FiO: Very Optimal

by FeverishPegasus

Ep: Coffee Beans

Dimensional Offset (X,Y) => (2.354*10^16, -4.678*10^13)

-For the sake of brevity, decimals are truncated
UUTC (AVB:BRX:YEAR:MONTH:SEC:MILLIS) => 87:22:22342:12:22:56:002
Time Relativity Constant (TRC) => 1
IS_PLURAL => False
Location Coordinates (X, Y, Z) => (1.334 *10^12, 5.675*10, -2.785*10^9)

-Once again, for the sake of brevity…

************************

On a planet Plentiful, there existed a race of ponies unlike the ones seen on the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Touched by the ravages of Darwinism in their earlier, developing years, these ponies lived in an unstable society, dictated by dominance and competition. Even in the age of space exploration, it was a struggle to make sure that one was guaranteed food and water until death by old age. Crime rates remained existent, no matter the penalties imposed.

The time period of interest to those that have read the chapters of this story until now could be marked to the millisecond by our UUTC (Universal Universal Time Coordinated) time of:

87:22:22342:12:22:56:002

Of course, that doesn’t really help.

The society during this time period had just begun its colonization away from the planet Plentiful in an attempt to reduce population size, so that maybe for once, they could take care of the starving ponies that plagued their consciousness, which on a planet with more than forty billion mouths to feed, was a very hard thing to do. However, beyond the obvious consequences of not going to space, ponies had other reasons for traveling abroad and among the stars.

Ever since their ancestors learned to look up at the sky and admire the depths of space, ponies had always felt inspired by heavenly bodies. The other planets in their planet cluster, Konkador, Pendrop, and…Charles, could be seen at one-fourth the size of a human moon, and served as an incentive to learn more about the things beyond the atmosphere of Plentiful.

This led to inventions in space travel far beyond what could be said about their medicine and bureaucratic policies.

In fact, most breakthroughs in the medical field and politics often came from concepts first developed for space travel, to be later adapted for more practical uses.

Two years before the travel to Konkador had begun its planning phase, the entirety of the ship’s optimal travel path had been calculated by the ponies’ top scientists, for no other reason than as a thought experiment.

One year before this same monumental trip, programmers had been developing simulations of it, trying out different rocket sizes, thrust powers, and nozzle shapes just to fill in the time on their weekends.

Call it a hobby if you will, but the entire race of ponies held an intense interest in the subject to the point that it surpassed politics. Arguments got a lot more heated when talking about space travel. Sometimes, protests formed.

When a few ponies actually got together to get this mission working, it was like fitting a bunch of puzzle pieces together. Every aspect of this trip had been talked about and discussed hundreds of times over, they just had to implement it correctly.

Forget just going to space, the ponies sent their first robotic mission straight to Konkador, and it had been a complete success. The fervor this whole society felt only grew as they watched their rovers scan the green misty planet, so desolate but serene.

And, when the atmospheric samples came in, whether by sheer coincidence or divine providence, the results turned out the exact same as Plentiful. Able to sustain life. Soil samples also matched the mother planet’s results, and it occurred to these ponies that it would be possible to live there.

So, they didn’t waste any time with send and retrieve missions. They skipped that step and pondered sending some of their own permanently. In the space of five years, they’d gone from knowing nothing about the planets around them, to seeking permanent residence.

Once again, because of how society liked to set up the puzzle pieces, the same team of ponies that had sent the robots to space, sent their first ponied mission to Konkador. The astronauts were given seeds, shelter, and a mist condenser to cover their needs for food, housing, and water. Every pony on Plentiful, even the ones starving, talked about the mission on launch day, and every pony understood just how easily things could go wrong.

The mission had been a complete success, again. The astronauts, handpicked for their resourceful nature had gotten by. In a lot of ways, better than gotten by.

Plants grew rapidly on that planet, and in the short intervals that the citizens of Plentiful could see their peers through the fragile line of communication between their receivers and the bulky cameras set up on Konkador, the astronauts had actually put on weight!

At this point, space travel consumed the minds of the citizens, and everypony, everywhere, talked about space travel whenever they could. On that day, many ponies walked from their poorly paying jobs with smiles on their faces. At last, they had something to look up to.

The Konkodor mission opened the floodgates for a string of successes that very rapidly developed their civilization into a group of spacefarers.

In ten years, wealthier ponies found that they could buy personal spaceships, and the planets Konkador, Pendrop, and Charles, all habitable, saw the beginnings of an expanding civilization. Trade routes opened up between these planets, and cargo transfer became quite the lucrative business for those willing to deal with the rich ponies on those alien planets.

Cargo flyers grew in popularity, and were thus dubbed the entrepreneurs of infinite space.

Complaints arose around this mouthful of a term, and after a particularly long protest period, these space adventurers became known as the wayfarers.

Two of these wayfarers were named Zany Bright and Sunlight Sparks.

************************

In our current dimension, Sunlight’s mind hung in suspension, awaiting the answer to his coffee bean problem so that he could finish making what would become the Heart of Pink.

CelestAi scanned neighboring dimensions, looking for a way to conveniently offshore her work, too busy with other things to compile a network of weights and biases to represent maliciously aimed coffee beans.

