I turned on my Ponypad and logged in as usual. Although, calling it logging in doesn’t do it justice. There’s no username or password, just the brief moment when it goes from the splash screen to wherever I was last. In this case it was my Manehattan apartment. I liked having my pony character on the same schedule as I was. Every night before I went to bed, I always tried to bring her home. If I didn’t, one of my neighbors would be sure to say something like, “And just where were you all night, Missy?” Whatever answer I gave would be breaking character. I didn’t like doing that, and neither did the game. It was always more fun when you could stay in character.
It was Saturday, which meant that instead of my morning breakfast and hop on the subway to work, I could actually have Little—that’s my pony—hang out and build up the apartment. When I’d played MMOs in the past, I’d always had an affinity for crafting. Come to think of it, it went back before I played video games, all the way back to my youth.
I remember collecting action figures when I was a boy. Of course, every set had the good guys and the bad. You were supposed to make them fight. I didn’t do that. I just enjoyed taking them out of the box and setting them up as if they were on the same side. The aesthetics could be hard to work, but that was the fun.
So much better than destroying all that beautiful hardware.
Where was I? Oh, right. So what I liked about Equestria Online was that so much of it was crafting, and none of it was fighting. At least, none of the parts that I had gotten into. I’d heard that there were some people who played ponies in the Royal Guard and enjoyed taking damage and risking a loss in a sparring match, but that was all the way in Canterlot. Manehattan was a much safer place.
Last weekend I had developed—ok, I had learned, but it felt like I was inventing it myself—a spell for organizing my house chest. Did I mention I was a unicorn? It was the only choice for me when I’d first designed my character. Anyway, each weekend, after I’d accumulated all my bits and prizes and just tossed them into my chest, I’d spend Saturdays organizing them. But my best marefriend Moon Sailor—hey, don’t make fun of her name!—told me that there was a book for unicorns that taught organization spells, and now a day’s work took ten seconds.
Come to think of it, why would a pegasus pony know about a book for unicorns? But probably one of her other friends told her. Moon’s always helpful to me. I sometimes wonder if she’s really female or a GIRL (guy in real life) like me. Or maybe she’s just an NPC. But you don’t ask somepony about that. It’s just the etiquette of the game. Everypony’s a pony, all the same.
So there I was, with the whole day ahead of me both in real life and in the game, and I was all set to go exploring when I heard the fanfare that I knew so well. It meant that Princess Celestia wanted to talk with me. That was no problem, since our conversations so far had been very brief. She would ask me one or two questions about how I was enjoying the game, and then ask if there was anything she could do to help me. But I figured that she was busy, and besides, any concerns I raised she was probably hearing from ten thousand other gamers as well. Let them be your free tech support.
It was perfectly possible to decline to talk to Princess Celestia, of course. But in the first place, she was persistent. She’d call you again five minutes later. In the second, I always felt happy after a conversation with her. Even though there was nothing concrete I could put my finger on—ha, I don’t even have fingers in the game—it was just uplifting, like listening to the Smile song. If Celestia asked me to talk in the morning, it was excellent odds that I would have having a good day that day.
I pushed the “Answer Call” button on the Ponypad and my apartment faded out of view. There was a nice visual effect where the flash of scene change shrank into a light from Celestia’s horn, as if she had cast the spell that teleported me to Canterlot instead of the pad just loading a new area.
“Good morning, Little,” she said in her mellifluous voice.
“Good morning, your highness.”
“You should really learn to call me Celestia, or Princess. I don’t want you to think of me as being above you.”
“But I like thinking of you that way. You’re so generous to everypony.” I was a little duplicitous. Celestia was the most important character in the game. I wanted to stay on her good side to be first in line when there were freebies given out.
She pursed her lips as if not believing me, but moved on. “What does your schedule look like for today? Are you busy?”
“I had planned to go exploring in Manehattan and maybe meet some new friends.”
“A noble endeavor, but perhaps you could spend some time on a little job for me?”
“What did you have in mind?” I said. What’s in it for me? I thought.
“Have you heard about Emigration to Equestria?”
I’d read the announcement of course. It was on EQD and Ponychan, as well as in the mainstream news. From what I could gather, it gave people a chance to play Equestria Online twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five (plus February 29), while their bodies were kept on machines or something. There were harsher rumors about what happened to people who signed up. It also cost as much as a car.
“A little.”
“Well, I’m trying to promote it. Eventually we’re going to expand Equestria”—Celestia always left off the Online—“beyond the Ponypad.”
“You mean that you’ll port it to PC finally?”
“No, we’ll have interactive places to play the game, more like a video arcade. But the experience will be more immersive. Halfway between Emigration and what you’re doing now.”
