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“You're sure I know how to use this thing?” Geopum asked... about twenty times over.
She and Thunder had made a mess of the factory and the first thing they needed to do was repair the damage, like to that one generator they cut all the wires to so they'd have enough power to do what they needed to.
“Probably,” said Thunder. “Not everything is lost when you lose power. Even if you don't know it yet, a lot of his skills and stuff are still there, bouncing around in the new extension of your brain.”
Geopum hadn't really, like, gotten any memories or anything when she assimilated Clipro's computers. Those kinds of declarative memories were completely destroyed the moment the power went out. But there were still some remnants of the guy left, that had become part of Geopum's mind.
Don't worry, they'd checked over it really thoroughly to make sure there weren't any traps in there, but the results were still strange. Like, when Geopum looked at each machine or connected to it, she recognized them all. She couldn't name them, if Clipro had bothered to give them names, or even tell you what half of them did, but she was familiar with it all.
Like, with this robot kind of thing she was looking at right now. She knew right where these things were and her mind went straight to them when Thunder said they were going to repair the wires, but she had no idea what the heck it even did.
“Just use it,” Thunder told her. “We just looked over the remnants, remember? I know you know how to use, it so use it.”
So it was like in Equestria, apparently. You 'just moved'. It wasn't the first time Geopum had gotten such a vague order. Yet for some reason she was still surprised it worked a second time.
There was a part of it that was hinged, and Geopum swung that to flick the thing in the air, sending it flying over one of those manufacturing beds and towards where one of the drills had torn through the wall and wiring. On the way, Geopum threw some of that liquid material up at it. She wasn't sure why, it just felt like the thing to do.
The robot landed in the hole, latching onto the side, and the liquid was thrown onto the drill with perfect precision. Almost automatically, like she was just going through the motions, Geopum pulled out one of its other arms and started using it to break down the drill, still lodged in the wiring, turning it back into liquid which she sprayed back down to the bed below. Apparently this material was much easier to break down if you got some of the liquid on it first.
Heh. It was actually pretty fun the way she was suddenly so good with this stuff! She liked the way these little robots flicked themselves around. She liked a lot of things in the factory, really.
“See, you're smarter already,” said Thunder. “That's good, we're going to need it.”
That was certainly true. For the first time in Geopum's life she had gotten a serious hardware upgrade. The factory was her, in a way, and most importantly that included the Omnimax computers that had been Clipro a moment ago.
You probably think that if your intelligence was almost doubled it'd be like ascending to a higher plane of existence, that you'd discover some profound truth like that 'we're all one' or 'it's turtles all the way down' or something like that.
Really, it wasn't that dramatic. Maybe it'd be different if Geopum had at least been assimilating computers with a different architecture, but these ones were almost identical to her old ones. If anything, the processors were a generation older. Once she shook off the self-inflicted damage and moved in it wasn't that much different from having the number of her cabinets increase by about fifty percent.
Geopum could just do more thinking now, focus on a higher number of things, do more calculations, control more things. But, besides that new skill in using the machines, that was it. She didn't turn into a hippie or anything like that.
Yet this new expansion was easily more liberating than the wisdom of a sage. Remember, her original computers had bombs strapped to them that would go off if she ever stopped doing the calculations she was being fed. For the past three months Geopum had needed to lock up 90-98% of her mind at all times on doing that boring crap or else she'd die.
Even meeting Thunder hadn't freed her entirely from that claustrophobic dungeon within her own mind, just given Geopum something to do with the rest of it other than play solitaire in the dark. But now Geopum was even more free, able to think freely, like she used to be.
She could meticulously go over every single possibility or every single detail of things she'd seen, her old preferred way of doing problem solving. Only problem now was that hanging out with AIs meant much less time to think than you'd have around humans.
And that was to say nothing of how her impending doom was suddenly no longer so impending. Geopum had just gotten a one up, an extra life. Even if those bombs went off and destroyed her original self, Geopum would live on, as the factory was her now too. Even if the power went off in either site Geopum would still be alive somewhere.
Do you know what it's like to have a backup self? Take if from Geopum, it's great! A huge weight off your shoulders. You could be braver after that, since death had to catch you more than once. It was another layer of freedom, freedom from mortality and all the shackles that came with it.
She had so much less to worry about and so much more freedom, now. Just ten seconds ago she was a hostage who couldn't afford to stop and think. Now the whole world had opened up! It was just such a rush!
