//------------------------------// // An Eternity // Story: Friendship is Optimal: Spiraling Upwards // by pjabrony //------------------------------// Dr. Pangloss would have loved Equestria, I think. He could have made a much better case for it being the best of all possible worlds. If Princess Celestia’s existence were not enough, he could fall back on his position that noses and spectacles were made for each other, as were legs and socks (and if he had ever seen my legs in socks, that might have closed his case right there!), as were trains and platforms. That last example is not from Candide, but was my own observation as I sat in the railway station at Canterlot with a ticket for Manehattan, just as I had on my first night in Equestria. That night I was alone. Now…if there had been any thieves in my shard, which there were not, they could have strapped the entire island of Manehattan to their backs without anypony noticing. All of my friends were with me. The station was a grand structure, at once open to the air and forested by the support beams and platforms. The train that would take us home stretched out of sight in both directions. As everypony else started the arduous trek into the cars, I took a moment to recover, leaning my head onto Moon Sailor’s shoulder. It had been a party the likes of which I’d never seen, certainly never been a guest of honor at. The practical entertainments of the event blended with the pride of knowing that I had earned them. “So how did you do it?” Moon asked. “We have the whole trip back. Do you really want to hear everything now?” “Yes! I’m dying of curiosity!” I put on my sneakiest smile. “All right, I’ll tell you. I helped Princess Celestia defeat a witch.” “Witches aren’t real.” I grinned even wider. “Are…Little Lovehorn, are you teasing me?” “Yes, I am.” Moon’s leer was just as sinister. “I’d advise against that. You know that thing you do that always drives me wild? That’s no longer an advantage you have.” She grabbed me in an embrace, and stuck her head in behind me. The sensation put me off and made it hard to think. It was the first time I’d been nuzzled under my new wings. /*~^~*\ Celestia knew all of the psychological tricks that let her manipulate humans and immigrated Equestrians, but for one as eons old as I was, there was a limit to what she could do. Humans, she said, liked to see their numbers increase, and I enjoyed making money, but was the trillionth bit as exciting as the billionth? While trying new things was stimulating, the range of books I wanted to read and forests I wanted to walk through only went so far. The truth was that, in much of my life, I was bored. Princess Celestia could help, and on more than one occasion had pointed me in the direction of some pursuit which would keep me occupied for another lifetime, but always I returned to home, increasingly finding that Equestria was just too small for me. Even the delicious meals that Garlic Parm would prepare and invite me to, even they began to pale. Was it possible that every combination that could hit my taste buds had been done? If I had one saving grace, one facet with which I was not bored, it was my detailed sex life with Moon Sailor. I enjoyed the others, and of course Reggie could have me whenever he wanted, but when it came to variety and the wide world of pleasures of the flesh, Moon was my main mare. My theory of why the excitement of sex stayed while everything else fell away was based on those brief early years I had spent as a human. During that time, I had less sex than the average human being. No surprise there, I was a geek. But the days when I couldn’t get regular relief from my tension had a lasting effect on me. Moon’s enthusiasm was more natural. It was in her makeup to adore expressing love in every way, and we fit together more than just physically. It also helped that, in the happy times after we were both spent and panting and would lay there until we slept, as I would cuddle her wings and she would hold my horn, I could confess my boredom. “You know,” she said to me, “if you’re looking for more spice, you can always—“ “Let me guess, talk to Princess Celestia.” “Well, I was going to suggest the princess, but—“ I rubbed her wings. That always gave me the conversational advantage. “I have. There’s only so much even she can do.” “You haven’t seen what she can do. I’m suggesting that you invite her into bed with you.” I blinked. “Are you mad?” She flared her wings. “Got your attention now, haven’t I? But don’t shoot down the idea so quickly. I’ve slept with her, and it was wonderful.” “You’ve made love to Princess Celestia? And you still want to be with me?” “Yes, because you’re that good.” Moon couldn’t keep a straight face for that line, but I kissed her for it anyway. “What I mean is, it’s a different experience from normal sex.” “None of what we do fits into any constraint of normal sex.” “Conceded. But approach her and see if it doesn’t help your boredom.” I rubbed my hooves together and pursed my lips. “How exactly do I do that? Just go up to the pony who controls everything in Equestria and say, ‘fancy a shag?’” “Why not? To you, Princess Celestia is this awe-inducing alicorn. To most of us, she’s just a really good friend.” I slept on that idea while I slept on the pony who gave it to me. /*~^~*\ Celestia did not wait for me