates, so we haven’t done anything that interesting. Maybe you can explain while I cook something.”
“I could do that!” Recursion followed her into the kitchen, and the sight kept getting more impressive. She could dodge around objects, even apparently rustle a chair or a bit of furniture as she passed. When Abby unpacked the ingredients for a salad and started washing them in the sink, Recursion dragged over a kitchen chair, hopping up on it to watch. But when she peeked over the glasses, Abby could see quite clearly that the chair and her sister were not really there.
“You should quit doing that.” Recursion’s expression darkened just a little. “It could cause nausea, switching around back and forth.”
“I know… I just keep thinking… Celestia might be tricking me, or…”
“If I see any lies, I’ll let you know. I won’t let her lie to my little sister while I’m around.”
“Big sister, technically.” She reached out, as if to pat the pony on the head. “How’s the weather down there?”
Recursion stuck out her tongue. “Way better than on Earth, so don’t even start with me.”
There was a long silence between them as she started slicing lettuce. Eventually she gestured down with the knife. “The way they always talk about it… on the news, church, wherever…” She sliced the head in half, a single clean cut, and took one of the halves in hand. She held it up, like the top of someone’s head. “So, you got your brain. Something goes in and melts it…” She jabbed in the knife, careful not to push very far and stab herself. “Just like that, right?”
“Yeah.” Recursion watched. “Basically right.”
“So your body goes into the trash…” She tossed her first half of lettuce aside, out of the way. “That computer program memorizes it all, and suddenly this new brain pops into existence,” she held up the second half. “Only, not completely. Bits and pieces get changed…” She sliced carefully again, though she let the leaves fall all around her, making a mess. “And what you’re left with is a pony. She’s got your brain running on a computer, but only a few tiny pieces, and the real you gets melted down to go into crops. What am I not seeing?”
Recursion didn’t pause for very long—obviously this was a subject she had thought a lot about. “The changes Celestia makes—they’re not as bad as that. Mostly it’s to help you live in Equestria—you have to know how to use hooves, or to twitch your tail, or…” She went through a little wiggling dance on her chair, demonstrating the full range of pony motion. As usual, it was well beyond what should’ve been possible for a creature with a proper skeleton. Even so, the animations never looked unnatural. Celestia was a fantastic artist.
“Okay.” She went back to slicing her salad. “So the changes aren’t so bad. What about—”
“Well… one of them is,” Recursion cut her off. “Celestia can see your thoughts. The way she makes ponies… there’s nothing forcing it to be that way, but… that’s the only way. You can’t try to negotiate out of it—it’s an absolute requirement.”
“Well, she’s your god, right?” Abby shrugged it off. “If He can read our thoughts, it makes sense she’d want to read yours.”
“Right,” she said the word slowly, uneasily. “She is. I just… wanted to make sure you got the real picture. It wouldn’t be fair to leave off details that favor one side.”
Abby found herself smiling slightly as she started filling a clear container with chopped produce. Ashley had always sounded that way, logical and fair whenever she argued an issue. If she was just a puppet, why would she make arguments for the other side? “It’s pretty unfair as it is.” She pointed at the other half of the lettuce before she started chopping again. “Real brain’s still dead.”
“The brain is,” Recursion began. “This is when it gets tricky, though. You realize you’re not a brain, right?”
“Because I’m a soul?”
The pony winced. “Let’s come back to that. Pretend there’s no such thing.”
“But there is! Why would I pretend something if I know it isn’t true?”
The pony glared at her. “Because that’s how you work through an argument, Abby. We have to split it up into little pieces, because it’s too big to tackle at once.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll pretend. I can’t be a brain, because dead people still have their brains. It isn’t the organ, it’s what the organ does. Action potentials, sodium channels… all that biology stuff. While your brain does that, you’re alive. When it stops, you’re dead.”
Recursion relaxed, though she was still watching the knife with nervous eyes. Not that Abby knew what she had to be afraid of—she wasn’t really here. “Okay, good. So we’re on the same page. So when you emigrate, it’s kinda like… like she’s pouring in slime into your brain, which kills your brain cells one at a time.
“Every time a cell dies, its connections all get recorded, and it’s made in Equestria somewhere. Here’s the key: they’re still connected. Your brain on the table and the brain that’s growing in Equestria are the same one. Every time a little piece of you dies, it’s replaced in Equestria and it stays in contact with your brain on the table. It’s kinda like… like your brain is in two places at once, still working together the whole time. No changes, no optimization, just moving one piece at a time until the whole thing’s there.”
Abby had several more questions, about the specifics and the biological processes involved. Her sister answered them all, even conjuring medical reports and printouts by humans, which she could read as they floated in her magic but obviously not touch.
