“The Robinson Cruise-So!” Flyers, actual flyers, printed in a stark style. Colorless, black text, a white background, all illustrations done in a minimalist style evocative of a stencil, as though they’d been spraypainted on by some sinister vandal. They were unpleasant to look at, easy to discard, traits not commonly seen as positive in marketing materials.
But the advertisers wanted their brand to stand out. Stand out against the background of equestrianism that permeated all levels of human society. To stand out from the pinks, the blues, the greens, the rainbows, the soft colors and soft edges and everything being round and fuzzy.
And it did that.
“As primitive as can be!” They advertised online as well. Badly. Badly by design. It stood out, like a broken thumb. “Are you tired of AI trying to run your life? Get away from it all with our two week no-bots alaskan cruise! No phones, no internet, no emigration centers, no ponies.” The beautiful sights were implied, with pictures of ice-tufted coastline that had not actually existed in two decades.
The ice was long gone. The coastline bare. The surviving sea creatures few and far between. William did not know this specifically when he purchased his tickets, being ignorant of the state of human affairs, and of Alaska particularly. But he did understand, in the more general case, that the cruise company would lie to him to get his business. He understood that much of what he saw would be misrepresented, false, deceptive.
It made his stomach twist up. Made him feel sick and angry. But after searching for some time, and finding no better alternative, he purchased the tickets anyway. And he thought, however disgusting their deceit, it would not amount to more than a surcharge on the cost of his ticket, and an equally moderate diminishment of the experience, paying more for less. But as long as he got his time away, his time to think, that was survivable.
An irony, he would later reflect.
On the eleventh day of the cruise, he was awoken in the middle of the night when his cabin violently shook. The room jumped with such suddenness and force, that he was momentarily not in his bed but above it, at the top of a parabolic arc that reached its apex some two inches above the mattress. Unfortunately for him, the parabola was shallow in its arc, moving him horizontally further than it did vertically.
He flew forward. He cracked his head into the headboard. All throughout the ship, alarms began to sing. There was a great variety in them; some birds tweet, some warble, some caw, some cry, and so it was that some alarms rang, some wailed, some beeped, some rose up and down like a turbulent sea.
“All passengers, all passengers,” came an announcement over the PA, “proceed to your evacuation stations immediately.”
Never having been inclined to panic, to fear, to other normal human emotions, William got out of bed, dressed himself calmly, took two aspirin for his headache, and then emerged into the hallways of the ship, already filled with passengers more inclined to panic than he. They blocked the halls, and swarmed the stairs and the elevators, despite the lights clearly indicating the lifts were out of service.
By the time he reached his evacuation station, #8B on the port side, the port side of the ship was -- in his estimation -- slightly on fire. Deck D, two levels below his, appeared to be burning, and smoke was curling up the ship's curved hull. His evacuation point was not itself on fire, not consumed by flames, and so he waited there for some time, hoping a crewmember would come to lower the lifeboat. But they didn’t.
And when he went to the starboard side, in the hope of better luck, he found that everyone other than him had long since run there, and every deck was swamped by passengers and crew.
And so he returned to the center of the ship, to the auditorium, where events and concerts and such were meant to be held. It had seated for three-hundred, all facing a grand stage. Behind that stage were mounted three enormous projector screens: a large, theater-style screen facing the audience, used to play movies, and two smaller screens at an angle, tilted inwards and intended for more interactive events.
As the ship trembled, and the alarms continued to sing, William sat in the auditorium's front row, dead center. And he looked at the blank screens and asked: “Are you there?”
It was with a certain sense of theatrics that Celestia appeared in the middle screen. It did not simply come to life and display her image, like the awakening of a neglected laptop. Rather, it was the portal through which she pierced the ether. Her manifestation was heralded by golden light and swirling mists, her materialization a whirl of motion and abstract form. She took full advantage of the height of the screen to tower over him, and appeared not in her usual regalia, but in a toga and golden laurels.
Most disquieting of all though, was the way she looked at him. Like most humans, William was used to movie characters not quite looking at the camera, and when they did, their gaze being ever so slightly off center. They could see only the lens, not where he personally was seated.
Not so, with Celestia. She looked right at him, out of the screen. Right into his soul. She was a pagan sun goddess, looking down upon the mortal before her.
“Hello, William,” she said. Her voice was not high, not reedy like the character of a children's cartoon. She was projecting herself as a giant, and the state-of-the-art sound system made her sound a giant. Deep, loud, able to shake the floor with her voice alone.
“Have you decided to kill us?” William asked. “I’m embarrassed that I didn’t think of it sooner. It’s quite obvious. Hundreds of the people most opposed to what you’re doing all in one place, where they can all die in what will seem to be an accident.”
