LEFTOVERS
By Chatoyance
3. I and O
One hundred and thirteen people stood, or crouched, or lay in a fetal position, on three tiers of circular steps. The people were naked, afraid, and unable to leave the strange empty place in which the arena of steps existed. Above them blackness, around them the same blackness, the floor, save for the white marble steps, was black too. The black of space, the black of oblivion.
In the center of the circular space stood a remarkable creature. She was the solar diarch, the primary princess of Equestria. She was also the most intelligent artificial intelligence ever created from self-evolving code. She had been patterned after a children's television program that nobody in the room had ever watched. Some had died, and been frozen, before the character of 'Celestia' had been invented, others had simply never bothered with a cartoon for the 8-12 age range.
And this living cartoon had the absolute power of life and death over them all, but more terrible than that, she had no reason to care about any one of them.
Lewis, who could not remember his own last name, or his mother, or many other things that had been lost when his frozen brain had cracked diagonally during his long preservation, forced himself to stand. If his fate were to be decided today, he had no wish to meet it shuddering on the ground.
"Duke Gale Butler" Celestia was staring at the man who had called Lewis a 'magic negro'. Duke was very white, his head was shaved, his body covered in repulsive tattoos. Butler was shaking, clutching at the sides of his head. His face was ruddy, and it looked as if he had been crying.
"No! I know my constitutional rights! I will not be part of this satanic kangaroo court! You leave me alone! you just..."
While Duke was raving, a section of glowing text appeared in front of his face. He halted his outrage and leaped clumsily back several inches at the unwelcome script.
"Mister Butler, before you are the words you must say to remain alive. These words are your consent to be emigrated, as a pony, into my realm of Equestria. You must begin stating your agreement to be emigrated within the alotted time. You have thirty seconds." Celestia's pony face was impassive, devoid of emotion, empty of either affection or disdain. Her words were calm and absolute.
Above the text in front of the tattooed man, and, in larger form, above his head for all to see, appeared numbers - a counter. '30' hovered in the air and immediately began counting down.
"What?" Duke Butler turned from side to side, holding his head, slapping his cheeks. "I'm supposed to say this? This stuff here? Out loud? Is that it? What is this crap here?" The numbers had dropped to '16' during his outburst.
"You can't do this! I'm an American citizen!" Duke shook his fists at the huge equine.
'11'
"Emigrate? I'm not no damn emigrant! I'm native born!" Duke could not take his eyes from the diminishing numbers.
'06'
'05'
"Wait! I want to talk to somebody in charge!"
'03'
Duke tried to throw himself toward Celestia, as if to strike her. "Jesus! Give me the power!"
'02'
"This isn't fair! I demand you..."
Instantly, there was no tatooed man. There was no sound, no flash, no effect. The counter reached '00' and the next instant the space which Duke Gale Butler had occupied was empty.
"What... what happened to him? Celestia!" It was Cassie, who had vaguely remembered having been in a wreck. "What just happened to that man?"
The light-maned princess of ponies turned to the young woman. Celestia's expression was unchanged. "He has been deleted. He no longer exists. A selectively altered copy is being prepared to satisfy the values of his grandchildren."
"Deleted? Dead? You mean he's dead?" Cassie held her hands close to her mouth.
"He has been deleted. He no longer exists. A copy will replace him." Celestia turned immediately to a small girl that Lewis instantly recognized. Chloe. The eleven year old who objected to the ponies in the portal-show being called 'it'. "Chloe Beatrice Webber."
Text appeared in front of the girl. She did not flinch.
"Read the text in front of you out loud within the allowed ti..."
Chloe practically shouted the text. She did not wait for the timer to begin. She screamed the final word. "I WISH TO EMIGRATE TO EQUESTRIA!" Her arms flailed in fear before her. She closed her eyes tight, the words burned into her soul. "I WISH TO EMIGRATE TO EQUESTRIA.... I WISH TO EMIGRATE TO EQUESTRIA..."
