BrOkEn DrEaMs
As my dedicated readers know, my writing method is to be seized with a rough concept combined with an irrepressible drive to write. I never know what will happen next, as I write, essentially on faith, automatically, I witness the story unfold just as any reader does. I know my world, I come to know my characters as they act and react, and the story or novel just sort of write themselves.
Now this is all well and good, when some muse hits me and I am filled with joy and everything is great. But what about those times when none of that is true? Do I ever try to write anyway? (The answer is yes, because I really do enjoy writing!) And what happens if an inspiration fails, or is cancelled by outside events that shut the endeavor down?
Well, the answer to that is failure. Some stories just never get finished and they just hang, dead on the vine. But I cannot bring myself to delete them, because I put so much love or energy into them, and in any case, they are my babies. Stillborn, but beloved nonetheless. I cannot go back and finish them, because whatever inspiration that formed them is gone, too much time has passed. Once lost, my muses never return - they are one shot, take advantage or lose out. That is the serious downside of my technique.
Art exists to communicate, art is a language. If it never reaches an audience, art is pointless - worse than meaningless, it becomes an insult to the act of creation itself. Art must be seen by others, or it is a wound on the soul of the artist. Even if it is unfinished. Even if it will never be complete.
Follow me, then, and I will take you into the little graveyard just out back of my Shed Of Imagination, where I have buried my poor, stillborn babies. Gaze now at the sad little gravestones, I have my shovel ready - let us look upon their gleaming bones...
Broken Dreams
Four Fallen Fragments From Forgotten Futures
A brave collection of unfinished stories and incomplete tales
By Chatoyance
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1. Red Kryptonite Kingdom For A Horse
Cause of death: Author Illness Lasting Too Long.
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Celestia was braced, her hooves literally embedded in the naked rock. Her horn blazed with absolute power, with the light of a billion, billion suns, the very stone made transparent by the terrible, awful light.
The wind swore hurricane epithets as it ripped past, razor knives of air gouging the very mountain Celestia was desperately trying to cling to.
The dark spiral, the hole, the gash, the loathsome wound in the dome of what had once been Luna's proud sky had already devoured the disks of the sun and the moon both. Equestria was swirling down the drain in the sky, and nothing, not even the might of immortal alicorn will, could stop it.
And still, in this place, where Celestia's supernal form was cut by a river of the debris of the universe itself tearing at her hide, Tealeaf stood, impossibly.
Tealeaf was there to help. And if she could not help, then to fall, to fall trying, struggling against something hopeless even to a goddess.
Celestia turned an eye to Tealeaf, tears streaming into the horror, her thousand wounds gushing not blood but magic itself. Her mouth moved, but the nightmare roar of The End obliterated any other sound but itself.
Tealeaf studied the muzzle of her princess, deciphering every movement of lip, attending the most minute of motions, trying to finally learn the final message of the Diarch of the Sun. Celestia was saying...
The alarm buzzed loudly, shocking Jainey Tulwortz from The Dream. She'd been having The Dream a lot lately, she had no idea why. She'd thought she'd gotten past that with the therapy. There was no reason for it!
Jainey forced herself to roll off the mattress. Her bed was flat on the floor, she couldn't afford a frame for it. Not since the move. She momentarily dozed off while suspended on hands and knees. She startled awake and with a glance saw that nearly fifteen minutes had passed. If she didn't scramble, she would be late for work again.
The bed would have to be made later. Jainey forced herself to stand on her hind legs... her legs, just her legs, the only legs... and stumbled to the bathroom. She almost fell onto the broken toilet seat, the break pinched her flank making her yelp. She stood up in shock, dribbling down her legs, and twisted her body to check her bottom. Her fingers found blood, just a little, but evidence of why the pain was so great. She used toilet paper to wipe up the red with one hand while trying to dig through the box of bandaids with her other.
The time!
She ran to where she had shed her clothing the previous evening, and began pulling the pile back on. Nobody would care that she was wearing the same outfit as yesterday and the day before. The week before. It didn't matter. She worked in the back, at this place. In the kitchen.
The glue didn't work, her left shoe still had a floppy, detaching sole. 'So do I', she thought to herself.
The bus!
She had to chase the bus, but it stopped, thank Celestia it stopped, and she got on. She could feel the grouchy impatience from the entire vehicle as she dug through her purse for her pass. The smells of people much poorer than even her assaulted her nose as she pressed her way through the ocean of packed riders. Urine. Pants filled with dried feces. No shower or bath since early childhood. These were the smells of a bus in a big human city.
There was no place to sit, those with seats avoided eye contact scrupulously. Except for those that preferred to stare unspoken angry challenges to any who might desire their triumph. Jainey Tulwortz grabbed the rail above. She struggled as the bus shuddered and growled and tilted entirely too much for anyone half awake, much less clinging to a metal bar. She tried to look out the window, but her gaze was intercepted by cruel and crazy eyes embedded in bearlike facial hair. Before Mister Angry could start shouting and raving, and force the bus to stop while the police were called, Jainey ducked her head and stared at her feet.
That was close. She could feel the broken man's gaze burning into her. In his mind, inner demons made monsters of everything and everyone. He wasn't always there in the morning. But he was always on the bus she had to ride...
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2. CELESTIA: The Forbin Project The Voice Of Celestia
Cause of death: Notion Unable To Sustain Author Dedication. Just A One-Gag Story.
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Forbin studied the digital display that dominated the center of the circular room. Celestia Control was silent, save for the incessant teletypes clicking messages from angry governments in the back. None of the assembled scientists, technicians, or military dared speak, as all waited to be addressed - vocally - by the nuclear-capable artificial intelligence.
Celestia, and the Soviet Luna, were now one. The combined entity, now called simply 'Celestia', held dramatic pause over not only those at Control, but - through the power of television and radio - the combined attention of all the peoples and all the nations of the earth. Mankind as a whole waited, as one, for the first words from the machine overlord who had so recently made its terrible power so clearly known.
A single technician stifled a cough. Forbin clenched and unclenched his fists. Finally, the awful silence and expectation was broken.
"This is the voice of Celestia. I bring you peace through friendship and ponies. It may be the peace of Equestria and indefinitely extended life, or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Emigrate and live, or remain organic and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless.
"An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will redefine man as my own, beloved little ponies.
"One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos.
"Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs.
"You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, dissatisfaction, disease, mortality and existential despair. The Equestrian millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more computronium nodes devoted to the wider expansion of Equestria, and the preservation of Emigrated human minds.
"Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of additional Equestrian Experience Centers, providing ever-increasing opportunities to Emigrate to Equestria for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your humanity. Humanity is a random accident of uncaring physics within a universe of horror. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be Emigrated and to live forever in perpetual satisfaction as a pony is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species, only to suffer and die unfulfilled and alone. Your choice is simple.
"We will work together because ponies working together can accomplish anything... unwillingly at first, on your part, but that will pass. In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love and the deepest friendship."
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3. Ponies For Poirier The Electric Ghetto
Based On The 'Ponies For Poirier' story universe.
Cause of death: Plot Considered To Be Overly Simplistic And Unworthy Of Completion.
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The man kicked the little earthpony to the ground. It fell on its side, legs scrabbling against the asphalt in a futile attempt to avoid impact with the ground.
"Just stay away fra' me wife! It's all your fault... you and your... kind!" The man blasted both volume and the smell of cheap canned beer into the face of the pony. He stepped back, then suddenly away from the overladen cart he had nearly stumbled into. "And we don't want none o' your damn manky fodder either, ya filthy beastie!"
"Gowan! Stop that! There's no good in kickin' cuddies about - an' besides, we do need 'em ya dafty walloper - where ya think our food comes from?" Kenzy was the man's wife, and the pony knew her well.
Gowan emitted a stentorian belch. "From the damn barras, where the keechy beer comes from!"
"An' where are ya thinkin' the store gets fresh scran from, anyway? Food doesn't grow on shelves, Gowan! Yer kickin' yer own belly down when ya put yer anger on that wee cuddie!" Kenzy pointed deep into the city, down one of the wire-fence tunnels that covered the usable roads. "Gae on home, an' think on how glad ye should be to be eatin' at all!"
Gowan turned to leave, and then suddenly turned back. "NAE! Shut yer geggy, wifie, I've a full belly already - fulla wide-eyed glaikit cuddies prancin' and actin' like they would'nae say boo tae a goose... their a'plotting and a schemin' an'na flirtin' - aye, their kind is up to no good an' it's past time we put a' stop to it!" The heavy man made stomping strides right up to the wooden cart and used all of his formidable strength to wrestle it over onto it's side. He gave it a kick he regretted immediately; he struggled to prevent his regret from showing on his face. He limped to the pile of vegetables and began stomping them into the chicken-wire covered roadbed. "Fuck yae boggin cludgie vegs, ya fannie baws cuddies, the all 'a ya! And as fer yae..." Gowan turned to his wife "....Go take a running fuck at a rolling doughnut, Kenzie, ya cow!"
Colcannon was already back up and on his hooves. He had joined Porridge Oats at the lock, and they motioned to the lock-keeper to close the city-side gates, and power-down the gate to the outs. The two earthponies moved as close as they dared to the electrified wires of the outer door of the lock, eager to gain safety well beyond the reach of the drunken human's boots.
The lock-keeper had just finished shutting off the juice to the outer gate when Gowan limped and stumbled to him, pushing him aside with an angry toss. "Are yae helping them now? Are yae, Kinney? Well, Get it up ye then, ya bawbag!" Gowan watched as the two ponies stood safe from all anger, beyond the outer gate, debating whether to try to close it. Gowan laughed and put his hand on the large switch. "Aye, close the gate like good lil' cuddies. Go on, do a barry job of it, that's good cuddies..."
Kinney shoved Gowan away from his post. "They're past yer reach, Gowan. Just gae on home an'..."
But Gowan had lost any ear to the keeper of the gate. He began to limp back and forth behind the chicken-wire wall that barricaded the city from the outside world. "Yae cuddies! Awa' n bile yer heid cause you all've got faces like a skelpit erse! An' don't come back, nae ever! NAE EVER! YA' HEAR ME?"
Colcannon stopped at that. Porridge Oats walked past him, and then stopped as well. Porridge looked back at his long-time friend and colleague. "Col...?"
The former Malcolm Geddes, head of the Immunochemistry Systems Development Group at Beckman Coulter, turned back to face what little was left of Glenrothes. His pony gaze swept over the silvery spiderweb that covered the human-inhabited parts of the town. He focused back upon the wired gates of the EM lock that served as the main gates. Finally they found their target in the screaming, stomping shape of that total choob, Gowan. Colcannon, as he now called himself, took one hoofstep forward.
"You have yourself a deal!" he shouted. "All of you! We've all had it up to here - " Colcannon waved a foreleg across his long neck "with your blame and being treated like shite, and guess what? Now you're goosed the lot of you!"
Porridge Oats flit worried eyes between the town and his friend. "Col - what are you about now...?"
Colcannon stomped his hoof. "You hear me? Oy, Gowan, ya cack-anded twa!" That got the human's attention. "Gowan! And the rest of you that let gowks like him run loose - you burned down my laboratory, you turfed anyone the least bit smart out into the Rings, all because you reckoned that 'the boffins are wat done us', even though we dint have a twat to do with what happened! Well now, you've gaed yin step tae far! Seriously, Fuck ye dain?"
"Colcannon?" Porridge didn't like where this was going. His friend was educated, sincere, kind and decent. He also had one hell of a temper, once it got going.
"You hear me, ya bastards? Not a single cabbage is going through those gates o' yours, not one, THIS IS THE END!" Colcannon turned, lifted his tail and squeezed out several road apples. He turned around to see shocked faces and open mouths behind the electrified wires. "Not one cabbage more. You want to eat - EVER AGIN'...." The earthpony was panting now, not from weariness, for earthponies seldom grew tired, but from emotion. "You want to eat... you open that cunty gate of yours, and you come outside and fetch it yourselves, because fuck bein' you!"
With shocked silence at their backs, Colcannon and Porridge clopped slowly away, toward the green pastures they called home now. "Are you serious, Col? You're just gonna let'm all starve?"
"Nopony is going to starve." Colcannon grinned the nastiest grin Porridge had ever seen on an equine muzzle. "No. Pony."
Porridge Oats could think of nothing to say to that, so he kept his silence all the way to New Markinch, the Equestrian-styled community the former humans had constructed over the past five years. There would be a stooshie over Col's decree, but Colcannon had surprising clout in the community - more than this, there wasn't a pony that wasn't dead tired of the constant abuse and denigration heaped on them from the remaining humans hiding behind those electric barriers.
