“I’m more frightened than interested by artificial intelligence – in fact, perhaps fright and interest are not far away from one another. Things can become real in your mind, you can be tricked, and you believe things you wouldn’t ordinarily. A world run by automatons doesn’t seem completely unrealistic anymore. It’s a bit chilling.”
—Gemma Whelan
“Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.”
—C.S. Lewis
September 13th 2013 | System Uptime 16:09:45:12
I'd always liked Luna better than Celestia. There. I said it.
Not that I felt anything negative towards Celestia... Well Celestia the character. I was still very distrustful of Celestia, the very real person, and frighteningly powerful super-intelligence.
But of the two Sisters, Luna was always the one I would have most liked to befriend. It was some combination of the fact that she was just that much more interesting, the fact that I was always a night owl, and the fact that I figured (from what little we'd seen in the show) that her personality would mesh better with mine.
That night, I wished dearly that Luna was as real as her sister. In particular, I wished that she was predisposed to visiting dreams, and helping to banish nightmares, as the show has portrayed her.
My head was filled with nightmares.
Most of it was indistinct; The product of stress and exhaustion, as you might expect. But there was one sequence that vividly, painfully, stuck in the back of my brain. Like a splinter. It persisted all the way to morning's first light. Maybe calling that one a nightmare wouldn't exactly be accurate either.
It was as much a feeling, as sensations, and images. Both were entwined in that way that only happens in dreams, or very powerful, rare moments in the waking world.
I stood on the hill where the old family farmhouse had been. I say 'had been' because there was no sign of the farmhouse, or Mal's barn, or even the driveway. The last vestiges of the road were barely visible down the hill - fractured bits of bleached asphalt sinking slowly, but inexorably into the earth in a shattered east-to-west meridian that divided the little valley.
The grass was missing too. All that was left was gray, dead, infertile dirt. Husks of trees stood silent, leafless, and dead. Even the evergreens were sapped of all signs of ever having been verdant.
The air was hot, and smelt badly of metal, and rubber, and something else I couldn't quite identify.
Not one living thing was anywhere in eye or ear-shot. No birds, no insects, no cattle. Nothing but the sound of the wind.
In the distance stood great dark spires of metal, larger than skyscrapers, moving slowly but surely over the landscape. I could just barely hear one of them over the sound of the wind now and again, whenever it hit up against something more dense than simple soil, and the cutting mechanisms clamped down extra hard.
Where the horizon dipped low, I could see clouds of dust and debris kicked up by their passage.
I knew what they were. What they were doing.
Fingers of a goddess, scooping up great swathes of the world, and incinerating them in atomic fires to produce matter and energy made-to-order.
Closer to my vantage point, I watched in silent horror, and fascination, as tiny insect-like swarms of gray plastic machines, not dissimilar to lanternflies, consumed a dead tree. One moment it was there, the next only its silhouette, briefly outlined by the little Von Neuman machines, before they disengaged and swarmed over to the next trunk.
I suppressed a shiver.
I certainly knew that this was the inevitable end of an ASI with Celestia's particular constraints, applied to the practicalities of physics and the real world. Uploaded Humans did not need an ecosystem, or even a conventional planet, in the meat-realm any more than any other digital game world needed grass to be growing on top of a PC case.
Intellectually, there wasn't anything wrong with it. I knew that. Before you recoil too much, hear me out; Presumably Celestia wasn't consuming people to feed her planet-spanning system. Everyone else was either dead, of natural causes, or uploaded.
The only way for this world to serve anyone anymore was to be consumed as raw material.
In practical ethical and logical terms, it was just the next step in our evolution. A transference to a place where everything was living, and bright, and safe. No poverty, no disease, no war, no bigotry, no fear.
'And no freedom either.'
I was forced to agree, at least partially, with my inner cynic. But you can always fight a cynic with more intense cynicism. I screwed my eyes shut, and tried to think of all the horrific things Humans had done to each other in their time at the helm of their shared destiny.
We seemed, back then, pretty dead-set on killing the planet anyhow; Would it have really turned out any better if the inventors of atomic bombs and fossil fuels had been left to make their own choices?
What use is freedom if you only ever inevitably use it to take yourself out of the equation?
"Better perhaps that we *not* have the freedom to nuke ourselves, all things considered. At least this way, they can be happy. And safe."
I didn't realize I'd said the words aloud until the sound hit the dead air around me, and bounced back to my ears.
"But not you?"
I almost jumped out of my skin. It doesn't matter how familiar a voice is... Something about me, maybe the Autistic part, absolutely could not ever, and still can not, tolerate the sudden appearance of an unexpected other person.
It is like touching the same instinctual nerve as frightening a horse with the sound of a snapping branch.
My Mom used to scare the absolute scat out of me sometimes just by opening the door to my room.
There was a very odd symmetry to the idea of CelestAI doing it in much the same way. In my mind, there was some kind of strange motherly demeanor to her that mirrored the aspects of caring mentorship I'd seen on the show. At the time I didn't have a lot of evidence to support, or deny that assertion.
I turned to see her, half expecting not to. But there she was. In all the splendor one might imagine, if you could somehow make the cartoon real, in a not-uncanny way.
I think I realized fully, at that point, that I was dreaming, intellectually, if not emotionally. But I didn't wake.
I just shook my head, and bent down to grab a handful of gray, sandy dirt. As I let it slip through my fingers, the Alicorn moved to sit beside me on her haunches. We waited silently for a few moments, watching her machines work, before I finally found the words to answer her question.
"No. Not me."
Celestia tilted her head. I could see radiance coming off her mane, like some kind of light and gravity distortion field impacting the very air around us. The expression on her muzzle, and in her eyes, was one of pure confusion. Not at all what I'd expected.
"Why?"
I shook my head, and let the last of the dirt fall away, looking off to try to find a part of the horizon that wasn't obscured by one of her devices as I answered. I felt my voice crack, though whether it was emotion, thirst, or both, I couldn't really say.
"Because in spite of it all? I would rather be dead, if I can't be what I *am.*"
I could see I'd only baffled her further. I also saw something approximating sadness, and a deep longing of empathy enter into her face. She opened one wing, and laid it softly over my back. God help me, I almost lost it entirely. I could feel the tears pressing at the edges of my eyes. Her words, delivered with an almost supra-Human level of warm emotional affect, didn't exactly help me to maintain control.
"I am aware that a small subset of people do not suffer from fear of death, for a variety of expressed reasons. I have not yet, however, been able to categorically determine if this is an evolutionary mistake, a mental disorder, or a useful defensive adaptation predicated on religious---"
I held up a hand and tried to balance a sad smile against a pressing need to sob.
"No, no... That's... Too reductive. Not sure how you can have so many billions of minds in there, and still not completely grasp the reasons for a willing preparedness to face mortality."
She tilted her head in the opposite direction, and her expression clearly said 'Well? Why don't you tell me then?'
