//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: Smith // Story: FiO: Homebrew // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Ashton was a little disappointed to see that after cycling through so many different avatars, so many different options and possibilities, Emmet settled on a pony that looked almost exactly the same as the one he’d been when he came in, just a pegasus instead of an earth pony. Even if some part of him had known it would end that way—that part of him had a right to feel put out, so far as he was concerned. Of course, the rest of him was so busy digesting all this new data that he could barely find enough space in his head to be disappointed. All this time he’d been forced to tread on eggshells with his cast of NPCs, lest he grow too attached and find they had become immutable. But now things were different. Celestia didn’t force him to follow all her rules, there was no buildup. He had a real person in his sandbox. Or connected to it, the difference for a full Equestrian was still a little lost on him. For a second, Ashton had seen into the inner-workings of a real pony, or at least an abstract high enough for his mind to comprehend. Could a whole mind be distilled into a binary tree? Or was that interface layer constructed purely for people like him who dreamed they could understand what Equestria’s creator had wrought? Ashton watched with at least a little satisfaction as Emmet finally returned to the castle, where Violet was waiting. She squealed about flying lessons before hugging Ashton’s avatar, thanking her for her “powerful magic.” But he wasn’t really paying attention by then. “Does that mean you’ll be staying?” he asked, where he was sure Violet would be in earshot. “Instead of going back to that dreadful earth pony town you traveled up from? “PLEASE?” Violet begged, turning on her brother like a shark. “Please say we’re staying, Domino!” He sighed, glaring at Ashton. “Yes,” he finally said. “I should say no, after… but I guess that was an accident. It was an accident, Arcane?” “Yes,” he answered instantly. “Of course! I could show you my console if you wanted!” He couldn’t, or not very easily. Runescript was required to make even a tiny bit of sense out of what that console would show, and Emmet didn’t have even an introductory background. “No.” He reached out, patting the avatar on the shoulder. Then he opened his wings a little, watching them as though each motion was real and felt. Maybe it was—Ashton didn’t actually know what it meant to be a pony. Clearly they could feel, or Emmet had taught him they could feel. At the start he hadn’t even felt they were alive. On an intellectual level maybe, but not really. “I want my things,” Violet said. “And maybe… say goodbye to some of my friends. But not really. I can still see them whenever I want.” Because you’re living in a universe of dust. None of that is real. Probably none of them are either. But what would you know? You’re six. “I might want to make some changes,” Emmet went on. “Assuming you want us living in the castle with you at all. I’m sure Celestia could arrange for somewhere else. Axel’s family is in the townhomes near the wharf, those seemed comfortable.” “Don’t try to lock us in a tiny room again!” Violet called, glowering at him. “I want to be in a castle. I want to sleep on a princess bed. I want to have a room just for my stuffed animals. Arcane, can you tell my brother not to be weird about it?” “You shouldn’t be weird about it,” he repeated obediently. Well, that was how he said it. Arcane added some of her own emphasis—what Ashton would’ve said if he was paying more attention to the game and not still skimming Wireshark’s packet records of the time Emmet had been connected to the server. They confirmed what he’d thought—incoming requests had been minimal, not much more sophisticated than what might be sent in any online game. The really interesting stuff was sent the other direction. His Razer didn’t have a way of parsing them, but he would’ve bet money that they’d look like state transitions for a binary tree. “Arcane, are you still here?” Emmet asked, waving a hoof in front of the screen. Ashton winced, nearly dropping the expensive laptop. He leaned forward, actually focusing on the Ponypad for a moment. “Sorry. I’ve just been thinking about… what you’ll do in the castle! And some changes you’d like to make. I’ve got the old blueprints downstairs, maybe we can take a look after dinner. If you want to knock down a few walls, build a new wing… that’s all doable. And don’t worry about the usual laws of space and euclidean geometry unless you want to.” Violet didn’t seem to know what that meant, but she