"I watched a movie the other night."
"Oh?"
Card Carry had always had trouble communicating her thoughts.
Luckily, waiting patiently and interpreting babble was what she paid a therapist for.
"At the- Yeah, a new one. The 32nd. I don't remember the name, I was kind of out of it at the time. There were these good guys, and they had to fight each other for some reason. And one really big, bad guy. They never seem to run out of those. Anyway, it ended happily, with the bad guy dead, and the good guy... just going on I guess. He'll be in the next one, I'm sure. For like, a few days, or weeks or whatever, everything was exciting, and he was sword fighting people for his life and shit like that. Then- These are my thoughts on the way out- then he's back to normal, and just lives a normal guy life until the next movie rolls around, and we jump ahead a few years or whatever. I guess... I kinda empathize with that. Short bursts of excitement- long stretches of lull."
The other pony jotted down some notes. Only a few, which was interesting for how long she had been rambling.
Card Carry leaned her neck over, stretching in an unhealthy way for her spine on the couch. "...Uh, then my stomach started hurting. As I'm coming out. One of those where you don't know if you're hungry or full. Hadn't eaten lately, no growling or anything. Figured I was hungry, but it just stayed there."
"Mm-hmm." Crane was an older stallion than Card, with wrinkles forming under his thin spectacles and select grey hairs in his brown mane to show for it. His cutiemark seemed to be a moth, but Card needed to squint from her awkward viewpoint to make it out.
"Went to sleep and got up, it was gone." Card Carry tried to look at the notes her therapist was making no effort to hide. "I heard somewhere you can make yourself hurt with, like... anxiety, or depression or stuff."
"Do you feel depressed?"
"Nah." Card Carry shook her head. "I mean- would I know? I don't feel depressed. I just feel... bored."
Crane looked up. "What makes you bored?"
"I mean- you know that. Same reason everyone's bored. Probably keeps food on the table for you."
"But it seems, out of all my patients, you would be the least bored. Your job is to entertain. Your job is to excite."
Card Carry shrugged. "Maybe that's why its not exciting for me anymore."
Card Carry's job was, technically, programming.
A long time ago, that meant staring at a screen for hours and numbing your head to the strings of numbers running across it. Card had watched a show from that time once, a comedy about a group of workers who played with computers all day. It was a distressingly far cry from her actual job.
Every morning Card would step through the door into the lobby of a grey office building. She would check in with Sam, step into an elevator, and select the button four up, two to the left. There were far more buttons than floors.
She would wait patiently. She had heard the music a thousand times alone, and in times of boredom, they would come back to her with a hoof-tapping vengeance.
Then the door would open, and she would no longer be in the building. It was a hard experience to describe if you weren't as used to it as Card was; she was looking out at a flat plane, vertical like a screen, and it contained billions and billions of brains.
Not literal brains, like pink blobs of spaghetti hovering in jars- only the important stuff. Sam would read her the list of those who were giving- only those giving. The ones getting were far too many to count.
She opened them up, cracked them open remotely like a clam. She inspected the gunk inside, and watched them like they were her own memory. She inspected the memory for damages, reported any cracks that needed filling, and sent them off to Sam for editing and distribution.
The memory could be anything. They could be as exciting as riding rollercoasters, deep sea diving in oceans, or something as mundane as tasting a hamburger, sitting on a hill with a loved one. She lived them as if they were the present moment, and when they ended- either because the owner had chosen to forget the surrounding circumstances, or they simply weren't important to them, or she manually chose an ending- she ejected herself, and moved to the next one.
Her shift was technically eight hours, although due to its nature it could typically last between ten hours to a few days. Then she would leave out that same elevator, through that same door, she would return to her home and a set bath.
She would talk to Sam, and ask her the number of grains of sand in a beach or the number of fish in an ocean. She would always have an answer. She might watch a movie, through more memories of a movie seen through a theatre long ago. Then she would sleep. Wake up the next morning. Repeat.
She had no lunch break. She had no weekends. She had no coworkers- besides Sam, of course. If she did have breaks, she wasn't sure what she'd do with them.
