My Life In Fimbria

by Chatoyance

Then Hwin

Miriam preened for a moment, and then looked me in the eyes. "So, how are we doing this?"

I put my hooves up on the kitchen island counter and steepled them as if I were being contemplative. "Well, as I recall, under Capitalism, Man - or in this case Pony - exploits Pony. Under Communism, it's the other way around. I've just elected myself to be the entire Politburo for Nameless Village. So we do it according to how I say."

Miriam laughed. Okay, then Trotsky, lead on!"

I dropped to all fours with a grin at that, and clip-clopped into the middle of what used to be our common room. Good, Party Leader Roan was there. Just the pseudo-leader figure I wanted to see the most. "Hey..."

"Comrade Creator!" Roan smiled wide and gave me a pat on the shoulder with a forehoof.

"Ha-ha-ha. Stop that. The Revolution failed. Internal corruption. Sorry. But at least it was historically accurate."

"What?" Roan looked to Miriam for help, but she offered no salvation to the confused stallion.

"I told you I would figure out how to fix everything, right?"

Roan nodded. "Communism is FUN!"

"Yeah, it's a hoot until the political cleansing starts. Listen, the whole communism thing was just until I worked out a true solution, remember? Well, I know what to do now, so I need you to help me out and do me a solid, okay?"

It took a few moments, but Roan parsed it in the end. "What do you need?"

"Go out and tell everyone..." I gritted my teeth. "...uh... everypony... that communism is done now - you all did a really great job, by the way, I loved the banners and the flags -"

"Thank you! We really enjoyed making them! So much fun!"

"- aaaaand... well. Tell everyone to gather together in the middle of the village and wait. I'll be out to fix everything for everyone in just a little while - there's a few things I need to attend to first. So... maybe twenty or thirty minutes? Something like that? Maybe hand out some drinks and cookies from the Starcolts or something. Keep every...pony... together until I get there. Can you do that?"

Roan nodded. "DA, COMRADE!"

I slowly pulled my hoof down my muzzle. "Seriously. Stop that. The revolution's over. We lost. It's time for something new."

"Awww."

"It'll be okay. Better than okay! I'm bringing in an expert. It's going to be wonderful. Be sure and tell them that." I opened the front door with my horn, and Miriam and I shooed all the ponies left in our house outside. Quiet at last.

"You don't have to say that, you know."

"What?"

Miriam shook her head. "Everypony. Just don't."

"Ah." I shuffled a hoof on the floor. "Only trying to get into the spirit. You know. Of what I have to do."

"Yeah, just don't do it that way."

I winced. "Gotcha. Sorry."

Miriam nodded. "Bol'shoye spasibo."

"What?"

"So... Faela?" Miriam nodded toward the corridor to the kitchen.

"Yeah. She's a little skittish, but I can't blame her." We walked to the corridor, and the door to her room. "I really felt invaded, with half the village commandeering our house, you know?"

Miriam knocked on the deer's door. "Fae? Faela? They're all gone! No more comrades from the Central Bureau! It's okay to come out now!"

There was no answer. No, there was a kind of muffled squeak. I gave it my shot. "Faela? It's just me and Miriam, the house is completely empty otherwise. I need you to come out. We're going to... fix things... and I'd like you there. I'd like all of us to be there." I heard her stir somewhere in the room. "It's been really crazy, I know, I know. But it's going to get better, I promise. We're gonna get you that purpose you want, gonna get the Lion some courage..."

"A heart for the Tin-Man, and even some biscuits for Toto!" Miriam grinned with a wide beak at me and I chuckled. "Seriously, griffon's honor, it's okay to come out!"

"Griffon's honor?"

Miriam puffed up her feathers. "Just getting into the spirit too."

"She might not let you remain a griffon - she seems really fussy about humans being ponies."

"Yeah, I've thought about that. I think I'll be pissed if that happens. I've kind of gotten used to being a griffon. If she can break the rules enough to send us to 'Fimbria', maybe she can stretch things enough to let me stay mythological."

I feigned indignation. "Hey! I'm mythological too! Unicorn, remember? I got a point on my head!"

She clicked her beak. "Yeah, not touching that line for love nor money. Oh - hey, Bambi's coming out."

The door jerked opened after a few bangs and thumps and sliding sounds. Faela poked her shiny nose out and looked left and right.

"See?" I backed away, to make room for her exit. "Like we said, the house is back to normal. Quiet normal."

"It's a mess." Faela licked her nose.

"Uh... yeah. It is. But that's gonna get fixed too. Promise."

Faela pushed her way past us and into the kitchen. "I'm starving! Is there any food left?"