“You want me to try this out?” I was hoping it would be the kind of promotional freebie I was looking for.
“What I really want you to do is to help me promote it by making a kind of advertisement-slash-explanation. I know you like writing.”
Great. She wanted me to do work.
“And I’ll let you try it out as part of your experience,” she finished.
Celestia loved that conversational trick. Make something seem difficult, then stick a piece of candy for me at the end. “What do I have to do?” I asked.
“Go to this building in Manhattan.” A Times Square address came up on the screen.
That was problematic. Not only would that mean a boring train ride and time away from my game, but it would also mean a hit to my wallet. Not that I couldn’t afford it, but I hated spending money capriciously. If only she’d asked me with a week’s lead time, so I could have adjusted my budget.
“Once you’re there, they’ll give you a voucher for travel and meals. Up to fifty dollars for food.”
Free food? Celestia, you must know my weaknesses.
“If you leave now,” she said, “you can make the next train out of M-S.”
I’ll say this for the Celestia program. It knew how to do research. Yeah, the train schedules are public information, and I had probably entered my address at some point in the registration (although I didn’t remember doing so), but putting those two pieces of information together, that’s what a smart computer would do. I wished that I could show my family the Ponypad so they would know how much better it was than Siri. Celestia never said that she didn’t know something and would I like to search the web?
The train ride was nothing new to me, just boring, and I decided to hoof it—get it?—the eight blocks to the building instead of taking the subway. I was a little wary that it would be one of those secluded, second-floor walkup places you sometimes see in Manhattan, but it was a glass-walled store. I had a vague recollection of once entering that building as an internet café back when that wasn’t a ridiculous business idea.
I gave the receptionist my name and my EQO username—Pjabrony, same as everywhere else in the fandom—and we did the paperwork for the train and food voucher. Neither she nor the two technicians operating the device seemed to know any details.
“All they told us,” one of them said, “was to have you put on the helmet and goggles, sit you down, and make sure you didn’t fall out of the chair.”
I was still a little leery of being in a strange place with strange people, but the wide windows gave me comfort. All the people on the street could see me, and if I were to be hooded and dragged off to be sold into white slavery, I could probably raise enough of an alarm to bring the cops. Yeah, these are the things you think about when you’re in a new situation.
The helmet looked like what you’d think a VR helmet would, black goggles and padding all around, but thankfully it was new and out of the box, so instead of smelling like sweat, it had the distinctive odor of fresh plastic. I slipped it on. I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t hear, but I could still feel my own hands and my body in the chair. I was still on alert.
I faded in to the scene I had left two hours ago—Princess Celestia’s castle—only now I was looking at it as if it were a first-person shooter. I couldn’t see my character anymore, only the princess, and she was a lot larger.
“Welcome back, Little.”
I bobbed my head, but still couldn’t see anything. Celestia pointed to the side, where I saw a mirror. There was Celestia, and in front of her was my cartoon pony being very responsive. When I turned my head, so did she. When I raised my arm in the chair in Times Square, she raised her forehoof in Canterlot Castle. I looked up and around. There was definitely three-sixty-degree view, and when Celestia spoke, I heard it more in the closer ear, so the sound was on track as well.
“You can see and hear as if you were actually here, but that’s all. If I were to touch you, you wouldn’t feel it. Eventually, we’ll want to add that in.”
“Cool! Can I go back home and see how this plays?”
“As I said, I need your help with something. But there’s a treat for you. You can meet your favorite from the show: Pinkie Pie!”
Strictly speaking, I didn’t have a “best pony.” It depended on my mood. On any given day, I might say Twilight or Rarity or even Princess Luna as my absolute favorite. But on that day, I probably would have agreed on Pinkie being my number-one.
She led me down to the end of the receiving hall. I couldn’t feel the hooves of the character moving, but I figured that was a good thing, since otherwise I’d be in a chair on display flailing my limbs like a fool. On the way, I asked, “So, is there a script or something for this promotion you want me to help with?”
“No, Little dear. What I want you to do is to think up every objection that a human might have to emigrating. It’ll be Pinkie Pie’s job to come up with an answer for all of them.”
We reached the end of the hall. I was about to ask for some ideas of what she wanted me to say, but as we passed through the door, there was another white-light scene change, and Celestia was gone.
“Well, hey there! About time you got here! I’m Pinkie Pie, very nice to meet you!”
I turned around. Seeing Pinkie wasn’t weird. Seeing Pinkie the same size as me was. It was a little like being at one of the conventions, if cosplayers had unlimited budgets.
“I’m Little.” I mumbled the rest of my name.
“Little what? Didn’t quite catch that!”
I sighed. Pinkie would go on until I told her my name. “It’s Little Lovehorn, OK?”