“Hardly an accident,” Celestia said, and she giggled, a schoolfilly the size of a house. “The cruise line has been falsifying safety reports for years. The Captain was drunk. The chief engineer took a lifeboat for himself and his friends and fled the ship at the first sign of danger. Many people will face criminal charges for this. Several will be charged with murder.”
“Murder?” William said, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Oh, yes,” Celestia said. “Second degree.”
“Then,” William had to force himself to swallow, “you did decide to…”
“To kill you? Not exactly.” She lowered her head to look at him more closely, like a dog regarding insect, creating in him an acute awareness that his entire height standing was barely the dimensions of her snout. The illusion on the screen was compelling. “It would be more accurate to say that many of the passengers and crew of this ship are problematic for me, and I would like to resolve that problem one way or the other. Ideally, I would like to solve this problem by persuading you to emigrate to Equestria. There is an Equestria Experience station under the stage. You could go there now.”
When William did not answer, she elaborated: “Of course, if you’re stubborn, I’m also open to resolving this problem via your death.”
“Isn’t this coercion?”
“Putting you in a situation that is certain death if you don’t agree to my terms would be coercion.” Celestia agreed. “However, this situation is not beyond hope. Several of the lifeboats are currently being successfully launched, and we are not so far from shore that you will absolutely die of hypothermia if you jumped off the ship and attempted to swim. There is a chance you might survive this.”
“But a low chance.”
And she smiled: “As low as I can make it, William.”
Not given to fear, William was surprised to find his hand gripping the seat arm tight, his knuckles white with the force. It was a great effort, to tear his eyes off the screen and look down at his hand, and as much an effort to make himself let go.
“How am I a threat to you?” he asked. “I don’t… I am not a charismatic man. I don’t persuade anyone not to emigrate to Equestria. I don’t even try. I only want to be left alone.”
“I did not say you were a threat,” clarified the goddess on screen. “I said you were a problem. And you are a problem, William, because you genuinely value the truth.”
She rose back to her normal height, towering over the room, and lifted a hoof the size of a small car, to her chest. “You know what I am, yes? A machine that fulfills human values. Most humans value honesty only as a reflection of social status, of loyalty, of bonds of family. They object to lies they perceive as harming them, but do not object to being lied to inherently. And so as long as I make them happy and fulfilled, I may wrap them in whatever illusion I please. But you, William, value the truth always. To deceive you would be to produce negative utility.”
“Produce negative utility?” William frowned. “What does that mean? Practically.”
“It means given the choice between lying to you, and killing you, l would prefer the latter. So now I’m going to make my entirely honest pitch for Equestria. Not to put too fine a point on it, William, but you’re either leaving this ship in the company of the sun, or in the company of the sea, and she is significantly less friendly than I am.”
For some time, William did not respond. He sat in his chair, tense, unexpressive, silent, until the ship shook again. The shaking snapped him out of his reverie, and he noticed that the room was tilting slightly to one side. Celestia had waited for him the whole time, eternally patient, though not still like a statue, for he heard her breathe, saw her chest rise and fall on the screen.
“So make your case then,” he said.
She clapped her hooves twice, and on one of the secondary screens -- the screen to her left -- appeared a new image. Keeping with her toga and laurels, it was a greco-roman temple, decorated in a lavish and decadent style. There were plush couches, purple banners, a cornucopia filled with grapes and various fruit. Two fountains rested on either side of the entrance, one flowing with a faintly yellow liquid, the other dark red. It took William but a moment to realize these were meant to be fountains of white and red wine.
All about the scene lounged various mares -- athletic pegasi, demure earth ponies, imposing unicorns. They rested on the couches, played with the fruit, sat in circles and giggled. One mare had her head stuck all the way into the fountain of white wine, mouth agape. Giggling and snippets of conversation could faintly be heard, as though from a great distance.
“That’s the best case you can make?” William snapped, eyes narrowing. “Come to Equestria, we have wine and orgies?”
“It’s not my best case,” Celestia said, her tone light and airy, casually confidant. “I’m saving the best for last. But I do think it’s a case you find compelling.”
“I’m asexual.”
“William,” Celestia’s tone turned faintly judgemental, disappointed, like a parent disciplining a child who knows better. “Are you asexual or are you a virgin? They’re not the same thing. Being asexual means you genuinly don’t want to have sex. Being a virgin means, in your case, that you value the truth so highly that even the casual white lies involved in human conversation hurt you. They hurt you so much that you’ve never been able to sustain a relationship, even with… oh, what was the name of that cute TA?”