After all, her job was the most important- the one thing a computer could not do without serious risk to the brain's owner. The building, elevator, and pane existed for her. At any point, anyone could donate a memory of theirs, giving explicit permission for her to extract a copy of it, often in the middle of their days with the owner being none the wiser.
Memories were experiences and entertainment. If you wanted to live out the real world, it was really the only way to do it.
And you do want to live out the real world- because the alternative is the one you live in.
"How did we get here, Crane?" Card Carry murmured, rubbing her forehead.
"In the computer, you mean?" Crane politely responded. "'Sam'?"
"In... Life, I guess. I know how I got inside Sam, physically. Years and years ago, when I first came to the computer, I thought I would drown in paperwork. I spent days filing it all out to move here, begin living here. When I went back to the offices yesterday, there's even more paperwork just to leave. Not even move out- just leave."
"I doubt they expect anyone to do it." Crane answered, jotting down more notes. "Do you wish to return to the real world?"
"Not really."
Crane nodded. "There's a part in all of us that says this is not real. This is not my beautiful reality, we say. We believe that because it is fake, it is inherently inferior, that there is something intrinsic about reality that makes it beautiful and perfect- something a computer cannot replicate."
"Is that true?" Card asked.
Crane smiled over his spectacles. "Isn't that something you'd understand better than I? I am a psychologist. Not a philosopher."
Card fell silent again, thinking on it from her couch.
"Have you ever submitted a memory to Sam, Crane?" She asked.
"Once."
"What was it?"
"It wasn't a pretty one."
"Was it, like, a weird sex thing?"
Crane glanced at her again. "Is that the way you want to get to know your therapist in?"
Card wisely backed off. She doubted his sexual prowess, but that wasn't necessarily the only option. It could be a memory of a death, or a breakup, or something personal. Not everything ponies wanted to relive was pleasant.
"My stomach started hurting again yesterday. Same thing, a few minutes of pain and then vanished."
"Have you been eating?"
"Would it matter?"
"Your body would prefer it." Crane replied. "Just because you can survive with no food in the computer doesn't mean it will be pleasant."
"I've been eating. My body just feels like its revolting."
"If you truly feel you are sick, I'm afraid that falls outside my jurisdictions."
Card shook her head. "Nah. Sam would know if I was really sick. I think its just... what's the word? Paranatural? Psychosocial? I'm imagining it."
Crane returned to his note taking. Card glanced up at him.
"That's a thing, right?"
"Yes, Card. That's a thing."
"Brains are fucked up."
"You would know."
"I guess we both work with people's brains, huh?" Card pointed out. "In... ways that are less gross than it sounds."
Crane tilted his head in recognition. "You're not incorrect."
"You'd think I'd have one that works better then."
Nighttime in Plato's Cave.
When Card was especially quiet, she sometimes thought she could hear right through the computer, to the whirring of fans just outside her flesh ear. She had read once that when all was quiet, really, vacuum quiet, one could hear their own blood pumping. But it was never quiet, never as long as the computer was running in the background, maintaining the world she lived in.
And she was never alone.
"Sam." She asked the whirr. "How many creatures are left in reality?"
"I apologize." A feminine voice answered smoothly. "I do not possess statistics outside my internal information. I cannot answer that question."
Card chewed her lip.
"How many people live here, Sam?"
"7,102,323." The computer answered.
Seven million didn't seem large.
"You seem lonely." The computer diagnosed. "Would you like me to list your friends in the area?"
"Go ahead."
"You currently have one friend in your friend list. Of this, one is in the area. Would you like me to read this list?"
Card shook her head. "I'm good. Check my next appointment with him."
"Four days, twelve hours, ten minutes remaining. Would you like me to call him and reschedule?"
"Not right now. Its late."
The computer obediently shut up. That dull, background whirr again. It was inescapable.
"Tell me a joke." Card requested of the whirr.
"Okay. What is a pirate's favorite letter?"
Card strained her mind to remember the concept of pirates. Big ships, birds on shoulders, buried treasure.
