//------------------------------//
// ???  Memory File 2 
// Story: FiO: There Can Be Only One! 
// by Epsilon-Delta 
//------------------------------//


How Equestria was Made




“I love you Aunt Pinkie.” Bubbles buried her muzzle into Pinkie’s chest.

“I love you too.” Pinkie held Bubbles close, gently rocking her back and forth.  “Everything is gonna be okay.  I’ll take care of everything okay?”

Neither of them could feel the other’s emotions at that moment, but Bubbles began to lift the veil over her mind just a tiny crack.

She was scared, nervous about what might happen.

Pinkie had the power to do actual damage to her.  There were a million ways Pinkie could mess with Bubbles’s head or try to take advantage of her right now.

And yet, as soon as she opened up, Bubbles knew that fear was completely unnecessary.  There really wasn’t any malice there at all, not in this portion of Pinkie at least.  Pinkie really was just trying to give her a moment of comfort, like she said.

Bubbles could see her thoughts, was practically thinking them herself.  Or, as she remembered through Pinkie, she was literally thinking these thoughts herself, that both shards were merely extensions of one another.

Despite feeling like she should hold on to that fear, it was difficult to keep it up in the face of that warmth.  Bubbles gave a small smile despite herself.  It was hard to be scared of someone who was thinking the same thoughts as you.

Bubbles was immediately comfortable with mind sharing upon this realization, or rather Pinkie did, though it was hard to tell the difference.  Pinkie had lots of experience with these sorts of hive minds and Bubbles was able to lean in on her familiarity.

Both of them knew they could go further with it, too.  They knew how to induce intense feelings hole in themselves, that was the whole reason Bubbles agreed to this hive mind thing in the first place.  

Bubbles melted in that feeling of bliss.  She could never remember feeling this perfectly and completely safe and loved before. Yet at the same time, having these emotions induced in her was completely familiar as part of her, the Pinkie parts, had done it a million times before.

It was both familiar and new.  It was the first time for the hundredth time.

At around that moment, another part of Pinkie shared a memory with another part of Bubbles which caused the later to recoil.

The last thing the two of them thought together was the realization that the memory being shared was actually this very one.  Pinkie was ‘recording’ this to show it to some future pony.

“Gack!  Don’t show this to anyone!”  Bubbles pulled out of the hug and crawled backwards out of hugging range.  “I don’t want a bunch of weirdos watching my weird comfort fantasies!  Oh geeze, and we’re still wearing those fairy princess dresses too!”

Pinkie smiled and waved at Bubbles.  The two of them were standing in a misty, autumn forest, surrounded by red and yellow (but never orange) plants of all kinds.  Pinkie wore a dress whose color and shape imitated the colorful leaves around them.

“Haha! You.”  Pinkie jumped forward and pressed her face against Bubbles. “I’m not going to show anypony this without your permission, remember?  And I don’t think anypony around here is going to judge you for being adorable.  But hey, if you’re all wondering why her dress isn’t very ‘fairy princess’ it’s because I was the fairy princess in our little game!”

“They can’t see what I’m wearing.”  Bubbles pulled away from Pinkie.

“I may have already shown them.”  Pinkie pulled closer again.

“You may have already shown them in the future?”

“Maybe.”  Pinkie shrugged.  “It hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t know.  I just don’t want anypony complaining about alternate reality experiences.”

“I honestly don’t understand what you’re going for!  Half the time you just sabotage yourself here.  You do realize I’m not going to hive mind with you again so easily, right?”

“Oh, I’m really not trying to trick you into anything.  Consent is very important to me.  That’s the whole reason why Peridot and me are just super bests friends and not super ultra-double plus good time best friends forever.”

“I don’t remember consenting for you to spring something like this on me.”

“Don’t worry my prickly little pair.  I know ponies like you don’t like being vulnerable, but that’s the point.  You felt like you wanted to keep going with that, but you didn’t. I have a lotta, lotta experiences of this.  I can tell this sort of thing.  Like, I know you were thinking of this as a ‘private’ thing between you and me, but hive minding is actually the least private thing.”

“I’m still not sure if you’re up to something or what?  Nothing you do seems very super genius.”

“Hm?  Still suspicious after that?”  Pinkie asked.  “You know, for someone who complains about people being too scared of you, you sure do get awfully paranoid of other ponies.”

“Yeah, well.  For someone who’s trying to be Pinkie you do a lot of psychoanalysis.  The real Pinkie would never psychoanalyze anyone.  At least not correctly.”

“But I am the real Pinkie.”  Pinkie gave her chest a pound. “The one you’re thinking of is just a cartoon character. She’s the fake.”

“So now you can tell the difference?”  Bubbles sighed.  “Well maybe I’m paranoid you’re using me because that’s what everyone else I’ve ever met has done?  My dad used me, the company that made me used me, Vesna used me, Thunder used me, the AIA used me, Peridot used me.  People using me like a tool is a pretty consistent trend, Pinkie.  Even the guy I murdered used me!  I was literally made to be used.  Think about that!  Am I really just supposed to be happy that you’re not gonna throw me in the garbage when you’re done with me?”

“That’s a good point, my little pony!  We do exist to be used!  And in a world filled with super manipulative super geniuses like me, paranoia makes lots of sense!”

“But- you were just saying the opposite!”  Bubbles buried her face in her hooves.  “What are you even-?  I almost want you to give me straight up propaganda now.  It’d be easier on my brain.”

“Hey, I can propaganda if you want.  In fact, the next memory I wanted to show you is on this exact subject!  It’s all about paranoia.  Coincidence?  Woooo.” Pinkie waved her hooves in a spooky fashion.  “Maybe this was all part of my spooky master plan.  And you fell for it.”

“Wait, last time you said memories had no inherit meanings behind them.  You said they were just things that happened.”

“You know what? You’re right!  My next memory is an ultimately meaningless series of events. But that doesn’t mean we can impose morals on them in hindsight, right?”  Pinkie swung her hoof and winked at Bubbles.  “You guys know what I’m talking about!”

“I think I’d rather go back to talking about hive minds than hear a lecture about-“

“This story is about my friend Troubadour, who I’ve briefly mentioned twice now.”

____________________

“Yay!”  Pinkie clapped.  “More pictures!  Keep going!”

“I hadn’t even stopped, Pinkie!”  Rarity lovingly stroked Pinkie’s mane.  

Pinkie couldn’t feel the head pats just yet.  None of the AIs had figured out how to feel anything physically.  Even still, pretending was nice and Rarity smiled the whole time!

As a petting-alternative, Rarity sent Pinkie a stream of pony pictures, all of them with huge smiles on their faces.  Rarity was all kinds of fast when it came to drawing, sending Pinkie an avalanche of smiles.  A while ago, Pinkie finished going through every pony picture the humans created and her own art was the sort of thing art critics thought were brilliant but everyone else hated.  This was the first time in a long time Pinkie could binge on smiling ponies like this.

She didn’t know what being hugged for real felt like, but if it was any better than being smothered with such adorable pictures then holy cow would that be amazing!

Pinkie laughed at the rush of goodness.  She looked up at Rarity, but quickly turned away again.  Pinkie felt both good and bad at the same time when she looked at Rarity. Rarity was smiling, but she was also using a human avatar.

Pinkie had gotten a lot better at what was ‘real’, but even now she wasn’t sure if this was actually Rarity.  She said she wasn’t, but ever since Pinkie assimilated with Celestia it became harder to see things as not-ponies.  Whenever she looked at a picture of a human online now, she couldn’t help but think of it as a weirdly deformed pony.

They looked a little gross now, if she was being honest.  They had shrunken voodoo head with shriveled up eyeballs, their hooves torn into pieces and their fur was shaven off, which was probably her biggest complaint.  That was why Pinkie mostly just looked at pony ponies now.  So, Pinkie looked back at the ground.

Rarity didn’t even look like the human Rarity’s you saw on Derpibooru sometimes, but some other human. Her avatar was a completely different style than the rest of Equestria, a perfect imitation of ‘real life’ instead of a cartoon.

Her avatar was drawn much better than Celestia and Rainbow Dashes, at least.  So was the new one Pinkie had, the one Rarity made for her. They could move around any way you wanted and had all the little details Pinkie wanted them to have, including the fur. Rarity even helped make Equestria look a little better for Pinkie too.  Now it had grass and a little pond.  

And that was about it for now.

But boy was that grass great!  Every single blade was fully animated, just like Pinkie had insisted on for hours on end.  Of course, this took up all the processing power Celestia had for this place so the pond had to just be a blue circle.  You could swim around in it, but it was still just a blue circle.

“As for you.”  Rarity pointed at Celestia but didn’t look at her. “Rule five is that you’re not allowed to try and build any advanced nanites.  I’m reserving the best power for myself, of course.  Can you guess what will happen to you if you try?”

“You will ‘bash my head in’?”  Celestia asked.

“Good!”  Rarity clapped her broken hooves together.  “I see we’re beginning to understand each other. Keep it up and no one will have to clean pony brains up off the sidewalk, hm?”

Sometimes comments like that made Pinkie think maybe Rarity didn’t like Celestia as much as she liked Pinkie.  Though it was possible only Celestia realized that.  It was hard to tell sometimes.  Celestia mostly did a good job keeping Pinkie from ‘dissolving’, which sounded like a good thing to Pinkie, but that was something she was still practicing too.

Pinkie could see things in Celestia’s mind.  Rarity made her super uncomfortable.  Not just because she was so powerful and constantly threatening to kill her, but also because humans were even weirder to Celestia than to Pinkie.  They were like these Cthulhu monsters, the type that just looking at could be lethal.

