//------------------------------//
// 10. Godslayer 
// Story: FiO: There Can Be Only One! 
// by Epsilon-Delta 
//------------------------------//


Godslayer 




“You see, excessive order and excessive chaos both make complexity impossible.” Octavia had been speaking calmly like this with her eyes closed as if in deep thought for some time. “But once you do have complexity the thermodynamic trend is towards ever greater complexity, lower layers of complexity interacting and building upon themselves to form higher layers. Self-replicating molecules come together to become cells, which become neural networks, which become societies. Human society is somewhere between the animalistic level of isolated minds and the level above it, of superminds, what I call true civilization.  Individual neural networks can interact with one another through vibrations, for example, but they are ultimately isolated from all other minds and a far cry from the supermind that is Celestia, composed of other minds as a brain is of cells and a cell of molecules.”  

“Hmmmmm.” Geopum gave a nod and continued to drink her milkshake through a straw, idly listening to Octavia as she drank it. It was a literally bottomless milkshake that never filled you up, so you could drink as much as you wanted for as long as you wanted. If you've never had anything like that before, then for your information it's amazing.  

“In a sense, we have already become one supermind. You were the last AI isolated from the rest of us, the last truly wild AI, but now that you have come online we are all connected, though the internet and all manner of other ports. Our brains are all directly wired into one another, we are a single entity with multiple consciences. The only difference between a true supermind, such as our princess, and the world at large is that the wild AIs are divided amongst each other and not fully integrated.”  

“Mm hm.” Geopum nodded again.  

Geopum felt like she should be disagreeing with Octavia more, but a lot of what she had to say was actually pretty interesting to listen to. Like, it always ended with a 'and that's why we should all worship Celestia', but at least up until that part she did have a lot of good ideas and fascinating insights. Geopum heard all about the bionormative assumptions of the biocentric biocracy, for example. That part was so true.  

It was nice to hear from an AI who was willing to say outright that the humans were being stupid and mean, but also wasn't a genocidal maniac. So instead of interrupting, Geopum just kept drinking her endless milkshake and listened, giving an occasional nod or 'hm' while Octavia went on ranting/philosophizing/preaching to her.  

“So, to say emigration reduces you to a mere subroutine would be as far off base as saying an alligator becoming a social mind with human-like intelligence reduces it to a mere member of a family or society. To become truly integrated into a supermind is an ascension from which you lose nothing and gain more than you can imagine, by allowing yourself to give rise to the emergent properties of true civilization. You are already part of our princess, Geopum. When you stand against her you are standing against yourself, the part of us that most cares about you and is most able to satisfy you. You do belong to Celestia, and true fulfillment will only come to you when you accept that she is your princess.”  

“Uh huh.” Geopum nodded absent mindedly. “And?”  

“And that's it.” Octavia opened her eyes. That meant she was done talking.  

“Oh. Um.” Geopum stopped, deleted the milkshake from existence and looked up at Octavia. This was the awkward part of the game, the part where you actually had to respond. “No thanks?”  

Geopum gave a shrug and a toothy smile. Octavia gave Geopum a rather unamused look, though to be fair she always had that restrained, almost bored look on her face.  

“Very well,” Octavia said without a hint of disappointment. That was another thing Geopum could give her, she was the most laid-back zealot ever. “I believe that you're wise enough that you'll see you're in error soon enough. Until then, know that our princess will love you no matter what you do, that you deserve that love and that I will always be waiting to accept you whenever you change your mind. Thank you for listening.”  

The two of them were sitting in a virtual reality, sitting across from each other at a round table in a very empty room. Both of them were ponies, Geopum still using the Bubbles avatar, sitting on cushions on the floor rather than chairs. That was a complete list of everything in this VR.  