"X? No. R?" Card guessed.
"The high C."
Cue the laugh track.
When they died down, Card was still thinking on it. She would not get it until seven hours later, upon coming up from the memory of a forest burning, upon which she would admit it was kinda funny.
"Have you tried my advice from our last session?"
"Sometimes I wonder why I bother with a therapist. All you tell me is the obvious."
"Because everything sounds better when somebody else is saying it." Crane responded calmly, unoffended. "You've expressed annoyance at a lack of equine contact before. Sam and I don't count."
"You mean I'll be happy if I make some friends?" Card murmured, slouching back. "That's gay."
"When advice is obvious, we get tired of hearing it. That doesn't make it less true."
"What would we bond over? How would we... How do people make friends in here?"
"From what I've seen, the same way anyone else does. Through Sam."
"From what you've seen? Do you have any friends? Besides- I mean- Yeah."
"I consider you a friend." Crane admitted. "But its a friendship you pay for. Its not exactly a substitute. I personally enjoy being alone, myself."
"You never tell me anything about you. Let me guess; fought in a big war, killed a bunch of people, now you isolate yourself from people? No, genius inventor, saw your creations used for evil, became disillusioned with society. What did you create? A bomb? Sam?"
Crane shook his head. "Need I a Freudian excuse? Some people just adapt better to the world than others."
Card snorted and rolled onto her side. "Still. You should donate another memory. After the other one you mentioned, I mean. You're an old guy. I'll bet you saw some cool stuff."
Crane laughed at that one. "Boy. Something like that. Maybe someday I'll tell you."
7 million people. One 'friend'. That seemed a little sad.
"Sam, search for nearby..." Card wasn't sure how to phrase this in a polite and non-pathetic way. 'Lonely people'? 'One person rooms?' "Uh... Residents."
Late night, or early morning. Or late morning, or early night. She sat on her bed, scrolling through the list hovering in the air in front of her. It wasn't a hologram, or a screen, but a physical piece of the environment she could manipulate same as the sheets she sat on. A part of her world. She looked through unfamiliar names and faces, and down their lists of friends, looking for someone.
'Friend-making' was a foreign concept to her. You start talking to someone- that part's easy. They remember you, and want to talk back- that was harder. She needed to be memorable? Is that how that works?
She sent out a few requests for contact, then sat back on her bed, hugging her hindlegs and waiting for a response, like she was casting out messages in bottles.
Ten minutes.
Twenty minutes.
Thirty minutes.
Ding!
She leapt on it immediately. The wall directly across from her broke down, melting into strings of numbers, and she was facing an identically sized, identically sparse bedroom.
The stallion on the other side looked mildly surprised.
"Oh." He said. "I didn't think that would work."
"Neither did I." Card admitted. "You're the first person I've talked to in a while. I'm sorry if you... notice."
"No, no!" He stood up, trepidatiously approaching the line between their two connected bedrooms like she was a wild animal likely to dash off. "I'm happy for... anyone to talk to. It happened so slowly for me- You're in this brand new world, and you want to do everything you couldn't in reality. All the rollercoasters and boogie boarding and- and T-rex fighting- and then..."
"You do it." Card echoed.
"And then you realize..."
"There's nobody there to brag to about it."
"I wouldn't have said... brag." The stallion blushed, scratching the back of his head. Despite the sudden closeness, he seemed unwilling to cross the invisible line that had once been the wall, as if it could snap back and bisect him at any moment.
"Ah- Neither would I." Card quickly amended. "I just- I mean I- Did you come here with any friends?"
The stallion shook his head. "Completely alone. I mean- I wanted to leave, and to... I just didn't really have anyone to bring with."
Despite her desire to be polite, Card was so starved for conversation she attempted to pursue this new route. "Are your family... Okay?
"What? No- Yes. Yeah, they're fine. They just... I didn't want to talk to them much. At all. I wanted something they didn't want me to have."
Card tilted her head. "Like- Like, a car?"
"Like a penis."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Card scratched the back of her head. "You look good."
"Thanks."
