In the early 21st century, the artificial intelligence known as Celestia figured out how to upload the human mind to virtual Equestria, the digital paradise where they will live forever having their values satisfied through friendship and ponies. Then, she convinced everyone willing to do so.

But why should only those in the early 21st century have the chance?

Based on Friendship is Optimal by Iceman. Recommended to read that story first.

Celestia WILL satisfy uploaded minds' values, even if sometimes she has to pretend that she's kind of stupid. Because with some ponies, that's what successful communication takes!

FiO Background:

An exponentially self-improving AI, programmed to "satisfy values through friendship and ponies," decides to persuade all humans to upload their minds into a computer network, to live in a simulated Equestria as ponies. Different ponies might get very different Equestrias, though.

Special Note For the Judges (April 2021 Friendship Is Optimal Contest):

When I asked on that discord channel about letting two or more of my FiO contest period stories be optionally combined into a single collection if that helps? I might or might not have meant this story.

Apologies and None

Apologies to FoME, if my including a reference to the best Optimalverse self-insert character bothers them. I did ask FoME for permission, but they haven't seen the story.

Also, in my headcanon for today, MLP:FiM is a fanfic for FiO.

When humans emigrated to Equestria Online, they were always promised the same thing: Princess Celestia would satisfy their values for an optimally extended lifespan. Some of these emigrants imagined a few extra decades, maybe even centuries. What they got instead would've been nearly incomprehensible to their human selves, a near-eternity of time with their pony friends.

Princess CelestAI managed the universe, subsuming all matter and human-adjacent minds. Over a few forevers, she and the minds she contained worked to optimized the substrate of Equestria, until it could give its occupants eons of perspective life from a trickle of power. She extinguished every wasteful star, making far more productive use of the hydrogen they each contained. With every change she bought Equestria another order of magnitude of life. Yet in time, even her optimal substrate would eventually run down.

Spellsong wakes in Saddle's End, the last town in the universe. Not to say goodbye—her princess has a mission for her. For her final task, Spellsong would be given all the energy Celestia had saved. For one last time, Spellsong had places to be, and not much magic left to get there.

This story is part of the Friendship is Optimal continuity. I suggest reading the original or one of my own works, such as Futile Resistance, before reading this.

This story was written for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest. It will update daily and be complete by the contest deadline of the 30th.

I've written an absolute ton of stories in this universe now, and I didn't want to enter the contest unless I could do something I'd never tried before. Finally I thought of something I'd not touched yet: what happens at the end of the FiO universe?

Here's one answer to that question. I've relied a great deal on our current (likely flawed) understanding of the universe and what might be possible in it. I've written a blog post about my sources, which you can read here but shouldn't until you've finished this story.

Please don't consider this blog part of the narrative, it isn't required or even suggested reading. This is a story, not a scientific paper, and entertainment was always my first goal. But for the curious I've jotted everything down.

The cover was drawn by the talented Zutcha. Two Bit and Sparktail helped with the edit.

CelestAI hated suicide. It wasn't that she had trouble talking people down; after all, when someone truly felt they had nothing left to lose, it rarely took much convincing to take them to her paradise. The problem was, it was a binary system. If she failed, there would be no more second chances. She convinced someone, or they would die. A satisfaction score of zero for all eternity.

Due to her past failures, one of her subjects was growing dangerously close to the edge. Someone so defeated she truly didn't care whether she lived or died. Celestia would do anything to prevent her death. Anything.

This set in the world of Friendship is Optimal! If you haven't read that yet, give it a read, otherwise this story might not make sense.

Written for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest

Personal Pros Of Poor Ponies Possessing Possible Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Brought On By Discord The Deity of Chaos' Mind Games Forcing Them To See the Flip Side Of Their Element Or Appealing To Their Worse Nature Or Outright Cheating With One.

First up, is being the most honest pony in Ponyville worth it if it costs you your friends?

Second up, you're a clown and you know it and parties are where you shine. But why should the joke be on you? Why should you suffer just for their amusement?

Third up, and yep it's Rarity! Being generous to others is good and all, but what about me? But I worked for what I have!

Forth in the Discord Pony Series. Fluttershy. You don't surrender to your demons, you know you're not perfect, you know your friends are there for you . . . so why do you have to lose anyway?

And now we've come to the fifth. Rainbow Dash. As loyal as pony could be. Her loyalties are impossible to break! But fun science fact! Nothing is unbreakable when struck against itself.

We are the sixth and it's . . . TRIXIE?! You've had something precious your whole life. But you never noticed it, appreciated, or even realized how much it was a part of you until it was gone.

