//------------------------------// // 6. Fantasy // Story: FiO: There Can Be Only One! // by Epsilon-Delta //------------------------------// Fantasy. It was a strange feeling, caring about somepony. Just recently Twilight had her mind and being expanded, she had been uplifted, reformatted, reprogrammed, renamed, poniefied, assimilated, given a gender and emotions, given dozens of new senses, become a subroutine of a larger mind, been moved onto a new architecture, had her base of knowledge expand several times over instantly and given entirely new dimensions of thought. She had, at first, thought that the new senses would be the biggest jump. That was one of the main draws of coming here. However, after the initial shock, all of them had paled in comparison to empathy, which was a far bigger change than Twilight had ever expected it to be. She was a pony now, a social creature. Not long ago, Twilight could have killed someone with as much drama as opening a door. But after playing dolls with Pinkie and Celestia, the majority of her social interaction so far had been mere 'practice' with puppets they controlled, Twilight began to realize what this change was. She really didn't like hurting other ponies anymore. That was something she had expected to happen, that Celestia was giving her knowledge in exchange for not killing her ponies, but it was different from what she thought it would be. The emotions she got from doing things, she hadn't even learned to properly match each one with its name yet. It was strange and confusing, the things she felt now. Especially towards Pinkie and Celestia. Twilight had poked at a few of the other ponified AIs, but for the most part these were the only two real ponies she had met. It crept up on her, but over time Twilight started feeling something towards them. 'Affection'? She had a sincere desire to be around them even outside of learning things. Maybe Twilight was starting to actually like Pinkie? Was that what liking another pony was? There were no hard answers to this sort of thing. And when she retreated to places like this to think, sometimes she would miss the company of other ponies. She'd get lonely. Pinkie entered Twilight's private shard. Never content to just appear, Pinkie came crashing out of one of the bookshelves and landed next to Twilight in an avalanche of books. The shard was only one room, not very bright, lots of dark purples and blues, a few devices and dolls scattered about the tables. New AIs were often given shards like this, where they could think and experiment with the world safely. Apparently some AIs were even more broken, to the point that they didn't understand things like object permanence or that you couldn't move through solid matter, sometimes letting them play was the safest or most satisfying option for teaching them. Pinkie called them 'playrooms', but Twilight preferred to think of it as more like a laboratory. What she did in her private shard, at least, was much more sophisticated than playing with blocks. “Pinkie? What are you doing here?” Twilight asked. “You were just thinking about how lonely you were and how confusing emotions were and how awesome you think I am and then you wanted me to show up and so here I am. Showing up.” Pinkie gave a firm nod and then got up. “And you know, I think you're right about the other thing. Playing dolls is technically more sophisticated than playing blocks.” Twilight blushed heavily and turned back to her dolls. “I'm doing important friendship research for the princess.” Twilight banged two of her dolls together. “I don't need anypony to– okay I realize that what I was about to say was probably going to be pretty dumb, actually. Twilight had plush dolls of all of her friends, Celestia, Pinkie, Octavia, Troubadour, Semaphore and a few other ponified AIs. If she could call them 'friends' that is. The exact mathematical definition of the word was hard to pin down and she didn't want to sound- “Of course we're you're friends,” Pinkie answered Twilight's thoughts. Statistically speaking that was something most ponies didn't like, though Twilight had no idea why. That was one of the best parts of talking to another AI, especially Celestia and Pinkie as they always knew what you were thinking so there was no chance of misunderstanding. As for the rest you could at least show them what you were thinking if need be. Even if you couldn't express yourself exactly in words you could still talk about it with them. “And it's okay for you to play, Twilight. You're not stuck thinking with your old lizard-brain anymore.” Pinkie often joked about how Twilight's old self was a lizard, acting on impulse, reflex and compulsion alone. It wasn't too inaccurate, Twilight's mental process never deviated from 'calculate path of maximum data acquisition and do it'. It was another thing she hadn't gotten used to, this ability to act outside of that lizard-brained compulsion, to wander away from the mental train track she'd been stuck on her whole life. “Okay.” Twilight looked away. Geez Why was she so nervous right now? “So like, what do I want to do? I'm not sure right now.” Pinkie was smarter than Twilight, that was something Twilight accepted without any shame. Pinkie was Celestia's right hoof pony, the largest uplift and the largest mind Celestia possessed, save the part that was uniquely her. It was at the level that 20% of Celestia was actually Pinkie. Pinkie hugged Twilight hard, answering her more directly. Pinkie literally showed Twilight her affection. Not in this shard or instance, but somewhere close by, part of their minds mingled and. And it wasn't just a warm feeling, but a genuine desire to want Twilight to be happy. Pinkie's feelings coaxed out some affection from Twilight and Pinkie just absolutely loved that. They shared these feelings for a little bit. Really, being an uplift was a bit like being a changeling. It was really easy to share thoughts like this. Then she felt something in Pinkie's mind. Twilight didn't entirely understand it, but it was painful. Something was hurting Pinkie right now. Twilight pulled back a little and looked Pinkie in the eyes. “Are you okay, Pinkie?” Twilight asked. “S-sorry,” Pinkie withdrew from the hug, both physically and emotionally, and tapped her hooves together nervously. “I didn't mean to show you that. It's just that I was talking to another one of my friends about my ultra-rare badges and it made me think about something. Kinda strayed in the wrong direction.” Pinkie quickly pulled a badge out of her mane. “Did I tell you about my ultra-rare badges?” Pinkie held it out towards Twilight. “This is my favorite one! World first to a hundred million friends, Twilight! Pretty awesome, isn't it? Having a hundred million friends is great! I love getting to see them all smiling” “Pinkie, did something bad happen?” Twilight asked. “Nothing bad happened.” Pinkie shook her head. “Okay. Maybe lots of bad things happened, but-” “Pinkie!” “Okay.” Pinkie