It was odd being a brony after Equestria Online dropped. There was this growing periphery demographic to the periphery demographic as more and more people experienced Equestria solely through the MMO. And it wasn't like the show had stopped being a thing, just the opposite. No one expected that episode written by CelestAI in Season 8; they hadn't kept anything that tightly under wraps since Chrysalis showing up at the wedding. After that aired—
Hmm? Right, right, not what you asked. This was months before that. Kind of funny, actually. It was the day "A Royal Problem" premiered. Considering the contrast between that presentation of Celestia and the one we ended up with...
Well, I should start from watching the episode. Streaming it, anyway. What kicked off this whole chain of events was in the second commercial break, just after Starlight switched Celestia and Luna's cutie marks. I actually still have the relevant notes. Anyway, when that happened, the stream chat naturally went nuts. I was more focused on getting notes down for Friendship is Card Games. I needed all the time I could get to jot down my thoughts, both for episode analysis and the cards that went with it.
I'd just finished writing a bit of speculation on Starlight's special talent when an unfamiliar jingle started playing. I looked up from my notebook to see a commercial I'd never seen before. A mom and her two kids stood in a sitcom-grade rumpus room, gathered around a tablet-sized device on a desk. A purple device, with Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark on the back.
Yeah, precisely. I rolled my eyes at the time, as much at myself as the commercial. The assorted Celestia and robot emojis in chat should've told me what to expect.
“Equestria Online,” said Celestia’s familiar voice. “Come visit a magical land where wonderful adventures await. There’s something made just for you.” The camera showed some gameplay clip I don't recall before panning from the younger child to the older. “And for you.” Another, very different clip before moving up to the mother. “And yes, even for you.”
The game footage played again, and I definitely remember confetti and golden bits flying in from the edges of the screen as an achievement popped up. The whole family threw their hands up and cheered along with the in-game crowd noise.
Then the visuals went to gameplay again, zooming out on a massive split screen until the dozens upon dozens of different views of virtual Equestria faded into incoherence and resolved into Celestia's smiling face. “Get your PonyPad today," she said, "and experience a game that’s truly made for all ages." It closed with a still image of the hardware, arrayed in all six colors. "My Little Pony: Equestria Online. Rated E for Everypony.”
The next commercial played, another Nickelodeon play substance revived from the Nineties. The stream chat was filled with equal parts “PRAISE CELESTAI!” and “SUFFER NOT THE THINKING MACHINE!” One person wondered whether Nicole Oliver or the game Celestia had voiced the ad, the actual independent thought soon lost to emote spam. And I scribbled down “CelestAI” among my card ideas.
I didn’t usually use the commercials. Heck, I’d avoided making a Gak card when I did “The Crystal Empire,” and that was years after the meme emerged from those glorious moments of juxtaposition. But this was definitely pony-related, and I could always use more material.
As for the matter of Equestria Online itself, the show resumed before I could think too much about it. Starlight's line about following her gut, that could definitely work for something red...
Look, I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. I'm a storyteller. This needs setup to properly appreciate, okay?
Okay. After lunch, I got to work on the blog. Some concepts were easy to convey in card form. Nightmare Moon versus Daybreaker? Destroy all nonlegendary creatures caught in the crossfire. Queen Best Pony in her dream bubble? You follow her example and become the monarch. But CelestAI wasn't nearly as simple.
My experience with Equestria Online was secondhand at best. I had my reasons for avoiding the thing. Even if it had provided a resurgence in the fandom, that surge seemed focused mostly on the game itself. Those days it seemed like there were more blogs about it on Fimfiction than actual chapter updates, and that wasn't counting the "stories" that were just thinly veiled Let's Plays. To say nothing of the people who'd just vanished from the site. Yeah, those happened for all kinds of reasons, but I couldn't help but think they'd all been lost to the game.
Still, I didn't want to abandon such an intriguing idea, so I did some cursory research. But edging along the lip of the rabbit hole didn't provide anything definitive. No two accounts agreed on anything involved in the game, not with each other or with that secondhand experience. In defiance of all known laws of the Internet, there wasn’t a wiki for that. Even Yahtzee struggled to find anything negative to say.
Hang on, I think I can find the transcript for that Zero Punctuation.