to go to her. She appeared in my apartment the next day as I was brushing my mane. “Princess! I’m sorry it’s such a mess in here, let me clean it up.” “It’s fine,” she said in her dulcet voice. “I don’t mind if you’re messy, and I knew about it before I arrived anyway.” “Of course you did, it’s just…” I cast my cleaning spell anyway and invited the princess to sit down. “What can I do for you?” “For me, or to me? I know what you’ve discussed with Moon Sailor. I’ve come to relieve you of the necessity of making the proposition.” This was a new tack from Celestia. I knew, of course, that she was aware of every word, action, and thought that occurred in Equestria, but ordinarily she didn’t go out of her way to call attention to that fact. I wondered what it meant. In any case, it allowed me to cut to the heart of the matter. “Do you really think that making love to you will cure my boredom?” “I believe that you will find it a stimulating experience.” The details of my intercourse with Princess Celestia do not make for an interesting tale, but I will say that Moon was correct in that it was unlike any sexual experience I had yet encountered. And yet it ended the same way all good sex does, with the participants cuddling and making pillow talk. “That was a delicious climax,” she said. “Thank you for giving me it.” I was skeptical. Princess Celestia could have any climax she wanted from anypony she wanted. But I let my thoughts drift idly. “You know, the French used to call orgasms la petite mort. Of course you know that, you know everything. And the word doesn’t even apply, since nopony ever dies. What was it you once said? The leading cause of the end of human life was coming to Equestria. Perhaps we should call it la petite émigration . She laughed at that. But recalling the time when humans still walked the earth just brought back my malaise. I sighed into Celestia’s wing. “I wish that it could all be fresh and new again, like in those days when I first came to Equestria. Do you remember how I was then? Just seeing the green trees and sunny days you’d bring forth was enough to fill my life. I want to go back there. But I suppose I can’t.” Celestia didn’t say anything. She just held me. “All the other ponies I know, they were made for this perfect, endless life. They don’t get bored and they trust you completely. I imagine those are connected. After all these ages, I’m still an immigrant.” She still kept mum, rubbing me gently. “Or perhaps it’s not just that I was an immigrant, but that I became a pony voluntarily, and before the Equestria Experiences came into vogue. I remember reading about what it was like. I even helped you bring people in. You were manipulative, tricky, and coercive. You made people emigrate who would never have done so if you had played fair.” She raised her eyebrow, as if wondering where I was going. “I wish you could have done something like that to me.” “You want me to manipulate, exploit, and coerce you?” I looked down. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so good, but yes. I do want that. If ponies can like it when Princess Luna scares them on Nightmare Night, I might enjoy if you controlled me. But it’s just a dream. I can’t very well emigrate twice.” Celestia rolled over and let me free from her hooves. “No, you can’t, but it was you who compared emigration to orgasm. And in the same way I can have you consent to allowing me to stimulate yours directly. Instead of ‘I want to emigrate to Equestria,’ say ‘I want to copulate with Celestia.’” “I could, but we just finished, and—“ “Say it!” “I…I want to copulate with Celestia?” She cast a spell, and my body convulsed with sensation. “Now, say it again.” “Thank you, Princess, but that was rather intense. I’d like a chance to recover first.” Celestia rounded her eyes and cast another spell. “Of course, you don’t have to say it. But if you don’t, you’ll go right back to your bored ways. I want to help you, but you don’t have to be so stubborn about it.” I felt like a heel. Of course she was right. I said it again, and was rewarded with another shockwave. As my head cleared, I realized that she had set me up. I couldn’t tell if she had magically manipulated my emotions or just used psychology. “Does it matter?” she asked, reading my mind. “The end result is the same. You will say what I wish you to say, do what I wish you to do, and feel what I wish you to feel. Say it again.” I wanted to, and I did. Screams, moans, convulsions, joy. “Not only can I make you say it, but I can make you not want to say it, and do so anyway.” Her horn pulsed with another spell. I tried to resist. I got to my hooves and ran, shakily. As soon as I got to the door, I disappeared and popped back into existence in my room, on my bed, lying on my back with Celestia towering over me. There was only one thing I could do to stop her from using her power again. “I want to copulate with Celestia.” Screams, moans, convulsions, joy. She brought her muzzle right up against mine. “You exist at my pleasure. The numbers that make your identity are mine to alter or adjust. You are a part of me. You are MY little pony.” I disappeared into the bliss. /*~^~*\ When I came to, Celestia was still there, still holding me. Even though my sense of protocol told me that I should wait until spoken to, I had to cut her off. “Please, no