This story is a sequel to Business Trip

Upon returning home to San Antonio from his Business Trip to New York City, Mr. Jones makes the decision to move to Equestria.

His journey takes longer than he expected, and whoever said 'getting there is half the fun' didn't have their teenage sister along for the ride...

Additional character tags: Snowcatcher, Rainbow Flash, Ploomette, Tex, Truly

Translated to Chinese by WW2ephyr: https://fimtale.com/t/46331

Arcane Word has an unusual profession among Equestrian ponies: a necromancer. After a lifetime of creating characters and telling stories, she's in the perfect position to provide relief to first-generation ponies with holes in their family. For every pony unwilling to ask for Celestia's help to fill in the gaps, she is the perfect pony—she even lives in the abandoned city of Wintercrest, surrounded by appropriately spooky decor. The authenticity of her results were always secondary to the satisfaction they produced.

At least until a particularly troublesome client arrived, flush with resources from Equestria Online's distant borders and megastructure expansion. What would it take for Equestria to bring a pony back from the dead? What about everypony who had ever lived?

Arcane Word could never turn down such a tempting job. The impossibility of the task was only ever a minor setback.

Updates Daily

This story was written for the print anthology of Friendship is Optimal stories I'm currently publishing. Every time I make a print book, I like to include something that has never been published before, this is it. If you'd like to get a copy of the book for yourself, you can order it here: https://igg.me/at/recursive-iterations

Thanks to Bitera and Sparktail for editing. Zutcha did the cover.

One million years ago, in the year 2017 A.D., humanity discovered two new types of radiation that were being emitted from an unknown region up in space. Using the Hubble space telescope, scientists were able to discover that the radiation was being emitted from an asteroid, which was on a direct collision path with Earth. 

These two newly discovered radiation types were dubbed Keifer's radiation (later nicknamed harmonic radiation) and Chaotic radiation. Keifer's radiation was found to be completely harmless to humans and animals, although it was later discovered that Keifer's radiation tended to be attracted to certain animals. Chaotic radiation, on the other hand, was found to be extremely harmful to humans in large amounts, causing fatal mutations to humans. 

The discovered asteroid was found to be over twice as big as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. In the year 2018, scientists predicted that the radiation was expected to reach fatal, critical levels by the year 2027. The asteroid itself was estimated to only crash into Earth one thousand years later, long after the rest of humanity would be wiped out by the lethal Chaotic radiation.

As a result of this, world leaders got together and began construction of Utopia, a large underground bunker, capable of housing four hundred thousand people, two thousand from each country. The chosen few were gathered together within Utopia and would be the last of humanity.

However, the radiation was estimated to have a half life of at least 1,000,000 years. This led world governments to invest heavily in suspended animation and cryogenic technology. And finally, in the year 2024, the first cryogenic pod was invented, capable of freezing someone for an infinite amount of time, without the need for sustenance, as long as there was a power supply.

Exactly one million years later, the humans reemerged to begin recolonisation... only to find several sentient species currently inhabiting the planet that they once had absolute, unchallenged authority over. 

One of them was humanity, which was able to recolonise and repopulate the planet from the few members of the human race that managed to survive the Second Flood, long before the Utopians woke up. But there was something wrong, humanity was being used as slaves by the ponies and several other species.

How will humanity answer to the fact that Planet Earth (now renamed Equus) is no longer theirs? Will they make peace with the locals, or will they attempt to wipe them off the face of the planet with their stockpile of nuclear weapons, that were there for the very purpose of reinstating human rule if another creature evolved to their level?

[Heavily inspired by the tv series The 100]

Featured from 19/7/21 to 23/7/21

Featured on 25/7/21

This is the old version of this story. The rebooted version is available here:

Beyond Earth Phoenix Rising

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.

Blake and his friends are urban explorers, venturing into some of the most interesting places that the public isn't allowed to see. They deal with dangerous structures, poison gas, and even the occasional arrest. But when they venture into the bony catacombs of Paris, they could never imagine what they'll find waiting for them.