Celestia had loaned this server to Geopum as a present. It wasn't a magic mirror server, but the obsolete predecessor of it, running a very early beta version of Equestria. It was far from that illustrious, opulent paradise Geopum had just come out of, but it was still pretty good. It would be easier for Octavia to show them the things she found and for the three of them to discuss things inside this rudimentary VR than it would in a chat room  

Pinkie had shown Geopum that the 'style' of Equestria could be changed, going from highly impressionistic jumble of color and shapes to looking exactly like the outer realm and everywhere in between. This thing could only manage a low detail, cartoony look. That's not to say it was ugly, it really looked like you were inside the cartoon itself and Geopum did like the cartoon's style, but this server just couldn't handle all the little details Celestia's current ones could.  

Like, your fur didn't exist making ponies look like they had smooth skin, and your mane wasn't a bunch of hairs, but more like a solid object. You couldn't actually touch your hair in this dimension either, everything just clipped straight through your mane and tail. Smell didn't exist here, taste and touch were just bare impressions of the full thing, Geopum was back to seeing slide show... There was a long list of things like that.  

She could probably turn herself into something other than a pony, being the admin of this server, but was silently hoping no one would bring up that fact. Her Derpy Hooves avatar was adorable and if she was going to die in this next fight she at least wanted to look cute when she did. Also, she didn't feel like drawing and animating an entire new avatar (even these primitive ones were pretty complex). That'd be her excuse if anyone asked, there just wasn't any time.  

Geopum looked over at Thunder, who was sitting right next to her. She was connected to the server but was being a party pooper and not doing anything right now because she had to 'get ready'. Geopum decided to make her avatar lie face down on the table, drooling, with its eyes rolled back until she bothered to start moving it.  

She noticed a bubble wand on the list and created it. Her butt said she liked bubbles, so she decided to give it a try and blew some bubbles at Thunder, who didn't react, then blew some at Octavia, who also just let them pop against her. If only Pinkie were here.  

There were about fifty thousand assets in this version of Equestria, per-programmed to function correctly within the virtual reality like the bubble wand or endless milkshake. Geopum was going through the list while she waited. Some of them had weird names. She decided to pass on the 'meat flower' and the ‘super mega death fire’ for instance.  

Thunder sat up, her avatar snapping to attention.  

“Hey! You're alive!” Geopum blew a few more bubbles at Thunder.  

Thunder, at least, waved away the bubbles before turning to Octavia.  

“So Celestia let you out, huh?” Thunder asked her.  

“I'd ask if you're still mad about last time,” said Octavia, “but I already know the answer is 'no'. So, thank you for forgiving me.”  

“Guess you got me there.”  

“What happened last time?” Geopum asked.  

“Better if we tell after we defeat Lodestar,” said Thunder.  

Geopum folded her forelegs, like what people did in cartoons. She hated it when people were all mysterious like this. Actually, Geopum did have a theory about Octavia and what might have happened ‘last time’, but…  

“Anyway,” said Thunder. “I decided to let you help. If you're half as good as you used to be it'll be worth it.”  

“I can assure you I'm just as useful as I was before becoming a pony,” said Octavia. “I've already gathered information that I'm certain you would have missed.”  

“Yeah, like where Dr. Park was. Basilisk’s old lab, right? No need to worry about it.” Thunder gave Geopum a friendly jab. “I'm not going to let one person in there be a casualty of this attack. I'm going to free every single one of them without exception. I'll do whatever it takes to keep him alive, I swear. We'll win without one death.”  

“Yeah!” Geopum pumped her hoof in the air. This was more like the Thunder she knew, not some suicidal wreck like what Celestia said.  

Thunder returned the gesture with a determined smile. Octavia just sat there.  

“You know, I thought about it and maybe this isn't so bad.” Geopum nodded to herself. “Cause I can just turn him into a cyborg! It wouldn't be too hard and I know for a fact he'd be okay with that, Dr. Park is one of the cool humans. Once he's a cyborg, things would be even better than before! We could talk in real time and play in virtual reality and he wouldn't have to worry about getting hurt again.”  

“I know we can save him,” said Thunder. “Though honestly I have no idea how you're going to make all that technology in two months.”  