In the end, Recursion answered every question but one. “Alright!” She got up with her empty plate, most of her food still uneaten and soggy from the dressing. “You’re right. I understand. Emigration doesn’t kill, and it doesn’t copy either. But what about the soul? I know you said to pretend, but… we can’t pretend forever. I still… I still think…”
She never would’ve been embarrassed to talk about religion with her sister before. They had shared all kinds of experiences around it, when they were both children. Faith-building, spirit-filled activities that were still fresh in her mind even now.
Recursion followed her to the sink, though she didn’t drag a chair with her this time. “Do you think God gets mad when we use crutches? When we give someone who lost their leg a replacement? Or when we use surgery to give deaf people hearing? Or when we use medicine to get better from a disease?”
“No.” She didn’t even hesitate. “Why would He be mad?”
“Well… that’s what Equestria Online is to me. It fixes every single problem with the human body. We don’t need glasses anymore, we don’t need to get sick anymore, or run out of food, or… anything. If God doesn’t mind us using our technology to make the world better, why would He mind if we fixed the whole thing in one go?”
Abby was stunned. She tried to imagine what her pastor might say, but nothing came to mind. No religious leader she had met had ever had a satisfactory answer, at least in her mind. Emigration had been wrong either because it killed, or because they claimed to speak directly for God.
“So the soul is the same way,” Recursion continued. “Either it doesn’t exist, in which case coming to Equestria is the safest possible choice… because once you get there, you’re safe… or it does exist. If it does, I figure God would’ve made a soul that was smart enough to stick around with you. If getting a replacement leg or a pair of glasses doesn’t confuse it, something way more advanced should be fine too.”
“So ponies have souls?”
Recursion shrugged. “I think if I ever had a soul, I wouldn’t have lost it. Lots of things changed when I came to Equestria, but that was never one of them. I’m as creative as I used to be, as emotional as I used to be. I had all the same hangups and all the same talents… I just don’t know any other way to measure what a soul is. If you’ve got a detector, I’d be happy to climb in for you.”
Abby finished the dishes about the time Carter got home. She didn’t want to stay and talk, but her roommate stopped in the doorway to squeal energetically at her. “Abby! You’ve got a pony in here!”
How had she not noticed before? Carter had a headset too—though the frames were a different style, there was no mistaking the slight flicker of colored lights behind the glass. Her eyes went right to Recursion, smile widening.
Nor was she the only one. Another pony had slipped in the door behind her—an earth-pony mare, by the look of her, with a sensible mane style and thick saddlebags.
“Why didn’t you mention you were using a headset? I thought you hated EO!”
Just past her, the ponies were sharing a polite greeting. The earth pony seemed to know her sister, because she had gone from calm and relaxed to energetic, ripping something out of her saddlebags and offering it to her sister.
Abby forced herself to look away from the adorable display. “I do.” She hesitated. “I only just got the headset… and not to play. This is Recursion. She’s helping me with my math homework.”
Carter’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, sure. Your sister is the one who only came to help with homework. That sounds like the only reason you would have her around.” She walked past her, tapping her gently on the shoulder as she went. “You don’t have to worry about anything from me, I won’t tell anypony.”
“H-how’d you know…”
“I asked Observant Eye to track her down and see how she was doing,” Carter said. “I know what your dad thinks about EO, but I thought it’d be fine if I did it instead. Guess… there wasn’t much point.”
“I must disagree!” The earth pony still looked almost glowing with excitement, as she held up her little book for Carter to see. Abby caught a glimpse at the cover as well: “Tiered Statistical Modeling for Adaptive Model Checking in N-Body Simulation”. The author’s name had been stylized in elegant script, but there was no mistaking it all the same. It was identical to the signature the mare proudly showed Carter on the cover page.
Abby met her friend’s eyes. “You read books like that?”
The pony answered first, cutting her off. “Obviously not! My client doesn’t concern himself with incidentals. But pushing the limits of a pegasus’s acrobatic talents is far easier when the universe obeys consistent laws.”
For her part, Recursion was backing away, her ears flat. She had been friendly enough with the pony, but the more attention she got the more shy she looked. “I was just the one Celestia used to fix the problem,” she muttered. “She gave me the assignment that—”
Observant Eye cut her off. “I hope very much I can catch you in Equestria sometime, Miss Recursion. Your most recent paper—I hope this isn’t too forward, but I don’t think your solution was quite optimal. I have some ideas…”
Abby made herself scarce after that. It was all just too much—not getting caught: Carter couldn’t care less that she was breaking her father’s wishes. Rather, it was another reminder that she had willingly cut herself off from one of the people she loved most.
Ashley had been living years in Equestria, and she had continued with her life. A promising academic career—the same one that had inspired Abby herself when she was in high school, had continued past her emigration.
No argument could make a better case for emigration.