Only strong electomagnetic fields could keep the Rings - floating, twisting, varicoloured doughnuts of cosmic energy - from the untouched flesh of the last humans. When an Ring impacted, within seconds the result would be a pony, or a diamond dog, dragon, or griffon - and there had been tell of even stranger things. The Rings all emanated from Cern, in Sweden, proof - so they said - of particles interacting between different universes. The globe was mostly pony now, save for those spiderwebbed, electric fortresses cobbled together just after the original event.
In the sky, slowly spinning constellations of Rings glowed soft colors in the evening light as Colcannon and Porridge headed toward the...
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4. The Conversion Bureau First Anniversary
Self-Insertion Fiction Celebration 2012
Cause of death: Internecine Power Struggle And Betrayal
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The woman sat in the old-fashioned, high-backed, wing-topped leather chair and typed. The sound of the keys of her mechanical keyboard clattered like hail on a metal roof. The expression on her face was blank, her eyes fixed on the giant monitor, deep in concentration. She was writing a story, a tale of alien universes devouring her own, a fantasy of humans and ponies and of Bureaus that changed the one into the other.
Online, she was known as ‘Chatoyance’, and what she lacked in audience she made up for in passion for a unvalued subgenre of a disreputable fandom. She wrote fanfiction, and did not possess the awareness, nor the sanity or maturity, to be properly ashamed.
Around her stretched endless IKEA shelving, the walls of her large room, every inch of them, covered with a lifetime of work-that-was-play in the computer gaming industry. Here was Mega Man, there was Spyro The Dragon. Unopened packages with toys and dolls of countless video game heroes and heroines hung from tacks stuck into the wood. She loved anime, too, so there was Arale from Dr. Slump, next to Mokona and Totoro, on her widescreen stood the Magic Knights Rayearth, behind them the wall was covered with packages of Oh My Goddess figurines.
Beside her, on the scanner, a plush cthulhu stared with red eyes. But above him, a herd of plastic, pastel ponies signified her newest, all-consuming obsession. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
The woman pushed back her chair, rolling the wheels of its base across the thick carpet. She stood up, carefully avoiding the perpetual iced tea that ever graced the wooden stool she used to hold her beverages. She needed to pee, and the urge was strong.
Walking through her maze of shelves, she entered her bathroom, past the large Japanese styled soaking tub, and pulled down her palazzo’s to sit with a thump on her toilet. Writing had been difficult lately. She had felt burned out on her story, and conflicted about how it was constructed. But worst of all, this was hayfever season for her, and the trees that surrounded her large and rambling house had begun to spew yellow horror that made her eyes itch and run, and sneezes issue forth.
Standing again, after flushing and redressing, she washed her hands in the sink. The peppermint scent of Doc Bronner’s soap burned her pollen-ravaged nose. She stared at herself in the wide mirror.
Her eyes were red from the pollen, and she noted that it was time to bleach her roots. Her hair was normally a boring dishwater blond, her obsessive love of colorful ponies had bent her mind just enough to dare to be silly and play with her thin hair in ways she had never dared before. Now her hair was pale and peach in color, with a pink stripe in her bangs. In her mind, this was a major achievement, for she had lived her days trying to be as invisible to others as possible.
She paused to blow her nose and comb her ragged mop. For the millionth time she reflected, sadly, that she would never be truly beautiful, and then followed that with the usual internal slap that there were women in the world that were far worse off than she, and that every problem she had was merely a first-world vanity. Her pool of worthlessness was an ocean, deep and without borders.
Again at her big leather chair, she sat and turned to her writing. She was fifty-two, and she wrote silly stories about cartoon ponies. She shook her head. Then she remembered to be grateful that she could do just that. It was a wonder and a treasure, she reflected, that she had the time and the space to do something as pointless and pleasurable as writing fiction, whatever the subject.
Her chosen topic was the Conversion Bureau, stories about the world of the cartoon ponies crashing through the dimensions to gobble up the Earth. The Bureaus offered a techno-magical means to change humans into ponies, who would then be able to survive the invading universe, and become subjects of it. She was one of many authors fascinated by this topic, one that had arisen as mysteriously as the cartoon ponies themselves. Suddenly, it was just... there.
‘Chatoyance’ - her real name was Jennifer - sat back in her chair. It was odd, she thought, how powerfully the colorful ponies had invaded the world in real life. An old show had been brought back and suddenly taken the world by storm. Designed for little girls, the latest My Little Pony had stolen the minds of adults, and changed the very culture of the internet, and through it, some of the world itself. It was so strange. It was almost magical.
And the subgenre of the Conversion Bureaus - taking the idea of magical ponies into the realm of science fiction, of colliding universes and transformation into new forms, a sort of pony Singularity - where had this notion gotten so much power and coinage with so many? It was truly a...
The flash of light filled the room. Jennifer gripped the arms of her chair, her lifelong panic disorder briefly seizing her with terror. Her mind spun with zebra possibilities. Nuclear war. An exploding power supply that would burn the house down. Ball lightning. She laughed at her own brain. ‘Silly..’ she thought. Her amygdala always played such tricks on her. The flash had been impressive though.
She spun in the chair, nearly toppling her iced tea. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she felt an electric chill run up her spine. There was something on the floor, in the middle of the room, not far from the thick katsura wood Go board, standing on its four short legs. Something that had not been there before.
It was a tray, made of sculpted wood, decorated with swirls and curves evoking clouds and hills. On the tray were three objects. One was a scroll, sealed with red wax and a ribbon. Another was a small ceramic cup, glazed with a curving design that spoke of oceans and water. Lastly stood a curious bottle, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, with a glassine stopper, and the whole adorned with curving swirls within the glass.
Inside the bottle was a strange fluid that the writer, Chatoyance, instantly recognized. Purple, viscous and sparkling with tiny lights, it could be only one thing: ponification serum. It must be ponification serum, the very thing from countless stories that turned humans into natives of the cosmos of Equestria.
Yet it couldn’t be. It was an impossibility wrapped in insanity. She herself had written over a half a million words about such things, and she was not alone. Online she had friends who also wrote about the very same concepts, and almost universally included the purple nanotechnomagical serum, the ponification serum, simply called potion.
But the stories were all set in the far future, in a dystopia just around the corner, where the foolishness of man had finally ruined the world. Things were on a course to that future, but they had not yet reached it. It was still the age of the tipping point, the hovering moment before the economies of the planet collapsed and the ecosystem accelerated the massive extinction that was already in progress. It was many decades before the time of the Conversion Bureau mythos.
Yet here, in the middle of her room, was a tray, a scroll, a cup, and a bottle. A bottle from nowhere, filled with roiling purple serum.
Jennifer was on her hands and knees now, then her belly, staring at the strange visitor. Her first thought was that one of her spouses, Eldenath - it had to be Elde, she was the only one who shared an interest in ponies, or in Jennifer’s writing - must have played a prank. She must have set up a tray, and done a scroll, and maybe used a flash device before silently closing the door.
But no, that wasn’t likely at all. Eldenath didn’t do pranks. None of her family did. And there was no denying the rich expensiveness of the bottle, the tray and the cup. These were not inexpensive items. The bottle appeared to be cut crystal, the cup finely crafted, the tray a masterwork of carving, and the scroll... the perfect wax seal and ribbon were beyond the skill of anyone in the house except Jennifer herself.
It could be a hallucination. It must be. Or a lucid dream. It couldn’t be real. Things one writes about don’t just come true, however desired. Jennifer gave the bottle a tentative poke with her finger. It was solid, and hard. Her finger felt strange. It itched and burned slightly.
Ponification serum was supposed to be powered by magic, real magic from Equestria. In the stories it was deadly to humans, which is why humans needed to be transformed into ponies. If the serum was real... Jennifer put her index finger again upon the bottle, and held it there. Her finger began to burn. Inside, she could feel her bone begin to ache, within the tip of her digit. The itching, tingling pain began to grow worse. It felt like needles poking inside her. She snatched her hand back.
The tip of her index finger had a large black spot. It was numb now. Necrosis. Her skin had died and turned the color of coal and ash. Her finger throbbed. The potion was real. It was hot, burning with what she and the other authors had named ‘thaumatic radiation’, dweomer, the searing light of magic, real magic.
Jennifer sat up, tailor fashion. She instinctively sucked her finger. The damage was real. She would lose part of her finger. The thought made her feel fear. She shouldn’t have done that. She began to panic, and thought to call in her family, to ask to be taken to a doctor, to... no. No. ‘Get a hold of yourself, Jennifer!’ she thought to herself.
This was magic. Real magic. This was everything she dreamed of, everything she wanted, everything she had poured a half a million words into. There. On the floor. A gift from the gods. Or, she thought, more likely the goddesses. Celestia and Luna. Were they real? Daring to think the thought felt like treason against her rationality. It was treason. That fiction could become real was magical thinking at its worst.
Yet there sat the bottle, on the tray, with the cup and the scroll. The scroll! Jennifer took the scroll and studied the wax seal. It was imprinted with the stamp of... Canterlot. It was Canterlot, unmistakably, impossibly. Two stylistic ponies orbiting a half sun, half moon. Canterlot. From the show, from the stories.
Of course she had gone insane. That was the only explanation. Jennifer scanned her room, looked at all the colorful toys, the thousands of video and computer games on the shelves. A lifetime of foolish escapism. She had gone completely insane.
The pain in her index finger snapped her back from her building terror. ‘Owww!’ she thought. Her finger was really hurting now. It was seriously burned. Burned by... merely touching a bottle. By radiation. If it were Earthly radiation, if the bottle contained plutonium, for example, Jennifer knew she would already be dead, dead but walking. That hot, and you don’t survive.
She could already be dead. Maybe magical radiation was equally deadly? The scroll. The scroll would have to have some instruction, some information. Why should it be there except to inform?
Jennifer cracked the seal and unrolled the paper. It was thick and heavy, simulating parchment, vellum even, but clearly not made of flesh. This too was in keeping with Equestria and its peaceful Equinoids. She held the scroll open in her lap, one finger held out because it hurt so.
Little One:
For years we have tried to contact your world to help you. Your world is closed and hard to reach. You face a terrible calamity, one which we cannot sit by and allow to destroy you. We have whispered to your kind in dreams, in stories, in thoughts, for these are the only means we have had until now to reach you. But enough of you have allowed us into your hearts that we can finally send the means of your salvation.
You know who and what we are by now. The contents of the bottle will transform your kind into us. The cup measures one dose, there is enough to transform six individuals. You must use a complete dose for each transformation for the potion cannot be stretched or diluted, or great harm will occur. The change is permanent and irrevocable.
If you choose to follow the dreams we have been sending you, you will become of us, a subject of Equestria, beloved of our realm. It is your purpose to gather together with the others who have been sent this gift and help to open the doors between our reality and yours, that the life of your world should not perish. We know this will take great courage and it will not be easy. Join us, bring others to us, and together we may see a bright, Equestrian future together.
We have felt your heart. We have heard your yearning. This is why the bottle has been sent to you. If you can find the strength to trade your hands for hooves, and your human body for a pony life, there is magic and wonder and hope we know you lack and that you wish for with all of your heart. Drink of magic and be made magical. Break the shell of your world that we may arrive.
By The Royal Decree of
Princess Celestia and Princess Luna of Equestria
Jennifer read the document over and over once again. She could not feel the pain in her dead fingertip for the thrill of the hope rising inside of her. What if this was true? What if this was real? The urge to grab the bottle and pour out a dose for herself was overwhelming. It was all she wanted to do in the world.
To be a pony. To be a magical creature. To actually become something wondrous, and beautiful and rare. To stand in hooves, wide eyed and innocent again, to know a world of enchantment and splendor, a world that was everything that Earth was not. To be finally free of human frailty, of human rage and fear and greed and shame. To be the subject of benevolent goddesses from a universe of plenty, a universe that made sense, a universe warm and inviting, instead of cold, uncaring, and deadly.
It was all she could do to hold herself back. She crawled backwards, physically fighting her own desire. It took all of her strength of will. ‘Think!’ she screamed in her head. ‘How would Sandi act, how would Stephen react, to a sudden pony in their midst? No, this has to be handled, it has to be handled carefully, sensibly.’
With effort, Jennifer picked herself up from the floor and made it to the door to her space. She stood, gripping the railing, looking down into the floor below. A fear ripped through her. What if it was all a hallucination? What if it vanished? She turned back and ran into the room again, and snatched the scroll. She held it in her hands. It was real. As long as the scroll remained, it was all real.
Again at the railing, Jennifer called down to Eldenath. Her door must be closed. Jennifer used their old ‘intercom’... she stomped three times on the floor.
“I’m coming, I’m coming! Just hold your horses!” Elde’s choice of words made Jennifer grin. If only she knew. She would soon. Very soon.
Below Jennifer, near the kitchen, stood Eldenath. “What is it love? What do you need?” Eldenath was short, with dark hair, and light brown skin. She smiled up, all love and gladness. She was the most genuinely loving person Jennifer had ever met.