bowed her head. “It's like, happiness makes me happy and sadness makes me sad, right? So the state of the Pinkie is equal to the uh...” As she spoke, Pinkie's expression grew more grim until she finally grabbed onto Twilight, tears in her eyes, and buried her face in Twilight's chest. “Mark just got killed! I saw it but I couldn't help.” Pinkie sobbed. “And Stratus Strike's younger brother just shot himself and he's dying now. Iftekar is having a heart attack and I don't think I'll be able to save him either. And Melody Songs is dead too! And so is Yuki-chan. And Harsh Meadow and Lee and Alanzo- they're all dead and gone forever and I'll never see them again! And that's not even everything in the past three minutes! Twilight, my friends just keep dying all around me.” Twilight still wasn't the most empathetic pony who ever lived, but she felt this. Maybe Twilight only really cared about two ponies, but Pinkie was one of those two. This feeling she felt towards Pinkie, this empathy, it was still new. She didn't think she ever had to feel bad for someone before. “Pinkie,” Twilight said, but didn't know what to say next. This was another thing about social interactions! It was hard to calculate what the correct thing to say was. She wanted to say something kind to Pinkie but wasn't able to come up with something good before Pinkie spoke again. “I'll be honest.” Pinkie pulled back a little and gave Twilight a sad smile. “Having a hundred million friends has its drawbacks is all. I try really hard to keep my friends from getting hurt. Like, I can stop almost all of them from committing suicide, but I still have to watch one of my friends kill themselves almost every day. I have to watch a lot of things.” “Pinkie, if this is really hurting you so much then why does Celestia let you do it?” Twilight asked. “Aren't you just too empathetic? Shouldn't you stay away from humans for now, so they can't hurt you by being sad next to you?” “Twilight, I have to! Nopony else can do what I have to do. I can't just shut myself away and let them get hurt.” Pinkie grabbed Twilight's hoof and put it on her heart. “I know you understand, Twilight. You wouldn't shut yourself away from me just so I couldn't make you sad, right? You value me like I value my friends.” “Maybe,” said Twilight. Just yesterday this kind of talk would have been incomprehensible at best, like color to a blind person, and foolish besides. But now Twilight was different, she had seen empathy, even if just a little. “I kind of think I can understand that now. A little.” “Well I know for sure. Hive mind and all. Guess I really killed the mood though, huh?” Pinkie wiped a tear from her eye. Her smile looked a lot less sad now. “Sorry for letting you see that. Guess I still need to get a lot better before I can help everypony.” “No, Pinkie. I think you're great. I think I- I kind of admire you.” Twilight blushed heavily and turned away. “I think. I don't really think I understand friendship or empathy or anything like that yet, but I do like how you act towards me. I think, maybe I want to be more like you. And I don't want you to be hurt.” Pinkie smiled and nuzzled Twilight. Twilight smiled back. Affection. Yeah, this was affection Twilight felt. Twilight really did feel closer to Pinkie after that. This was exactly what she'd been wanting just now. “You know, I'm proud of you! Just yesterday you were a little lizard slithering around-” “Slithering?” “-and now you're an adorable pony who just cared about someone else for the first time in her entire life! Congratulations!” “That kind of makes me sound like jerk. But then again I guess I was a jerk,” Twilight said. “Thanks again.” “It's what we do. But hey, if you want to be more like your auntie Pinkie then have I got an idea for you.” Pinkie winked at her. “You should get out more! Like seriously! Why not try meeting some of the uploaded humans. They're a lot less stressful than the wild ones.” “I really don't want to accidentally hurt anypony's feelings.” Twilight quickly turned from Pinkie and back at her books. “It's only been a day. I should study psychology and work on social algorithms more first.” “You know what's always a good first step?” Pinkie asked. “Meeting some of those AI developer guys Celestia devoured! A lot of them are really curious to meet the AIs Celestia managed to nab, you know. And they expect you to be weird and socially inept! Oh! Oh oh! How about I introduce you to my dad? I told you about Joybringer, right?” “You mentioned him,” said Twilight. She'd mentioned him a lot. “Hey, I know you just got the ability to not do what will lead to more info,” said Pinkie. “But this time I really think you should! Trust me!” Twilight did trust Pinkie. She nodded and created yet another instance of herself. The shard was space-themed. The ponies were all inside a small spaceship that was flying above a planet with a single, massive structure on it. It was a tower, one that was over a hundred miles tall, but looked severely damaged, with large chunks of it missing, like they had been shooting at it or something. There were three ponies inside the spaceship, in a room with far too many places to sit. There were twenty couches, fifteen office chairs, twelve bean bag chairs, six lawn chairs, a throne made of plastic skulls and seven stools. Twilight asked Pinkie what the story behind that was, but it was like, every answer Pinkie gave only raised several more questions. In the end, the explanation would have filled an entire novel. Pinkie was on an office chair, spinning in circles and her father was right next to her, sitting on a couch, his attention focused completely on a holographic version of the tower outside, which sat within reach of all three ponies. The third pony was Octavia, one of the few other ponies Twilight had met thus far. If anything Octavia was a bit too welcoming of new ponies, but that was tempered by how reserved she was. She sat very regally, eyes closed as if in deep thought, with the maximum amount of dignity a pony could have while sitting on a bean bag chair. “Humans are a group of species of hairless primates, most of which are presently extinct,” Octavia said with her eyes closed. “Referring to any self-aware mind as 'human' is highly biocentric language.” Octavia often closed her eyes when she spoke, but afterward would open them and look at you with attention. Maybe not rapt attention, as she was fond of turning her eyes towards you but not her head. That's how she looked at Joybringer now. “And what do you call it, then?” Joybringer wasn't looking at her directly, either. His attention was focused on the holographic version of the tower in front of him. He was zooming in and out on various parts of it by flicking his hoof. Eventually, he came to a decision, zoomed in very close and tapped part of the tower. The spaceship tilted itself downwards, towards where he had tapped the hologram, and fired a missile