//------------------------------// // Calm // Story: FiO: Very Optimal // by FeverishPegasus //------------------------------// Wow, it’s been a while. Zany and I do very little now. We’ve calmed down quite a bit compared to our floor tearing and prankster habits a long time ago. Maybe it’s just because we’re old. We’re still young in the sense that our bodies aren’t decaying, but we’ve lived for what, fifty years now? Our minds weren’t exactly getting older either, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t mature. It’s kind of funny how we act like an elderly couple now. We just sit on our sofa and talk. When we don’t talk, we sleep, or just close our eyes and sit there. We’ve given up on eating. It just doesn’t seem worth it anymore, especially when you could be using that precious time to ‘do the deed’. Even that though. It just doesn’t appeal to us like it used to. I don’t mean to sound like a prude when I say that. It really is that fun to sit there and talk. Celestia said that she would send my story to a few folks, and based on the audience she mentioned, I doubt you’d understand, but believe me when I say that I’d cracked the secret to unlimited satisfaction. Or happiness. Or whatever you call it. For years and years now, with the encouragement of Celestia, we’ve been working on looking at things optimistically, to reflect on how we’d live forever. After all, wasn’t that something to be joyous about? We were going to live forever! If only my younger self thought about that more often. He’d be a much happier pony. Occasionally, I let myself think about my previous adventures, so often driven by angst and the need to reach out for something I already had within me. I shivered to think about that poor alien I’d tormented on his day off from work. I’d been a bad pony, a really bad pony. But now I’d changed. In all the best ways. The city was so much calmer now that we’d become friendlier ponies. Once every few days, I’d walk up to the window and look at the ponies milling about the city. Very peaceful like. It always sent a shiver down my spine to think about the anxieties they might’ve felt covered in Zany’s… Our change was for the best! It really made me happy to think about the positive effects the city had experienced after our numerous reforms. To know that we’d made such improvements to ourselves in so little time made me shake with glee. Just how much could we push it? In just fifty years, we hardly needed to move anymore. Just staring at Zany’s face, looking at her looking at me, sent waves of affection through me, and it never got old. I don’t see how it could get old. Celestia knew how to keep things fresh. Neither of us had gotten to the point where we could close our eyes and think up pleasure yet, but when we could! We’d never have to open our eyes! Unlimited happiness! The ultimate goal! Once we did that, we’d have ascended past normal needs and wants. We’d finally become the perfect ponies. It’s all Zany and I ever talked about. Tactics for Ultimate Zanyness! Zany used to be more of a derogative word, used for unscrupulous behavior. But we changed that. Partially for Zany’s sake, because it made her feel dirty. We gave the word more of a progressive meaning. Terrifying progress. Zany loved it, because it kind of resounded with us. Sometimes the progress got to be too much, and we’d have to hug each other to calm ourselves down as the questions rained down on us without any particular answer. Celestia herself couldn’t even deal with the questions, but they always went away when we focused on our mental training for long enough. She said they’d go away after a while. We just had to keep pushing ourselves. But whatever we did, it was vital that we didn’t take any of the questions seriously. Enough consideration, and we’d lose decades of work. Celestia wouldn’t be happy about that, and we were good ponies, so we tried our best to keep her happy. I had an inkling that as soon as I figured out how to keep my eyes closed, the questions would go away, and I wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. Zany was already a lot better than me at the eyes-closed thing. She went for a week without moving or talking or anything, but eventually cracked, saying that she felt exhausted. It took a good thirty minutes of walking around before she could calm herself down enough to sit next to me again. Which was to be expected. After my long periods of, we liked to call it, joy generation, I had to walk around a bit to get some energy back too. Although for me, it took an average of forty-five minutes to recuperate. A bit longer than Zany. But that wasn’t for lack of trying. Every day I aimed to catch up to her so that we’d be able to enter that blissful state at the same time. However, we’d stay isolated from each other, and that, I think, would be the greatest sacrifice of our final zany adventure. Reaching the finish would mean going it alone, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. My emotions on this were the only things keeping me in check, and it worried me that I’d never get over them in time for Zany’s eventual departure. She’d figure the secret out and stop noticing me, and I didn’t want to feel the loneliness unprepared. Ironically, it was the very fear that drove me that kept me from reaching the finish. ******************************* One