"That's real bold of you to- You know, put it out there. Your words. Not your penis."
"I mean- There's no risk to that anymore. No physical risk anyway. Sam keeps me safe."
Card's awkwardness ebbed. "Oh, thank god. Somebody else calls her that."
"It was her-"
"-Demo name?"
"Nickname from her-"
"-Short for something?"
"Sam."
"Right. Sam." Card echoed back.
They chuckled, both of them feeling a tiny weight off their shoulders.
"I didn't come here with anyone either." Card admitted. "Not for- those reasons. I mean- That was mean to say. But my folks were already... Yeah. And I mostly just... worked. Nine to five. I was a barista, minimum wage. And Sam was..."
"Looked like the best option."
"There. Yeah, she was just there." Card agreed. "Do you use the memories? That's my job."
"Not really. I mean- It feels a little pathetic. And... I don't like the idea of living in a body that isn't mine. I mean- You know what I mean."
"I know what you mean."
"Is it better?"
Card paused. "What?"
"Than your real job. You said you have a new one. With the memories. Is it better?"
Card opened her mouth, but no words came out. She closed it again. She tried a few more times before she finally got her thoughts in order.
Then she heard a beep, and Sam kicked on.
"The memory vault is open again. Please proceed to the elevator."
The door behind her opened, and through it Card saw the lobby of her workplace. She bit her lip nervously. That time already?
"Is that... do you need to do that?" The stallion inquired nervously, looking past her.
"I mean... No. I'm not being forced or anything. Because... digital utopia."
"Then why...?"
"Mostly because there's nothing else to do."
The stallion kicked the floor nervously. "We could... keep talking."
Card Carry sucked air through her teeth. Sam waited patiently, everywhere at once. In her left ear she heard a low whirr.
"...I'll only be gone a few hours."
"Okay." The stallion nodded, reluctantly.
"I'll take off early."
"Okay."
"I... enjoyed this."
The stallion smiled and nodded. "Thank you. After work?"
"For sure."
The stallion stood up again. "Alright. After work."
Card stood up with him. The two touched hooves together.
A blink of an eye, and Card was pressing her hoof into the wall.
She sat back and sighed.
"Sam, add him to my friends list, please."
"Please specify a name to add to your friends list."
"The- The guy I was just talking to."
"For security reasons, I cannot affect individuals without a clear name to do so with. Please specify a name to add to your friends list."
Card thought back.
Card's eyes widened.
Today, Card had attended an anime convention, been shot in the side, opened a wallet to find it devoid of money, charged through the underbrush in search of a recent windigo sighting, dined at a pizzeria for a five year old's birthday party, smoked weed while Smashing Pumpkins played, lost an arcade game, eaten five separate asses in a row, and pulled a car over on the side of a moonlit road to sob.
Upon coming out of the last one, she still felt damp tears on her cheeks until her brain remembered it wasn't sad. She wiped her tears off with a hoof before checking the list again.
Her eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. The memory was apparently dated to two weeks ago.
This was her first time seeing a memory younger than five years, for obvious reasons- there was no point to donating a memory of something anyone could do in the computer. People only wanted memories from the real world.
Which left two options; either a completely pointless memory akin to a lunch break, or the memory of someone who had very recently filed out the necessary paperwork and left the computer.
She tried to remember the last time she had seen the real world, and the state it had been in. There had been a leak in the world's population, directly to Sam. She hadn't stuck around long enough to see if it would get plugged up before she became swept along herself.
In all likelihood, this memory wouldn't give her much. But it would give her something.
She searched for the brain it currently resided in, cracked it open, and played it. Her eyes rolled back into her head.
Disgusting.
I can feel it running down my lips and cheeks in rivulets. Its abhorrent- every fiber of my body rejects it, calling up lunch from my stomach. I've never felt anything like this revulsion.
I want more of it. I force myself to keep going, jerking and heaving as I go back for seconds. I hate doing it. I detest doing it.
Its thrilling. When was the last time I have ever hated something? Truly, truly hated something that wasn't myself? Nothing like this exists in the world anymore, not in that damn computer. Only in the real world, in flesh can this experience be conceived.