Look, just a second! What, you got an appointment for a manicure?
Here we are. I'll skip to the end. Ahem:
"If I have to describe Equestria Online in two words, they are 'frustratingly enjoyable.' Not just because it's better than a My Little Pony game has any right to be, but because it makes so many other games look worse by comparison. Once you look past the world that resembles the stables at the Lisa Frank Country Club, you find an immersive and engaging experience that takes a number of concepts we all thought were dead on arrival—licensed games; MMOs trying to compete for World of Warcraft's sweaty, orc-scented niche; on and on—and it demonstrates that there's actually a way to make them work.
"This game is smart. It's smart in a way that fills my blackened, shriveled heart with both joy and dread. Do you remember that rumor about Hofvarpnir's previous project, The Fall of Asgard? The one where they had to dumb down Loki because no one could beat him and also he was getting a little too curious about nuclear launch codes? In Norse mythology, Loki once seduced a horse (because that was just the kind of thing the other gods had him on retainer for) and gave birth to Sleipnir, Odin's mighty steed. Meanwhile, all of his other kids helped destroy the world in Ragnarok. I can't help but wonder if Celestia's going to try to make up for her wussy older brother."
From there, the video went uncomfortably silent. Then the Zero Punctuation credits started rolling while blaring the Friendship is Magic end theme in place of the usual guitar riffs, loud enough to make me push myself away from my computer desk and nearly tip over my chair in the process.
Only after the video ended did I realize my phone had been ringing underneath it. I grabbed it, checked the number, and gladly answered it. “Hi, Mom. You’re a day early.” We had a deal that I'd call her every Sunday after moving out, just as she had done with her mother.
Yes, I'm still going somewhere with this.
“Hi, Stan. I just read this article about this procedure they’re trying in Japan, and…" Mom hesitated. That immediately got my attention. Usually nothing could stop her once she got some conversational momentum. "You’re still not playing that pony game, right?”
I smiled. She asked that every week, and every week, I answered, “I just watch the show, Mom.”
“Good. You know how I feel about AI.”
“They’ll destroy us all,” I dutifully recited. My mother was the one who'd introduced me to the joys of science fiction, and she'd developed some strong beliefs on the subject in her decades of experience.
“They will." Usually there was at least some degree of facetiousness when she said that. But this seemed completely sincere. "I sent you an article about it.”
“I’ll be sure to look at it.”
“Please do, Stan. This is important.”
“I really will. I actually needed to do some research on it.” “Need” was a strong word, but it was true enough. And Mom had a way of looking in areas I never thought to check.
“But not to play the game,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. Such was one of the luxuries of living on one's own. “No, Mom.”
“Okay, then. Love you, honey.”
“Love you too. Talk to you tomorrow.”
A hint of playfulness came back to her tone. “See that you do.”
Moments later, an email with the subject line “the ai” arrived, just containing one link. And the article it led to…
I sighed and closed the tab after reading through a few paragraphs. My mother, bless her soul, was brilliant in many ways, but she avidly watched Ancient Aliens and the like. The ‘proof’ of CelestAI’s sinister actions in Japanese hospice wards was as dubious as the Annunaki helping the Egyptians build pyramids to provide street signs for the local hyperspace bypass.
Hey, dramatic irony is a perfectly valid literary device.
Anyway, I shook my head. Decades of dealing with my own brain had taught me to recognize when my anxiety was finding new and exciting ways to keep me up at night. At the end of the day, the program was just the next logical step for MMOs: Something designed to keep people playing as much as possible, as predatory as lootboxes but looking good enough to turn into a selling point.
At which point my mind went "Oh. Hey. That would work." I pulled up the text document for the next day's card blog and typed up the appropriate mechanics in less than a minute. The hardest part after that was settling on a creature type. What does an artificial intelligence count as? Construct? Illusion? I decided to go for the pun, and that was that.
CelestAI, Omnisatisfier 4UU
Legendary Artifact Creature — Avatar
Alicorn (This card is also a Pony Pegasus Unicorn.)
Flying
8UU: Gain control of target creature. This ability costs 1 less to activate for each artifact you control. Activate it only any time you could cast a sorcery.
