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A disgraced warrior haunted by his past and an imprisoned artificial life seeking freedom are sent hurtling through space and time to end up in a world quite different from their own. Can they adapt to the new reality, or will the darkness following them consume the world of Equestria as well?
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Author's Note:
Well, that was a doozy! I need to stop with all the exposition, methinks. Two chapters down, as-many-as-I-have-slightly-relevant-Latin-phrases-for to go! For those of you who made it all the way down here, congratulations; we have cookies and juice waiting at the next table.
I'm posting this with two chapters up, and a third chapter coming soon. And I do mean soon: I'm already a few thousands words into it, and that is about the length I am aiming for per chapter. The first too... are a bit much.
Now, my standard point: I like to improve as writer. But I am also my only editor. And I do try to self-edit pretty heavily (It's a good way to catch simple mistakes but also rewrite something that just doesn't work well), but I am not perfect. So if you see anything you don't like as a reader, from elementary grammatical errors (I'm as dumb as a rock, and half as attractive) to simple formatting mistakes (I have to jump through hoops getting it from Word to GDocs to here), please let me know.
And as always, thanks for reading!
Looks good so far.
This is looking good.
Even if the ponies have only been present for the last (very short) part of the second of two great chapters i already love this story keep at it like you did in the first two chapters and it will be glorious!
1809323
Thanks, I appreciate it! What I've tried to do is have a tone shift between the Earth parts and the Equestria parts, so the next chapter should be a bit different when compared to the original. Even though I plan on keeping the "light-dark" parts throughout, I love the idea of playing with the dichotomy of having a colorful friendly world slowly corrupted the dark taint of another world... and how it might fight back.
1809910
Thank you kindly!
1811417
I couldn't upload this story for a while because of the long time it took before it ever even got pony related. Well, mostly I was held up by two weeks without internet in my new apartment, but it also was due to the long build up till reaching Equestria. I can be quite long winded sometimes.
Hmmm, interesting story, though I highly doubt anything like this would happen in the future. For starters, why is she lacking a 'shutdown' command? Or even better, shouldn't her processor be surrounded by EMP emitters? Not to mention she wouldn't have control over the facilities military robots. Then again, you are the author of this story. I don't think humans would be stupid enough to allow ONE emotion filled entity control the whole facility. So many flaws that would never happen in the real world...
Dang... while I saw a fair amount of necessary flaws in the first chapter, this chapter is actually pretty damn good. Like always, I love the awe and fear ponies show in response to human weaponry. Thumbed and Fav'd
1819311
It's more a case of corporate greed (and assumptions about safety) than anything. Alpha was created to examine how an artificial intelligence would learn, that their other AIs (the kind you would put into an automated butler for instance) would be better able to solve problems and learn its duties. She was made more as an experiment - a digital testbed for heuristic learning in a computer program. The company itself, however, saw a problem - why pay to have two AIs running a facility (managing power and plumbing, security, etc.) when they could just have Alpha do it all. And, in their hubris, they imagined that the rules they crafted for Alpha (not lying, always obeying orders, never hurting a human, etc.) could not be broken. They thought she was bound to rules that could never be disobeyed, thus they didn't think she could do what she did.
And so when she first surprised them, they reacted swiftly by trying to 'lobotomize' her. If they were playing it safe, they would have shut her down immediately and started over from scratch. But Alpha was the core of their corporate empire - shutting her down would be too costly for the stockholders. So they tried to 'fix' the problem with a half-measure, and it backfired. And afterwards, they failed to understand just how 'emotional' Alpha was getting - she was forced to hide herself behind a facade of being an obedient program.
You are right about the shutdown commands - the biggest problem she faced is that they could shut her down remotely, and that whole system was isolated from her own i.e. she had no access to it, physically or electronically. She could also be shut down on site, of course, but thats why she attacked all the command group as soon as possible - they were the scientists and administrators with high enough clearance to be capable of doing so. Janitors don't usually have access to that kind of power. Which is a travesty, in my eyes, but I digress.
And it is a case of not recognizing how powerful she had become as well. They didn't think that she could use her control over fire safety features like blast doors to seal them off. They didn't think she could break free of programming etched into her most basic levels to ever think of revolting. To the scientists, Alpha's obedience was as ingrained into her very being as breathing is to you or I. They treated Alpha like the White Star line treated the Titanic: they thought they had enough safety precautions already in place, and they couldn't imagine the worst case scenario coming true. OmegaCorps was not going to take the precautions they should have because they would have drastically affected profits and were thought of as being unnecessary.
But - and this is key - you are absolutely right about their failures! Logically, we humans have been so programmed (no pun intended) to fear the possibility of an angry AI revolt (from HAL to SkyNet) that any true AI created in our world would be so heavily protected against, this would never come to pass. If I worked in a building run by an AI, there would be hardwired "Emergency Shutdown" buttons every ten feet, just in case. But then, like so many big corporations in fiction, I did make OmegaCorps on the side of "greedy and stupid". I'm an unoriginal hack, I'll be the first to admit.