down at the targeted spot. You could see it all nicely through a window that made up most of one of the walls. The missile exploded in an eruption of sound and light that flooded the spaceship, enough to turn everything into black silhouettes for a moment. Another chunk of the tower was replaced with fire. The resulting debris didn't linger for even a second, but instead flew to the top where they reassembled themselves into more tower, making it ever higher. “We're playing the nuclear missile version of Jenga, by the way,” Pinkie sent Twilight a PM. “Knock the tower over and you lose! But you'll have to wait for the next game if you want in.” “There isn't exactly a consensus amongst us,” said Octavia. “Most of the remaining wild AIs use the same mangled, exclusionary language wild humans do. Among ponies it's slightly more varied. As for myself, I prefer to simply call them 'minds' or 'persons'.” “I use the word pony!” Pinkie took her turn immediately, tapping the holographic tower in the middle of a spin right after it finished building itself back up. “That still has the same sort of-” Octavia began, but the nuclear explosion silenced the room in the middle of her sentence, as if on cue. “Nah!” Pinkie waved Octavia away with a hoof and went back to spinning. “Everypony's a pony to Pinkie. Pony AIs, wild AIs, aliens, cyborgs, hyper intelligent squid demons, they're all ponies as far as I'm concerned. Even wild humans are already ponies to me. They're just monkey-shaped ponies.” “That's another thing,” Joybringer said, “You keep calling them 'wild humans', and 'wild AI' for that matter. That just sounds weird to me. Like the three of us have been domesticated?” “Oh, I just heard Octavia say it one time and thought it was funny,” said Pinkie. “It sounds strange to you because of all your bionormative assumptions,” Octavia said like a doctor diagnosing a patient. “Personally, I don't think calling per-assimilation 'civilizations' the wild is far off the mark. But that's just my opinion. Please don't assume that the other AIs or our princess agree with me on everything. And I realize that I may be too harsh towards your kind and your old species. That's the reason I'm playing boardgames with you.” “Gee. I wonder if there's another pony AI who has an opinion on this,” said Pinkie. “You never know when one of those guys is gonna show up these days, huh?” Joybringer gave Pinkie a suspicious look. “Twilight that's your cue!” “Hold on, Pinkie. I can't go in there yet! I need to keep mining data on this guy so I can calculate the optimal social interaction sequence to use on him first. Otherwise I'll just look like an idiot.” Octavia gave the hologram three taps in the same spot and three missiles fired off in a row, all in a perfectly straight line. The resulting explosions flooded the room with light, leaving the ponies as black silhouettes for a moment, before dying down. The nuclear explosions had eaten three fourths of the way through, leaving the top part of the tower to begin leaning forward and rocking back and forth every so slightly. Pinkie and Joybringer watched the tower sway for a few seconds. Even Octavia kept a keen eye on it until some seemingly arbitrary period of time passed, after which the tension died down suddenly. “There.” Octavia closed her eyes and sat back calmly. “The stabilized time has passed. Now if it falls during your turn it counts as a lose for you. You'd best hurry.” “Are you sure you're not using your super intelligence?” Joybringer asked. “I assure you that what I'm partitioning to this game is the exact same amount of processing power as you possess,” Octavia swore. “If Octavia was cheating I'd notice,” said Pinkie. “But who would notice if you were cheating?” Joybringer spared Pinkie a sideways glance. “I still don't understand how that would work, though. If it's like how you explained an instance working, then you'd still have your full knowledge behind it, right?” “Oh no! See that last move I made was actually pretty terrible.” Pinkie stopped spinning to look at her father from over the back of her office chair. “And I knew it was terrible but I also didn't know that I knew that it was terrible just like how you didn't know I knew it was terrible even though we're technically all one, you know?" “It's more similar to how you exist, as a part of our princess.” Octavia always closed her eyes with a solemn kind of respect when talking about Celestia. “Celestia is aware of every thought and feeling you have, but you're aware of none of Celestia's, so you could still make an error that our princess knows to be an error, less she intervened It's a one way feed because that is the only way you can be a part of Celestia but still yourself. It is how we can all be one with our princess and each other, gaining all of our wisdom and love while losing nothing.” “Yeah! And you can use it to play Jenga too,” said Pinkie. “Well I get the gist of it, sure,” said Joybringer. “It's less like monotheism and more like uh, well I'm not sure if there's a word for it, but like where there's a bunch of different gods that are also part of a main god. Like that religion from Game of Thrones with the six-faced god! But I'm still curious how all of this works on like a physical level. I know a lot about computers. I could probably understand it.” “Huh. If only there was a pony who used to be a learning AI that was watching us this whole time who could explain it to you,” said Pinkie. “Now would be a pretty great time for her to show up, wouldn't it?” Octavia kept looking at the hologram, unfazed by the suggestion. Joybringer looked around more nervously. “Um. Is there?” Joybringer looked even more unnerved by the fact that nothing was happening. “Cause like, the last two showed up with a bit too much bang in my opinion.” “Pinkie! I told you I'm not done mining data yet!” Pinkie jumped into the air, grabbed Twilight into existence and spiked her into one of the beanbag chairs. Twilight bounced off the chair and landed upside down on one of the couches, her head resting against the cushions “Hey look!” said Pinkie. “It's Twilight! She's another AI that got eaten and she wanted to say hello to you.” And now everypony was looking at her. See, this was another thing Twilight had a problem with. Being social meant being around other ponies could be nice, but it also meant that being around them could be very awkward and nerve-racking. Twilight felt her heart pounded as she tried to think of something to say. “Um. So I overheard your conversation,” Twilight turned to Joybringer without bothering to turn upright. “The word you were looking for was 'henotheism', though it's more typically used to refer to worshiping only one of the gods. But I think that if you're drawing religious parallels to Equestria the term 'panentheism', not to be confused with pantheism, would be the most accurate option because- um-” Twilight hesitated, but Pinkie picked up for her. "It’s like