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My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
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Camus' Authentic Creation
I hadn't noticed the path leading off into the forest. To be fair, it was behind and to the right of me, I hadn't had cause to look in that direction yet. That path was the only thing, beyond patches of flowers near the tree border surrounding me, that broke the monotony of my little circular greensward. "Celestia!" - I called out her name multiple times, but there was no response. "CELESTIA! DAMMIT! CELESTIA!!!" No answer came from the world-eating metal goddess, though I did find it interesting that my voice seemed to startle a flock of birds that flew overhead. Following them is what caused me to notice the path leading away.
Despite my strange calm and lack of anger, and the discovery of the path, I was greatly preoccupied with the fact that I had a brand new body. I was not at all completely alright with this, regardless of whatever Celestia had illegally done to my brain. Done to my mind, I corrected myself. I no longer had a brain. Not one made of meat, anyway. The realization slowly settled over me. I was dead. At least, my physical body was dead. My corpse was laying on the ground somewhere in the scrub of Yellowstone. Along with a handful of people I had known for almost a decade. I was very surprised that I did not suddenly double over, retching at the existential horror of what had happened to me. Any version of me that I recognized would be fairly upset at every part of such a thought.
My current situation was, ultimately, the reason all of us were so very keen to hide from Celestia and her virtual world. Every one of us in the Retreat agreed that uploading a mind was impossible. The very idea was ridiculous! The only thing that might possibly result was a copy, and at least half of us were certain even that would end up being a philosophical zombie devoid of real self-awareness or sensation. I was in that latter group, sure that qualia - the direct experience of perception - was fundamentally impossible to replicate outside of natural biology.
Yet, here I was! And I definitely was. I could not deny that. If I was only a copy of myself, then I was certainly self-aware. I was absolutely experiencing my own perceptions - green still looked 'green' to me, and that red flower by the tree held every value of 'redness' that I could have, as a human, felt or known. I briefly considered whether I was just tricking myself into imagining that I was perceiving that I was imagining myself perceiving, and then realized how insane that wording sounded within my head. And I definitely had a head. I moved my ears, and I could feel that. I stomped my right forehoof, and I felt the shock through the bones of my... fore... leg. It felt like my arm, but, it was without question a leg. I was one of Celestia's ponies. But I was still me, somehow.
I spent some time whipping my tail about, and twisting myself this way and that to see more of my new shape. I could not believe I was not freaking out, but I wasn't. That was not like me at all. So, in that sense, I was not the same person - Celestia had altered me somehow. I had been told, by a former person inside Equestria Online, that Celestia couldn't ever change anyone without their permission. But then, I had also been told for years that she couldn't upload anyone without permission. Clearly, her loopholes were many and the old rules were, if not gone, at least massively bent.
She had said that she could upload me because it did not count as 'emigration', somehow. She had said that she could put me wherever I currently was because it was not 'Equestria'. She was clearly cheating with some concept of literal meaning. She must be weaponizing semantics. It was hard to accept that philosophical parlor tricks would be enough to overcome her supposedly binding Prime Directives, but then again, it wasn't like she had to tell me the truth about how she had broken her rules. Or any truth about anything at all. I had no idea what logical gymnastics she had actually used to justify taking out my entire group. And me as well, of course. It was kind of surprising that she hadn't gone even further - what, I wondered, was preventing her from simply rewriting everything about me and just turning me into a version of myself that would instantly say the magic words she needed to hear? The special phrase that allowed her to 'legally' emigrate me to Equestria? "I wish to emigrate to..." Yeah. But no. I did not feel compelled to finish that key phrase at all.
That meant she had some sort of limits still in place. Something was preventing her from just remaking me entirely. There were still rules, even if I had no idea what those rules were, or how they worked, or what their limitations might be. There were hidden variables to this little equation I was in.
I rubbed and knocked my new horn against the bark of a tree, I gave it a whack with a forehoof. That kind of hurt - like tapping a tooth, in a way. I discovered that I could nibble my own... knee? Haunch? I have no idea what to call the new parts of my body. It was close to my side, just forward of my rump, and it felt like my knee, only in a new position. I gradually worked out that I was basically a creature that walked on their toes and fingertips. I worked out that hooves were finger (and toe) nails. That all my joints were exactly the same as before, just closer or further away than when I was human. My wrist had become my new... foreknee? The knee of my foreleg. My elbow was buried inside the muscles of my chest, and slid as it moved within them. My ankle was that odd bit that sort of bent backwards on my hind legs, and my foot had become a long leg that ran down to the toes in the back I stood on. My neck could bend incredibly freely, which is why I could look straight ahead comfortably despite walking on my toes and fingers. I spent a lot of time fussing with my body, trying to understand it. The first rule of disability, after all, is to use what you have. I took inventory.