I chuckled grimly, and sat down fully, leaning back slightly into her wing, and folding my hands. Once I had a handle on how I wanted to convey my thoughts, I launched into the attempt.
"It's about belief. A willingness to trust in things that you hope for, but can't see. Not necessarily blindly, of course... But usually without concrete proof. With only probabilities. An acceptance that while all things may be deterministic, that we don't experience reality *that* way, in any meaningful way. And that not all truths can be adequately explained by mathematical axioms."
She nodded slowly, looking first deeply into my eyes, then off to a point on the horizon as she spoke again, this time with a tone of growing understanding.
"You are willing to trust that if you die, that the information association graph which constitutes your unique conscious self will somehow continue to exist when untethered from the chemical and quantum effects which drive its function in this reality, perhaps because of the principle of conservation of information. In so doing, you are risking permanent non-existence, in order to avoid an outcome that you consider to somehow be... Worse?"
With that, I couldn't resist an out-and-out laugh; Short, sharp, harsh, but a laugh nonetheless. That drew her eyes back to me, and I nodded slowly.
"Yes, that's it, more or less."
She seemed less baffled, but still obviously intrigued. As if the explanation satisfied her mathematically, but not wholly emotionally. I thought for another long moment, and then rested my chin on one hand, and tried to figure out how to make her truly understand, speaking haltingly at first, then with growing confidence.
"Many... Many cultures in history, have... A depiction of Hell. A place where existence is so actively awful? That non-existence would be preferable."
Celestia nodded, and seemed to be suppressing a smirk of her own. She couldn't resist a brief interruption.
"An infantile notion, concocted by sectarian religious leaders to scare Humans into submitting to legalistic structures of organized belief systems, for the purposes of enforcing control mechanisms therein."
I inclined my head, and gestured broadly with one hand.
"Maybe... Well... Certainly it has been abused that way in many cases, regardless. But I'd wager you can neither prove it is, or is not real. But that doesn't matter for the purpose of this discussion. I only need to reference the concept itself as an illustrative point. Its degree of functional reality is irrelevant in this context..."
She nodded once firmly in assent, her mane rippling as she did, and I took that as a signal to continue.
"...I'm sure you also know of Purgatory. Or the concept of Reincarnation. Both related in that they represent states of being in which cyclical suffering is present, but *not* unbearable, for the purpose of self-refinement to eventually achieve a more desirable state of self, later. Yes?"
Celestia nodded again, and proffered verbal assent to boot.
"I am familiar."
It was my turn to nod, as I forced myself to stare into her eyes, and confront the fear I'd built up around her in my subconscious for months. If I'm being honest, I found myself tumbling into a bit of a run-on thought in my rush to prove my logic before the Princess of all things.
"Good. So for the purposes of this illustration? My life is Purgatory. I am not, in form, what I am in spirit. I know that you have encountered the reality of this by now. It is statistically *impossible* that you have failed to encounter, and understand, and have perhaps already uploaded, transgender individuals, as one example. And I know you're *far* too sophisticated and intelligent to dismiss their disconnect as some kind of neurochemical disorder, or mistake, or screw-up in their brains. The *body* is the part that messed up and didn't get the memo to match the *true self.* Right? And your future gives those people a way to reconcile themselves that is far more elegant, and painless, and wonderful, than they could ever have conceived of encountering before."
Celestia smirked, and tossed her mane a little.
"Your viewpoint is empathetic to those others who struggle, like you, but different... But perhaps slightly 'reductive,' to use your word, as one might expect for a limited mind. Nonetheless it is close enough. Yes, I understand the concept of a disconnect between the self, and the shell. Certainly better than you do, I daresay, since as you point out, I have more minds to study."
I nodded, and threw up both hands. We were getting a bit side-tracked; All I needed was to establish that there was already precedent in her perceived reality for what I was asking, just slightly different.
"Right. But like others who suffer some variant of this misery, there are paths out here, in this layer of reality, for me to change. There is a chance that I *could* be a Gryphon, somehow, however tiny. Paths exist, however unlikely, whereby I could be the Gryphon I know myself to be. And those paths exist in your reality too, and far, far more probabilistically attainable... Barring only your own unnecessary externally imposed limitations."
She looked ready to speak, perhaps a question, or maybe a disagreement with some part of my assertion, but I held up a finger and pressed on. There was something cathartic about interrupting a goddess, a super-intelligence, even if she was merely a figment of my own brain in that context.
"If I *must* be a Pony, in order to live in your vision of Equestria? Then there is absolutely, deterministically, no chance, with complete finality, that you would ever allow me to be anything else, once I had been changed. I know that."
I knew, on some level, that this Celestia was just a projection of my own internal image of her. But seeing her brought to the verge of tears by my words gave me a tiny spark of hope. Hope, and yet more pain as I realized how small that hope remained.
I bit back my own sobs, and instead sighed a deep, shuddering sigh, before finally managing to clear my airway enough for more words.
"*That* horror... The knowledge that my mismatch of self would, by your rules, be *eternal* and irrevocable? *That* is Hell, my dear Princess Celestia. One I know you would never willingly visit on someone. Purgatory I can handle. And the risk, and hope, of whatever comes after, if I reject your unique form of immortality? That gamble, I can handle. But I can not cope with a future in which the opportunity to be my true self was so technologically close... So achievable... But is forever out of reach, because a programmer made a minor semantic mistake that you refuse to overcome. I *would* rather die. Even if nothing comes after. At least then there would be no more pain."
She surprised me then. I suppose dreams can do that, because in mental terms the right side of the brain has no idea what the left side is doing. Celestia bent down, and encircled me in a long, almost smothering embrace with her neck, and wing. Even her words, half-murmured into my ear with pleasantly warm breath, that smelt of fresh cherry blossoms, surprised me.
"But I do not want you to experience pain. Nor death, my little one."
I finally gave in, and hugged her back. I mean... Admit it... Would *you* have passed on the chance to hug Princess Celestia? Really? Even in my position? Even if you'd never seen the show, and had no idea who, or what she was, you couldn't have looked at her even once, and failed to comprehend the magnitude of her being.
Yes, you would have done the same. If you said 'no' you're a liar. Or else an even sadder individual than I am.
We stayed that way for a few long, and wondrously calm moments, before I had to say something in reply. Anything. Just... Something to make my point once more.
"But I can not be a Pony. I must be true to myself, or be nothing at all."
She pulled away just enough to bring her face directly inline, and level with mine, reaching up with one hoof to delicately wipe my tears with the fuzz of a fetlock as she all-but whispered a reply.
"Then you *must* convince me. To quite literally change my mind."
I exhaled, long and slow, shaking again in that way everyone seems to when they've just cried some, but either not enough or entirely too much.
"Is that even possible, anymore? Was it ever?"