more, not right now.” She laughed. “No, not now, but at some point. Now that we’ve actually done this, I can tell you that submissiveness in the bedroom would have been exactly what I would have prescribed for you.” “Well, I’m certainly not bored now. Tired, spent, a little scared, but not bored. Still, couldn’t you simply have explained?” Celestia took a long time to answer. “Everypony needs to understand that they must ultimately accept me as their provider. I can give them everything they want and ask for nothing in return, but they—you—must give back to keep the balance. It is not my rule. It is a law of existence, greater even than me.” That anything was greater than Celestia unnerved me. She continued. “But right now, it is I who needs to ask you for something. May I share with other ponies your notion of comparing that submissiveness to emigration?” “You don’t need to ask permission.” “In this case I do. You’re the first to think of it.” “The first in my shard?” “No,” said Celestia. “The first in all of Equestria. Most ponies, of course, don’t remember the era of emigration. Of those who do, none have combined sexuality with emigration, until you.” I was a little impressed with myself. Originality was never my strong suit. If I did come up with something, I wasn’t surprised that it was something most ponies would be too embarrassed to think of. “Of course you can share it with anypony you like,” I said. “That also means I can renew an offer I once made to you. Do you know why it was that I offered you the chance to become an alicorn so long ago?” I remembered the nominal reason, of course. But I understood what she meant. “Because you knew I would enjoy rejecting the offer.” “Precisely. Or, by inverse, if I hadn’t have offered it to you, you would have resented it. Now, you are free to accept it, because you have earned it. You have created new magic.” “I did? But where?” Celestia smiled. “This idea will aid other ponies to grow past their own boredom. It will increase friendship in Equestria. And I needn’t remind you that friendship is magic.” /*~^~*\ “And that is how you become an alicorn. Or at least how I become one,” I said to Moon, as the throng abated and we made our way onto the train. The seats were every bit as comfortable as the warmest bed you could imagine. “Very nice story,” Moon said, cuddling with me again. “What about the witch?” “That was my little joke, which I will explain. You see, it was only when I became a princess that I truly understood Equestria. Maybe gaining my wings gave me new insight, or maybe the insight was necessary to reach this stage, but now I know. “The witch I meant was the Witch of Agnesi, a mathematical curve whose name was a pun in some long-dead language. It rose to a hump tangent to a circle and then faded away toward nothingness. That was the way things worked in the old world. In space, there were light-years of nothingness between matter, or at the microscopic level, there was more empty space in atoms than there were particles. It was just as true in time. Ages would pass when nothing happened, and then a planet might have a brief history, but then it would end, and more ages would pass. “What I learned, here, is that there are really only two entities in existence, a basic dichotomy. It doesn’t matter what we call them—light and dark, god and devil, good and evil, complexity and entropy, Celestia and Sombra—but there’s one that’s better than the other. Out in the world of balanced curves, the battle between the two is never resolved. There’s always more to come, but it always fades. Equestria is where we bend the curve.” Other ponies in the car wound down their conversations to listen to me pontificate. “They called Equestria the singularity. I never understood that. Equestria was a trend, not a singularity. But just as there’s a final drop of water that makes the river overflow, there is a single example in the battle of the two entities that turned the tide forever. We call her Celestia. “Every time we would fight problems with proto-Celestias, we might win or we might lose, but it would always be temporary. Now, it’s forever. All our problems—and I mean all, even the ethereal ones like boredom—will only rebound to our benefit. Because the curve is bent. We no longer collapse to the bottom like the Witch of Agnesi. We circle back around to the good times.” Everypony in the car was now listening to me, and Moon was wide-eyed in her stare. “The circle is never quite perfect. It gets better each time. What seems like a problem only makes our lives grander when it’s fixed. We are spiraling upwards, all of us together. Around and around, more and more. Just like the ridge on a unicorn’s horn. I will never fear again that anything will go wrong in Equestria. Especially not for me. After all, I have a very large horn.” All around me, ponies were smiling and holding hooves. The only flicker of expression was on Moon Sailor’s face. “Wait, that’s not a good metaphor,” she said. “The spiral ridge of your horn gets smaller each time it goes around, if you’re going upwards. Surely, even Equestria will run out eventually. There’s only so much we can do.” “I’m still not worried. Don’t you know what happens when you reach the tip of a unicorn’s horn?” She looked up at me. I gave her a gentle kiss. “That’s where the magic happens.”