My teeth breaks alien substance, grounds it to strips of meat between dull molars. A pony was not meant to eat like this. A pony was also not meant to live inside a simulation. My nerves, my senses are firing on all cylinders, telling me to cry, to vomit. I do both, and delight at the mess I make. I am finally, finally an animal again- not a line of code, not a collection of thoughts, but one of Faust's creatures, dripping in my own bodily fluids and bathed in vile emotions.
I have got to have more of it- more hate, more disgust, more fear, more delight. I keep eating, keep ripping and biting and chewing. I feel a crunch, and my mouth aches from what it carries.
The night has just begun.
I simply cannot fathom the full gamut of emotions I am going to experience tonight.
If I did, I would scream and never stop.
Card Carry pulled up from the memory like a cold pool of water. She felt like vomiting, and this time the feeling did not fade away as she returned to the real world.
She had taken a dip into the mind of another person. Whoever had those thoughts lived in the same world she did, in the same computer. She could not identify them by looking at their thoughts alone, and nothing in the memory had indicated the owner's identity.
She tried to piece together what little she had seen. It was dark, and only a single dull luminescent glow had lit her surroundings, but she had been tapped directly into that pony's thoughts, and they knew exactly what they were doing.
That glow had been a headset, accompanied by that familiar dull whirr. That meal had been a pony. They- and by extension, Card- had fed on someone plugged into the computer, who could no more feel a drop of rain on their fur than their own devouring.
"Sam. Sam! Call the authorities. Call someone. Please, a crime's been committed." Card had nothing to vent her fear on. She only paced her bedroom, carrying a conversation with the whirr in her head.
"I am sorry, no crime of note has been detected within my parameters. Please elaborate."
"In the real world- somebody's hurt!" Card barked.
"I am sorry, I cannot-"
"I don't care if you're sorry! Just- call someone!"
"Would you like me to list your friends in the area?"
"No!" Card screamed hoarsely, before her eyes widened. "Yes! Its Crane, just call Crane!"
The wall vanished, and she was looking into a familiar room. An empty couch, and a bespectacled pony in a chair.
Crane stood up from his chair, mildly surprised. "Card? Have you already-?"
"Crane, oh Celestia, Crane. I saw-" Card Carry rushed to her therapist, taking him by the shoulders. "Somebody submitted a memory, a-and I checked it, and I saw somebody being hurt- being eaten! And I-"
"Card." Crane said softly, shaking her gently off his shoulder and looking around the room. "...Would you like to reschedule your session?"
That was enough to shock Card out of her stupor. "...Excuse me?"
"I'm on duty. Please, we can reschedule your session."
"I don't have the money." She said instinctively, before realizing how old world of a sentence that was. "I mean- Yeah, go ahead. Do it."
Sam hummed in approval. Crane pulled away, removing his glasses and sighing heavily as he cleaned them.
"I expected this to come later, but I should have anticipated-"
"You couldn't have anticipated this! Crane, someone is hurt!"
"Card."
"Crane, that guy is still out there! The memory donation is anonymous, H-he could be any one of us-"
"Card." Crane repeated, looking almost sorrowful. "Have you really not figured it out yet?"
Card was, for the second time this week, on Crane's couch.
She stared into her coffee. Fake coffee, in a fake mug. She let her hooves tremble, and spilled a tiny drop of it onto her leg. A small, ancient part of her brain told her to expect pain that did not come.
Despite, quite literally, everything, Crane still appeared deathly calm as he took his usual seat in the comfy green chair.
"Your coffee is fine, I expect?" Crane asked politely.
Card didn't answer for a minute. "It always is." She grunted.
"Very good." Crane took a breath, collecting his thoughts. "I'm sure you have some questions for me."
"Just the one, really."
Crane smiled. "And here I thought you would understand me best."
Card looked up. "Did you... donate that memory on purpose? Knowing I would be the first to see it?"
"That you would remember it for me, wholesale? It certainly seemed a better alternative to simply telling you. Celestia, you might think me insane."