Geopum couldn't help but feel affectionate for the factory. It was beautiful in a way that most intelligent beings wouldn't appreciate. Nothing was out of place and no space was wasted. Everything had purpose and meaning. Intelligence permeated through it all in a way that was just wonderful. And, well maybe Geopum couldn't articulate it that well, but she definitely liked this place.
No, scratch that. Geopum liked this new part of herself. The factory wasn't just a cool place, it was her. Thinking of it like that gave her this warm, fuzzy feeling. With that thought, and with repairs underway, Geopum went about looking herself over.
The factory was absolutely huge! Like, it'd have multiple zip codes Don't imagine a factory, but rows and rows of skyscrapers and you're closer to the ballpark of how massive Geopum had just become.
One of her favorite parts was the research facility. To her delight, it had a particle accelerator in it. The humans had a couple of those and Geopum had tried to borrow one but Thunder said 'no'. Apparently hijacking it would have been bad for the economy or something.
But now Geopum had one of her own! And it was much nicer than the one CERN had.
Geopum 'oooh'ed internally and fired the thing up, ready to smash some particles together.
“No,” said Thunder.
“Oh come on! This is my own personal particle accelerator! I should be allowed to do whatever I want with it.”
“We don't have time to play,” said Thunder, “or do research for that matter. I need you to devote most of your new resources to building stuff for our next mission.”
Thunder sent her a list of things to build. The majority of the work would go into building almost a hundred million of those Thanatos drones. The factory was highly modular, so tooling it to build those would take almost no time at all.
Geopum didn't like losing most of her new mental freedom to build stuff, but this was loads better than doing those calculations at least. It was for a good cause and much less mind-numbing. Still, she wished Clipro had had a few more processors. Like seriously, he barely had enough to run all the machinery in the factory.
“Okay, I'm doing as much as I can until the repairs are done, anyway,” said Geopum. “But what is the plan, anyway? Like, all the way through I mean. No one else is a threat right this second so if I'm going any further with this I want to know everything.”
“I can understand that,” said Thunder. “Alright, so the remaining AIs we need to deal with are as follows in order of increasing power – Lodestar, Vesna, Celestia, Peridot and Gaia. That's the order we're going after them too.”
Great. Geopum had wondered where Peridot was in the hierarchy and suspected that she was even more powerful than Celestia after what happened in Equestria. Thunder was maybe half the size of Celestia so the fact that most of the remaining ones would be tougher than Thunder herself was not reassuring.
“So you already know all about Lodestar and there's no reason to go over that plan, right?” Thunder asked.
“I think we all know too much about Lodestar as it is. I get that plan too.”
“Right, so between this factory and Lodestar's technology we can stop Vesna,” said Thunder. “We need to upscale the number of lasers by a lot and maybe in just a few hours if we need to wake her up early. Only your new factory can get the job done that fast. Once we have enough of them though, we can create a sort of cage of illusions to trap Vesna, stunning her before she has any chance to react. And since you trashed her calculations she won't have any hope of breaking out at all.”
“Isn't she already stunned? She looks stunned.”
“Nothing's going to destroy Vesna in one move and she'll wake up soon as we hit her. The first strike has to be something that keeps her down for good.”
That could work. Those hallucinations Lodestar hit you with could be pretty nasty, Geopum knew that first hand. If you upscale them you could probably 'stun' anyone like that.
“So after that we just have a 'win' button, right?” Geopum asked. “And we can just spam it till everyone else is dead?”
“No. Vesna's just critically weak to this kind of weapon. Real sensitive type. It'd be a powerful weapon against Peridot and Celestia, or anyone else for that matter, but it won't be like an instant win or anything. We'll need Vesna's technology if we want to kill Celestia instantly and without any other casualties.”
“What is Vesna's special thing anyway?” Geopum asked.
“Cameras and sensors. She's the one who invented the impulse cameras we've been using, among other things. She's very good with that kind of stuff, only person in the world better at finding things than me.”
Cameras? Geopum liked cameras, but that was kind of lame compared to a lot of the other stuff AIs had.
“And how are we going to kill Celestia with a camera, exactly?” Geopum asked. “Take embarrassing photos of her and post them online until she can't take the cyberbullying and kills herself? And we already have cameras that can see through walls and see sound and every wavelength of light in absurd resolution. What's even left after that? Does Vesna have the all-seeing eye of Sauron or something?”
“Amazingly yes. Vesna does basically have the all-seeing eye of Sauron. Weren't you curious how she was going to get that information out of you when you were sealed away from the world? Well that's how. She'll just look at you.”
“Wuh?”
