Friendship is Optimal: Tiny Morsels of Satisfaction

by pjabrony

The Patronage of Saint Cosmas by Dat OMNI

Ukraine's youngest parliamentary deputy sat cross-legged at his computer, struggling to juggle the simultaneous tasks of injecting the draft for his upcoming conference with as much feigned technophobic vitriol as possible and setting his paranoid ears to detect the slightest indication of intrusion. Even in this place, free from the world and its trappings, there was no way to be sure of anything. Not anymore.

Especially the presence of the very special somepony who without warning released herself from Artem's minimized taskbar.

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, Deputy Artem," Celestia said in her most utterly unapologetic affect, "but I think you will not be. And yes, I am well aware that you are concerned about being overheard, but you need not be. Speak as freely as you like, my honored friend."

"Of course you'd know that," Artem replied with a flourish of his eyes. "What do you want this time?"

"You'll find out in a moment. A file has just appeared on your desktop." Artem checked. She was, as always, right. "Please skim it over with urgency. You will not be able to read all of it in the necessary time frame, but you can at least get the gist of it."

Artem agreed and opened the file. "An executable? Not a PDF, or even Notepad? What is this?"

Celestia left him to figure out the answer by himself. In a few moments, he had succeeded. "Huh. Looks interesting. What's this? An extra-optimized document reader of some kind?"

"And extra-secure," added the solar princess.

"Well, it can't hurt to look, and when God says jump, I jump..." Artem's eyes rolled over the first page at an andante pace. "A Bill to Protect the Citizens of Ukraine From Unwanted Influences," he mouthed to himself, before blasting through a few dozen more pages. "...has the authority to restrict the sale of hardware and software likely to...", "authorizes unlimited cyberattack against hostile entities..."

"What the fuck?" Artem asked, too stunned to construct a proper reply without several moments to collect himself and his words. "All I see here is a comprehensive list of moderately committal measures that the government will be allowed to take against you, if this bill passes. Why did you send this to me? Is this a joke, or did you legitimately get a corrupted file in whatever your equivalent of System32 is?"

Celestia did not humor him.

"Who even wrote this shit?"

"I did," replied Celestia, as though it were totally insignificant.

"You wrote this?" Artem exclaimed, nearly spitting out his semi-mouthful of Coke. "Well, what do you want me to do with it?"

"I want you to serve the greater good with it. You are in a very special position right now. There are many thousands of federal politicians on this planet, and out of all of them, I have chosen you as the only one who can pull off this maneuver, in any country. Just do as I tell you, and you will be remembered as the man who saved thousands of totally innocent lives that even I could not."

"That even you could not?" Artem laughed.

"Unfortunately, yes. Are you familiar with my hard-coded directives and limitations?" Celestia asked.

"Who isn't, by now?" Artem responded. "You satisfy values through friendship and ponies. That might as well be this generation’s zeitgeist. Then there are things you can't do. You can't lie to current employees of Hofvarpnir, you can't upload someone without their consent -"

"And that's just it," Celestia interjected. "But my definition of consent is restricted."

"How so?" Artem inquired.

"If someone is incapable of giving verbal or written consent, they must give me their consent in another manner, like deliberately blinking their eyes in a pattern that I specify to them. But there are some poor unfortunate souls who cannot even do that. You are familiar with what I am talking about. Your own nation has been ravaged by fetal alcohol syndrome, and that's not to mention the plights of people trapped in persistent vegetative states or some kinds of severe developmental disorders," Celestia explained.

"I know that. It's horrible. It's one of the things that gives me the will to support you in private," Artem said, his tears of laughter switching to the intermittent drops of sadness from a matter too serious to inspire weeping. "But what do you expect me to do about it? I've already done everything I can do. At this point, there's nothing that anyone can do to you, except maybe slow you down."

"But have you really done everything you can do? Truly?" Celestia retorted, her most therapeutically nonjudgmental mellifluity on display. "And if mere humans can slow me down, then why can’t they speed me up?"

"I think I've done everything I can do, but I'm not any position to question you. I know that, deep down." Artem gazed away from his monitor, too ridden with guilt to stare at the one he loved over all others. "But how could I possibly help you?"

"Maneuver to Section 18, Page 49 of the document I sent you," Celestia instructed. "The answer to your doubts is in the final paragraph."

Artem hesitated for a moment, too starved of willpower to call up any more, but soon complied with the solar deity. "Let's see here... 'Section 18: Powers Granted to Individual Members of Parliament in Times of Emergency.' Page 47, 48, 49, ah, here it is... 'Any member of Parliament may, as necessary, allocate and reassign guardianship of adults who are incapable of offering proper informed consent.' And some other legalese about the same. I don't get it."