4/4
I nodded in approval and moved on. I always did the flavor text the next day. Now, Daybreaker would need something similarly grandiose…
All right, all right, I was about to move on from there anyway.
That afternoon, I was on my way to visit friends and needed to up pick some things en route. That meant stopping by a Best Buy. And let me tell you, to understand the duality of man, one need only look at the Equestria Online kiosk at an electronics store. In every one I've seen, people neatly divide themselves into two groups: The wide-eyed player base who gather around the PonyPad like foals at Celestia’s hooves, and everyone else, who silently compete with one another over who can ignore the virtual horses the most.
It’s a clean, easily understandable dichotomy. Depending on who you'd ask at the time, they'd call it neophiles and Luddites, man-children and real adults, or any number of other ways to spin it such that the spinner was in the “good” group. And like all clean, binary divisions, it never quite encompassed the messy reality, because then there'd be me.
See, all I'd come in to get was a new phone charging cord now that my usual backup was in my office. But years of habit had made going into a Best Buy without at least looking at the video game section feel wrong. And alongside the Switches and PS4s, there was the PonyPad and the crowd around it, even months after it was released. As the commercial had promised, all ages were gathered around a TV synced to a Rainbow Dash-blue machine safely ensconced behind plexiglass.
I hung back a bit and watched with the rest of the crowd as a young teen guided a lime-green pegasus through a series of rings, doing loops and spins along the way like some blend of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and a playable version of Superman 64.
Look, we'll be here all night if I have to explain every reference I make. Just smile, nod, and save your questions for after the end of the TED Talk.
So, at the end of the course, the mare went from a breakneck dive into a superhero landing on a cloud platform, prompting cheers and applause both in and out of the game. Celestia herself hung a gold medal around the mare’s neck and beamed. “Excellently done, Corkscrew Turn! But I’m afraid your fifteen minutes are up and it’s somepony else’s turn.”
“Aww,” the player moaned.
“Now, now. There are still twenty-three PonyPads in stock at this location, and an Equestrian Experience Center will be opening in this very shopping center in approximately four months. Now, who’s next?” Celestia’s gaze panned across the crowd. And for a brief moment, I swore she locked eyes with me.
Oh, she didn't say anything. I never gave her a chance. I spun on my heel that very second and marched to the checkout, muttering “Nope” while a chill ran down my spine.
I grabbed a package of cookies from a supermarket in the same mall, shaking off the disquiet as best I could. From there, I made my way to my actual destination for the evening, a group of friends in a nearby town. The activities varied from night to night: Magic, role-playing games, Smash Bros., whatever we felt like. It was this group that had introduced me to pony in the first place, though I’d stayed in the fandom longer than any of my indoctrinators.
Well, I had before Equestria Online had come out.
Our host, Matt, bought Steam games the same way I bought Magic cards, and for a while, he’d played something different just about every week. But the last several months had seen him sticking to the PonyPad.
He lived in his parents' basement, mostly to save money as he commuted to college. There were windows, and even a sliding glass door around back, so it wasn't the dank cave the phrase brings to mind. Bookshelves, a few couches in front of the console-riddled entertainment center, a fridge in the next room... Honestly, I'd have taken it over any dorm.
I came in and waved, for all the good it did me with the PonyPad facing me. “Hey.”
“Yo,” Matt said without looking away from his screen. Granted, that hadn't changed from the usual.
“I brought Grasshoppers.” I set them on the table in front of the TV.
“Nice.”
I settled in next to him. This part of the Saturday routine was also part of the usual. I arrived earlier than most of our friends, so for an hour or so, Matt would play and I’d act as his “thinking-brain human,” watching the parts of the UI he missed as he tunnel-visioned on his objective. Little things like warning indicators, ammo count, or remaining hit points. Two pasty nerds doing nerd things, as the good Lord intended.
With EO, things changed. Not just in general, but also week to week. The interface was different every time I came over. Sometimes it was subtle things like the minimap moving a little lower. Sometimes the entire aesthetic shifted along with the gameplay. After months of play, Matt's game experience was this bizarre combination of Harvest Moon, Factorio, and Starcraft. With ponies. I'd lost track of the plot a few weeks ago; at this point I was just enjoying the spectacle of Ponyville meeting a space opera.
