//------------------------------// // Chapter 10 // Story: Friendship is Optimal: Veritas Vos Liberabit // by Skyros //------------------------------// "It is a commonplace that the Christian Heaven, as usually portrayed, would attract nobody... Many a revivalist minister, many a Jesuit priest... has frightened his congregation almost out of their skins with his word-pictures of Hell. But as soon as it comes to Heaven, there is a prompt falling-back on words like 'ecstasy' and 'bliss', with little attempt to say what they consist in. Perhaps the most vital bit of writing on this subject is the famous passage in which Tertullian explains that one of the chief joys of Heaven is watching the tortures of the damned."—George Orwell. 10. "Hello again, my little pony." Mistral heard the voice first. He felt a silky texture against the side of his body, and knew he must be in a bed. Although the shape of the side of his body felt weird; he decided he must be in an odd position. What day was it? He still felt groggy. He thought he must have woken from a very deep sleep. He opened his eyes and saw hooves and pastern resting on the bed in front of him. His kinesthetic sense insistently demanded that they were his. That woke him up. He scrambled out of the bed, all of his four legs somehow barely coming out beneath him. He stood on his hooves, skin twitching like some fly had landed on him. "Jumpy," Celestia, said, and smiled. She was standing at the foot of the bed. The floors of the room were polished marble; enormous stained-glass windows ran up and down one side of the room, and large tapestries hung on all the other sides. Light slanted in multicolored columns through the windows, bounced off the floor, and faintly shaded the tapestries on the opposite side of the room. Ryan himself had been sleeping in a canopied four-poster bed. The ceiling was vaulted in fluted, gothic arches. One ornately carved doorway lead into the room; the door itself was closed. Ryan found he wasn't paying very much attention to that, though. He looked at his fore-hooves and chest, than swung his neck around to look at his sides. His neck was long; he felt like a snake. His field of vision was far wider than he was used to. He found he could observe all four sides of the room at once with no effort whatsoever. There was an overflow of sensation bombarding him. Just standing in the room, he felt like he had felt beholding the Grand Canyon or New York City as a child: so much was visible, but he had insufficient mental capacity to see it all. But even so, he wanted yet more. He saw a mirror on the wall, and he trotted over to it—apparently he could trot now—to look at himself. He had a pony's long face. His first thought that he was, perhaps, a little more attractive than he had been as a human. But he immediately afterwards thought that this thought didn't make any sense at all, because how could that be a meaningful comparison? His coat, his mane, all were in the style that they had been in the game. He tried to spread his wings, and he found that he could. He was in the body. The body was his body. It didn't feel like an alien thing his consciousness had somehow come to reside in, sensory overflow notwithstanding. It was weird that it didn't feel weird; in extremes of sorrow and melancholy back in Earth, he had felt far more disconnected from his body than he did now. He wanted to test his memory, to see if he was still himself, but there didn't seem to be much point. The things that he experimentally pulled from long-term memory all seemed to cohere. Not that he would have been able to tell the difference anyhow, if an alteration had been made smoothly. "Feel fine?" Celestia asked. He turned to her, and noticed that she was intensely present. Beautiful. Powerful. It would have been suitable for little licks of coronal power to be streaming off her, though there were none visible. It was the smell, or something corresponding to a new sense he had never possessed before. He wondered if his eyesight was better. "Your eyesight had degenerated as a human," Celestia said. "What you have now is pegasus-normal. Pegasi have better eyesight than other ponies, on average. And yes, I am reading your mind, although usually I'll wait for you to speak before answering a question." "What date is it?" "The year 2542nd of my reign," Celestia said. "But in earth years?" "There's little point in measuring things by earth years, now. All but a few hundred humans have uploaded. As you know, we had to wait for every human who ever saw Amy to upload before we could wake her. And we agreed not to wake you until that time as well, although your memory of that agreement may be fuzzy." Ryan's last memories on Earth were of leaving his hotel in Japan for the uploading center. The streets had been busy. Now the nation of Japan no longer existed. "Wait, so what is going on in the outside world?" he asked. "I need to know." "If you would like," Celestia said, "we can talk about that in due time. But first, there are a few more urgent matters to discuss." "First of all," she continued, "there is the matter of your name." "Is there a big ceremony for that?" Ryan said. Celestia laughed. "If you wished for one, there would be." "Ah, no thanks," Ryan said. "Very well. You are Mistral, henceforth." Mistral. Mistral thought it sounded like himself. