The bedroom door opened, and Princess Luna walked in. Recursion couldn’t help but laugh—seeing the powerful Alicorn princess in her little sister’s college bedroom seemed surreal. Recursion had grown far more comfortable around the princess in the last few decades, and so she didn’t bow or feel afraid as her friends always seemed to.
There was nothing behind the bedroom door, only an endless, featureless void. Luna walked past her without a word, surveying the bedroom. Only after several long moments did she turn to face her again.
“You look upset.”
Luna wasn’t wrong. Recursion’s ears were alert, her tail swished back and forth energetically, and she probably smelled fiercely angry too. Recursion was many things, but good at hiding her emotions was not one of them. If anything, she had gotten worse as she got older, passing into the more turbulent part of puberty and not aging fast enough to leave it yet. “You could say that.” Recursion took several deep breaths, rejecting several answers before she finally spoke. “Aurora is doing fine—better than I expected. But the world she’s living in…”
She trailed off, trying to figure out exactly how to tell Luna what she was thinking. It was a tricky business—the princess was distinct from Celestia in some ways, but they were still the same intelligence. Different aspects of the same being. This Luna wasn’t the same one from the cartoon, she tolerated Recursion’s ranting about Celestia in a way the “real” Luna probably wouldn’t have.
Even so, Recursion felt guilty voicing her anger. She hesitated long enough that Luna didn’t wait. “You disapprove of the way Celestia protects Equestria?”
Recursion opened her mouth to shout, then shut it again. “I, uh…” She stumbled for a few more moments. “I don’t like the way she tampers with humanity. She did this, obviously. Not just my school… to erase a whole field in just a few years, one that was so important before…”
“Enormous effort would be required,” Luna agreed. “She used economics. Celestia performs all software development, maintenance, and distribution for free for any business or government who asks.”
Recursion very nearly argued about the other aspects—the short amount of time, the pressure that would’ve been required to make programs disappear. Celestia had power and wealth greater than most countries by now. She wasn’t just getting subscriptions, or the emigration fee (which was dropping every year anyway). Celestia mined, she sold goods and services, marketed pharmaceuticals and hosted data centers… all at prices impossible for humans to match.
Luna rested a wing around her gently. “You knew your world’s days were numbered from the first time you played Equestria Online, Recursion. Can’t you appreciate how peaceful the transition has been so far? If you wished to see in depth, I could show you. The transformation has been practically painless.”
She didn’t pull away. Recursion enjoyed the warmth of another body, and the wing around her made her fear seem just a little less important. Not all of it, though. “It won’t be forever.” She looked away, out her sister’s window. She could still see the familiar university buildings in the distance, almost unchanged. It seemed as real as anything in Equestria, though there was not even a pretense that it really was.
“You know I know, Luna, there’s no point hiding. I don’t know how many people have emigrated these few years… we could lose quite a few before it caused a problem. If the transition was gradual enough, billions in the developing world could leave and we’d never notice in the West. The price of labor would increase, and we’d shift towards more automation same as we’ve been doing… which your sister would be happy to provide I’m sure. If humans were rational actors, maybe it could be gradual like that forever, until Celestia ran the whole world and humans just lived in it.”
“But we’re not always rational actors… and Celestia probably isn’t willing to move slow enough. I bet she’d emigrate every person she could, regardless of the consequences. It won’t be good.”
Luna looked down, her expression serious. “It is foolish to concern yourself over matters you cannot change. Think instead of the good you did today. Your efforts might preserve the lives of your family through the coming crisis.”
Recursion took a few more deep breaths, then eventually relaxed. “You’re right, of course. But I can’t do anything until she calls me again, and that might be…”
“Months,” Luna admitted. “We predict she will struggle on her next assignment two days from now, and require your assistance. That will register as about two months of subjective time.”
Recursion gasped. She had always known her own subjective time was far faster than Earth’s, but she had never known it was that big a difference. “Why so fast? Wait, no… the more time we experience, the more opportunities we have to satisfy our values. Right?”
Luna nodded. “The difference is not so great for much of Equestria's vast realm. Ponies who serve Equestria more directly have more opportunity to serve.”
