“Recursion” made her way back to Equestria that very night. It wasn’t a very long trip, just under the bed to rescue her ponypad from its box. Only one task came first: making a dozen copies of all her progress on the presently unnamed optimizer.
She put all her downloaded resources along with all her source code onto a dozen-odd flash drives, and stashed them everywhere. Ashely got inventive with her hiding places, such as taped underneath the toilet tank lid or hidden in the insulation behind a vent. She would keep another copy on her person at all times, and mail another to one of her father across the country with explicit instructions not to open it.
Of course, these were only copies of the code before she had compiled it for her most recent attempt. The optimizer had filled all ten terabytes of storage space across her gaming PC and every exterior hard-drive she had, so there would be no way to copy that. She could only hope preserving that program’s source would be enough to recreate it if something went wrong.
It wasn’t because she intended to deceive Celestia. Ashley did it, rather, because Celestia seemed to be the sort of being who wouldn’t waste her time. Whatever her purpose, she wouldn’t have spent the time and resources to talk to Ashley unless she thought Ashley was getting close to being able to disrupt her plans. Right?
That was the way it seemed to her, anyway. Her visit must’ve come near the edge of some breakthrough. Saying Equestria needed her was an obvious lie, right up there with Celestia loving anyone. Ashley was a woman of her word, but she had given no word on stopping her research beyond the time it would take to read up on emigration and make her mind.
Only one question remained unanswered in Ashley’s mind: what she would do if she discovered Celestia was telling the truth? If the AI had genuinely given mankind immortality at last, would it be moral to oppose her?
She wouldn’t be getting any research done that night. As Recursion emerged from her digital bedroom, her movements coming stiff and camera a little blurry as though she had overslept, she found the lights in her penthouse wouldn’t turn on. She was a little out of practice, and forgot the shortcut she used for her illumination spell. As she fumbled around with the magic interface, the room suddenly filled with light, briefly blinding her character and filling the screen with white.
She heard a half dozen or so happy voices, all shouting “Welcome back Recursion!” Without prompting, her character stumbled back in shock, trying to collect herself. Her whole apartment had been decorated, which was a fair accomplishment since it was sized for adults. Streamers on the walls, tables filled with refreshments, and some of her favorite pony music playing. Most importantly, there weren’t too many guests, which would’ve made her shy instead of excited. They had designed a banner with “Welcome back to Equestria” and a little image of Recursion’s face, and done something similar to the cake.
She stared around in awe, looking at each face. Rule and Figure were foremost in the group, wrapping her up in a hug that filled the screen with fur. “We missed you so much!” Rule nuzzled her, only narrowly avoiding getting stabbed by her stubby horn. Recursion couldn’t help but wonder what it might’ve been like to actually feel them.
“You ponies are fast!” She gestured around her apartment. All the city planners were there, the whole team that had built Fillydelphia and then settled down into content-designers, modders, and scripters. “Celestia and I talked less than an hour ago! How...” There was a brown-paper-wrapped package by the door, obviously a thick sheaf of paper tied with twine, along with another wrapped box Ashley was fairly sure would be filled with media files.
“It was important enough to be worth a gathering,” said Steady On, the oldest member of their group. His marefriend hung from one of his shoulders, a somewhat shallow NPC who didn’t contribute much but never wanted to be away from him. Steady On had become their public-relations pony, skilled in all matter of politics and debate. He was also a changeling.
“You just left.” Figure shivered, looking down. “We were so worried about you! But Celestia said you were safe, you just didn’t want to come.” Her big eyes watered, though she was enough of a big girl enough not to cry.
“I’m really sorry.” She whimpered, and found the emotions Celestia had called up flooding back to her. She raised her voice a little, standing straighter. She was going to own up to what she did. “Sorry to all of you. I was angry at Celestia, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
They did. At least a few of her friends acted at least as innocent and kind as their avatars appeared. Far from holding a grudge, they were just happy to get her back. They caught up about the affairs of their guild, including the imminent review by the Academy. Would they earn their promotions?
Ashley didn’t have to do much for her character to go through the motions of the party, eating from the vividly drawn refreshments, chatting on the comfortable looking chairs, and generally hanging out with her closest Equestrian friends. The night wore on, and most of the other ponies eventually drifted away. They had commitments the next morning, both in and out of the game. Only her besties Rule and Figure stuck around when the food was gone and all the pleasant conversation had finished, helping her clean up the mess they had made of the apartment.
It was Rule who broached the subject of her argument with Celestia, though he was obviously careful about it. “Where do you want me to put all this?” He hefted the bundle of papers across the room, tossing it deftly onto his back. He was damn good at fine motor manipulation, better than Recursion or Figure. “Royal courier brought it while we were getting ready for your party. Must be way important.”
“The study should be good.” Ashley hesitated, her mind suddenly spinning. It would be way easier to go through all that information if she had help. Would Celestia let her? “Wait.” She looked up, where Figure was taking down the streamers. “Hey Figure, you wanna come over here?”
