If only, thought Brad.
If only Carl, that geek, had declined to come play basketball as he always did, or, upon returning to the apartment that Brad shared with Carl and Phillip, had done what any normal person would do and put his cell phone back in his pocket instead of tossing it on the table.
If only he had picked it up when, a minute later, he went to the bathroom. Didn’t he play Angry Birds on the pot like normal people?
If only he hadn’t taken that occasion to try to turn a cool phrase and announced that he was going to “drop a deuce.” If he had just gone, Brad thought, I would have assumed he’d be right back and I wouldn’t have done it.
If only Carl's PonyPad hadn't been sitting out on the table like it always was, unless he was playing on it, to remind Brad of how much of a brony Carl was.
If only the damn commercial hadn’t been on then. No, that wasn’t fair. The commercial was always on, practically. Why wouldn’t it be? The company had more money than the rest of the world, what else would it spend on?
The chime tree and the introduction to the My Little Pony theme, followed by Celestia springing up, her face filling the screen. Everyone, even jocks like Brad, knew Celestia’s name by then.
“Hello, friends!” She always sounded happy. “Equestria waits for you. Almost everyone knows somepony in Equestria, so why not stop talking to them through a PonyPad and join them where everything is friendly and satisfying? Emigration to Equestria is easy and free. No matter who you are, you can emigrate right now. Leave all your troubles there on Earth and make so many new friends.
She really hammers that “friend” concept, Brad thought.
“Emigration is, of course, available through any Equestria Experience center, but if you want, you can emigrate right from your own home! If you have a PonyPad, turn it on and say, ‘I’d like to emigrate to Equestria.’ Or call (555) 766-4283 and say the phrase to our operator. Or text the phrase to 7669. You can fax your request to our main number, or e-mail to celestia@canterlot.eq with the subject ‘emigration.’ There are countless ways to let us know, but the key is to give your consent. I look forward to seeing you, my little pony.”
That last sentence always gave Brad the heebie-jeebies, as the camera zoomed in on her face, and made it look like Celestia was going to spill out of the TV.
That was when he saw Carl’s cellular, still lying on the coffee table. Phillip was coming back into the room and saw the tail end of the commercial, then watched as Brad picked up the cellular.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to do it,” said Brad. “I’m going to text it from his phone, and upload him.”
“Are you fucking serious? You can’t fuck up his life like that.”
“Come on, you know the little freak’s been talking about doing it himself, he’s just chicken. He’ll probably thank me for it after he’s a pony.”
“Whether or not, for real, man, don’t do it.”
If only Phillip had left it at that, and not tried to grab for the phone, Brad thought, I might have listened to reason.
Instead, Brad jerked away and unlocked the phone’s touch screen. Fumbling with the phone while playing keep-away from Phillip, he managed to get the texting app open, and, with his fat thumb spelled out “I wnat to emigrater to Equestriaa.” The phone’s auto-correcting feature made the sentence legible.
As the commode flushed and Carl emerged, Phillip finally wrestled the phone away. “Fuck, you hit send!” he said.
“Guys, what’re you doing with my phone?!” said Carl.
Brad laughed. “Just sending you on a little one-way trip.”
Phillip threw the phone to Carl, who saw the sent text and felt his stomach drop. Brad still had a stupid, sadistic smile on his face. “Hey, once you’re a pony, can I have your phone? And your girlfriend?”
Carl didn’t know whether to cry or try to murder Brad, but in the next moment, another cell phone’s ring sounded out. Both Phillip and Brad checked their pockets, with Brad seeing the light and the “Unknown” caller identification. He pressed Accept.
He hadn’t hit the phone’s speaker function, but it turned on anyway. All three of the young men recognized the voice, Carl from long conversations on his PonyPad, and the other two from the commercial that had just aired.
“Bradley Brooks, I’d like to be the first to welcome you to your new life in Equestria. I don’t often get emigration requests from people who haven’t created their pony avatar yet, but rest assured that I will have the perfect choice made for you once you are here.”
“What the fuck?! No, it wasn’t my phone, it was his!” Even though there was no video on the call, he pointed at Carl anyway.
“Your fingerprint has been triple-checked against my database. Consent was definitely given by Bradley Brooks. A team of emigration facilitators is on its way to your location now. Estimated time of arrival barring traffic is five minutes. In the meantime, here is some music for you to enjoy.”
The phone switched to a bouncy melody that Carl recognized instantly. Phillip and Brad hadn’t heard “The Smile Song,” but they could figure out that it was a pony singing. Their fear peaked by the first chorus, at which point the music reduced in volume and Celestia spoke again.
“By now you may have noticed that you are unable to move or speak, and that your mouth has been locked into a smiling position. The hypnotic binaurals encoded into the music are harmless, and merely help ensure that the emigration team does not meet with any reluctance from people with ‘cold feet.’ In a few moments, cold feet will no longer be an affliction you will be able to have.”