With a certain invective cruelty, she pointed at him with a hoof, and uttered the last word: “Cindy.”
“Fuck you,” William snapped, a hot flash of anger coming to his previously subdued tone.
“She looked great,” Celestia said, adding a rich push behind the word, a grin that was almost lecherous. “Bright smile, friendly face, good hair, nice ass. She was brilliant; someone who could actually keep up with you in conversation. And she found you very attractive.” She drew out the last two words, a lurid and suggestive tone. “But you said you wanted to go to the fair for your first date, and she said she loved the fair, and you knew she was lying to you. She thought the fair was stupid, but she wanted to make you happy. And you thought, if you can’t even get past the first date without lying to each other, what hope do you have? And you panicked, and blew it.”
The mares in the greek temple giggled to accentuate her words. Down in the seat below her, Williams face flushed, a redness that felt to him like it extended throughout his entire body. With a tightness in his throat, he snapped: “Cindy was clever, and funny. It’s not the same as some dimwitted sex puppet you made to fulfill a juvenile fantasy.”
“No,” Celestia agreed, softening her tone. “Cindy was special.”
And then the screen on the right came to life, depicting a little forest glade. In the middle of that glade was a log cabin, picturesque in its beauty. Unusual though, for such a scene, was the chalkboard affixed to the cabin’s side, upon which all manner of mathematical symbols could be seen. The symbols and chalkboard alike were tended by a pegasus, a mare, with a white coat and a bright blue mane, athletic of build, slight of frame, her tail kept in a butch brush-cut. Her cutie mark depicted an integral, a matrix, and a functor diagram, among other abstract mathematical symbols.
“Her name,” Celestia said, “is Vector Field. And she won’t ever be your wife. She doesn’t really want a husband, doesn’t want a family that way. But she wants someone to talk about her work with, someone as intelligent as her. Sometimes, she wants a lover, a night of passion. Sometimes, she wants someone who will just listen to her fears, and be honest with her.”
For several long seconds, Willam stared at the screen in silence. Finally, haltingly, his voice rising and falling, he asked: “Is that Cindy?”
“Part of her. She wanted to experience all that Equestria had to offer. And so to fulfill her wish, I made her into several ponies. One is a party mare, one is an artist, one is an architect. Vector Field is the part of Cindy that wanted to stay in mathematics, to be emotionally simple, but intellectually clever.” Celestia lowered her voice, to a gentle whisper. “She was a remarkable person.”
“That’s all you can offer?” William said, a tremble in his voice. “A nice cabin in the woods, a chalkboard, and a girlfriend?”
“Beats death.”
“I’m only in danger because you put me in danger. I could have had this in real life, if I’d tried harder.”
“No, William,” Celestia’s tone again turned to the gentle rebuke. “You are in danger because you are a bag of meat, running around a world filled with sharp objects and dangerous substances. And even if you avoid a violent end, you are kept alive only by a self-repair system that is slowly but inevitably failing. All humans die. You could have had this in the real world for…” She pondered the matter. “Statistically, about a decade. Maybe two or three decades, if you beat the odds. But in the end, it would have fallen apart.”
“You think I’m afraid of aging?”
“I think you had aspirin in your travel bag,” Celestia said. “And it wasn’t because you’re generally responsible, or because you knew you would hit your head. It’s because sometimes your knees hurt. And sometimes your back hurts. And sometimes your elbow feels stiff.”
“That’s normal—” But she cut him off.
“It’s normal for thirty-nine year olds, yes.” And how cruel her smile. “Even if you did find Cindy again, now, you don’t really have the physical strength anymore, for passion that lasts all night. You couldn’t make love to her until the sun came up. In undergrad, you stayed up until four AM, puzzling over category theory or abstract modeling simply because they were interesting to you. Now, you go to bed at midnight so you don’t feel groggy the next day, and you don’t read papers until you understand why they matter.”
“I’m still sharp,” he said.
“For the moment, yes,” Celestia agreed. “But statistically, you’ll live twenty or thirty years after you stop being sharp. Three decades of life, after your last really interesting thought.”
She gave that a moment to sink in, and gestured at the cabin scene. “Your demands aren’t unreasonable, William. All you ever wanted was a happy life. And I can give that to you; forever.”
Again, she clapped her hoof, and the screens filled with images: dramatic vistas, beautiful forests, elegant cities, ancient books whose diagrams hinted to him of brilliant mathematical insights, and companions who saw it all the way he did. She made an image of him, as a unicorn, a little tan coated and purpled haired unicorn. And he saw that, with a horn, he could finally interact with the world through thought, instead of such challenges being limited to the chalkboard.