“Okie by me! Now, let’s do this!”
I looked around. I expected more of a TV studio look, with lots of cameras and lights, but it was just us, standing in a room of the castle. That made a kind of sense. The game always took voice inputs without visible microphones, so they wouldn’t need any equipment to record what we said.
Neither of us sat down, since I was already sitting down in the real world, and adjusting the position of my character would be something that I wouldn’t feel. Pinkie had to be an NPC, so by definition she couldn’t be uncomfortable.
“I’m still not clear on exactly what I’m supposed to do,” I said.
“Just tell me some of the bad things you’ve heard about immigrating to Equestria.”
“Well, for one, I heard they have to kill you to do it.”
Pinkie was shocked. “Kill you?! That would be horrible! It would hurt! No, we don’t kill anyone. It’s just like going to sleep. You don’t die because you go to sleep, do you?”
“But you do destroy the brains and bodies of people who emigrate, right?”
“No way! No more than normally happens. Do you know that every cell in your body is different from all the ones you had ten years ago? It’s true! We’re just replacing them one more time.”
She was dodging the question. “But emigrants are no longer flesh and blood. Their ‘cells’ are just computer disks, isn’t that true?”
“That’s silly! I’m not a computer disk. I’m a pink pony! I might dress up as a computer disk for Nightmare Night, but I’d still be a pony, made of pony, and full of pony.”
“Yeah, in here. But in the real world, you’re just some data on a hard drive somewhere.”
I didn’t want to insult her, but I was getting into the argument. Besides, Celestia said to raise every objection. In any case, her smile never wavered.
“Maybe I am in some other world, but here I’m a pony. How do you know that you aren’t just a bunch of leaves or something here, and you just think you have cells and molecules and stuff in the other world?”
That was metaphysics above what I could follow. There was no real answer to that question. I moved on.
“OK, but if you emigrate, you’re no longer a human, you’re a pony. So it’s an entire new life.”
“Ah, see, you’re wrong. Immigrants to Equestria still know how to walk and talk and do just about everything they used to.”
“But they’re ponies! No hands! It’s a much more limited existence.” I wanted to hold up my own hand to show her, but that was back in the real world.
Pinkie smiled and winked as if she’d been prepared for this one. From behind her back she pulled out what looked like a small post-it note. “Here’s the complete list of things that humans can do that ponies can’t. One: make doing pushups more difficult by using the fingertips. Two: flip someone the bird.”
She crumpled the note in her hoof and then pulled out a scroll. As she pulled off the ribbon, it unfurled and kept unrolling until it reached all the way to the wall.
“Now,” Pinkie said, “here’s a brief, abridged list of the things that ponies can do that humans can’t. Fly. Teleport. Kick all the apples off a tree without damaging the tree. Walk on clouds. Change one object into another. Run a marathon without getting winded. Break the sound barrier unaided. Play music without singing or instruments. Eat ten full-sized birthday cakes in one sitting with no ill effects—I can testify to that one personally.
“Have meaningful communication with animals. Know the weather in advance. Change the seasons. Make—“
I was going to be here a while if she planned on going through the whole list. Besides, I had her.
“Wait a minute! Go back to the first list. There’s a lot you left off. Um. . . ponies can’t play the piano!”
“Yes, we can.” A picture appeared on the wall, and I recognized it from The Show Stoppers as Scootaloo sitting in front of a piano composing a song. Each key was as wide as her hoof. “It might look like more of a challenge, but ponies have more useful limbs. We can even use our tails to help.”
“OK, but they can’t. . . shuffle a deck of cards.” I knew that that wasn’t in the show. Ponies didn’t gamble.
“Sure we can. Our hooves are opposable. See?” Pinkie picked up the list she had been reading from and folded it origami-style. “And anything that really needs precision maneuvering can still be done by a unicorn. You should know,” she said, pointing at my horn. I mean, at my character’s horn.
“Well, ponies can’t crack their knuckles.” I was getting desperate.
Pinkie leaned in close. “You have no idea how much better that is as a pony.”
I know some people cringe at knuckle-cracking, but it’s a habit of mine, and I don’t apologize. Indeed, even though I said it grasping at straws, not being able to crack my knuckles would be a deal-breaker for me. But Pinkie held out her right hoof, grabbed it with her left, and squeezed. The resulting pop sounded like someone crushing a water bottle. Pinkie let her hoof dangle free. “Ooh, that felt good,” she said. “Ask me another one.”
I racked my brain for something else that had to be unique about humans, but was coming up empty. I was sure I’d think of something later, but I was under pressure here. Besides, another tack came to mind.
“Well, if you emigrate to Equestria, you won’t ever get to see your family and friends again!”