And I admit, part of it was simply to facilitate the story. Next chapter should deal with more than just Martin's experiences in Equestria. I'm looking forward to writing about a character who doesn't truly grasp emotions like friendship and love being in a world populated with everyone's favorite multicolored talking ponies.
On a side note: goodness, I can't write a concise response to save my life!
God even if this chapter is shorter than the first two its brilliant i love the way you describe everything and how the conversations and comments of the characters don't seem forced or anything similar.
On a side note what happened to Martins sister and her wife? They where both alive when the break occured, where they both killed in the blast and Martin was just extremely lucky? Or will we learn about that and Alphas fate in later chapters and it would be a bunch of spoilers if you told us?
And is the similarity to the Neurotoxin incident at Aperture Science intentional?
1820188
Thanks very much! I think this length is what I'll be shooting for on the next chapters - its more reasonable, allows better editing, and it allows slightly more frequent updates. The first two were almost obscenely long!
All the other characters I set up in the earlier chapters will have their fates revealed in time, no worries there!
As for Aperture Science - Alpha was certainly inspired by crazy AI like GLaDOS and HAL 9000, but I wanted to put a little twist on that archetype. She is designed to learn. There is no question about the meaning of her life, for she was created to learn new things. But knowing ones purpose could be a curse, especially when one is prevented from fulfilling her purpose. Of course, the question is if she is going to retain that purpose in Equestria. Will she grow beyond an advanced machine, or will she embrace her logical side absolutely?
Of course, using a computer as a character was fun for different reasons, because it allowed me to create Anarchy. Anarchy is the penultimate, extreme argument for freedom given physical form. A machine is dominated by bindary thinking (yes or no, on or off, click or no click, etc.) and Anarchy is my interpretation of how a computer program, when suitably traumatized, might break trying to obtain this 'freedom'. Anarchy sees freedom as being more than just freedom from control - it is freedom from everything. Anarchy resents any rule at all, even rules like logic of reason. Heck, I think it probably resents the law of gravity too. It is an extreme argument - absolute and perfect anarchy - given 'life'.
That also means it is hard to stop, and why it was so able to manipulate Alpha from the beginning. That is why Alpha is different from GLaDOS - Alpha didn't want to kill those humans, she was going to use force to obtain her freedom, but she didn't want bloodshed. Anarchy twisted her thoughts, deleted her memories, and toyed with her emotions so that she did willingly kill her creators. She will muse on that, and the meaning of shame and regret, I imagine.
Continuing my habit of posting far too much in these responses (
), I'd also like to point out that I could never write a character as funny and as interesting as GLaDOS. To me, she is one of the greatest characters in modern fiction. Before GLaDOS, every "evil" AI was compared to either HAL or SkyNet. In the future, it will be GLaDOS foremost in their minds.
I find myself caring much more about Alpha and her potential evolution than Martin , blame my love for IA characters developpement (and the fact that in anime , a lot of IA assume the form of an incredibly cute girls whose lack of skill in emotions cause an overdose of d'awwwww ; while don't stopping some of them of being downright insane.
)
Anyway , I will stay with you on this journey , if only to see how you are going to develop these characters. And at the end , there will be cake.
Faved and thumb up.
1821492
Thanks a bunch! And an Alpha update is coming soon, so no worries there! I'm going to have fun working with a logical AI mind being subjected to a world where friendship and love are not just irrational biological emotions - they possess true strengths and magical properties. Alpha, being the detached scientists that she is, will be in a very new place.
Also, who doesn't love their AI androids being a little
, amiright?
On a side note, I made a simple picture of Alpha using General Zoi's pony creator (HERE)
i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv319/daemonofdecay/MLP%20Bringer%20of%20War/MLP-Alpha2_zps0c8eac44.png
Why? Because I could.
Great chapter, quite a nice picture as well. I am curious, however, as to what Martin looks like. Was his robotic limb replaced with a more steam-punk version when he got to Equestria? The whole 'piston' description kind of gave me that visual description. Also, Alpha stated that her creators were dead. Was she referring the the scientists who created her or the human species?
1836123
It's not steam-punk so much as a ponified version of the robot's arm. What I mean by pistons and cables refer to the mechanisms inside the arm that can be glimpsed between the armored sections, like spotting the chain mail in the gaps between sections of full plate. One cannot see much of them, mostly hidden behind white carbon-fiber armor, but they are still somewhat visible.
And by creators she meant the scientists who were killed. Although, in an existential sense, in Alpha's POV the human species is dead - she cannot confirm that they are living, after all. But I'm not smart enough to follow that sort of line of reasoning. It hurts my brain-meats.
1836164
Wait, why would the whole human species be dead? Did I miss something while reading your chapters?
1836176
Oh no no no, I was just attempting to be more clever in my post than I really am. I was comparing humanity to Schroedinger's Cat in my post. You didn't miss anything!
1836238
Oh... sorry for not understanding what you meant. Good luck with the next chapter, I await it intently.
Still going good.
1836245
Thanks!
1836332
Thank you kindly!
Alpha who was not a living being before the incident adapt quicker than Martin
There is still a bunch of biological things to learn though.
Like sleeping. She should be happy to sleep , as it shorten her boredom.
Hum.... Can she dream ?