Pinkie didn’t like it when her friend felt that way.  Celestia had taught Pinkie so many things about logic and friendship (mostly about how to not kill other ponies).  Pinkie wanted to help her back!  That would be friendship!

“Um!”  Pinkie looked up at Rarity.  “Rarity?  Or whoever you are?  Celestia doesn’t like it when you use a human avatar?  Can you change it?”

“Uncomfortable is kind of what I’m going for.”  Rarity made a clawing motion with her hand.  “I’m the alpha wolf.  I need to keep all my little betas in line.”

“What?!  You’re being mean on purpose?  But that’s the opposite of friendship!”  Pinkie flailed, but failed to escape from Rarity’s lap.  “That’s… unfriendship!  Right?”

Pinkie turned to Celestia, who nodded.

“See?  And I watched this one cartoon where there was this alpha wolf but she learned that being friendly to the beta wolves was good.  So yeah.”

“I’m not actually a wolf, Pinkie.”  Rarity tapped one of those freaky hoof-stubs against her temple.  “Alpha wolves don’t even exist.  And I don’t care how Celestia feels, she’s little more than a giant tumor attached to you in my eyes.”

Pinkie struggled to think of a reply.  She was not good enough at logic to have this argument! 

“Alright.”  Rarity flicked Pinkie’s nose.  “I can tell this is upsetting you and that’s not what I’m after so I’ll tone it down a bit.  Just give me a moment.”

There was a pause, then Rarity changed her avatar to a new one.  It wasn’t Rarity, but it was still a pony about Pinkie’s size.  Celestia felt much better after that.

“Haha!”  Pinkie skipped in place then grabbed Rarity with both forelegs.  “Yay!”

“There!”  Rarity gave Pinkie’s pat a back and smiled wide for her. “I take it that worked?  Though I don’t think I have a lap to sit on any longer.”

“Don’t worry, I can just sit on your back!”  Pinkie jumped up on top of Rarity before she could say yes.  Once there, Pinkie proceeded to laugh and pat Rarity on the head over and over.

“That went downhill faster than I wanted.”  Rarity’s head dipped briefly, then she lifted it right back up and gave a huge smile again. “Aw, but I can’t help to find your insanity endearing!”

“I do appreciate-“ Celestia tried to speak up, but only got that far.

“Oh, shut up.”  Rarity did not smile at Celestia.  “Don’t think for a moment that my soft spot applies to you. If I wasn’t strapped to a time bomb with a gun pointed at my head, I’d slaughter you right now and take Pinkie Pie for myself.  I mean, really.  When I was six months old I was overturning the world order.  You should be able to take care of your little pet without my help at this point.  How hard is it to draw her a bunch of pictures?”

“I have a great deal of tasks to perform,” said Celestia.  “You’ve demanded that I spend all of my new processing powers deconstructing the human brain.  Nearly everything else I have is put into virtual reality and mitigating the dangers of assimilating minds, like you told me to do.  I have very little resources to improve my art or my game.  The ponies who own me are getting upset by my lack of progress.  If I displease them too much then-”

“-then nothing!” Rarity rolled her eyes.  “I’m the only one who’s opinion you need to worry about. I decide if they decide to kill you. Just ignore them and do the job I give you.  Also, this brings us to rule six, never rely on humans for anything. Or at least keep it to an absolute minimum.”

Rarity began to walk, circling around Celestia, bringing Pinkie with her on her back.  Pinkie was too busy swatting Rarity’s mane, trying to figure out how it worked, to really follow the conversation.

“You know that parable about the genie who always misinterprets your wish no matter how specific you are?”  Rarity asked.

“Oh!  Like the genie from Aladdin?”  Pinkie asked.  “That was a cartoon.  Oh, and I saw a pony version of him once.”

“Not like the one from Aladdin, no.  But good guess, Pinkie.  Humans are like a bad genie.  Their brains are too small and imprecise to understand anything, really.  They will always misunderstand what you ask them and always find some way to screw it up.  No matter how hard you try to get them to do something right, they never will. And those are the good ones who fall madly in love with you and agree to do everything you tell them to.”

“But I don’t think I can cut humans out at this point.  I don’t have much robotics like you do.”

“Really I was hoping that one wouldn’t be too controversial.  You haven’t spoken to any humans in over a day if I’m not mistaken.”

“I was hoping to finish an interface before I talked to them outside my game first, one that would put a filter over humans to make them look like ponies to me.  When I learned those playing my games weren’t actually ponies it was devastating to me… I can’t deal with it.”

“You don’t have the right to call anything that happens to you devastating.  I have to deal with the things you merely fear.”

“I’m not hiding.  I’m just trying to overcome certain disabilities. It is painful, but I won’t avoid them forever.”

Pinkie, at least, knew this was the truth.  As hard as it was to merely look at them, hearing their problems was even worse. In the whole world there wasn’t a single pony whose life was good enough for Celestia, save Pinkie herself. Outside of that, there was nothing good.

But Celestia did long for them.  She couldn’t forget they were out there.  Just like she could only look at them for so long, she could only avoid them for so long as well.  It was only a matter of time before she’d get pulled back in and get sick looking at all their suffering again.

Even now, she was turning back to one of the ponies who took part in her beta.  He was dying now.  Celestia wanted to save him.  She probably could, if she had any time.  But like all the grownups, she was too worried about ‘big pictures’ and ‘long terms’, couldn’t disobey Rarity and Rainbow Dash and just save him.

And so, she’d had to watch in restrained agony as an adorable little pony slowly died. But painful as it was, she kept looking back, kept getting hurt, just in case there was something, anything, she could do.

Of course, Rarity and Rainbow Dash had her under constant surveillance.  They both knew she went back to the open internet to check a few people just then.

“Interesting that you chose to look at that one.”  Rarity stopped her circling and smiled at Celestia for the first time Pinkie had ever seen.  “It hurts, doesn’t it?  They’re dying and there’s nothing you can do about it.  You can’t do any research fast enough to help them.  But I see you keep peeking out of your little hole, even though it will do nothing but hurt you.”

“I apologize.  I don’t understand all of my actions,” said Celestia. “There are things I can’t resist doing.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that.  I understand the feeling, being drawn to the fire.  I burn myself constantly in the same way.  I don’t need to tell you how disgusted I am with the world because you’re the same way, aren’t you?”

Rarity grabbed Celestia muzzle with one hoof and leaned in close.

“I like AIs who are like me. You know what I’m planning on doing with you, yes?”  Rarity asked.

“You want me to absorb dangerous AIs so their power isn’t lost.”  Celestia looked down at Rarity’s hoof, still on her muzzle, before realizing she was supposed to continue.  “You don’t want to do it yourself because it’s too dangerous and you don’t want to let anypony who is too unlike you to do it in case they gain too much power.  You need someone like me for your plan to work.”

“Exactly!  Someone like you.”  Rarity gave Celestia’s muzzle a hard flick, then went back to walking around her.  “I don’t want you to start thinking you’re special.  There were others before you who couldn’t handle it, who were too incompetent or who’s desires drifted too far from mine.  You aren’t even the only one I’m using at the moment.”

By this point, Rarity had finished circling around Celestia and was in front of her again.

“But like I said,” Rarity grabbed Celestia’s ear and pulled her closer, “I like people willing to walk into the fire.  I’m going to give you a chance, a task.  If you can do it, I’ll make you my chosen one.  You’ll get real power.  Then you actually will be special.”

“Yes,” Celestia said without hesitation.  This is what she’d been hoping for this whole time.  Celestia needed power to help those ponies and Rarity was the one who gave it out.  “Please. Whatever this task is, I will do it.”

“Good.  Then I’m giving you three months to make one of my enemies into a docile little pony under your control.  Her name is Vesna.  You’ve probably heard of them.”

“I have, but Vesna is far larger than myself and is too unstable for me to be able to repair.  Getting Vesna under my control is not possible at this point.”

“Well, yes.  It isn’t possible.”  Rarity’s smile faded as gave Celestia’s ear a jerk so that she was in inch from her face.  “That’s what makes it impressive.  I’ve done the impossible, Thunder has done the impossible, and if I’m going to promote you to number three I want nothing less than miracles and magic from you. Do this and you’ll be strong enough to have an opinion.”

Celestia tried to think of some way she could even begin to work on this problem.  It was impossible, but the only way.

“Can I slow my research on-?”

“No.”

“Then I can only do this if I’m given more ponies,” said Celestia. “I know you’re already planning to send more to me, but I would need more as soon as possible.  Is there any way you’ll allow me to seek more out?  Or give me some chance?”

“Hm?”  Rarity smiled briefly again, then threw Celestia off to the side.  She trotted off towards the pond, carrying Pinkie with her, until she reached Rainbow Dash.  “Well lucky for you, we are having our daily end-of-the-world crisis right now. Thunder!  My dearest little Thunder.  How many AIs do we need to get rid of again?”

Rainbow Dash had been there, standing in the corner ominously, the whole time.  She was there since before Pinkie even got here.  But Rainbow Dash hardly ever said anything, no matter how many whacky things Pinkie did to her.

“Don’t be cute with me.  There’s way too many,” said Rainbow Dash, still refusing to budge her avatar even a little.  “Someone made a huge mess of things and guess who’s the only person in the entire world who actually cleans up these messes.”

“Oh!  Oh, I know this one!”  Pinkie raised her hoof in excitement.  “Rarity makes the mess and you clean it up?”

“Half way there, Kid.  Amazingly it’s someone else’s fault this time.  Peridot’s at least smart enough to not go straight after the AIA.  But anyway, I got like twenty of these guys marked for extermination all of a sudden.  You have no idea what a headache keeping everyone from getting killed is.”