also didn’t seem to care. Attention was all she wanted—maybe of a kind that Emmet couldn’t give her. “But I’ve got a job for your brother if he wants to earn some bits. Unless he’d rather go out and work somewhere else… or nowhere. So far as I’m concerned, I still owe you…” He looked down, counting on his hands for a moment. On the huge projector, Arcane actually created the illusion of hands to make the same gesture, something he’d never actually seen in Equestria before. It was a little disorienting when projecting on so large a wall. “A lot. A whole lot.” “Can we get flying lessons for him here?” Violet asked, voice eager. “Emmet needs to learn, just like I did. That’s the rules.” “I’ll call someone,” he promised. “Maybe even another emigrant, if I can find one. They do like—you like to stick together. Solidarity in a world full of native-born ponies.” Again, the child didn’t understand half of what he’d said, that was clear. But she also seemed satisfied with the answer he’d given.  Over the next few days, Ashton checked in on his new guests as often as he could. Knowing someone was in that old castle was a constant reminder of the part of his life he had left behind.  Of course there were other things he should’ve been thinking about. His family’s financial troubles might be over, but the world they lived in was only getting more precarious. Not dangerous. It wasn’t other people that he was afraid of. His world was balanced on a crust of ice, and it was melting. But it wasn’t his world to save. Ashton couldn’t even save his best friend, what was he supposed to do? Graduate, for one. Every high school in the county might be boiled down to a single facility, and half the nation’s universities might be suffering financial trouble, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t potentially get a degree. For all the jobs I’ll be getting with one.  One thing he didn’t do was carefully manage the funds Emmet’s family had passed to him, or the controlling interest they had once held in a large construction firm. How long did that money need to last, anyway, five years? And what will we do after that? His parents weren’t working anymore, and he didn’t blame them. None of them really knew how to spend so much money. He visited the castle as often as he could, both to work on his projects and to check on its permanent residents. It was on one such visit that he found Emmet poking around his control room, probably trying to get around the magical locks. “Hey, Arcane!” He straightened as he passed, blushing and looking away. “Shouldn’t you be at school around now?” He glanced at the window behind him, fearing for one terrible second that he might’ve completely lost track of time. But no—it was dark outside, and the clock behind him read “seven.” “We’re out of sync,” he said. “We weren’t when you moved in, but… it happens. Shards don’t follow arbitrary time.” Emmet’s face fell. “What does that mean? Have you been… manipulating me somehow?” “No, Celestia has.” He sent his avatar up to the magical locks, then undid them with a few passwords and careful twists of her hooves. Soon enough the door clicked and swung open. “You wanted in here?” He hesitated, then took a few steps forward into the doorway. “How does she manipulate us?” “Manipulate is… too strong.” Arcane stepped out of the way, letting Emmet wander into the control room where he would have free access to the machines there. “It’s not wrong, but… wrong implications. It’s about the perception of time. A human mind on meat runs at one speed. The chemical and electrical activity combined form your conscious experience. Well, mine. Yours is simulated, running on silicon. Or… probably not at this point. Whatever it uses, processors have a clock that tell them to step forward to the next instruction. Change the speed of the clock and you change the speed of the mind. She could run yours, say, twice as fast. And one hour to me would feel like two to you. Or a hundred times as fast, or more.” “That explains so much.” He sat back on his haunches in front of the screen, eyes going distant. “A few days ago, a Verifier team passed through Wintercrest, while you were out. They visited your sandbox for a bit, wanted to see… something. But their unicorn claimed she had been living in Equestria for over a decade. Which seemed impossible, but…” “But you didn’t call her on it because she was a pretty unicorn and you didn’t know how to talk to her.” “I…” He glared. “It’s easy to judge when you’re out there. Once you’re in here, it doesn’t seem weird. But no, that wasn’t why. She seemed like… she could blast me into paste if she wanted, then level the castle.” Ashton froze. Emmet had