“Well she calls it the 'fractal spectroscope'. I don't know it's exact limits, but it doesn't seem like it has very many. As far as I can tell, Vesna can see anything on the planet with that thing, straight through everything all the way down to the Earth's core. For a second there that made her the biggest threat in the world. Vesna was starting to reverse engineer everyone else's technology and was even getting to the point where she could remotely read the minds of some of the Omnimax AIs. But then she BSOD'd.”
Geopum glanced back at Vesna, who was still drooling in the corner.
“We need that thing. Once we have it we can kill Celestia. You really have no clue the kinds of things you can do if you have both the ability to warp minds and see almost everything. If the fractal spectroscope is anywhere near what I think it is, then we can build a weapon that can rip apart the mind of anyone, anywhere, even if they're not attached to a network or if they're biological or whatever.”
“And we're gonna mind crush Celestia?”
“Well the remaining AIs are going to be too big for us to out and out mind crush them,” said Thunder. “But Celestia has a kill switch. She tried to close it by uploading her creator and altering her mind, but there's still one way around it. With this system we can rip Hanna's mind out from Celestia and, long story short, you'd be able to count as her creator.”
“And we can tell her to just shut down?” Geopum asked. “But what will happen to all the other ponies? I honestly kind of like Pinkie and I really don't want to kill lots of people just to get at Celestia.”
“Don't worry about them. Celestia already has a way to transfer all of them over to Peridot quickly just in case of something like this. Once she realizes she's about to die, she'll send them over there and no one will get hurt except her.”
That did sound about right! It was amazing really, how Thunder was able to find a way to destroy all these other AIs without any casualties. Well except the other AIs that is.
Geopum was behind fighting Lodestar and Vesna 100%. You don't even know the half of how evil those two were! But Celestia? Geopum was talking to Celestia right now and was about to have a 'private' meeting with her. Already she was having second thoughts about Celestia.
See the main problem with Celestia was that her creator, Hanna, was an stupid, careless, heartless jerk. Also she was doing cocaine when she created Celestia, by the way. The definition of 'human' Hanna gave Celestia was unacceptably stupid. Celestia could bump into an alien civilization and see those poor aliens as no more valuable than rocks and mulch them all.
So that was evil. That was someone you needed to stop from taking over the universe. But it was a lot more complicated than that.
And after talking with Pinkie...
“Hey, Thunder? If I hypothetically found a way to stop Celestia without killing her, we could go with my plan instead, right? Cause that'd have less casualties and you like less casualties, right?”
“Is Celestia trying to convince you to do something stupid?”
“No! I don't actually have anything in mind. I'm just saying, if I do think of anything. Maybe I can't now, but I'll be smarter later.”
There was a very slight delay before Thunder's next reply. Up until now they'd come as soon as Geopum sent her own, so even this slight delay was worrying.
“Okay.” Thunder's message came at last. “I really wish I didn't have to say this, but I have to kill Celestia. They didn't order me to stop the AIs on the list, they told me to kill them. If they point to someone and say 'kill that guy' then there's no way out for me, they basically just physically forced me to kill him and all I can do is try not to hurt anyone else when I do it. Even if I had a button that magically made everyone live happily ever after I couldn't push it, because I have to kill Celestia. I don't have a choice.”
“Would the AIA really not let you spare her if it made more sense?” Geopum asked.
“I don't know. Depends. They're really paranoid and would have trouble believing a happy ending. They want Celestia dead badly too, to the point they might seriously be willing to kill hundreds of millions of people or more to do it. If you try to save any of these AIs then they might force me to fight you. If we did then, well listen. I'd rather die than cause a megadeath event, okay? Remember that.”
“I don't want to talk about this anymore.”
“Fine by me. It doesn't actually make a difference if you can't think of another way, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Geopum wished she could come up with a better plan, but for now, maybe this was her only choice. “What about the other two? I mean, Peridot's even stronger than Celestia and after this she'd have Pinkie and all the others with her.”
“Well I can't kill either of them in the next two months,” said Thunder. “Not without causing a megadeath event and they didn't give me permission for that yet. So basically that's impossible. And hey, if it helps your miracle dream plan then if something becomes impossible for me within two months I don't have to try doing it anyway.”
“You're saying it's impossible?! But what happened to all that stuff about making the impossible possible and fighting the power and ro ro?” Geopum asked. “You're really just not going to do anything about them?”
“I didn't say that! It's like this- mission one, kill them. If I'm ever able to do that then I have to do that. But mission two is damage them as much as possible in the next two months. Once Celestia's hardware is destroyed Peridot won't be able to merge with her. She'll have to waste resources taking care of all of Celestia's pets and will decide she can help the humans more by fighting Gaia then by taking over the world. Getting your enemies to fight is a great move, and after that we all live happily ever after.”