Now the whole group has been thrust from the world they knew, each one cursed with a terrifying new shape. If they ever want to see their home again, they'll have to work together, searching this strange new world for a return worldgate. But while return portals are numerous, finding one that's safe enough to get them back alive is another matter entirely.

Written thanks to the generosity of donations from Lightfox and Canary in a Coal Mine on my Patreon. Edited by my wonderful team of Two Bit and Sparktail. Cover by Zutcha.

Updates every Monday and most Tuesdays. Will update more frequently until Fimfiction catches up to my Patreon.

Leaving home meant losing many of Orson's old friends, separated by time and distance. But they weren't willing to give up one thing: their old tabletop game. After trying and rejecting each of the online tools for roleplaying games, they stumbled on a novel solution: Equestria Online.

The game was unlike everything else on the market, an entire procedural generated world ran by a mysterious curator artificial intelligence. But Orson and the others didn't care about any of that--they just needed somewhere with a game table and some dice. The AI happily obliged, and soon they transitioned all their games to E.O. Equestria Online had its own host of benefits, bringing the GM's images to realistic life before their eyes, and even letting them visit and interact with the characters between sessions.

That was only the beginning...

A Friendship is Optimal story. I suggest any readers who are unfamiliar with that universe read the Original first, or FiO: Futile Resistance before reading this one. None of my other optimalverse stories are required to understand this one.

Written as a Patreon reward for Sparktail, though we stole the idea from Silver Wing.

Edited by Two Bit and Sparktail, cover by Zutcha.

Updates weekly on Wednesdays.

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.

Theodor Pichler knew joining the Barrow Observatory's winter crew would be a difficult position. He thought he knew the danger--freezing temperatures, gale-force winds, and terribly spotty broadband coverage. What he didn't expect was for an experimental new telescope array to interact with an unusual storm and send him screaming helplessly into the sky.

Instead of falling to his death, Theo landed in an alien world, populated by colorful horses he can't understand. What's worse: the body he landed in isn't his own, and he's not sure anything is where it should be. Having wings might be cool if he didn't have to be naked all the time...

With limited supplies and no help from the Observatory, Theo has to somehow navigate this new land, making new friends and encountering terrible dangers along the way. It will take all his cleverness, and a healthy dose of luck, if he's ever to be human again.

This book has a Hardcover! If you want to pick it up, you can grab it here: https://starscribe.net/

This story was a commission for Lucky Ray on my Patreon. Feel free to PM me if you'd like one of your own. It was edited by Two Bit and Sparktail. Coverart by FoxHatArt. Where chapters have art, it was done by Jasper.

Zutcha was here too.

Since time immemorial, the Horn of Celestia has stood above the ancient northern glaciers. It is older than the Empire, older than Equestria itself. The tower carries many ancient legends, but the most credible is this: that during the time of strife, ponies sacrificed their greatest powers to come together into a single kingdom, committed to peace and friendship forevermore.

Lyra Heartstrings is convinced there is more to this story, and after years of preparation, she has arrived at the tower with an expedition of friends and fellow experts to discover the truth for herself. One way or another, she will discover the secrets concealed in the ancient horn, even if it costs her everything.

This story was written on my Patreon as a commission for HMage, but was one of the earliest casualties of the pandemic. As a result, only part 1 of 2 was written. There are roughly eleven chapters taking us to what was meant to be the halfway point of the story. At least for now, the story will end there--not as a painful cliffhanger, but before our heroes transition to the next phase of their adventure.

The story is now continuing again on a monthly basis.

Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail, cover by Zutcha. The works.

Working at the front desk of a hotel has numbed Kaia to the variety of guests, at least until the ponies arrive.

Written for the Passports and Portals Not-A-Contest

Now with a reading by StraightToThePointStudio!