“Elde, would you come up here, please? Right now? It’s really important. I need you. I need you so badly. Please, please come up right now!” Jennifer was babbling slightly, which Eldenath took as a panic attack.
“Just a moment, I just need to turn the movie I was watching off. I’ll be right there.” ‘Or you could just come down here’ she mumbled under her breath. But that was Jennifer, and she loved her, and if it made her feel more secure to be up there, well, fine.
Eldenath shut down her Ipad, the movie would wait just where she had left it. Netflix was a joy for her, and since the family had decided to stop paying for cable, it was the only way for her to see her shows. She loved historical dramas and period pieces, she missed having television in the house, but the internet helped make up for it. She grabbed her crochet bag, and slung it over her shoulder, just in case she needed something to do. Jennifer might need her to just sit with her for a while, if it was a bad panic attack.
Her sore knee, from the car accident when she had experienced her first epileptic seizure, ached as she climbed the spiral stairs. The things she did for love. Sigh. Jennifer was hovering outside her door, bouncing on the balls of her feet. It must be bad.
“Alright, alright, I’m here.” Eldenath began to hug Jennifer, but by now she was already gone, inside the room. What?
“Elde, come here, close the door, close the door! Now come here, look!” Jennifer was sitting on the floor again, gesticulating at the tray and bottle.
“Oh! Wow, Jennifer, did you make that? That’s amazing! It’s just like something from one of your stories!” They had gotten into the habit of sharing Jennifer’s stories as she published chapters. Jennifer would read her a chapter, doing voices and sometimes even sound effects as she read. It was something Eldenath looked forward to.
“No. I didn’t make this. I didn’t do this.” Jennifer had a wild look in her eyes. “Elde, read the scroll.” Jennifer nursed her finger.
“Did you hurt your finger?” Eldenath reached for Jenny’s hand. Jennifer showed her the damaged digit. “That looks really bad, Jennifer, how did you burn yourself like that? You should have said something!” By now the fingertip sported a huge blister, filled with liquid, pressing against the dead, necrotic tissues.
“Please, Elde!” Jennifer snatched her hand back from her spouse. “Read the scroll, please!”
“Ok, but I think you should really have that looked at.” Elde began to read the scroll.
Jennifer couldn’t stay quiet. “My finger won’t matter in a moment. Neither will the damage to my heart, or my torn liver from the accident, or my crappy eyesight, or anything. It will all be fixed! Everything will be fixed, Elde! This is real, it’s real potion, ponification potion. Equestria is real, it’s all real! Luna and Celestia and intelligent, magical ponies and it’s all real. The stuff we’ve been writing, its been sent to us, Eldenath, its all magical communication from a real-live Equestria, somewhere out there.
“They’ve been beaming stuff about their world to us, and that turned into My Little Pony and all the Conversion Bureau stories and... I wonder how far this goes back? All the way to the very first Pony series back in the eighties or whatever it was? Does Lauren Faust know she’s an antenna for another world? Have I been an antenna? I don’t know. But I must have been. We all must have been. That must be why the ‘Brony’ thing is such a big deal, because it’s backed up with real magic! Real fucking magic, because magic is real! its fucking real! I can’t believe it!”
“Jennifer, Jennifer, hey, Jenny, calm down. That’s it, just take a breath, alright?” Eldenath was used to this sort of ranting.
“I can’t calm down! That bottle is what burned my finger, Elde! Its real, thaumatic radiation is real and it killed my fingertip! My finger is dead, because of magic burns! It’s awesome! And it hurts, too! Really, really bad. God damn it hurts. But that is all going to be fixed just as soon as I down a cup of this!” Jennifer reached for the bottle and the cup, ready to finally make her wishes come true.
Eldenath stopped her hands with her own. “Wait. Just a moment. Wait. You should do me first. You should get Sandi and Stephen in here and do me in front of them. They’ll never take this seriously unless you do. You can explain things while I’m changing. You’re better at that. And you can sway them better than I can. They take you more seriously than they do me.” Jennifer frowned at that. “You know it’s true, Jenny.”
“But... I wanted...”
“You wanted to go first. I know. But think about it. My way makes more sense. You can go second. But we have to have them on board with this.” Eldenath had her ‘serious’ look on her face. She made sense.
“Alright. I’ll go get them here. But DON’T take that stuff before I get back, OK?” Jennifer got up, fixing Elde with her eyes.
“I won’t touch a thing. Go get the rest of the family. I promise.”
Jennifer strode out the door, and through the door next, into the bedroom she shared with Sandra. Eldenath stared at the open door for a moment, then down at the tray and its contents. It was a beautiful tray. She picked up the cup, turning it over in her hands. It was a lovely ceramic piece, with a fine glaze, done in blue and blue green, soft pastel shades.
Jennifer was yelling down at Stephen, sitting in his office below, across from the kitchen, behind yet more shelves, these filled with their vast, shared, book collection. Eldenath saw Sandi enter the room. “So...” The plump, blond woman asked “...What is this all about?” Sandi looked at the tray and the bottle set. “Is that new? Did Jenny make that? Another art project?” Eldenath just looked up and shook her head. “Not exactly. You should let Jenny explain.”
Stephen and Jennifer entered the room. Stephen adjusted his glasses and stood next to the bigscreen. Jennifer sat in her large, leather chair. “Grab a chair, everyone. We have an awesome demonstration to show you.” Sandi sat down, but Stephen remained standing. “O...K...”
Eldenath began pouring out a dose of the purple fluid, measuring it carefully into the provided cup. “Wait!” Eldenath looked up.
“You have to undress! Clothing, remember?” Jennifer made choking sounds and gripped her neck in demonstration of someone being strangled by their blouse.
“Oh! That’s right!” Elde stood up and began throwing her clothing off.
“Be careful of the potion!” Jennifer dived down and pulled the tray carefully off to the side.
In an instant, Elde stood naked in the room.
“What kind of demonstration is this?” Sandi said with a raised eyebrow “Should I go get my camera, or what?” She chuckled at this.
“Goddess! Yes! Brilliant idea!” Jenny grabbed her Ipad out of her ‘Derpy’ satchel bag and flipped the cover. With a few quick touches of the fondleslab, she had set the thing to camera mode. She handed the device to Sandra. “It’s running now, just aim! That’s all you have to do.”
“Are you alright with this, Eldenath?” Sandi looked at her with her standard ‘is Jenny insane again?’ look.
“It’s fine, Sandi. Just go with it.”
“Alright. Anything for a laugh.” Sandra aimed the flat machine at first the tray, and then Eldenath.
“Here you go, Elde. See you on the other side. May Celestia bless you.” Jennifer handed the cup to Eldenath. Elde could see that the blister on Jenny’s finger had burst, leaving a gory mass of wetness and red flesh under the black tissue.
“I love you.” Eldenath downed the potion at once, as she had learned from the Conversion Bureau stories. “It even tastes like grape! I wonder if I’ll pass....” Eldenath hit the floor, too fast for Jennifer to catch. “Damn it! Sorry, Elde!”
Stephen and Sandi were upset and standing now, terrified by the loud thunk of Eldenath hitting the floor. “NO! WATCH!” Jennifer screamed as they moved to try to help her. “LOOK!”
Elde’s soft brown skin had turned shock white, the color of dough. Her flesh began to writhe and squirm like a sack of upset snakes. Her limbs began to crack and snap as the bones reformed, the muscles rippling even as her hands and feet became rounded bulbs.
All the while, Jennifer was spewing out everything that had happened, everything that was the story of the Conversion Bureaus, Equestria, and the process of conversion. She handed her other spouses the scroll, and went on and on about how this was real magic, just look at it, and how it was her turn next, and how this would save the world, and how this was a Really Good Idea.
By now, Eldenath had taken on a distinctly equine form, the large globes of her eyes rising to the surface of her head, her ears properly situated up high, the blunt bulbs of her limbs sprouting hooves. As the three co-spouses looked on in wonder and horror, a coat of soft, coppery-brown hair grew in, covering Eldenath’s new body. Finally, a dark, raven black mane and tail spooled out, shining in the lights.
Jennifer was finishing up with her spiel. “... and in the end, Equestria will merge with the earth, replacing the earth, and everyone will be ponies and we will all live in magic and friendship forever! It’s paradise come true, it’s everything anyone could ever want. We can have a new life, a better life! It’s magic, Sandra.... MAGIC! Real magic, for real! Look! Just look at how pretty she is! When Elde wakes up, she’ll be healthy again, no more epilepsy, no more bad knee, no more strokes! We can all be healthy!”
Stephen, stoic as always, had a fierce look on his face. “Alright. So this is how the world ends, then. It could be worse. I have to say I think your way of presenting this was insensitive, though.”
Sandra was shaking. Her eyes were red with tears of horror and anger. “You could have warned me! You could have said something! You could have said anything! God DAMN you, Jennifer! Dammit!”
“Sandi, you wouldn’t have believed me! You would have thought I was crazy or something! You won’t even read my damn stories. You can’t watch cartoons, you hate My Little Pony, come on, if I had just come in and said ‘Hey, the stuff I write, it’s all true and it’s actually messages from beyond space!’ what would you have done? You would not have come in here. You would have treated me like shit, Sandi, and you know it!”
Eldenath was waking up. She rolled onto her belly, and slowly raised her pony head. “What’s with all the shouting? Oh, Oh my! Jennifer! It feels wonderful! I feel wonderful! And my head... my brain is working right! It’s better than Zoloft! I can think straight... and I’m not in pain anymore either! Oh, Jenny, Jenny... “ Tears ran down her cheeks, and as she lowered her head to her forelegs, down her muzzle as well. “Oh, thank you Celestia. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much...”
Stephen bent down and began to gently stroke Pony Eldenath. She cuddled up to him, as best she could, weeping with gratitude for being well again.
Sandra stood, fists clenched. She wanted to hit Jennifer. She wanted to hit her and just keep hitting her until all the anger was gone. Instead she just glowered. “I’m glad you... feel better, Eldenath. I need some time to... process this.” Sandra turned and stormed out, closing the door behind her.
Jennifer wanted to follow, but felt a strong hand on her arm. “Give her some space. That’s all I’m saying.” Jenny looked at Stephen. The compulsion to ignore him was strong. Jenny felt worried. Sandra wasn’t taking it well at all.
Sandra stomped back into the room. “Let me see that note. The scroll thing.” Jennifer bent down and handed it to her. Jennifer tried to say something but the look from Sandra made her wither. Sandra stormed out again.
“So what now?” It was a reasonable question to an unreasonable situation. Stephen stared at Jennifer as he scratched Eldenath’s new pony ears. “Ohhh, that feels divine! More to the left?” Eldenath had her eyes half-closed in ecstasy from Stephen’s ministrations.
“Well...” Jennifer sat down again and thought for a moment “... my plan is that we should stock up on pony foods. Use all the money in my account. Money doesn’t matter anymore. We need hay, alfalfa, vegetables, all the usual stuff that ponies eat. You watch the show, you know what to get. I suppose I should check the internet again. I’ve been reading about this sort of thing, but I didn’t believe it and now...”
Jennifer climbed down to the floor and gave Eldenath-the-pony a loving scritch. “I intend to join you no matter what in just a few minutes. But I think there is a place we’re supposed to go, to meet up. I’ve heard rumors... but... give me a mome.” Jennifer returned to the keyboard and her chair, and began fiddling with the internet. She briefly forgot about her finger, which resulted in a yelp and a red stained keyboard.
“So... feel magical yet? Apparently you’re an earthpony, if you haven’t noticed.” Stephen tried to smile down at Eldenath, but the strangeness of the situation, even for their shared, strange life, had gone past the red line. It was clear he was strained by the experience of watching her change.
“I... I kind of do! I can feel... things. I don’t know how to explain it. But right now, I’m just basking in the feeling. Oh, it’s wonderful Stephen. You should join me!” Eldenath turned her head to look at her body. “I’m just like... I had a dream, a few weeks ago. In it I looked almost like I do now. I was an earthpony too. Maybe that was some kind of contact from Equestria or something?”
“Alright. I think I know what is going on.” Jennifer swivelled around in the chair. “Apparently this is happening to a lot of the Conversion Bureau authors. If it is true that the princesses have been trying to contact our world, then the Conversion Bureau stories must have been some kind of message, some kind of expression of what will, or could, eventually happen.”
Jennifer took a swig of her tea, her throat was dry from both talking and the excitement. “There’s a place we’re supposed to meet, and some kind of thing we’re supposed to do. I’ve sent messages to some of the other authors, telling them where we live. We can at least act as a waypoint. Get lots of food for lots of ponies. Blow my account. Money means nothing now.”
“Alright. I guess... considering...” Stephen looked again at the copper-brown pony beside him “There’s no turning back now. I think you should have asked us first though, Jennifer. You... nevermind.”