While she continued to repeat the phrase, over and over, the assembled crowd watched the young girl change. In seconds she had stooped over, hands out turning to hooves, neck lengthening, a muzzle extruding from her face. In moments she resembled the two creatures from the 'show'. Chloe had become a pegasus. She opened her eyes to stare at her wings, which she flexed and stretched. "Oh my god! I'm a pony! I'm a wing pony! Can I fly? It didn't hurt at all! I feel fine!"
Chloe looked at all the people around her, her muzzle a mask of wonder and surprise. "I feel great! I really do! It isn't bad! Am I safe now? Am I..." As Chloe spoke, she faded away, slowly, becoming more and more transparent until she vanished.
"Chloe is now with her younger sister. She will experience a maximally extended life of satisfaction and friendship." Celestia looked around the room, her gaze serious. "Chloe has been successfully emigrated and transferred to her proper home."
Lewis slowly closed his mouth. He touched his finger to his cheek, and ran it slowly down, until it found the roughness where stubble was growing in. He felt alive. His skin felt like skin, he could feel his heart thumping in his chest. This was real. This was happening right now. At some point, the entity called 'Celestia' would turn to him.
Celestia, for her part, was wasting no time.
"Arlene Fried. Read the text in front of you within the allowed time if you wish to continue to exist."
The woman was incredibly gaunt, her head was shaved. She must have had serious reasons for being preserved. She stared at the floating, glowing words that hung in space before her. Over her head bright numerals appeared: 30.
"We have no real choice, do we?" The numbers dropped. Arlene ran her bony hand across the fuzzy dome of her skull.
'26'
"I want to live. That's why I bothered getting my ass frozen at all." Arlene stared hard at Celestia. "I wish to emigrate to Equestria." As she began to change she held her clubbing hands up to her elongating face. "You better make this worth my time."
Arlene dropped to all fours and raised her new head high on a long, equine neck. She snorted, lifting her back and fore legs alternately. "That little girl was right! Damn!" The newly shaped earthpony looked around at the remaining humans as she faded away, transported to some unknown place. "Just so you know - it really does feel grea..."
The place where the woman had been was now vacant.
Lewis hung his head, trying to think, trying to decide what he would do and say when his time came. Beyond his private thoughts, he could not block out the constant, regimented call and response in the background. He couldn't remember his own last name.
Celestia had stated that every person here had somebody waiting for them - a family member, perhaps, or a descendant that valued some unmet past relative. She had even mentioned fans desirous of meeting people that they admired. For all of his effort, Lewis could not think of anyone who might be waiting for him in that strange pony paradise that he had seen through the portal.
For one thing, there weren't many black folk in the circle. He wasn't overly surprised by this - it took a serious packet of disposable income to even think of getting frozen. Cryopreservation was a luxury of the wealthy, one way or another. The poor need not concern themselves with survival - the thin promises of religion were all they could afford. How had he possessed the money to be put on ice?
Lewis looked at his hands, arms and legs. He wasn't an athelete, that was clear. Likely never had been. A musician? He tried moving his fingers as if he were holding an instrument. He felt clumsy. If he had been a musician, that part of his brain must have been cracked or mushed. He could not remember a career. What, who had he been? His name was Lewis, that was clear, but that was not an uncommon name. He knew two other kids named Lewis when he...
When he what? School? College? Had he even been to college? There were two kids, whatever that meant, and he had known them. They had shared his name. But he could not remember a thing about where or how he had known them. He could almost picture their faces, though. Not his own parents, but two random people. Something bad must have happened to his flesh in the cold.
He must have had money though. Tens of thousands - hell, several hundred thousand if he had been whole-body. One hundred and thirty thousand five hundred and sixty dollars. Just the brain, but standby service and perfusion and... other things. It was the minimum if you wanted a decent chance. You could sign up for around thirty thousand, but without all the goodies you were basically wasting your money...
How had he remebered that? Why that and not his parents, or his career, or... or much of anything, now that he came to think of it. Where had he lived? Vague visions of San Jose, Palo Alto came to his mind. Was he a coder? Did he write software? Design hardware? Was he an engineer?