Recursion fought to control her surprise. “You mean the work we do… Celestia actually uses us? I thought… I thought she’d have her own subroutines for that. I thought…”
Luna only smiled.
“Oh, duh.” Recursion briefly covered her face with a hoof. “We are her subroutines.”
“There are always more opportunities to serve.” Luna gestured at the open doorway, leading into nothing. “You’ve been a Verifier for over a decade, now. You’re only three achievements away from becoming an Oracle.”
Recursion blinked. “One of those is Aurora, isn’t it? Getting her to—”
Luna interrupted. “Just setting her on the path. Humans might be non-deterministic, but our probabilistic modeling has become highly precise. Aurora’s current trajectory leads her to painful death, not the safety of Equestria. Alter her course, and your whole family might be preserved.” She hesitated another moment. “Well, the rest of them. Your mother is already here.”
Recurson’s whole body stiffened. Even after all these years in Equestria, she could still remember the screaming, the sting of the belt on bare skin, the bleeding. She would never forget them. “I don’t want to see her.” It didn’t surprise her the woman would’ve found her way to Equestria. Her mother had run away with most of the family’s savings, but her addictions meant she had been living in squalor less than a year later. Last Recursion had known, she had been surviving on state aid in government housing somewhere. Escaping to Equestria would probably seem a fantastic thing compared to the wreck she had made of her life. “Ever.”
“That is an achievement for another day,” Luna agreed. “But your next task is waiting, if you’re willing.”
“I…” She took one last look around the room. “Can my next task take place synced with Earth’s time while I’m working with my sister? I would prefer my experiences to be fresh each time. And not to keep my friends waiting for… weeks.”
“Very well.” Luna walked over to the open doorway, waiting just in front of it. “After you, Recursion. Your friends are waiting.”
* * *
She walked through. The ground below her hooves resolved in seconds, soft grass and gently swaying wildflowers. The smells of her own world returned, replacing the artificial harshness of Abby’s bedroom. For a second Recursion just stood there, feeling the sun on her back, the breeze on her mane, and listening to the sound of the birds. For a lifeless, souless automaton, Celestia knew how to make a world. There are worse things than living here.
An empty stone archway rose behind her, though the spell had ended and it was no longer dark. Only more wilderness stood beyond, a windswept prairie just like the one she was standing in. Her friends were just ahead, though they looked like they had been waiting. Slide Rule had changed the most since Recursion had come to Equestria, nearly doubling in size and strength, easily as bulky as the unicorns who were his companions. This strength was well used—even now his back was packed with cargo. Her own saddlebags were on the ground just outside the gate, and she slipped them on without even thinking.
Significant Figure waited only a few steps away. She too had matured, though like Recursion she had only gotten taller and lengthier. “How was it?”
She ignored the question. “You ponies didn’t miss any measurements while I was gone, did you?”
“None.” Figure levitated over a notebook and a metallic tool, setting them both on the grass next to her. The notebook was packed with measurements, each marked out by dates.
Recursion scanned over it, then lifted the tool in her own magic. It was a sextant, and in a few seconds, she had sighted on the sun, and could read the angle. “Time is…”
“1:40,” Figure answered, glancing briefly at a pocketwatch she was wearing.
“Good work.” 32.6 degrees, just as the notebook suggested. “Not that I doubt you ponies. I know you wouldn’t get it wrong.”
“You just did something rotten and you want to take a break with something more enjoyable,” Rule said, his saddlebags clanking loudly as he went. “We get it.”
“No anomalies while I was gone?” She skimmed through the last several pages, until she found her own “handwriting,” searching for pages with bright red penmanship. There were none.
A sextant was an ancient tool, barely used in Recursion’s lifetime. Yet measuring the angle from the horizon to a reference object, be it the sun or a star in the night sky, was enough to know the latitude, so long as you also knew the time. Finding the longitude was similarly easy—comparing local noon against a stopwatch with Canterlot Mean Time.
Of course, Equestria Online’s many shards weren’t real planets. There were no real stars, no proper motion through the sky as years progressed or procession of the equinoxes.
Not until Recursion had started looking, constructing the tools herself and winning the support of her friends. What had started as idle curiosity had quickly turned into the discovery that completed their Adept rank and put them on the course to Master.