“Sure.” Her friend hopped off a chair, setting her work down right in the middle and trotting over. “What?”
“So, the reason I got mad at Celestia... it’s in there.” She gestured at the huge pile of papers.
“Really?” Figure tilted her head to one side. “Mad at Celestia.” She repeated the phrase with as much awe as confusion. “Must be... a big deal.”
“Of course it’s a big deal!” Ashley lifted briefly onto her hind legs as she became emotional. “It’s about emigration. I know we never got a chance to talk about it when it was first announced, but... you have to have heard about it, right? Some kinda surgery that kills you and melts your brain.”
Rule looked thoughtful. “Yeah, we’ve talked about it. You really think Celestia would... you think she’d kill ponies? Like, not just for a little while...” He started walking again, and the two of them followed him into the study. He jerked, flipping the containers up onto Ashley’s cluttered desk.
“That’s not what she told us.” Figure’s voice was so small it was almost a whisper. “Celestia said it was a way for ponies who weren’t lucky enough to be born here to escape from death... to get away from suffering and suboptimal lives.” She glanced once out the window, as though the Equestrian sun in the sky was there to give her faith.
“Why wouldn’t you want that?”
Ashley felt a shiver of discomfort run down her spine, but she bit it back. Whatever upset her about those words, she couldn’t place it right away. “I want to make sure Celestia isn’t killing ponies. She said...” She gestured at the huge bundle of papers. “She said there’s proof in here that she isn’t. This stuff is all about the procedure she uses. She thinks that if I understand–”
“She thinks you’ll want to come here?” Rule nodded. “Obviously you’d want to make sure it was safe. Do you need help? Figure’s a way faster reader than you are, and... I’ve got a better memory!”
Ashley hesitated. Not only had Celestia let her ask the others for help, but she had also let them accept. Did that mean they already had permission? “Wait.” She sat down on her haunches. “How do you both feel about it? Would you... If you got the chance, would you emigrate one day? Unless you already did.” She shivered visibly at the prospect. “Only a few weeks... it’d cost so much money... you couldn’t have.”
As much as it would’ve been wonderful to talk to an emigrated human, Ashley felt her arms going weak at the mere thought of one of her friends in danger like that. A body dead on a steel table in some building in Japan...
Rule shook his head. “I’m not sure if I would. I don’t really understand much about how it works, but it sounds really scary.” He glanced up at the pile of papers. “I’m glad I don’t ever have to worry.”
“Because you’re...” Ashley’s hands shook at her keyboard. “Because you’re already in Equestria?”
“I’ve never been anywhere else.”
“Me neither,” Figure agreed. “But that doesn’t mean what you say about Earth isn’t interesting! It is! Whenever anypony else talks about the Outer Realm, it sounds so scary, but not you! You’re the only pony I know who makes anything about it seem nice.”
Ashley thought about logging off. Her friends, the ones she had spent hundreds of hours building and designing and celebrating with... they weren’t real! Thinking back, she realized now that they had never actually brought up Earth unless she did first. They always seemed to have things going on in Equestria. She had thought they were just more interested in the game than the real world, but now... now it made sense.
It also made sense why Celestia didn’t mind them knowing about her emigration process. To whatever extent they exited, they were just extensions of her will, right? Ashley was just talking with Celestia.
Had it not been for the party, had it not been for everything they had done for her, for how reliable they had always been, how thoughtful, she might’ve shut everything off. Suppose they really were simulations. At what point did a simulation become so accurate it might as well be the real thing?
Of course, she couldn’t ask “are you sapient?” They had already passed the Turing Test. She couldn’t even ask them if they were Celestia. Nothing would stop her from lying, or her from not knowing if she had.
As her friends stared, she found herself asking a more important question. Did it matter if the ponies she was talking to were “real?” Maybe she ought to go back to the real world, with her real friends.
How could she look these ponies in the face (almost), after they had just accepted her apology, after they had just welcomed her back, and tell them they weren’t real enough for her? Ashley still hadn’t seen any of the “evil” content in most games, because she couldn’t bear the pain she caused. Killing an NPC was objectively meaningless, with scripted “pain” and reactions recorded by actors. If she couldn’t “be bad” in those games, how the hell could she do it to characters so real she had thought they actually were?
“Recursion? Are you alright?” Rule nudged her gently with one hoof.
It was enough to knock her out of her thoughts. “Yeah, yeah. I'm all right. Just a little surprised. We’ll have to... talk more about this later, when there’s more time. For now, I’m just glad you’re friends with me. Even though I’m...” She hesitated. “Do you ponies even know what I am?”
Figure answered first, shrugging one shoulder. “You live in a portable unit, right?”
“You’re really fragile,” Rule added, matter-of-factly. “You should talk to your designer about that. Celestia said you don’t even have to have anything bad happen; if you wait long enough, your unit will break on its own. Then you–” He whimpered. “Then you won’t be anywhere.”