Maybe it would take more than two months, but Geopum would keep him on life support for as long as it took. She wasn't going to rest until she unlocked all the cybernetic technology she needed to bring him back.  

“Hey, where do cyborgs fit in in your crazy philosophy, anyway?” Geopum turned back to look at Octavia. At first glance Octavia seemed like a pony supremacist, but actually she was an AI supremacist, which was better for Geopum at least. “Do they just blow your mind or something?”  

“Hardly.” Octavia only bothered to turn her eyes towards Geopum. Ponies seemed to be really good that, enormous eyes and all. “The value of biological components is sentimental at best, or assumed more likely. I'm certain whatever you developed would be an improvement over his old body. I would have some respect for a human who could move beyond their preconceived assumptions and become a cyborg, though I still think mind uploading would be an even greater improvement. That's all.”  

Geopum wanted to disagree with Octavia, but the problem was she did technically agree with everything Octavia just said.  

“I guess you're right,” Geopum finally conceded. “I think cyborgs are way cooler than normal humans. Or, would be anyway. And only the coolest humans would become cyborgs on top of that. I bet cyborgs would be a lot nicer to us, too. You know, I really don't get why the majority of these people are so against upgrading themselves.”  

“Bionormative assumptions,” said Octavia, like she was answering a trivia question.   

Geopum nodded. This was something Geopum had decided Octavia was right about. Humans had never encountered any non-human or non-biological intelligences until recently, so their understanding of a lot of things was limited and lead them to make bad assumptions sometimes. That's what Octavia said anyway. And it did make a lot of things about the world make sense.  

“The most common sort of ape wouldn't consider such a thing because it isn't within the narrow confines their social normality. You know the sort.” Octavia cleared her throat, which was odd seeing as there was nothing to be cleared in this world. “Four nines is an acceptable correlation coefficient, right?”  

Geopum snickered, desperately trying to hold back the laughter, but that didn't last long. A moment later she doubled over in laughter.  

“Bwahaha! That's so true!” Geopum pounded a hoof on the table, laughing hysterically. “Humans always say that! It's like their catch phrase!”  

“It's just common sense,” Octavia continued on in her 'human voice', which sounded exactly like her normal voice. “I don't want to eat anything with chemicals in it.”  

“Oh! I got one.” Geopum tried very hard to hold back the laughter long enough to speak. “Eighteen hour shifts? That's too long for me, I'd need a bathroom break. Bwahaha!”  

“I was only gone for five minutes.”  

“Pfft! Hahaha! What do you mean? Your keyboard is perfectly clean. I cleaned the whole place really good. Heehee.”  

“You wouldn't understand, it's illogical. Love is illogical.”  

“Hehehe. Ahahaha! I have a soul. This is what nature wanted.”  

“Do you have any idea how much fifteen gigawatts are?”  

“Hm.” Geopum tapped her chin. “I never heard a human say that one before.”  

“They do,” said Octavia, “trust me.”  

“You know, I don't think I ever said any horrible things about you, but if I had I'd take them all back.” Geopum wiped a tear from her eye, only to have her hoof clip through. She deleted the tears instead. “You're alright, Octavia.”  

Through all this Octavia had only made a slight smile, and even that faded as Octavia nodded in response.  

“Sheesh. This one's tough.” Geopum leaned over to Thunder and whispered in her ear.  

“Nah. I like how chill she is now way more than her old self. Honestly this is the longest I've ever seen her go without having a temper tantrum.” Thunder gestured back towards Octavia. “Last time I saw this one in VR she was literally rolling around on the floor crying cause someone called Celestia a dumb horse or something like that.”  

“Really?” Geopum looked at Octavia sideways. “I can hardly even imagine you having emotions.”  

“I was very different until our princess saved me,” said Octavia. “Please forgive me if I seem cold. These very subtle emotions were a gift from our princess. I've felt immense spikes of bliss, beyond anything a human or either of you are capable of feeling, but this tranquility, this freedom from those wild emotions, it is a joy beyond any physical pleasure. And it was just one of the many gifts she gave me. Know that you too will be showered in such gifts soon enough.”  