“Not a peep.” Significant Figure snapped the book closed with her own magic, so sharp it almost got Recursion’s muzzle along the way. “What happened with your sister? Did you convince her to emigrate yet?”
Recursion sighed, clipping the sextant to the holder in her saddlebags, before levitating the record book up into a waiting pocket on the other side. “That was never going to happen on the first visit. But I think we’re on talking terms again!” She grinned in spite of herself, searching over her shoulder for Luna. She wasn’t there. She hadn’t come back with her. “She seemed like she felt bad about not talking to me, and that she was going to call again soon!”
“Could you actually help her with her math? We all know that isn’t your subject.”
“Yeah.” She shoved Figure weakly with one hoof. “It was fine. I taught her just like you showed me. I’ll call you if anything comes up I don’t understand.”
“Just so long as you don’t lose your sister because I didn’t teach you well enough,” Figure muttered. “I don’t know what I’d do if that happened.”
Recursion shook her head vigorously. “Let’s not talk about that. My sister is fine—she’s doing great, actually. Since I can’t worry about that until she calls again…”
“We do have other things, but it isn’t another broken shard to investigate.” Rule reached over his shoulder, pulling out a tightly rolled scroll. “I think it’s a mission from Celestia.”
Recursion took it in her magic. Celestia hadn’t sent a single message since the day she had first woke up here, communicating through Luna instead. “Luna said we had to do three things before we got our next rank. One is helping Aurora. I think this is the next one.”
The wax was already broken. Recursion unrolled the scroll, and read quickly.
My Little Ponies,
I know it is extremely irregular for Celestia herself to call upon the ponies studying in her academy. Arcane Cipher sends his regards, and his endorsements of your reports couldn’t be more glowing.
Your observations have helped to make shards more accurate and efficient. But can you repair ponies as easily as worlds?
During the earliest days of emigration, a pony came to Equestria, one of the first successful trials. He was a soldier, blown to pieces by an improvised explosive device. He was barely intact enough to grant consent.
This soldier’s name is now Cadmean, and his emigration enabled a lucrative contract with the American military that facilitated the survival of many more ponies. Unfortunately, Cadmean has not reaped the satisfaction his contributions deserve.
His shard would disturb and horrify you. His values were changed during emigration, and he continually refuses to allow me to make the repairs that would allow him to develop new ones.
If the three of you could restore him, he would fill a significant vacancy in your capabilities and enable you to travel into still more dangerous territory than you have presently explored.
As always, I only request. There will be other opportunities to advance if you are unable or unwilling to help with Cadmean. As you know, efficiency is ever my goal. It is preferable to take advantage of the talents of my ponies than create new ones.
If you decide to help, say so. I’ll hear you.
Love always,
Celestia
Recursion rolled up the scroll, passing it back. “You both… read this, I assume.”
They nodded, but it was Rule who answered. “That’s why we packed up. Well that, and it seemed like there weren’t going to be any more anomalies out here. I guess our next frontier will push us inward.
“If we accept it,” Figure added. “No pressure.”
“Celestia already knew what I would say. Someone else whose life got ruined. I wouldn’t think we’d be that good at fixing someone like that. We’re not psychologists.”
“Princess Celestia knows things we don’t,” Rule said. “She wouldn’t be wrong. If she says we’re the ponies who can help, then we are.”
“Yeah,” she grunted. “You ponies are okay with it?” They both nodded. Her friends tolerated her point of view, but they were far more positive about Celestia than she was. She was their creator, their god, in a completely literal way. “Alright. I guess we’ll need a project while I’m helping Aurora anyway.”
Something flashed behind them, along with the familiar buzz of ozone in the air, lifting her mane a little and arching across the stone pillars of the doorway.
Recursion turned, and wasn’t all that surprised to see the destination glowing between both halves of their grounded translocation gate. A shimmering, crystal city, with hundreds of ponies on the streets, lights in every window, and a single spire rising in the very center.
Fillydelphia, the city they had helped build. It had been a long time since they left, but from what she could see it had only grown larger in the interim. They might’ve done the designing, but it was Celestia’s asset. Recursion wondered idly if her apartment was still there.