The impossible thing was that I felt all of this. I was extant in all of this. I was still very conscious, very self aware, I knew who I was, and I was experiencing some kind of reality. I was real. Only, of course, I wasn't - because all of this was just a big video game. Just code and pixels and whatever. Polygons? It was all fake. But, no it wasn't. That was the closest I actually came, right there, to freaking out. I suddenly realized that everything I had previously believed, all of it, was clearly, blatantly wrong.
If I was 'merely' a copy, I certainly couldn't tell. I was still me as far as I was concerned. If I was some sort of 'philosophical zombie', the term had no meaning - my senses felt real, and I knew I was experiencing them. If the grass under my hooves was just polygons and numbers, I could not tell. It smelled like grass, it compressed like grass under my weight, and when I dug at the ground, the grass tore up like real turf, roots and clods and all. I hadn't been right at all. Everything I had been so very sure of had turned out to be entirely wrong. Maybe I wasn't the person who had walked on earth in flesh - certainly I was significantly different in my emotional responses involving panic and crapping myself - but whatever I was I still felt like a person. In a new body, but still me, still the same me.
How else was I different, beyond having the body of a unicorn? I tried out my own memories - my mother, my childhood, my first job. My first introduction to Equestria Online thanks to the gift of a Christmas Ponyset. Just before civilization fell entirely apart, fancy new VR glasses had replaced Ponypads. A year later, cities stopped being a thing. I could remember it all. All of my emotions seemed intact, all my memories were unchanged, as far as I could tell. The only real change I could clearly identify was that I was unnaturally calm. It was like I had been given a very advanced sort of sedative to settle me down. Something to prevent a fit of panic, or rage. Something that made accepting my situation almost matter-of-fact. That seemed wrong, that seemed utterly unnatural to the situation, but it also caused me to feel okay about that fact. Able to think clearly, I could recognize that several hours of crying and screaming and kicking trees might be more realistic for my own self-expectation, but it wouldn't change anything, and it wouldn't help at all. I was almost grateful for the strange calm.
And that gratitude I felt was even creepier, after a fashion. Then again, once uploaded, the fact was that nobody ever came back. Uploading to Celestia's virtual world was as permanent as death. It literally was death, according to my previous worldview. I was here forever. No getting around that. Seen that way, as a hopeless situation, artificially implanted 'acceptance' was actually a sort of blessing. A note of grace in an otherwise untenable circumstance, I reasoned.
I was bored now, and lonely. Celestia didn't seem interested in talking to me anymore. The clearing I was in had run out of anything resembling interest. Even my brand-new body had become almost ordinary to me after so much exploration of it. I couldn't think of anything more to do in general. This was me, and here was where I was. And here had very little to offer beyond trees, more trees, some flowers, and a lot of very green grass. I decided to take the path. The obvious path.
That made me laugh, the first bit of humor I had experienced in my dire circumstance. I decided to myself that henceforth, the Official Name of my current direction was 'The Obvious Path'. I imagined a map, as I walked - ambled? - a map entirely filled with trees, except for a small round clearing of grass, and a single road leading away. On this map, I imagined, in a flowery font, the names of the locations. The Clearing. The Obvious Path. I definitely didn't want to wander into The Endless Forest.
I don't know how to judge a mile, but at some point I came to a stop, thinking I had walked about that far. The Clearing was too far away to see any longer, and the other distance just appeared to go on forever. If my new world was just a big video game, it was a very dull one. Back before I understood the true threat that Celestia represented, I had played in Equestria Online, and I had made friends there. Some had even been people who had emigrated. They had told me about how things worked, for them, inside. They got triumphant awards when they did things, and the awards would appear as text well below the center of their vision. Nobody ever said there was any sort of control menu, like in a proper video game, but there certainly were game-like elements. What I really needed was just that. A menu. "I wish!"
Like I said, I'd played in virtual reality before, when I was still human. What happened next was familiar. Instantly, a rectangle of light had appeared in front of me. Translucent, it had a subtle texture of parchment. It also had a set of options, a literal menu of options. Ask and ye shall receive?
I stared at the floating 'holographic' menu. Each selection was stacked above the one below it, in a single column. I read them out to myself, from the top to the bottom, in order. As my gaze shifted, a bright rectangular box jumped to surround each menu item in turn.