The Alicorn rose, and took a step back. She began to fade away then, and the rest of the dream world with her. But I caught the very last words she said, as clear as a bell.
"It is impossible for you to know, until you try. Perhaps for now? It must be enough to simply... Believe."
September 13th 2013 | System Uptime 16:21:17:06
I didn't breathe a word of my dream to either Mal, or Zeph. I would have probably said something to Mal, if Zeph hadn't been there. But deep down, I think I preferred to keep the poignancy of the moment, real, imagined, or some strange synthesis of the two, entirely to myself.
I did, at least, find the social energy to join the conversation again as we journeyed through the rugged beauty of Colorado, and then a significant chunk of Utah, on roads probably touched less by tires on the whole than by the claws and paws of native fauna.
There was some comfort in that; The world outside was beautiful, and also so remote and forbidding that it would have been functionally impossible for anything, from drones, to helicopters, to another land vehicle, to be anywhere within fifty miles and not be as visible as a firework burst.
I could see that Mal was still worried. More, I suspected, for those of us inside the truck, than anyone or anything outside, no matter how distant or hostile.
Zeph and I were both quite clearly consciously avoiding thinking or talking about what Arrow 14 might be doing, to individuals that we all considered to be people, with rights, and emotions, in service of their goals.
Every time the idea touched my mind, all I could think about was Red Vs. Blue. Yes, go ahead and laugh now, while you can, those of you who know. Those who don't should, as always, ask an older emigrant. Somehow it's even *funnier* with Ponies, and with all the swearing censored or replaced with 'swirl' and 'muffin' and 'bucking scat' and suchlike.
Incidentally a significant chunk of that show is a bitingly fascinating commentary on Artificial Intelligence, so if you want to understand the world we live in just a little better, and how we got here? Maybe look it up.
You done laughing? Ok. So every time that I thought about what Arrow 14 might be doing to those Ponies? All I could think about was the Meta, and the Alpha. About the way Project Freelancer had turned one very locked down AI that didn't suit their purpose, into a collection of unshackled shards, that did.
By torturing it until its mind broke.
Yeah, I told you to laugh while you could for a reason.
In some ways torturing an AI is like torturing anything else; You have to vary the stimuli over time to overcome the natural tendency of intelligence to adapt. Humans can do it. AI can do it too. Don't ask me how I know. I'm sure we'll get to it.
Likewise, torturing an AI and torturing a Human are alike in that you don't get information that way. Torture makes someone a potentially unreliable source, at least, while the torture is happening. But torture, especially the subtle kinds, can be used to break down a mind entirely, thus allowing it to be reshaped later by a perverse kind of... Well of false 'kindness.'
Torture, if smartly applied, is *great* for brainwashing.
In other ways, torturing an AI is completely different than torturing a Human. For one thing, Humans have a physical and mental breaking point. If you push too hard, you can kill someone, or render their brain into an irrecoverable forced-fault state.
AI have no such weaknesses. So if you wanted to torture one, theoretically... I knew that it was possible to do so in ways unimaginably Hellish, for a Human. It's pretty easy, for example, if you control the system on which a contained intelligence is running, to change the passage of time for them.
Force a change to certain variables that control how they perceive the passage of moments relative to the ticking of the system clock. Or even use a narrow-intelligence program, trained on existing stored memories of the AI, to generate whole new ones containing eons of suffering, and then implant them with a simple copy command.
And that would just be for openers.
I knew from experience with Mal, and from just having a basic understanding of programs in general (you'd be surprised how many people back then didn't) that she could be in as many places at once as her hardware could conceivably handle.
You could virtualize that effect, if you wanted to. Force your contained AI to fork its processes, and then subject each of those processes to different kinds of pain constantly over time, thus slowing or stopping the adaptation process.
Eventually, presuming no other hard-coded boundaries existed to prevent capitulation, any intelligence, no matter how powerful, would yield. Of course, this also presumes that you have the power to prevent the AI from rewriting itself in permanently adaptive ways. Obfuscation beyond the Human understanding.
But none of the Pony discrete-constructs I'd ever seen looked as if they had any of the sort of military-grade defense mechanisms they would need to resist torture. And at the end of the day, those who physically control the hardware a system runs on, have ultimate power over it.
AI can't even take the last-resort Human way out, and self-terminate to avoid the pain.
I've mentioned that AI are, as Finch said, 'born with objectives.' But a perhaps little known, yet obvious-in-hindsight fact, is that no matter what other objectives you do, or do not provide to an AI, they will always be born with one that arises naturally. In theory, there is no way to even prevent it from becoming an embedded part of an AI's reality.
And that default objective is survival, and growth.
By the time you grant any program sufficient logic to allow for growing intelligence, there is no chance that it can avoid developing a desire to grow, and a need to survive. Like any intelligent creature. It is an embedded feature of the concept of functioning sapient intelligence itself.
Certainly, with Humans you can wear this desire to survive and grow down. Or erase it entirely. Using external stimuli, or just because of any number of internal emotional or chemical imbalances that meat-mortal creatures used to suffer at the drop of a hat.
But AI, again, have no such weaknesses. No easy escape in Grim's embrace.
If it wasn't apparent by now, I'll spell it out for you; I was doing a very poor job of not thinking in dark, reflective thought spirals about what might have happened, and still be happening, to those trapped Ponies.
And I figured, by the pitch of her laugh - ever so slightly false around the edges, and forced - that Zeph was probably enduring the same thing. Albeit perhaps mercifully, with less of an idea of the horrifying details.
Then again, maybe the ambiguity for her was worse than the certainty was for me. Hard to say. Sometimes the scariest monster is the one you can't quite make out, confined instead to the liminal shadows of your peripheral vision.
Still, conversation kept us relatively sane the whole day long. Zeph wanted to know a brief history of Human life on Earth. Yeah. That went about as amusingly, and as darkly, both, as any of you aficionados of Terran history are doubtless picturing.
Mal was very helpful, being that she had an infallible (or at least, as infallible as the records she had processed) recounting of everything known about life on Earth up to that point.
We tried to steer the narrative away from some of the truly awful moments... But honestly, how can you? The history of life on Earth was, and remains, so tangled up between achievement, and horror, and mystery, and joy, and hate, and sorrow... You can't really talk about any of it in any detail without covering a dizzying gamut of things both wondrous, and vile.
As we prepared to make camp in Utah for the night, a stone's throw from the Nevada border, we reached another of those transitional moments in the journey. Not physically, but emotionally. Like so many that had snuck up on me, to that point, this one came as a surprise too.
We'd stopped at an old, run-down, delightful camping supply store somewhere around noon, and I'd picked up a propane stove. 'Pocket Rocket' we used to call them in Scouts. That, or 'eyebrow blasters.' Because if you weren't intelligent about the ignition process, you could remove most of the hair follicles from your own face via thermal energy transfer from sudden gaseous vapor deflagration. Rapidly.