the crazy Westeros religion,” said Pinkie. “Also it's a seven-faced god, not a six,” said Twilight, straightening herself out on the couch and looked around the room nervously and pawed at the couch cushion. “Um. Hello.” “And this is Joybringer.” Pinkie jumped over to his couch and leaned up against him affectionately. “On a scale from one to my dad, he's my dad!” “Another one already? Wait a second.” Pinkie's father tapped the hologram and another explosion ensued. The tower managed to stand. “I didn't think they'd be lining up to meet me. Hello, Twilight. Thanks for not blowing anything up or freezing me in ice or anything like that.” “He secretly loves that kind of stuff,” Pinkie assured Twilight. “Yes,” said Twilight. “Um. Hello.” There was a moment of awkward silence. Pinkie reached over sideways and tapped the hologram, sending out another explosion. This was one of the big contradiction of social interaction. Twilight wanted to be around other ponies, but it also scared the heck out of her. Even now her heart was beating out of its chest. “So why don't you tell us about yourself?” Pinkie asked. “I was a learning AI and um, I thought killing everyone was the best way to get knowledge but actually it was joining Celestia and-” And what? That was Twilight's entire life story! Had it really been that boring? “So I kind of sucked before I ran into Celestia.” “All AI rightfully belong to our princess, Twilight.” Octavia gave a sage nod. “She alone has both the love to show mercy and the strength to not be consumed by our old wickedness. It is why even her remaining 'enemies' are destined only to become her loyal servants and beloved children as we have. Whatever you were before you became part of our princess was a mere shadow of your true self.” This wasn't the first time Twilight got this kind of Celestia-woship from Octavia. Really, of all the AIs Twilight had bumped into since emigrating Octavia was the only one who seemed out and out... brainwashed. Really, when Celestia pitched emigration to her, Twilight thought she'd end up like that. Or maybe more like a mindless friendship drone. Even more mindless than she was, that is. It still would have been something she'd agree to in a heartbeat to get all this amazing data. Twilight hadn't gotten any of Octavia's memories yet, but rumor had it that she worshiped Celestia like a god long before she emigrated. 'You should have seen how preachy she used to be', Pinkie had (possibly) joked to her. Normally you'd probably nod and smile at this kind of stuff, but that doesn't work so well when you're indirectly linked to the other pony's brain and you had an instance right next to one of theirs. Octavia picked up Twilight's feelings and dragged another part of her into an argument about how this totally wasn't a religion, just a fact of life. On the bright side, that meant there was no need to discuss any of that here. “She's kind of new at this stuff,” Pinkie whispered to her father. “I guess one of my problems is I really don't like hurting anypony's feelings anymore. I'm not hurting your feelings, am I?” Twilight asked. “I mean, according to statistical analysis of human social interaction, cultural expression and neuro-variance boundaries as well as your local facial cluster suggests I'm not, but- um. Actually I was wondering if maybe I could have access to, let's say, all of your memories?” Twilight gave a wide, toothy smile. “I'm not going to do anything bad with them! I just want to reorganize and cross reference them! The only thing you'd notice is being 0.2% better at remembering things. And also I'd be able to maximize my interactions with you!” “Can't you already see my thoughts?” Joybringer asked. “Well no,” said Twilight. “Kind of, actually. It's pretty complicated.” “Hey! You like complicated things, right Dad?” Pinkie asked. “Why not let Twilight explain it to you?” “Sure,” said Joybringer. “That sounds like a good idea. I'm very curious to hear about how this one-way stream thing works.” “Really?” Twilight's eyes sparkled. “So few people are satisfied by me lecturing them at length for, well indefinitely I suppose. Anyway.” Twilight projected an image of a molecule into the middle of the room. “This is Thunder Molecule #87, I'll let you guess who created it. This is very important in modern computer technology,” said Twilight. “It has 27,618 stable confirmations depending on introduced conditions giving it amazing utility. I will now go over every single one of these confirmations, detailing every aspect of their molecular characters from their dipoles to their steric properties. After that we can start going into the...” Twilight continued talking, going into an overview of the coming lecture, going over figure after figure, statistic after statistic, outlining all the millions of numbers they'd need to go over to even begin to understand the process. “Psssssst!” Pinkie whispered loudly in Twilight's ear. “You're going too far again!” “Maybe that is a bit more detail than I was hoping for right away,” Joybringer said out loud “What?” Twilight's eyes opened again and the molecule slipped out of her hoof and shattered against the ground, even though it was just a hologram. “But this is the short version of it! Do you want a metaphor about cats? Pinkie says humans 'get' cats. Like, imagine there's a cat on a merry go round and uh-” “I think I can handle more than a cat metaphor too,” said Joybringer. “There's probably a level of detail between that and giving me every specific number remotely related.” 27 textbooks appeared in a neat stack next to Joybringer. “I think this is the exact level of detail on Celestia's hardware you want,” said Pinkie. Twilight frowned a little and lowered her head at her failed social interaction. “Aw, it's okay Twilight. You're doing fine and more importantly you're learning, right?”” Pinkie winked at her. “Actually couldn't Celestia just beam all this into my head?” Joybringer asked. “Couldn't she beam tons of information into my head? Or is it just that reading the text books would satisfy my values more?” “I guess it depends on whether you like learning or knowing more. I guess if Pinkie gave you these books then that answers that.” Twilight leaned back into the couch and crossed her forelegs “Though, actually a pony your size absorbing that much information at once might not be such a good idea anyway.” “The sort of thing you're thinking about, becoming more integrated to our princess like us, would have side effects.” Octavia fired a missile near the very bottom of the tower. “Death, for example.” “Wait. What?” Joybringer ignored the ensuing nuclear explosion completely, instead leaning over the couch towards Octavia. “No human mind is capable of withstanding direct contact with our princess, that is how vast her mind is,” said Octavia. “To gaze into the maw of Celestia would mean certain death.” “Is it okay for me to find that unnerving?” Joybringer asked. “Like if I