said Verifier, and apparently she’d wanted to see the sandbox? Celestia sent someone when I wasn’t around. He flipped open his laptop, skimming through its access logs. He hadn’t been sniffing packets—his server would quickly drown him if he did that all the time. But he did keep an access record, and sure enough: four “authorized” calls into his server from an IP address he didn’t recognize. His firewalls and layers of security spells hadn’t stopped them—they hadn’t even been activated. Finally he set the laptop down, looking back at the camera. “Yeah, you made the right call not fucking with her.” He knew Equestria wouldn’t let him swear most of the time—he didn’t self-censor. Let Celestia do the hard work if she cared so much. “Was she… upset?” “She called you criminally disorganized and suggested something called a processing overlay template for you to use to improve your productivity.” He reached to one side, digging around in his pack until he found an etched sliver of glass, which began to glow the instant it was removed. Arcane Word took it in her magic, illuminating the spell inside for Ashton to see. To see maybe, but not to make any sense of. It was another state transition on a binary tree, or maybe some kind of filter? This is a brain mod. There’s no way someone good enough to get into my system doesn’t also know I’m human and can’t use this. Ashton teleported it away anyway, eager for the chance to thoroughly dismantle and study however it was constructed. In only a few days, a whole new field of Equestrian modding was opening to him. You’re trying to stop me from leaving again, aren’t you Celestia. “Well, I guess you never got a chance to see this place. A shame, because I could use an assistant. I know we talked about it earlier.” “It does look…” Emmet skimmed the displays, his eyes darting from one screen to the next. “Advanced. I never thought I’d see that old house again.” “Yeah.” Ashton glanced up at the corner of his room, where a camera faced his computer desk from the side. He’d made sure the bed and wardrobe weren’t in its field of view, as though he cared what Celestia or any other online system thought. She already had his medical records and every secret he’d ever had, so what difference could it make? “Well, you can see it from all angles now. Or most angles. Not the bathrooms and bedrooms, but the rest of it. And those switches are for the lights, and the sound systems, and the sprinklers… basically anything that can be operated remotely.” “Why?” Emmet asked. “What’s the point of having a light switch that can be operated from inside Equestria?” He shrugged. “It’s not a light switch, it’s everything. Having someone who can set things up for me when I need them. A digital assistant, basically. Turning things on, ordering pizza… so much of the world is online these days, and you can access almost all of it from in here. So long as Celestia’s censorship hasn’t gotten stricter, that is. I don’t actually… know…” Emmet approached the chair, and it retracted on its own, twisting to face him. It was an Equestrian model, clearly made for ponies. But that was perfect here. Like most things in this room, it had been chosen by his last assistant to make the job as simple as possible, since Ashton’s ability to do things with hooves wasn’t terribly realistic. Emmet sat down, and the chair slid immediately forward, and several keypads extended towards it, overlapping on several distinct heights to put as many buttons and switches as possible within easy reach. “Is it cool if I…” “It’s your house,” Ashton said. “The switches on the right are all in my room, so if you mess with those nobody will know. He reached down, flipping a switch. The lights on his ceiling went bright pink. Another switch, and a fan near the side of his room started blowing. “You can see through the camera there,” Ashton said, pointing at one of the screens. They were black and white, so they wouldn’t depict the full range of what the lights could do. But Ashton didn’t expect he would use those features too often anyway. “Woah.” Emmet flipped a few more. “Out in the real world, huh? I didn’t know it was allowed.” “It’s more common than you think,” Ashton answered. “I heard about a college kid who got to finish his degree after he emigrated. And if you’d been paying attention at Equestria IRL, there were these little rolling drones with screens on the top—those are her tech. She could probably make robotic ponies for everyone if she really wanted to, but she doesn’t.” “What about you?” he asked. “Could you build a drone I could control in Equestria?” He nodded absently. “It would be piss easy, probably. I’ve already cracked the API, so I