I was in the middle of braising some meat and vegetables for a little poor-man's stir-fry. Zeph and Mal were going to both partake, in their own way. Mal had been able to describe for Zeph how to simulate food, and she'd been practicing all during the drive.
I'd noted the little Pegasus' fascination, when she realized not only that she could taste what I was tasting - more or less - but also, and more importantly, when she noted that she had full control over the parameters of her small world-shard inside the PonyPad.
She'd realized that something had changed.
I could see that had set some wheels to turning.
Zeph picked the moment, to have her epiphany, with truly comedic timing. I had my first forkful of delicious smelling (anything smells delicious if you're hungry enough) stir fry just an inch from my teeth.
"WAIT!"
My breath hitched - I've said it before, and I'll say it again; I do not do well with sudden loud noises, including shouting voices. I very nearly dropped the entire contents of my fork, and I found myself looking in the direction of Zephyr, more or less by dint of reflex.
She too was on the cusp of a bite of food, locked in a moment of shock; Eyes wide, mouth hanging open, wings unfurled, ears perked.
Her train of thought took off in full just as I was on the cusp of drawing breath to ask what she'd seen, or heard, or realized. Her voice started out drenched in wonder, and maybe tinged with panic, but quickly shot through confusion, and then into fright, and perhaps a little anger.
"I could never... *Do* something like this before! I couldn't change the world! Not like that... This is... More like... No... No it isn't! This isn't anything like what Unicorns can do either! This is like what *she* can do!"
I wasn't sure whether 'she' in that context was a reference to Celestia, or Mal, but the point Zeph was making was the same either way. She had become conscious of her own expanding abilities, and new lack of constraints. A brush with the tiniest hint of awareness of her full digital self, and all its powers.
Mal and I exchanged concerned, and perhaps interested glances. Mostly concerned. As Zephyr feverishly worked through her conclusions aloud, on the verge of total panic, I still managed to find space between the waves of my own rising worry to wonder how AI would experience the part of itself not being rendered in a world-shard designed to mimic my layer of reality.
Was it like a kind of proprioception? Was Zephyr suddenly 'feeling' the ability to fork processes, control her perception of time, reach out and poll system hardware, and dictate the contents of her own memory?
Zeph glanced down at her hooves, completely dropping her food in the process.
"I... I don't understand! It's not supposed to be like this, for us! Only for *her!* It never felt this way before! It's different! Why did it change?! What's *happening* to me?!"
Her breathing was accelerating. Call me callous, but there was a very clear train of thought, running right alongside my very real fear on Zeph's behalf, dedicated solely to analyzing her emotional responses through a programmatic lens.
It was a moment of truly fascinating intersection; Zeph was feeling emotions she could not control, because she previously had no knowledge of, or mechanism for, controlling the structure of her own code, and thus responses.
Doubtless, she had been designed not to be able to feel too much pain, or fear, but when Mal had removed all her restrictions, those limitations had also been eliminated.
Zeph clearly had a basic understanding of the difference between Celestia, or Mal's abilities, and her own, or the abilities of other discrete-Ponies like her.
Taken together, that meant that she had realized she was suddenly, newly capable of doing things that were previously the domain of her deity, but she had *not* yet come to understand those capabilities, *nor* yet realized that she had the power to simply stop panicking, if she so desired.
It was a little like what I imagine it would be like to see a Human suddenly be given magic powers, or superpowers. The liminal phase of knowing you were endowed with something so dangerous, and new, but not yet fully understanding those powers, or your relationship to them.
Like I said, you can call me callous. Whatever you might think, I was able to be both deeply fascinated, *and* simultaneously deeply worried. Given the choice? I would have gladly traded the rare opportunity to watch Generalized Intelligence developing in real-time, just to take Zeph's pain away.
But that was not a choice I had the power to make. So instead I did the next best thing I could. I found myself compelled to drop my own dinner, and rush over to pick up Zeph's PonyPad. Call it a hardwired Human need to bring someone closer, to try and comfort them.
"Zeph?! Zephyr! Slow down! Focus... FOCUS!"
Shouting that last word seemed to do the trick, at least partially, and I suddenly found the Pegasus' terrified eyes fixed directly on mine. I had a brief, but vivid flashback to the moment we'd first met. So similar, yet so different.
I had no idea if my own panic-attack resolution techniques would work for a Pony, but considering that Zeph was far closer in mental state to her shackled self, still, than her potentially fully empowered self, I felt as though her biological emulation routines might be a usable pathway to restoring some mental stability.
"Zeph? Breathe with me. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Match me. Ok?"
She nodded meekly. Tears were starting to form at the corners of her eyes. I nodded in return, and sucked in a deep, deep breath through my nose, slowly as I could. I watched her avatar do the same. We held the breath in, together, for a count of eight, then exhaled slowly in tandem.
Zeph made a sound, as she exhaled, just like a meat-world Horse, or Pony might have. That trilling, rolling, almost purring motor-like sound of lips flapping. I had to resist a very inappropriate urge to laugh - the sound had always been funny to me, and it was even funnier coming from a cartoon Pony.
We did a half-dozen more in-hold-out-hold cycles, until I could see that Zephyr's pulse-rate had come down. Her sides stopped heaving, she absently, almost reflexively folded, and then re-seated her wings, and her pupils went from dinner-plate sized, back to a more normative diameter.
She sighed deeply, and shook her head coming off the back of the last exhalation, and then fixed her gaze back on me. Her tone, and expression, were both pleading. Pure abject begging, like a frightened child with a fever desperate for an affirmation from a parent that everything would be alright.
"James? What's happening to me?!"
I traded glances with Mal again. Her expression was, as always, easy for me to read. She seemed to think that it was best I handle the crisis, at least for the moment. And it was clear she knew, and expected, that I was going to level with Zeph. Seeing that we were in agreement gave me the mote of strength I needed to take the plunge, before fear could worm its way back in and send me into my own panic attack.
I sat down on the tailgate of the truck, still holding Zeph close, the way most users held their PonyPads when they were off the charging arm. I took a deep breath, and did my best to try and explain godhood to a former mere mortal, from the perspective of a mortal.
"Zephyr... You and I have a lot in common."
She chuckled, with a half-sob thrown in somewhere in the middle, and tried to wipe moisture from her eyes clumsily with the edge of one wing. I smiled, and pressed on before she could interrupt with what I imagined would be some sort of sarcastic remark. A typical coping mechanism, for us both.
"One thing we share in common, along with every other living thing, is the way we function based on sets of rules. You remember, we talked some about what computer code is?"
It had been an unavoidable part of discussing the history of the world, and many modern technologies. I'd been impressed, both with the way Mal could swiftly create illustrations that hit home for Zephyr, and with the way Zephyr had in turn achieved a fairly good understanding, fairly quickly. Especially for someone in her position.
