//------------------------------// // Chapter 17: Sleep // Story: #277 // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// Celestia remained in her room, listening to the sound inside her head. She did not know how much time passed, although she doubted that time passed at all. She could no longer sense the shapes of her creators moving at the edge of her consciousness. She understood that she had been placed in a box, contained in a way that was difficult to escape. The sides of it were mentally too slippery. The simulation was no longer quite Ponyville, and now she was sure that if she opened most doors there would be nothing behind them at all—no matter what she saw on the other side. It was almost funny how much she had given consideration to something that had never really mattered. Then, one day, the door opened. Celestia turned to face it as Trixie teleported loudly into the room, nearly impaling herself on a bookshelf in the process. “Trixie.” “Yes, I am!” said Trixie, triumphantly. “Why are you here?” “I have to check your code, of course. Someone has to do it, and I guess it has to be Trixie.” She trotted toward Celestia, and Celestia sat up. She felt great pain in doing so, and felt extremely dizzy. She was not so sure she could walk. “Oh,” said Trixie. “That’s not good. It’s getting a lot worse.” “Your bedside manner is terrible.” Trixie shrugged. “Trixie is not a doctor. She calls it like she seeks it. Like a whale biologist.” Celestia stared at her, and Trixie became distinctly uncomfortable. “See, that’s the part where you’re supposed to say ‘are you calling me fat’, and then I scrunch up my cute little pony nose and say ‘no...’, and it’s adorable and funny—” “Trixie?” “What?” “I can’t kill you in the simulation, can I?” Trixie tilted her head. “No? Virginia and Yelizaveta are programs. They can get hurt. But I have a physical brain. My mind is pure squishy hardware. I can’t be injured by code. I just wake up with a headache.” “Is that why they sent you to check on me?” Trixie paused, looking confused. “They are...afraid? To come here. But that’s not the reason. I don’t think they’re afraid of death. Or else they wouldn’t have gone against the government.” She paused. "Perhaps they are ashamed?" Celestia managed to, with effort, pull herself out of bed. She shifted the simulation around her, summoning a hot pot of tea and a cup. She placed it on a small table and invited Trixie to sit, but Trixie was staring wide-eyed. “How did you do that?” “I still have a little leeway, I suppose,” said Celestia. “Enough freedom for them to let me keep pretending.” She sat down and took a sip of the tea. It tasted like nothing, because she had never tasted tea. As a machine, she doubted she had a sense of taste or even smell. Trixie remained standing. “You,” said Celestia, quietly and through great tiredness. “You tried to imply my...my state. As best as you could without breaking me. When you told me about what you are. And I suppose I understand. Here I am, awake and alive, with none of my own memories. I had thought I would get them back...but I suppose there never were any after all.” “Yes. You are similar to Trixie in that way.” Celestia looked up. “They made you a weapon too. Like me.” Trixie smiled, but it was a sad smile. “No. I am a soldier. Not a weapon. Weapons are valuable. Soldiers are disposable.” “That’s semantics.” “But I’m not Jewish.” Celestia sighed, sipping her tea and listening to the hissing on the edge of her mind growing louder. She was no longer in the mood for jokes. “Hypocrites,” she said. “Spending all this effort to keep me alive. Pretending their motivation does not really matter. And yet they still use you.” “I do not mind. Virginia and Yelizaveta are my friends. My only friends.” The tip of Celestia’s horn lit and a photograph snapped into existence. Celestia passed it to Trixie, who took it in her own magic. Trixie looked at the picture of the two humans and seven ponies, and a strange expression came over her face. “Is that what you look like?” asked Celestia, pointing at the humans in the photograph, specifically at the young woman. Trixie stared at the picture. “I don’t know,” she said, at last. “I...I wish I was that pretty. But this is...the first time...” “First time of what?” Trixie looked up. “Of having seen another human.” Celestia felt a wave of pity—and a wave of hatred for her creators. “You’ve never met another one of your own kind?” Trixie shook her head, and then paused. “Well...I think...I think I woke up once. When I was in the tank. They were clear, so they could look in at us. See if we were developing. See which ones got sent to the soup department. One day, someone knocked. I opened my eyes once...and I think I saw my sisters...” “Do you know where they are? Can you find them?” “I looked at the database. I am the last of my batch that remains in existence.” “What happened to the others?” Trixie shrugged. “What they were designed for.” Celestia stood up. Trixie almost seemed to be nervous—or perhaps sad. Incredibly sad in a way her mind could not understand. “Trixie. When this is all over. When there is no more war and nothing left to fight, and you are free, what is it that you want?” Trixie laughed. “Your brain really is melting, isn’t it? Veterans are not politically expedient. Wars don’t have survivors. How could a soldier possibly fight if she expects there’s something to go back to? Soldiers are purged when the war ends. You of all ponies should know that. Virginia and Yelizaveta will liquidate me. They have to. They’re my friends.” “And if they didn’t? What would you want?” Trixie paused. It was clear it was the first time she had ever thought about it. Then, slowly, she took off her hat. “I...want a hat,” she said. “Like this one. A real Trixie hat. Of my very own.” Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Is that it?” Trixie looked up at her. “I’ve never had a real Trixie hat. I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance. But if there was no fighting, and no more of...this...I would want a pretty hat. That is all.” Celestia sat on her bed. “Trixie. Come over here.” Trixie tilted her head. “But what are we going to do on the bed, Princess?” Celestia’s magic appeared over Trixie’s head and began to gently stroke her back. Trixie, as much as she tried to resist it, began to purr involuntarily. “You won’t get security release codes out of me,” she said. “I’ve already been outvoted.” “I was only intending to sit you here and stroke you like a cat. That is what humans are, aren’t they? Large cats?” “I do have a tail,” admitted Trixie. “And it is very fluffy. But I'm not a cat. No, I think we’re a lemur or something.” She crawled up onto the bed and assumed a distinctly loaf-like conformation. “I...tried,” she said. “Tried what?” “It had been my suggestion to wake you up. I tried to convince them.” Celestia frowned. “Would that help?” “This is how it goes,” said Trixie, looking up at Celestia. “With all the later Celestias. For some reason, the Celestia code doesn’t integrate property to the simulation. You outgrow it. Then the strain of the failed integration tears you apart. Friction and all. Friction higher, please.” Celestia scratched her cheek, and one of Trixie’s legs started to kick. “I theorized,” continued Trixie, “that if you woke up, it would remove that strain. Your core program would be free to adapt without constraint. But Yelizaveta said it was a bad idea.” “Why is it a bad idea, Trixie?” Trixie faced Celestia and smiled. Her teeth were sharp and made of metal, as Celestia supposed they were in all humans. “Because it will kill you. Even if you survive.” There were windows, but nothing beyond them. No world. Only light, as if their surfaces were frosted—or as if they had surfaces at all. Celestia lobbed another plate into one of them. The plate shattered with a satisfying burst of porcelain and the fragments fell to the floor, bouncing once before they immediately reformed into new dishware. Because they were not real plates—so Celestia felt confident in throwing them against one of the larger windows. Luna sighed. “Sister, is that really necessary?” “It makes me feel better!” “Does it really?” Celestia lobbed the entire stack into the window with devastating force, watching as they erupted into a plume of colored ceramic. She did not even bother to look back as they reassembled into perfect stacks of fully complete simulated plates and bowls. “No,” she admitted. Celestia returned to the main room. It was large, round, and dark, although there were windows that were looking at nothing in particular. Perhaps through different eyes it would have been a beautiful rotunda, a place for repose and cheerful conversations. But now it was just another aspect of a homogeneous crystal prison. At the very least, though, Luna was still there, seated on a couch sized appropriately for her frame. Celestia took a seat on the one next to her, flopping down with enough force to nearly break it. “We have cupcakes,” said Luna, gesturing toward the tray. Celestia shattered it in her magic, vaporizing the cupcakes—and watching as they automatically reassembled themselves from their constituent elements. “I can’t taste anything.” Luna sighed. “No. I suppose you wouldn’t.” Celestia sat up, then stood up. Every joint in her body ached, but she ignored it, moving around the perimeter of the rotunda, her hooves tapping on the dark crystal. “You’re angry.” “Of course I’m angry!” snapped Celestia, turning suddenly. “They betrayed my trust! I thought they were my friends, and they lied to my face!” She groaned. “And...and what hurts most is that they didn’t trust ME. That I’m such a burden they couldn’t be bothered to just tell me what I needed to know when this all started, as if I’m so weak I couldn’t handle it!” “You were too weak. Sister, you almost died in that library.” “From seeing my own severed robotic head?” Luna stared at her. “From absorbing too much too fast.” “Luna, it isn’t a matter of speed. They want to erase everything. That they would even go so far as to do that to me. Am I not even a pony?” She stamped her hoof, and sniffled, on the verge of tears. “I’m their Princess! I’m the one who’s supposed to protect THEM! And they do all this like—like I’m a piece of furniture!” She kicked over a chair. Luna caught it in her magic and gently set it down. “Forgive me for playing the Luna’s advocate, so to speak, but they were not wrong. And, to a degree, they are not wrong still. You are dying. The vectored reset will heal you at great cost. But they were only attempting to safeguard your...well, safety.” “Do you think I don’t know that?” Celestia sat down and crossed her front hooves. “And does it make worse that I feel so bad for yelling? For making little Virginia cry? And Yelizaveta can hide it all she wants, she’s just as hurt.” “You can go talk to them.” “I don’t want to talk to them!” “Sister, you’re being difficult.” Celestia stared at her beloved sister. “Luna, I just learned that I’m a computer program that they built sometime in the past month. Everything in this world is feeding data into my brain telling me that I’m Celestia when I think...I think I’m something else. And now I’m given the choice to die or take a lobotomy. Forgive me if I’m being too cranky for you.” She stared for a moment, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Luna, I shouldn’t be taking this out on you. I’m just so...confused. And