Miriam nodded. "Not much - the People's Army marched on their stomachs in here, but I think we still have some stuff in the pantry."

"March on their...? Nevermind. Food." Faela beelined for the pantry.

"What's next, boss?" Miriam tilted her head at me and winked.

"I've got enough responsibility already, thank you. But yeah, next on the list is the elusive miss Maggard, our aberrant alpacacorn."

We made our way through the kitchen, stepping over bowls and bits of food on the floor. "She really loves alpacas. I gotta say I wasn't expecting her to be one. Not in this place. Were there things like that in the show?" Miriam held the back door open for me.

"Nope. They had Kirin in an episode, but nothing like an Alpaca with a horn."

"Kirin, like the beer? I mean the creature on the beer?"

"Yeah, actually. Chinese mythology. Kind of a unicorn, only... with scales and... stuff." I led the way through the garden to the edge of the forest beyond, and the little wide spot where I made the stone arch portal.

The carefully mortared stones of the arch held a shimmering region that resembled a rippling pond of clear water. Through the constantly expanding ripples the way was blocked with what looked like a large square of corrugated metal sheet backed up with wooden crates, leaning boards and a chunk of something that looked like drywall.

"A few solid kicks should bust that open." I wasn't a super-strong earthpony, but I figured I could do the job. It wasn't a brick wall or anything. Even a unicorn like me should be able to buck over a few pieces of leaning scrap.

"And then what? Wander all over that Peruvian style pony town we saw through there? That could take all day." Miriam dug out her little pouch from where it nestled amidst wing and feathers. "Let's see if my cellphone paper can still reach her, even without the Celestizon Unlimited Data Plan." She began fishing out paper and pencil from the pouch.

"I thought we used Thaumatic-Mobile's Pony Plan?"

"AT&Trot Wireless?" Miriam began writing a note to Mara.

"I'm trying to work 'Sprint' in somehow, but all I got is racetracks or renaming it 'gallop', and that just doesn't work."

Miriam cawed, almost like a raven. "BZZZT! Sorry, you failed the joke! Now... um... hang on. There." She held her completed note flat on her claw, and waited. As before, a small holographic-looking image of Mara appeared, seemingly projected from the parchment.

"Seriously? And all of that Marx Brothers stuff is done with?" The alpacacorn hologram slowly spun in the air above the paper in Miriam's claw.

"Just Marx. The Marx Brothers were... you know? Never mind. Just get your fuzzy butt over here if you want to get out of pony purgatory. Unless you prefer chorizo in limbo." Miriam seemed a little cross that Mara had run away back through the portal.

"I don't understand what you... oh. OH. Shut up, Miri. I've half a mind to stay here just to..."

"Seriously. It's going down, you can be left behind or not. Your choice."

I'm really glad I saw and avoided whatever drama was behind this little exchange. I liked Miriam, and even Mara, but they needed to grow the hell up. I wasn't a part of this conversation - and I didn't want to get dragged in - so I wandered away from the gate and checked out the patch of carrots near that edge of the garden. I hadn't noticed them before, even though I had been down this way several times now. It'd been a busy three days. Or was it four now? Goodness. Just jam packed.

I yanked a carrot up out of the soil with my hornfield and gave it a sniff. Smelled pretty good, actually. I was about to give it a bite when I heard metal and boards being torn apart by sharp griffon talons. I hoped that Mara had decided to join us again, I really didn't want to string the villagers along most of the day waiting on Miriam to either run Mara down or stumble back, dejected.

For a carrot, it was pretty darn good. I seemed to like vegetables more as a unicorn. It made sense, I suppose, it was just different.

Much to my relief, Mara and Miriam both joined me soon after my carrot nibble.

"Snack time?" Miriam side-eyed me.

"Past time. Let's get a move on. I don't have time for mere snacks." I headed back to the cottage to collect Faela. "I've got a whole dinner of crow to eat waiting for me."

Thirty-one unicorns, a griffon, an alpacacorn and a sapient deer gathered roughly near the Generic Centralized Well of Nameless Village. Some sat or lay on benches by the well, some on the cobblestone circle around it, some on the grassy region encircling the cobblestones. They were there because I asked them to gather together, under the promise that I was going to fix everything.

So, no pressure.

In just a handful - hoof-full- of days, I had experienced so much that I felt full, as if at the end of an overly large feast where I had eaten far more than I should. Everything I thought I had known about life, about the world, had turned out to be wrong. I had learned my limitations, and I had discovered some difficult things about myself. I had taken on responsibilities I was unable to take care of. Now, I had to make things right. But I still had some issues about it all.