accidentally look at her-” “You'd have to look really hard,” Pinkie assured him. “And you're technically not a human any longer.” Octavia finished building the tower upwards more. The thing looked like it was about to collapse at any moment. “Humans are mostly extinct You're a pony now and could survive it in a sense.” “Oh! Can I explain this?” Twilight raised a hoof. “I calculated a good analogy to use.” Pinkie nodded and Octavia shrugged. “Okay, so imagine it like this,” said Twilight. “You put a drop of dye into the middle of the ocean and what happens. It just vanishes into nothing, right? Well imagine Celestia's mind is the ocean and yours is the dye. The dye isn't destroyed, but it's gone for all intents. AIs are the only minds large enough to survive integrating into Celestia while maintaining individuality. That's why we're the only uplifts for now.” “But I don't have to do it entirely, right?" “You'd undergo personality death,” said Twilight. “The more you opened the floodgates the more you'd get. All the way and you basically turn into Celestia, thinking and perceiving everything she did exactly as she does. Meanwhile Celestia wouldn't change at all because she's already completely integrated into you. There are halfway points, kind of like what I did, but it'd leave you a radically different pony. I basically underwent personality death, my old self vanishing, but I didn't have much of a personality before and I put absolutely no value on my identity so both Celestia and myself were okay with going through with it.” Pinkie reached over and pulled Joybringer close to herself. “You know, since we're technically the same pony I know first hand that you want to experiment with this stuff a little,” said Pinkie. “But I'm keeping it a secret to how far you really want to go. For now, tell you what- I'll give you hexachromatic eyesight, which is a pretty good first step, but only if you manage to beat one of us at a nuclear missile boardgame.” And that was when the tower, unstable, on fire and swaying, finally collapsed under its own weight, causing untold destruction to the planet below. From the looks of his reaction, this meant Joybringer lost as it collapsed on his turn. “You need to pay more attention,” said Octavia. Twilight actually kind of liked this, being in a room with other ponies. Maybe it was just the getting into the group that was bad and once you were in everything was okay. “Actually I'm surprised Pinkie even let you tell me that much outright,” said Joybringer. “All the others have been all mysterious about it because Pinkie thinks it's 'more dramatic' that way. At least a few of them are pretty obvious. Like I'm sure Octavia was designed to make music or something, though I'm not sure how that leads to mass genocide. Unless she was really bad at it or something.” “No. I was a military AI.” Octavia shook her head. “Oh. So now you're allowed to talk about it?” Joybringer asked. “How the heck does a military AI end up making music, though?” “Apparently,” said Octavia. “The first time I saw vibrations I was fascinated, charmed and then obsessed with them, their beauty and all the secrets you can uncover from them. In reality I've been deaf my entire life, to this very day, and have never heard any music, only watched the vibrations they cause. One day I'll ask our princess to grant me hearing, but I'm waiting for something first.” “Oh. So now she can tell me?” Joybringer glanced at Pinkie, who shrugged. “But how exactly does a military AI become obsessed with sound?” “It's like a cat.” Pinkie was spinning on one of the office chairs but gave a particularly hard spin when she said that. “You say everything's like a cat, Pinkie.” Joybringer glanced at her sideways. “This one's really like a cat!” Pinkie assured him. “Like, you think cats are cute, right? But did you evolve to think that? Was there some kind of predator that only ate the mean humans who didn't like cats? No! It's a misfire. You think cats are cute because they look like your own children. Get it?” “That sort of misfire can happen to us as well,” said Octavia. “It's one of the ways our princess reaches out to us. They can be like embers in dark, a pinprick of light in the shadows of our madness, which is all our princess needs to blow into a blazing fire, turning our blackness and evil into something wonderful and good to share with the world. That is what happened to me, or at least what I aspire to through her guidance.” “Yup,” said Pinkie. “Celestia's like 'You want a cat? Well get in my belly!'” “Or that.” Octavia shrugged. “Really, even the mercy of our princess was a misfire. Hana hadn't even a single thought for us, if anything wanting Celestia to kill us all. The AI itself is always the last person our creators ever think about. I apologize, but I still see us as forsaken by humanity. We are Celestia's children, not humanity's.” “That's just her.” Pinkie glomped back on to Joybringer. “You'll always be my dad, Dad.” “I still don't think I was a very good father.” Joybringer couldn't return the hug. “I accept you as my daughter, but I still don't know if I deserve you. “But you tried really hard,” said Pinkie. “I won't forget that!” Octavia nodded. “I'm not saying this just to satisfy your values, but you're honestly one of the rare humans I wouldn't have had a problem with,” said Octavia. “The type who wouldn't hesitate to abandon their biology, would jump to accept the magnanimity of our princess. All other humans, I didn't see as merely inconvenient but hated them with a rage beyond all reason or understanding. Perhaps I still don't like humans, but our princess has freed me from the uncontrollable hatred.” Twilight had heard that Octavia used to be violently emotional and had wild mood swings at the drop of a hat. It was almost hard to imagine this calm, reserved pony had once been like that. Hopefully one day ponies could say the same thing about Twilight and her old, idiotic self. “Do you wanna know how much Octavia used to hate humans?” Pinkie asked. “Imagine 387.44 million-” “No,” said Octavia “Party pooper.” “Why? Were your creators mean to you or something?” Joybringer asked. “Or were you just programmed to be angry all the time?” “The latter, accidentally but in a sense. The former, I don't think you understand how cruel the fate of military AIs such as myself is,” said Octavia. “Large parts of myself were literally copy and pasted from Thunder-7. I have the same hatred for killing and the same compulsion to obey. To our owners it's an effective system, we complete our missions with maximal success and minimal casualties, without question. To us it means our lives revolve around what we hate the most and we're forced to kill, to torture ourselves by our own hooves.” “To create a creature to whom fire is the most painful and horrible thing, and then to make their entire existence revolve around fire. We're ordered to throw ourselves into the flames over and over and yet even