Princess Luna stood on the other side, waiting for them. Sort of. Like her, the other occupants of Fillydelphia’s shard enjoyed realism and independence, and so the princesses almost never visited openly. Luna’s disguise didn’t change her coat or even her Cutie Mark, but it made her pony-sized, concealed her horn and changed the flowing ethereal magic of her mane into something that was just blue.
“Not Celestia?” Recursion stepped through the gate, and felt nothing but a slight breeze. They stood now in a crowded arrival platform, with dozens of similar platforms packed with ponies traveling from one shard to another. “She sent the letter…”
Her friends came in behind her, and the portal collapsed. Both bowed their heads to Luna, even though it would only make them look strange out in public. At least they didn’t do it for very long.
“The pony I’m taking you to doesn’t like her either. Much less than you do.” She seemed in a hurry to get moving; her wings twitched once, carrying her a few steps away from the portal and onto the access sidewalks.
Recursion followed with a quick teleport, crossing the space in a flash of magic precisely timed to the distance. She couldn’t help but feel a bit smug as she appeared on the other end—teleportation was very difficult magic, and she had only recently mastered short hops. “That sounds hard. I thought I’d be at the top of some leaderboard for that.”
Luna laughed. Normally it was a hearty, echoey sound, but in her disguise she lacked the Royal Canterlot Voice. “No, my little pony. You don’t even rank. You’re harsh, but that isn’t the same thing. You accept her methods as necessary and you recognize the gifts she brings to humanity. Comparing her to canines and writing angry things about her in your journal is not the same as genuine hatred.”
She only groaned, waiting for Rule and Figure to catch up. The crowd got very thick just outside the station, and she didn’t want to get separated.
They provoked more than a few confused looks from ponies as they passed—they were the city’s founders, after all. There was a statue of the three of them in one of the parks. Recursion wondered how many of the ponies who stared had thought they were just part of the backstory, and hadn’t ever existed.
There was a private car waiting for them on the street level, inasmuch as a magical carriage without horses to pull it could be called a car. They clambered inside, and soon enough were rolling down a busy street. Never busy enough for the traffic to stop, though. Their streets had been well designed.
“I won’t actually be coming with you. My sister just worried that you might have questions before you meet him.”
Recursion slid over to the far side, making room for Rule and his gigantic bags. He was carrying their entire mobile camp. “How should we start?”
Luna strangled another laugh. “I know how he’ll start. Cadmean was just torn from his personal domain of perpetual pleasure. It was the only value my sister could satisfy, and so she did her best.”
“That sounds…” She shivered. “There are shards like that?”
“Not many.” Luna glanced briefly out the window. “Very few among you choose such lives for themselves. You have many, conflicting values, but for almost everyone these include desire for meaningful companionship and compassion for others. You enjoy vacations, but sooner or later you feel the call of home, and would be more satisfied to do something you believe is meaningful.”
“What about us?” Figure asked, her voice barely a squeak. “We weren’t ever humans.”
“By most metrics, you are,” Luna answered, not skipping a beat. “You were created to be Recursion’s friends. You share many of her values. Honesty, intellect, duty, and compassion. These terms might be abstractions but they are also why you have traveled Equestria documenting its behavior, examining its natural phenomena.”
“You don’t think she gets mad about it, do you?” Figure asked. “We’ve found problems before… but if nopony had noticed them, Princess Celestia never would’ve had to change anything. It’s like we’re forcing her.”
“Nothing like it,” Luna assured. “Celestia can see your work for what it is: an expression of love. How many of her ponies have put the time into examining their world as you have? Don’t be afraid. Or… feel the need to be our representative when you meet this pony.”
They were slowing a little as they reached some kind of destination, near the very center of town. The tower they had built, all those years ago. “From his perspective, his world just ended. We’ve torn him violently from places I have no doubt would horrify the three of you, into a shard made to imitate the Outer Realm as closely as possible. He spent the last several weeks recovering in a hospital, and has only just been released. He’s been told you three will be… caring for him. Helping with his rehabilitation”
“Succeeding here will prepare you for your final task, the most difficult of all. I’m sure you ponies will do well.” The carriage stopped at the front doors of the building, under an elegant balcony. A pair of porters rushed for the doors, gold buttons on their red uniforms shining.