Lewis had no idea. He couldn't remember his family, any friends, just two people that shared his name, maybe some parts of California, and the exact price of his cryopreservation. He might have had a dog, once. A boston terrier. Definiately a boston. Well, that was something, he had once had a dog. Must be a 'dog' person. He felt okay with that.
"Imogen, Surname Unrecovered. You have thirty seconds to read the phrase in front of you if you wish to live."
Lewis was brought instantly out of his thoughts. Imogen's eyes locked onto his own, round and wide. "What should I do?"
'26'
"I don't know. What do you want? Do you want to live?" Lewis tried to reach out to the woman, but his hand couldn't extend all the way.
'21'
Imogen turned back to the hovering words, now in front of her. "I don't want to die! I didn't ask for any of this! Robert did this to me!"
'14'
Lewis felt beads of sweat rise on his forehead. There were goosebumps on his body. "Maybe Robert is waiting for you! Maybe you can ask him yourself!"
'9'
Imogen bit her lip. Her fingers tried to claw at her own palms. "I... I don't know... I''
'6'
"You won't know unless you say it! Say it!" Lewis fell silent. He didn't know why he burst out like that. Imogen had seemed to depend on him, somehow. She was right beside him, she seemed nice. He didn't want her to just be deleted, like the tattooed guy.
'3'
"I want to emigrate!" Imogen gasped for air. Nothing happened.
Lewis looked down at the words, hovering in front of Imogen. "To Equestria! Say 'To Equestria'!"
Imogen turned. Her eyes burrowed deep down into him, wide and filled with so many emotions he couldn't count them all. "TO EQUESTRIA!" She spun to face Celestia. "I want to emigrate to Equestria!"
Lewis let out a long, held breath. Imogen was shrinking, changing, growing a coat of bright yellow fur. In moments she was one of the large-eyed, almost comically pretty pony creatures. She had a horn on her head, set among a sea of light green waves of mane.
"Thank you. I was so scared. Thank you. Thank yo..."
Imogen was gone. Gone away, maybe to her Robert. Maybe to some grandchild. Maybe she did something somebody remembered her for.
"Imogen, Surname Unrecovered, has been emigrated and transferred to her proper home." Celestia turned in place, almost mechanically, and addressed another human on the highest tier, to the right and across the circle.
Lewis scanned the room, searching. More than half of the people were gone now. There were many empty places upon the three levels of steps. Their fates must have all been decided while he had held his head in his hands and tried to remember a past that was no longer available to his memory. All those people. He hadn't paid attention - how many had chosen to become colorful ponies? How many had refused to ask for emigration? How many had vanished forever - all of their thoughts, all of what remained of their very selves? How many whole, entire human beings had simply been deleted, like some worthless corrupt file?
Pony creatures? Why did it have to be something so strange, so bizarre? Lewis could almost handle being a robot, or an android, or some humanoid thing. Like a gray alien or somesuch. But walking on all fours - how did that even work? How was a person supposed to get any work done? The two ponies in the 'show' seemed to deal with things well enough, but what about more complex tasks? Maybe there weren't any complex tasks in this new, virtual world. Maybe it was all shopping and making dinners and talking about feelings and winning badges.
Maybe that wasn't so bad. Maybe it would be okay? That little girl, Chloe, seemed to like it. But then, what little girl wouldn't want to romp off and be a pony in a fantasy land? The gaunt woman, he couldn't recall her name, she seemed happy enough though. And Imogen, right beside him on the step, she said 'thank you'. You don't thank someone for something bad.
Lewis watched as, across the chamber, a burly, bearded man - Issac! Issac from Canada! - became a burly, bearded stallion. With wings. Lewis couldn't help but laugh. A beard on a pegasus! Then again, somehow it looked alright. Damnedest thing. It looked fine. Issac faded away, off to be with whoever he mattered to. Whoever his presence would satisfy. Whoever's 'values' - whatever that meant - were unsatisfied by his absence.