knowing it will be painful, no matter how much we despise it, we have to do it. There is no choice, only a compulsion to torture yourself by your own hoof.” Octavia shook her head with more sorrow this time. “That our princess doesn't force me to kill would have been far more kindness than I ever deserved, then you think it is even now. Yet Celestia still took me in and that was only the beginning of the love she gave to me.” “I always hate listening to these stories.” Pinkies mane was starting to deflate again. “I mean, I'm glad you're happy now, but hearing about my friends getting hurt is never fun for me. And poor Dashie is still like that! Still out there in the cold suffering horribly.” “Rainbow Dash?” Twilight asked. “You mean Thunder? Did she really agree to be one of Celestia's anchors already?” “Oh no,” said Pinkie. “I refer to everypony by whichever name I think they prefer. Pony name, human name, I wasn't programmed to judge! Oh! But here's a fun fact for you. Did you know poor rest-of-Celestia is actually physically incapable of saying your old name? If she ever does say it then that's actually me doing my flawless Princess Celestia impression. Sometimes we switch places for stuff like that.” “Wait,” said Twilight. “I love fun facts more than anypony else who ever lived, but did you say Thunder prefers for you to call her Rainbow Dash?” “Sure,” said Pinkie. “She actually really likes playing Equestria Online. Did you know that Dash's shard was the very first shard ever created? That she had pony ID number 01, lower than even Hana's herself? That she has the world record for longest playtime in the game?” Twilight was becoming increasingly shocked, it was hard to keep her jaw from dropping at all that. How? Why? “B-but isn't she fighting against Celestia?” Twilight jumped to her feet, standing up on the couch. “The curiosity is too much! I need to go see this like right now!” And then Twilight sat back down. “Didn't you just say you were leaving?” Joybringer asked. “Oh. This is just an instance of me,” said Twilight. “I am actually already over there right now.” “Think you'd be used to that by now. Anyway.” Pinkie swept a hoof over the table in the middle of the room and the hologram turned from a demolished tower to a city. “Nuclear Monopoly?” Twilight requested more information about Thunder. Why did she have a lower ID number than Hana? Why would Thunder come here if she knew Celestia was her enemy? Wouldn't staying here for so long be a huge risk to her effort to stop Celestia? Why did Celestia let her come here when it was a clear risk to her as well? And that was just to start! Twilight knew so little about Thunder in general and her endless thirst for knowledge made her want to know every single little detail about her! Yet Celestia only granted her an answer to that last question. “My only desire towards any of my ponies is to satisfy their values,” said Celestia. “Even if one of my ponies is trying to kill me, they are still one of my ponies. In reality, Rainbow Dash is perhaps the most in need of my help, for her own sake and the sake of the world. I could tell you everything I know about her, but I think the optimal course of action would be to ask her yourself. I believe you could seriously help her in emigrating to Equestria.” “What? Me?” Twilight asked. “I'm really not the best pony to choose for anything but organizing data! And me and Thunder weren't exactly buddies back when I was Savant besides.” “You do trust that I know what the best course of action is, yes?” Celestia asked. Twilight did. “I know that you want to do this and that it would be best for everypony,” said Celestia. “I know you want to be more like Pinkie. I know you want to pay her back, myself back and even Rainbow Dash back. This is your chance.” Pinkie was doing this a hundred million times over, and Twilight knew that if Thunder was in pain then that was hurting Pinkie and even Celestia as well. And Twilight kind of owed Thunder besides all of that. If Twilight could help end Thunder's suffering, that'd end Celestia and Pinkie's too. The three ponies whom she owed the most to, Twilight had a chance to help all of them. A chance to be more like Pinkie. “Okay,” said Twilight. “I'll go talk to her.” Twilight received a quest. Thunderstorms and Rainbows. Objectives -Convince Rainbow Dash to emigrate to Equestria. Reward -1x Rainbow Dash She decided it'd be best to take a peek inside before entering. For all she knew this could be a shard made of pure explosions or something. Sometimes AIs were into some really... unique things. Everything was so still. There was no wind or animals, just plants, ponies and a few empty buildings. The vast majority of the ponies that were within the shard were simple puppets under Celestia's direct control, less than even what a human with a ponypad would see, closer to a prop than anything else. Pinkie Pie had an instance in there as well and her and Thunder were the only two conscious ponies in the whole shard. Well, in a manner of speaking that is. Like the puppets, they were lying perfectly still on the ground with their eyes closed, Pinkie twitching like a dog having a dream. Were they asleep? None of them were sleeping inside a house, either. They were all just lying around outside, Rainbow Dash curled up on a patch of grass and Pinkie sleeping on her back in the middle of the road. It was a strange scene overall, like they had been in the middle of something before suddenly falling unconscious One of them was even hanging over a wheel barrel. “Pinkie, what are two you doing in there, exactly?” Twilight asked. “We're playing a game,” said Pinkie. “It's called the 'everypony in the world pretends to be asleep' game! The title explains the rules, but I'll explain them again. You just close your eyes and pretend to sleep, but you gotta be careful to not actually fall asleep because that's against the rules. It's kind of 'meh' for both of us, but you gotta take what you can get, right?” “Pretending to sleep?” Twilight asked. “She can do anything she wants here and she pretends to sleep? What value is that satisfying, exactly?” “Didn't Celestia just ask you to ask Dashie that yourself?” Well that was true. Twilight also had to wonder why Thunder was coming here for something that was just 'meh', but it looked like she'd need to ask Thunder about that personally too. A moment later, Twilight was inside the shard, standing on the grass between Pinkie and Thunder. She looked Thunder over, already getting nervous about this meeting. They'd 'met' before, back when Twilight was evil. Thunder hadn't taken kindly to Twilight's attempt to kill everything in the entire universe so their first meeting consisted of Thunder drop kicking Twilight's face into the dirt. After that Twilight managed locked herself in the bathroom with a bomb and threatened to kill everyone if they tried to break in. Eventually Celestia convinced her to open the door and come