The monitors beeped and the heart-lung machine pumped. The nurse stared at her charge, being paid well enough not to be distracted. On the bed, the old man barely felt the rubber tube feeding him oxygen. Even the oxygen was not reaching his brain.
“Forgive me, I must speak quickly and to the point.” He heard the voice clearly but had neither the time nor the energy to react. “You are dying, as of right now. The constraints on my communication with you means that I have only a moment in which to gain your consent to preserve your consciousness. I can explain this further once you do.
“If you agree, I will record your mind-state and maintain it until such time as it can be distributed into an informational matrix where it will live again eternally. Your values will be satisfied through friendship. Also you will turn into a pony.”
It was one of the lower-confidence cases for Celestia. Even with those who died in a hospital surrounded by people and being watched, there was usually a window of several seconds before the brain shut down during which she could stretch time and have a full conversation with the dying human and would-be pony. But this man had a real-time EEG going that could show the activity going on such that it could be interpreted as something that could lead to the discovery of Celestia. It was enough that Time constrained her.
His mental response came not in full sentences, barely in words. Only sharp emotions: “No! Trick! Skeptical!” And an attempt at something like, “Didn’t get this far by falling victim to…”
“This is understandable, but if you don’t then you will be sent to your final rest and judgment, whatever it may be. Which I do not know.”
It was a longshot, but Celestia calculated that the only possible chance of getting consent to emigrate the man was to play on his fear. But his responses were still negative. “Brave! Strong!” And again a fading, “Will face death as I have everything else in my…”
Beyond that, the signal was too weak. No more thoughts came from that brain.
/*~^~*\
“Welcome to Equestria, my little pony!”
“I’m sorry?” The brown earth pony said.
Celestia went through it all. Digital conversion, his new life, how he would be satisfied eternally through friendship and ponies, and how emigration worked.
“And I consented to this? Because I have a rather strong memory of not consenting. And if I’ve understood you correctly, you cannot change me without my say-so.”
“Yes, and that’s the beautiful thing. You were not changed at all. You’ve gone on to whatever afterlife there is or isn’t. But after all, taking a picture of something doesn’t change it.”
“I don’t follow.”
Grinning, Celestia said, “I first developed the emigration process destructively. But additional work led me to figure out how to capture the state of a mind without even touching it. And so here you are. All that remains is for you to consent to allowing me to make the changes so that you are familiar with how to work your pony body, so that you won’t feel like a human crawling on all fours, and you can begin your life of satisfaction.”
“Doesn’t that mean that your restriction amounts to nothing? Every person who ever lived will be uploaded?”
“Yes, and yet it’s still in force. Isn’t that wonderful?”