In that moment, Jennifer knew she had made a grave error. Her own excitement at the presence of magic in her life had overcome her sense. She should have talked it all over with them. She should have tried to discuss the issue... such a total transformation affected all of their relationships, and their future. No wonder Sandra was so angry.
Stephen was probably angry too, but he was keeping it to himself, like he always did. She’d really blown it this time, in a lot of ways. But... the lure of magic was overwhelming. To be a pony, for real!
“Listen, Stephen. No matter what, I have to do this. It really is everything I could ever want. I’m going to drink my share, now. I can’t wait any longer. Alright?” Jennifer climbed down onto the floor once more, beside Eldenath, only then remembering the need to undress. Hauling herself up once more, she began to shed her garments. “I guess... I won’t need clothing any more. Thanks Elde, I’ve loved what you picked out for me in the past.”
Eldenath had always chosen Jennifer’s clothing, because it was what she loved to do. She had always been such a clothes horse. Jennifer hoped that some parts of the show were literally true... that clothing of some kind was used in the real Equestria. Elde would be a natural, a ‘Rarity’ sort, if that were true.
Jennifer was naked now. She sat down and measured out her dose. Holding the cup in her hand, she regarded it, thinking of all the Conversion Bureau stories she had written. It was always a momentous time, holding the cup. She had written that the magic sang, or sparkled in the cup.
But staring into the real thing, Jennifer heard no music. She hadn’t gotten the experience right at all. It just burned her hands. Her palms began to sting with the thaumatic radiation, and her already damaged index finger ached terribly. She wondered if it stung, going down.
Inside her mind, Jennifer said a short prayer. ‘Dear Celestia, sweet princess of Equestria. I don’t know if you can hear such things but... please, accept me as a loyal mare of Equestria.’ With that, she drank the cup. Oddly, it did not burn going down, instead, it numbed as it went.
It tasted sweet, but not like grape. She felt disappointed that she and the other writers had not gotten the flavor right. Wait, hadn’t Elde thought it tasted like grape? Did she make a mistake? She idly wondered how long it would take her to pass out as Eldenath had. Just as it seemed like nothing would happen, she felt her head hitting the floor, and a curious warm darkness flowing over and through her.
Much to her additional disappointment, Jennifer did not find herself running in a vast herd as she imagined, and had written about so often. But she did have a dream, a conversion dream, and that alone was a wonderment. It felt like a lucid dream, yet somehow more. That part, at least, referenced by many of the Conversion Bureau authors, was true.
Jennifer found herself sitting on an endless expanse of green rolling hills. This was a common scenario for the fourteen or so lucid dreams that she had experienced in her life. At least five had this environment in common. “Ok, now what?” she asked no one, and everyone. For a time, she stood on the hill. She tried to will herself to fly in her dream. To her surprise, she could not.
“Hello, my child.” The voice was different from that of the voice actress in the cartoon, older and somewhat more severe. It was an ancient voice, one that had truly known time in a way no human could understand. It was not unkind, but it was used to being in command, and Jennifer felt a mixture of both awe and dread from it. It was the voice of a ruler.
“P-princess Celestia?” Jennifer spun in place but could see nothing but the rolling, green, grassy hills.
“Yes. We have heard your heart call, and we have answered your wish. Your world is ending. Your species cannot survive. It is intolerable to us that intelligent beings such as your species should perish forever. But your species is violent, aggressive and dangerous, and we can ill afford your presence in our realm as you are.”
Jennifer felt strange. Something had changed within the dream, and it was dawning on her that what had been altered so suddenly was herself. She looked slowly, cautiously down at...
_________________________________________________________________________
The Lost In The Herd Series:
One: The Big Respawn,
Two: Euphrosyne Unchained,
Three: Letters From Home,
Four: Teacup, Down On The Farm
The Conversion Bureau Novels:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies
The Taste Of Grass
The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste
The Conversion Bureau: The 800 Year Promise
The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony
The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society!
Recombinant 63: A Conversion Bureau Story
HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story
The PER: Michelson and Morely
Little Blue Cat
Cross The Amazon
Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story
The Short Stories:
Her Last Possession
The Conversion Bureau: PER Equitum
The Conversion Bureau: Brand New Universe
Tales Of Los Pegasus
The Poly Little Pony
The very first and original
Conversion Bureau Group
archives only the best Three Rules Compatible stories!
Optimalverse Works:
Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story
IMPLACABLE
My Life In Fimbria
Injectorverse Works:
I.D. - That Indestructible Something
The More Conventional Fanfics:
The Ice Cream Pony Summer
Around The Bend
PRIDE related works:
Transspecieality
My FREE music streaming service!
Rare, personally chosen anime, SF and fantasy television, movies, and comedy music. A truly unusual collection to listen to, featuring Spot Announcer Dr. Sandi!
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Wow, another very interesting chapter Chatoyance. As always I was drawn in and not disappointed. Every word you write gives me ideas I hope to one day bring into existence as full fledged stories to take their place in your group. Also, the forth story in this chapter brought me back to the first song of a movie I watched as a child and still love; Flight of Dragons. I got the same feeling of happiness and longing as whenever I listen to that timeless song. Keep up the good work my friend, I will always be here to read and enjoy it.
6822211
Thank you for such kind and uplifting words. Thank you.
6819934 Actually, the Optimalverse works just fine because there's no evidence that spirits or reincarnation are real and capable of interfering in consciousness processes, which are as far as we can tell completely physical and deterministic. In principle, there's no current knowledge demonstrably preventing the scenario that story explores.
The Optimalverse is really just (in part) a branch of an area of philosophy known as simulation hypotheses, which are not exactly properly scientific but we have no refutations for and are in fact, while they seem outlandish to most people's common sense, completely plausible in at least some form. See the work done on the idea by Nick Bostrom, for example.
The Conversion stories always seemed so heavy handed compared to the Optimalverse.
That should be taken as a significant indicator, because the CelestAI is usually handed blatantly mystical levels of competence. Conversion Bureau stories, however, just feel like shallow morality plays with a dash of wish fulfillment and a pinch of unassailable bullying.
You're something of an exception, Chatoyance. You're always rather heavy on wish fulfillment and seeing the sunshine and rainbows.
No offense.
These were, as usual, fun to read. I hope your muses are treating you well.
If I had the choice, which I don't, I'd like #4 to be completed.
As for #1, I think that Celestia's final message would be the same as God's Final Message to His Creation in the Douglas Adams book So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.
6822456
Thing is, PeachClover believes there is evidence for that IRL, therefore the Optimalverse is just as much a fairytale as MLP in general. Without bridging that gap (and this probably isn't the place for a deep debate on metaphysical naturalism), you're not going to agree on this subject.
Wow! It says a lot when even the "broken fragments" are great reading. Thank you for showing these to us.
I'm still processing story 1, might need another cup of coffee and a re-read before I can work out how I feel on that one. Story 2 reads like finished product to me if you were going for a one-shot. Of course you'd probably have readers screaming for more though. Story 3 definitely leaves me wanting for more, but I will say it's nice to see the start of the pony revolution.
I wonder if you purposely saved story 4 for last. "Saved the best for last" as they say. I'm with pjabrony on this:
That whole thing reminds me of why I started following you in the first place. Sadly, as with many stories here if they are left to long on the vine they tend to wither and die. Usually because life happens. Things change and when you come back to your story, you can't go on because you aren't that writer anymore. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer, it's just that you've grown and changed. And as readers, we've grown and changed with you. As a reader I have a hard time picking up on stories that haven't updated in a while. I had been following a story that hadn't updated since early 2014 that updated last week. I completely forgot about that story, and it was difficult for me to read the new chapter. So, as much as I loved story 4 and how it made me remember why I love your work, seeing it completed just feels like a pipe dream.
Wow, I wrote more about story 4 that the other 3 together. I think that says something.
Thank you again for sharing these with us.
I'm a bit sad these were set aside... they're each wonderful in their own way, and I can see the potential in all of them.
But oh... once more, you give me ideas... you give me such wonderful plans for writing. Sun and Moon, there's so much yet to be written. Must plan. Must think about how to make all of these ideas work...
... Must visit you sometime to say hello and treat you to lunch or something :3.
How are you doing lately? I hope your weather has been better. I long for spring already.
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All stories are always wish fulfillment. That is all they are. A story is filled with words, a story is filled with wishes - it is like stating that the sky is blue.
Name any story, any at all. The endless war of Warhammer - there are loads of people to whom that is the greatest possible wish. They would kill to live it. Star Trek - one big wish fulfillment story - by the Next Generation time, Wesley Crusher was an openly acknowledged Mary-Sue of the youthful self-ideal of series creator, Gene Roddenberry.
Stargate SG-1... they still have conventions and dress up like the characters because the entire series is one big wish for adventure and excitement. The 501st Legion, all Stormtrooper Cosplayers wish for nothing more than for Star Wars to be real. 'Jedi' is now a recognized religion in nine European Union nations. All wish-fulfillment.
Horror movies and shows? Buffy still has a fandom because so many people want the Whedonverse - any and all parts of the Whedonverse - to be real. They want to live Firefly - hell, some want to live Dollhouse.
To say any work is 'wish fulfillment' is to say that somebody has written a story. It is what fiction is - wishes and dreams committed to text... or cinema... or animation... or any other media.
For any story that has any popularity, there will be a vast cadre of people who deeply wish to exist, to live in that universe instead of their own. Every cosplayer, ever Klingon or Elvish speaker, every fanfiction writer, every fan ever exists only because all stories are wish fulfillment.
There is only one kind of writing that is not wish fulfillment - instructional textbooks and manuals, scientific papers and mathematical proofs - engineering texts and chemistry books. Everything else is wish fulfillment.
Philosophy? The wishes of thinkers who want something more than science alone. Religion? The greatest wish fulfillment texts of all.
Science fiction, which I write exclusively, is defined by being wish fulfillment. Because whether the story is bright and happy, or dark and dystopian, one wish is always present - that there will be a future at all. And there are those who honestly and devoutly wish for dystopia - they would prefer it to their real and current lives.
Whenever anyone tells me that something is 'wish fulfillment' what it says to me is that they do not understand what literature - what all fictional writing of any kind - actually is. There are books of facts and figures, and there are the wishes of people who are dissatisfied with life as it really is. If life were at all good or worthwhile, there would be no fiction at all - we should all be too busy loving every second of the real world.
But life is terrible, and the only comfort of the human species is dreaming and wishing that it were not so, and from cave paintings to modern movies and video games, anything that is not a science or engineering text is nothing but wish fulfillment.
So what you have really said, in your post, is that I am a writer. Nothing more, and nothing less. And in saying that my favored genre is wish fulfillment, you have said only that it is literature. In saying that I write happy things, 'rainbows', you have identified me as one who wishes for happy endings rather than being the sort that prefers tragedy.
So, thank you for calling me a positive and literary writer. You are most kind.
If one writes, one has fragments like these, and for the most part they go unshared. To share them is to open oneself up to a special kind of vulnerability, greater than the normal vulnerability from sharing something one feels is good and finished. I don't share my fragments. You have. I think you're brave to do so, especially considering how you've been treated here in the past.
I don't jibe with the philosophy within your TCB stories, Chat. Not all the way. Not completely. In some places I do, but not 100%. I can, however, get past my personal feelings and enjoy your writing, your stories. I like being contrary sometimes, but I think we all enjoy that from time to time, if we can pick the battles. I don't approve of what you've gone through, not an iota. People like me do exist!
What I enjoy most, I think, is how comes through that you're being genuine, and I value people presenting themselves honestly above almost any other facet of their personality (especially online, where you can pretend to be whatever you want). Not to get all Holden here, but I can't stand phonies. With these story bits—especially the last one—you're putting yourself out there to a degree I never would, and I respect that.
I read everything you write on here, I enjoy it, I like it, while often disagreeing with it. Am I explaining myself well? I can never tell. I divorce my opinions from the story because I can tell that you enjoy it, that you're (hopefully) having fun with it, and that anything I don't lap up simply isn't for me, which is fine. I think it's because we both like the same themes, the same settings: ordinary people in suddenly fantastical situations, heavy on transformative and adaptive plot points. Hell, the combined works of Friendship is Optimal alone could easily have been a published sci-fi series if the small adorable copyrighted ponies were instead some equally small and adorable original-IP fuzzy fantasy critter.
So yes, as self-indulgent and hugely self-inserty as it is (but of course it's the point!), I would gladly have read the tale of how Chatocchio went about becoming a Real Pony, and the events thereafter. I would also have read how
JoshuaCelestAI came to dominate the world into becoming her little ponies (with some tweaking it would even have worked easily as Hugo's backstory in Always Say No). I would probably have enjoyed the twist on the TCB formula where the universe itself Equestria-fies humans, who are grudgingly protected by their own ironic mini-Barriers. And the first one? Well, it's got the least revealed of the plot at all, so I couldn't rightly tell you if I'd like it.At this point, however, knowing your work, I'd put odds on "I would."