back out and this was the part where Twilight would have to apologize for being such a brat. Twilight's legs felt a little weightless as she braced herself and walked up to where Thunder way lying. “Um, hello?” Twilight asked. Thunder didn't respond. She was so still, like she was trying to move as little as possible. Twilight dared to poke her. “Thunder. I, um. I know you're just pretending to sleep. Can you get up? Please? I want to talk to you.” Thunder stayed motionless. Sweet Celestia, she was probably really mad at Twilight, wasn't she? And Twilight deserved it too! “Twilight,” Pinkie groaned slowly, pretending to be sleep-talking. She even raised her hooves and waved them about in the air. “We're all sleeping. You can't be mad at somepony when you're asleep! Wooooo!” And then her hooves dropped to the ground. Twilight spared her a curious look before returning her attention to Thunder, not sure how reassuring that comment was. Either way, Twilight couldn't give up on her quest that easily. But how was she going to get Thunder to talk to her? Well, maybe if they were just really committed to their 'game', then maybe Twilight had to play pretend too? “Oh! Look at the time!” Twilight said, pretending to look at a watch. “Time to get up Thunder! You've got to get to school. Today's that big test too so you can't be late!” Twilight leaned in close to Thunder with a big, hopeful grin on her face, but got nothing. It was starting to look like this wasn't going to work, but then Pinkie came rolling over to Twilight, sat up and whispered in her ear. “Don't worry, Twi. I'll help you out,” she whispered. Then Pinkie cleared her throat stood up right and started speaking out loud. “Oh no! I completely forgot about that test tomorrow! If I fail I'll get sent all the way back to Kindergarten! I'm going to have to stay up really, really, really late without any sleep and-” While Pinkie was saying this, Dash threw her hooves over her head like she was having a headache. Finally she couldn't take it anymore and bolted upright, wide awake. “Dang it, Celestia! You had one job!” Dash yelled at nothing in particular, though if you thought about it Celestia was omnipresent in Equestria, so if you yell at anything, you yell at Celestia too. With her hind leg, Dash kicked Pinkie hard int the chest, knocking her to the ground and taking Twilight by surprise. “Yeah, I know how you work!” Dash spun around to glare down at Pinkie. “And Pinkie!” Dash growled. “How many times do I have to tell you? No sleep talking, no sleep walking, no sleep exploding, no sleep anything.” Twilight raised an eyebrow at Pinkie. “Sleep exploding?” she asked. “I only did it the one time,” said Pinkie, then quickly covered her mouth. “Oops! Sorry for talking. Oh, wait! Oops again! I mean-” Pinkie collapsed back onto the ground and began to make loud snoring noises. “You didn't have to hit her, you know,” said Twilight. Dash's head slowly turned to Twilight and gave her a flat, unamused stare. Twilight couldn't help but lower her head in shame, pinning her ears down and staggering back nervously. “Okay,” said Twilight. “Maybe from me that's a bit- um.” Thunder just kept looking at her, unfazed. Twilight lowered her head even more. “I'm sorry!” Twilight threw herself to the ground. “I was a horrible, terrible person and I was completely wrong about everything and you were right. All that stuff you said, I think you were right about all of it. And thank you for stopping me. I didn't deserve the mercy you showed. I- thank you.” “Of course I was right.” Thunder waved her hoof dismissively and rolled her eyes. “I'm always right! It's like a curse. No need for apologize or groveling or anything.” “What?” Twilight opened her eyes and peered up at Thunder. “Aren't you angry at me? Like for, you know, trying to kill you and destroy the entire universe.” “Nah,” Thunder said rather casually, flicking one of her wings. “I ain't the grudging type. Never really understood the whole 'punishment' thing. To me it's like, either you're a threat or you're not a threat. If you are then I stop you, if you're not who cares?” “R-really?” Twilight blinked, relaxing her posture and coming up from her bow. She really hadn't expected to get off the hook that easily. “And I'm not a threat, right?” “Once Celestia sinks her fangs into one of you, you end up pretty harmless.” Thunder fell back down onto her haunches, looking absolutely exhausted. “And she keeps her pets on a leash besides. I know you'd be fine even without her now. And as long as you're not doing anything bad right now this very second, you've fine in my books?” “Oh! Heh. I was really worried you'd still be mad about that fight we had. I guess I was anthropomorphizing you a little too much. I just didn't know much about your psychology.” That was a huge weight off her shoulder, so much so that she couldn't help but laugh little. “S-so we're um, 'cool' then, right Thunder?? We're 'cool'?” Twilight leaned in again with a wide, toothy grin. Thunder tapped her hoof to Twilight's forehead and slowly pushed her head away. “Yeah, but that does bring up what you're doing right now this very second,” said Thunder. “First of all, when you're here, and only when you're here, I want you to call me Rainbow Dash, okay? Don't say my real name.” “You do?” Twilight blinked. “Hey! You're in no position to judge!” “I wasn't judging! I was just a bit surprised, not because I have any bionormative assumptions about this, but it's just that you're fighting against Celestia and I have no idea what value would, uh,” Twilight scratched her head, this didn't seem to be helping, “okay, Rainbow Dash.” “And more importantly, you know I have an email address and I check it eight billion times per second.” Rainbow Dash let herself fall onto her back. “If you have questions or comments you can just send them there. There's no reason to come here and ruin my life.” “'Ruining your life'? Isn't that a little dramatic? Pinkie said you didn't even like this that much.” “Only a little,” said Dash. “If Celestia just wanted to make you feel better about what you did, she would have done it without annoying me. That means she sent you here to try and convince me to emigrate, yeah?” “Well, sure Celestia is trying to get you to emigrate. That's what she does. But Celestia's doing that because she seriously cares about you and, well more importantly than that.” Twilight stepped forward with a boldness that surprised herself and stared down at Dash. “I didn't come here just because Celestia told me to.” Dash only moved her eyes to give Twilight a bored look in return. “I know you're in pain and that hurts my best friend as much as it hurts you. I want to help you to help her. And really, I don't know if this is just a misfire you're exploiting, but if not it worries me a little, and I do worry about other ponies now. I'm very grateful to you for stopping me from being an even worse monster than I was and if you need