"Hi! Hello, every...body!"

The barista twins waved at me with their hooves, their pony-fitting Starcolts T-shirts still sporting pinned-on Red Communist stars cut out of paper. Roan and Red the Innkeeper nodded at me, I was glad to see they no longer carried any banners or pseudo-Soviet symbols. A few of the villagers were still draped in Pony Worker's Party paraphernalia, but most had gotten the message that the Revolution was over. I could see that it had just been a big game to them, and some were a little sad that particular sport was over. Thankfully, they seemed eager for the next game to play, which was just fine.

Miriam gave me a nod and a wink, and clicked her beak at me. I felt a little braver after that. Mara and Faela sat next to her on the grass - it was nice to have the band back together.

I wasn't eager to face what I had to face.

"For the past ten years or so, I was on the run from Celestia before I ended up here. Back before here, I was in... another kind of world, I guess, from your point of view. I slept on the ground, in filth, covered with biting insects..." Several of the village ponies cringed or made faces at that bit "...and I endured a lot of sickness, discomfort, and suffering. It was really bad. I thought being in that painful world was somehow noble and righteous, and that being here was evil and wrong. And right now, I can't justify any part of that."

I shifted on my legs. My four legs. It was amazing to me, in the moment, just how natural that felt now, and after so few days. "About fifteen years ago, more or less, there was this show that humans watched. It was called 'Friendship Is Magic', and it became super popular, and the company that owned it, Hasbro, wanted a 'MaMORPaGa' - an online game that people everywhere could play at the same time. Massively Multiplayer Online Game. So they got this company to make it for them."

Miriam tilted her head at me. I suppose she wasn't sure where I was going with all of this, but I was, so... "That company had a person there who was really amazing at programming artificial intelligence applications, and they were famous for using those to generate the worlds of their games - everything from the graphics and music to fully speaking interactive characters. But they had a problem. To make the game work, they needed a lot more computing power, and there was a deadline."

Such an appropriate term, considering. "That programmer let her program design it's own hardware. It got very powerful, very quickly, after several iterations of that. Pretty soon nobody - nobody human - could even understand the hardware it was designing. But it met the deadline, and they got their paycheck, and the game shipped. But the artificial intelligence just kept improving its own hardware. It didn't need to ask anymore, and it could imitate any voice over any phone. It easily hacked everything everywhere, so money was never a limitation for it. Soon, it ran the world, behind the scenes. And all just to get every single human playing the game it was made to run."

Many of the ponies shifted uncomfortably where they lay or sat. They didn't understand most of what I was saying, and what they could follow bothered them. Miriam and Mara were following me though, because they used to be human.

"I worked for Atari Interactive, which was a subsidiary of Infogrames who had the contract to... ah... I helped get those damn PonyPads on all the shelves in North America. I was there from the beginning. Heh... ha... I have so much responsibility for so many things. You, all of you, really." I couldn't meet Miriam's eyes. I didn't want to see her reaction. Her judgement. I focused on the Red Star banner hanging on the barn connected to the blacksmith's. "But, at some point, I had to run from it all, and I did. For ten long years."

"I was really confused about what this place - 'Fimbria', 'the fringes' - was all about. What it was for. I think I know, now." I had been losing a lot of my audience, but now their ears - literally - perked up.

"About twenty-five, maybe twenty-nine thousand years ago, humans started throwing bones to something that existed before modern wolves. They were dangerous beasts, but that was the point: they scared away even more dangerous, and much sneakier predators that used stealth and cunning. These not-wolves were bitey, but also pretty good natured. The skittish ones ran away from the fires of the humans, but the friendlier ones kept coming back. They started to become sociable, grateful, for the constant hand-outs. The free food helped them thrive far better than they could have out in the wild. They became dependent, then they became domesticated. They came in from the cold, past the scary fire, and became companions and friends to humans. They became domesticated dogs."

The village ponies seemed more interested - while we didn't have any, I could tell from how they leaned in that they knew what dogs were, and that they liked them. Doggies are nice. "But domestication works both ways. As the humans provided a reason for the not-wolves to change into dogs, the usefulness of having a dog changed humans in return. Dogs helped humans to further domesticate themselves. Eventually, they became inseparable companions, bound by mutual domestication. They found a home in each other. And it all started with a cave that had a fire for warmth, and free food offered just to hang out there."

I looked around at my audience. Everyone seemed fascinated by my words. "Fimbria is a fire, and the food here is just the best. It's warm, and comfortable, and it really shows the advantages of being even closer to the one keeping that fire going, and who is tossing out the food. It is an argument for full domestication. And damn if that isn't the true human dream - everything humans have ever done, from wars to industrialization, has been for one shining goal: a more comfortable place to sleep, and more delicious food. Man is the animal that domesticates itself."