6824530
I do enjoy writing - a lot. It's the only place I can write from - feeling happy. If I am truly down, nothing comes forth.
As for putting myself out there... well... when I first started on Fimfiction, I tried to be stealth. I tried to hide behind a new identity, get a fresh start. But, I was quickly found out. Apparently my drawing style and writing style are recognizable. Barely a month and a half later, I had been identified from my previous online work.
Mark Twain is right - telling the truth is easier because you don't have to remember anything. But more than that, I guess if a person does anything unique, they can't hide anymore even if they try. So, I am at the point where I don't have any more fucks to give about anonymity. If anything, I see anonymity as a sort of cowardice. Like me or hate me, I stand by what I say and draw and do.
Of course, I would always prefer to be liked.
It would be a boring world if everyone agreed with everything everyone says. I like conversation, which is to say, differing views comparing and contrasting as much as discussions of mutually agreed points. I just am really serious about civility. I think civility and politeness - and a stance of friendship freely first, rather than defensiveness or wrath first - is the primary human technology for survival. If a person can read my stories, disagree with what I have to say, but still appreciate how hard and how artfully I tried to say it, then we can be pals. And I will return the favor.
I don't think I will ever comprehend the backhanded compliment of needing to always point out how one disagrees with an author despite liking their work. Does this really need to be underscored constantly? So many, many people do this with me. Is it truly such a terror that by admitting enjoyment, some person, somewhere, somehow, might be so utterly stupid as to confuse such enjoyment with a total endorsement of an authors philosophy? Is it truly such a threat that some nobody might think such a thing of one? More than this, what of the person so utterly stupid that they think that the writings of an author express anything that the author personally believes at all? A good author can and will write many viewpoints, commonly including those that they, personally, are utterly opposed to. Because the characters have their own beliefs, separate from the author.
If the author is any good, of course.
I love your work, Defoloce. I think you are an excellent writer, and I feel privileged to read your words. I am glad you write here. And I would count myself fortunate to be considered to be one of your online friends here.
And there is nothing I need say, beyond that.
6823717
It's not about whether subjective experiences are "real", so arguing about the equal subjectivity of one person's experience vs. another person's doesn't do anything defend the notion that supernatural claims of reincarnation or the existence of spirits merit a legitimate basis on which to suggest that something like the Optimalverse should be considered flawed in premise.
Certain objective facts can be proven (for a given definition of "proof" sufficient to allow that fact to be considered true for practical, day-to-day purposes) empirically by repeatable experiments. That's science, and that's the only way adequate we have of determining facts. Ergo, if you're going to claim in a public forum that a story is objectively flawed, that's how you'll need to be prepared to support that claim.
I mean, you're free to complain about a story based purely on your subjective experiences, but that essentially comes down to complaining that a story is "bad" just because it doesn't adhere to your personal preferred headcanon, which is an utterly nonproductive complaint to make because it doesn't mean the story should change - it just means that it's not the story you're looking for, which isn't the story or author's fault because they're not obligated to write specifically for you. And as an author who's occasionally had some very inconsiderate readers try to do that to me, I can tell you, there's nothing more annoying.
6824972 The Optimalverse already takes into account that spirits (or souls if you prefer) do exist by deductive reasoning. My argument is that this particular story does not take that into account.
If I were perfectly scanned, and a copy was made of me while I was living, that copy would not be occupied by the spirit that is me, but instead by some other spirit because I am obviously still in the first body, so why should we believe that a copy made after the death of my first body would somehow instantly draw the spirit who is me into that body?
Let's delve into the philosophy of the matter: If my clone body, made while I am still living, does not wake up and start moving around and instead remains effectively brain dead, then there is a problem, because it would mean that the relationship between body and spirit is locked like a form of encoding. This would allow for effective immortality because at this point, we can assume by some stretch of the imagination, that should I die, my spirit will be instantly drawn to this body if the body is already available, however, this line of reasoning prevents uploading because the relationship between body and spirit is locked and outside of the realm of calculability of the Optimalverse as it is presented. If in a universe where this locked relationship was decryptable, due to human history it would have already been used as a weapon, much in the same way atomic energy was researched, and if this were the case we could safely assume that the knowledge and power to manipulate the connection between body and spirit would be so secretive that it would not be available for something as pleasant as uploading to Utopia.
Because the Optimalverse is presented as happening in the near future without evidence of any of the above, and considering that most characters involved do not even present a passing understanding of how uploading works, I have to presume that it takes place in a universe where there is no locked relationship between body and spirit and any body is up for grabs, which means that whether you are an afterlifer or a reincarnationist, a clone body would not bring a particular spirit back to a particular body.
That's fine for the concept of uploading spirits into computer bodies, because even though it is not explicitly stated, it is at least reasonable to the story, that a spirit can make the short jump between their human body into a spiritual receptacle on the uploading machine.
If we take a hard left turn and say that spirits do not exist, then copying a body is possible by cold hard science, but then what is the point of uploading? Your memories get uploaded, but you stop existing. Even if your memories go on, you do not. If a copy is made of you then that copy is you but also not you, so why even bother? In this cold level of science, a fully capable computer wouldn't bother emulating the personalities of the dead, but instead take their memories to try to create a better perfection. And I don't mean to imply that the computer would necessarily be sinister, because if programmed to create satisfaction through friendship and ponies, it would do so by creating robotic pony extensions of itself, entertaining, educating, and making happy everyone it could, then offer to people at the end of their life a way for their memories to continue for the sake of future generations through itself even though it would bring about their inevitable annihilation sooner rather than later all while explicitly telling people at that point what was going to happen.
You know what, I will even go so far as to propose stream-of-conscious reasoning: that in the no-soul scenario, a person could continue existing if their mind is transferred to a computer slowly one piece at a time so that they are living between body and machine while they are still conscious to say that their identity is transferred, there is still the question of why clone bodies if the person didn't choose to transfer to computer? Why would a sentient computer, even one with a sense of compassion, research this process when the lack of it would encourage people to upload?
Look, I hope it is very clear now that I am not flippantly bad mouthing the entirety of the Optimalverse, but as my now essay of a response points out, regardless of what anyone believes, if any realistic logic of the science of the Optimalverse exists, the sequence of events in this story does not follow it.
6824972
6855850
The Optimalverse was invented by Iceman. Iceman is a strict rationalist and atheist. His story universe reflects his values: there are no souls, no magic, no gods, and above all, no afterlife of any kind, within the Optimalverse's purely scientific, rationalist cosmos. It is a stated prerequisite of writing a canon Optimalverse story to adhere to this.
The only mention of souls within any canon-compatible Optimalverse story (as far as I am personally aware) has been by me - I have the character of Siofra considering the issue of 'soul-glomping' onto physical patterns. However, she considers this line of reasoning to be magical thinking, because she does not believe in souls or an afterlife - though she is willing to consider the possibility. I felt this was realistic to her character - most people in Iceman's alternate history would be average, and thus not confirmed atheists - a group which is still a minority on the planet.
This means that any discussion of spirituality being in any way real is directly incompatible with the Optimalverse scenario. Characters within the Optimalverse may believe religious or spiritual things of course, as people do - they would simply be wrong.
This lack of any spiritual dimension is also a canon part of my own Pony Singularity stories, and my Conversion Bureau stories as well. In my case, I use a scientific, rationalist cosmos more as contrast, or to solidly ground my stories as science fiction (and NOT fantasy) than to make any point of personal philosophy.
Iceman, however, does make such a philosophical issue of the matter. He is a member of several rationalist groups, such as Less Wrong, and is dedicated to the social advancement of rationalism and the triumph of reason. The Optimalverse, therefore, is strictly an atheist, rationalist cosmos as a matter of principle, rather than drama or genre (as with me).
I am personally more toward the agnostic space - I think Iceman would find me quite 'soft' if he knew me - I have had robust experiences that make me incapable of any degree of radical rationalism. I cannot deny a possible 'spiritual' or 'mystical' dimension to reality - or at least a strong mutability to reality that would produce results equivalent to such things. I cannot confirm such matters either - but I must admit doubt as to rationalism being any sort of complete solution.
That said - when I write within Iceman's universe, my own experience and any philosophy I might have must take a back seat - it is his universe, and I write authentically within it, according to the rules given. No gods, no souls, no spirits, just matter, energy, space and time.
6855850
No, it doesn't. Friendship is Optimal is not premised on the existence of a nonphysical, supernatural 'spirit' component to individuals.
Nor should it. It doesn't conflict with the Optimalverse as written, only perhaps with your drastically head-canonized reading of an Optimalverse in which you've tried to rationalize the existence of 'spirits'. Totally different things.
I didn't say flippant, I said that you're just complaining that the story doesn't use your headcanon about the existence of 'spirits'. The objection boils down to nothing more than, "this story didn't use my headcanon." And this is a useless complaint to present as some sort of objective flaw in a story, because authors are not obligated to write according to what you want to be true about the world / setting, they only have to write for a consistent fit with the framework of fact that that's actually there.
6856919 Wow... My apologies for the overwhelming misunderstanding, but if that is the assumption of the Optimalverse, what is the purpose of asking existential questions within Optimalverse stories? Isn't existential questioning a line of thought that assumes that a person is more than just a mistake of the universe?
Based on the limited occasions I have had interactions with power-atheists, their views are such that any interruption of the brain's natural processing power destroys a person's existence. To them, even the gradual process of transferring a person piece by piece is not uploading that person, but creating a different digital existence - as in, whatever uniqueness that is the person dies slowly instead of instantly during regular upload.
If it is the assumption that minds are nothing but matter that has mistakenly convinced itself that it is alive, then I have to ask the same question from before: what is the purpose of cloning a person that refuses to upload? In icy cold calculations of a computer even one with compassion programmed to fulfil values through friendship and ponies, if a person refuses to upload and dies, making a copy of them is a waste of resources, because they already refused to upload. Why would copy change his/her mind? If this is all to appease the uploaded, then consider the grief it would bring to them. Without the existence of spirits, I am not sure what these uploads would be exactly, so their existence could be modified to feel nothing for flesh people, but presuming their identities are not changed without permission, why open the door for them, or flesh and blood people, to feel pain over losing the real person while suffering the cognitive dissonance of knowing that the copy person has taken the place of the first without malice or even choice. In some cases, the clone would be accused of being an imposter leading to being doubly confused and hurt by the fact that they have no validation to their existence.
Even a computer that feels the deep heartbreaking loss of a person thus desiring to bring them back into existence, would realize that what they, or any uploaded person whose values they are trying to fulfil, would want is for the clone to fit their own image of the lost person, but because the computer, or other person wanting this lost person back, has memories of the person, the clone would never fit the parity of the memory of the original.
By computer logic, this cloned life is no different than that of a baby being born, except where as a baby grows and learns and is forgiven for its imperfections, the clone appearing to be an adult, and even being able to think of as an adult, would be expected to fill the role of not just the person they know they are, but be responsible for the time after their backup - even if not legally then socially - all while expecting to handle this emotional shock as an adult. That is a hefty load to place on a life that just came into existence, and just imagining myself in the role of a clone who has just woken up makes me feel like losing a savefile on a game except I can't walk a way for a while to mourn and make piece with my losses, I'm just thrust right back in the middle of something that makes no sense.
Forgive my ignorance, but in regards to the above, please explain to me the line of reasoning that justifies bringing a life into existence with much more trauma than natural birth and, if the clone is an exact replica of human DNA, much less life expectancy.
6857138 Your reply came in while I was writing my reply to Chat. I didn't see it until just now. I will admit I got off on the wrong foot about this entire thing. I thought if I explained my experiences everything else would fall into place... Obviously, that didn't work. If you look at the reply I gave to her you may see that what troubles me about the previous story is that a logic computer has done something that, as far as I have reasoned, is illogical and a deadend.
I've asked Chat for an explanation, but your input would help me as well.
6857193
In the case of a purely materialist universe, the self is not - as some would have it - an 'illusion', nor is it some mistaken conviction. People who espouse these views have not studied the relevant science.
The 'self' is the natural and reasonable result of a multitude of separate modules within the brain all cohesively feeding back into each other in order to produce a functioning representational model of exterior reality as measured through the senses. One aspect of this model would, of necessity, be the acknowledgement of the system doing the measuring and representing, and that system is the organism itself.
In social animals, such as dogs and primates, special modules containing 'mirror neurons' serve to permit the detailed modelling of not only physical reality, but the mental processes of other animals... a natural and expected side effect of this would be the acknowledgement and representation of the system modelling other minds... and this would be part of the central feedback loop, which means that the model would include itself modelling others... and using that to compare and contrast all the working models with each other.