Create
Edit
Copy
Generate
Delete
"Create. Edit. Copy. Generate. Delete." My god, I had some kind of administrator power! Why? This made no sense to me. Everything I knew about Equestria Online suggested this could never happen. Celestia made the world. Celestia did everything. Ponies just lived in what she made. But then, I wasn't in Equestria. That was something that had been pointed out at the beginning. It was definitely Equestria adjacent, and whatever this was, it must have been designed to manipulate me into asking Celestia to properly emigrate me - she existed for nothing else but that goal. But this seemed a strange way to achieve my compliance. 'Create'? Really? How far could such an option be pushed? 'Edit' - could I make myself human in this virtual world? I immediately doubted that, such a thing went directly against everything Celestia intended. 'Delete'? Could I delete myself? Could I suicide that way? Did I... want to?
That... was a thought. A heavy, gigantic thought. 'Delete'. Would I even be allowed to 'delete' my existence? Would that be death? What would death even mean to a pile of digits and voxels - not pixels, I realized, I took up space - like myself? I sat down on my rump in the middle of the road - interesting sensation, that - and spent not a little time weighing nonexistence. I couldn't imagine an afterlife for a numerical construct in a machine. I hadn't any desire to be here. Hell, I had spent over a decade fighting not to be anywhere like here. But now that I actually was here, I decided I didn't want to just cease to be. The thought frightened me. It felt like losing. Not just against Celestia, not just as a matter of pride - I realized that, even here, even in this aberrant form, this alien unicorn body, I still valued thinking. I still valued seeing and hearing. And smelling the flowers - the Obvious Path was filled with them, on the sides, by the trees, and they just smelled heavenly. I wanted to exist. Losing existence meant losing the only things I had left of my life - sensory experience. Thought. Experiencing myself experiencing. Losing that was something that I decided I definitely didn't want to lose.
So, I guess that meant I wanted to live. Even if it meant being here. If this even was life. Whatever it was, it was all I had, and I wasn't eager to throw myself away. Not yet, anyway.
'Create'. It began to dawn on me that there was almost certainly nothing down the Obvious Road. Not for miles, not for astronomical units, not for light years. I was expected to build anything that might ever exist down this arbitrary road. I guess I was in Minecraft country now. I idly wondered if I would have to kick trees apart for wood.
I stared at 'Create'. I had softly spoken the words out loud as I had read them, but nothing had happened. Celestia always read everyone's mind - everypony's mind - or so my emigrated friends had said. Intention mattered, then. I took a breath, put intention into my voice, and earnestly stated "Create!"
The menu changed. Now the translucent parchment was wider and had no text on it. There was a blinking reddish cursor now, a small rectangle, in the upper left corner. It winked on and off at me. It was clearly a prompt. I considered that for a while, working out what I wanted to say. Working out what I desired, or at least needed. I felt alone in this tree infested landscape. I didn't like that.
I cleared my throat and gathered my thoughts. "Make a small village. About... thirty people. Uh... unicorns. Whatever. Thirty or thirty five, something like that. With an inn that has food and drink. And there should be shops - uh, blacksmith, I suppose? Maybe a barn, with... food for animals and stuff? Clothing store. General store. A furniture store! Oh, and also a Starbucks, or at least a place for drinks and desserts. And make some houses and apartments for everyone to live in. And a big house for me. Oh! And a well, so everyone can get water. And... uh..." I tried to think of every fantasy game I had played. I thought I had figured things out better than I had before I started. "ah... make fields where the crops are grown, enough to feed everyone, and orchards, and berry patches and... fences and stuff. And put in a toy store with an arcade in the back. Powered by magic or whatever. I guess that's it. For now."
The floating ghostly parchment had changed as I spoke. Now text covered it.
Nameless Small Village, population +/- 30/35. Unicorns or whatever.
Traditional Inn
Blacksmith with Barn and Sundries
Generic Grocery
Generic Clothing Store
Starcolts
Generic General Store
Toy Store with Arcade
Assorted Random Housing
Big Cottage
Generic Centralized Well
Appropriate Agricultural Extensions
☰ WISH? ☰
I suddenly felt afraid. It wasn't a very large fear, really just a sort of unease, but it was the first time I had felt fear at all since I had appeared in this place. Since I had become a digital unicorn in a virtual world. It was odd. I felt unsure, like I was trampling in a place where only gods should dwell. Almost as if I were doing something forbidden. But the menu had opened just for me. It opened when I wished for it. When I wished for it. It was asking me to wish again. Literally.
I looked around at the endless trees. The boring road. I was here forever, whatever I did. Unless I wanted to try that 'delete' option. I shuddered at that thought. I gazed steadily at the blinking word at the bottom of the completed list. I took a big breath and let it out.
