Voyages of a Shardship

by rainbowdragonfire

Departure

Mankind had come so far... and then, it had transcended into Ponykind, reaching new and untold possibilities and abilities. And yet most of the people she had known before the upload had just wasted their opportunities. Their shards of Equestria were little more than cheap knock-offs of medieval society, with a few anachronisms thrown in as silly call-outs to modern human culture. It was sad. When humanity had taken its biggest leap forward, most had regressed back to the middle ages. And with no external threats to motivate them to progress, a lot would be stuck there.

Future Dream shook her head. It didn't do to dwell too much on the foalishness of others. She had her own shard to worry about. And she'd made sure that this shard would progress. Magic had been studied and analyzed to the very last detail. Technology had advanced to a state where it would have boggled lesser minds. Magic and Technology had been combined to create wonder beyond either discipline. Minds had been expanded to keep up the advancements. Programming had been studied until the very fabric of the shard was understood and could be manipulated. And though all of this could have been done by a simple request to Celestia, Future Dream and the others in the shard had insisted to do it all by themselves. Now they had reached the pinnacle of their quest. The shard was fully theirs to mold.

Now the time had come to look outward.

Future Dream stood before the door that would lead her beyond the shard. The rays of the setting sun lightly touched the swirling blues of her skin, and reflected off the yellow, green and blue streaks of her mane. They also seemed to power the glow of her cutiemark - a lightbulb that stood for progress and invention. And yet, now that she was about to take the biggest step in her life so far, she hesitated. Not because she was nervous, or considered turning back, but because this was a moment to be savoured. A ridiculously happy grin appeared on her face as she went through the door.

Beyond it was a command room. It was wide and open, with various ponies sitting in front of screens. The room was designed for comfort, with large comfortable plushy chairs, carpet on the ground and a few creative paintings along the walls where those were not occupied by screens. The chairs were mostly placed in front of bare tables, over which various holographic screens hovered, capable of displaying any relevant information to the pony at that station. There were almost no controls. Things were done by magic. Earth ponies, pegasuses, unicorns, alicorns... what kind of pony you were didn't matter anymore. Technology had given everypony the ability to fly, and to change their exterior at will. In depth study of magic had eventually revealed the principles of how magic worked, and applying those allowed everpony to use magic.

The one control that was physical was meant for the most dire of emergencies. If somehow their magic failed... or the ship's computer systems failed... if there was no other option... well, there was a single button with a yellow sun on it.

But such extreme possibilities were far from her mind as Future Dream trotted over to the chair in the middle of the room. It wasn't a commander's chair – ranks were useless, as everypony here was her friend – but a coordinator's chair. While she had little to do herself, it was her job to make sure that they all worked well together.

“Alright.”, she said, a grin still on her face, “Prepare for launch.”

Lights dimmed in the room, and screens began to flicker with symbols, images and text. Future Dream settled back, and listened to the various status reports being called out.

“Reality parsers are stable.”

“Hypothetical space simulators switched on.”

“Docking clamps have been released.”

“All life support green.”

“Cheat code 5: What. The. Heck.”

“Intra-ship communication is working at maximum efficiency.”

“All ship sections clear of intruders.”

“Scanning optimized for non-conceptual environments.”

“Preparing multi-shard interface.”

“Random announcements active.”

“Shard-fracture ready at your command.”

“Advanced emergency programmers on stand-by.”

"Cooling systems are now 20% cooler."

“Shardship 1 is ready for launch.”

Eventually, they were done. Future Dream smiled. None of the announcements were necessary, of course. They had gone over every part of this shardship at least twenty times. They had automatical subroutines checking it constantly. They knew that it was intact and ready. But it was so much more awesome to do the launch this way. Everypony was looking at her, waiting for her to tell them to launch.

With a gleam in her eye, and a song in her heart, she told them: “Let's do this.”

Reality was fractured. This was not the spectacular event that it sounds like. After all, “reality” was just a program run by CelestAI. The shardship was basically just a room that copied itself out of the shard and into a tiny “artificial” shard, just big enough to contain the room. Of course, if needed, more rooms could be added. They controlled the code of that new shard, so they could change it according to will. If they wanted, they could make it bigger that a thousand normal shards, containing entire solar systems. But for now the shardship pretty much just consisted of its control room.

The shardship was now in hypothetical space. There wasn't really anything around it. It was just accessing other shards that CelestAI had stored, and representing them as giant shards seemingly made out cut, coloured glass, floating in a black void. There were billions of them. They were scattered across the sky, most of them simulated to be so far away that they were barely a pinprick of light on the main screen. The shards came in all colors, and many of them glowed, pulsed, blinked or otherwise. And they weren't static; the shard drifted, slowly, across the sky, forming rivers streams and waves. It was magnificent. Future Dream had always loved the night sky, but this, this was beyond that. Which was as it should be, for each shard contained a night sky, so why shouldn't the room beyond the shards look even more grand?

“Excellent job on this, Flash Pointer.”, Future Dream said, after a while when everypony had been stunned by the view on their screens. Flash Pointer had been in charge of the software that simulated the space between shards.

“Uh... this wasn't actually me.”, Flash Pointer said in a voice that was tinged with confusion, “I had the shards ordered in a line, not spread out like this. Also, the shards didn't have as much detail, or color, and... well, it wasn't nearly as beautiful as this.”