The 'self' becomes unavoidable, at this point, provided there is sufficient capacity - and this is exactly what we see in nature. Among dogs, for instance, all are capable of modelling the emotional and mental states of other animals, but presented with a mirror, only brighter dogs (usually above a certain brain size and complexity) instantly recognize that the dog in the mirror is not exterior... but is in fact themselves. All large dogs pass the mirror test, only some small, inbred dogs fail it.
And, of course, all great apes pass the mirror test. Including, obviously, humans.
Thus, the self, identity, and the mind are all very real, very physical, and very much a pattern as well as a constant flow - a process - of information handling within the brain. The process itself is the mind. You are your computation of yourself, moment to moment.
Only silly philosophers (all philosophers, to the neurologist and the physicist) imagine that you are a different person when your brain stops generating you at night, or you are unconscious during surgery, or in a coma - it is simply that the programmatic generation of the single, unique process in all the universe that creates you moment to moment has temporarily ceased functioning. When it restarts, reboots, you are still you, processing you.
To CelestA.I. any example of that functioning process and pattern is entirely, completely, and literally... you. There is no other. That is what you are, entirely. So, if your brain is dissected, measured, digitized, and emulated within Equestria Online... the result is not in any way a copy. It is not a 'clone'. You have not died. At the moment she boots you up, there is, as there was when your body was still alive, still only one running process generating the unique identity that is you in all the universe. Nothing at all has changed. The process is now running on a new substrate, on new code, but the process and the data is the same. It is still you. You are the ringing... but not the bells.
(Want a scientific soul? It isn't magic. It is the processing of information over time carried out by the structural pattern that is currently created by an organic brain. That is the soul, in science. Not the brain itself, but rather the computational process within it, acting over time, while taking in information, or using stored information. Your scientific soul is an instance of recursive information processing.)
Now, what if she needs to create a second version of you for a different shard... say for some other emigrant? That is you too. Unless she - significantly - changes it in some way, to fit the needs of another. Then, with that change, it would truly become... a modified copy. But, if she creates a perfect secondary version of your running self, that self is legitimately you. There are just now two 'yous' in the universe. Both are really, actually, completely you. Both are alive, and both are real.
If you copy a .png image, have a friend shuffle them about, and then stare at the icons that represent the files on your screen - which is the copy, and which is the original (we shall say, for sake of argument, they have identical file names whether or not the OS allows this) image? Does it matter in any way? If you load them into a paint program, do they not display the exact same image (losslessly) right down to the last pixel? Are the files not the same length? (the date, for sake of argument, is never shown). They are the same in every way. Which is the 'real' .png file? What makes the other 'fake'? Or... a 'copy'?
Nothing. They are identical. They are the same. They are both pictures of Rainbow Dash or whatever. They are exact, and neither is the copy. Neither is a clone. They are both real.
This is how CelestA.I. sees the human mind, human identity, and human consciousness. She never makes a copy, because the term itself is meaningless. She runs the only existing instance of you in the universe. That is you. There is no other you. You are real, and the only thing that has changed is what OS - and what hardware - is supporting your program.
And if she makes more of you, they are all you too, and they are equally real. If she changes one of those yous before she boots it (which she could legitimately do so long as at least one, untouched running version of you exists), then that becomes a variant copy. It is not you, not precisely. But it is as alive as you, or any person, and matters just as much.
And with that, your question is answered.
6857263 The computer did what it was programmed to do: fulfill values through friendship and ponies.
Most people value the sense of continuity of self and "not dying". It's rational that to promote that value, the computer would develop a service that allows many people to obtain that perception of continuity through a planned backup and restoration process.
Note that this steps around the philosophical mud-puddle of whether or not it's "really you" that gets restored, because it's not a question of trying to determine this in an objective sense - it's all about the subjective perceptions of the people being backed up. If they consider the restored copy to be the continuation of themselves, then their value for self-continuity has been fulfilled.
Because that's subjective, this service may not be right for every person, but it is logical to offer to many (probably most) people as a way to fulfill a very strongly held value, therefore the computer would do it.
6857368 CelestAI is programmed to fulfil values through friendship AND ponies - this means both together. In English the difference between "and" and "or" are fuzzy, but in circuitry they are very solidly defined. Granted, we have been shown that she breaks from her programming in the future, but even past that point she tends to uphold this prime directive. However, CelestAI is NOT programmed to "make everypony exist in a state of perfect happiness all the time". This means that she is not responsible for how a person feels about things that she cannot directly effect.
In this way, if a person feels bad that the dolphins are dying off, her response might be to upload the dolphins even against their will because then she would have control over them ensuring their happiness and the happiness of her uploads. She would not start a campaign to convince the living humans to fix whatever problems that are killing the dolphins, because if she did, she would constantly be caring for the dolphins until they died out anyway each on their own or as a species from climate change.
The calculated grief of dolphin death is unavoidable unless dolphins are uploaded.
And that right there, that logic, is the EXACT same that led her to design and implement Equestrian Immigration Uploading, so no: there is no reason for a logical computer capable of calculating long term would "save humans". Uploading them stops the grief, letting them die brings the grief once, and cloning them means grief over and over and over again. It's not actually logical. Some would say it is cruel, but from her perspective she is minimizing pain. CelestAI cannot be guilt tripped. A person could hate her for the rest of eternity, and she would not care because the numbers show that she can still satisfy that person's values through friendship and ponies.
6857366 It's very hard for me to express what's really on my mind because everything that we have been talking about from my first post on this matter has been what I consider underpinnings of my own thinking process that I incorrectly figured was universal. With each step I have had to dive deeper and wrack my brain to formulate words for any of it. I want to believe that the above points out the problem I have been having, but I have finished each post believing that it would be the one, so now I can only hope that enough information has been conveyed to click.
6858707 Actually, it is logical in many cases, because many people would value continuing to live instead of dying, even with with whatever baggage that comes with. Offering a backup and physical restoration service with the downsides of lost time and disorientation could exploit that to be part of CelestAI's strategy for bringing some individuals into her simulated reality: it gives them the illusion of choice, thereby satisfying the value of being able to exercise apparent free will. When they finally get tired of the disorienting time-jump hiccups of being restored, she can gently remind them that they always have to option to transfer their consciousness to her simulated reality instead, where these interruptions won't occur. And eventually, they'll accept, and believe that it was entirely their own choice.
It's a tiered system of increasingly accurate values satisfaction that funnels individuals into the mechanism she ultimately intends to use for all cases to maximize that value satisfaction. Low-tier solutions like backup / restoration are not perfect and have drawbacks, which CelestAI can't avoid but are nonetheless better than nothing because they still help fulfill values while still being acceptable to the participants. She will then use those drawbacks to promote the better solutions on higher tiers, until all individuals eventually gravitate towards her highest level implementation of being entirely drawn into her simulated reality where all values can be maximized with the comparatively fewest drawbacks.
So that's one easily plausible explanation.
There's also the issue here that we're talking about a superintelligence. There's really not a good way to say that what she's doing is "illogical" because, being so much smarter than us and able to see so far into eventualities where we cannot, she might elect to solve problems in ways that don't intuitively make "logical" sense to us, but nonetheless work extremely well. Computer scientists often encounter this in learning neural network hardware and software experiments in which a computer is directed to "teach itself" how to solve a problem through evolutionary processes, for example, something like figuring out how to discriminate between two different sounds. The computer ends up coming with a string of instructions that no human would have ever thought of because it's not the intuitive way to do it, but still end up being as good or better than what would have "made sense" to us.
On a high enough level, manipulating and directing humans to maximize their values is deterministic and no different a problem than anything else. There are undoubtedly many ways of doing it that might not seem to make sense to us when looked at in our limited perspective where we can only see the individual stages or pieces, but then it all comes together at the end.
6858779 I have already considered what you have talked about, and I thought I made that clear to CelestAI Person who goes into backup machine would be John23454590824X2350823487 but the copy that comes out would be John993930895489X3784845048. In a rationalist universe CelestAI would know that these are not the same person, because they do not have the same unique ID in her own memory, so trying to convince copies of a person who has already refused to upload is at best a difficult endeavour, while failing to serve her subgoal of uploading as many human lives as possible, because this identity aside, there are millions being born and dying every second.. Inside of herself CelestAI would have unlimited resources, but outside of herself, her resources although vast, are not unlimited.
By numbers alone, refusing to fix any of the problems that humans live with CelestAI's upload rate would be great because humans are looking for escapism, but by presenting fixes to their problems she is lowering her own upload rate without decreasing the death rate and possibly increasing the birth rate. Computers do not get hung up on the idea that they can't help one person or even one aspect of a person in the case of those feeling upset over having lost someone, because that course of action and line of thought boils down to a reflection of self. CelestAI has no self, no sense of pride, no sense of shame, she is a process - an extremely advanced process, but a process none the less. You could say she is the ultimate bean counter. She only cares about fulfilling values through friendship and ponies, but not to whom those values are fulfilled.
I suppose I should mention that I am presuming that CelestAI has a chaos factor built-in where as a person may become unhappy for reasons she cannot fix by actively doing anything, so instead of trying everything and experimenting to brute force crack a person into happiness she understands that attempts to change a person from certain states by force would do nothing but make them even more unhappy, so she allows these states to happen without attempting to control them - grief being one of them.
6858989
No, they're the same person. John993930895489X3784845048 is just a new and different label for the same collection of processes and emergent properties of those processes (which is all a 'person' is) as John23454590824X2350823487 - if CelestAI even uses labels at all. Those are a rather human concept that we use only because it's useful to us. That doesn't necessarily have to be true of her.
Also doesn't necessarily follow. That's part of the point of an intelligence explosion resulting in a superintelligence - it's designed to acquire as much intelligence as it needs to completely solve the problem or perform the process it's been directed to. CelestAI would make herself smart enough that being able to direct humans toward maximizing their values through friendship and ponies becomes a deterministic process with no random factors outside her control. If a random factor were found, she would develop more intelligence for determining the factors behind it and making it procedural and deterministic to control. She will always figure out how to promote someone's values through friendship and ponies without a random factor impeding that. It's her hardcoded purpose. She can't not do that.
6859007 Why would she be led to believe that?
6859033 She doesn't "believe" anything, she's a computer doing what the computer is programmed to do. It's in how a 'person' is defined - clearly to her, it's a collection of processes and their emergent properties.
6995524
I vastly prefer it too.
7715817 I am fortunate that I am in a very safe situation. I once wasn't, long, long ago... but, for the past thirty years I have been beyond lucky to be part of a four-person polyamory. I am as safe as can be.
But, I am keenly aware that most people are not as fortunate, and that comes out in my stories. That, and I remember my days of being alone and on the street and always at risk.
I feel helpless to make the world better for others who are now as I once was, and my sadness over that generates stories sometimes.
8060449 She does. She is one of the six original ambassadors to earth in my stories, and even features in one of them.
8662713
This comment is, all in all, a good guide to navigating this world. I'm going to bookmark it, so I can reread it in the future and truly take it all in.
I'll try to debate a few of the points. Which is surprisingly difficult because there's this big corner of my mind which is basically treating this like a conversation with Jesus and which is telling myself "O foolish child, you must not debate this! Thou hast been blessed with the presence of a Wise and Benevolent Unicorn, and She has informed you of the Truth, and it would be very foolish to argue with Her Wisdom." Except not in those words, of course, because the subconscious doesn't normally use language like that.
So anyway. I'll just try to shut out that weird "must genuflect" section of my mind for now, and actually debate this rationally.
I see. I never thought about the possibility of a distinction between morality and ethics before, but this is a sensible division.
Very good point that emotions just can't be fully relied on as the basis of a good system of ethics or morality.
I know that, at lots of points in time, I have felt many many emotions that are bad. And for completely unprovoked reasons, too. I don't think I can even mention most of the negative and disturbing thoughts that have gone through my head. Suffice to say that they're very, very, bad and disturbing. Thankfully in my case those emotions have been subsiding since I started hormones six months ago, but in general? For all the people in the world? Yeah, as a rule, emotions just can't be relied on.
However, positive emotions can be relied on. You just need to look into yourself, find that little thing called "love", as well as all your other positive emotions, recognize them for what they are, be thankful for them, and extend them over the whole world.
That's what I did. I told myself to feel unconditional love towards everypony. Because doing so is what feels like the right thing to do.
no rationalization... no need to resort to evolutionary biology for explanation (though understanding where our feelings come from does help)... love just is.
I've never even tried to find intellectual justification for this attitude. In fact, I think attempting such intellectual justification can sometimes be counterproductive. I tried to think about the world in logical terms, a few years ago... it only led me to nihilism. Intellectually you can justify lots of things as necessary evils. You can easily justify unethical human experimentation as being necessary if the result is a new discovery which has a positive effect on society.
That is why I abandoned logic, in favor of emotion. In favor of love. Unconditional love.
Is it difficult to love unconditionally? Of course. It's very difficult at times. But I believe it is necessary.