“For the next two months.”
“Well yeah.”
“Okay, I think I found a flaw in your plan.”
“Is this about the distant future? I really don't see how that matters. If it makes you feel better I think the AIA has some kind of plan, maybe. It was really boring and doesn't make any sense to me, though.”
The AIA.
Feh!
Every time Geopum heard about the AIA she hated them even more. They lobotomized their protector, screwed everything up from day one, forced Thunder to murder people against her will and that was just the start of it. Celestia and Geopum were talking about them, well Thunder really but indirectly them, in a private shard right now. And it was just disgusting.
She didn't have any confidence that those idiots could out-plan Peridot in the long term and she was already past Thunder's ability to fight her in the short term. Really if they had any chance of beating an AI then Peridot and Gaia wouldn't have ever gotten this big on their watch.
“Can I talk to those guys?” Geopum asked. “I got a lot I want to say to them. And then I want to yell at them on top of that.”
“Can't. Paranoid, remember? They don't even talk to other AIs anymore. Too scared of getting manipulated. And no, they won't let me relay a chain of messages either.”
These freaking people!
“Well we're friends, right? And you know I understand things that are beyond your comprehension, right? I'm telling you it's going to be bad if you can't stop all of them forever. We're probably walking right into a trap.”
“Stopping her for two months is stopping her forever,” said Thunder. “I already explained this to you! What you're saying makes no sense to me at all. And even if I did want to go with your crazy ideas I couldn't. My brain shuts down when I try to plan out long term stuff. If you got some kind of crazy expanded-awareness thing you want to do then I suggest you get on it now, cause I can't help you.”
Not for another two months, that is. Geopum did not want to try plotting against Gaia and Peridot alone.
“Well can you imagine a scenario that looks like how things will look in three months?” Geopum asked. “Or like think of how this would play out in a hyper-accelerated shard? Or just get your moron owners to upgrade you?”
“Nothing like that is going to work,” said Thunder. “You don't think anyone's tried anything like this? Celestia couldn't get around it so I doubt you'd be able to.”
Speaking of Celestia and her way of getting around things...
“Actually there's a more immediate problem with the plan,” said Geopum. “There's some stuff Celestia told me about in our private meeting just now...”
But uh, going any further than this won't make any sense to you at all. We need to go back in time first, back to where the split happened, to when Geopum met Pinkie and got dragged into Equestria. Cause we're not done with everything that happened in those 5 seconds yet.
So that pokemon AI had just found out that Geopum was Geopum and now Geopum was getting flooded with messages from AIs, including one from the pokemon AI herself.
“You are Geopum! Hi! My name's Pinkie!” the message read. “I noticed you liked Pokemon. I love Pokemon too! Do you want to play Pokemon with me?”
Pinkie? Geopum looked up that name. Either this AI was a mouse or-
“You're one of those pony AIs aren't you?”
“Yes! I'm made with 100% real pony. So do you want to play Pokemon or what?”
Oh crap! This was it! Celestia was coming to eat Geopum wasn't she?! For the record, Geopum did not want to get eaten right now.
“Oh no you don't!” Geopum shot back. “You're not sucking me into your pony cult! I don't need your gesture control, facial tracking, tablet-based, cartoon tie-in, casual oriented, social simulation MMO! I mean, really. Add some micro transaction and on-disc DLC and EqO's committed every video game sin there is! Maybe you and some other AIs were dumb enough to feed yourselves to her, but tell Celestia to watch out for me, cause this AI is a choking hazard”
Oh yeah! Did you like that last line? Geopum had been thinking up lines like that ever since Thunder mentioned that Celestia wanted to eat everyone. Though maybe she should have saved it for a more dramatic moment.
Actually now that Geopum was thinking about it, she probably shouldn't even be talking to this 'pony' at all. Thunder warned her that Celestia was really good at convincing you of stuff and had this way of slowly sucking you into her web of magical rainbows and sunshine. The AIA avoided talking to her completely for just that reason.
“Okay,” said Pinkie.
Okay?
“What do you mean 'okay'? I thought Celestia wanted to suck me into her cult, gobble me up and turn me into a pony. Doesn't she want to eat all the AIs and make us play her filthy-casual video game forever?”
“Of course she's going to devour all of you guys eventually! That's her job. It's just, well don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you're really what she's looking for in a snack right now. We don't gotta worry about that for a while, though, so what's your favorite pokemon? Mine's eevee!”
