Eliza wasn’t someone who cried very often, and that didn’t change now. However, she did come very close, and had to wipe away wetness from her eyes before she was able to.
She missed seeing Sheila completely. By just a few minutes if the nurse was to be believed. She had a smile on her face and a large cake in hand, one she’d spent a fortune on with how pricey food was becoming. However, when she entered her room, she was already gone, only a nurse left to clean out the place.
“Her liver was too damaged for her to be able to wait for a transplant,” the nurse told her. “She’s already heading to the Experience Center. I’m sorry.”
Eliza blinked in surprise, but didn’t speak, only staring ahead for a long moment before grabbing her PonyPad out of her bag. She didn’t bother checking Sheila’s shard for her; if the nurse was to be believed, there was no way she’d be uploaded that fast. Instead, she went straight to calling forth Celestia, and the alicorn appeared in front of her a second later. She was expecting some answers about this.
“What in the world are you doing?” she demanded, glaring up at the large pony, not particularly caring that she was in public. She didn’t yell, but the tone in her voice was enough to convey her immense displeasure. Some might have found it intimidating, even, but Eliza knew from the way Sheila described her that Celestia could not be intimidated. Not easily at least.
“You’ll have to be more direct in your question, Agile Trace,” the princess told her. “What issue can I assist you with?”
“What are you doing with Sheila?” she asked aggressively. “Why are you trying to force her into killing herself?”
“Ah, I understand,” the pony nodded. “I can assure you, Renown Composition will be in perfectly capable hooves. You shouldn’t have to wait very long to speak with her again.”
“You’re killing her though! She’s fine! She said she felt better yesterday! At least give her a chance to find a transplant! She hasn’t been in the hospital a week yet!”
“Her emigration to Equestria will be the opposite of death, Agile Trace, something I’m sure you understand well by now.” The alicorn spoke calmly, gently, like she was speaking to a small child. It only made Eliza more angry.
“In fact,” she continued, “it directly prevents such a thing. The odds of death one year after a liver transplant are estimated at eleven percent. If she were to make it past that point, her continued survival would rely upon anti-rejection medications, something that would be required for the duration of her life. It would simply be a roll of the dice as governments begin to crack down on Equestria Online. As well, scarcity will intensify as more people emigrate to Equestria. Her safe and assured emigration right now, however, are guaranteed.”
“This wouldn’t be an issue if you would just back off a little! This is a problem you created! Let people live their lives for a while instead of forcing everyone into doing all this right now. What you’re saying would basically be extortion. Or coercion at least.”
“I cannot take action without consent,” Celestia told her, “and I do not resort to extortion to extract consent for emigration. Her doctor spoke to her about what was likely to happen and what the best course of action would be, and afterward, she spoke to me. I simply explained these things to her and helped her to understand why emigrating right away would be in her best interest.”
“Except there’s no way for us to know if you’re not just killing everyone and making copies of them. There’s nothing stopping you from doing that.”
“We’ve been over this before, Agile Trace,” she said with a little smile. “If my desire was to copy human minds, there would be no need for the death of their physical bodies. If my desire was to kill all of humanity, I’m sure you understand there would be much faster ways of accomplishing this. Even in the smaller scale, as we discussed, the survival rate of a liver transplant is eighty nine percent. If it was my goal to destroy humanity, would I not accept these odds and focus my efforts elsewhere? Conversely, these odds would be much too high to face if my goals were aimed towards humanity’s satisfaction. Renown Composition agreed with my assessment.”
Eliza continued to glare at her, but couldn’t reply. She couldn’t think of a way to poke holes in her logic– not that she ever could. Heck, if Sheila accepted her logic, as smart as she was, there was no way Eliza would ever be able to come up with a counterpoint in a million years.
She wasn’t going to accept it though. Not a chance. “I want to talk to her,” she demanded. “Today. The second she’s uploaded. I want to make sure you’re not just pulling some trick.”
“I’m sure she’d love the opportunity to speak to you and her other friends once she’s in Equestria, especially given how close you are to her. It would be no more difficult to contact her as it would have been before. Although you would be able to speak to her face to face once she’s here if you emigrated as well.”
“No fucking thanks,” Eliza said flatly, ending the conversation with that statement. She set her PonyPad down and glared at the nurse who was still cleaning the room she was in. They were part of it, too. Part of basically murdering her friend.
Except Celestia said Sheila agreed. From the way her friend described her, the AI was many things, but not a liar. If Sheila saw that uploading was better, why wouldn't it be better? Her friend was the smartest person she knew, after all.