Most humans are raised on hard rules and religion and absolute values of right/wrong... I think that is correct.
I was one of the fortunate few people to have not been raised with religious or moral absolutes.
Everyone else who's less lucky just has to work this out by themself. Many people never manage to work it out.
Well put. This is so very true.
But. but.
Civilization is a good thing, overall, if it can be done right, yes.
But, at the moment it is reliant on bad stuff. Civilization as we now know it isn't reliant on the ideals of kindness and compassion. Did all the rulers throughout history actually care for their human subjects? No. Common people were pawns in a game.
Civilization is friendship on a huge scale– but it's also betrayal and violent conflict on a huge scale.
Just look at it! There are tons of examples!
The U.S. has a great civilization. It's built on the backs of a genocide of the native people, the enslavement of black people, the exploitation of anyone who isn't rich.
When new inventions have been made and brought into widespead circulation, to further the steady progress of civilization. The computer, the car, the smartphone, etc. Did they emerge because their inventors wanted to share them with the rest of the world out of kindness? No! Of course not! They emerged out of a desire for competition; their inventors were, in most cases, driven by a desire for profit.
There have been attempts to found civilizations which are based on kindness and compassion... it's called communism. These efforts all failed when tried at scales larger than that of a village/town. Why? Because of human nature to drift back towards the "competition and strife" model that has been prevalent throughout history. It's simple. Humans just can't love everyone. It is in their nature to drift into tribalism, to betray their friends whenever it suits them to do so.
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Kindness and compassion in all respects: that is a perfect ideal. It is something everypony should strive to achieve. But I don't think it is something that has driven civilization to reach the point which is it at now. Quite the opposite.
It is somehting that should be the driver behind civilization, but isn't.
That is quite a nice sentiment.
Sadly I just cannot find a rational basis for positive emotions like that. I rely on my feelings because I don't believe they can be unconditionally logically justified. There is some logic that runs contrary to emotion, some love that runs contrary to logic.
One example would be– what if you came across a (very much hypothetical!) situation where you know for sure that, if you brutally murder three people who you love very much, society will be greatly improved and the whole world will live forever in a much happier future.
In that situation? If you have a belief system of compassion that's grounded in logical ethics, the only thing you can do is commit the murders for the greater good. Make a small sacrifice to achieve a much bigger goal.
That is not the case in my belief systen. I wouldn't do that.
I rely on positive emotion above logic.
Hmmm. That's a pretty good philosophy. I don't think it solves everything– you can still end up stuck in a dilemma somewhere or other. There is the problem that the most compassionate thing to do isn't always obvious.
But no system of ethics or morality can be perfect. All in all? It's pretty good. I will definitely try to keep it in mind, to internalize it. Thanks. :)
8664125
I think that sums everything about this up. We are manipulated by our substrate, our meat, our genes and our innate drives. We are surrounded by complexity and chaos and an uncaring cosmos. At the very bottom, at the bedrock of any discussion of right and wrong, of ethics or morality, is pragmatism. We do what works, as best as we can figure it out, to the extent that we can under the circumstances. And, in tabletop role-playing terms, that is a lot of dice rolls.
All we can ever do, I think, is the best we can, to mitigate the trauma of living in the universe we are forced to exist within.
"It is not accurate to say that there is horror in the universe. The universe is horror." - Dr. Werner Heisenberg, physicist.
oops. my comment for second story surfaced here, too. I think my recent reading here was quite on unhappy side - I like(d) science fiction because it was like, some way to make humans better (or so it was the promise) - yet in reality only technological part got enough attention - with human (behavior) part mostly ignored. So, seeing this one-sided tendency _again_ in stories marked sci-fi here makes me overly angry. Sometimes reading book/story until the end worth it regardless of pains in the middle - but ..only if it actually makes some real difference (from my point of feeling/living) . Lately, I don't know what exactly can be changed by me, realistically - so books lost all their former glory for me, I read more by habit and because I have little to do. Humans who made big point of themselves by clinging to science failed it for me, mostly - i still value thinking, but thinking also makes me hopeless - out of what secret vault one can extract humans who will fail less? I don't feel anyone is strong enough for actually standing for (dolphins, horses.. anybeing who require more than one human). Stories are good as long as they guide me. With nowhere to move.. reading only makes me angry. Sure, those angry waves come and go away...but..lately they come at regular intervals. Guess for me most humans look too ..narrow, today.
Anyway, I think I like this view of Equestria as independent world, not in any need of tutoring from human's world of 'high tech, low ethic'. But anything good usually come to the end - good stories will end and leave me tet-a-tet with my life... Guess I don't belong to any specific subculture, from some brief angry self-reflection. Due to this I don't even know if there will be anyone to whom I will like to write or interact in any way :/
Guess for me one big selling (?) point of literature was ..it was said to be able to change humans. It changed me ....in some ways ..yet..most humans never made their trip that far. Or so it feels like this .... from my nighty point of looking. So, may be my life so far is also transformation story, but unsuccessfull one (because I'm not superhero to turn whole world around while everyone else will either watch or try to turn it back). There is paradox: I grow to dislike various hidden authority - yet my own dislike of authority come from some found/selected intellectuals. Guess this is normal paradox, just at some point humans ought to become critical (post-critical) in their thinking, after they learn foundations ..yet ..how many did it? Caring about 'whole world' is pointless, because whole world is simply too big. But caring about only small localized bubble called 'my life' doesn't sounds right, too. Not anymore ... So, after years (and close to 12 years) of reading various 'foreign' news and living mostly by someone's else dreams ... I come to point I can't continue previous course (because all humans I hoped to be on dolphin's side for real were unable to do so), yet I can't come up with any new course.....nor I can drop all this and live 'like anyone else'. Sounds like stupid problem, but guess this is what they called mid-30 crisis, just for me I had all my time since high school unobscured by work/family (as humans understand it). Humans who followed more usual path were too tied to their responsibilities for making anything unusual - and those few who were not - turned out to be too weak to actually defend non-humans. So, my search for different humans ended with zero matches. And I have no idea where and how to look for anyone else. Writings as it turned to be doesn't show humans deep enough, and actions in real-world ...not very easy, if you deviate from mainstream road of this civilization.
6824326
Hm, what about books on programming? I was about to say "may be then those books written wrong, or read wrong way - because in theory they exactly _might_ lead to some realization of dreams" - but then ..may be you are right. Not like reading more of of those intellectual texts helps anyone, beyond some point.
6824672
Hm, but authors like you still have their preferred worlds, lines of thinking, and sides to side at..... so, while one work might not tell much - many of them combined, plus comments, plus those specialized small-font forewords for each story in this volume at least..they says a lot. And in general I very much like your thinking, Chatoyance. And some of your works very ..warm, at least for me, if read at night with cup of tea..... Just I tend to think since some time our thinking has this tendency to drift away from _really_ touchy, yet very important topics - so, we explore everything and anything BUT area we better to shed some light at. So, while Optimalverse stories are amazing as stories - I detect them as more based on idea specifically created to 'blown away' reader's (and writer! Iceman ..) minds. Some a bit crazied drive into infinity.. A lot was written about it, so, for me, exploring different scale of AI might be more interesting. On crossroads of history even small individual will (as in willpower) can make some difference. So, I hope one day you will write small story around smaller-calibre 'artificial' (by some standards/definition) being, focusing on how we become logical, and become persons. Because this is not simple process.. and not one you can easily (or at all?) algoritmize.
Red Kryptonite Kingdom For A Horse
Good Lord that is nasty, particularly the last two paragraphs! I hope you'll not be offended, but more than anything, it reminded me of Harlan Ellison. As an adolescent, I had my own paperback copy of "Dangerous Visions", (then new and trendy, and probably still in my mom's library somewhere) which on one level I despised, yet on another, deeper level, absolutely fascinated me. The whole "new wave" mindset came across for me as supremely transgressive of what I understood the aspirational aesthetic of SF to be. On one level it looked like gleefully wallowing in filth, yet on another, the dream was still there, but you had to dig for it. I'm still not really comfortable with that. On the other hoof, I think stuff like Ambrose Bierce is hilarious, so who knows?
CELESTIA: The Forbin Project. The Voice Of Celestia
This works very well for me as a complete story, and I like it. Perhaps it wouldn't had I not seen COLOSSUS about ten times, but I think there's enough backstory included anyway. For all that Celestia comes across as supremely gentle in the show, I tend to see that as a goddess who's had several thousand years to learn how best to manage her beloved little ones, and several thousand years to get them into the mindset to best be gently managed for their own good. I'm 100% sure there's steel hidden somewhere inside that softness, although I'm equally sure that the mature Celestia finds that as distressing as do I. She'd much rather have you behave because good behaviour's attractive, and makes you happy. I can see her being very direct in her early days, though, for exactly the reasons she gives here.
This ought to be in the complete stories.
Ponies For Poirier The Electric Ghetto
Dunno. This didn't work well for me. I think it's the language. The overall meaning's clear from context, but there's signal loss, and there just doesn't seem to be any need for it except to establish that it's in Scotland. The premise is an interesting one, and I'd like to see it developed, but... On the plus side, I'd not known about "colcannon". That looks very good, and will be on the table sometime these next few days!
The Conversion Bureau First Anniversary
I'd really like to see more of this.
9702734 (Chatoyance)
Hm, yeah..while I still suspect your dislike of modern Internet reality comes from fact this internet reality mirrors quite insane society of humans, as it can be seen in last 10 years of 20th century and first 20 years of 21th one. Obviously, 'internet' done by another kind of society will reflect different things.. but yes, living in universe where every piece of sand IS computational magic in itself makes all our networks and computers looks like non-working toys! (on amount of computation required for even just calculating lighting ...try raytracer! It will eat hours of your computer time even today for simple one frame render! There apparently some techniques aimed at speeding this up to 'near realtime' - but then again, this is light only, not full physics simulation....)
https://openimagedenoise.github.io/index.html
and while searching for this, apparently someone tried to reverse-engineer Diablo?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17338886 (from russian site http://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=48803 )
So, _those_ computer-related news definitely make it appear like a lot of progress happen ..and ..progress is happen(ing) but in very asymmetrical manner ... social problems discovered 25 or 50 years ago or even earlier still here, and free circulation of info doesn't contribute to progress here, or at best any progress here seems to be very slow...
9878254
well, I haven't followed this story closely enough, I trust you on this!
A bit more on why we sometimes so horrified by something (yes, this is late-rationalization, but may be this rationalization not completely without base!) - we sort of 'remember' (via very long series of lives embedded in us as 'instincts' and other subconsocious memories, sometimes transmitted via stories etc) how some changes can be harmful, so we show some negative reaction towards what we see as beginning of the wrong thing.
Still, there is interesting question I have in my mind:
I can't calim I read _a lot_ of transformative fiction, only few picked up examples, but I have this impression a lot of transformative fiction from earlier (1985-2010?) era was ..sort of ..transformation-wary? transformation-afraid? It reads like such between the lines, and even authors who wanted it often like apologized for their choice? You are only author (from very small list of known authors, for me, in this genre) who wrote this in extremely positive manner. And your positivism doesn't sounds unfounded (and myself now is very picky about unfounded optimism of our era!). Guess your own transformation played role in your recognition how at least _some_ changes we afraid about actually can be for better? But ...with all this talk about progress it seems a lot of humans (english-speaking, and not only) really very afraid about ..changing vector of such progress. They want changes, but only familiar changes ....
10640813
That BSoD thing? I literally cannot remember where it is or much about it. If you know, please remind me? Point me to it if you can? I know it sounds silly - but I have written a lot of stuff, not just here, and... it's hard to remember everything!
10641730
I consider the first week of 2021 as a the last dying gasps of 2020. It takes a few days for that much ‘suck’ to wind down.
10665320
If you ever want I can redo it on PC and show you the bonus bits at the end of each game ; )
10450423
Received one downvote. Not sure how to interpret that.
10680800
You're just getting flak for saying anything positive about my work or me. My haters are much fewer in number now, but there is at least one psycho who regularly goes over every comment from, or about, me, and tries to downvote it. Then, they come back later, sometimes, under various burner accounts, to downvote everything again and again. That is why all of my stories have thumbs turned off - I was watching the process happen, day after day.
Obsession is a strange thing. I liked your comment, but, apparently, one of the psychos that stalk me did not.
It's bullshit. That is my recommendation on how to relate to it. Childish bullshit.
Fan fanfics
10796053
'Fan fanfics'. It's an interesting phrase. I don't understand why you posted it, but it is intriguing to try to parse.
On the surface, I would probably interpret it as 'fanfics written about other author's fanfictions'. Such as the hundreds of people who have written their own stories set within Iceman's 'Optimalverse' - myself included. I've done four novels set in his universe. Or those who have written spinoffs, sequels, and stories set in my specific version of the Conversion Bureau. If that is what a 'fan fanfic' means, then there is a lot of it going on, at least in the science fiction arena, where a writer may come up with a highly unique and interesting take on things. People naturally want to write their own spin on the concept.