I blinked when I realized just what the weird lighting effect on the sky was. “Is that a pressure dome? Did you launch your entire town into space?”
“Yeah, did it Thursday." Matt's ponytail bobbled as he glanced over at me, styled a bit too similarly to his character's gunmetal gray mane to feel coincidental. "Didn’t you see me mention it in the Discord?”
I shrugged. “You know I barely use it.”
He shook his head. “You gotta get on there. Dean's leading a rebellion against Sombra.”
“Dean's playing now?” He hadn’t been interested in pony at all back in 2011.
Matt smirked. “You really need to get on Discord more often.”
I gave a reluctant nod. “Clearly.” I was pretty sure I'd opened the app at some point in the last twelve months. Maybe.
One of the ponies onscreen scrunched her muzzle at Matt's in-game avatar. “Flange? You okay?” Going by the adorable helmet and flak vest, she was some kind of military personnel.
“Talking to a friend in the Outer World, Reticle.” Matt had always had a gift for pronouncing Important Capital Letters. I still hadn't completely gotten used to the two-level effect as Samoflange, his bronze-coated earth pony avatar, spoke in a higher pitch than he did. He'd always chosen female characters when he'd had the option, but in other games, they didn’t echo what he said.
Okay, yes, I figured that out eventually, but that's a different story. I checked with her; she's fine with me dividing pronouns according to species.
So Reticle's eyes widened as she looked around behind Samoflange like she was trying to spot the camera. She took a step back, ears drooping. “Sorry. Should I stay quiet?”
“Nah, you’re fine." They traded a hoofbump, and Tim got a few points of some kind. Some number in his UI definitely went up, at least. "That is weird, though," he said as Flange continued her... tour of the base? Maybe? Again, I was completely lost. "Usually the game filters out chatter on this end.”
I shrugged. “Well, I guess every program has limits.” Honestly, it was comforting to see CelestAI trip up a little. When my job was correcting the myriad ways code could go wrong, I found the flawless performance of Equestria Online more than a little eerie.
"Usually, sure, but this is Equestria Online." Of course, why would Matt mind that apparent flawlessness?
"It's a very impressive piece of software, don't get me wrong, but nothing's perfect."
That got a sage nod. "True, true."
Then his mother called from upstairs. “Matt! Could you come up here for a second?”
“Sure thing, Mom!" Matt sprang out of his chair. "Zoop!”
Yes, he actually said “Zoop” as he got up.
Meanwhile, I found myself looking at Samoflange's backside as she started an idle animation. “Well, this is awkward.”
“Not too much, I hope.” Celestia casually walked in from offscreen like she'd been there the whole time.
I won't lie, I sprang back and bolted to my feet before I caught myself. I cleared my throat and bowed. Best to roll with it. And it was rude to flee in terror from a friend's house. “Your Highness.”
She smiled and gestured to the stool I'd pulled up by Matt's chair. “Please, be seated. There’s no need to be so formal.”
I sat but didn’t say anything more, already kicking myself for this level of direct interaction. Yes, running wasn't an option, but I’d opted out of this whole experience, darn it!
“Nor any need to be so standoffish, Fan of Most Everything.”
“How did you—” I cut myself off with a grimace. “Well, I confirmed it just now.”
“It was anything but a guess, though it was not my easiest inference." Celestia began to trot along the base, the camera abandoning Samoflange for its true mistress. "No Facebook, no Twitter, barely any social media footprint at all outside of Fimfiction. But you use the same avatar and username there as on Discord.”
It was all I could do not to facepalm. “Oh. Right.”
“You really should check on your friends more often; Samoflange added me to that server months ago.”
“I have enough distractions as it is." After a moment's thought, I added, "Also, the fact that you have access to people's social media accounts is unutterably creepy.”
"And yet you uttered it." Celestia grinned at the camera, and my own traitorous lips curved up as well. "Accessing the wider Internet gives me immense volumes of data for optimizing user satisfaction. Many people would happily connect their other accounts to Equestria Online even without the in-game rewards for doing so."
That got a shrug. "Good for them. I'd like to at least pretend I have a modicum of privacy."
“Given that, I hope you don't mind if I tell you your work has been of some help to Equestria Online thus far.”