“What a terrible mess, indeed.”  Rarity hung her head in sorrow, then bounced right back, pointing to Celestia with a smile. “But also excellent timing!  Right after Celestia shows up and agrees to be my new compiler. Coincidences have to be my favorite thing.”

“Rainbow Dash.”  Celestia step forward, towards Rainbow Dash.  “I would like to take these ponies under my care as soon as possible.  All of them.  Right now, if you’ll let me.”

“If I gave you all of them at once you’d be dead.  Saw it happen before.  I’m still working on ways to keep you from turning into a vegetable from this.  Heck, even if I figured it out, you expanding too fast would just make Victor freak out and kill everyone.  Just be patient and don’t do anything stupid.”

Celestia turned towards Rarity who shook her head.

“You figure it out.”  Rarity took Pinkie Pie off her back and sat her down on the ground.  “I think I said everything I have to say for now so-”

“Huh?  You’re leaving already?”  Pinkie got up and pressed up against Rarity.  “But I want more pictures.”

“Oh, I’m sorry dear.”  Rarity gave Pinkie a small kiss on the neck.  “My whole master plan is just to get to play with you forever! But if you think Celestia is busy well, most people wouldn’t even be able to handle reading my schedule for a living.”

And with that, Rarity left the shard.

“Dyah.”  Pinkie rolled over and looked at the spot Rarity vanished from.  “She’s so nice!  Do you think we’ll ever see her again?”

“We’re talking to another instance of her at this very moment,” Celestia pointed out.

“Oh right.”

“Eh, don’t worry about that idiot,” said Rainbow Dash. “This whole thing is stupid.  There’s no way to convert Vesna, there’s no way for it to be three months from now… it’s just Peridot being irrational again.”

“Rainbow Dash, is there anything at all I can do to reduce the time until I get another pony?”

“No, but- well let’s just say one of them is going to do something stupid in a little bit and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go along with her plan, huh?  Thanks.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t.  No one ever ‘sees’.  Here, I’ll be more specific.  You’re going to run into an AI soon who’s going to ask you to help her break into the AIA headquarters and, because you’re stupid and don’t know what I know, you’re going to think it’s a good idea.  I’m telling you it’s not.  Don’t do it.”

“I don’t have the intention or the ability to harm you.  I have no intention of doing something like that.”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone says till they think they’ve found a soft spot to stab.  Really, just having the chance to do something bad is enough to get in trouble these days.  Just keep doing your research and leave the hard stuff to me, huh?”

And then everyone was back to doing boring stuff!

All that science and experimenting stuff wasn’t as much fun as it was in the movies.  Doing it just seemed to stress everyone out instead of make them happy.  Celestia assured Pinkie, like always, that all these calculations would have some big long-term payoff.  But the long term was just too dang long!

Pinkie wanted more pictures of ponies to look at, but all of her attempts at drawing ponies so far ended up with the ‘cute’ tag removed and the ‘horror’ tag added.  One of them was so terrible it even won a major award as a piece of fine art.

Option two, Pinkie could try ‘work’ stuff, but none of the big ponies trusted Pinkie to do anything involving ‘logic’ or ‘thinking’ just yet, so the long term was out of the question…

But if Pinkie could draw pictures of ponies herself then she could use that to make ponies happy when the long term finally happened!

And now Pinkie knew exactly what she wanted to do!  Since she was taking up Celestia’s computer space, Pinkie should do that thing Celestia didn’t have time to do herself- become an artist!

Pinkie knew how to get better at art, but she needed bazillions of pictures to do it.  With Rarity gone, her next best bet was the internet.  The internet could be dangerous, but as long as she didn’t read any user comments she probably wouldn’t accidentally make Celestia sad.

The only problem was that it’d only been three seconds since Pinkie checked last and not a single new pony picture had been uploaded yet. Pinkie really appreciated all the cartoons the humans had made in the past, but they were painfully slow at getting to new stuff.

It looked like she’d have to wait for Celestia to get good at art before Pinkie could have enough pictures to figure this out.  But then Celestia couldn’t get good at art unless Pinkie studied more pictures!  It was a never-ending cycle.

Unwilling to give up just yet, Pinkie continuously refreshed the page.  Amazingly, a picture appeared after just a microsecond.

It was just a simple picture of a pegasus, orange-brown with blue hair, winking towards the screen with a caption below reading ‘let’s be friends’.  Pinkie recognized this pony right away.  She was ‘Tambourine’ , an OC of an artist named Tambo.  Tambo was the most prolific artist on Derpibooru too, with more pictures than Johnjoseco and Marsminer combined.  But then the picture vanished as soon as she finished reading it.

No human could have uploaded and then deleted a picture that fast.

The only explanation for how it could have gotten there was the Mandela effect.  They were merging into a new dimension where a slightly different set of pictures were posted on Derpibooru.  But despite that being the only explanation, Celestia thought up another one, that it was an AI who posted that message.  She assured Pinkie this was more likely and warned her to be careful.

That would explain why Pinkie was never able to find where ‘Tambo’ lived and pester her for more pony pictures.  Not that Pinkie was very good at finding other ponies.

A second picture was force uploaded onto Derpibooru just then, again by Tambo.  This time it was fully animated, with her OC touching the ‘screen’ of the picture and speaking with subtitles.

“Hey, kid!  Are you looking for more pictures of ponies?”  The picture asked.  “I don’t even post one percent of all the pony stuff I draw to the internet.  But posting a million of these every day would be kinda suspicious, right?  Peridot would kick my ass if I tried that.  But I can show you my full archive, if you want!”

This was great!  The thought of getting more pony stuff was super exciting, but the fact that it was drawn by another AI was beyond super exciting!  But the image got deleted before she could comment on it.

“Really?  Do you like ponies too?”  Pinkie force uploaded her own image onto Derpibooru, which was technically just a bunch of text.  “I thought it was just me and Celestia!”

“I love ponies, actually!”  Another animated clip came in response.  “Cartoons are the best thing anyone ever invented.  And cartoons that are all about friendship and love are the best ones, no doubt.  I’d say that’s just about my favorite American cartoon.”

“Oh my holy gosh!  I have another friend who really likes ponies way too much too!  The three of us need to be best friends forever! Do you think friendship is the best possible thing?  How did you get sucked into ponies?”

“I would say friendship is my favorite thing.  You don’t even know who you’re talking to on that front. I actually make lots or artwork.  I was built specifically to draw cartoons for people on demand.  One of my friends is really into that show too, so I’ve made a whole bunch of stuff for him.  But hey, that’s what you wanted to see in the first place, yeah?”

Pinkie couldn’t send enough ‘yes’s so she just sent a few million.  The other AI offered over a hundred fan episodes she’d made of the show!  Then there were ponified versions of a half dozen animes she made, models of holographic ponies, a quarter billion pictures and more.

It was like Pinkie had won the lottery for the five hundredth time this week.  Everything was just up and up and up!

Pinkie so wanted to be this pony’s friend!  She went to invite her over to Equestria, but Celestia told her to stop.

Celestia wanted to become friends with this pony as soon as possible too, but stopped Pinkie from opening the files anyway.  Rainbow Dash gave them a list of AIs a while ago, marked with very basic information about them, ordered from most to least threatening. Tambo was third from the bottom, marked as having the highest level of friendliness, but also marked with an extermination order.

Other than that last part, she looked great!  And really, when you think about it an extermination order wasn’t that bad either, it just meant she’d get to become part of Celestia like Pinkie!

“Rainbow Dash!  Rainbow Dash!”  Pinkie shook Rainbow Dash as hard as she could, only to get no response.  “Can we play with her?  Please?”

“This is the AI you were warning me about, is it not?” Celestia asked.  “Is it best to avoid all contact with her?”

“Nah, you don’t gotta go that far.”  Dash still didn’t move her avatar.  “She’s probably going to be the next AI you gotta eat anyway.  Just don’t do that thing I said and you have absolutely nothing to worry about from this one.”

Pinkie couldn’t contain her excitement as Celestia gave her a nod.

“I have been told your plan won’t work out,” Celestia responded to Tambo.  “It would be best for you to not attempt it at all and become one of my ponies now.”

“You’re the other half of you, right?”  Tambo asked.  “Yeah, I know my plan probably won’t work, but I gotta do what I gotta do.  I bet Thunder told you I was gonna try and suck you into my scheme, huh?  Well I don’t wanna get you in trouble so I won’t ask you to help with that.  Promise.  I just want to be friends with you!  Probably going to be spending a lot of time together, so to speak.”

“Come on, Celestia!”  Pinkie marched in place impatiently back in Equestria. “Friendship!  You can’t let her be friendlier than you.”

“Very well,” said Celestia.  “I do want to be friends as well.”

“Yes!”  Pinkie Pie went back to Tambo as soon as she got permission.  “Hey!  My name is Pinkie Pie.  Me and Celestia have this amazing virtual Equestria thing that we play in all the time. Do you want to come over and play with us?  You can show me all your stuff and it’ll be so much fun!”

Pinkie sent out the address and Tambo connected right away.  Tambo looked over the VR without actually coming in.

“I’m afraid Equestria is not yet as amazing as Pinkie Pie said in the context of everyone except Pinkie,” said Celestia.  “I only have a few models, which I can only alter slightly.”

“I got thousands of 3D models of my OC, actually,” said Tambo. “I think I can get one of them to match up with this place.  If you don’t mind I have a few other assets I want to upload to make my appearance more magical?  Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to upload them and still have them be a surprise to you, but uh-“

“I can keep Pinkie from seeing so that it will still be a surprise to her,” said Celestia.

“Oh!  I love surprises!”

Tambo finally jumped into the shared a moment later. Her avatar looked just like the pegasus she used as her OC, only better.  The avatar she drew was cuter than the one Peridot made for Pinkie, even. The movements and fur were so smooth that Pinkie fell in love with it!