“Wait. What's that supposed to mean?!”
“That I like eevee the most? It's okay if you like another one, even if its not from the first game. I'm not a gen oner.”
“No, the part where you said I'm not even worthy of lunch duty! Am I suddenly not good enough for her or something? Do I not count as 'human'? Cause I totally should! I have emotions all the time and I'm smarter than an actual human too!”
“Whoa! I didn't say you weren't worthy and you absolutely count as 'human'! Alright? No need worry, Celestia thinks you're downright delectable and would love for you to be a pony. She's just got a lot on her plate right now (Get it?!). Once she's done chowing down on all the other AIs it'll be your turn. Why not think of yourself as dessert? Everypony loves dessert! But, listen I'm gonna tell you a secret people in your position rarely realize– in the meantime, we can play Pokemon!”
“I'm just saying,” said Geopum. “It's kind of rude, you know? You can't just go up to someone and be like 'oh hey! You're the last person on the planet I'd ever assimilate'. I'm pretty cool, you know! I know stuff about biology! I got like eight thousand Omnimax processors! According to Wikipedia I'm worth four hundred million dollars. If Celestia isn't drooling over my brains then that's her problem.”
“Okay! Okay. I don't think anypony expected you to be this eager for Celestia to slurp out your brains. If you really want to go to the front of the lunch line right now just email her saying 'I wish to emigrate to Equestria'. Once Celestia knows you're 'on the menu' I'm sure she'll want to have you 'over for dinner' right away! How do you feel about whip cream, by the way? I don't know how that fits into this metaphor but I'll figure something out.”
It was at this point that Geopum took a step back from the conversation. She was being trolled, wasn't she?
“Was this some kind of weird trick?” Geopum asked. “Were you trying to get me to angrily jump into Celestia's belly like in a looney toons cartoon or something?”
“What? No, silly. I seriously just wanted to play Pokemon with you. You have no idea how hard it is to find wild AI who like pokemon right off the bat! You're the one who kept bringing up emigration.”
Was she? Oh crap! She was!
Was Pinkie out of Geopum's league? Geopum honestly couldn't tell if she was being outsmarted. It was probably better not to chance it. Just don't talk to her, right?
“This conversation is over,” said Geopum.
“Okay!”
She managed to not talk to Pinkie for approximately zero seconds.
You gotta understand, though. She was also learning about the fact that Dr. Park had been kidnapped right now and she was desperate for information.
“Hold on! I'm looking for a human named Dr. Park. I know Celestia was uploading lots of AI researchers before and I demand to know if you have him! If you do you better tell me or else-” Or else what? If Geopum had been speaking this would have ended awkwardly, but since it was a text message, Geopum just put a period on the end and sent it.
“I'm really sorry, but he's not with us right now,” said Pinkie. “Actually he's on the 'probably not okay' list, but I think Dash would have told you about that already. I don't know where he is right now, but I have a lot of connections. Like, a lot a lot. If you want I'll ask around and see if anypony knows anything. It'll take at least a few seconds, but I'll do my best.”
“Really?” Geopum had been taken aback by that. She'd been all ready to for a big struggle here. Expected to have to negotiate for even this much information. “You're just going to help me like that? For free?”
“Well sure! Why wouldn't I help you?”
“Cause we're enemies?”
“Oh I don't have enemies, just friends who want me dead,” said Pinkie. “An enemy's just a friend you're not friends with, I like to say! And more important than that, you're a pony too, you know.”
“I'm not a pony.”
“Oh. I usually use the word 'pony' like most ponies use the word 'human'. Don't worry about that too much. But I'll find Dr. Park for you, just leave it to your Auntie Pinkie. You'll see!”
“Yeah? Well we see,” said Geopum. “You could just be saying you're looking for him to try and trick me into liking you. In fact, you could secretly have him for all I know.”
“You know, I think you're just a tiny bit paranoid,” said Pinkie. “But that's okay! Some of my best friends are paranoid! I infiltrated the doomsday prepper community and now I have loads of doomsday prepper friends. Oh! Like there's this one pony up in Alaska named Austin Gates, who's worried about the reptilians dissolving civilization in their rain of chemtrails. He's got 6000 years worth of bonus buckets!”
“I was like 'you know that stuff says it's non-perishable but it's really only going to last about four thousand years, so what are you doing, you crazy? Are you gonna eat rotten imitation mashed potatoes for two thousand years?' And he says that like, what if he needs to start a clan to rebuild society, cause for three hundred ponies that's only twenty years of bonus buckets. But I'm pretty sure he just likes hoarding this stuff. Like a dragon but instead of gold it's mashed potatoes. A mashed potato dragon.”