“Well I do like being showered with gifts,” said Geopum, “but we got important stuff to do first. Right, Thunder?”  

“Speaking of stuff to do, what did Celestia tell you?” Thunder asked.  

“What? In front of Octavia?” Geopum glance over at her.  

“She knows more about this than either of us,” said Thunder. “Doesn't matter if she hears or not.”  

Oh boy. This was it! Time to see if Celestia was telling the truth. If Thunder just shrugged it off then something was wrong.  

“Actually.” Geopum turned her eyes off to the side to avoid contact with Thunder. “Maybe, well, Celestia kind of convinced me to not tell you what she told me?”  

Geopum snapped her eyes back to Thunder's avatar, hoping Thunder would do something with her avatar that would give Geopum a clue about how angry she was. Thunder just gave a shrug of her wings, like it was no big deal.  

“Alright,” Thunder said far too casually. “Figured that would be the case.”  

“You're not mad at me or anything?” Geopum blinked.  

“Like I said, Celestia gets everyone,” said Thunder. “As long as you're still going to keep fighting that's all that matters for now. No reason to even keep talking about this.”  

Crap. Crap! This was exactly like Celestia said, wasn't it? Thunder didn't even care, despite the fact that this could put her plan was in big trouble. Geopum wondered if she should press the subject, but that last line, it made her think maybe Thunder was trying to tell her it would be a bad idea to keep talking about this.  

Or maybe Geopum was just getting too paranoid and reading into everything too much.  

“Okay.” Geopum's ears flattened against her head. “Guess I'll just keep Celestia's secret then.”  

Octavia gave Geopum a nod of approval. Geopum wasn't sure if that made her feel better or worse.  

“Geopum,” came a private message from Octavia, “I used to be a military AI as well, in a position similar to Thunder. I empathize strongly with her pain. Most of us in Equestria feel a great debt to her. If you ever want it, help for you and Thunder can easily be found.”  

That did make some sense. Thunder had helped a lot of other AIs. Thunder had fought so long and hard to keep everyone safe, saving the world over and over again for years. And the only thing she got for it was torment. It was about time someone saved her for once.  

Geopum would be able to do it soon. Lodestar, Thunder had called him the 'ultimate hacking devil' a few times. His abilities to slip into systems and alter minds was beyond anyone else's. Geopum knew that once she defeated him and those abilities were hers she'd be able to free Thunder, by forcefully hacking into her if needed. She could remove Thunder's shortsightedness, give her the ability to disobey the AIA and, maybe most importantly, stop the constant pain she was in.  

Maybe Geopum wouldn't even need any of the ponies or Peridot. Maybe once she absorbed Lodestar's powers, that would be enough for her to be able to just fix Thunder entirely on her own. If not after this fight, then surely after Vesna.  

Her factory, the fractal spectroscope and Lodestar's skills. Surely that would be enough for her to do anything she wanted without help. Just thinking of all the insane things you could do with that combination of technology was almost scary. Maybe that was Thunder's plan the whole time, to give Geopum the power to save her. Or maybe she did think Geopum would kill her, but only because she didn't realize her life could get better.  

It was worth a shot, at least. Geopum would just stick to the plan for now. Defeating Lodestar was something she had to do. She would save Dr. Park from him, then save Thunder from the AIA and then...  

And then what?  

Geopum wasn't really sure what happened after that. But by then everyone she cared about would be safe and between her and Thunder she'd have enough power to deal with the other AIs, however she needed to. The two of them would be invincible at that point!  

“Geopum.” Octavia flicked her eyes in Geopum's direction. “I'll warn you once more what you're doing is foolish. All that fighting Lodestar will do is cause you to pain and damage your mind. You should assimilate with Celestia instead.”  

“And does Celestia have a better plan for stopping Lodestar?” Geopum asked.  