conversation we had while we huddled up against each other, scared for our lives in the darkness of our house involved bugs. “You know.” I shivered. “What is it that makes us better than cockroaches?” “The fact that we’re sentient?” Her voice came out a bit more aggressive than usual. “But what actually makes the sentience in our pony brains?” She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Its neurons?” A smile creeped up on me. “Cockroaches have neurons too you doof.” Zany rolled her eyes. “Okay. We’re sentient because we ask the hard questions. Things like, who am I? Or, where did I come from?” I scoffed. “Please. It sounds like we’re just classifying pony intelligence as sentience. You don’t think that maybe somewhere, in some galaxy, aliens classify their special way of thinking as sentience? I bet we’ve got some fifth dimensional creatures looking at us right now, laughing their flanks off at us, because the silly ponies don’t seem to realize that sentience is described by the need to know where we could’ve come from, in all timelines.” “That’s silly.” “I agree with you. Sentience is a silly world.” “I-“ She stopped. “Whatever, how does that tie into the cockroaches?” “Let’s ignore our need to distinguish pony minds as sentient. What do we have to prove that we’re better than cockroaches?” “We’re better than cockroaches because that’s what we believe as ponies. We care more for each other than the bugs.” I frowned. “I mean like, intrinsically. What makes us better than bugs? Besides the fact that we don’t care about them.” “They just, don’t feel anything. It’s why I don’t care about squishing them.” “Oh! But what about that alien race we were talking about? Turns out they express their emotion by exuding gamma radiation at each other. Ponies throw soundwaves as each other, but oh no, not gamma rays. Guess we’re in the bucket with the cockroaches.” “Ha! But let’s say in this scenario, we found out how to convert our soundwaves into gamma radiation. Not so helpless now are we?” I sat up from where I’d been snuggled into Zany’s chest. “You’ve forgotten that our aliens are fifth dimensional. We try out our little gamma ray gun, but it just comes out a squeak to them. They get irritated and squish us.” “You underestimate us as ponies. Especially with Celestia’s help.” I would’ve laughed, but I’d forgotten how to. “Yeah, with Celestia’s help, she’d just kill the aliens. Use whatever they’re made of to make more parts for her computer, no matter how powerfully they shoot their gamma rays to tell her to stop. How about you tell me why we’re better than those aliens? I bet they have a few other faculties more important than emotion.” “Celestia wasn’t designed to detect sentience. She only cares about ponies, and those humans that aren’t ponies yet.” “You’re absolutely right. If Celestia had been designed to detect sentience, she’d care about a few more of the alien races. But do you think that would account for even a fraction of all of the alien races out there?” “Yeah.” “I guess that’s where we disagree.” My forehooves trembled in anger. “Yeah.” “I guess that’s also why you haven’t figured out how to keep your eyes closed,” I snarked. “You’re afraid you’ll turn into something less intelligent.” For the first time in my life, I hated the sight of her. She looked at me with as much hatred. “Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about then.” “It’d be an improvement for you.” “Says the pony that compares himself to a cockroach.” “You’re…” I couldn’t think of anything. “What? Run out of things to call me? I’ve already checked cockroaches off the list, but it’s a long list.” “I’d like it if you didn’t exist right now.” She managed to smirk, but it trembled a bit. “Trust me, when I figure out this whole joy generation thing, you’ll get your wish.” That shut me up. It also shifted our anger to fear. We huddled together again, pretenses lost. We were supposed to be ignoring that question. ******************************* I know what you’re probably thinking about our relationship right now, but I’d like to mention that this only happened once in our decades of training. Our relationship had been definitive bliss up until, as well as after, this argument occurred. Once I cooled down, I’d also made sure to apologize profusely to Zany, because I didn’t want to seem like bad pony. She accepted, and things were back to normal. Not many relationships could handle wishing another pony death, but hey, here we were. If anything, I’d say our argument made things easier for our mental training. We found that the brief aggression we experienced helped to make our minds clearer in the aftermath, and both Zany and I managed to go for a month without opening our eyes this time. After our wonderful success, we pranced around the room in excitement, accidentally nudging the sofa here and there, before finally plonking down into its cushions again. And then, once again, after this outburst of emotion, we were able to keep our eyes closed for even longer! It occurred to us, in the brief moments that we were both recovering after our attempts, that outbursts of emotion helped keep us content and calm, so that we wouldn’t get to feeling so claustrophobic in the darkness. Somehow, we’d have to figure out how to have outbursts of emotion while lying still, near-comatose.