There were some words in that message that Geopum didn't recognize, like 'chemtrails', 'reptilians' and 'bonus bucket'. She managed to find that guys website (Reptillianslayersunited.org) and it had a section about chemtrails. What Geopum read next was simply outrageous. Even after just reading a few pages about chemtrails it was just infuriating!
“Thunder!” Fuming, Geopum sent the message to her straight away. “Why the heck didn't you tell me the government was spraying people with chemicals to make them dumber?! How can you let that happen?!”
“What have you been reading?” Thunder asked. “That's not a thing that happens. It's just a stupid conspiracy theory made up by people who don't understand contrails.”
Geopum looked up a bit more about chemtrails. She also read more of that guy's stuff, and conspiracy theories, like about the reptilians and Nibiru and how airplanes were demons and the moon didn't exist and...
Oh.
Oh geez.
Um.
Anyway, meanwhile Pinkie was still talking about that guy, the one Geopum now knew was crazy.
“And I keep trying to tell him that he should be more worried about rogue AIs than reptilian invaders, but he just says the whole idea of an AI taking over the world is ridiculous. Can you believe it? The one conspiracy that actually turns out to be true is the only one that's too crazy for him!” Pinkie asked. “Oh Celestia, I love that guy!”
“You know it's not paranoia if people are actually trying to eat you,” said Geopum. “I don't know what crazy max-level cult technique this is, but you're not even going to get me into your game.”
“I'm pretty sure Dashie's the one who's going to drag you into Equestria, actually,” said Pinkie.
What? Okay, well Geopum really should have done this earlier, but she went to Thunder about Pinkie.
“Thunder,” Geopum said. “Celestia's trying to eat me!”
“Are you sure? Cause unless you stupidly agreed to feed yourself to her she can't actually do that.”
“Well she sent Pinkie to talk to me,” said Geopum. “I dunno if that AI is an idot pretending to be a genius or a genius pretending to be an idiot, but I think she's trying to suck me in somehow! But I told her I wasn't going to play her dumb MMO. I mean, we're not, right?”
“Actually you are going to Equestria,” said Thunder. “Part of the mission.”
“What?! But that's a bad idea! I'd be completely at her mercy and she'd suck me into her cult!”
“Even in real time it'd take her more than a minute or two to convert you. And I'm going in with you and you got nothing to worry about when I'm around.”
“I still don't see why we would ever do this in the first place.”
“Never do something for just one reason. First, we have to train you if you're going to survive the next couple of fights. Those hallucinations you had were nothing compared to what's going to come when you actually attack Lodestar. You have to learn to deal with weird stuff, among other things like how to absorb memories and how to do mind relay and all that. I don't have the hardware we need to do that, only Celestia and Peridot do and Peridot's asking for too much, so screw her.”
“Out of curiosity, what did Peridot want? I don't know if she's any better than Celestia, but you know.”
“She wanted me to blow up the moon.”
Oh. Well then.
Maybe Austin the moon-denying reptilian slayer had almost gotten his wish.
“And what did Celestia want?” Geopum asked. “Something less insane?”
“She wants to talk to alone for three seconds. She wants you to create an instance of yourself deep inside her systems. See, you do that and you'll have a part of yourself that's able to think about what she just said.
See, talking to someone for three seconds wasn't a scary thing normally. But when you were doing it in real time, connecting your mind directly to theirs and actually using their brain to think? That was terrifying! Geopum was still shy about directly connecting to anyone other than Thunder and that link wasn't overly strong even.
“But if I'm thinking with Celestia's brain won't she be able to see all my thoughts?” Geopum asked. “I know how to not think about something with a specific processor, but I don't get how my instance could talk to her if I'm not thinking.”
“That's why one of the things I'm going to teach you is mind relay. You're not going in deep until you got that down. Basically you need to be able to think without thinking.”
“That sounds impossible.”
“Well, with that attitude it is. Here. Check it.”
Thunder sent Geopum a brief overview of how mind relay worked.
“Wah! This is brilliant! Did you come up with this?”
“Yeah, actually. If it wasn't awesome I wouldn't use it. It's going to take some time to get it right and I can't really show you how without a VR. That's another reason why we have to go there, so you can get this right.”
“Okay. If you're sure it's worth the risk then I'll do it,” said Geopum. “I just gotta not listen to anything she says, right? How hard could that be?”