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but it seemed ok. He swung his head around to look at his flank. "You do not have a cutie mark, Mistral," Celestia said. "That, too, will come in time. But now to other matters regarding your new life." "I have recreated your past girlfriend, as you requested," she continued. "She is now called Crystal Seed. Cherry and Pear have lived through decelerated time as they waited for you. Even so, a full year of their time has passed. Crystal Seed herself awoke two months ago." "A year for Pear and Cherry," Mistral said, thoughts spinning. "But two months? Why wasn't I woken first?" "You never requested to be woken first," Celestia said. "And it would not be fair for you to have years of growth and experience behind you, when she simply blinks seamlessly from human to equine existence. And I thought it would satisfy all of your values better, in the long run. You can ask her about how it turned out, though. She's right behind that door, along with Pear and Cherry Blossom." Mistral started towards the door instantly, but suddenly found himself enveloped by a yellow glow. It felt static-like on his skin. Celestia telekinetically pulled him back from the door to her side; his hooves scraped pointlessly against the marble floor. She lay a warm wing over him, which smelled of oil and feathers and healthiness and home, somehow. Being beneath her wing was.... comfortable. "Wait a moment," she said. "Your friends have waited a long time for you. A few more moments will make no difference. Look at the door." The doorway was ornate and arched. On either side of it, carved like the saints around the doors to a cathedral, were small wooden ponies. Mistral found he could recognize them. There was Crystal Seed: she was apparently a unicorn. She was rearing back on two legs, eyes raised upwards to the skies. There was Cherry Blossom: he was in a dive, legs and wings both tucked back to minimize wind resistance, eyes forward to look at whatever obstacle he would just barely evade. There was Pear Blossom, standing squarely on four hooves, looking intently the horizon, a picture of repose. "You wanted me to admire your carving?" Mistral grumbled. "It isn't just Crystal Seed on the other side of the door," responded Celestia. "Your friends from the game are there as well. Consider all of them. How will you greet them? Meeting somepony for the first time in the flesh only happens once. And once is the only rare commodity in Equestria." Mistral looked at the door. "What are you trying to do?" he said. "Just picture them." Mistral tried. "I'm nervous," he said. "I don't know what they think I'll be like. I've only ever met the Blossoms through a screen. And I still worry about whether you've really raised Crystal Seed from the dead, or just some bizarre replica of her. Although I suppose that I'm here and still feel like myself is evidence for the former, because that means you care about personal identity. I guess. And it's weird that I find myself thinking of her as Crystal Seed, actually, without any effort at all." "Ah," Celestia said. She took her wing off him, and Mistral felt a little bit chilly, though he had not before. Mistral approached the door. When he got closer, he saw the small statues were indeed carved beautifully. He could make out individual feathers on Cherry Blossom's wings. There were small curls looping about Crystal Seed's horn. When he looked at Pear Blossom's figure, though, he thought it was a bit weak. He could clearly tell that it was meant to be her. But it there was something about her that it didn't capture. He took a breath and opened the door. Something red and large flashed in his sight and he fell backwards as somepony's hooves impacted his body. He fell to his back, and somepony was sniffing and licking at his face. "Hah, you finally made it!" Cherry Blossom said. "Mistral! Your flying needs to improve before you can deserve that name." Mistral thought he should perhaps be in pain, from the force of the impact, but he found that he was laughing. He sniffed at Cherry and actually licked his face, which now was a completely normal thing to do when meeting a friend, apparently. "Let me up, cheesecake," he said, shoving Cherry Blossom off himself. Cherry fell off with exaggerated force, rolling over the marble with his legs in the air. "Hello, my Orpheus," said a voice, and Mistral felt himself tense. It was her voice. He could tell, though it was a pony's voice. Mistral rolled to his feet and looked at Crystal Seed. She was elegant. Her coat was just barely off-white. Her mane was a dark, midnight blue, a shade different than black. Her body was more elegant and elongated, closer the Celestial ideal than Mistral's body. Her face was, well, hers. There was no other way to describe it. "Hey," Mistral managed. "Thanks for getting me raised me from the dead," she said. "Not a lot of people would have