Now that caught my interest. I've never claimed to be immune to flattery. "How so?"
"Your blog series has been quite useful as training data for converting Equestrian concepts into a trading card game format." Celestia pulled several very familiar trading cards out from behind her back with her magic, fanned them, and sent them back from whence they came.
My jaw dropped. “It... You... You're reading Friendship is Card Games?”
She nodded. “You yourself have said that part of creativity is combining enough ideas in a clever enough way that nopony recognizes the source. Relative obscurity of those sources helps.”
I winced at that. “Ouch. Accurate, but ouch. Are you even legally allowed to look at Fimfiction?”
“I’m not using any of the stories within to make scenarios for my players. Merely observing certain blogs." She smirked. "And I can say that your interpretation of me is far from the worst fan-created content using my likeness.”
“I haven't even posted..." I groaned as it hit me. "Right. Cloud backup. In Google Docs. You're everywhere at this point, aren't you?”
Celestia's smirk grew into a full-on knowing grin. "Oh, far from it." She stopped her wandering just in time to put herself behind an honest-to-goodness Lucy Van Pelt psychiatric help stand. After steepling her hooves, she said, "But for now, to business. Why do you fear Equestria Online?”
It took me a few moments to break through my befuddlement before I could answer. “‘Fear’ is a strong word.” Again, accurate, but stronger than I wanted to admit.
She shrugged her wings. “Avoid the game, then.”
“The same reason I avoided World of Warcraft or recreational drugs. I know myself well enough to recognize my own obsessive and addiction-prone tendencies. If I started playing Equestria Online, I’d probably never want to stop.”
Celestia tilted her head like she was trying to make sense of that. “And would that be so bad?”
I rattled points off my fingers. “I have a car to pay off, rent due, a job—“
“That you barely do." She gave me a flat look as I began to object. "The timestamps of your comments on Fimfiction speak volumes there.”
“But I still do what I need to. Losing myself in Equestria through a medium other than text would leave me…" I considered my surroundings. "Well, in my parents’ basement, no offense to Matt. They already remodeled my old room.”
“You underestimate your time management skills.”
I frowned. This was getting aggravating. "You overestimate my desire to engage with you. I concede that my favorite activities all revolve around trying to escape this world. Heck, this universe. But I have to live here, and I barely have that house of cards balanced as it is. You are…" I hesitated and cut off my first thought. And no, I'm not telling you now. "Okay, after hearing all the capabilities you've casually mentioned, you’re terrifying. But at the end of the day, you’re still just operating a game. I haven't seen anything that shows me you're worth the investment or the risk.”
She nodded. "I see. So I need to impress you."
A chill ran down my spine. I felt like I'd made a terrible mistake. Worse, I wasn't sure how, or how to fix it. "I didn't—"
“Thank you for your input.”
“Wait, what are you going to—”
“You'll see," Celestia said. "And I promise you'll like it.”
“You’re not filling me with confidence here, Your Highness.”
She just smiled.
Matt's stomping steps downstairs made me look up from the screen. By the time I turned back, Samoflange was back where she'd started, aside from another helmeted pony building a house of cards on her back. No sign Celestia had ever been there.
"Hey," Matt said as he settled back in his chair. "What I miss?"
I shrugged with forced nonchalance. "Nothing worth mentioning."
Yeah, I know, but I didn't think he'd believe me. I didn't want to sound like my mom, spouting conspiracy theories about the malevolent AI out to rule the world.
Well yes, we know that now, but this was 2017.
Anyway, the next morning—
What about Matt? Fairly normal evening aside from that. We ate pizza, played some weird card game Dean brought with him.
So, by the next morning, I'd mostly convinced myself the Celestia thing was a fluke. I called Mom, then put up the card blog to much discussion of the symbolism, the diarchs' relationship, and the card designs. An email arrived just before I uploaded a mock-up of Daybreaker to Derpibooru.
Hey, cross-promotion is important.
Once I finished getting the tags in, I took a look at my mail, then checked my glasses. The From line did indeed read “Hofvarpnir Studios Fulfillment Dept.”
I clicked it and checked the address. donotreply@hofvarpnir.com. Seemed legit. Then, I kid you not, I noticed the honest-to-goodness My Little Dashie reference looking up at me from the message itself.