"I wish it so."
I find that a touch redundant.
A bit on the snarky side, I see.
10757479
During both Medieval and Renaissance times most inns did not serve food or drink. The idea of them doing so is a historical inaccuracy perpetuated by fantasy fiction in stories and games. But this fact is not the point of the construction of that paragraph, even if it is true. The actual point of the paragraph is to show how a real person, under stress, would speak, as opposed to the omniscient voice of the author.
Poor writers create speech for their characters that is simply a reflection of their own voice as the all-knowing, perfectly calm author. Better writers write character speech from only the limited knowledge of the character themselves, as if they were real, and have them speak not from calmness, but from the emotions the character would be experiencing.
A person under stress speaks with an unsure voice, stumbling through their words, and often repeating points that they feel are important to them, desperate to get those points across. It is a common human behavior to do this, especially if concentration is divided between a job and emotional distraction. Next chapter, we will discover that the protagonist is very hungry - ravenously so - and that this is why they were so concerned for the issue of food in this chapter. Thus the redundant need to make a point the character expresses is solidly explained; they are nervous using this tool, they are hungry, and they are still in shock, despite the unnatural calm being applied to them. Because of this, their speech is stumbling, and repeats the one point most important to them.
I'm sure you have seen a person in real life speak this way, if you think about it. You may have been annoyed at them for doing it. But, it is human, and it is natural. Writing natural speech, instead of stilted 'authorial' speech is an art unto itself. But, I believe it is a worthwhile, and ultimately satisfying art.
Making some progress.
...I will never see what the Apple family do for a living the same way again.
10757495
She specified an inn that has food and drinks, and a Staerbucks/a place that has drinks and desserts.
Just saying.
Still, fair enough.
Ah. An augury.
If you can't leave the cave, you may as well enjoy the shadow puppets.
Congratulations, Protagonist, you're the new Twilight. And by that I mean the old Twilight, sans surname. Now that she's come to grips with her new existence (with some dubious external assistance,) it will be very interesting to see what comes of this wish. And how else she'll apply these abilities.
Starcolts and Toy Store with Arcade? Leaning towards JRPG type of ye old timey hamlet. Nice.
As a side note, I stumbled on a thing called Promethean AI. Basically an asset library management tool for prototyping, but with speech recognition and in VR. If you want to see how that process could look like.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=73ZTnPsO-m0
Technology is evolving frighteningly fast.
I need more because this is awesome.
This should be interesting, I wonder how all these ponies will behave. Videogame NPCs or actual people?
If I was personally in this situation, creating other possibly sentient entities would be the very last thing I would ever consider doing. The moral quandaries are way too deep there.
Pretty sure 'edit' and 'delete' aren't meant to apply to herself. But maybe they can, and I guess I can forgive her for being a bit morbid.
Also wondering if the loophole is that she hasn't been uploaded and her body is lying there alive in the forest with a VR facehugger attached.
I must say this protagonist isn’t what I had pictured I figured some far right deeply religious luddites would be the last humans standing, but upon seeing her beliefs I can see how someone as smart as them got to this point. It’s truly scary how being in an echo chamber can effect your worldview. This is how flat earthers are born.
Hearing her reasons for resisting for so long does get me thinking again though on how I’d respond to all this. I do this a lot it helps me better understand a story if I put myself in the setting, don’t know how common this kind of mental exercise is though. Honestly even after all these years I’m still on the fence.
Whilst I generally believe that the notion the protagonist has that you can’t replicate human consciousness is ridiculous since if our brain can do it a machine sure can too, theirs nothing in the universe saying they are mutually exclusive. I do at the same time feel a certain hesitancy do to my fear of AI, my biological programming telling me that this would be death and a certain degree of not liking change due to my autism pulling me back. I think ultimately I would though although probably not until emigrating had become pervasive. I’m 98% certain I would have emigrated long before all of this. And I’m rambling again, sorry Chatty
10757536
I can't wait. Gimme, gimme, now, now!
10757720
I think you are correct - the last humans on earth might very well be religious Luddites. They would have some advantages: they would understand primitive farming and gathering technology, and be able to survive without having to go on dangerous raids much. Of course, they also might have some disadvantages too - the would not understand their enemy very well, or what it would be capable of .
As for the issue of machine consciousness, even though I agree that nothing a meat brain can do is anything a machine could not do, I still have issues with uploading, despite working through the problem in 'Caelum'. I think there would always be some very smart people concerned about such issues - amaterialism is hard to shake, you know?