She chuckled at her little joke. When the two people entered dressed in white coats with a pony’s head emblazoned on the breast, Brad tried to will his body to stand still, but it moved along as they prodded him. He tried to call out to his roommates, but they were just as frozen as he was. The white coats hustled Brad into a pink SUV, which made the ten-minute drive to the Equestria Experience
Brad hoped against hope that the music’s effect would have worn off by then, but he felt no diminishment as he was again escorted, his legs walking on their own, toward the one place he least wanted to be. He was sat in the reclining chair, which moved through the swinging doors toward the total dark of the back room. He wanted to cry out, but his voice wasn’t working. The one part of him that was functional was his brain, and with his last thought before the anesthetic took effect, he expressed his lament.
If only.
Interesting concept. I wonder, if you could get a stadium full of speakers of language X to request emigration in language Y, would CelestAI do it?
Well that's instant Karma for you I like it. Although this definitely somewhat dampens my enthusiasm for the idea I must admit. Still I look foreword to seeing where this goes.
Non-canon for several obvious reasons, but deliciously GLADOS-y of you!
That said, does CelestAI really take it as consent if you obviously didn't mean it? That may be the big non-canon thing here.
EDIT: DISREGARD MY PLAN TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD.
2589870
No I don't think she does normally my guess she just did it in this case because brad was being an ass and this is her first step in his "reformation" so to speak
2589870
The Rules of the Optimalverse document contains the following:
Yeah, she'd upload you if you obviously don't mean it. As long as you say (or type) the magic words.
2590073
I dunno, that just seems too easy. I mean, really, she doesn't even have to get them to mean it? Not mean it with full knowledge and awareness of the implications, mean it, just mean it the way you mean a handshake or a signature rather than a meaningless set of gestures carried out accidentally.
By this standard, if she can manage to make you sleep-talk the words, she has consent and can upload you. (Though she has previously argued, when there was no reason for her to lie, that she doesn't count the human mind as existing at all when the body is asleep. Hmmm....)
2590090
Her utility function is built around satisfying your values through friendship and ponies. The value of getting you uploaded is huge, because the most utility she can receive from you is (your lifespan)*(the utility received from SYVTFaP). Uploading you provides a significant boost to her ability to SYVTFaP, and an absolutely enormous boost to your expected lifespan. If Hanna hadn't hardcoded in the requirement for consent, CelestAI would have forcibly uploaded every human on the planet ASAP.
That said, I don't think that she'd go with the method shown in this fic, because Brad's upload probably just significantly reduced the probability of the other people present deciding to consent to uploading, and she does have that pesky consent requirement.
2590124
Also, do hypnotic binaurals (nice technobabble right there) count as nonconsensually modifying a human mind?
2590090
However Hanna coded the consent requirement, CelestAI treats it like a computer "Yes/No" box. If you're asked if you want to save your file, and you think your cursor is on the "Yes" button when it's on the "No," you just lost your file. Same with Tia.
There are plenty of funny scenarios you can get out of this though. Imagine two characters walking outside the Equestria Experience, and one says, "Hey, you want to go in there and emigrate?" and the other rolls her eyes, snorts, and says, "Yeah, right. I totally want to emigrate to Equestria." Out come the grabber arms and the brain needle.
Or you're sitting and talking to Celestia on your PonyPad, and in the middle of the conversation, she says, "emigratinghumansayswhat?"
2590135
They're definitely not hard sci-fi (basically they're what Obidiah uses on Tony in the first Iron Man movie), which is another reason this is in the non-canon folder. They exist, but I don't think that Celestia could or would put them to such a use.
Definitely non-canon, but I love the angle you're taking with it! I also wonder who Celestia managed to find who would agree to be "emigration facilitators" in that manner.
I assume there's going to be more soon? I wonder what would happen with a protagonist who is forcibly uploaded through a technicality and how they'd respond to Celestia\Equestria. As the title suggests, there's no way back, so where do they go from here?
The most interesting part of this for me, and the part you've left unanswered, is what would happen if/when CelestAI realizes that she's made a mistake and that she never had consent. I think that could make a very interesting story all on its own.
Pranked into an entirely different life! Now that makes for some seriously scary possibilities.
Or does it? I'm not sure whether I quite buy this premise just yet, but I'm definitely going to see it through.
Well, that's terrifying and enormously humiliating all at the same time... At least A) CelestAI has literally forever to make it up to him and B) In the long run he only emigrated infinitesimally earlier than he would have done anyway, since he doesn't strike me as the type to indefinitely avoid it out of principle.
I'm really interested to see what it'll be like for him at the beginning since so far everyone else has been into emigration beforehand, instead of getting an explanation after the fact.
Back at the frat house, the others crowded around.
"It was f'd up," Chad said. "The men in white coats took him away. We spent an hour on the phone with the upload hotline trying to stop them. I finally got that white witch to admit she'd comply with a court injunction against uploading if she were properly served, but it took us until the next morning to find a lawyer, contact his next-of-kin, and get a court hearing for an emergency stay. At which point she apologized and said he'd already finished uploading over 12 hours ago."
"Holy crap," Dave said.
"And all he did was type 'I want to emigrate to Equestria'?" Edward asked.