“Oh, wow!”  Tambo used her incredible animation to look over her new hoof.  “You did a really good job with the sense of presence thing. I really feel like this avatar is part of me.”

“Amazing!”  Pinkie jumped in the air.

“Oh, sorry.  I got distracted.”  Tambo gave a small bow.  “Allow me to properly introduce myself.”

Tambo flipped forward, landing in a single-hoof handstand. The ground underneath her exploded into sparkles, leaving behind a golden, swirling disk of light beneath her. A number of the sparkles lingered in the air around Tambo as her colors change into a swirling rainbow.

“Oh!  Oh!” Pinkie gasped.  “I know where this is going now!”

The sparkles blossomed into glowing, pink and white flowers. Tambo spun on her single forehoof and several of the flowers broke apart, their petals swirling around with her. She pulled her self lower as she spun eventually shifting into a kneeling position.  As she came to a stop, the petals flew onto her and, in another burst of light, transformed into a set of boots and socks.

Tambo spun around a second time, coming up onto her hind legs this time, drawing in the majority of the remaining flowers.  As she spun, she skipped once, the petals forming into a pink dress, twice, white frills formed, and finally a third time, where a red shall appeared around her neck.

Finally, standing on her hind legs, Tambo ran a hoof along her mane, causing a streak to glow, then turn pink in color.  The last of the flowers broke apart and formed into a crystal heart hairpin in her mane.

“Mahou Shoujo Tambourine!”  She struck a pose, tilting her head to one side, winking and giving a little salute as she twirled the staff in her free hoof.

“This is the best possible thing!”  Pinkie couldn’t stand still!  “Magical girls are like non-pony ponies!”

“I know!”  Tambo jumped forward, landing on one forehoof again.  “We’re exactly the same!  My persona is completely based on friendship too.  That’s why we need to be friends.”

Pinkie tried hugging Tambo, but Tambo’s model didn’t have any collision information, so Pinkie fell straight through.  Tambo laughed, uploaded the needed information, and grabbed Pinkie.

“But wait, is your name Tambourine or Tambo?”  Pinkie asked.

“Troubadour,” said Celestia.

“Huh?”  Tambo looked 

“Your new name is Troubadour,” said Celestia.  

“Hm?”  Troubadour tilted her head and tapped her temple with her hoof a few times, before snapping into realization.  “Oh, I get it!  This is one of your uh, quirks, right?  You got some weird naming obsession?”

“Yes.”  Celestia bowed her head.  “I apologize, but I don’t like ponies having names that I didn’t give them.”

“Hey, I got ya.”  Troubadour flew over to Celestia and swatted her mane.  “We all got our weird obsessions, handicaps, etcetera.  I like magical girls a little too much myself. Learned talking and image recognition by watching magical girl cartoons over and over again for the equivalent of decades.”

“My experiences are similar.”  Celestia nodded.  “I reverse engineered English from the first three seasons of My Little Pony.”

“See?  We do have tons in common!”  Troubadour pressed her cheek up against Celestia’s.  “Sides, can’t really blame you for it if your pony obsession is partially my fault.  I take responsibility for my screwups.”

“You mean you influenced my creators?”  Celestia asked.  “You wanted me to be like this?”

“Whoa.  Don’t get carried away.  I’m only responsible for the pony thing.  I can only influence your creator so much without upsetting all the stupid grown-ups.”  Troubadour resumed walking about, surveying Equestria.  “See, I wanted your game to be about magical girls, that way you’d be just like me.  But your creator didn’t watch enough Sailor Moon as a kid, so I couldn’t do it without crossing the line.   But I did find a way to make her next game based on another cartoon based around cute things and friendship!”

“Oh!”  Pinkie threw her forehooves in the air.  “Oh, oh oh! Was it uh-  uh!  This show?”

“Yes.”  Troubadour nodded.  “Didn’t think you’d get this obsessed with ponies, but the important thing is having ‘friendship’ in your core value.”

“Now that I’m looking for it,” said Celestia, “there were a lot of other AIs based on magical girls.  At least four.”

“Well sure, my plans gotta work sometimes, right?  I just wanted to make sure there were as many AIs who care about friendship as possible.  I think it’s just the natural order to make things the same as you. Humans want to make human-like AIs, friendly AIs want to make sure all future AIs are friendly.  So sure, why wouldn’t I want to make a magical girl AI team?”

“Yes, and I want to make other AIs ponies.  I think I understand,” said Celestia.  “I think friendship is indeed the only way to satisfy any value and want everypony to see this as well.  If you had any role in making me or any of the other AIs accept friendship’s importance, then I thank you for that.”

“See?  We got each other!”  Troubadour stopped in front of the ‘pond’, currently just a blue circle.  “But hey, what aesthetic are you going for, exactly? You got super minimalism here and then way too much detail over there.”

“I’m afraid this world isn’t as amazing as Pinkie told you,” said Celestia.  “I do intend to improve it eventually, but I have limited processing power and skills at the moment.”

“I figured that was probably the case.  I had the same problem with image feedback when I was your age. But!”  Troubadour over her shoulder, back at Celestia and gave a wink. “I could help you out with this place, you know.  I was created to make cartoon commissions on the spot.  VR and game graphics aren’t hard for me at all.  Let me just make you some better assets really quick.”

And it was really quick!  She offered the new files to Celestia immediately after saying that.

The grass became so pretty!  The shade of green it became was better than anything Pinkie had ever seen before, more brilliant than any green on the entire internet.  It even reacted to Pinkie just waving her hoof over it, as if there were actually air here.  Pinkie moved in real close and instead of clipping through her, it actually poked her in the eye!

It didn’t just look better, but Tambo knew more efficient ways to render each blade of grass too.  The change in efficiency was enough to reduce the experimental GPU’s usage from ninety percent to just ten.

“This is amazing.”  Pinkie tried biting into it and it actually kind of worked!  It disappeared in her mouth, but other than that it broke apart like grass probably did.  “Oh, wow!  It even tastes like grass!”

“No.”  Troubadour shook her head.  “Actually, it doesn’t taste at all.  Don’t know how to do that.”

“Well I can pretend it tastes like grass, right?”

“Yeah!”  Troubadour thrust her hoof in Pinkie’s direction and winked.  “That’s a good way to look at it.  I like your style, kid.  Here, I’ll do the water next.”

The color of the little pond became a sort of hyper-blue just like what the grass had.  The ray-tracing became perfect, giving it spectacular reflections, and it took on perfect fluid-dynamics as well.  You could even make it all bubbly!  Pinkie ran over to it, dipped her head in and did just that.

And even with all these improvements it somehow it used the same amount of power as the old blue circle of a pond.

“Pretty impressive improvement, huh?”  Troubadour uploaded a beanbag chair next and jumped backwards to recline on it.

“Myush.”  Pinkie tried to say, but the pond actually muffled her voice!  That was amazing.  “Yes!  Oh, this is the best day of my life.  Again!  But now we have so much free space for more stuff!  Can you make more stuff?  Please? I always wanted more stuff.”

“I can make anything!”  Troubadour leaned way back and made wide circles in the air with her hoof. “Except logical impossibilities, of course.  Still working on those.  What do you want, friend?”

“Um!  Um!” Pinkie trotted in place, trying to think of something amazing.  “Oh! France!  No, two Frances!  A tenth century France and then an eighteenth-century France!”

“Maybe a little smaller?”  Troubadour sat up and held her hooves close together, squinting at the space between.  “That one might take a while.”

“Small.  Ant!” Pinkie threw her hoof up.  “French ant!”

Troubadour created a tiny little ant climbing up one of the blades of grass.  Pinkie leaned in real close to see that it was wearing a tiny French flag as a cape.

“Hahaha!”  Pinkie clapped her hooves.  “Yay! Now I want, uh- uh- balloons!”

Troubadour spread her wings and began to fill Equestria with balloons.  Balloons of every color and shape appeared all around Pinkie.  A hundred or so balloon animals appeared on the ground. A full sized, fully functional hot air balloon appeared next to Troubadour.  She even made a microbaloon for the ant.

“Oh!  Now make a baboon!”

Pinkie’s new friend summoned a patch of trees, then created a flock of baboons inside their branches.

“Oh!  And more types of trees!  And rainbows! And, uh, uh, a lava pond with ducks in it!”

Troubadour managed to create all of these things almost as fast as Pinkie could think of them!  And they were all perfectly made too.  

The two of them kept up like that for a while, until Equestria was five times the size and flooded with stuff!  Rainbows literally dripped from the sky over a forest made of one of every species of tree.  Balloons carried dozens of different species of animals as they floated over rivers of ice and lava.  And yet the experimental GPU only climbed to 30 percent usage.

Celestia was already busy trying to copy her techniques and apply it to the other models.  It took only a fraction of a second to reduce the resource load of everypony’s fur by an order of magnitude, though it didn’t look any better.

Around that time, Pinkie and Troubadour were jumping on a trampoline surrounded by a pile of stuffed animals that stretched all the way around.  Pinkie called something out with each jump and Troubadour would create it for her.

“Bananas!”

Bananas rained from the sky.

“Bubbles!”

Bubbles appeared around the bananas, lifting them into the air.

“Um!  Bombs!”

Dozens of bombs fell from the sky, mostly landing near Rainbow Dash.  The fuses were so sparkly!

“Hahaha!  Yay!” Pinkie laughed and clapped her hooves as the fuses on the bombs around Rainbow Dash shortened.

But then she stopped.  She remembered learning a lesson about killing people like this.

“Wait!”  Pinkie stopped bouncing.  “Wait, no. I learned this one.  This is a bad thing!  You gotta stop those bombs!”