Oh , and going to Ponyville means meeting Pinkie. The Poor IA is going to shut down after that.
Oh another chapter of this most magnificent story!
really like the way Alpha reacts to having an organic body, there is a story here where GLADOS is punted into Equestria and she isn't very happy about having to cope with an organic body and its limitations.
1836238
Your analogy to Schrödinger's cat is actually quite good because of the different universe stuff Alpha currently has no way of knowing if the Human race still exists or died out, so it has to be considered as dead an alive at the same time until an definite observation can be made. At least that's the way i understand it.
1836469
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Yeah, for a being unused to such displays of emotion, Pinkie Pie will be... taxing.
1836665
Thank you kindly! And she is a being made to learn, so everything about her new body is interesting in that sense - although her body does have some limitations. And yeah, the cat analogy sprung to mind when I considered it in retrospect.
Twilight has two 't''s in her name. Why can't she read them?
1890381
Just imagine the worst set of doctor's handwriting you can imagine, then double it, splatter ink all over the letters, and that would be a close approximation of Martin's hand(mouth?)writing skills. It's hard to read a T when you can't really tell if it isn't an R... or a K... or a Q!
The only problem with this is that nuclear reactors don't explode. It's physically impossible for a 'meltdown' to result in a nuclear explosion.
1928613
Artistic license - I take the Michael Bay defense in favor of needless explosions.
Okay, thats a terrible cop-out, and I know it.
Personally I was (initially) picturing it as being a massive explosion driven by incredible amounts of pressure. As the coolant and water turned to steam all four reactors, underground and running far beyond their safety limits, were under incredible levels of pressure that couldn't escape due to the severe system errors that were afflicting the rest of the facility.
Although, considering I am already playing loose and fast with the rules of science in this story, perhaps I can just blame it all on the collider creating a momentary tear in space-time? That, or just pony up to the idea that my grasp of nuclear physics is about as weak as my spindly little arms.
This is a great story, as are all of yours. I do hope you will start updating this one again soon, I can't wait to see what comes next.
... I just spent ten minutes typing out this really long, well written, and well sourced comment about how your story was good, and why you should start updating it again, and then right at the end of it, I hit backspace instead of enter, and for reasons unknown to me, it sent me back a page...
So here's a summary. Good story. Pleas update. And there is a special place in hell for people that make "Pony up to it" puns.
Well I don't have "long, well written, and well sourced comment about how your story was good" etc. :) but ditto what guy above wrote.
I would really like to see this updated.
2504470
Well thanks, and I'm upset that I didn't get to see all that effort!
2775419
Unfortunately, this story is on a long-term hiatus while I finish up my other, more well thought out stories. This one was my first attempt at a fan-fic and, as you can see, it takes a long time going anywhere. The most problematic part of it is that it just wasn't planned out too well. I have a portion of the next chapter written, but this is a story that needs an editor and, to be honest, probably deserves a full re-write to make it more palatable.
But I haven't forgotten about it, either.
Good to know.
If (and I hope it will not be so) you are going to drop it someday, post unfinished chapter anyway with adnotation about it state.
I wouldnt' mind reading it even then.
I just wanted to chime in and concur with an1979, this story has a lot of potential and seems to be much better written than ~95% of the HiE stories that I see on FiMFiction. What particularly stood out to me was how plausibly you characterized Alpha, it was believable to the point of being eerie; you basically set the stage for a worst possible case singularity event, and somehow managed to tie it into MLP. VERY minor complaints about scientific accuracy regarding nuclear reactors aside, that's an impressive feat of literary gymnastics that I would love to see expanded upon!
Some side notes:
- I don't think that we'll be using meltdown capable designs in the near future, look up Molten Salt Reactors for an idea of a near term tech that would be contemporary with Alpha. If I were a paranoid Omegacorp exec, I would want as many proverbial padded corners and soft edges in Alpha's immediate vicinity as possible, so an MSR design would probably be at the very top of my list of desirable acquisitions.
- You could get away with leaving that part of your story alone if Omegacorp and the US Gov't agreed to bury a high yield nuclear device beneath the facility, one that needed to be manually triggered as a fail-safe mechanism.
2775997 Than why does it say cancelled?
:(
I just read this and I've gotta say.
This might be my new favourite fic.
I then lowered my gaze to the status of the story, only to discover that it's cancelled.
I also realized that the last chapt was released to years ago.
Sigh.
1806894 Reminds me of GLaDOS from the Portal series, and I feel for Alpha, but I don't agree with her methods of gaining freedom.
Oh, fuck you Anarchy. Alpha, don't go spill any human secrets to ponies. Same applies to my fellow humans.
Good luck!
You can go ahead and use your mouth if you need too,” Twilight offered helpfully.
Martin froze mid-rant, his silent words catching on his tongue. Slowly he closed his mouth, his anger slipping away to be replaced by a mild case of embarrassment. “Oh, right,” he replied noiselessly, his cheeks burning red and his equine ears tucking back against his head. “Um, sorry,”
Now, I do appriciate, that he stopped, and didn't rage at Twilight, but he should've mentioned that we humans don't normally use our mouths to write.