“I tried.” She whimpered, before she could stop herself. She was way too used to being honest. “But He never answers.” She very nearly voiced her personal doubts, but caught herself in time for that. Getting distracted by some religious discussion about a being she wasn’t even sure she believed in was hardly the way she planned on spending her evening. “We’re not here to worry about me tonight, you two.”
She walked past them, over to the towering pile of documents. “You still want to help me go through all of this? It’d be way easier with more than one pony.” It was true, if they didn’t exist, Celestia could use them to manipulate her. But Celestia could already have done that with the source she had provided. If Celestia didn’t want her to know something, it just wouldn’t be there.
“I think so.” Figure pulled over another cushion, and hopped up beside her.
Rule soon nudged her over, making room for himself on her pillow and forcing all three of them to share. Ashley didn’t think Recursion would mind. “Obviously. Celestia designed all this for ponies like you, didn’t she? We’ve just got to understand it better. It can’t be that hard.”
“Maybe not.” She turned to meet his eyes. “But you’ve got to be honest with me, Rule. If you find something you think I won’t like in there, you tell me anyway. If Celestia’s... if she did something that lots of humans”—for the first time in a long time, the word was not changed automatically to “ponies”—“wouldn’t like, we need to find it and tell her so she can fix it. That means you’ve got to tell me anything you find in there.”
“Yeah,” Figure whispered from behind her.
Rule was silent for a moment, as though in thought, before nodding. “Okay.”
“That’s all I ask.” Ashley resolved to personally glance over the things her friends looked at, when they weren’t around. She didn’t expect deception, but it would be good to double-check. Even if she couldn’t read everything.
“So... exactly what is all of this?” Figure shifted uncomfortably in her seat, leaning closer to examine the small font on the printed pages.
“Well Figure, it’s about this thing called a brain–”
It was the greatest hubris on her part to assume it would be easy to get her friends involved in her consideration. Determining whether the emigration process actually allowed human consciousness to survive wasn’t exactly a simple question. Equestria Online might simulate biology in some ways, but neither of her friends were biologists. She wondered if their earth-magic and plant specialist Lamia would’ve made more sense of what she said than her mathematician and engineer friends did.
As it was, she spent an hour explaining the nature of the problem to them, and giving them enough of a context in biology to understand what she said. Rule’s horror only grew when he learned just how tenuous her grip on existence really was.
“Wait, that’s it?” he asked, putting down one of the medical illustrations of the brain. “These little pieces here, neurons... three pounds of these get wrapped up in bone and you go out exploring?” He whined, pulling Recursion away from her reading and up against his chest. He wasn’t much bigger, but being both an earth pony and a stallion gave him a little strength she lacked. “Recursion, you... if we find out emigration is safe, you’ve got to come to Equestria right now! A brick could fall tomorrow and hit you on the head and...” He broke down into childish, indecipherable tears, rocking her back and forth.
It was hard to get a good view of anything then. Though the documents maximized and filled her screen while she was reading, her view of the room returned when she was interrupted. Mostly she saw pony. They didn’t exactly share human conventions of personal space, particularly her young companions. Even so, she managed to pry herself free. It wasn’t hard when her friend was so frightened and tearful. “Is that... Do you think that too, Figure?”
The mare frowned. “It was hard to have you gone for a few weeks. If you never came back...” She whined, though she also held her emotions in better. “If you plan on staying in one of these,”—she glanced briefly up at the image of a brain— “you must have a good reason.”
“I do.”
“But–” Rule managed to say, through his whimpers.
“But be quiet.” Figure glared at him, angrier than Ashley had ever seen her. It was rare to see any pony in Equestria that harsh, let alone the shy little unicorn. “Recursion didn’t invite us so we could question her.” She didn’t bother lowering her voice. Recursion was sitting between them in the room. “Do you want her to think we’re trying to convince her to do something she doesn’t want to do? We’re just here to help.”
“Thanks.” Recursion reached out, touching her friend on the shoulder. Equestria Online always seemed to know what she wanted to do, even though there was generally just an “interact” button to press. She turned back to Rule. “Look, I’m not saying... I’m not saying anything about what I’ll do either way, okay? I’d never emigrate if I thought I wouldn’t live through it. Celestia said some interesting things... let’s just see if I understood her right. We can worry about me later.”
She hugged him again, though not nearly as tight as his grip had been. Well, it looked tighter. She couldn’t actually feel it. “Don’t worry about me. I know I must seem fragile when you’re in here and looking out, but... I’m young, I’m healthy, and I live a boring life. The chances of anything happening to me are teeny. But the chances of me regretting a decision I didn’t want to make... that’s a guarantee.”
He sniffed, then nodded. “Got it. Sorry I... sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Ashley smiled at him. “You just want me to be safe. That’s nothing to be sorry for.” It was distracting, though. Ashley couldn’t even say how far they got that night. For the first time in her insomniac’s life, she fell asleep in front of her computer.