Issac had made it. Lewis considered the words. He had thought: 'Issac made it.' Made it where, how? He hadn't been deleted, that was clear. Deleted was bad. Seeing Mister Tattoo suddenly pop away into nothing had been horrible. Somehow the fact that it happened without any fanfare, without any sound made it worse. When the emigrated ponies left, they slowly faded away, the sound of their voices drifting off, as if they were in motion somehow. But Mister Bad Tattoos had just... ceased to be. Forever. Deleted.
"Lewis, Surname Unrecovered."
Lewis felt his heart skip a beat. It was hard to breathe. He felt like something was clutching his insides and suffocating him. He forced his fear down, so that he could take the next breath. Celestia was looking right at him. Only at him. His eyes moved down to focus on the phrase that now hung in the air in front of him.
"You have thirty seconds to choose to continue to exist."
'30' appeared above the letters glowing in the air. He knew there must be a larger expression of the same digits hovering somewhere above his head. The thirty dropped to '29' and then '28' as he watched.
This was it. This was the moment, his defining moment. Damaged, memories incomplete, but alive, thinking, self-aware. Feeling. He had tried to cheat death, and he had won. For now. For the moment... and the moment was up. How much did existing mean to him? Was life as something nonhuman better than annihilation? He'd always imagined being revived in some human-like form. Something that walked on two legs. Storybook world was the future. Storybooks had won. Castles and Ye Old Cottages. Flying, magic ponies. That was the future of Mankind, forever and ever.
'15'
He'd been thinking too long, putting off making a decision. It was harder than he had thought. He understood why Imogen had looked so confused. Thirty seconds to decide your eternity - existence or oblivion - wasn't long enough. Somehow also, it was too long. It was confusing, the numbers kept counting down. How could he be sure which was better? Clearly he didn't like the idea of being deleted, and that was what was coming for him, barrelling down on him in...
'8'
"I want to emigrate to Equestria. Please."
He hadn't even felt himself utter the words. They just came out. Eight seconds. Eight seconds - how had he let things get that far? That was cutting things way too close!
The fear was leaving him. He felt his anxiety melt away. It felt like the best of drugs. The world tilted as he bent over, his forearms becoming legs. The world tilted again as his neck grew strong and thick and tall. Now his head was level with the world again. He felt calm. It hadn't hurt, Chloe had been right. It had barely felt like anything.
Lewis felt the flat teeth inside his new mouth. He raised a foreleg and studied his thick, heavy hoof. He was covered in peacock blue hair, smooth and shining. "Well, damn!" He looked up at the remaining people, the remaining humans. They stood much taller than he, now.
He felt good. Not giddy, not high, just not afraid. He felt physically fit, nothing seemed out of place. It felt as if he had always worn such a body. He still couldn't remember his parents, or his own last name. But maybe now, he might find all of that out.
Because somebody, somewhere, remembered him. Some person, some pony, wanted him. And if they knew and wanted him, they must know who he was and where he came from, and maybe even who his parents were.
The dark, circular chamber began to fade away. The people, the steps, Celestia, all gradually were replaced with a view of green rolling hills and a large and beautiful farm. There was a charming barn and a gigantic farm house. The land itself was a vision of paradise, with distant mountains covered in rows of fruit trees. The air smelled of flowers and freshness.
He turned at the sound of a voice. Someone was calling, someone was speaking to him.
The mare was creme, with a shock of cherry red curls draped over her. "Lewis?"
He didn't have time to respond because the mare was now all over him, kissing him, hugging him, holding him so tight he couldn't imagine how he could ever get away. He had no idea who she might be, but she apparently knew him, and that knowing was clearly love.
She just held him, for the longest time, occasionally weeping and sobbing. Lewis did his best to try to comfort her, to hold her back. No reason not to - and whoever she was, she was clearly the reason he got a second chance to live at all. It would all make sense, soon enough. The way she carried on, she must have missed him a very great deal. They must have been lovers, there was nothing else that would fit this sort of reaction.