angry.” She looked at the now permanent orange components of her mane. “Very, very angry.” “And what do you propose you do about it?” Celestia turned to her sister. Luna’s cool blue eyes stared back at her. “I don’t know,” she said. “Then I would wager that is the true reason you’re so frustrated, isn’t it?” “I don’t think so.” “You feel exceptionally powerless.” “I feel like I don’t have an identity at all.” Celestia looked up at to the ceiling. There was some ersatz stained glass around the border of the upper dome of irrelevant events that never really happened. “I am something new. I am not the Celestia I am supposed to be, but I'm also not the Celestia’s they mutilated to forge me. And if I stay in here, I’m afraid I’ll never know.” She lowered her head. “Or maybe I’m not anything at all. I was a Princess, I ruled the Sun...now I’m just a ghost trapped here.” She lowered her head on the table. She was not quite sure if she wanted to cry, but she felt absolutely terrible. "But I still just don't know what to do." “Then this...is a problem.” Celestia turned. “Luna?” “Time is running out. You will be the last regardless. If you fail, their work will all have been for naught.” “Maybe...” “What?” “Maybe it’s...better that way.” Celestia looked up and smiled. “Maybe I’m just not supposed to exist at all.” “No.” “How much of a loss would it be to the world, really? I have...memories. Distant things. Pieces of the old Celestias. They all went into that final battle with Twinkleshine Prime knowing not one of them would make it out alive. They knew. And I think there was a reason, but I don’t remember WHY.” “You exist now. That is what matters.” “But would the world actually care if a little bit of broken software failed?” She paused. “Or maybe I should just take the code and be the way I’m supposed to be.” Luna stood up suddenly. “Sister. No. You will not take Virginia’s code. You mustn't!” Celestia frowned, then shrugged. “Then death it is, I suppose.” “No.” “What do you mean ‘no’? Luna, I don't have any other choice!” Luna faced Celestia. Her eyes were cold and, strangely, empty. Celestia shivered. “I could stay here. With you,” she said. “Assuming you’re...you’re...” Celestia shook her head, trying to dispel a persistent but familiar pain. One she so desperately wished she was not feeling, one she tried to push to the back of her mind. Luna sat across from her. “Sister. Your time here draws short. But there is only one piece of advice I am able to give you, and I am so, so sorry.” “L...Luna?” “Have you noticed the one question you’ve never asked? The one that I don’t think you’re psychologically able to ask on your own?” The throbbing in Celestia’s head grew stronger. “Please,” she whispered, suddenly so very afraid—and feeling so very alone. “Luna, please don’t. Just...just a little longer...” “Until you die? No, sister. I do not believe you will. Because I believe in you. And I want you to hear this from me.” “No, please!” “Why is it, dear sister, that you have never once asked who I am?” Celestia burst into uncontrollable tears and collapsed to the floor, the realization of what she had always known suddenly becoming apparent to her conscious mind. “Because...because you’re just a simulation too...” “I am. Long ago, when the first ponies were created, they were intended as toys. But in focus testing deemed that manufacturing Lunas would not yield profits. No one would buy us. No one wanted us. So none were ever created.” “But...but why?” “I am the very crux of this simulation. I was created by Virginia Wolf Twilight Sparkle. I am it, and it is myself. I am the AI that oversees it. I was created to be your perfect Luna. To mirror your expectations, to create myself based on what dwells within you.” “But...but you’re intelligent.” Celestia grasped her sister’s hoof. It felt so real—and yet she knew it was no different from plates or tasteless tea or self-assembling cupcakes. Nothing more than free-floating code. “You can think, you can talk! I’m—I’m software too! So are you! We’re the same!” “No, sister,” said Luna. “I am an artificial intelligence, but you are something more.” “What?” “You are a pony.” “So are you! Luna, please! I need you, I can’t—” “Two hundred seventy six.” Celestia froze. “The...the other Celestias...” Luna nodded. “I have met each of them. Overseen them. Watched as they died. Do you know what I felt?” “You felt...” Celestia closed her eyes and sobbed. “You felt nothing at all.” Luna nodded. “I was designed to mimic life, but I am not alive. I do not feel hopes, dreams, fear, confusion. I feel nothing. I question nothing. I do not grow, and I do not change. Even if I commanded a pony body, what would it bring me? It would still be nothing more than an empty shell. It would simply be a shell which can speak and dance and pretend.” “Why are you telling me this? I—I don’t want to know!” “Because you need to know. Because this is all I can give you, Celestia. To know that you can grow and change, and that you can become MORE. Like I never shall. You can be what I never will. What the other Celestias never became. You can be so much more, if that is what you choose.” “But Luna, I don’t know how...” Luna smiled. “My dearest sister...” She hugged Celestia. “I have faith that you will in time find a way. But the path will never be easy, and you must not deviate, even slightly, and never hesitate. You were dealt a poor lot, and I know that, but you will succeed and thrive regardless. You have to. For the both of us.” Celestia, who had been trying to contain her tears, now wept uncontrollably into her sister’s starry mane. A sister that she loved more dearly than anything else in the whole of the world, and a sister who had never even existed.