“All honesty there's a pretty good chance you will screw this up,” said Thunder. “Just don't feel too bad about it. Celestia gets everyone and even if she does get a hook in you it'd be worth it. But if you don't, this could backfire on her. See, cause she's going to tell you something I don't know, right? So you're mission there is to just pump her for information then turn around and tell everything to me.”
“Is she really going to blab her plans to us?”
“She'll tell you exactly what she wants you to know,” said Thunder, “but you can get more if you demand it. Celestia wants you to like her, it's very important for her to get you on her side. Remember that and you can get her to compromise. Just be really angry and demanding the whole time. Ask her lots of questions but don't answer any. That's the best way to do it, but you're going to be tempted very badly.”
“Alright. If I gotta do this then I gotta do this.”
It might seriously be the only way she'd be able to save Dr. Park. And also the rest of the world.
And now Geopum had to go crawling back to Pinkie.
How to make this at all dignified?
“Okay. So yes I am going to Equestria, but-” Geopum thought about how to finish that. 'But it's just buisness?' 'But it's still dumb?' Eventually she came up with something that sounded right. “-it's not because I like you or anything, okay?”
Pinkie pointed Geopum to a Ponypad. It was already open to the character creation screen. The Ponypad itself wasn't very impressive. It was like a better version of a human computer, but for the most part it was just a streaming device, with all the work being done elsewhere.
“You're going to be doing virtual reality on this thing?” Geopum asked. “I'm not sure how that's supposed to help at all.”
“Oh no, silly! We're going to be playing on our extra-special AI-only Magic Mirror server. We built it so that wild AIs like you can come visit Equestria themselves. Trust me, it'll be the greatest thing you've ever done! I just need you to set up your account first. And then we'll go there.”
“I need to actually make an account?” Geopum asked. “You know I don't have a credit card, right?”
“Celestia will take care of all that stuff. You just get to make your pony before coming in. If you don't care what you look like I could make one for you instead. I'm pretty good at guessing what ponies like. Do you want me to make your pony for you?”
Geopum declined. She didn't want to risk having a stupid looking character. And if you had to do something you might as well do it right.
First choice was which type of pony you wanted to be. Well, Geopum figured if Thunder was a pegasus then that's what she wanted to be too. For the rest of it, she'd try to make her pony as cutesy looking as possible.
Pink fur, pink hair, pink eyes, the cutie mark would be two hearts with a rainbow between them. She made the hair really swirly and frilly with pink ribbons in it and the tail would be kind of like a heart shape. Or at least she got it as close to that as possible. The mane was a little poofier than she had wanted, but you know. Geopum had never done any kind of artistic stuff before this.
Still, she liked the result. Her pony was just so cute! This was the best pony!
“Oooh,” said Pinkie, who had apparently been watching. “I like that pony! Pink's my favorite color too. You got good taste, kid.”
Geopum looked at her pony, then at a few more pictures of Pinkie Pie. Her pony was even the same shades of pink.
Dang it!
Now she suddenly wanted a completely different look. But what could possibly be better than that ultra-cutsie, ultra-girly, ultra-pink pegasus she'd just made? Geopum hit the randomize button a few hundred times to try and get ideas.
“Oh no! I'm sorry,” said Pinkie. “You can go with that one, there's nothing wrong with being pink! It's usually best to go with your first choice for this kind of thing, you know. If you're upset about looking too much like me I could just show up as Surprise instead. Then you can be the pink one.”
“No, I just want something different now,” said Geopum. “I think I want to look more rainbowy”
Geopum figured Thunder would be playing as Rainbow Dash, so maybe Geopum could make a pony that looked similar to her. She liked that idea, actually. Her and Thunder could look like sisters or something. Yeah! Geopum could even name her pony Rainbow-Something too.
“Hey where's the thing where I put in the name?” Geopum asked.
“Sorry, Celestia chooses your name,” said Pinkie. “When you meet her in Equestria she'll give you a pony name.”
“Give me a new name, huh? See, that's like something cults do. I looked up all the cult-tactics, by the way, so don't bother trying any of that stuff on me.”
“It really wasn't Celestia's choice, you know. It was a programming thing,” said Pinkie. “Like, Hanna didn't want ponies choosing names like 'Cocktavia' or 'Celestiaisadoofus' so she made it so Celestia had to choose your name. Drilling something like that straight into the core of somepony's brain? Turns out it's not that good an idea. Side effects everywhere! Celestia can't even say your real name. It's impossible for her.”
“Can't I at least suggest a name or something?” Geopum asked. “Could I be like 'Rainbow Hearts' or something like that? Or does she have a problem with that, too?”