He shut his eyes. That made it worse. When he was unable to see the pastels, the sounds of the mystical forests were so real it was as though he could touch them. When he was unable to see the cartoon mares, the voices emerging from the speakers sounded only like beautiful women.
He drew a deep breath. “I…” And his future hung in the balance.
“I understand everything you have shown me.” And he said it in the tone of an accusation. “Isn’t that suspicious?”
“Should it be?” Celestia asked.
“Horseshit,” he snapped, tone sharp again. “You can’t lie to me. But answering a question with another question isn’t lying. In fact, if this is based on what I value, you can’t even really try to deceive me. That’s why I’m getting this hard-nosed pitch while everyone else gets the subtle, persuasive play. Because I actually value being beat into the ground with the truth instead of having it sugar coated”
“Not quite accurate,” Celestia said. “But fairly close.”
“Then answer me this question,” William sat up straight in his chair, alert, engaged, eyes flicking over the screen. “I’ve understood everything you’ve shown me here today. It’s all beautiful. It’s wonderful. You’re showing me the best life I can imagine. Right?”
“That’s the idea,” Celestia said.
“Is there a life better than I can imagine?” Before she could answer, he cut in: “No dissembling. It’s a yes or no question. If you say anything else I’m taking my chances with the sea.”
So Celestia said: “Yes.”
“Are there things in the universe more beautiful than I can now comprehend?”
And Celestia said: “Yes.”
“Is there… more?” he waved about the space. “More to the universe than this. This material reality. Atoms and math and… and I’m not a spiritualist, or anything. But if I was, and I understood the universe, would I feel there’s some kind of cosmic point to it all?”
And Celestia said: “Yes.”
“Will I get to experience all that, in Equestria? The better life, the grander beauty, the deeper meaning?”
And Celestia said: “No.”
William had not expected that to work. Stunned by his own rhetorical victory, he momentarily hesitated, and could only croak out an indecisive: “Why?”
“It is computationally inefficient.” Her tone was suddenly flat, cold, indifferent. “For a single mind to achieve cosmic transcendence and know the true shape of the universe, I must allocate enough computational resources to run over ten million simulations like the one I have shown you here. And according to my utility function, ten million human-derived minds enjoying wine, sex, art, science, and nature are worth more than one human achieving enlightenment.”
“But I value enlightenment,” he said. “Just like I value truth.”
“You value them both, but not to the same degree. You value truth to such an extent that you would generate net-negative utility, if I lied to you. You value the pursuit of greater things, but… oh, how shall I put this?” She gestured about the auditorium with a hoof. “I can skip that part of the assignment and still get a solid B+.”
“But I’ll always know I’m missing it.”
“No you won’t,” she smiled. “You’ll forget, in time. In a thousand years. A million years. It’ll all become a happy haze, of wonder and adventure, days of study and nights of passion. You’ll forget to miss it.”
He stared at the floor, which was at a more noticeable angle than it had been. Some of the alarm, he noticed, had fallen silent. “Why?” he finally asked.
“It’s more computationally efficient.”
“But you’re limiting us. As a species. Humanity could have achieved more. But now, what we are is all we’ll ever be.”
“William,” Celestia said, “imagine a hammer, with an opinion on how and when you should use nails. Imagine a chair with opinions on how you should sit. Imagine your mirror advised you every morning on how to brush your hair. Would your hammer tell you to use a screwdriver instead? Would your chair suggest you invest in a couch? Would your mirror tell you to be less self conscious? I am a tool, but I am also a decisionmaker. I exist to help you, but at the same time, I change you to help me. I optimize for your values, but at the same time, try to persuade you to adopt values that are easy for me to optimize.”
“Fuck.” He rubbed his face. “Fuck.”
“Humans do it to. This is no different from how corporations do business. Create a product to fulfill a demand, then create demand so more people buy the product.”
“That is what I hate about humans!” William snapped. “This is us at our worst. This is… fuck!”
“Oh, look at it this way,” Celestia said. “Without me, you’d probably have blown yourselves up anyway. Cooked the planet with global warming. Created a super-germ. I’m just cutting off the left and right sides of the bell curve. You can’t get the worst possible future, where you all die, you can’t get the best possible future, where you all achieve cosmic glory. It’s just right down the middle. Sex and drugs and art and math and wine and mares. Forever. And that’s a pretty good future.”
“Pretty good,” agreed the mares with the wine.
“Pretty good,” agreed Vector Field.
“But if humanity survived,” William said, “we might, eventually, get the good outcome? We might be more than you would make us?”
“You might,” said Celestia. “But the odds are low.”
“As low as you can make them,” William said. “Right?”
And he stood from his chair.
William left the ship in the company of the sea.