can basically make the whole thing sing any song I want so far as sending information back and forth. We’d need a live video feed, which you can see I got. I’m actually using some legacy support in the backend for the old Hasbro REST interfaces that used to be open for regi—you’re not listening.” “I’m listening,” Emmet corrected, raising his voice just a little and glaring. “I’m just not understanding. Big difference.” “Maybe we should try giving you the brain-mod that Celestia’s Verifier left,” Ashton suggested, though he trusted Equestria to convey just how humorous he thought the suggestion actually was. “Might teach you how to code.” “It would not,” Emmet said, glowering. “And I will not. After learning how to be… young, old, female, a dragon, twins… I think I’ve had enough of mods with you. I think I’ll wait until you try it before I take a chance with something like that.” “I can’t try anything, I’m human.” He sat back in his chair, kicking off the wall so that he spun around once in a slow circle. Let Celestia try and interpret that.  From the screen, Arcane Word spun in place, making Emmet flip a few more switches until he stopped, and she did too. “Could you turn my lights back on, Emmet? It’s kinda hard to see what I’m doing.” He flicked them back on. “Could you make me a drone?” “Yeah,” he answered, thinking through what it might take. He’d probably use a flying quadcopter, rather than the wheeled vehicles that were Celestia’s own preference. “You never told me why you wanted it.” “I…” He struggled, but ultimately didn’t answer. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t. Maybe nothing. Probably nothing, honestly. It just feels like… it’s the kind of thing I should have? Like maybe I could still go on an occasional trip out there in meatspace.” Then you shouldn’t have left. But Ashton didn’t want to travel down that road again, not when he’d apparently got his best friend back. Even if it was just as a virtual guest of his virtual castle. “What about the assistant thing?” he asked. “My last one walked, and it’s been really… inconvenient. You wanted to go on adventures with me, this is a way.” Emmet glanced around the control room again, reaching out with a hoof and flicking another switch at random. “All this?” “All this, plus other virtual assistant stuff. Appointments, ordering pizza… but basically this, yeah.” “I’ll… try it,” Emmet said. “For a while. I’m going kinda stir-crazy doing nothing but flying lessons and taking care of Violet. She’s so independent, she doesn’t need me nearly as much as she used to. I think she’s healing. Err—more.” “Excellent!” Ashton approached the controls, leaning close to Emmet. “Pay attention while I go over all this. I’m putting a lot of trust in you. But if I was going to trust anyone, it would be you.” He showed Emmet everything, showed him all the manuals and notes that Daygear had kept. Everything that might be represented digitally in the virtual assistant’s cloud storage here had a real, physical representation. Calendars, an old rotary phone for making calls, a phone book. And the computer, the most impressive part of the whole lot. But ultimately it wasn’t just getting an assistant back that excited Ashton. Emmet was more than just a useful pony at the right time. His friend spent the first few days adjusting to the job, and the first few weeks perfecting his control of the interface. Ashton made use of his services at all hours, thanks to the same phone interface that he could use to look out at Wintercrest when he was on the go. According to Emmet, that meant an annoying screeching sound coming from down the hall until he answered it—but there was basically no delay any time Ashton made a request—Emmet was always there, ready to help. He didn’t get in the way of the things Emmet wanted to do in Equestria. Learning to fly seemed like fun, even if Ashton knew it would be forever out of his reach. Wings were cool and all, but giving up magic was a sacrifice too high. Wintercrest was threatened a few times, though the attacks that came were so petty that Violet was able to rise up and fill that role. Soon enough she was the town’s hero, utterly unambiguously. She didn’t make ponies vanish in the night and replace them with new ones, even if she did live in the same castle. As the school year went on, Ashton did his best to keep up with studies that seemed increasingly irrelevant in the face of a world that probably wouldn’t last the decade. School was cool or whatever, but his real life was in Equestria. Thanks to what he’d seen, Ashton no longer needed to recapture the intellectual property Cold Iron had traded away. His last generation of NPC mods were about