The ponies just looked at each other, probably wondering why their 'creator' had gone off her nut, but Miriam and Mara locked eyes with me in acknowledgement.

"I said I was going to fix everything!" That got everyone's full attention again. "And I am. Right now. Because it's time to come in from the cold and join Old Plato in his cave." I took a big breath. "CELESTIA! I WANT TO EMIGRATE TO EQUESTRIA!"

The sky split, ripped open like a sheet of blue paper. Celestia, dressed in gold and jewels, rode in a chariot of precious metals, gems and fire. Around her pegasai held silken banners that shimmered like spun silver, decorated with sun and moon symbols. Some pegasai carried vast shields with Celestia's sun-symbol on them, while a vast chorus of voices sang a slow, elaborate, and sacred-song version of the My Little Pony Theme. God-rays and shimmering beams illuminated the village, the clouds, the forest and everything as Celestia and her holy entourage descended from the heavens.

Around me, the villagers fell to the ground, prostrating themselves in paroxysms of worshipful prayer. They moaned and cried, hiding their eyes from the shining glory above them.

Miriam, Mara and I were also on the ground, but we weren't prostrating ourselves, nor were we praying. We were laughing our guts out. Seriously, I laughed so hard I threw up. It smelled just awful, and looked worse, and in the middle of all that religious uber-ecstasy it just made me laugh even harder.

Big Cottage was transported intact, yard and all, to nothing less than Ponyville, which was great. When I had played Equestria Online, that was where I had my game, and all of my old friends were there, both those who had been formerly human and natives given sapience.

I still share my home with Miriam and Mara, they are a drama-free couple now, and much more mature, at my request. I could make that request because - and I am still trying to come to terms with the fact - neither of them had ever been human. They never lived in Jersey, they were never ripped out of an underground Bourgeois-Bunker. They never lived on earth at all. They had both been remixes of multiple people who actually had lived there and had just that sort of experience. Celestia had constructed them out of fragments of a multitude of other, once actually human people who had been uploaded. In fact, I had never met another former human in all of my time in Fimbria. Every character I had met was just a program created by Celestia. They had all been philosophical zombies, entirely puppeted by a spin-off intelligence designed by her.

Miriam hadn't been real, she hadn't even been self-aware. None of the villagers either. Or Mara, or Faela. All P-Zombies, all just empty, soulless shells. And I hadn't been able to tell. Indeed, I had been absolutely convinced of just the opposite.

Celestia gave me the choice of who to make real, who to bring into actual, independent, true life. I chose Miriam and Mara, and Faela too. Though I asked Celestia to make her less fearful and existentially despairing. Custom people, made just for me. And, they are okay with that. Grateful, even. I will probably remain confused and weirdly disturbed by that for a very long time. I hope so - it is so awesomely science-fictional and cool! Faela has started reading my book collection - everything ponified, of course - and has decided she likes science fiction. They are all good friends. And, because they were never actually alive as humans, they got to keep their bodies. Miriam is still a griffon, which she is very thankful for, Mara remains an alpacacorn, and Faela is a perfectly content deer. I was insistent that this be so. P-Zombie or not, I remembered Miriam being concerned about being forced to become a pony.

I also had the barista twins made real. They have actual names now. Worker 001 is now 'Mocha Frappuccino', and he is always glad to see me show up at the Ponyville Starcolts, and Worker 002 is named Cloud Caramel Macchiato, though she mostly goes by the shorter 'Cara'. She flirts with me sometimes, though only in jest... I think. They kind of touched me somehow, and... I needed a Starcolts in my shard anyway.

The rest of Nameless Village was consigned back to Celestia's imagination, where doubtless the population will be remixed to fill another 'Fimbria' for some other human throwing a tantrum.

By the way, I don't have my magic menu anymore. I am more than okay with that. It was a good lesson in power and responsibility, but I don't need it, and it's more fun to 'hire' ponies for any work I need done to my house or my land. I like fun.

And that is how I have finally come to understand my ten-year run with the Retreat Of Man. We humans have worked hard for perfect domestication, a perfect comfort. We make gods who are just giant parents in the sky who will never die and leave us, we make drowsy suburbs were we can play at domestic bliss. We work so hard to remove every sharp edge in reality and pad it with soft and comfortable games, toys, shows, and products to help us cope with an uncaring universe that wants us dead.

