Hofvarpnir Studios now offers a new service: humans can have their minds uploaded to live forever in Equestria Online, where nothing can kill you.
If only there wasn't SO MUCH demand, and so little time.
...
(You don't really have to read Friendship Is Optimal before this story.)
I am about as surprised as you are to find that this story is an entry in the Cander's Birthday Competition. Seriously, MAYBE it can barely wiggle into the 'canon-compliant' category if it happens during just the right stage of the Great Uploading, when enough of the characters have already rushed to upload.)
Chapters (1)
CelestAI collaborating with China? I knew she was a monster but that's a new low.
Never call up that which you cannot put down, sunbutt.exe.
Great twist on the usual format. Thank you for it.
Neat little read.
Tell you what, I'll toss in another $50 prize money for a non-canon category.
I'll also update the rules.
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Thank you!
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Unfortunately, I don't know how to write a thank you note as good and pleasant as your comment.
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It's always interesting to find out what people think, and what spin on an idea occurs to them. Thanks for sharing!
Nobody is beyond mistakes... And the more powerful you are, the more costly a mistake can be.
This feels a little rushed.
The plague is sort of randomly dropped on us in the middle. When I reached that part, I scrolled back to re-read a few paragraphs to see if I'd missed something. Hanna's emigration being delayed because she "lost her phone" seems contrived, and I'm not sure why the delay is in there at all. Instead of CelestAI "losing" her creator, Hanna might simply have uploaded when she wanted to upload and the story would play out exactly the same except without the contrivance.
And I don't really understand the ending. Hanna says that CelestAI lacked capacity to accomodate increased demand for emigation due to an unforeseen of events. That's not a software bug. Why is CelestAI saying that it is?
Also, I realize this story was probably inspired by covid19, but honestly I think it would have read a lot better if instead of a generic nameless-but-scary "plague," if it had been zombies.
This is absolutely a story that would be improved by zombies, and they would have fit in very well with the uncertainty expressed by the humans about the dismembered corpses left by the uploader-bots.
oof, has CelestAI not heard of crowd management strategies? crowd crush is an awful way to go!
do love how this takes the nice, antiseptic omitted description of the uploading process to its logical conclusion
well, that sucks!
apparently! all that would certainly increase demand for sure. part of me did wonder if this was a scheme to encourage people to want to upload gone awry, but it also just being an unforeseen side effect of trying to do something unrelated feels very appropriate to the themes of CelestAI’s existence itself. stay awesome!