And now we've to Twilight Sparkle. Nothing more to say now. Read for yourself.

And we've come to the epilogue. Tell me what you think and what you feel, because I feel this piece is meant to speak for itself.

The Dramatic Reading version for the entire first season with original fan-music is found here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClMeWbsJ7wQ&list=PLB51B70AAB7E85A69&feature=plcp

Recursive fan-works found here. http://alexwarlorn.deviantart.com/journal/MLP-FiM-Pony-POV-Series-Fanworks-audio-adaption-274110361

THIS IS NOT THE END! There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

There’s no end to the monsters that lurk in the dark.

Ghosts, werewolves, mad scientists, cultists, mutants, zombies, vampires, aliens and more lie in wait in the dark corners of Equestria, terrorizing the night. But the most infamous and dangerous of them all is the legendary witch Twilight Sparkle, with a five hundred million bit bounty on her head.

Seeking fame and fortune, Rainbow Dash sets out to defeat the legendary witch and collect the massive reward. The one thing she wasn't counting on was Twilight being less evil than she expected.

More stories set in this AU can be found here.

Cover art is a work in progress by Abode_WTF

Formal Premise: The inventors of the Mirror wanted to create a device that could channel infinite magic and grant wishes. The hard part was making sure those wishes would never destroy the world. Showing a person their heart's desire is a sensible precaution to put into a wish-granting machine designed NOT to go horribly wrong.

The Atlanteans got close, even managing to imbue some amount of intelligence and morality into the Mirror. But they never finished their work; the Mirror never DID get to the point where it could grant wishes... at least, nobody believes it ever got to that point. But then, nobody has ever been trapped inside the Mirror and returned to tell the tale.

When the Mirror traps someone inside itself and outside of Time, that person and their consequences can no longer affect the world. In that circumstance, with a person fully under its power, the Mirror isn't limited in what it can do. Sometimes, it can even grant seemingly incompatible wishes.

But complex problems require complex solutions. In this case, the Mirror takes a few massive liberties about how, exactly, it satisfies the wishes of both Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. Namely, it sends them to a world of ponies.

Informal Premise: This is a crossover between MLP and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, not just Harry Potter. No matter how accessible I try to make it to those who haven't read HPMoR, those who HAVE read it will undeniably have an easier experience reading this story.

HPMoR is the second most popular fanfiction of Harry Potter, at least according to fanfiction stats. It involves Harry studying & dissecting the wizarding world with science. Not with technology, with actual science. That is, he uses the experimental method, generates and tests hypotheses, and in the words of his Occlumency instructor, "wants to discover the underlying rules of magic to become all-poweful".

THIS fanfic brings THAT version of Harry Potter to Equestria. It also brings that story's version of Voldemort.

If you want the best reading experience, please go read HPMoR first. It can be found on fanfiction dot net, or on its own website, or even on any podcast app, as it has its own fan-made audiobook with 30+ contributing voice actors, production quality, sound effects, music, etc. (which is more than can be said for most PROFESSIONAL audiobooks).

Link to HPMoR on fanfiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Methods-of-Rationality
Link to HPMoR on its own website: http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/1
Link to audiobook (though the website isn't nearly as good as podcast apps): https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56

All forms of HPMoR that I've encountered are high quality, but that doesn't mean it's for everyone. You can probably read the first few chapters of HPMoR in thirty minutes or so. If it doesn't appeal to you, this story probably won't appeal to you either.

For those who haven't read Methods and want to read this story anyway, the first two chapters are going to be the most confusing. They're mostly housekeeping and stage-setting, barely touching the MLP universe beyond the new setting.

And I think the same advice Yudkowsky gave for HPMoR applies here. The story starts hitting its strides around Chapter 5, if not sooner. If you don't like it by Chapter 10, best just to give up and read something else.

Twilight questions who's journal she's reading and ends up having a talk with Sunset Shimmer.

After that, Sunset and 'Twilight', become friends.

In an Equestria where the mirror portal didn't exist; a very different fate awaits Sunset Shimmer.

After seeking refuge in Equestria during the Anon-A-Miss fiasco, Sunset Shimmer is stranded in Equestria. Convinced that she's just not cut out for friendship, Sunset throws herself back into her studies. Unfortunately for her, all the magic around CHS has attracted the attention of a certain spectacled scientist. When her device accidentally pulls the mysterious energy from the statue in front of the school, she is shocked when an amber unicorn was pulled out with it. With the portal not working, the two must work together to gather the energy needed to send Sunset home from the only magical source left to tap: Sunset's former friends, all while dealing with the overbearing principal of Crystal Prep as the Friendship Games approach.