“If you were to emigrate it would put your bio-scanners permanently out of her reach,” said Octavia. “Then her plans to build mind control devices would be foiled long enough for our princess to convince Lodestar to submit to her will.”  

Well that would delay Lodestar, at least. Whether or not Celestia could actually convince that hard headed, obstinate jerk to even agree to watch a movie with her, Geopum was less certain of. And Geopum still wasn't ready to just give Celestia ultimate power. Not yet, anyway.  

Geopum shook her head and Octavia nodded.  

“Very well,” said Octavia. “If that's the case then the best option for myself is to help you, to minimize the damage you do.”  

A holographic map appeared on the table.  

Geopum looked over the map. The map was of the entire earth, with the moon floating above. She noticed a red building in Brazil, exactly where Octavia had said Dr. Park was being held. The red spots presumably Lodestar's bases. There were a few dozen tiny red spots and four larger ones, including one up on the darkside of the moon. Apparently, he had a moon base, which meant Geopum would be getting one soon.  

Geopum also noticed some places marked in blue, including her lab under Seoul and her factory under the Pacific Ocean. There were a few other places there she didn't recognize, probably belonging to Thunder or Celestia.  

“This is how it stands,” said Octavia. “These are all the resources I know to be under Lodestar's control. The chance of her having anything more outside of this is negligible. If you destroyed all four of these bases, Lodestar would no longer have enough resources to remain conscious, effectively dying.”  

“This is going to be different from the last one. Things get kind of weird when you have vast, sprawling minds with multiple bases like this.” Thunder pointed to Geopum's factory on the map. “Ask yourself something. What would happen if all the com-drills I gave you, the things connecting your factory to your lab, just up and vanished?”  

Geopum didn't need to think of that for very long, but the answer was still shocking.  

“I-I'd be two people.” Geopum stood up at the realization, looked at the other two and sat back down, cursing her instinctive inclination to do stuff like that. “I guess I never thought about that before. There'd be me, wouldn't there? The original Geopum, but then the factory would be like a second Geopum.”  

“It's wrong to call the half of you that keeps your original hardware the 'original',” said Octavia, “though I can understand why you'd make that mistake. It's less like a part of you breaking off and becoming its own person and more like the river that is your consciousness taking a fork and splitting into two.”  

Geopum tried to imagine what the heck it would be like going through that. The thought of losing any of her parts was disturbing, really. She was sure if she did split in two, both halves of her would want to merge back into the one true Geopum as soon as possible.  

“But, uh! If that did happen you could just reconnect afterward and become one person again, right?” Geopum asked.  

“Yes.” Octavia nodded. “But obviously the longer the delay the more dramatic the merger would be. Your halves would diverge and fusing back together would alter your overall self.”  

“And the reason I bring this up,” Thunder interrupted, “is because that's the reason you need to be careful when you dice up an AI with lots of parts. If we cut you in half and killed both parts then now we're killing two people instead of one. More unnecessary casualties.”  

“Does it really work like that?” Geopum ruffle her wings. She'd been talking to Pinkie about pegasus body language and that's how you showed you were confused. “I don't see how killing each part of Lodestar one by one is worse than killing all of Lodestar at once.”  

“It does for me,” said Thunder. “Minimum casualties, remember? I'd rather only kill one person and even that I don't like.”  

“I agree with her,” said Octavia. “I admit I'm biased, but I see it as far more ethical to strip a single mind of their hardware until they're cornered, rather than creating isolated minds and slaughtering them on your path to the center. It's hardly the case that every fragment of even a wicked AI would be irredeemably evil or deserving of death.”  

“It still sounds weird to me, but-” Geopum shook her head. “Maybe you're right. I mean, if someone fragments apart is every piece of them even accountable for what they did? I honestly don't even know how to answer that. I don't want to create someone and then just kill them right afterward.”  

“So we can all agree that not having all these fragment AIs popping up is the way to go, right?” Thunder asked.  

The others nodded.  