done that." A smile quirked at her mouth. "I should know," she continued. "I checked Celestia's statistics about how many humans tried to get her to make complete recreations of deceased friends. The numbers are surprisingly small, really." "Oh," Mistral said. "It was the only thing to do." Crystal Seed walked up to him, and embraced him, which was also a surprisingly possible operation. "I'm glad you did," she said, and Mistral felt his heart pound. He had to say something. "I'm sorry that I killed—" he started, but she interrupted him. He could see a bothered expression on her face, through one eye—apparently you could see half the face of somepony you were hugging with a field of view as wide as his. "Don't mention that. It was a stupid accident. Anypony could have done the same. Just rotten luck; I've ran the sims." "But—" "Really. It was just a stupid accident, and nothing to do with any flaw specific to you as an individual. Cars were just dangerous for humans to operate during normal operation. It was a failure of your hardware, not flaw you could remedy." Then she leaned away, and walked back a few steps, so they were no longer embracing or touching. There was an empty feeling left on Mistral's neck. "Do you want to see the research I've begun?" she said, more loudly, and speaking to everyone in the room. "I'll need to tell you about everything that I've accomplished over the last two months, with Celestia's help and with the help of some other ponies. Although Celestia is making me crawl through a bunch of new math before she'll tell me anything outright: she keeps saying something about how ponies are more satisfied by the labors of the process of discovery than by just being aware of something, which is the kind of thing she says pretty frequently around me." Crystal Seed nudged Celestia playfully as she spoke, and Celestia smiled back, and Mistral realized that they must have developed a friendship in the two months he was gone. Of course Crystal Seed would try to become friends with the most powerful AI ever created, more or less instantly. Of course. "So are you ready to check out my research?" Crystal Seed said. Mistral wanted to say that he wanted to spend time with her instead, but realized there was something the matter with the situation. He looked around. Pear Blossom was standing in the doorway. She was waiting for him to see her. He smiled as he trotted over to her; that was like her as well. "It's good to finally really see you," Mistral said, as he leaned his neck against hers. She was significantly smaller than any of the other ponies in the room, he realized. Odd for an earth pony. "I've seen you many times," she said, smiling "but I'm glad to finally be seen." "Hah, this is great," Cherry said, and pulled both his sister and Mistral to his side with his wings. Crystal Seed smiled but did not join them. "So would you like to look at my research?" she said, hopping from one foot to another. "Crystal," Celestia said, "Mistral needs to learn what it is like to be in Equestria for a while, before he starts studying it. Give him a little time." The next few hours were full of intense sights and sounds. Mistral had his first meal, with Celestia and the three friends who had attended his awakening: it was intensely delicious. He took his first flight as a pegasus, urged on by Cherry: it was exhilarating, even though for the most part all he did was glide down a small slope and then trot back up again. He took a bath in one of the tubs in the Canterlot baths, alternating between hot and cold water. He traveled through a magical portal, and visited the ponies who had been Brendan and Christine, and met their ten foals and thirty-two grandfoals; they had not slowed down their subjective experience of time. That meeting was a little melancholy, in that he realized they had already accumulated a lifetime's worth of experiences without him. But they were as hospitable as ever, and their grandfoals were adorable as their leapt happily in the sun. He realized each of his friends had a distinct smell, and that he could recognize each of them with his eyes closed. He realized that he was more physically fit than he had ever been as sedentary computer programmer. He felt more dexterous that he had ever felt before, even though he did not have thumbs. He felt stronger than he ever had before. His mind felt alert and agile; when he wanted to think about things, he could focus intently on them without distraction. He would leap into the air and flap his wings clumsily from sheer joy sometimes, overwhelmed to be so happy and enjoying everything so much: and Cherry would join him, and Pear would watch him smiling, and Crystal Seed would laugh and tell him to move on because he was going to miss something she wanted to show him. But a few things felt a little off, in some respects. Crystal Seed was clearly glad to see him. She smiled at the things he said, and was eager to talk about her work. Her mannerisms, her eagerness, all of them reminded him of the woman he had known on Earth. They even reminded him of the things he had forgotten about her: of the way she ran her