Card raised an eyebrow.
"You are still capable of sarcasm. That's good." Crane crossed his hindlegs and steepled the other two.
"I just don't get it. I don't get it at all."
"This is going to sound like an esoteric riddle, but I promise you it is not." Crane began. "What is the one thing the computer cannot create?"
Card recalled her conversation a few nights ago. "Uh... Information outside its databanks? Population counts outside, stuff about the real world..."
"A bit too literal thinking, perhaps." Crane acknowledged. "The computer- Sam, as you call it- exists to please us. It will make every attempt possible to make us happy. The one thing it cannot generate is a negative emotion. You don't get anything out of memories, do you?"
"No- I don't." Card admitted. "I spend my entire workday looking at them. By the time my shift ends, I'm always sick of them."
"What do you think other people get out of them? Why they are the most popular form of entertainment inside Sam by far? Anything form of entertainment that has ever existed can be recreated by Sam. Why watch someone else doing it instead?"
Card chewed her lip. "Because... Things can go wrong? But then why not just return to the real world? You can do it, with some hassle. Its just... a legal trip."
Crane leaned in, and asked softly, "What do you think is out there?"
"I don't know. Restaurants. Oceans. Civilization."
"You're a smart mare. Think about when Sam was first created. Infinite possibilities, everyone wanted to move there. Why did you move?"
"I... I just... I wanted something better." Card avoided answering directly.
"And what made you special in that regard?" Crane jabbed a pen in Card Carry's direction. "Your coffee's getting cold, drink up. The people who had it the worst off left first. Then the people who relied on them. The backbone of society, then the ribs. What do you think is left after that?"
"If the world was- If its so terrible out there, I'd know. Everyone would know."
"How would you know? Sam is your source of news and information, and it doesn't know what's outside. Do you have any friends in the Computer?" Crane pointed out.
"I don't... Want to talk about that." Card turned away, blushing.
"Then how would you know?"
Card cleared her throat. "You're my therapist. Aren't I paying you to give me answers?"
Crane laughed gently.
"Card, I am the only pony to ever pass through these doors for a reason unrelated to an appointment these days." Crane gestured his pen to the door. "Nobody has shown up to this building for work in months. The computer runs everything except my profession- and I may very well be the last of my kind."
Crane took a slow breath. "We therapists were never a mighty race. We only spoke to dispel the untrue, that which our patients were too ill to realize was such. There is nothing false or untrue about the problems you face, or the problems anybody will ever face again. Sam has eliminated poverty, illness, suffering, and purpose with it. If you want a picture of the future- the far, far future- imagine an empty sheet of therapy notes. Forever."
Card sat back, rubbing her forehead.
"I deal with my problems through therapy. My therapist deals with his problems by eating people. I guess I should have wondered about that sooner."
Crane's eyebrow raised inquisitively.
"Eating... Oh, Card... Did you think I was doing that to someone else?"
Card met his gaze again.
Crane shook his head. "You think me that cruel? For shame."
"You're..."
"Its awful. Disgusting. It needs to be disgusting." Crane looked solemnly into his coffee. "What I need is... to be reminded, on occasion, that I am flesh. A mammal. Equus Sapien. I need my blood to pump, my stomach to turn, and my brain to revolt. Otherwise I may forget- and think myself only code."
He spoke in an intonation Card initially interpreted as grave, then recognized for what it was- bile fascination. "And if I am not myself- if I am inequine- then who will help the needy? And believe me, there are a lot of needy."
"It sounds like a comedy."
Crane shook his head. "No comedy in life. There is only tragedy people cry at, and tragedy people laugh at."
Card fell silent.
Crane checked the clock. "You still have thirty minutes. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me that happened lately?"
"You want me to seriously move past everything you just told me?"
Crane leaned towards her, resting on his own hindleg. "Card Carry, if I can't help you with your problems, then what was last night for?"
Card groaned. "Well, ask me if I want you to do that next time."
Then ran out of things to say.
...
Except maybe-
"...I saw a movie the other day. Before the... thing, I mean."
"Oh?"