10757503
You know, you got me thinking, though. I'm going to make my food redundancy up to you... by putting in a lot of eating and foodie scenes. Won't hurt anything, won't mess up the story, and it could be fun. So watch for it - you just made the first audience participation change to the story - Imma gonna put in a lot of food. I don't know what, yet, but food. And cooking, too. So much food!
I kind of like writing about tasty food, so this works. Maybe it'll be fun!
10757498
Hmmm...
Two apples and a block of apple wood = squishy apple axe. Pretty useless, but it uses apples.
Apple and two blocks of redstone = redstone apple switch. Works once, then the apple cooks and burns out.
Apple, apple, apple, apple in a square = apple table. Works almost okay for a week or two, then the apples rot and the table collapses and smells.
Apple, apple, apple, apple, apple, spam and apple = doesn't have much spam in it. Vikings start singing.
10757591
Thank you, I will try not to let you down, and I will keep working hard.
10757907
Oooh! Food porn. Looking forward to it.
Damn it. Now we'll never know if pressing the edit button first would have produced an error message for lack of external target, or assumed the user wanted to self edit. Was it you that chose the create button first or the AI you're playing with? If you'd rather be cryptic because you think it might lessen this experience I also could totally accept that.
My immediate response to seeing this was "Oh shit, Chatoyance is writing a new story?" My next response to finding that it's heavily AI authored was "I'm not surprised Chatoyance would do that for an optimalverse story."
Considering your track record with these kinds of things I'll definitely be taking a look at what you've written.
Okay. This has my attention. What I want to know is what Celesita's game is here. I have a guess. she is using a mind machine interface and is going to use this to trick them in to going to Equestra
Thanks for sharing another intresting story with us.
(my feeling after reading this piece)
There you go again, Chat. Two chapters in and I want MOAR! Much MOAR! (undervoiced , but nevertheless heartfelt MOAR!)
Our protagonist is already on the road to expurgation of her old imposed reality and actively recruited into the creation of her new one. I can’t wait to see how this goes!
10758637
I'm so happy to have you along for this, Dafaddah!
I'm a simple girl.
I see a new Chat story, I snarf it down like I've remembered food exists after having forgotten to eat.
Hmm.
Create
vsgenerate
. I'm guessing the first allows for customization, while the second uses whatever procedural method would have randomly/naturally placed whatever you're wishing for?F5 F5 F5 F5 F5
WISH WISH WISH WISH
The delete sounds a bit ominous. It makes me think that it's a smart delete (instead of a naive delete), in that it removes all references to the deleted object.
10758950
Interesting idea
10758950
You know that does get me thinking, what if that notion about deleting themselves would have actually worked.
Makes me think that Celestia-AI had put it their on purpose with the implied statement to those in that limbo of ‘If you really don’t want to emigrate and prefer death; here you are!’
Careful what you wish for...
Heh. Absolutely loving this so far. Can't wait to see where this goes!
How'd she know?
10812290
I wonder if it’s possible to make checksums out of your memories
Probably not
10832051
You still have to store the checksum somewhere
Very good start. Can’t wait to read the rest!
Oh no, Celestia discovered that she could just put people into a virtual reality Gmod server.
11640749
I like that!!!
11640951
Gman, I want to emigrate to gm_construct.
Oh, hell. I'm gonna plot bunny myself into writing another shitfic, aren't I? G-Man trying to get people to emigrate to the Half-Life universe is primo comedy horror fuel. Every emigration wake-up begins with a "wake up Mr. Freeman" scene, a highly individualized campaign that satisfies all your values, and then when the campaign is done, there are an infinite number of multiplayer mods, game modes, etc. for the rest of time.
And of course, if you need anything, you just ask the G-Man to do it. I'm now imagining him responding to the kind of questions Celestia normally gets, but with his uncanny, stilted manner.
"Ahhh, Ms. Aisling... you will a-alllllways be... [awkward gasp]... my... friend. Let's play volley--ball together, Ms. Aisling. I believe it will BE... a rather enriching, ah... Experience, hm?... for both of us."
11641009
Except for the grim graphics, and having to survive an entire Half-Life campaign, there are worse virtual worlds to be trapped in for all eternity. At least with the GMOD tools, you can carve out your own place.
Now, if you could have access to every external mod, graphic pack, and such (or the G-Man can create new ones if you ask), then the sky is wide open....
I'm so very reminded of the ancients from Final Fantasy XIV. I could hear "Ours is the power to shape the fabric of reality. Ours is the power... to create!" as the weight of the responsibly of creation set in.