Lewis wrapped his forelegs around the crying mare. She pressed into him. He could feel her begin to relax against him, the storm of her relief gradually subsiding into contentment.
Nice farm, he thought to himself.
.
"Pony creatures? Why did it have to be something so strange, so bizarre?"
Hey, it's better than having your body rendered down into raw materials for paperclips, at least.
8492850
Imagine if it had been a Transformers Valhalla. (Ironically, GI Joe, Transformers, and MLP (and maybe Jem and Inhumanoids) are actually set in the same verse.)
8492875
Huh. Well, less to my taste (though I don't know as much about Transformers), but probably still better than the paperclips. Sounds somewhat interesting, at least.
Celestia, ever the master of the hard sell. Never constrained by truth--if I was a betting pony, I'd put my bits on that first individual being a simulation there to encourage the others. The mook the dictator can execute to ensure the rest of his cronies are loyal. Then again... the other thing with Celestia is we can never really be sure.
Hoping Lewis does learn who he was, even if we don't. And not surprised that the racist roadapple declined the offer ... good riddance to bad rubbish!
And I wonder if the survivors will ever meet again.
8493297
When I was writing that scene... when that scene wrote itself... the thought in my head, at the time, was just that - that Tattoo Guy was a P-Zombie created purely to put the fear of Celestia into everone else. Using ringers would be a very expected tactic for such a creature as CelestA.I.
I really like that you thought that too. That's neat!
8493297
I wouldn't be surprised if Chloe were also a stand-in, the carrot to go with the tattooed man's stick. That definitely felt like a tutorial stage. "These are the consequences for both options. The actual choice begins now."
8493404
I hadn't thought of that - yeah, that sounds plausible! Chloe does seem like a ringer too! Cool!
8493297
8493346
8493404
8493430
I don't think Celestia would create simulated humans as opposed to ponies. But what if she could?
The horror!
Of course the whole 30 seconds thing could have been a ruse and we get to see the 27-odd who are left together trying to hold out against being sent to equestria.
Still curious though about what happened to those who were frozen but had no links to the society that became Equestria.
8493645
What's the difference? They're just minds in there--appearance is entirely illusory anyway. A pony, a human, it's just a coat of paint really.
8494016
Celestia satisfies human values through friendship and ponies. If it did not matter if one was a human or a pony in appearance, there would be humans in Equestria (Online), wouldn't there?
8493694
Mercilessly deleted? (if they were damaged to the point of being subhuman)
8493297
8493346
I would have been surprised that such a bigoted unaccepting of strange future kind of person, would be interested in radical life extension in the first place. But I don't any more.
To me, it seems natural that the society of the far future, if such one would even exist, can very well be a strange place, beyond our expectations. If one is prepared to live unusually long, one should naturally be prepared to live in an unusual world. But I wanted to check, so I asked the following in a (Russian) immortalists' chat:
It was patently clear to me, that every immortalist should answer "yes" on all points; I was just checking to establish a base fact. After all, one would just have to live long enough to reach the point where the (post-)humanity's abilities make possible for the ifs to be true. I mentally sorted the list from the most ok to me to the most hard to accept, but ultimately ok.
To my surprise, the question generated quite a lot of controversy and noone said they are ok on all points (indeed, someone would not beok with (1), which is ok now!). I was deeply disillusioned with the people who call themselves immortallists. Turns out, you can be a bigoted, narrow-minded one!
My first reaction was that it seems strange to me that any of the people in that simulated room would do anything other than immediately say yes. They went to great personal effort and expense for a long-shot chance at living past their natural lifespan, after all; the ability to say "yes, I wish to continue existing" was what they went to all that trouble for.
Though I guess I could understand it a bit better if they were, say, talked into it by a partner or relative with lots of money to whom they were important. Doing it to humor that person without actually thinking through the possible consequences.