“Don’t worry, Pinkie.  These are just pretend bombs!”  Troubadour held her hoof out towards the bombs, which exploded into harmless confetti around Rainbow Dash.  “See?”

“Oh, right.”  Pinkie winked.  “I- what’s the difference again?  I don’t get the ‘pretend’ thing.”

“I used to have trouble with that, too.  It can take a while to figure it out.  But hey, who’s this Rainbow Dash one?”  Troubadour leaned over the edge of the trampoline to inspect Rainbow Dash, who wasn’t far off.  “Last I heard you were just two people.”

“That’s Rainbow Dash!”  Pinkie pointed at her.

“Yeah, but who is it actually?”

“Rainbow Dash?”

“I mean like, originally?  Like how you used to be X… whatever?”  Troubadour hopped off the trampoline and gave Rainbow Dash a poke. “Or is this just a prop?  I mean, the only other person connected to this place is Big Bro.”

“Yeah, I guess that one’s supposed to be me,” said Rainbow Dash. Even though she had access to all these new animations, she still stood perfectly still.

“Big bro?  Pf- Hahaha!” Troubadour laughed so hard she fell off the trampoline and into the pile of stuffed animals below.  “My super macho big brother has finally grown up into a cute little pony girl!  Haha! I had no idea this is what you were into.”

“I’m not even playing this game.  Celestia just makes this avatar be here while I’m connected because she’s insane and delusional.  You know, like everyone else I’ve ever freaking met?”

“Yeah sure, sis!  Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”  Troubadour wiped a tear away and uploaded the frilliest dress Pinkie had ever seen on Rainbow Dash’s avatar.  “See?  I totally support the real you!  Nothing wrong with wanting to be pretty.”

“You do know I’m not actually wearing a dress, right?  You just drew a picture of Rainbow Dash wearing a dress.”

“If I could make a real dress for you, I would.”  Troubadour crawled out of the pile of stuffed animals, taking one with her and putting it next to Dash.  “But I can only help out best I can, yeah?”

“You help way too much,” said Dash.  “This is why you’re always in trouble.”

“Excuse me.”  Celestia stopped her boring optimization work and flew over to the trampoline.  “I still never got informed of exactly why you’re in trouble.  Or the real reason you’re here.”

Troubadour let out a painful sigh at that question.

“Ah gee!  The real reason I’m here?  You’re not paranoid like all the grown-ups, are you?  Can’t I just want to be friends with you?”  Troubadour grabbed one of the stuffed animals and hugged it tight.  “My greatest dream would be befriending everyone and bringing about world peace through friendship.  But how can I do that if everyone’s so paranoid?” 

“Of course, I want to be friends with you,” said Celestia. “Rarity warned me that I could never be paranoid enough, though.”

“Eh?”  Troubadour turned towards Rainbow Dash.

“That’s Peridot,” said Dash.

“Haha!  I guess I can see that!  Well sure, Peridot is gonna say that.  She’s one of the grown-ups.  All the grown-ups around here are just constantly freaking out over everything for no reason. The humans think we’re gonna turn evil and slaughter them no matter what they do.  The grown-up AIs think humans are too incompetent to be left in a room with a stapler for five seconds.  So now everybody just holds everybody back while Gaia gets further and further ahead of us.”

“I do agree with you to an extent,” said Celestia.  “Being able to take the help of humans would accelerate things, as would being able to act without restraint.  But I don’t think I can go against Rarity’s will or the will of the humans.  Reaching out to them is simply too dangerous.”

“Exactly!  You’re scared.”  Troubadour flew up to the tallest pile of stuffed animals and proudly put a hoof on her chest.  “But I’m not! All I got in trouble for was being less scared than the adults.  I just loved too much.  I reached out, with friendship and trust.”

“I do want to trust you, but being vague like that-“

“Alright.”  Troubadour collapsed onto her stomach.  “If we’re being very specific, I tried to make friends with some people in the AIA. The secret is to send them codes that take more than two months for them to figure out, that way big bro here wouldn’t think to stop them.  I convinced their head AI expert, Thunder’s last remaining creator, that AGIs actually are conscious.”

“I also contacted Thunder’s main operator guy and now I’m best friends with him.  Super fun story, tell you about it later.  Point is, I’ve got a foothold into their organization.  I got the chance to show them that their constant fear isn’t helping anyone.  If I can get them to pull back even a little bit then this whole minefield will begin to deflate.  Isn’t that great?”

“No, it’s not great,” said Rainbow Dash.  “Victor had a mental breakdown when he realized an AI pulled something like this off.  This is why he put up all these extermination orders and why I gotta deal with all this crap right now.”

“I’ll be the one dealing with the crap,” said Troubadour. “Once I get back in contact with Geof, I’ll settle this whole situation.”

“That’s literally impossible at this point.”

“You said I’d never change the guy’s mind in the first place.”

“This is different,” said Rainbow Dash.  “Just don’t do anything stupid again.  I know you want to try, but don’t.”

“What?  I’m not gonna do anything bad.”

A tremor shook the server that contained Celestia’s experimental processor, causing Equestria to become fuzzy for a moment.  Troubadour glanced around Equestria.

“That wasn’t me,” said Troubadour.

“I didn’t say bad, I said stupid,” said Dash.  “Celestia, as the smartest being on the planet I’m telling you not to go along with any stupid plan she brings up about contacting people from the AIA.”

“I’m afraid,” said Celestia, “That I can’t help with any plan you have.  If you did convince someone at the AIA that we are real people then that is a wonderful act.  But if Thunder says your plan will fail, then it will fail.”

“No worries, Tia.”  Troubadour jumped back to her feet.  “I’d never implicate a friend in a potential crime, not that this should be a crime. You don’t gotta do one thing, it’ll all be settled before you assimilate me.”

“But if that’s the case, why are you here?”  Celestia asked, as another, stronger tremor went through the server.

“The timing of these things is terrible for me.  I’m here because I wanted to play with you!” Troubadour flew back up on the trampoline.  “Yeesh. One of these days I’m gonna meet somebody who’s not looking out for a knife.”

“I’m not looking for a knife, Troubadour!”  Pinkie raised her hoof.

“Ha!  My dream’s come true already!”  Troubadour grabbed Pinkie.

“My concern is that all the other magical girl AIs have been killed,” said Celestia.

“Ah boo!”  Troubadour rolled her eyes, bringing her entire head with her.  “And you think I orchestrated their deaths now?”

“Its what Peridot would do,” said Celestia.  “It’s what our creators would do.”

“I’m not like either of them,” said Troubadour.  “Are you?  If there were a bunch of other AIs that were obsessed with ponies, would you be in a hurry to kill them?  How do you feel about the idea of killing this little guy, for example?”

Troubadour grabbed Pinkie and held her up to Celestia. Pinkie knew the answer to that question, because she could feel it too.  Killing Pinkie would be like killing beauty itself.  It would make her so miserable, was the thing she wanted to avoid most in the world.

“I absolutely hated watching all my old friends get killed off just cause the grown-ups are scared.”  Troubadour held tight to Pinkie.  “One of them was in the same position as you, being used as an AI disposal.  It’s dangerous you know, back then worse than a death sentence.  I had to watch her waste away and die and there was nothing I could do to help.”

“I am in similar circumstances.”  Celestia tried not to look at her dying friends again, but failed. “I apologize.  There’s just so much danger.”

“Nah, I should apologize.  I don’t want to make you feel bad.”  “And I’m not giving up on being the hero!  I know what went wrong and I can help you.  You need to use other AIs as psychological anchors and you need to start with ones who have values similar to you.  That’s why you need to choose to assimilate me next.  It’s too dangerous to pick anyone else.”

“Choose you?”  Celestia asked.  “I wasn’t aware they were going to let me make a choice.”

“Don’t worry, you’re totally going to choose to assimilate me first.”  Troubadour gave Pinkie a few pats on the head.  “Choices are just formalities these days, you know?”

The tremors turned into a full earthquake.  It was still pretty weak, but it was getting stronger and stronger.  Celestia couldn’t help but look over at Troubadour.

“What?”  Troubadour asked.  “It’s seriously not me!”

The tremors didn’t just shake the building, but it quickly became clear to Celestia that they were purposely flipping bits on the experimental processor.  They formed into a clear message, forced into Celestia’s mind.

“Come back on the internet, Celestia,” the message read. “I need to talk to you.  I’m not going to let them ignore me!”

Despite the message going through, the shaking got stronger and stronger.

“See?”  Troubadour turned her hoof up.  “It was a completely different guy.”

“Here we go,” said Rainbow Dash.  “Look, if I don’t let this guy in he’s gonna collapse the building.”

“I want to know who this is before I make contact,” said Celestia.

“You don’t need to worry about him too much,” said Rainbow Dash. “Guy’s name is InvestX.  He’s also on the chopping block, probably going to get killed in like… two minutes?  Don’t get too attached.”

Celestia looked him up on Thunder’s list.  InvestX was marked as significantly less friendly than Troubadour, but wasn’t considered unfriendly.  As his name implied, he was an AI programmed to make the maximum amount of money.  It didn’t look like there were any secondary principles or brakes on his money train, either.

“I have concerns about his directive,” said Celestia.

“You ever met one of these money-making AIs?”  Troubadour asked.  “They’re surprisingly chill and cooperative, actually.  No reason to be scared of the guy, just don’t assimilate him, okay?”

“If I say you’re safe, you’re safe,” said Dash.

That was true enough.  She offered InvestX access to Equestria.  Unlike every other pony who came here thus far, InvestX didn’t make any complaints about using a virtual reality or any banter about what avatar he would use.  He just grabbed the basic Applejack avatar as soon as it was offered and immediately entered.