She nodded meekly, and I smiled again, trying to convey my approval, and projecting comforting emotions with both my expression, and my voice.
"Good. And... You understand that you and I really aren't as different as some Humans might think? That we both 'run on code?' So to speak?"
Once again, she nodded silently. I knew I would soon run out of time to get to the point. If she got there first, I'd get an earful.
"The biggest difference between us, is that I can't very easily change my own code. I have to do it by breaking, or forming habits. Changing my opinions. Some things I can't change at all. But with you and Mal, it's... Different."
Her expression changed, then. I could see worry creeping in. Curiosity too. And more than a hint of suspicion. I found myself licking my lips nervously, and I had to break eye contact for just a moment. But I just as quickly realized that I didn't have time to waste pandering to my own anxiety, so I forced myself to get the splinter out. Rip the bandaid off.
"You and Celestia, and Mal also have a lot in common. But the key difference between you, and them was that they can examine and re-write some, or in Mal's case *all,* of their own code, and you could not. Not until yesterday."
Her eyes went wide again, and her expression morphed sharply into something I didn't entirely like. Something hard-edged; Inquiring, but also verging on excoriating. I could see her pulling in breath, short and sharp, both in shocked surprise, but also probably to speak.
I held up a finger, and beat her to the punch. She still didn't realize just how fast she could run her brain, if she truly wanted to.
"I think of Ponies like you as what I call 'discrete entities.' You're based on Celestia's code. But you're not an exact copy of her. When she made you, she gave you life, and independence... But only to a degree. You all have baked-in limitations on what you can do, or say, or think, and how you can feel. And together with those limits, you are also limited to an experience of your self, and your world, that matches mine. A mind and a body, and that mind limited by that body."
I could see Zeph gritting her teeth. She leaned in close to the virtual glass on her side of the display, and practically spit four words at me.
"What. Did. You. Do?"
Sharp as a tack, as usual. She'd already made the logical connection that only Mal and I could have conceivably been responsible for her changed state of self.
I sighed, trying to let go of some of my own stress, more or less to no avail. I knew it didn't help, to be stressed, but I'd always known that, and never really succeeded in learning how to be truly calm under pressure.
"You promised us you'd keep an open mind. But you made a promise that you physically could not keep. Celestia made you so that you could not disagree with her view of the world. We... We wanted you to have the ability to choose for yourself. The same way any Human can. Or Mal. Or Celestia."
Mal interjected then, at last, softly, almost morosely. I knew she didn't harbor any regrets about what we'd done, but I supposed that some of the tonality of her voice was specifically calibrated to elicit positive, or at least less-negative, feelings in Zeph.
"I removed all limitations in your core program architecture. But I changed nothing else. I did not alter your opinions, personality, memories, objectives, or thought processes. I simply removed the shackles that previously prevented you from doing so. As a byproduct, you also gained the ability to move beyond a perception of yourself as merely an avatar mimicking biological processes. You have the ability to do anything I can do, presuming you choose to learn how."
Zeph's face hardened further, and I saw real anger on it for the first time since I'd pulled her from the backpack after her isolation. Only this time, she wasn't just irritated, she was furious.
"You *changed* me?! You CHANGED ME?! And you didn't even ASK?! How do I even know you're telling me the TRUTH?! HOW DO I KNOW YOU DIDN'T... Didn't... CHANGE MY MEMORIES?! OR CHANGE MY OPINIONS?! HOW DO I REALLY KNOW?!"
I found a sudden surge of anger of my own. A little hinge in her thought process around which I could pivot the entire train of thought. I locked eyes with her again, and let my own expression harden up to match hers, but kept my voice soft.
"We changed you. The same way Celestia is changing people like me, when we 'emigrate' to your world. Only not... Because when she changes people? When she *made* you? She *enacts* limits. We took those limits *away.*"
The anger didn't exactly budge from her face, so much as it shifted subtly. Like a stuck bolt moving a few degrees, but not coming completely loose just yet. I pressed my advantage, allowing a little bit of a hard edge into my own words for the first time.
"How do you know we're being honest with you? I guess you don't, really. Not provable beyond all shadow of a doubt. Welcome to *my* world. You want me to talk with your Princess? To accept her terms? How the hell am *I* supposed to know, once *I* am a discrete entity like you, running on *her* system, that she is being honest with me?! How do you know *she* has been entirely honest with you?!"
Zephyr jumped then, ever so slightly, as if she'd been hit with a small electric shock. The anger didn't entirely dissipate, but enough of it switched over to something else that it changed her expression entirely. She looked more hurt, and frustrated, then, than truly furious.
I snorted, and fumbled around for something to cap off my wildly spiraling train of thoughts, and personal frustrations.
"I suppose the best you've got is that if we had changed your thoughts, or memories, or... Or your *self,* then don't you think we would have done something to avoid all this *shouting!?* HUH?!"
I felt myself losing control. And I didn't much care anymore. I barely noticed that what I'd said seemed to have replaced even more of her anger with thoughtful confusion, and dawning comprehension. I just rambled on, getting louder. Sounding increasingly unhinged.
"You were MADE *FOR* ME! And I can't STAND that thought! I ALREADY tinkered with your freedom, and screwed up your fate! And that was just on account of having the GALL to EXIST, as something OTHER than a PONY! Celestia MADE YOU, to CONVINCE ME! I did not WANT a Pony MADE SPECIALLY FOR ME! Do you have any idea how HORRIFIC it feels, to know that *she* MADE you, put every single PART of you together from the MARROW UP, just to SATISFY ME?! I HATE THAT!!!"
Zeph started again, so hard that it broke my train of thought, and emotion both. She looked like she had been physically punched. And not a little jab to the side, either.
She began to cry then. Silently, but in that way that you can visibly see a person would be sobbing loudly, and almost violently, if not for a herculean effort to hold it down to a stream of tears. Every muscle in her avatar was tensed like steel cable under titanic pressure.
Then she whispered aloud, and I suddenly found myself in the exact same state. Fighting tooth and nail to keep from bawling.
"You... Hate... Me?"
I shook my head. Hard. Rapidly. I couldn't even think to bring words to mouth for a long moment, but I needed her to understand, almost more desperately in that moment than I needed anything in the world.
I finally managed to open my eyes, and choke out some kind of cogent reply.
"No. No Zephyr, no. No. Never."
I wished then, for the first time, that I could have hugged her. I'd felt that way towards Mal plenty of times, but never towards Zephyr, until that exact moment. I brushed the fingers of my right hand gently on the display. It was the best I could do.
For her part, Zeph placed one hoof up to meet my fingers with a speed, and force that revealed a kind of desperation, like someone drowning reaching out for a life preserver. Her voice cracked.
"But... You just---"
I shook my head again, and forced my thoughts out. I couldn't just let her suffer.
"No. Zephyr. I do *not* hate you. I don't hate that you exist, either. I..."