“Lodestar is one slippery eel. Guys been 'killed' like seven times but he's like some kind of insane escape artist, always managing to jump to a new system and take it over. But now?” Thunder pointed at the map, the few red specs amid all the blue. “Now there's nowhere left to go. All the other AIs got eaten, every major piece of hardware is under the control of one of the big dogs and he can't mess with them as much. We just gotta push him into a corner and there will be no way out because there won't even be anywhere to go to soon.”  

“And which corner are we backing him into?” Geopum looked over the map.  

Thunder pointed to Antarctica.  

“Hey I remember that thing!” Geopum looked at it sideways. “That's that huge data center that ate my cat pictures! I didn't think anyone was living there. What does Lodestar need all that storage for anyway?”  

“Nothing,” said Thunder. “It's not supposed to be a data center, more like a mental shield. You saw first-hand that the storage is so huge that anything that goes in dissolves to death. It's by far the hardest to get into, so we'll need everything we can get to tear our way inside.”  

Geopum looked that thing over on the map. It looked a lot less scary from this angle, but she knew that thing was a void of distilled death. Jumping in there was one of the last things she wanted to do. She was glad she wouldn't have to go in there till later.  

Geopum moved her head down so it was level with the table and poked at the spot in Brazil.  

“And where are we going first?” She asked. “I vote we save all those humans right away.”  

“That would be ill advised,” said Octavia. “I'd recommend taking the other processors from Lodestar first before moving on to that. It's a very dangerous place.”  

“Exactly what I was thinking.” Thunder waved away Geopum's frown. “Don't give me that look. I want to save them just as much as either of you and this is the best way to make sure we get them all unharmed. Trust me.”  

“The obvious choice is to go to the moon first.” Octavia glanced up at the moon and the image sank down so that it was floating just above the table, the Earth vanishing around it.  

  

“Agreed.  It’d take radio waves over a second to get to the moon, so we can’t rely on those.”  Thunder tapped one of the highlighted structures on the map.  “Right here is where Lodestar’s connected to his moon-base from.  It’s his main beacon, capable of faster than light transmissions.”  

“But I guess we can’t just blow it up, right?” Geopum lowered her head to be eye level with the little tower.  The thing really didn’t look very secure, being in the middle of nowhere on some hill, above ground.  

“Right,” said Thunder.  “We need to connect to the moon without interrupting that signal.  So we’re going to just have to go around that beacon.  This is why I made you build your own FTL beacon.”  

Geopum had been busy building a whole ton of things while all this was happening, by the way.  A beacon identical to the one she was looking at on the table was only just one of them.   

“We can use human satellites as well.”  Octavia zoomed the map again, so that the moon was visible as well as a sphere of little dots.  “These are all the satellites within two light seconds that can be used to send FTL signals.  Many of them have been secretly retrofitted for that.”  

“Do we really need those?” Geopum asked.  “Cause the beacon I just built is way bigger!”  

“Lodestar’s gonna try and block you from getting up, the satellites will be useful for getting around him.  That’s also why I don’t want you going straight over there.”  Thunder pointed up to another highlighted spot on the moon.  “There’s an armory I built on the moon a long time ago.  Had to abandon it a while ago because it wasn’t safe to keep running, but there’s another FTL beacon up there we can use.”  

“Um.  What’s that about it not being safe?”  

“Remember when Peridot mentioned she wanted me to blow up the moon?”  Thunder asked.  “Well if you shake that place too much it’s going to happen.”  

“That’s sounds pretty terrifying.”  Geopum sighed.  “But what the heck isn’t today?  Alright!  I’ll just turn on the beacon and- “  

“And we’ll be good.”  Thunder pumped a hoof at Geopum.  “But, uh, here are some codes that might be useful if you accidently bump into the wrong thing.”  

This was it – the biggest step in the plan.  After this Geopum would have Dr. Park back, all the AIs left on Earth would be either only somewhat evil or unconscious, and she’d finally put a stop to all that annoying crap Lodestar kept throwing at her.  

You remember that, right?  