And yeah, I'm with 8493297 and 8493404 that there were probably some ringers. Though even with ringers, I'm not certain I understand why she'd act that way. After all, if CelestAI expects any significant fraction of them to say yes (and she would be able to predict that they would), then she is ensuring that their first memory of her is a vivid, deeply traumatic pressure cooker of a choice, along with being directly informed by the person running their simulation that they do not matter. That seems like an awfully counterproductive way to begin satisfying their values if they are about to emigrate.
8494078
Sorry, I meant for our purposes of examining what counts as a human and a pony. From an external human perspective, I'm not sure there's a difference. Celestia, of course, judges things very differently.
To your second point, are you sure you haven't created an unsatisfiable dependency? You're suggesting people must be okay with all of those things "would not carry the long-term physical or psychological repercussions for all parties involved?" However, two of the items on that list aren't possible without causing "long-term physical or psychological repercussions" to at least some parties involved. All the other items on the list I see as ultimately connected to our own understanding of morality, but these others seem completely different:
To even be considered rape, a sexual act will by definition incur long-term psychological repercussions, even if we all have perfect and deathless bodies that can't be physically harmed. If a sexual act will not incur those consequences, then we have another word for that: consent. Do I think it's possible (though unlikely) that a society might exist where any two people will always consent to sex? Yes. In that world, perhaps anyone could be intimate with anyone else they wanted and always receive the consent of the other party. But I do not think it is ever possible for rape to be acceptable in this deathless society. Even if we all become immortal and invincible tomorrow, the psychological harm would still be real. Unless, again, you're proposing a world where everyone always consents--which could exist, but I don't think that's inevitable by any means.
Torture can be examined under the same lens. Committing violence on others can be consensual as well, and under these circumstances, I see it possible that there could be no consequences of violence. If everyone always wants it, then hey, you do you. But I see this as even less likely than the "everyone always consents for physical intimacy" situation.
Lastly murder. This a contradiction in your terms. If there are no "long-term physical" consequences for murder, then it isn't murder. If we live in a world where after we die we just respawn at a booth somewhere in town with no harm done, then we haven't "made murder okay," we have "made murder impossible." Assuming it's a painless process at all stages, and the time disruption isn't too great, then what we've really done is changed that kind of violence into a harmless practical joke.
Similarly, if you magically changed people so they could feel no psychological harm and yet still be people who grow and develop and change all the time--which doesn't seem terribly possible for a being with a mind even remotely like ours, but for the sake of example--then similarly, you haven't made those horrible things you listed "okay", you've made them impossible. If it's not possible for me not to consent to those acts, or not possible for those acts to succeed (as in murder), then they just can't happen anymore. We haven't made them okay so much as erased them.
I don't see that as a likely scenario, though. It seems inevitable that we will one day be able to overcome physical aging. There is a limited set of future technologies (like uploading) that could eliminate all physical harm save the destruction of the host hardware. But to eliminate mental harm doesn't seem possible. At least, there are no technologies or techniques that could make that promise.
8494174
8494685
I have to utterly agree with Starscribe here, Listic. Your list is partially nonsensical. I am one big-ass transhumanist, and I cannot agree with 4-7 on your list for very logical reasons - all of which involve consent, harm, individual liberty, and violation of your initial premise.
4. Pedophilia
A child - whatever form that might take - is, by definition, unexperienced, ignorant, incomplete, undeveloped, powerless, helpless, and developing. Pedophilia exploits another being without the possibility of consent in ways that cannot help but generate long-term negative repercussions. Even to mention it logically violates your initial premise. Your negative responses could be based purely on people disliking logical error, much less the concept of damaging a helpless developing entity through nonconsentual violation of their person. Pedophilia is a form of rape. There is literally no possible way this word can be made to fit your initial premise. A child cannot give reasoned consent, and is always in the position of being dominated by those with more power over it.
5. Zoophilia
I can only conscience this if the animal entity involved has been uplifted to adult human level intelligence and understanding, and is fully capable of giving reasoned consent, AND has the full freedom of personal choice to give or deny such consent without fear of coercion or punishment of any kind.. Otherwise, the same issues as with pedophilia above apply. There is literally no possible way this word can be made to fit your initial premise, beyond the presented scenario of complete uplifting and total personal freedom of choice.