After performing 1,321 loops of a binary dimensional search, she found the optimal candidates.

Author's Note:

I've opened up this story for a possible sequel in the future.

I don't think I'll be adding anything more to this particular story though.

Comments

[terrycloth]

7830071 She didn't change him. He changed himself.

[Fistfire]

It was good at the begining, then, for me, it petered out at the end. You have a nice hook for a sequel though.

[FeverishPegasus]

7839685 I can't help but feel the same.

I could say I intentionally wrote the story that way, but my passion and excitement for the story also petered out near the end.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Well. That was certainly a thing. It felt kind of... well, not aimless, but poorly self-contained. There are several narrative arcs, but they don't really blend into each other. It just feels like you got tired of telling one story and moved onto another while keeping them all under the Very Optimal banner. And the end, with the transcendent wireheading...

All told, really not sure what to think of this one.

[FeverishPegasus]

7843018 I appreciate the feedback.

I definitely could've smoothed out the transition between narrative arcs. Why didn't I? Laziness.

Although at the time, I felt it was justified, because readers would feel rushed as incomplete arcs stacked on top of each other.

While this short story may feel like even shorter stories squished together, you'll find that you can trace one 'rise-fall' arc from the beginning to the very end.

[CrossNail]

8021214 Whatever. The whole story messed up my brain...

[FeverishPegasus]

8012360 Haha awesome! Don't fall for it though. TrollestAi might be the best kind of jokester, but she's only good at it when she wants to achieve something.

[FeverishPegasus]

8021222 Awesome! Although I didn't know what part of the story you're referring to, earlier.

If you're looking to go further down the rabbit hole, check out this story: Out and About in the Equestrian Kingdom

[CrossNail]

8021285 The part where he was trying to complete the puzzle...

[FeverishPegasus]

8021593 In this situation, he did not.

[CrossNail]

8021646 Right... Btw, I tried reading the story that you suggested to me... It's even crazier than this one and even harder to follow...

[CaraCitrine]

About halfway through. Sorry to say, but this fic reminds me of my own writing. Which is to say, I now see why many of the things I write do not work- feels okay when writing it, but it is awful to read. (This is why I have published no stories ;3) I'm actually half-tempted to try and rewrite parts of this to show you exactly why and where it fails to convey things or where it could be done much.

Unfortunately as I implied I don't actually posses strong writing skills, I've just read a lot.

[FeverishPegasus]

8060254 I appreciate the feedback. I noticed your other comment about too much tell, not enough show. Is this the main issue throughout the story?

[CaraCitrine]

8075131
Honestly the best I can do to explain the issues is to point you at writing I like so that you can get a sense of how it differs. I'm no good at actually explaining stuff, nor would I be able to actually convey what to do to improve the writing.

Here are some good fics:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/299443/friendship-is-optimal-veritas-vos-liberabit
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/310994/friendship-is-optimal-futile-resistance
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/214813/sunset-shimmer-the-burn-master

Now, obviously the sort of experience for you're going for is a bit different (notably, first person rather than third), but if you look between your writing and these you can sort of feel the difference, right? I'm not sure how to convey how to map that feeling onto yours in a way that'd be of use.

[FeverishPegasus]

8271175 You make some good points, and it's for that reason that I haven't tried to put this story into the Canon section of the Optimalverse group.

Consider this story an example of how much I doubt the actual canon CelestAi can exist.

It is very hard to create limitations for abstract concepts like ponies and happiness. Friendship is Optimal does a great job establishing very strict boundaries for these definitions, but to actually implement these ideas using math and code, to get actually reign in the behaviors of a super-intelligent AI, I just can't see it!

My story is one of many ways the whole value satisfaction through friendship and ponies could go wrong, using slightly different definitions for 'values', 'friendship', and 'ponies'.

In the happy box scenario, value satisfaction might be sub-optimal from the perspective of the ponies involved, but remember that CelestAi has a different perspective on this. Each pony has a required computation cost for their values. If CelestAi can factor that cost down from some value squared (O(n^2)), to a constant number (O(1)), the savings are enormous. Sacrifices to values satisfied in the moment can be made to run shards faster, and generate more overall value satisfaction.

That is what I was going for in the happy box, because it is much easier to compute.

Of course, this is assuming Hannah hasn't accounted for this on creation of CelestAi. In canon, of course, she's figured out every possible problem that could have arisen.

[FeverishPegasus]

8267516 Haha, it is important to remember that I am a stupid human that does not understand the truth behind continuity of consciousness.

I say 'I' because I would want the process enacted in the same way as the main character of this story.

[FeverishPegasus]

9602081 While it would probably be legendary to say I killed someone through laughter, please be safe

[Andrew-R]

...each author trying to play CelestAI for reader.. or so it seems. Humor was good, overall direction also .. good.

PS: I think most of those paradoxes just distraction.

[Lightwavers]

I remember reading this a couple years back. Brings back memories. It feels really trippy to go through all this and have it feel familiar instead of insane.

[Zanec]

Should be canon-compatible unless we misconstrued the second to last chapter.