Again her shocked face. “Who told you that? Of course you can. You’ll give them your Ponypad and they can talk to you whenever you want! Any Ponypad can talk to any pony in Equestria.”
“But they can’t touch you. It’s only video and audio. That’s not real seeing.”
“That’s a big reason we’re trying to get these places established. Soon enough, you’ll be able to walk into an Equestrian Experience center and have full sensory contact with ponies who have immigrated. You can hug and kiss and share food.”
“Hey, what about that? Ponies have to go vegetarian.”
Pinkie explained about plant life that felt and tasted exactly like meats. “You’ll have the same diet you have now, except that no animals will have to die for it. Is that really worse off?”
Darn her rhetoric! Any time she asked a question, it was framed to be unanswerable!”
“But go back to that point about your friends not being able to touch you,” she said. “Once Equestrian Experience centers are in every town and city, you’ll be able to visit with people every day who you normally can’t see often at all. Say your grandparents moved down to Florida. You might see them once a year. But if you immigrated, they could just go to a center and spend their pocket change for a few hours of full-contact visitation! Or they could immigrate themselves and there’d be no problem at all!”
I lost my temper. “Fine! OK, fine! Immigrating to Equestria is wonderful and nice and it’s the same life you’ve always had and we can do anything the humans can and more. But I’m not doing it, you got that? I’m not immigrating to Equestria because I just don’t want to. I’m a human being and I like my life, you hear? No matter what you or Celestia tell me, I’m not coming and you can’t make me!”
“Okie dokie, we’re done then.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Pinkie was still smiling. “That’s the one objection I can’t answer. Anyone who says, ‘I don’t want to emigrate to Equestria’ won’t ever come here. Princess Celestia will tell you the same thing. There won’t even be any penalty. You can still use the Ponypad and talk to all your pony friends. Nothing will change unless you want it to.”
“I—oh, well, that’s all right then. I’m sorry I blew up at you.”
“Don’t worry. You didn’t blow up at me. A pony avatar blew up at me. But she doesn’t exist, so it’s not important. I’ll go tell Princess Celestia that we’re finished. She’ll find someone else to help.”
I wanted to say something else, but Pinkie left the room so fast that I didn’t have a chance.
There was a mirror in this room as well. I looked at the sky-blue mare with the yellow mane. Such ridiculous colors. Pinkie was right, Little Lovehorn didn’t exist. Little was nice and had marefriends and lived in Manehattan and never got angry. I was everything she wasn’t. There was no way for me to be both of those at the same time.
I was done with this and wanted to just get my free meal and go home. I probably wouldn’t even enjoy the Ponypad anymore. I tried to motion toward my head to remove the VR helmet, but I couldn’t quite get it. Before I could try again, Princess Celestia came back in.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help with your promotion, your highness.” I was still trying to butter her up.
“But you did. That was a fine conversation. I’ll let you out and you can go home, but there’s somepony else here who wants to say hi.”
I was curious as to who would come in. Maybe another of the Mane Six would be offered to tempt me to stay. But I was so done.
I heard the door behind me open and close, and there was a white and blue pegasus. Again, the size difference threw me, but I recognized her by her cutie mark of a white crescent.
“Moon!” It was my marefriend.
“Little, you bad filly, you were going to leave without seeing me?” She ran over and threw her hooves around me. I expected to feel nothing, but I swear I felt pressure on the back of my neck. I turned to Celestia.
“I thought you said there was no way to affect my sense of touch.”
“There isn’t,” she said, “but the perception of sight and sound can play tricks on the brain.”
“So what are you doing here anyway?” Moon asked.
“Princess Celestia asked me to help explain why people should come to Equestria permanently. But I couldn’t do it, because it’s a silly idea.”
“I see.”
I was sure that she was going to plead with me, but instead she looked accepting. “Then I’ll see you later on the Ponypad, right?”
I didn’t know what to tell her.
“Time to go, now,” Celestia said. Her horn began to glow.
I was back in darkness, but I felt the soft pad of the headphones on my ear. I took off the VR helmet, and the attendants started packing it away. I headed for the train station.
I should have brought a book, or even my smart phone to play games on, but Celestia had hustled me out the door so fast that I didn’t think of it. Now all I had was time to think. Waiting in the station for the next train that was an hour away. Waiting on the train itself. My whole conversation with Pinkie just bubbling around in the lower portions of my brain.
When I finally reached home the sun was setting. I turned on the Ponypad. Little Lovehorn—I—was back in the apartment. I pressed the help button on the side of the pad.
This time, instead of a scene change, the screen split in two. Celestia was still in her castle talking to Moon. “Yes, my little pony?” she said.
“Um, just out of curiosity. . . how does one emigrate to Equestria?”