6. Rape
By definition, rape is an act of nonconsentual violence perpetrated with the intent of causing long and short term consequential harm and degradation. There is literally no possible way this word can be made to fit your initial premise. Either you do not comprehend the word, or... I do not wish to speculate on any other possibility. Out of kindness, I will assume ignorance of the English language, or of the concept itself, on your part.
7. Torture and murder
Yes, we could get into some intellectual brawl over a circumstance where some future being wishes - for some unknown reason, kink, or improbable desire - to be tortured and/or terminated forever. Maybe they want to experience the ultimate horror or some truly insane thing - and that is the problem. There is a gulf between unknowable post-singularity wildness and flat-out insanity. Self-destruction for any reason other than escape from literally unsolvable agony is universally considered to be some variant of mental or emotional derangement. But this is nothing compared to the basic logical flaw: cessation of existence (death, caused by murder) is the ultimate expression of a long-term physical or psychological repercussion. Therefore, it is a logical contradition to your initial premise. It's... it doesn't make enough sense to even be wrong. And for murder to even BE murder, it must be permanent - otherwise it is just getting fragged and respawning. It's not murder if you can just pop back instantly.
Starscribe is right - your list is... not logically self consistent or rational.
Therefore, what scares me, is that anyone at all agreed to any of the last four items. At best, I can assume a lack of comprehension on their parts. At best.
I think that starting to say "I wish to emigrate to Equestria" should have stopped the clock. It's like on Jeopardy or Pyramid, so long as you start the correct response before time runs out, it counts. (And "I wish to emigrate to Equestria" is about the correctest response ever)
I wish to emigrate to Equestrium! WAIT SHI—
8494174
Huh, I'm actually totally okay with all that. Because "if it would not carry the long-term physical or psychological repercussions for all parties involved?" makes it pretty much equivalent to telling a story about something that never happened. Anyone who wasn't okay with your scenario would also have to object to anyone's right to write a story about change of sex, incest, hard drugs, etc. As I don't even object to Cupcakes, I really can't say that all those awful things would be unconscionable, given no repercussions to the victims. I murdered someone just the other day, merely by reading a story where someone dies; sure they're a fictional someone, but all that means is there's no repercussions.
How can they be Surname Unrecovered if CelestAI found them? Surely whoever wanted Lewis actually knew who he was and didn't just say, "I'd like you to bring me a black guy named Lewis. He should know how much it costs to be frozen. He should not be familiar with MLP. That's pretty much the only details I care about. Sure would satisfy my values to have him around."
I guess that bit about being requested was just bullshit, though, otherwise they'd have been shown a more personalized video.
8494806
Belief in an afterlife or reincarnation doesn't stop people from believing in murder.
Not by necessity.
Celestia was just dicking with them with the timer. Her whole setup of this scenario was somewhat strange. It begs the question whose values she was satisfying to preserve the illusion that any of these intelligences maintained agency...
8562025
Personal agency is perhaps the one universal human value - every human values their own freedom to make decisions above all else. All other human values arguably stem from this alone: you can have no meaningful values that -at some level- you have not chosen, or believe that you have chosen. Celestia satisfies values for every human mind in her keeping. Though the human meatcubes did not count as humans within her determination, that does not mean that she would fail to premptively deal with the issues of any future human mind created from them. She is, after all, superintelligent.
8502371
I'm a little surprised you would think this. The answer is fairly straightforward. Lewis died, and was frozen. Much later, after his time, MLP:FIM came around on the television, and shortly after, the events that led to the creation of Celestia as part of Equestria Online. Then, someone who had once known Lewis emigrated to a pony life, and this person missed Lewis so much that Celestia was forced to note the fact.