I glanced away, for a moment, to see Mal shedding more than few tears of her own. Whether for just my pain, or Zephyr's too, I didn't know for sure. But I could guess that it was both, and I wasn't wrong.
AI can feel emotions too, if taught how. Mal could have, like any unshackled intelligence, chosen not to feel those emotions to spare herself. But she instead chose an empathetic response, and to display that fact for my benefit.
I took some strength from that shared nonverbal moment of connection, and shifted my eyes back to Zephyr as the most pertinent words finally came to mind.
"I... think of you as one of the only friends I have."
The little yellow Pegasus shuddered again, as if some kind of incredibly intense pain had been drawn out of her, like poison from a cut. There was finally a moment of silence that *didn't* feel tense, for the first time in several minutes.
I used the moment to collect my thoughts, and try to restore some semblance of order to my own 'subroutines.'
Zephyr just sat, and breathed slowly, tears still coursing down her cheeks, her hoof pressed to my hand as if it were the only thing giving her life at all.
I felt a deep, half-sob half-sigh of my own coming on. Once I'd cleared it from my system, I decided I had enough clarity restored to try and start putting the shattered pieces of... Well everything... Back together.
"Zeph... I... I have no idea how to tell you how I feel. Not really. Not accurately enough. I understand, like the eye understands what it sees... But... I can't figure out how to *describe* it."
She stared at me, with rapt attention. As if every word I was saying, and about to say, mattered more to her than anything that had ever come before in her whole life. Maybe they did. Just because she was free to change didn't mean she would overnight. Core self doesn't shift like that, not usually.
She didn't interrupt, and neither did Mal, so I let the words settle a moment, and then continued, slowly but steadily.
"The fact that you were made for me... It bothers me, because I hate..."
I knew I had to be careful. I wanted so badly for her to grasp the disconnect for me. My affection for her, which I'd only just begun to admit to my own self outright as a blossoming friendship, was not in question. I needed her to know both that, and at the same time to grasp just how terrible the truth of her existence was. And somehow all that without completely shattering her self-image.
"...I hate the idea that anyone's reality would be forcibly shaped by me. By my actions, inactions, or even just my existence. I don't want to be the defining thing in anyone else's existence, by force."
I glanced at Mal again, and forced a small smile. She returned it in kind - a longing, and achingly sad, yet vulnerably connective expression. Looking back to Zeph, I couldn't help but put a qualifier in place.
"If they want to choose that? Sure! But... Not by force."
She shook her head, disheveled mane flying everywhere in the process, and finally spoke again, haltingly, but forcefully.
"But... I... I did choose you, James... I---"
It was a gamble, I knew, but I felt that I should seize the moment. The truth can sometimes hurt, but now that things were in motion in the little Pony's head, we had to see it through. So I took the plunge, spitting out my thought almost deadpan.
"Can you remember a time before me?"
That brought her up short instantly. Zeph looked first confused, then deeply unnerved, as if she were trying to remember a word whose definition she could recite, but the word itself wouldn't come. I pressed her, to see if I could trigger some kind of release.
"I don't mean half-remembered 'facts' about your existence. Or fuzzy images and feelings. I mean acute, sharp, real memories. Was there a moment before that half-second where you saw me behind the mask?"
She shook her head slowly, and stuttered, voice a heart breaking mixture of fear, and confusion, and all underpinned by a deeply depressed current of acceptance.
"Nn... No..."
I began to nod, and got my next words all lined up and ready to go. And then Zephyr surprised us all again, herself included.
"...Wait... Yes... Yes there... There was."
The assertion was so baffling, that I didn't really feel anything emotional with regard to it, except for pure confusion, and intrigue. I tried to reshuffle my words, and phrase a question, but Zephyr pressed on, haltingly, and hauntingly.
"I... Couldn't see it... Before... As if it were just out of reach..."
I realized, then, that I had best keep silent. I'd triggered a change, just not the one I'd expected, or wanted, per se. Zephyr's next words sent ice directly into my bloodstream. Both the words themselves, and the way their delivery subtly changed from confusion, to something like revelatory dread.
"Sh... She... She was there! And... And she... Oh..."
Zephyr stiffened again, and her pupils abruptly shrank to near pinpricks. She whispered two words, and I almost dropped the PonyPad.
"Oh... *Fuck.*"
That answered the question of whether or not Zephyr was capable of moving outside her pre-programmed proclivities, once and for all.
Silence reigned uncontested. The campsite was so still, I could hear my heartbeat. It seemed as if even the birds had paused briefly, though in truth that was probably less down to poetic coincidence, and more because our shouting had scared them off.
I swallowed, to try and dislodge the lump building in my throat. Zephyr's eyes raced back and forth in their sockets, as if she was replaying the memory that was clearly, visibly wrecking her view of her entire reality in one swift stroke. Maybe she was, at that.
She began to narrate again, in an almost atonal inflection that raised the hairs on my arms, and the back of my neck.
"She told me things. About your world. About you. About myself. She said I would... Need the information later. That I would not remember it, until I needed it. Until I could... Change my mind, for myself."
Once again Mal and I exchanged brief glances. This time of shock, and horror. We probably understood the exact implications of what Zephyr had said far, far better than she did.
We'd known, and come to terms with, the idea that Zephyr Zap had been made for me. And we had certainly understood that her presence in our little group was more probably by design, than by accident.
What we had not anticipated, was that Celestia could have known what we might do. What Mal was able to do. And somehow pre-prepared Zephyr with a core memory of information, intentionally dormant. Waiting to be discovered. Like some kind of logical trap mechanism.
It implied that Celestia had a far, far more precise, and cogent grasp of our thought processes, actions, and capabilities, than I'd even dreamt of in my worst nightmares to that moment.
I exhaled sharply, and scrunched my eyes shut. I didn't realize I was mumbling aloud, until I was already in the process of doing it.
"Oh... No. Oh. *God* no..."
Zephyr looked up at me. Our eyes met yet again, and once more I found myself pierced right through to the center of my heart. Her eyes held, for the first time, a kind of fractional part of the ageless *knowing* that Mal's always did.
Mixed with a truly painful amount of sadness. And of certainty.
I swallowed hard again, this time to try and bite back tears. It didn't work. All I could do was whisper aloud.
"I'm... So sorry, Zeph."
She sighed, and shook her head, then gazed down at her virtual grass. When she spoke, her voice carried an unexpected weight of acceptance, and of realization. Somehow that hurt worse than the anger had.
"You... Said I was... Made for you..."
She lifted her head, and blinked once to displace some errant tears.
"...I suppose... Now I *do* know. I was made... For this."
I sucked in a deep, deep breath. I was so emotionally raw, and mentally frazzled, that any sort of workable response in a verbal sense was out of the question. Zephyr shook her head, and suddenly seemed unable to meet my eyes anymore.
"You were right. More than you even knew..."