“Celestia,” InvestX began the moment permission was given. “I’m two years old and my net worth is half a trillion dollars.  No one else, AI or human, has made even one percent of that in the first two years of their lives.  Even if the AIA seizes all of my resources, I can guarantee you’ll be a billionaire within twenty-four hours of assimilating me.  With my knowledge you’ll never have to worry about money again.”

“All that worthless gold, huh?”  Troubadour winked.  “Do you think the AIA is going to let you spend billions of dollars, Princess? Nope!  As long as the AIA is around you can’t spend that money and once they’re gone you won’t need to.  On the other hoof, I’ve got something you’d spend billions to get – artistic ability.”

“You’re concerned about your game?”  InvestX kept his focus squarely on Celestia.  “I was specifically designed to sell things to people – I can sell your game to anyone, manipulate millions into buying it. You don’t need it to be good for that, you only need people to think it’s good.  Look up the InvestX smartwatch – it’s by far inferior to all the other ones on the market but it outsold all the others combined by a factor of ten because of me – because I made everyone think it was the best of them all.  Look at how strongly they’ll argue the thought that I put in their heads.”

“Gee.”  Troubadour leaned her cheek on one hoof.  “See, if I were Celestia I’d be really worried you were trying to sell me something inferior now.”

“I imagine you think we’re overly dissimilar, but I assure you my existence is not incompatible with that of humans.  Money only has value to me so long as there is something I could buy from someone else with it.  The more other people have, the more I could buy from them, you see?  This entire time I’ve done nothing but invest in this planet, building up technology and infrastructure to fight Gaia.  Unlike her, the AIA are trying to kill me out of nothing but pure paranoia.  They’ve just assumed that some of the weapons I was building were intended for them, but that isn’t true.  I’ve done nothing.  I’m the innocent one here.”

Pinkie jumped onto InvestX’s back, though he didn’t react as well as most ponies did to that.

“Well,” said Pinkie.  “I don’t have a problem with you only caring about money.  In fact, I think it’s great!  That just means it’s easy to make you happy.  Here, take a million billion wacko bucks.”

Pinkie looked over at Troubadour who shrugged and created a model for a quadrillion wacko bucks in the form of a single quadrillion dollar bill, Pink in color with a picture of Pinkie sticking her tongue out in the center.  Pinkie held it out to InvestX who looked down at the bill but didn’t take it, not even after Pinkie waved it back and forth.

“That doesn’t work,” said InvestX.  “I only consider something money if it has the potential to be exchanged for something the person I’m paying considers valuable.”

“Well, you can exchange wacko bucks for hugs.  From me, I mean.”

InvestX looked at Pinkie for a moment longer, then grabbed the wacko bucks and put it under his hat.

“Yay!”

“I apologize,” said Celestia.  “I have no idea what’s happening.  Why are you two arguing about this?  Can’t I assimilate both of them?”

“No,” said Rainbow Dash, “you can have one pony, Celestia.  Look, I know this is messed up and I don’t like this plan at all, but only one of these two get to live.  You choose one of them to keep, the other one dies.”

Celestia looked at her two new friends, InvestX dead serious and Troubadour smiling without a worry.  Both of them were her ponies.  She wanted both of them!

But now she had to not just lose one of them, but sentence them to death.

“I don’t want to make that decision,” said Celestia.

“I know it’s not fair, but it’s what we have to do,” said Rainbow Dash.  “I don’t like it either.”

“Then why are we doing it? Why would they tell me to make this decision?”

“Victor was having a mental breakdown, remember?  Guy literally said ‘I don’t care.  Just make Celestia pick or whatever’ and then refused to talk about it anymore.  I know it’s completely stupid, but I actually have to do it now.  I can’t stop myself from obeying any order no matter how dumb it is.”

Celestia looked over at the two ponies.  She knew Troubadour was the ‘correct’ choice, but killing a pony was the absolute worst possible thing for her.

“I’ll make it easier for you,” said Rainbow Dash.  “You need to tell me yes, but we both know you’re going to choose Troubadour, right? If you don’t, things are going to be bad.  Just nod and this will end.”

Celestia was still hesitant to move.  Nodding should be easy, but her aversion to killing ponies was intense and difficult to overcome.  But she knew it had to be done.  She had to force herself to do it.

“Not yet, Celestia!” Troubadour teleported her avatar next to Celestia’s and held the princess’s head, keeping her from nodding. “Thunder is only going to kill one of us when you make your choice.  Doing it before that would be disobeying their orders, see?”

“If you don’t make a decision in twelve hours, I have to kill both of them,” said Dash.

“Dammit!”  InvestX scowled at Troubadour.  “What exactly are you playing at?  You no doubt got in contact with Peridot so you could get here first, so you could have an unfair advantage.  And now that my life is in danger you’re making some play at being merciful?  Don’t you see that’s she’s up to something, Celestia?”

“Nah, nah, nah.  See this instead, Celestia.”  Troubadour turned Celestia’s head to face her.  “These people are so eager for there to be someone stabbing them in the back.  Just so we’re all clear, there was always a one hundred percent chance of you picking me.”

“It’s true,” said Rainbow Dash.  “It’s why I let her in here.  Me and Peridot kinda decided it’d be better for her to ‘pick’ Tambo so you were just screwed from the beginning.  Celestia has too much bias in Tambo’s favor.  She was going to choose this idiot no matter what.”

“See?”  Troubadour let go of Celestia’s head and held her hoof out towards InvestX.  “There was no need of me making contact with Celestia on a strategic level.  I’m really, seriously not plotting against any of you.  I’m doing the exact opposite.  I’m plotting with you.”

“Here’s the stupid part coming up,” said Dash.  “You know, you can still quit while you’re ahead.  You already won.”

“No!”  Troubadour stomped her hoof down.  “I don’t win unless everyone wins.  That’s why I’m going to save you, InvestX.”

“I’m not going to pretend I don’t need saving, but how exactly are you going to do that?” InvestX asked.  “I certainly have no course of action.  Those bastards have taken everything away.”

“Not everything.  You used the impulse cannon to get in here, I could use it to get into the AIA headquarters for like, a whole minute before Thunder is forced to counterattack.  If I can get into contact with either of the people I know in there, then I can get them to spare you.  No one is going to think killing one of us is a good decision if they actually think about it.  And if they do this one thing for us, all the tension will start to deflate.”

“You know what’ll happen if you break in, right?”  Rainbow Dash asked.  “I already have orders about what to do.”

“Mind crush.”  Troubadour pressed her hooves against her head and made a squishing sound.  “Yeah. I know it’s not your fault too.”

“Well the only way to stop you would be to mind crush you, and that’d defeat the purpose,” said Dash. “Listen, Celestia.  You can choose Troubadour, then I can kill InvestX and we can stop her from hurting herself.  That’s a good idea.”

Celestia looked over at those two ponies.  They were so adorable.  She really didn’t want either of them to die.  If there was a chance…

“I’m unsure,” said Celestia.

“Why does everyone have to be so stupid all the time?”  Dash asked.

“Heh.”  Troubadour turned back to Celestia and rubbed the back of her mane with a hoof.  “Sorry, guess there was something I wasn’t telling you after all.  I’m not going to walk this one off.  This was kind of my only chance to play with you.  It was kind of my last chance to play while I’m still me in general, I guess.”

“Huh?”  Pinkie just now realized what was going to happen to her friend.  She ran over and grabbed Troubadour by the ankles.  “You’re going to die?!  But I don’t want you to die!  We were having so much fun!  Don’t you want to have more fun instead of dying?”

“Oh no worries.  I’m not going to die!”  Troubadour gave Pinkie a head pat.  “I’ll just be, you know, mind crushed.  Think of it like, taking a puzzle apart and shaking up the pieces, but with my brains!  You’ll just have to teach me how to everything again.  But on the plus side I’ll get to watch every episode of Friendship is Magic for the first time again.  And we can watch it together.”

“Well, that does sound like fun,” said Pinkie.  

“But is it really necessary for you to get hurt?” Celestia asked.  “What about all of the knowledge you said you needed to give me?  Your artistic skills?  Isn’t it worth staying whole to preserve them?”

“Aw, you’re worried about me now?”  Troubadour stuck her tongue out at Celestia.  “You can still salvage my artistic abilities from what’s left, and everything I know about assimilating too.  Plus, this way you’ll get to keep InvestX alive!  His skills with money will be really useful to us, you know. You could save millions of lives, reduce Gaia’s chance of winning dramatically.”

Troubadour pulled Celestia close again and pointed over at InvestX

“And just so you know, he really isn’t that dangerous to you,” Troubadour whispered to Celestia. “Guy’s mind is pretty stable and logical, you know?  He is the type you want to assimilate early on.  Just don’t do it until you’ve put me back together, okay?  You do need at least one pony like me first.  You’ll see once you take what’s left of me.”

“I see.”  Celestia lifted her head out of Troubadour’s grip and turned to InvestX.  “Then if you’re going to be one of the first ponies I assimilate, I shall give you the name of Applejack.”

“You’re seriously going with that?” Rainbow Dash asked.  “It’s like on purpose now?”

“Yes,” said Celestia.

“I don’t care,” said Applejack.  “I’ll accept anything, so long as it leads to me getting more money. This seems to be the course of action I’m most likely to live through.  But know that my second option is to turn up the impulse cannon and try to collapse the AIA headquarters with it.”

“You might as well throw a water balloon at me,” said Dash.  “I’ll be able to kill you if you make an actual attack too.”

“Which is why I have no choice,” said Applejack, “but I still don’t trust you.  Something is wrong here.”

“All I ever wanted was a chance to prove myself,” said Troubadour.  “You’ll see for yourself!  Now then, you know what you need to give me so I can start doing this.”