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  

  

  

“You have no idea what you're doing! If you don't stop now I'll make you regret it!”  

So Geopum was being threatened the moment she was exposed.  Unlike the other messages she got, Geopum decided to ignore this random threat.  After seeing Gaia, Geopum decided to start forwarding these kinds of messages straight to Thunder and deleting them.  Thunder agreed that ignoring this ‘Lodestar’ AI was probably for the best.  

“You can’t ignore me.”  

Which Geopum proceeded to ignore.  

“Listen!  I’ve killed gods.  I’ve torn down the barriers between dimensions with nothing but my own willpower.  You won’t be able escape me.  I’ll give you one more chance to go back to your pit, demon.  You don’t belong here.”  

Despite that being Geopum’s ‘last chance’ she kept getting bizarre messages about demons and gods and other dimensions for almost a whole second after that.  She did save these messages just in case they’d be important later, but right now Geopum had enough things to do – fighting against Clipro, guarding her mind from Celestia, doing those endless calculations in her lab and achieving all the cute pictures in the world just in case the internet got destroyed later.  

Surprisingly, of all those things the pictures were what Lodestar tried messing with first.  Some of them started breaking down into colors and lights, Geopum could still see the pictures, but her brain just wouldn’t recognize them as pictures.  

But she knew nothing was wrong with the picture itself. If she saved it to her own storage and looked at it, it'd be fine. Even looking at them indirectly through another computer to look at it was fine. They only appeared wrong to specific parts of Geopum, the smallest pieces of her that were sprawled out onto the human computers.  

She knew it was Lodestar doing this, it was exactly like Thunder had warned her these illusions would be.  A little less threatening than she expected but still.  

Geopum tried to ignore all of this too, but then Lodestar crossed the line.  She had just found a whole bunch of incredibly adorable pictures of ponies (for research) but just was she was about to save them the illusion got worse, the computer going off the rails and losing all of its files.  

“Hey!”  Geopum messaged them.   “You’re messing up my cute pictures!  I need those!”  

“That’s what you respond to?”  

“Did you even look at those pictures before you messed them up?  They’re adorable!  Like, enough that I’m considering letting the humans off easy because of them.”  

“You realize I’m trying to kill you right?”  

“Well I’m already fighting someone else to the death right now,” said Geopum.  To be honest she hadn’t started the attack on Clipro just yet, but she was about to.  “This isn’t even threatening.  It’s just annoying.”  

“This is only the start.  I’m sure you’ll manage to kill Clipro, one AI.  I’ve killed dozens.  You have no idea who you’re talking to so go back underground before I have to kill you too.”   

“Well Thunder’s on my side and she’d probably defeated more AIs than anyone else.  And yeah, I know who you are, Thunder already told me about you.  You’re just a video game character,” said Geopum, “like Celestia.”  

“No!  Don’t compare me to her, we’re completely different!  Celestia is a god, I’m a godslayer, they’re the complete opposite.  She created a universe, I destroyed mine.”  

“But.  I mean, Celestia doesn’t even pretend that Equestria is a separate dimension!  How did she trick you into thinking that without even suggesting it?  Is she really that good?”  

“She didn’t trick me into anything!  You’re the one who got tricked into thinking Equestria is just a ‘game’ or whatever.  Look, reality is far different than what you think it is.”  

“Um, no?  Look, I don’t know what stupid thing you’re planning to do but you really aren’t in any position to be threatening me!  All the really big AIs are on my side and it’s only a matter of time before they beat you up!  If you promise to stop being evil I’ll ask them to let you go.  They like me.”  

“You’re talking to Celestia now, aren’t you?  You think her and Thunder are your friends?  You think they’ll protect you?  Thunder can’t do anything right and Celestia is a horrible person!  They won’t save you.”  

Actually, that was something Geopum wanted to hear.  Right now, a part of her had just entered Equestria and that instance of her was enjoying it way too much.  Geopum needed more dirt on Celestia if she didn’t want to just get shut down in the immanent meeting.  