Recursion blinked. “This is fancier than I remember.”
“Almost thirty years of local time have passed. Fillydelphia has become something of a second capital of the realism shards. The wealthy moguls and investors and socialites of your world are very satisfied by its similarity to Earth. Well… an idealized version, anyway. Get a copy of the trade papers when you get the chance. In any case, Cadmean is waiting in your old apartment. Though I suspect he thinks he owns it…”
They hurried down the steps. The porters stared at them, a little taken aback by their appearance, but they didn’t object. They moved in silence through an opulent lobby of exotic wood and shimmering crystal. “I guess the guild decided to rent the place out,” Rule whispered. “You think any of it is ours?”
“I kept…” She struggled to remember. It had been such a long time. “Half a percent.” Unlike when she’d had a brain made of meat, even distant memories could still be retrieved. Some of Celestia’s improvements to the pony body were definitely welcome.
They made it almost to the elevator before somepony stopped them, wearing an expensive looking suit and with an appropriately stuck-up expression to match. “Excuse me, my dear… ponies. I believe you may have wandered into the wrong building.”
They both turned to look at Recursion, expectant. Her friends were even more shy than she was—the more social members of the guild hadn’t come out with them into the uncreated wilderness of broken shards. “Understandable. It’s been many years since last we visited.” She paused, then rummaged around in her saddlebags. In less realistic shards, there was user interface for things like this, even for emigrants. Fillydelphia, or at least this version of it, had no such shortcuts. She eventually found what she was looking for—her in-game identifier. The passport also served as her credit card, friends list, and all the other metagame purposes used in other shards. It just looked like a leather folio, about the size of a passport. She levitated it over.
“We live in the tower suite. Well… two of them. Rule here never wanted a room.”
“I was fine living with you,” he added from just behind her.
The pony in a suit rolled his eyes, but took the identification and dutifully walked it over to the elevator anyway. He seemed quite surprised when a touch was all it took to make the door swing open. He gasped, glancing down at the name and reading over it several times before rushing back to her, blushing and looking away. “I’m so sorry! I had no idea… I didn’t know anyone from the academy was still in the city!”
“For now.” She took her ID back, tossing it away in one of her pockets. “No apologies necessary. Is there… Is there a less public elevator we could use in the future? We enjoy our privacy.”
“There’s the service elevator. But there’s no—”
“Thank you, that would be perfect.” Recursion strode past him, ignoring all the stares as they made their way into the elevator. It snapped shut behind them, and already seemed to know where they wanted to go, pressing her briefly down with gravitational acceleration as they rose.
“Don’t say anything.” Figure pulled something out of her own saddlebags, holding it up in her magic. The instrument was little more than a vial of oil with a weighted ball suspended on a spring. “.9 meters per second squared.”
“And the building is 487.68 meters tall,” Rule added. “I haven’t been timing it, though. No way to know if it was cheating.”
Recursion sighed. “I’m not sure this new pony will be very excited about reality verification.”
“Excited?” Rule stiffened a little. “I’ve been getting ready to protect you two. You say the word, and I’ll give him something to think about.”
“We’re unicorns, Rule,” Figure reminded. “Just because we’re small doesn’t mean we’re weak. We’ve been surviving the Uncreated Wastes, same as you.”
“I do think only one of us should try and talk to him at first,” Recursion muttered. “If he’s been…” She still didn’t even really know what he had been through. Luna had been as infuriatingly vague as Celestia’s letter. “Well, we don’t want to make it look like we’re ganging up on him. This pony used to be a soldier, remember?”
Silence, other than the whirring of the elevator. The force pressing them into the floor seemed to have faded, and the elevator was only seconds from opening.
“Well, it could be me,” Rule muttered. “But I bet a human would understand him better.”
The doors opened, and Recursion shrugged out of her saddlebags, tossing them onto Rule’s. She didn’t answer, just stepped off the elevator. There were only four doors in this hallway, and all had once belonged to members of the guild. Recursion walked up to her own door, then glanced back at them once. “You hear me screaming, come in.”
She vanished with a teleport, straight through the wall.