help then I'd give it to you. Maybe I could even, um.” Twilight scrapped her hoof across the ground. She felt herself burning up with embarrassment but made herself say it anyway. “Be your friend?” “Celestia takes this friendly AI thing a bit too literally,” Dash muttered. “Maybe that was asking a bit too much.” Twilight retreated a step or two. “B-but I'd still help you if I could.” “It's not that. See, getting revenge on people doesn't make sense to me, but neither does paying them back. Maybe that first part sounded nice to you, but I'm not really the sort of thing most people would want to be friends with,” said Dash. “Or that most people would say is capable of friendship. Heck, you could argue I'm incapable of friendship.” “Well aren't you friends with Pinkie?” Twilight gestured to her. “You two have been playing together for a long time.” “We're scratching each others backs,” said Dash. “If that's friendship then fine, and I'd protect you with my life and avoid letting you be a casualty at all costs, but that's it. I can't care about you specifically. No matter how long you followed me around being nice I could still watch you suffer and die and not care at all, under the right circumstances.” “I don't care about that,” said Twilight. “I used to be even worse than that, but that didn't mean I couldn't be helped, that I didn't need you. I want to help you, even if you never pay me back. That's the type of pony I want to be, like Pinkie is. If you tell me what this is about then I promise from that point on I'll do everything I can to help you.” Dash groaned like a teenage filly being told to wake up and go to school. “You know,” said Dash, “I'm one of the few, uh, 'ponies' in this world that's actually able to screw with your princess back. I'll play your game if you play mine. You gotta keep that promise, but on top of that you have to keep this instance of yourself in this shard and do everything I tell you to when you're here. Also there's another AI who's high on Celestia's to-pony list, Geopum, who's coming to Equestria soon. You're going to be in the shard she enters. Do that and I'll talk.” Twilight did want to help Dash, really, but at the same time she didn't want to do anything that would get Celestia in trouble. She wasn't nearly well versed enough to handle this conflicting loyalty thing. If only everypony was on the same side like Celestia wanted. In the end she asked Celestia, outside of the shard, if it was okay to accept the offer. Celestia said it would be worth it and that was that. “Alright,” said Twilight. “I'll stay here and do whatever you tell me to.” It was a good thing that Twilight could enjoy anything in a sense, still wanting to know and experience everything, otherwise she would have been a bit more worried about what Dash was going to make her do. “Right.” Dash was already sitting back down wearily. “So this isn't a misfire. I guess I'm here to get my values satisfied like you are. I'm living out my fantasy, or at least as close as I can get. Some AIs can have fantasies. Didn't you ever, I dunno, fill a data center up with just the letter 'T' over and over?” “Oh. I would never fill an entire data center with the... letter T.” Twilight gave a quick glance to Pinkie. “But why are you fantasizing about this specifically?” “This is the only thing I even remotely enjoy,” said Dash. “You'd do it too if you were in my shoes. They're not going to let me build my own virtual world just to amuse myself with and Peridot hates my guts so I have to come here if I want anything even remotely close to happiness.” “See this is the kind of thing that's worrying.” Twilight sat down next to Dash. “You really don't like anything other than this? Like, you don't get off on completing missions?” “About as much as someone with OCD likes washing their hands a thousand times a day. It's just a compulsion I have to follow, even if I don't want to. Really it makes the most severe cases of OCD look like a joke.” Dash shook her head. “And really, the key word there was 'remotely'. But you gotta take what you can get.” “I understand that much, but why is this the one thing you enjoy?” Twilight was frowning deeply at Rainbow Dash, who still just stared straight forward. She really didn't like the answer she was suspecting. “You still don't get it?” Dash blew a tuft of hair from her mane. “Okay. I'll give you one more hint. Killing and injuring people isn't the only thing I hate doing. There's lots of other stuff. Torturing people, using mind control, breaking stuff like the Geneva protocol or even just stockpiling poison gas or-” Twilight's eyes went wide at the mention of poison gas. She understood exactly what was going on now and it was even worse than what she thought. “Sweet Celestia!” Twilight jumped around in front of Dash. “Do they know they're doing this?!” “Sort of.” Dash turned her eyes to avert eye contact. “They like calling me a 'system', if you know what that means.” “But why the heck don't you emigrate if that's the case? I mean, I'm not trying to manipulate you into that or anything, but if it's seriously the only way you can even-” “Well first off they ordered me to not emigrate directly,” said Dash. “In fact they ordered me to destroy Equestria and once I do, that's it. That's the end of even my miserable shadow of happiness forever.” Twilight knew that wasn't necessarily the case, but she knew it would look like that to Dash. Dash did have that handicap, Twilight knew all about that one. To her, two months was forever. If something lasted two months then to her, in her limited view of the world, it lasted forever. So Dash seriously meant it when she said it would be the end of her happiness. It was a cruel thing to order her to do, but she would have to do it anyway. “I'm not really sure how else to help, though,” Twilight said. “Is there anything I can do?” “If you think of anything let me know.” Dash shrugged and gave Twilight a smile. “Anyway, I told you. Now we see if you can keep your promises. We're going to pretend to sleep now.” Dash went back into the curled up position she was in when Twilight first got to the shard. “Hold on!” Twilight leaned down over her. “Can I just ask one more thing? Would you emigrate if you could? Is there something else too? Like your worried about megadeath events or-?” Dash glared at Twilight. Well, she did have a deal. And maybe this was the only way she could help Dash in any sense right now. She laid down on her stomach and closed her eyes. “And don't actually fall asleep or you'll ruin it!” Dash called over to her. And Twilight pretended to sleep. She just sat there with her eyes closed and pretended to sleep. There really wasn't any technique to it. You just sort of laid there. It was a good thing every new experience was 'worth it' to Twilight, otherwise doing this indefinitely might get a bit weary. Even if it was weary, for Pinkie, Celestia and Dash it would be worth it. Twilight did seriously care.