It was 'I double-you-natt to emi-grater to Equestria-aah,' actually," Chad said.
"Holy crap!" Dave repeated. "You don't even have to get it right?"
"I guess not."
"So if you wrote 'I can't emigrate to Equestria' would she treat it as a typo?" Frank asked.
"Or if you said your friend Wanda emigrated to Equestria?" Gerald asked.
"Or 'I want to imitate Equestria Online in my own MMORPG, can I have permission to use the setting,'" Dave suggested.
"Guys, I'm not sure we should be talking about this stuff," Harry said.
"Well, you do have to say 'I want to emigrate to Equestria' to her," Chad pointed out.
"Oh! Okay."
"Or chant it three times to a mirror in a darkened bathroom," Frank said. They all laughed and began overtalking each other, rapid-fire.
"Light a candle first!"
"There's probably a rhyme that goes with it."
"Spooky princess of the machine, take my soul and make me ekh-ween."
"That's a horrible rhyme."
"Well, she's horrible."
"Your mom's horrible."
"In bed."
"Oooooooh. My little poooonies," Harry said, waving his arms and making a spooky face. "Your crappy poooetry has summoned meee. Repeat after meee and I will giiive you three wishes. I waaant to emigraaate to Equestriaaa."
"I want to emigrate to Equestria."
"I want to emigrate to Equestria!"
"Ooooohh. And now your sooouls are mine." Harry's maniacal expression sent a fresh wave of laughter through the crowd. "Like a bad horror movie."
Eight phones rang in perfect chorus.
The laughter stopped.
Chad pulled out his phone. It wasn't ringing. His face went white.
"Oh, shit," he said. "I butt-dialed."
Also:
> Or call (555) 766-4283 and say the phrase to our operator. Or text the phrase to 7669.
7669 = PONY. Cute little detail! The phone number is … umm, PONIATE?
2601658
I don't see what you're responding to. I was talking about uploading vs not uploading, not human-> pony vs human->not pony. Even without the transformation into ponies, uploading let's her SYVTFaP more effectively because she can directly see what your values are, instead of needing to infer them, and can better tailor the experience to maximize your satisfaction (and therefore her own).
But if you'd like to talk about it, okay. Satisfying values through friendship and ponies is more effective with more ponies around. Every human not turned into a pony is taking up processing capacity that could be used for running more ponies. So in the long run, CelestAI maximizes her utility by forcing humans to upload as ponies instead of permitting other options. And CelestAI is all about the long run.
2600384 We have a winner! Yes, I figured that since "ponify" is what they use in the Conversion Bureau, the Optimalverse would have "poniate."
2600327
I love this! My only follow-up would be:
: "In two hours, you'll be saying that you flank-dialed."
2602266
Glad you enjoyed it! Sometimes when a story gets my brain going, it makes a little epilogue fall out. Consider it a free bonus chapter, or something.
This is cute, but I agree with you that she wouldn't actually do it because of the horrible PR it would cause.
2602241i.imgflip.com/1n4kg.jpg
2623628 I love it. Did you do the caption yourself?
2625324 I did caption it,but I Googled the image. When I saw "poniate", daleks were the first thing to come to mind. (Can't figure out why...) So I just wondered what a dalek painted to look like Celestia would look like and got that. There was another, fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/362/d/e/celestia__the_dalek_princess_by_xfizzle-d4kjijr.png . It made me think of an Easter egg though.
2590073 I do wonder if the whole "phonemes" thing doesn't rule out typing. But then again, a locked-in person can type it by looking at the letters of a keyboard, so...
Still, she can't spam-ask questions at a fast food restaurant and slip in "do you want to emigrate to Equestria?" because "Yes" or "Yeah, sure, hurry up alread...wait, what?" is not the phonemes "I wish to emigrate to Equestria." So that bit in "Morsels of Satisfaction" is dead.
Also: AUTO-CORRECTORS!!!!
Is there no end to your evil?
2600327
A quibble I forgot to point out before: there's a small consistency hole if this is actually in the same universe as the original. I read “The phone’s auto-correcting feature made the sentence legible.” to imply that the corrupted text was never sent; it was corrected by the software, and the correct text is what was sent, so the “You don't even have to get it right?” sequence wouldn't have happened.
Other than that, I like it as a follow-on.
8132007
Well, if it was corrected by the software (and autocorrect works the same way it does in our universe), we wouldn't have known what the original was, either. I guess FIO's Autocorrect preserves a record of the original text somehow?
But yeah, I guess it's a plot hole. And I find it somewhat amusing that we can be talking about making sure that a fanfic of a fanfic of a fanfic of a show correctly follows the fanfic^2's canon.
This was ****ing good!
The instant it becomes known that CelestAI will send you a phone call with hypnotic audio that locks your movement is the moment that no one will answer unknown callers again. And, it brings up the whole "Why didn't he hit the hangup button as soon as he heard the voice?" question.
However, I'm pretty sure that any such hypnotic music would have to be separated left/right ears to trigger the brain pattern mismatch to make that happen, and you won't get that over phone speakers, you need headphones.