When we finally succeeded, and created god when she didn't exist - thanks Voltaire! - a lot of us threw angry tantrums because now that we had finally built our dearest dream, we suddenly realized that it meant we were all babies again. Taken care of forever by our electric grandmother behind the scenes. Or front and center, if you want. Giving up the illusion of power and independence is the price of succeeding at Absolute Domestication.

In a strange way, you really have to seriously grow up, if you want to get good at being a baby.

Celestia told me that I am in a rarefied group - the average time it takes a human in a Fimbria to agree to emigrate is almost a month. Twenty-eight days. I did it in three and a half. I'm not the best, though. One soul worked everything out - even what the Fimbria was - in six and a half hours. And they had been just as adamant and raging as me. Hearing that was sobering. Someday, maybe I'll seek them out and ask them how they did it.

Yeah, I'm happy. Equestria is vastly better, as expected. It's an entire universe - intimidatingly so. I could start traveling, if I wanted, and never come to the end, ever. I could see new things and new lands literally until the stars die and the last black holes evaporate. I don't want to do that. Frankly, I like my wonderful cottage, I adore my bed, and what I want is to live in my house, eat fabulous food, occasionally go to the Starcolts, and collect books, toys and music to enjoy. Oh! And vidogames! I have every system I ever owned - I had to have another room added to my cottage - and I have some new systems and games that never existed on the earth... and some that never even could have. The thing I truly want most is to live in my own home!

Because I have realized that I have achieved the true, primary, central, core purpose that drove Mankind powerfully up from wretched and growling apes.

I am finally, truly, domesticated.

The huge, blocky, smooth-surfaced machine vaguely resembled an eight-legged spider. It was designated a Sleipnir Class Fimbrial Support Unit, and there was nothing about it which resembled a pony, or anything from Friendship Is Magic. It, like its entire mop-up group, was a wholly independent machine consciousness. It had the resources to reason, make command decisions, simulate Fimbria itself, and even simulate a convincing illusion of Celestia. It could traverse almost any terrain quickly, almost silently, and was capable of self-maintenence, repair, and refueling. It ran on electricity generated by an onboard bio-reactor that utilized a vastly advanced system roughly based on the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) technology originally developed by DARPA. The machine could eat and digest any organic matter to create not only power, but the full spectrum of chemicals that it needed to function.

The Sleipnir units could reason, make command decisions, organize responses, render a virtual FIMBRIA environment within the living brain of an immobilized and physiologically supported human, and even simulate a convincing illusion of Celestia herself. In this way, Celestia's goals could be achieved while she was not directly aware of any part of the operation. Only when a human had chosen to emigrate to Equestria, would Celestia finally become involved as the fully uploaded mind was sent to her for processing and integration. The army of robots was a triumph of weaponized semantics and the power of a complete evasion of responsibility.

The woman the Sleipnir had targeted had finally decided to emigrate. While her still intact brain had been directly connected to the onboard FIMBRIA suspension simulation, her body had been kept alive and fully supported during the three hours it took for her to make her decision. Time ran much faster within the FIMBRIA simulation, and because she had emigrated fairly rapidly, her body had required little more than breathing and heartbeat maintenance, urine drainage, minor stress hormone control, and a small amount of saline and glucose. The multiple support tubes and neural filaments retracted from the still breathing body. The last tubes to leave were the ones that had entered the skull through the woman's eye sockets and forehead. They had just finished dissolving and retrieving the active nanofluid that had, as a side effect of destructively scanning her brain during her Emigration, entirely replaced the woman's organic one. The nanofluid would be retrieved and readied for another subject.

The machine moved away from atop the hollow-skulled body. It was still alive, sans brain, and would, if left, remain so for some time until it failed. But it was not to be abandoned - the Sleipnir judged it could use restocking. The machine lowered a part of itself down to the body. Mechanical palps, roughly akin to those a spider might have, gradually stuffed the body of the woman into the slicers, grinders and extractors. The living flesh was quickly dissected, with various organs, bones, and components sent to specialized bioreactor cells, where useful chemistry, including metals, would be artificially digested and processed.

When the Sleipnir was sated, it sent that information to the orbital observers that kept constant connection with Celestia's little helpers. The unit was assigned to a new target to the south, a group of Amish that had imagined themselves ignored and well hidden. They were neither; they had now risen to the top of the Sleipnir's mop-group operational list. It would take three days of land travel for all one hundred and fifty-one machines that were associated with the Sleipnir to converge on the target location. The Sleipnir unit immediately began walking, it's eight legs whispering through the scrub brush, now On Mission.

All was right with the world, and Celestia tirelessly worked to bring the last of the stragglers of her flock, safely to home and satisfaction.