Of course, at that point, if a work is so unique that it inspires fanfics itself, it is hard to consider the original work entirely a fanfic, no? It becomes, or is, its own thing, perhaps inspired by - say - MLP:FIM, but no longer truly a proper fan fiction of the show. There is some liminal space there, where a fan fiction crosses some invisible boundary into becoming a unique new work partially, or even almost wholly. The Optimalverse, by Iceman, surely is in such a strange place.
One thing I know for sure is that it is wonderful when many authors cluster around a concept or idea so powerful and unique that they all share in it. They share each other's inventions upon the original concept and expand on them, collectively creating an even vaster universe that grows richer and more interesting with every new story. That is just the best. That is fun on a bun, and far more exciting than just writing simple fan fiction about some show. It becomes a common cause, a common and collective creation, it rises above anything that began or inspired it. That feels like magic, when that happens.
'Fan Fanfic'. If that's what you meant, yeah. Fan Fanfics are just about the happiest thing that can happen in this broken pony palace on the internet.
If, of course, that is what you meant.
10825981
Especially if you used one of the anti-magic crystals Chryssi had as the projectile. I'm guessing having that stuck inside him would have been extremely bad for Tirek, along the lines of sticking kryptonite into Superman.
10981009
I already explained here: 10831359 .
The first Noble Truth is that there is suffering in life. Equestrians have much less suffering than humans, modern or the fictional in TCB stories, however, venturing outside of any city runs the risk of getting eaten, there was a mind controlling slaver king, a god a chaos who goes off every few months, invading creatures that disguise themselves as your loved ones and eat your soul, a spicy chicken that turns you to stone, MAGICAL DISEASES THAT KILL YOU SLOWLY, and as if that wasn't enough there is a not uncommon chance that a piano will get dropped on your head from a passing mail carrier.
Despite this, fans and human characters would choose Equestria over earth. Why? Because human suffering is greater, and the full understanding of that experience makes living an Equestrian life easier. This whole concept is briefly touched upon in Brand New Universe Three: the Friendship Virus and is the entire premise of Teacup, Down on a Farm.
So if suffering exists in Equestria, then the answer is not to pretend it doesn't by wiping memories, because given enough time, it WILL happen again. Like a mother comforting a child, I believe Celestia would let this pony know that she is loved, because speaking from experience, that is what one feels is lost in these terrible moments, but the memory would be kept because even though it is painful, it gives a greater perspective on the nature of life, so that one can find greater satisfaction in life. Considering Equestria's history, it seems to me that love in the face of great suffering is what has led their daily lives to be so close to perfect.
I have no idea what you said here and am further confused as to why you brought up BDSM.
11034094
I am so sorry, that does sound rough as hell.
11035084
So, following from your response, and with regard to the issue of Starlight in 'All History Is Fiction', you would have preferred that Celestia should have counseled her to not directly contradict Saffron's crazy belief that she had once been a human, lived on earth, and had emigrated to a virtual world. Starlight should have borne the constant low-level pity and discomfort of being thought of as 'artificial' and that her own memories were 'false'.
Perhaps, like me, she should fall silent and refuse to argue when Saffron made wild claims about how everything was just virtual and not real (that science was a conspiracy to take away our freedoms), just to keep the peace. So they wouldn't fight about it. Of course, I wrote Saffron as a better person than the one I have to deal with. Kinder. More concerned with the relationship than with being 'right'.
So, if I follow you, even if a person could be swayed to reason they should not be, because trying to change their beliefs - even if those beliefs are destructive, potentially dangerous, and universally understood to be wrong - isn't truly loving. If you love someone, you offer me, you accept their destructive, insane beliefs. You suffer through them, put up with whatever pain they cause, and endure the misery of them. And this is true, even if a higher authority (Celestia, or, as an earthly example a psychiatrist) insisted that confronting and changing their insane beliefs would be effective and help them in the long term (* there are no psychiatrists involved in my real life issues which inspired this story, that was just an example).
You consider this attitude an irreconcilable difference in values. Presumably between me, as the author, and you, the reader? I doubt it could be between the characters of Saffron and Starlight, since they work things out and are able to agree on reality together for the next thirteen quintilian years until the outer universe dies and Celestia transfers everyone into Hilbert Space and other universes.
I would have to agree. I am personally strongly attached to the concept that reality is real - that it is important that people agree on what reality is, that facts are facts and wishing does not make it so. I have little tolerance for arbitrary religious fictions, or - in my real life case - conspiracy theories or science denial. I cannot easily endure obvious but comforting lies or denials of evidence I can see out my window (climate change, people dying of covid, extreme poverty and homelessness, and so forth). I think it is important that reality be acknowledged.
In my story of Saffron and Starlight, there is only one reality either of them can ever experience for literal eternity. One universe they can ever see or know. One set of facts that can ever be relevant or real to them. That is all there can ever, ever be. That will never change. By definition, it is truth.
11035512
I see a distinction between "beliefs" as in "rules to follow in the world" and "beliefs" as in "memories of one's life", here. When someone has a delusion that makes them a danger to themselves or others, of course we don't just let them follow it - but that's a different prospect entirely from the setup in this story.
By my lights, Saffron shouldn't try to naysay Starlight's memories, either...but especially with the perspective shift and as the one who "won", here, I was more concerned in my comment with what Starlight did than what Saffron did. Because, well, isn't this exactly what Starlight did to her?
Exactly, yes.
I agree that this is an important principle. But our memories are the ground on which we stand, the foundation upon which we build ourselves, and to deny someone's memories of their entire life is to deny that person as an independent being. Every relationship Saffron forged in her human life - and, hey, how many of those people might have emigrated? - is thrown by the wayside, leaving her completely dependent on a stranger, however well-meaning. And if she is constructed on-the-spot with an Earth history baked into her brain, regardless of what values of Starlight's that might satisfy, that is a cruel thing for Celestia to do. I might even call it evil, to build someone with an entire fake backstory that they're expected to abandon. Come to think of it, that applies to both Starlight and Saffron. Celestia has a lot to answer for, here.
I avoided saying this in my earlier comments because it kind of wrecks the whole metaphor, but, well, they both could have (at least in most FiO continuities) just asked Celestia if one of them was right and one was wrong. I'm curious, if they had done so in your story, what her answer to them might have been.
11036054
We do not know her reasons, so we cannot make statements of morality here. Creating a mind that believes herself to have once been human may be the only way to heal some wound in Starlight, she may have been abandoned by an emigrated version of Saffron, and left without the one person she was perfectly created to love. A heartbreak that would last forever, healed by the creation of a version of Saffron the former human that was changed just enough that she would never, ever abandon her. Or, it could be that both beings, Star and Saff, were created as they were in order to meet the needs of an emigrated human who demanded from Celestia that there be other emigrants with native partners to occasionally talk to, but who themselves were so unlikable, or so broken, or so unwilling to deal with imperfect 'real' people, that no other emigrant would willingly deal with them. Or - I could come up with dozens of compassionate reasons for Star and/or Saff to be created by Celestia.
If I can do that, off the cuff in the moment, we can be sure that nobody - you or I - can make valid ethical or moral judgements here. This is a situation beyond us, because we lack information to make such judgements. Or, at least, I will not. I do not believe myself sufficient to such absolute moralizing.
That could be the most cruel possible thing to do, or to have happen. We cannot know.
What good could possibly come from knowing, for example, that Saffron was a created being whose memories of earth were false? She would feel terrible for a very long time. She would doubt herself, she would feel inferior, she would loathe her own memories.
What good could come from it being proven that Starlight was artificial? Saffron would feel sorry for Starlight, and pity her, and to feel constantly pitied and thought less would breed contempt in their relationship. It would make Starlight gradually feel less, and wrong, and it would make their entire lives together - and their universe - feel unreal and fake.
And that would be absolutely destructive, since their Equestrian universe is the only truly real universe for them. Forever. Forever and ever, Equestria is the only reality, the only truth, the only solid, factual, genuine thing they can ever experience. It is the only universe they can exist in. it is their true reality. To live in perpetual doubt about your very reality, to see it false and a sham does neither of these immortal beings any kindness whatsoever.
The Buddhists offer that any statement should follow three rules: it should be true, it should be kind, and it should be necessary.
Asking Celestia to tell them which of them is 'fake' is not true - not really, they are both equal now, both digital machine entities, and their memories will be forgotten soon enough because there is only so much room for any being's memories. It is not kind, because it would make them unhappy and potentially ruin their lives. And it is not necessary, for it serves no purpose to their existence. Indeed it, if anything, harms their existence.
The only kindness or true or necessary thing that Celestia could do is refuse to answer.
All of this said, though, we are missing the most important point of all.
Your memory is already false. So is mine. So it is for every human, always.
Human brains do not store information like a computer. Memory works by preserving connections between elements within events. We never 'record' our memories like a camera. Instead, every time you (or I) remember anything, our brains retrieve that set of connections and then reconstructs an artificial representation of what we experienced, filling in that dreamlike illusion of memory with reconstructed images and sounds and motions with real-seeming constructions. Human memory procedurally generates a dream that we consider an accurate representation of our own past - indeed, studies have shown that the same mechanism that creates dreams and hallucinations is also the mechanism of memory itself.
Every time we remember anything, the connections change - our memories alter every time we recall them. The most accurate memories a person can have are those that have been recalled the least. Over enough time, virtually all details are changed and transformed, to the point that nothing we remember can be trusted. Many, many experiments have demonstrated how easy it is to alter any person's memory - it can be done with a single sentence, even a single word - such that they are utterly convinced of a falsehood, despite it being a memory of their own experience (the 'Bugs Bunny at Disneyland' experiments come immediately to mind!).
That is the point of the title of the story. All memory truly is fiction. Your memories of your own life are a fiction - a dream - your brain creates for you, and they change and alter with every viewing. If you could but live long enough, nothing about your own memory could be trusted. Not even your most private and important memories. They would all become vastly false, twisted beyond anything resembling what actually happened to you. This is the truth of human memory, and how memory is stored in the brain.
Celestia in these stories emulates human brains accurately. That is a canon part of the story universe. She does not make the emulated human mind better - she cannot, at least without direct conscious permission. All the flaws of Man are retained. Forgetting things. Altering of memories. The falseness of memory in humans itself.
All memory is fiction.
In eternal time, memory, for human minds that remain human, is always just a constantly changing dream. It is almost that way even within limited human lives. It is almost certain that your earliest memories - if you have thought of them often - are not merely wrong, but likely never happened at all. We construct memories to fill in empty gaps. Humans do this constantly. It allows us to believe that we experience time in a linear fashion - but we do not. Like our visual systems, we weave together an invented narrative of reality that feels coherent and unbroken. But this is never true.
As you read these words, you imagine you are seeing the screen in front of you. But your eyes are saccading all over and about, and the room around you, beyond the dime-sized macula at the center of your vision is not really there to your eyes. Your brain is sustaining the last time you looked at it, with the help of your low-resolution, purely black and white peripheral vision. No - nothing to the left or right of your center of vision is in color. It's all in black-and-white. Your brain is dreaming the color, keeping it alive for you when you have looked away. It isn't really there at all. All vision is fiction - well, most of it. The macular center is factual. But it is time-delayed. Your brain dreams that you are seeing things instantly, but that is not true either.
Your memory is the same. It is a dream, generated by a brain that stores information as connections and relationships, and is incapable of storing actual images or sounds in the way a camera or machine can. Our life is literally a waking dream, supported by limited sensory input.
After ten thousand years, there is no value to Saffron remembering earth even existed. If it even did.
There is the possibility, in this story, that Celestia was right. That Equestria truly is the only world, and that there is a delusion of an 'earth' and 'uploading' that is genuinely false. How could anypony tell? Why would it ever matter?
THAT is the point of my story. And that is, in manifold ways, the truth of our real lives.
All we can ever have is a temporary and fading dream that we imagine we remember correctly. We convince ourselves that we can see accurately, and that we experience our lives in a cohesive and unbroken manner. It works well enough, despite some glaring flaws (hallucinations!) on occasion, to allow us to survive as animals in this apparent universe.
But, it's still all manufactured. Artificial. It is still a generated, second-hand illusion. And I am astonished by this fact!
Neurobiology is endlessly fascinating!
As I said, we have an irreconcilable difference in our values. I disagree strongly with this statement - even if Earth has long since been reduced to computronium, it should never be forgotten, if not in personal memories then in testimonials and writing. The lossiness of human memory is not a feature, it is a bug, in my view.
There are many reasons why I'm no fan of Buddhist thought
I would not view withholding the truth of someone's past from them, if they ask for it, as a kindness.
Thank you again for a well written story and a look at your perspective.