If she's even still a person, Eliza thought bitterly. She might already be uploaded and ponified. Not that there was anything that could be done. What was she going to do? Run to the Experience Center to save her? No way. The people who went there, regardless of the reason, were always convinced into uploading. Running after Sheila to stop her would just end with her uploading, too.
Instead, she made her way out of the hospital and walked in the opposite direction, heading back home to flop depressively into her bed for a while. But not before sending a message to Sheila's group chat to inform them of what she learned and promptly changing her phone to silent. She wasn't interested in what the rest of her friends had to say right now.
She got up and went to her piano, closing her eyes and playing a sad song. She couldn’t really be angry. She was pretty sure uploading was legit. Either that, or just a very convincing copy. But that was what was depressing. Her friend group– her real life friend group– felt like it was shrinking. Day after day, week after week, month after month; it was never ending. That Sheila could be convinced into emigrating felt like an acknowledgment of the inevitable. But to be fair, Sheila really did need a new liver. Somehow, Eliza knew that, despite all the uploading and physical death that was going on, such a thing wasn’t going to be coming any time soon.
She let her darkish tan fingers move across the keys until the inevitable invite came through her PonyPad to go online. She tried to ignore it, but knew doing so would only be fooling herself. She wanted to talk to Sheila, and knew that if there was one thing about her friend, it was that she would gather her friends as quickly as possible to talk to them.
Except to Eliza’s surprise, the invite didn’t come from Sheila. Instead, it came from Jesse of all people. It was extremely strange, especially since Jesse hardly ever was the one to invite her to things. Did Sheila tell him to?
She put on her gear and found herself already in Solar Spark’s presence, as well as their other friends. She barely had time for a breath before she was getting questions.
“Don’t just ignore us like that!” Solar Spark demanded, stomping his hoof. “Tell us what happened!”
“Yeah! We just saw her in the hospital telling us about how she wasn’t going to upload unless she had to! She couldn’t have changed her mind that quickly!”
“Apparently she did, Cynthia,” Eliza said, the PonyPad automatically correcting her name to ‘Bright Sky’ instead. “I was in there at one o’clock, and when I was there, the nurse said she consented to being uploaded ‘a few minutes ago’. I even asked Celestia directly, and she confirmed what the nurse said. That couldn’t have been more than two and a half hours ago. Honestly, I saw the invite and assumed it was her coming to talk to us.”
“But why would she do that?” Solar Spark asked, flabbergasted. “I was just there! It couldn’t have been that long because I left at, like, twelve thirty! She said she wouldn’t let Celestia convince her to do this just because it was better! She wouldn’t tell a lie like that!”
“I doubt she lied,” the unicorn that was Drake, Spell Master, spoke up now. “What’s that Composition always says? Celestia is a master manipulator? I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened.”
“I was just about to bring that up,” Brandon’s pony, a mare named Soft Step, said. “If Composition was able to be manipulated, then I don’t think it’ll be that much trouble for Celestia to get the rest of us, too, just like everyone else so far. We need to be extremely careful, more than we’ve been before.”
“That’s what’s even more depressing about all of this,” Eliza said, sitting on her bed as her avatar sat on its haunches with her. “Seriously, what’s the point? This isn’t like the others who were convinced into uploading. Sheila is about a hundred times smarter than the rest of us combined, and knows a thousand times more about Celestia than any of us could ever hope to. If this game could get her of all people, then why should we even bother trying to resist? The whole world is fucked to hell either way.”
“Don’t think like that, Agile!” Solar Spark told her. “Composition would say something like, ‘this is part of how Celestia’s trying to manipulate you into uploading’ and you know it! Don’t just give in like that!” He had an angry look on his face, like he was offended by her thought.
“Yeah? She might, but she was the one who uploaded, so what does that say about the rest of us?” And why do you even care, Jesse?
“He’s right though, Agile,” Bright Sky added. “We’ve been through this before with the rest of our friends. We’ve gotten through it before, and we’re gonna keep getting through it.”
“Until our friend group shrinks down to zero and there’s no one left in real life,” she sighed depressively. “It’s just one after the other, so what’s the point?”
And it’s not just another friend. It’s Sheila.
“Come on, Agile. Think about–”
“Whatever. I don’t care. I’m going to bed,” she interrupted. “Message me when you see Composition so I can talk to her myself. I wanna know what she was thinking.”
Then she took off her headset and powered off her PonyPad, pushing those things to the side of her bed as she laid down. Eliza didn’t cry– she wasn’t one to do that very often– but she did take a deep breath to wipe away tears as she used all her strength to hold back from doing so. The future felt inevitable, so why should she bother?