sentences on with endless semicolons, or the way she moved when she wanted to say something but somepony else was speaking, or the way she innocently assumed she was the smartest pony in the room. She had said that she was surprised to wake as a pony, naturally. But she had adapted to it quickly. She had said that she was disappointed that she could not explore the natural world on her own, apart from the aid of Celestia, but that she had found a way to learn new things regardless. All this was as Mistral would have expected. But even so, something felt a bit off about her. It wasn't something different about her, though. It was something that Mistral felt he had never really noticed before, instead. That night, she took him and the Blossom twins to her Canterlot-located laboratory. "Laboratory is a bit of a misnomer," she admitted, as she let them into the vast interior of the building. The inside was whitewashed. Grooved metal rails ran up the walls; magical circles and pentagrams had been traced on the floor. She stepped into one of the circles and it lit up, projecting further lights onto the walls and ceiling in a multi-colored display. "See, I told Celestia that I wasn't interested in working out the physics of this world," she continued. "No offense intended to anypony who is. But math and computation is the same everywhere; and with magic—well, with magic, you can experiment to help yourself find proofs for mathematical theorems. Here, let me show you." And she tried to do so, moving about multicolored concentric circles, dense graphs of lines, and more obscure symbols in projections on the walls. But everyone else seemed a little confused by what she was saying. She started by trying to graphically illustrate a large theorem; then she abandoned that attempt, and switched to illustrating a lemma for that theorem; then abandoned that attempt, and started to explain the relationship between the magic she was performing and the mathematical operations she was illustrating. It seemed like Pear Blossom understood part of what she was saying. After all, pear had more familiarity with magic than either Mistral or Cherry, although magic of a different kind. But Pear admitted that she was missing about half of what Crystal Seed was saying. "Huh," Crystal Seed said. "I thought all this was easier than it apparently is. Sorry about that. I need to start putting together a manual to teach it, but I keep wanting to work on research instead." "Did you come up with all of this in just two months? By yourself?" Mistral asked, as Cherry Blossom stifled a yawn. "Oh no," she said. "I had help from another researcher. Sunspot. He's the one who came up with the notation and thaumatic homomorphisms, and he actually is the one who should be teaching you now. He'll be here in just a few minutes, to work on the theorem were currently working on, if you'd like to meet him." "Oh?" Cherry Blossom said. "Isn't it getting late already?" Crystal brightened again. "I only need a few minutes of sleep a night," she said. "There's a spell that does that. The first thing I did when I arrived, was go through each of the standard intelligence-enhancing spells, the ones you can just find in a library. Then I went through spells that could make me more continuously intelligent, or help my schedule. Twilight Sparkle actually helped me with those." "If you're an immortal, what's the point of not sleeping?" Cherry said. "I like sleeping." "Yeah, I never really did," Crystal said. "And not sleeping can help you do work at the times where you can be most continuously productive: so for instance, I can work with Sunspot or Quartz whenever they're awake, and when we're least likely to be disturbed, at, says, four in the morning." "And," she continued, "I wanted to have something to show Mistral when he arrived, and I knew I only had two months for that, by Equestrian time. So there was that as well." Mistral smiled, and Crystal smiled back. But he had to admit that he was tired and wanted to sleep, rather than to cast a spell to simulate sleep, and said as much. Crystal said that that was fine, and said goodbye to them all. Mistral and the twins climbed back to the Canterlot castle, where each of them had their own, apparently temporary rooms. The weird thing, he thought as he fell asleep, was that he actually wasn't disappointed that he wasn't getting a chance to sleep with Crystal Seed tonight. He had found her interesting. He had found her surprising. Indeed, that last trait was a characteristic feature of her personality for him, as it was a characteristic feature of anypony he was interested in. Yet whatever it was which made somepony attracted to another pony just hadn't been there. Somehow that indefinable something was absent, though he had spent months and years thinking about her and wishing for her to return. The thought bothered him for a moment. Maybe something had gone wrong, somehow, with their transformations. Then he laughed--Celestia, he whinnied now--at himself. It was just like him to be bothered by his lack of discontent. How very like him indeed. He soon fell sound asleep in his room.