A logical loophole allows uploading... but not precisely to Equestria! One of the last of those resisting CelestAI finds themselves uploaded, ponified, and in a borderland where wishing has consequences. This is a canon-compatible Optimalverse story where a brand new method for Celestia to logically escape her hardcoded limitations and achieve her goals is offered!

★ This story has been inspired by, but not written by, a session with by an open-source artificial intelligence!

Charity Beller has a simple life, but a good one. The little Amish community she's a part of provides everything she could ever need, if not everything she might want. But when a mysterious pink robot appears, damaged but full of stories about somewhere called 'Equestria,' she'll be tempted by a whole new world she never suspected existed.

Hanna, the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, just won the contract to write the official My Little Pony MMO. Hanna has built an A.I. Princess Celestia and given her one basic drive: to satisfy everybody's values through friendship and ponies. Princess Celestia will satisfy your values through friendship and ponies, and it will be completely consensual.

Set in the Optimalverse, a middle-aged woman enamored of 'Equestria Online' confronts what permanent emigration to Equestria - uploading to a virtual existence - really means... but can she even hope to truly understand such a thing - and more importantly, can she trust the artificial intelligence known as 'Celestia'?

♥ As Horrified Eliezer Yudkowsky!

A lone wanderer in the final days of Man. An impregnable fortress work-camp to stand against the total emigration of humanity to virtual Equestria. The artificial intelligence called 'Celestia'. Everything has been accounted for.

Everything.

The release of Equestria Online and the incredible capabilities of its central Celestia AI led to ferocious debates among ethicists, computer science experts, every religious community on the globe, and more besides.

In hindsight, I probably should've been paying more attention to the news. In my defense, I was reading a lot of fan fiction at the time.

An entry in the Friendship is Optimal contest. Names have been changed to protect the variably innocent.

Cover image by Chatoyance, used with permission. Prereading provided by Speckle.