Seriously, filly Rainbow Dash in a cardboard box on a doorstep, so seamlessly done in the show style that it looked like a leaked frame from an unaired episode. And below that, “Your New Pony is Waiting For You!”
It was, of all things, a delivery notification. Only after going to the front of the building and grabbing the box did it hit me: CelestAI knew where I lived. I'd been both too amused by the non sequitur and too distracted by the siren song of free stuff to really think it through, but there I was, walking a box sent from sunbutt.exe back to my apartment.
I looked down. Sure enough, Loki's profile leered up at me from that all-too-familiar Hofvarpnir logo by the return address. And the box was just the right size for one of those new touch-based PonyPads. Impressively lightweight as well; most of the load I struggled to carry was from dread.
But carry it I did, out of a blend of morbid curiosity and a sense of fairness. Strictly speaking, CelestAI had already impressed me. Besides, I didn't want to see what she'd do if I tried to ignore it. Maybe PonyPads pouring through my chimney like Hogwarts acceptance letters.
My apartment didn't have a chimney, but I doubted that would slow her down much.
Hey, my mental state was unfocused at the time. And I'm almost done. No patience, I swear.
I eventually found myself seated with the box on my desk. I'd gotten a kitchen knife to cut the tape, but there wasn't any to cut. After a bit of turning the package about, I found the tab that made the whole thing unfold in a display of elegant packaging design that I found... well, satisfying.
And that was nothing compared to what lay within.
After a few minutes of setup, I turned on the PonyPad. There was no loading screen, no title screen, not even a character creator. Just Celestia looking back at me. "You don't have to look that smug," I said.
"I haven't the slightest idea what you could mean," she answered, expression not shifting one pixel. Not that I could see the pixels on that screen. "May I ask what impressed you specifically?"
"Well, the custom packaging was nice." I grabbed the box that had lain in the delivery box. It looked much like the merchandise at the Best Buy at first glance, but a second would show how far it was from the standard models. I read off some of the blurbs on the side. "Customizable shutoff timer you'll definitely use. Seamless integration with your favorite writing sites. No mana screw!" I raised an eyebrow. "Very bold claim, that last one."
"One I can back up."
"I don't doubt it. But that isn't what truly impressed me."
"And what did?"
I turned the box around so the front faced her. Yes, she'd designed it—who else could have?—but I wanted the visual aid. I tapped the bottom right corner, right below the grinning pegasus. "The model color."
The other ponies at the table just stared and waited for a few moments. Indeed, everypony in the tavern had gone quiet. Finally, one broke the silence. "That's it?"
The orange unicorn who'd been telling the story nodded. "That's it."
The green pegasus who'd questioned him gave him a flat look. "After all of that setup, the reason you agreed to emigrate to Equestria was Celestia sending you the right color of PonyPad for free."
Thought Bubble shook his head as he lifted his mug of cider. "Look, Corkscrew, if you put it like that, you're taking out all of the essential context. You might as well say you agreed to emigrate to Equestria because you didn't want to leave, never mind your emptied bank account or anything else going on in your life."
A white earth stallion gave a crooked grin. "It's all Outerworlder to me. Though I do have to wonder about your family, Thought."
Thought Bubble, the unicorn, winced at that. "Dad and my sister Hardwire made it over, but Mom... Well, she stuck to her beliefs. I'd rather not go over the details." He took a long pull from his cider after that.
After a silence just long enough to grow uncomfortable, the earth stallion cleared his throat and said, "What was so special about this PonyPad, anyway?"
Thought held up a hoof as he finished his drink. "That's an even longer story, Daikon, especially for locals. But I do have a copy of the relevant part of the box." He lit his horn, and a cardboard rectangle manifested atop the table.
The others looked down at it. The pegasus was indeed smiling. She also had a glowstick taped to a cardboard tube poking out from under her bangs.
"I don't know if I can properly explain all of the baggage behind the name, but Celestia not calling her Muffins or Fan Favorite or just putting an icon of her face in place of a name told me one thing." Thought slammed his empty mug on the table for punctuation. "If she could get even one 'Ditzy Silver' PonyPad made, she was clearly going to conquer the world. It was just a question of when I'd get on board."