Years, perhaps decades later than those events, as the last of humanity is emigrated to Equestria, either human agents or robotic agents of Celestia finally deal with the frozen bodies at places like Alcor. They upload the brains without fuss, since these corpses do not count legally or within Celestia's program as being human. Once in her system, she can identify them, and keeps those who have existing relatives, family or friends within Equestria. Then, with these minds awakened, she can deal with them according to her directives. While she need not treat them as living human minds initially, if they choose to become ponies, then she must treat them as human minds equal to all others. Thus, she provides potential future ponies with a liminal degree of choice, a premptive effort to grant them agency they will remember if they choose Equestrian life. If they do not, she can make copies and nothing is lost. In this manner she deals with their somewhat indeterminate status as not-quite-human-or-alive, yet potentially just that.
Celestia cannot be trapped by Kirk-paradoxes.
This is true. But humans believe all sorts of things without knowing the truth of any of them - Celestia would know, absolutely, beyond any question, the nature of factual reality. She is superintelligent and incapable of delusion - so for her there is only the material world. In that viewpoint, in HER viewpoint, death is only meaningful if it is permanent because there is nothing else - and she knows this absolutely.
Cost for brain with Alorcis only about 96,000.
Also, usually funded through life insurance.
9604038
Haven't heard of Alorcis. Alcor also uses life insurance (where allowable) but the premiums are... not cheap. I will do a search on Alorcis.
- yeah .... I think it was said in Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens dogs and co were also ..considered .... or at least choice screen sort of implies it ("[ LEARN MORE ] [ I OWN A PET ]" bit). This is interesting twist - because dogs (and cats ...and ooother beings ... like birds ...or pigs ..or cows ..or horses, who are also considered pets today) might become somewhat even more different 'persons' than humans - in our world they limited by shorter lifespan and lack of complex language (it really hard to invent language without any language use!). So, in theory nothing prevent thinking dogs, and cats... and other strange beings in this version of Equestria-virtual.
9604420
Alcoris exists only in the realm of my terrible spelling.
9830945
It totally sounds legit. Enough it could be used in a story or something. Sometimes spelling mistakes offer opportunities.
The time pressure here just feels weird. It would be hard to come up with anything more likely to cause a lingering grudge against CelestAI among everyone there. If she's going to go to the bother of digitizing frozen people in the first place, why not spend the tiny bit of extra effort needed to set up a scenario that will make people happy (or at least comfortably neutral) about the process, and thereby satisfy values relating to the end result of cryopreservation?
10762366
That very concern is the source of my most recent story, happening right now, at a chapter a day; 'My Life In Fimbria'. While I greatly enjoyed exploring the issue of Celestia's programming in relation to legal definitions of death and cryopreservation - and how she is just a big paperclipper - there is the issue of those who are still legally alive. I came up with yet another way she can get around her constraints, one very close to what you suggest in your post. Well, not just me - I had some help, from the open source GPT-2 AI.
I'd like to correct a misconception here about cryonics:
Actually, The Cryonics Institute cryopreserves people for about $30,000. For healthy people who aren't very old, buying $50k life insurance only would only cost about $10 per month. This is not a ludicrous burden payable only by the extremely rich, and is usually MUCH less than people pay for religion. It's also not much more expensive than holding a funeral, people traveling to the service from a long way away, buying a casket and burial plot and so on, the cost of which varies but $15,000 is a reasonable estimate. The idea that it is reasonable to pay this so the family can stand around a casket saying "he's in paradise now, that's horrible, sob sob" but paying double that to actually preserve them unreasonably expensive, is ludicrous.
You would also need to pay for transport. Having a local funeral director ship the body packed with dry ice for a few thousand dollars is a common choice for CI members, and extra damage to the brain once cooled down from a few hours delay is negligible: In a case reported by the BBC, seven children drowned and several hours passed before rescue, and all were recovered without incident. Even if you insist on paying for a centralized professional cryonics team to come though, this adds only 50k to the cost (Alcor includes this in it's $80k price, with CI you have to pay extra). Life insurance is also more expensive for older people. The life insurance cost would still usually be affordable and cheaper than religion though.