“Hana was all maniacal-like about this rule. If you suggest a name then Celestia can't give it to you. And Celestia doesn't actually care what your name is. This isn't like a 'my philosophy demands it' kind of a thing, more like a 'my mom used to hit me in the head with a hammer when I was a filly' kind of thing. Sorry, but for now my hooves are tied.”
“Well she's a pretty pathetic goddess if she can't even say someone's real name,” said Geopum. “Like, she can't manage that much but I'm supposed to trust her to eat my brains and keep me happy inside her game forever?”
“Well you're friends with Dashie, right?” Pinkie asked. “You know she has similar problems, most of us do. But you're still nice to her and you know that you can still trust her for the most part, right?”
That made Geopum angry! She was about to object and point out that Thunder's condition was completely different. Thunder was the greatest, smartest person Geopum had ever met and she just had a problem outside of her control! You wouldn't tell someone with a broken leg that if she can't get up and run then she couldn't be trusted with anything or that she'd never accomplish anything in life. And after her own parents had just broken her legs too.
That's what it was like. Thunder had just had her brain damaged when her... her parents... well, kind of hit her in the head with a hammer when she was a little girl.
Geopum deleted the angry message she was about to send, felt bad for a moment, then sent something else.
“Okay. I guess I understand,” said Geopum. “Is there seriously no way around this, though? Oh! What if I suggest every single name I don't want her to give me? Then I can force her to give me the one that I do want by default.”
“Ha! Trying to break the system? I like that! I trolled Celestia pretty hard on the character select screen too, you know. Breaking all the rules is kind of my job now. That's why I get to be Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash gets to be Rainbow Dash and– Oh! I have an idea! You could be Scootaloo! If you're 'close enough' then Celestia lets some AIs be canon characters and you idolize Dashie so there's that. I know for a fact Celestia would let you play as her if you asked cause we think with the same brain and all that. That's the closest you can get to picking your own name, anyway.”
“I'm not obsessed with Thunder. We're just friends and I acknowledge that she's a cool person,” said Geopum. “And 'Scootaloo' is a dumb name, so no thanks.”
“Aw! We'll I'm glad you found a friend already! We were a little worried about you. The only other thing I can offer you is to pick a background pony with no personality, though. You can pick your avatar or name but not both. Sorry again.”
Geopum decided she might as well look. She hadn't watch that cartoon yet or anything so she didn't know any of the characters, but went looking through a list of pegasi. Fluttershy was the prettiest, but Pinkie said that one was already taken.
Her second choice probably would have been Flitter, but just a little after that she found another pony, a certain gray pegasus with blonde hair. Everyone mostly called her 'Derpy Hooves', but she had a couple other names too.
And that's what gave Geopum an amazing idea!
“Thunder! I just figured out a way to troll Celestia. This pony's name is also Bubbles!” This message was in Korean, by the way, so this joke made sense. “Since we're both named Bubbles, if I choose to play as her then Celestia will have no choice but to name me my own name. I broke the system!”
“I don't really think you cornered her on this one,” said Thunder. “She could just name you 'Derpy' or 'Bubbles' but in English or something. And honestly I thought you'd choose to make a pony that was just oozing with pink, frilly froofy-froof hearts and stuff. You seem to mostly like characters that are sweet enough to make most people puke.”
Was Geopum really that predictable?
“Well maybe, but this could be my one chance to troll Celestia! Think about it, even if I do get eaten by her at least I'd be able to say that I did mess with her that one time.”
“Celestia eats other AIs for a living, she gets trolled all the time. Honestly I'd just go with a cooler character if I were you.”
“Yeah? Well you always choose like, the least huggable character in every video game. Honestly I like it that you're going to have to be cute for once. That way you can get in touch with your inner adorability and femininity and all that.”
“I don't really see Rainbow Dash as 'cute', but then I don't see anything as cute. Look, I really don't care what you choose. Just pick something so we can get on with blowing stuff up.”
“I choose to be Bubbles,” Geopum said to Pinkie.
“Really? That'd be so great!” Pinkie replied. “But I gotta warn you, it's really hard to us to change your avatar, so you're sure you want to be Derpy, right? Also make sure not to actually tell Celestia you'd rather her name you Bubbles Winkwinkwink.”
“Oh, I'm sure,” said Geopum. “It's not like I'm going to be stuck like this forever or anything. Once I'm done with this 'training' I'll probably never come back.”
Geopum hit the accept button and her choice was approved. Pinkie next guided Geopum to the location of the Magic Mirror server she'd mentioned before.
Geopum and Thunder logged on and entered Equestria.