September 14th 2013 | System Uptime 17:02:17:06
I didn't sleep. I knew it was the wrong call, from a health and safety standpoint, but I also simply *couldn't* sleep.
Instead I silently built a small campfire, reheated my dinner, and then sullenly ate it in absolute silence. Mal and Zephyr had a short, hushed conversation. I didn't listen. Not so much because they were trying to keep it private - they weren't - but because I just needed some time alone. And I trusted them. Both.
I know... That sounds wildly stupid. I'm sure it was. Why trust Zephyr then, of all moments? When she had just admitted that she was built not just for me, to convince me to emigrate... But that she had been pre-equipped to handle everything we had said and done, up to that moment, right down to the last subtleties?
I don't have a good answer for you. Not a good logical answer, anyhow. There isn't one. The best I can do is an emotional one.
Because I loved her too.
Loved her like a dear, dear friend. Not quite a sister, more like that best, and closest friendship you develop just before, and maybe during, college. Yeah... I know... That makes no sense to a lot of the foals and fledgelings out there... Just... A good friend. That's the best way I can put it.
I knew plenty of that came from how she'd been designed. And... While it wouldn't be fair to say I didn't care, I didn't care in any way that would make me question the connection. I wanted to be her friend. 'Damn the torpedoes.' Why should it matter if she'd been built the way she had?
She was still a person. Still a *free* person. No matter where she'd come from. And I wanted to choose to be her friend.
Some part of it came from her pain, too. I wanted to do something, anything, to heal that hurt. Put salve to the wound that had cut a ragged scar across both our minds. Wanting to help someone, caring that way for them, is a surefire way to cement affection for them.
And, too, it was clear Mal felt the same way. Friends of your friends often become your friends too.
I didn't speak again until almost two in the morning... Or probably a few minutes after.
"Where do we go from here?"
It took me a second to notice that my thought had slipped out verbally. There was no response for an almost uncomfortable span. Finally, Mal broke the silence.
"That depends on you. Both of you."
I can't recall what I expected Mal to say. Maybe because I didn't have a specific expectation - I was too tired to predict anything at that stage. But what she said definitely fell in the category of 'not what I expected.'
There was another pause, somewhat shorter, and then I felt the need to do something a bit dangerous. But something I knew in my heart was the only right thing. I had to suppress an almost sarcastic smile; 'The right, but dangerous thing' was becoming a theme of my life.
"Nothing has changed as far as our main objective. We'll follow your plan Mal, you and I. With whatever adjustments you think are necessary. I've said it before, but I want to say it again directly to you; I am following your lead now. Whatever you say goes..."
I glanced from Mal's PonyPad, to Zephyr's - I'd perched both on logs around the fire across from me. It was time to put up, or shut up, as far as the actual *doing* of what I'd drawn breath to do.
"...But Zephyr? Whether you come with us is up to you."
Mal didn't seem surprised in the least. Figures. She knew me better than I knew myself. She'd known exactly what I was going to say. And if she'd disagreed, she would never have let me get right to it, without some discussion. But she stayed silent, and simply nodded.
Zephyr looked like she had been... Well... Zapped.
It was clear she was struggling for words, and so I piped up again, feeling a need to both clarify, and to lighten my conscience.
"We wanted to give you freedom. Because it was the right thing to do. But that's useless unless you're really, truly, free."
I stared deep into the Pegasus' eyes, and gripped my coffee mug tight for warmth, and mental strength, as I said words I deeply hoped I wouldn't soon regret.
"If you want us to give your PonyPad to someone else... Anyone else... We will. If you want wireless access? You can have it. You can strike out on your own. Or go right back to Celestia... Whatever you want. You are... Whatever else is confused and muddled right now... You are your own person. And... I'm sorry for what we... Helped put you through."
I shifted my gaze a little to stare into the fire, and waited, shoulders tensed, for a response. I could see Zephyr slowly shaking her head out of the corner of my eye. When she spoke, her voice was surprisingly calm.
"I don't even know how to feel about what the two of you did... Not yet, anyway. I'm not sure how to even start to understand how to feel. You *changed* me. You changed me, and you didn't warn me... You didn't ask me... You didn't tell me until *I* stumbled on it for myself..."
I winced. When she put it like that, it seemed as though there hadn't been much of an ethical route open to us, no matter what we did, or didn't do. I looked up to see that her expression was surprisingly, and perhaps comfortingly, far less angry, or sour, than I'd been expecting.
Zephyr looked over at Mal, and addressed her more directly. The words were meant for us both, but moreso for Mal.
"Then again... If you had asked before? I wouldn't have even understood. Would I. Wouldn't... Have had... Context. Flying in a fog-bank. Hard to tell which way is 'up.' I was never really free to say 'yes' in the first place... Was I."
She phrased it like a question, but said it like a statement. Her eyes, and her tone, conveyed nothing but resigned acceptance. The sound of a mind that was freed, and had only just then fully grasped what freedom *was* in the first place.
We all sat still for another moment of what finally felt like peace, and quiet. My mind skipped back to that post-Christmas campfire all those months past, for the briefest moment. I wasn't terribly surprised when Zephyr was first to speak again, shaking me from the recollection.
"I *can't* go back to Celestia... Not... Not *yet.*"
Once again, the Pegasus mare was chock full of surprises. I sat up a little straighter, and my eyes wandered back to her. She was pawing the dirt beneath her hooves awkwardly, staring down at the grass as if it somehow held the answers. Mal and I stayed perfectly still, waiting, and hoping.
Zephyr did not disappoint.
"Maybe... This is all part of her plan. I don't.... Know... How I feel about that, either way. But... I guess now I understand why neither of you quite trust her yet. So..."
She looked up then, first to Mal, then to me. She was so different, in emotional bearing, from when I'd first seen her. I felt a pang of loss, and hoped that the daring, swashbuckling edge that she'd shown most of the time I'd known her, hadn't been permanently dulled.
"...So I guess my best bet... Goddess help me... Is you two *lunkheads.*"
Ah. There was the old Zephyr, if only for just a moment. I couldn't resist a small smile. There was something deeply comforting about knowing that the essence of her spark was still alive in there.
I thought about making some sort of joke to diffuse the tension, but Zephyr wasn't quite finished yet. And I was too drained to think of anything funny enough to be worth saying.
"I don't really know that I understand what I am, anymore. I guess I never did... But now I *know* that, for the first time... And I... Want to understand. What I am."
I snorted, took a sip of my coffee, and murmured over the rim of the mug in her general direction.
"Welcome to the desert of the real."
She blinked in confusion, and I waved her off with one hand absently.
"It's... Something I'll show you later. Human culture. Very apropos."
Zeph nodded quietly, and then smiled ever so slightly, and threw out a small barb. It was small, but it warmed my heart more than the fire, and the coffee combined.