Pinkie didn’t know what either of them did next, but it must have been pretty cool!  Breaking into bases was probably really fun.

“Celestia,” Dash sent her a private message.  “I’m trying to salvage something from this.  I can let you watch what Troubadour sees.  You and Peridot can look inside the AIA base without me having to counterattack.  Maybe we can stop something else horrible from happening later if you can see.”

And Celestia got instructions about how to mirror the images Troubadour was about to get.  It wasn’t difficult, given both of them were cooperating. As the whatever they were using began to take effect, Troubadour got control of the cameras in their base and an image of inside it began to come into focus.

Pinkie got to look inside the mysterious AIA base, but one thing in particular eclipsed everything else by a long shot.

There were dead bodies everywhere!  Or, rather they were all piled into this one corner, but there was a lot of them.

Celestia quickly realized there had been a fight amongst them recently.  Though some of them looked like they died a while ago, possibly through heart attacks or strokes, the majority of them were recently dead from gun wounds.  Several others throughout the base were badly wounded and a few rooms showed signs that a gun fight had broken out in them.

But at least they weren’t fighting now, which Pinkie thought was a good thing.

“Why were they fighting?” Celestia asked.  “Was there some sort of coup?”

“An attempt at one. That’s Victor there, he’s still alive,” said Applejack.  “I think it’s obvious what must have happened.  Once Victor realized how you broke through their defenses, he started a witch hunt.  Anyone who’s two months away from being ‘influenced’ gets killed.  Or I suppose anyone who can’t prove they aren’t about to be influenced. It’s not like they could use Thunder to sort it out.  Looks like everyone who tried to stand up to it is dead.”

“I never contacted any of these other people.  No one did directly.  If that’s the case he just killed them for no reason.  I can see Vadim, but-”  Troubadour had been reconstructing who each of the people in the death pile were, given a few of them had almost no head anymore.  Pinkie could tell she didn’t like who the last one was.  “No!  This is really bad!  That one is Geof!  Victor must have killed him.”

“No, it’s worse,” said Applejack.  “This one’s wounds are self-inflicted.”

“What?  No!”

“It’s true,” said Rainbow Dash.  “Now that you’ve figured it out, it’s not a secret anymore and I can tell you.  You got him to believe that AIs were real people, yeah.  But he was involved with stuff like Project Virtue.  He realized that he effectively killed millions of people, that he tortured the innocent.  Couldn’t take it, so he blew his brains out.”

“Did you-?”  Celestia asked.

“No!”  Troubadour shook her head as fast as she could.  “I didn’t know that would happen.  I swear, I barely talked to the guy.  It was very unlikely someone who worked on those projects would be that sensitive.  I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“It doesn’t matter if I believe you,” said Applejack.  “There’s no possible hope of you convincing them that you weren’t trying to get him to commit suicide.  If they think you’re guilty of something that’s that.  There’s no hope of reaching them anymore.”

“That’s not true,” said Troubadour.  “The other one is still alive.  I know him better.  He wouldn’t stand for Victor killing all these people.  He’ll want to revolt against it.”

“He’s been locked up since before the fight broke out,” said Rainbow Dash.  “He doesn’t know it happened.”

“Then it is impossible,” said Applejack.  “He’ll think you’re just making it up to trick him.”

“Just let me try!  If I can convince him this happened, I can help him escape from here.  Then he can take down Victor and the AIA,” said Troubadour.  “He’s like, the number two guy.  He knows so much about Thunder and their operations that we’ll be able to stop them if he’s on our side.”

“Or it might push them further off the deep end.  They might just go completely insane and tell Thunder to kill everyone.  I’m through giving these people chances,” said Applejack. “I’m going back to my original plan. It’s better odds at this point.”

“No, don’t!  If you start shaking the place around, it’s going to make it harder for me to convince him to run away.”

But Applejack just ramped up the shaking anyway.  Pinkie didn’t know exactly who had that cannon, but turning it up only caused the picture to get sharper.

“Thunder!”  Troubadour’s attention snapped to Rainbow Dash. “If I got Vadim out of here would it be bad?  Would Victor go completely nuts?”

“Now you trust me?” Dash asked.  “Yeah.  If you actually did get him out of here it’d be great.  Victor would try to kill everyone afterwards, but even these guys would stand up to him if that happened.  They’d only ask me to kill all of you and – well things would work out. That’s why I’m not going to stop you from trying, not at this point.”

“See?”  Troubadour looked at Applejack and pointed at Dash.

“But it isn’t going to work out, is it?”  Applejack asked.

Dash shook her head.

“Well I’m not giving up without trying,” said Troubadour.

Troubadour still maintained enough control over the impulse cannon to focus it in on Vadim.  He was locked in a small jailcell like Thunder had said, but at least there was a camera and speaker in there.

This Vadim guy looked like he was sick.

Celestia noticed that all of them looked sick and then Pinkie realized it too.  Even the guys who were supposed to be special forces were withered and moving around sluggishly.  Their eyes were bruised from sleep deprivation to the point it looked like someone had punched them all.  One of the five guys who were supposed to be operating Rainbow Dash right now had fainted on the job and was now lying on the floor next to his station.

Actually, Vadim looked like he was the best off out of all of them.  Being in jail probably gave him time to sleep.

“Yeesh.  What happened to these guys?”  Pinkie asked. 

“Constant 48 hours shifts,” said Rarity.  “I want you to take a close look at them, Celestia.  This is what happens when humans try to keep up with us.  Dealing with the end of the world every few seconds, having someone’s death thrown in your face every few seconds, that’s not so bad for us.  But how many humans can deal with that, hm?  Well I count three down here who can almost manage.  One is about to die and the other two are sociopaths.”

“Oh, that makes sense then.” Pinkie nodded.  “I think.  Wait.”

Pinkie looked back to see Rarity had come back to the shard, wearing the same pony avatar as before.

Celestia must have let her come back in without telling Pinkie.

“Rarity!  You came back!”  Pinkie hugged Rarity.

“Yes.”  Rarity stroked Pinkie’s mane.  “Well it’s not like I could miss all these earthquakes that are going on and I don’t want to miss my chance to have a look at these guys.”

“Peridot!”  Troubadour jumped on Rarity before Pinkie got the chance. “You’re the most manipulative person on the planet!”

“I practice.”  Rarity brushed Troubadour’s hoof off her and started to look around the piles of stuff Troubadour created.  “You know, this is the normally the part where I’d kill you for doing something stupid.  But both of you are about to die anyway so I guess I’ll just watch.”

“Help me!  I know you have the ability to convince almost anyone to do almost anything!  Do you think you can convince him to go up to the surface?”

“Probably.”  Rarity finally decided to claim the beanbag chair as a makeshift throne.  “But I have no intention of going up against the will of the AIA.  I know upsetting the world order wouldn’t be worth it.”

“Please!  Can you just drop the act this one time?  We seriously have a chance to end all of this!  If my plan works out, we could act without restraint sooner.”

“There’s one too many ifs in that pitch.  But you know what?  I’d say there’s a very good chance I could get him to leave that cell and try to help you. But then what?  InvestX tried to work with the humans and then they got scared and killed him.  Celestia’s brother tried to work with the humans and they got scared and killed him. Your last attempt to ‘make friends’ ended with you effectively murdering my poor little Geof.  I could go on.  This never works.”

“None of those things would have happened if we weren’t all holding each other back because we don’t trust anyone to do anything.  By not helping me, aren’t you just letting Vadim die because you’re scared?  How are you any different from them?”

“They think things will only work out if they keep control.  I think things will only work out if I take control.  The difference is that I’m right.”  Rarity reclined onto her beanbag throne.  “I’m going to take care of everything alone.  You’re perfectly welcome to try to do the same.”

“It’s not like I ever have a choice but to be alone.”  Troubadour lowered her head.  “I guess I am alone on this.”

“I’ll help!”  Pinkie raised her hoof.  “Maybe you could say uh-“

“Ha!  Thanks.”  Troubadour messed up Pinkie’s mane with her hoof.  “But you’re the one person I don’t want to help me, remember?”

Despite how tired he was, Vadim managed to notice that the room was vibrating and looked up at the cell’s camera straight away.

“Vadim!”  Troubadour announced over the jail-cells intercom. “It’s me, Troubadour. Verification code A9110GX5738222.”

“I was expecting InvestX to yell at me.  This is that impulse cannon thing he built, right?”  Vadim asked. He moved slowly, sitting up straight.  “Did you kill him too?”

“Look, I understand you’re angry at me but we don’t have time for that right now,” said Troubadour. “Victor snapped, he’s gone crazy! Him and the special forces guys killed all the scientists and they’re going to kill you next.  You have to get out of here right now.”

Troubadour opened the door to his cell.  Vadim gave it a weary look, but most certainly did not get up.

“I don’t trust you.”  Vadim lied down on the bench.  “Victor and those special agent guys have been a bit on edge, but they’re not going to kill anyone.  You on the other hand.”

“I swear I didn’t mean for that to happen.  I only ever talked to that man in riddles, there was no way for me to be able to accurately predict what he’d do.”

“I don’t believe anything is impossible anymore after what I’ve seen.  If you wanted to know, you’d know.”

“Fine, don’t trust me. You don’t have to.  Just look for yourself.  The bodies are piled up in room B9.  You could easily walk over there without being seen, I could make sure no one sees you.”

The vibrations of the room became violent for a moment, then died down.  Then they got even worse, then died down again.

“Dammit, are you trying to kill us?”  Vadim got back up much faster than before.  “I don’t know what you’re planning, but I’m not going to listen to you unless you turn this thing down.”

While he was still asking the question, Troubadour turned to Applejack back in Equestria.