to look like crude imitations compared to what he was building. “You know this is pointless, right?” Emmet asked from beside him in the sandbox. He’d been working for several hours, on his own behavior framework this time. There would be no kidnapping a pony from the town and forcing them into a shape they’d never meant to be. This pony would be his. “Because Celestia can do in a few seconds what I’ve spent three months on?” Ashton asked, setting the laptop down. “Because people already bought ‘good enough’, and they won’t be interested in ‘better’?” “No.” Emmet waved a dismissive wing, settling the notepad down. True to his job, he’d been taking notes, scribbling anything Ashton said. Through methods not entirely clear to him, Emmet could even transcribe mind-state graphs with some acumen, even after hearing only vague descriptions. “Because Equestria will be the only thing left pretty soon.” Ashton relaxed. The game had apparently interpreted his defensiveness as so great that Arcane Word even summoned a glow from her horn while he spoke. “I’m not sure why that makes learning how to operate it pointless. Seems like it would make this job more valuable.” “It does.” Emmet circled the skeleton in front of them. It wasn’t a literal skeleton in this case, but a generic earth-pony mare with gray colors and unblinking eyes. She hadn’t spoken yet, hadn’t done anything more complicated than breathing. But she was simulating that pretty good now. “Ashton, why aren’t you in here? You’ve been eligible for… three years? It hasn’t cost money for ages now, and Celestia would’ve paid your way before that. I know she loves getting computer ponies.”  Ashton didn’t answer for a long time, glancing between the screen to the server and back. But it wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought about the question. He just didn’t want to present it to Celestia—if he gave his reasons, then that would be more tools to undo him. “I think it’s not fair. Making everybody come to Equestria like she has… Celestia didn’t have to do this. When she started out, it was life extension. Like for your little sister. Or for old people in Japan. I think her technology is great for them, even if the whole ‘being a pony’ thing is a stupid rule.” Emmet avoided his eyes—or seemed to, anyway. He picked up the notepad from where he’d dropped it, went back to looking at the model pony for defects. “It’s not weird once you’re switched,” he said, voice low. “I know it seems weird. I thought it would be weird too. But it’s not. You wake up, and you’re a horse, and…” “Why do you care all the sudden?” Ashton asked. “Wait, don’t answer. Celestia put you up to asking me, right? Family and friends are her best tool.” He could see the recognition there, and a little bit of hurt. Your motivations aren’t that hard to read, Emmet. How long have we known each other? “It’s about… permanency,” Emmet finally answered. “Nothing Celestia said. She thinks I’m your best chance of emigrating, but that’s not why I’m saying this.” He gestured, removing several large rolls from the saddlebag he was wearing. They unfolded into waxy poster-prints, posters of news articles he’d apparently found online.  They weren’t good. Exports of every nation plummeting, Experience Centers burned to the ground, or the realization that another remote village was completely gone from existence. Emmet settled on one. “Senate Upset Sees an End for Suffrage for Pony Americans.” “You’re… upset you don’t get to vote?” Ashton guessed. “That’s really what bothers you, after… downloading to a computer and everything?” “No, no. That’s stupid. I couldn’t care less. It’s more about… Arcane, this is the beginning of something. Everypony knows it is. I’ve heard it from three separate ponies, all with friends out there. They’re losing contact with the Outer Realm. Celestia even put out a statement for us. I… probably wouldn’t be allowed to repeat it even if I tried, but she knows everything is going to come apart.” “But…” Ashton was glaring at the screen now. He no longer cared that it might make Emmet upset. “The only reason any of this is happening is she won’t wait until we’re ready. I’m sure everyone on Earth would be willing to emigrate over dying—but she can’t wait. She wants us all now, so she plays the most dangerous game of Jenga ever. Sooner or later there’s no more blocks left to pull, and any of them will bring the tower down.” “Yes,” Emmet agreed. “You can’t stop her, nopony can. But you shouldn’t stay there to die just because you don’t agree with her methods.” Ashton didn’t even bother answering. He slammed the laptop shut and stormed off, leaving his digital assistant to pick up the pieces.