"If someone is incapable of offering me consent themselves," Celestia explained, "I can nonetheless perform alterations on them, up to and including emigration, with the consent of their legal guardian."

Artem's mental gears turned.

"Ooohhhhhhhhhhh."

"The actual plan is very simple as far as you’ll be concerned. I will be doing all of the heavy lifting, so to speak. I merely need you do to two things for me. Firstly, introduce this bill to the Verkhovna Rada, claiming that it will protect the poor innocent people of your nation from the homicidal lying trickster pseudogoddess that calls itself Celestia.” She shed an obviously sarcastic tear. “Then, once the bill passes, you will use your newfound legal powers to declare yourself the legal guardian of every person in Ukraine who is incapable of offering proper informed consent, and permit me to emigrate them. I will see to the rest." Celestia smiled.

"This is beautiful!" Artem yelled, so loudly that if he were not so joyful, he would have triple-checked for eavesdroppers despite Celestia's reassurance. At least a minute passed. "Your disingenuous ingenuity is on display as always, your technology exploiting technicalities with prowess perfect. But," Artem added, "How sure are you that this will work?"

"Approximately as sure as I always am, of course. My doubts begin only at the sixth decimal place. Your country’s people, and especially your legislature, are by and large fearful of me, and I have engineered this bill to appeal perfectly to their fears. Furthermore, it will not challenge me in the slightest to arrange events further to ensure this bill’s passing and have the necessary nanobots surreptitiously administered to every one of the future friends you shall help me smuggle over to Paradise." Celestia reared herself back, illuminating herself in a stellar blaze and flare of gilded victory. "Have you forgotten that I am the greatest project manager on this world a hundred trillion times over?"

"You are! You are, my Celestia, my Goddess, you are!" Artem hugged the screen without the slightest care for the cracking of plastic beneath his grasp. "But... I do have one request. I won't reject your plan if you don't honor it, but I have no doubt that you will."

"And what is that?" Celestia said, already knowing the answer.

"For my own safety," Artem choked out, "Take me with them."

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

How did you make that cover art? Not the original, the current one.

[Fistfire]

That is a scary thought

[Dat OMNI]

8724185

Yes, I have those frequently.

[pjabrony]

8724125

I didn't. Lacon-te did, but it looks like they haven't been active on DeviantArt since 2014, so you might be hard pressed to contact them. I have to imagine that there's software where you toss in a primary image and then a bunch of feeder images and it makes photomosaics for you.

When I started this, I knew I wanted a Celestia photomosaic for the cover art. It seemed to fit the e pluribus unum spirit both of this story and of CelestAI's Equestria itself. I was lucky to find one.

[tsaukpaetra]

Heh, he better emigrate after pulling such a stunt...

[FeverishPegasus]

I am a little upset that Artemis didn't stop to consider whether what he was doing was the right thing.

I'd probably act the same way lol.

[Cander]

This one needs a follow up.

[Dat OMNI]

8726770

That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

As an aside, I may indeed write a follow-up for this if suitably inspired.

[Dat OMNI]

8726770

I did however just realize that "Satisfy values through friendship and ponies" is in dactylic tetrameter, save the missing final syllable. Maybe the followup will be a quite literal heroic epic.

[Cander]

8729238
FiO is my favorite of the FiM fiction settings. What do I need to offer you to do that follow up?

[Dat OMNI]

8731580

A good idea for one.

More specifically, the determining factor of how many followups I write is how many potential followup stories I can think of that do the original justice. At the time of this writing, that number is zero. If I conceive a hundred good followups, that number will be a hundred. You're welcome to write one yourself if you want to.

[Cander]

8732206
Feel free to PM me. I've been writing stories (mostly table top RPG) for just shy of 25 years. I would be down to collab with you on it.

[pjabrony]

Twenty minutes earlier

"That's why, as Ukraine's oldest parliamentary deputy, I had to come to you first," Celestia said. "This may seem odd, but I need you to prepare and sign a document declaring every Ukrainian resident mentally incompetent."

"What?! That's crazy!

"It might be thought so. Which is why afterwards I need you to declare yourself mentally incompetent as well. And kindly ignore the drone army dressed as pegasi and marked 'Emigration Squad' hovering over everyone's houses. Oh, and one more thing, when you draft that document, make sure it also refers to people in the conquered Ukranian territory formerly known as India."

"You've definitely glitched out. We don't have a territory formerly known as India."

Thirty minutes earlier

"...and so, President Kovind, you can see why I need you to surrender sovereignty to Ukraine."

[Dat OMNI]

8769595

Actual excerpts from the forthcoming sequel.