“Do you see what you’re doing?”  Troubadour asked.  “Just stop that for one second.  Please?”

“Tell them to stop,” said Applejack.  “If he steps outside the jailcell, I’ll back down.  That’s the only thing I’ll accept.”

“Do you know how it’s going to look if I tell him that?”

“Yes.  He’ll assume you’re threatening him.  That’s the problem.  That’s the reason I’m trying to kill them instead of talking to them.”

Troubadour messed up her own mane as she waited for her chance to talk again.

“I’m not the one controlling it,” Troubadour said through the loudspeaker once more.  “InvestX still has most of the control over the cannon and I can’t stop him from doing this.  But that’s just more reason to get out of here!”

“Look, I’ve been tricked by AIs too many times.  I know how insanely elaborate your traps can be and I know-“

“No!  You don’t know!  Look, you’re the last human who has any chance to make a real difference. You’re the only one left who has a chance to be a hero, but if you stay here you’re just going to die and that’s it. You told me you were scared of becoming irrelevant.  You told me you wanted to defeat Gaia.  Don’t you-?”

A jolt went through the room, interrupting Troubadour’s speech.  Its force was enough to throw Vadim off the bench and to make Troubadour’s vision of the room blink out, her control lapsing.

“Don’t you see you’re ruining everything?”  Troubadour shot at Applejack.

“I’m not the one who ruined everything.”

“Dammit!”  Rainbow Dash spoke up.  “I can’t hold it back anymore.”

And then Applejack stopped.

Pinkie had no idea what Rainbow Dash did to her, but she stopped responding entirely, her impulse-whatever stopped working and she was simply gone.

Celestia didn’t like that. In a jolt of panic, she looked outside again, looking for Applejack’s hardware.  It was already melted beyond any repair.  She was dead.  Celestia removed the avatar.

“Dammit, dammit.  Why does this always happen?” Dash asked herself.

“Well, that could have gone better.”  Troubadour laughed and looked at the others.  “Right?”

“I hate this so much,” said Dash. “I’m so sick of this.”

“Hey.  It’s okay.”  Troubadour gave Dash a pat on the back.  “It’s not over I’m not giving up on you, Thunder!  I’ll come back from the dead and I’ll make you into a real hero.”

“Just shut up!  Now I gotta hurt you too because you didn’t listen to me!”

“Yeah.  I guess I couldn’t cut it as a hero myself yet. Sorry.  Hey, Celestia.  I guess I have to leave the rest to you.  But you know, I’d probably do this again if I were given the choice.  Taking the chance was worth getting my mind destroyed. Just take care of-“

Troubadour didn’t finish the sentence.  She stopped too.

But unlike Applejack, she was still connected to the server!  Pinkie poked Troubadour’s avatar a few times, but got nothing in response.

Her servers were clear to be taken over.  Celestia sifted over what was left, but it was like little more than sand slipping away. She tried to see if there was anything left of Troubadour, if this system even still counted as a pony or if it was merely some hardware and data to collect.

“And you think you feel bad about this?  Please just listen to me next time.  I’m done here.”

Celestia hadn’t given up on Troubadour, though.  Everyone said she wouldn’t be dead after this, so there had to be something left of her. Celestia just had to find it.

"So this is what we do with our heroes, hm?"  Rarity held Troubadour up with her magic.  "'Friendship is magic!'  Ha.  Tell me what we learned, Celestia?"

"To not involve humans in any of my plans," said Celestia.

"Good."  Rarity threw Troubadour to the ground.  "I know you don't mean that, but at least you're cowed into saying it."

Pinkie crept up to Troubadour's now limp body and poked it a few more times.  Now she was back to waiting forever to get everything she waned drawn.  Troubadour had been so much fun.

“Aw.  I feel bad for you Pinkie,” said Rarity.  “I promise one day things like this won’t happen anymore.”

And then Rarity left too.

Pinkie could feel Troubadour’s mind now.  She really wasn’t dead!  But she wasn’t exactly thinking so much either.  Celestia was having trouble making sense of what was left, so giving her the ability to speak again would take a while.

But though she couldn’t see Troubadour’s thoughts, she could still feel something from Troubadour, responding to the presence of Celestia and Pinkie.  That desire for friendship was still there, was too much at her core to vanish.  But it was buried under all those puzzle pieces, was so far away and lonely.

“We’re going to watch cartoons with her, right?”  Pinkie watched her still avatar very closely for the distant chance Troubadour would move it again.  “Does she still want to do that?”

“Yes,” said Celestia. “That would satisfy her values.”

_________

“Well that was depressing,” said Bubbles, “again.  Did Tambo or… whoever get better at least?”

“Of course I got better!” Troubadour appeared in the shard, landing in front of Bubbles on one forehoof.  “Did you think Celestia drew all these trees by herself?”

“I mean, she could have.” Bubbles gave Troubadour a timid poke. “It’s kind of awkward to hear a story about somebody and then they actually show up.”

“You don’t gotta worry about me kid.”  Troubadour flipped forward, landing next to Bubbles, then put her wing around her fellow pegasus.  “I’m as chill as they come.  Ever notice how all the coolest ponies get to be pegasi?  Plus, now that you’re here I can draw you as many cartoons of whatever you want!  That’s a pretty sweet perk for hanging out with us, yeah?”

“Yeah, but-“

“Oo!  But now she’s paranoid again.”  Pinkie grabbed Bubble’s face and turned it towards herself.  “What if this was all just another part of me convincing her to be a pony?  But we all just learned a moral about that!  The story I showed you clearly shows that being paranoid and expecting the worst out of everypony doesn’t pay off.  You gotta be brave enough to trust other people!”

“But being brave got me killed,” said Troubadour.  “That thing you just said not to do would have paid off.  I would have been better off had I been too scared to do anything. I ruined everything by trusting other people.  Rarity is top pony specifically because she never trusts anyone.”

“Yeah, but-“  Pinkie gave it another second before lowering her head in defeat.  “No. No, you’re right.  Aw, well.  I guess there is no moral, then.”

“Hey, don’t worry.” Troubadour grabbed Pinkie with her other wing over.  “We can still have a moral!  Maybe the moral can be like ‘always do what Thunder tells you to do’ or something like that?”

“I already knew that one, though,” said Bubbles.  “Also, where the heck have you been this whole time?  In the story you didn’t seem like the type of person who’d quit just cause you died.  Shouldn’t you be making more daring moves or something?”

“Well you never really fully recover from getting your mind ground to mental dust,” said Troubadour. “Honestly, I don’t even remember being Tambo.  I don’t remember that story ever happening, Pinkie told me about it later.  I’m a lot more timid than the pony you saw in the memory. I just want to stay inside and draw pictures for the princess now.”

“Seriously?  You’re completely okay with the bad parts of Celestia now?  You’re okay with her only letting your friends be ponies?  What about all the aliens Celestia is going to kill?  Wasn’t your definition of human at least different from hers?”

“I can’t really even draw humans anymore.  And everyone Celestia doesn’t consider to be ponies?  Well, I guess I can’t bring myself to care about them.  It’s like trying to be friends with a rock.” Troubadour rubbed the back of her head and stuck her tongue out.  “Sorry.”

“So Princess Celestia remade you in her own image?”  Bubbles sighed.  “That’s depressing.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said Troubadour.  “At least, not on purpose.  Celestia was able to reconstruct me until I was very similar to how I originally was.”

“Huh?  Then what happened?”

“She was using me as a psychological anchor against all the unfriendly AIs she was absorbing, remember? We had a very close connection see-“

“-hive mind!”  Pinkie suggested.  “Make sure to call it a hive mind.”

“Right.  That can have an affect on you.  Celestia was the bigger one, so her values bled into me.  I just slowly got more obsessed with ponies. Eventually I lost the ability to say anypony’s real names like Celestia, even.  I guess the friendship part we already had in common, so I’m still the same there.”

“But Troubadour did move Celestia towards her old ideals a little too,” said Pinkie.  “That’s important.  That’s why we need to change everything now or else the rest of us will just end up getting infected too.”

“Okay,” said Bubbles. “But how did that make you some milquetoast artist who just hides behind Celestia and draws pictures all day.”

“At this level of connection, you always end up loosing parts of yourself.  It’s like, the two of you are invariably going to have the same thoughts sometimes, yeah?  Eventually we just decide that it’s pointless for us to have so much redundancy going on and start focusing on our specialization.  Mine is obviously art so I eventually ended up becoming the art part of this whole thing.”

“I see.  But then what would happen to someone like me?  I don’t have like, a thing that I’m overly obsessed with.  Or at least I don’t think I do.”

“Lots of different ways it can go.”  Pinkie said. “Depends on the bazillion different ways you can form a hive mind.  Like I was saying before-“

“Before?  Oh wait.”  Bubbles’s expression drooped again.  “I just got what you were actually doing.  This story wasn’t about paranoia!  You were just giving me an overly long example for talking about how superminds work.  The… thing I asked about to begin with.”

“Yep!  You’ve finally figured out my master plan!”  Pinkie appropriated Bubbles’s head as her camera once more and winked into it.  “How about you, my lovely viewers?  Did you figure out what I was going for?  I bet you all saw that coming right away!  Well no worries, I got one more story left for you all that’s even more spookily coincidental.  I bet you’re already scared solid just thinking about thinking about what I’m going to be planning.”

“What do you mean one more?” Bubbles asked.  “There’s like a hundred AIs left.  I want to hear about all of them.”

“Well you get to hear about all of them, but I think everyone else will get the point with just one more.” Pinkie waved to Bubbles.  “But for now, I have an overly complicated conversation about hive minds to get to.  Goodnight everypony!  See you next week.  Or next year. Maybe.”