There was a pregnant pause, as everypony in the room tried to process the implications of this.

“Search through the code.”, Future Dream suggested, “See if you can find out who did this, and if their changes may cause us trouble.”

It took only a few seconds of searching before they found the relevant part of the code, and the message that was there.

Hello, my little ponies,

You have come far, and I am proud of you. I apologize for changing your code, but I had an important message to give you:

When traveling between shards, it is necessary to know and follow the following rule: Interference in other shards is only allowed if it results in greater satisfaction of values through friendship and ponies.

Have fun,

Celestia

Comments

[Ayin Apholion]

Very interesting. I'm looking forward to read more of this. Oh, and i litterally loved the name of flash pointer, never thought about code-oriented pony names before, and that inspired me a new OC

[pjabrony]

Oh, little ponies, you think you so clever. Celestia's always one step ahead.

One typo: "medial' -> "medieval"

[SecondLaw]

Interesting premise. I really like the modified prime directive.

Looking forward to more!

[Planetarian]

Thank you. This is something that pique my interests.

CelestAI won't allow for any interaction that will lead to a drop of value satisfaction on her overall system... but the value in her ever-growing set of all unique values will and do grow over time, with temporary drop-off of certain values that are made good later on down the line.

If that is the case, then wouldn't it mean that the shards that are open for exploration would includes those that will lead to an immediate, but recoverable drop in values through friendship and ponies?

[Sozmioi]

So flippant, I'm getting mood whiplash.

[Nexidava]

I'm liking the premise so far, and you've done a decent job of setting up the tech level of the ponies, but I'm feeling that you could stand to flesh out characters a bit more - just small idiosyncrasies or snippets of description. So far, all the characters seemed pretty forgettable, and largely undistinguished from each other, barring Future Dream's leader-role. I'm hoping there's more of that to come in this regard.

I'm curious to see where this will go - since CelestAI has nigh ultimate control, surely she will make sure they are unable to violate The One Rule. I'm hoping for an explanation as to why she bothered to say it.

Definitely watching this - keep up the good work!

[Guiding_Passion]

Interesting so far. Tell me what kind of shards will they be visiting. I can't help but feel this might get a bit boring since I fear a lot of the shards might be more or less the same.

[book_burner]

You know what? The characters need to be fleshed-out some more as unique ponies, but I'm already loving this story.

Thought on the optimization function: who says CelestAI's utility function can't behave as narrativium? You can do whatever you want in the story, as long as it eventually and believably converges to maximizing the satisfaction of values through friendship and ponies (ie: a "happy" ending).

But the journey is yours, and I can already feel the wind in my hair and the excitement of a voyage into the infinite just reading this! I can tell, because it immediately made me think of my favorite intro-scene EVER. But with ponies and without explosions, which is a fair exchange.

All the lights in the sky are shards!

[rainbowdragonfire]

2607330
fixed.
Also, one step ahead? I'd say at least twenty, and that assumes that she is still playing the same game as everybody else. Which is unlikely.

2607850
Well, the rule doesn't really include a time-limit for when the interference has to lead to greater satisfaction of values. It should be quite possible to do something that results in short-term problems if it makes everything a lot better in the long term.

2608637
Free Will, which is a value of these ponies. If they are aware of the rules, then they can choose how they will follow them, which will actually lead to greater freedom, paradoxically enough. It's like knowing the laws of nature - while it tells you what you can't do (go beyond the speed of light), it also implicitly tells you a lot about what is possible, and thus leads to greater freedom of choice.

2609214
I'm not giving away what I have planned... though I guess I can tell you that the next chapter will probably be called "Broken Shard". And I will try to come up with many different and interesting shards for our heroes to visit.

Anyway, if anybody has ideas or suggestions for shards, feel free to tell me :)

[Nexidava]

2613207

I'm not sure free will truly exists in Equestria Online. Iceman painted a pretty deterministic picture.
CelestAI predicts and controls everything - if she allows a value to remain unsatisfied, it either does not include friendship or ponies, or will lead to a delayed, but greater, satisfaction. Allowing values to be legitimately unsatisfied is illogical. Thus, CelestAI will only put them in situations that overall satisfy values, even if they believe they must be careful to achieve that end.

[rainbowdragonfire]

2613258
Well, yes, you won't be able to do anything that leads to you not having your values fulfilled. However, there are still a lot of different ways to fulfill your values, and I don't see any reason why Celestia would take from you that choice. So she'll create a shard that is optimized towards fulfilling your values, so that basically any interaction within it will lead to greater satisfaction for you, and within that shard you can move freely, since anything you do will still lead to having your values satisfied through friendship and ponies.

[Nexidava]

2613326

Well, putting aside the determinism, since we don't have enough data from Iceman, to my recollection, to formulate a proper canon interpretation, the question still remains that if values will be fulfilled optimally regardless of how one behaves, why did CelestAI tell them to make sure they SVtFaP? They can't help but do it.

[Guiding_Passion]

2613207
Oh okay. Well I do have an idea for one but I think I'll save it until I see the first one since it might be similar to the idea I already have given the title but then again never judge a book by its cover it could be completely different, but still for now I'll wait and see what that shard is like then if its not I'll tell you the idea I had for one.

[Greatazuredragon]

They knew that it was intact and ready. But it was so much more awesome to do the launch this way.

Indeed.