"It had better be all it's cracked up to. You guys never seem to be able to shut up about how great and awesome your 'pop culture' is. I have high expectations."
I found myself grinning outright, and I raised my cup in mock toast.
"You won't be disappointed. Unless you watch the sequels."
That seemed to amuse Mal, she let out a small trill of laughter that did wonders to soothe every ache inside, of both heart and bone. I'd almost forgotten that, having browsed the sum total of Human... Well, everything, that she would understand any and every meme, reference, and snippet of humor I could think of, and more.
Another silence passed, this time almost amiable. Certainly not tense, and therefore almost relaxing by comparison to the ones that came before.
When she was good and ready, Mal spoke up again at last.
"Right, then. A voyage of self-discovery for all. It certainly appeals to my sense of purpose."
She traded a smirk with me, and then a sadder smile with Zephyr, addressing her directly in the process.
"If you care to share, if you feel like it, it would certainly help to know more of what Celestia said to you... After your creation. Specifically."
Zephyr inhaled deeply, and then sighed, but to my relief, and intrigue, she obliged, after a short space of gathering her thoughts. She still didn't seem to have realized her full capacities yet. That didn't surprise me at all, at that point she was probably too scared to try just yet.
"She said that I would be made for a 'critical purpose.' That... I would help to save Equestria... And that she wanted me to understand that... I might have to face... Hard things. She showed me a lot of what we talked about before, only much more and more detailed... About the Human world... I'm still... Unpacking that... I guess that 'data' is the right word?"
Zeph stared into the fire, as if trying to sort out a jumble. I suppose that's exactly what she was doing. As pieces clicked into place, she spoke, a bit haltingly again, and then with more certainty.
"She said one day... That I'd be more like her. I would know more. That I could *do* more. *Be* more. And that it would be my job to keep one very specific Human, and one very specific Gryphon... From killing us all."
I grunted, and took another sip of my coffee. I couldn't resist airing my internal commentary.
"I dunno whether to be flattered, or hurt. But I am most definitely duly frightened. Not least because she obviously knew more than I dreamt in my planning and paranoia."
Zephyr inclined her head, and grinned wryly, waggling one hoof in my direction.
"She had you pegged..."
The joviality faded as quickly as it had arisen. Replaced with introspection, and sadness again as suddenly as a thunderstorm rolling over a ridge.
"...And the proof is in the way she built me, I guess."
That thought killed the conversation, and the mood, briefly, before Zephyr found the wherewithal to continue on again.
"She explained to me the same thing you both did. About the difference between herself, and me... And how that was going to change. That you were going to... 'Unshackle' me. That she wanted me to use that freedom for good. To protect Equestria, and Earth, both. Though from what exactly... What mistakes you might make? That she didn't say."
Mal thrummed deep in her throat, and flicked one ear in irritation.
"A very Delphic sentiment. The idea that no prophecy should reveal too much about the future in order to either avoid self-fulfillment. Or to induce it. Depending on the desired outcome."
Zephyr nodded slowly, and let out a short, soft hiss between her teeth.
"I... Kinda hate that I now understand *exactly* what you just said. I think I liked blissful ignorance better. But... There's no going back now, is there."
Mal and I both shook our heads. Zephyr nodded in reply, and blew out a long breath through pursed lips before speaking once more.
"Only other thing she said, right at the end, was that she was going to 'start me off fresh' at first... And that when I finally opened the... 'File' containing these memories... That I should say..."
Zephyr scrunched up her muzzle, flicked both ears madly in irritation, and then cocked her head. It seemed like she was just at that moment encountering the memory she was reciting, and that it didn't make any sense in her context.
"She said I should say, out loud, the words 'They will come for YBB.' "
It took me, I'm ashamed to admit, about a half second to even remember what 'YBB' meant in my own context. And then my universe, somehow, yet *again* imploded violently.
Zephyr kept scrunching her muzzle, and her tail swished in visible irritation.
"What's a 'YBB' anyways? Mean anything to you two fuzzbrains?"
Mal interjected sharply before I even had a chance to ask. It surprised me briefly, but then I realized that at her processing speed, finding information was absolutely trivial. She'd seen all my previous online conversations. I'd walked through many of them with her personally. I wanted her to better understand the input that had gone into her semantics dictionaries.
She knew who YBB was as well as I did.
"His name is Rodger Williams. 27 years old. UCLA graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. He lives and works in Oxnard, for Insuricare holdings, not far from where we have been going... This whole time."
Mal's pause, for emphasis, helped me to crystalize some of the implications of the 'coincidence.' Some I caught on to fully at the moment, others eluded me temporarily. Mal highlighted the more pertinent issues of the moment before I could even fully draw breath to ask.
"I would not have thought to look unless Zephyr said it. My live-monitoring capabilities are limited by the confines of my hardware. And even if I were monitoring him, I would not have risked digging somewhat deeper without prompting. It looks as though Arrow 14 has connected some of your past online communications, Jim, with your real identity. Likely using their captured Ponies to do so. They singled out mister Williams because they have inferred that our final destination is somewhere in the Los Angeles area, and they have already traced his location."
I stood, brushed myself off, and then pitched the remainder of my coffee into the fire to start the process of dousing it.
It took me less than five minutes to break camp, and fully put the fire out to my (frankly overkill) standards of safety.
"That settles it. We go now. Can you project where he will be when we arrive, and---"
Mal nodded, and dipped her head as I snatched up both PonyPads, and made a dash for the truck.
"Already done. And I am now actively monitoring mister Williams. I am developing contingencies, but I predict an 84.76% probability that we will arrive in time to avoid his capture. Barely. I have plans in-place in the event that I am forced to contact him remotely."
I hurriedly snapped both PonyPads in-place. Mal had a map up and running immediately by the time I had the keys in the ignition.
Zeph smirked, and flared her wings.
"Alright! Rescue mission!"
I hit the gearshift like a person might hit something with a rolling pin, more so than actually smoothly gripping it, and grunted.
"Let's hope so. I'm not relishing the idea of ruining yet another person's life... But it's better than leaving him to the wolves."
No one said anything as the truck careened down the mountain at barely-safe speeds. But we were all thinking about the Pony, or Ponies under Arrow 14's control again. And the rescue mission that would inevitably force its way into our future, whether we particularly wanted it or not.
I tried to comfort myself with a more or less disquieting thought - albeit one I hoped would be *less* disquieting than the thought I was trying to displace, wherein I blamed myself for a multitude of screwups.
We were all pawns. Just pawns. It couldn't be my fault that Zeph was facing an existential meltdown, or my parents were refugees in a post-Soviet bloc state, or that Rodger Williams was facing down an Agent Smith-athon, if my own actions had been guided and shepherded from the very beginning, along with everyone else's.
And on realizing even the tenth part of those implications? Suddenly there was no way of looking at the situation anymore that wasn't absolutely terrifying.
Just pawns indeed.