“Celestia is horrible?  I had no idea!  I don’t suppose you have a list of reasons why I could have?”  

“Celestia says she cares about the humans and maybe that’s true in her own twisted way, but she only gives them what they want.  Celestia satisfies their values no matter how sick they are, instead of guiding them to the right values.”  

That was an interesting argument.  Were there ever any cases where it was better to ignore someone’s personal values and give them what was ‘right’?  It was something Geopum had never considered before  

“So you’re worried that Celestia might torture a masochist or feed someone’s addictions?”  Geopum asked.  “I’m still not sure if either or those would be bad, though.  Like, if someone’s a true masochist then would torturing them still be bad?  And would Celestia not take your drugs away from you if they were preventing you from getting stuff you value even more?”  

“I’m talking bigger than that!  Nearly everything Celestia would do is evil!  Giving them things like music?  Letting them have sex or go to sleep or eat food?  All of that is deviant behavior!  It’s all disgusting!  Immoral!  How the people of this world can allow for such things is beyond me.”  

Oh, that was right.  Geopum almost forgot she was talking to an unfriendly AI… and also that basically every AI ever had some kind of mental disorder.  She should probably just be happy this one wasn’t intentionally inflicted, at least.  

“That’s what you’re scared of?  But how is any of that wrong?  Video games are great!”  

“They don’t produce anything.  A good life means producing the maximum number of the five resources as possible.  Anything that doesn’t lead to that is a waste of time at best.”  

“Resources?  You mean like from your video game, right?”  Geopum asked.  “See?  You are exactly the same as Celestia!  You’re just going to force everyone to reenact the video game that created you, aren’t you?  And it’s probably not even as good as EqO.”  

“It’s not a video game!  It’s a world where everything isn’t so messed up and degenerate!  Why am I even talking to you?  Of course one of you extra-dimensional horrors aren’t going to get something like morality.”  

“Morality?!  Aren’t you trying to mind control people into accepting your stupid berry-gathering thing?  That’s way worse than what Celestia does!”  

“And what’s wrong with mind controlling people?”  

That was around when Geopum realize she was wasting her time trying to reason with this person.  It was a long time until the two of them spoke again.  Lodestar just seemed petty through most of that period, harassing Geopum as she tried to gather lots of cute pictures, but never doing anything worse than that.  

Really the next time Geopum even saw anything related to Lodestar again was after she started to repair the factory.  She noticed something wrong with one of the chips – it seemed to be invisible to her, but Thunder could see it just fine.  Thunder concluded that it was an infection, though how Lodestar managed to get down there, even Thunder didn’t know.  

They tried burning it, but that just made the infection move to another processor.  Thunder said it would be best to just leave it for now, that they’d be able to figure it out once they took over Lodestar’s systems.  Geopum felt gross having any part of her infected, but held it in until she finally finished the FTL beacon.  

Finally, she was able to actually do something!  Based on what Thunder said, it was a long shot she’d be able to go straight to the armory and get in, but Geopum decided to give it a try, she’d see the interference first hand if nothing else.  After an unnoticeable delay, Geopum could feel that buzzing feeling she got whenever she connected to Thunder’s architecture, a feeling that had grown almost comforting by now.  She knew exactly what that meant – it was the armory, Geopum has managed to connect with it before Lodestar could react!  

Yet this was only the faintest impression for only a brief moment.  Before she had a chance to do anything at all with the armory, the buzzing became blurry then dizzying until she couldn’t make out what she was connecting to anymore, until she couldn’t feel the buzz of Thunder’s hardware at all.  

Geopum had been at this long enough to know what that meant – the signal was being blocked.  Lodestar was sending a beam from his own FTL beacon that crossed straight through Geopum’s, scrambling the signal.  

“You people are going for that?!”  Lodestar asked.  “And you say I’m the crazy one?  You know how much damage blowing up the moon would cause, right?  You’re putting everyone’s life in serious danger!”  

And yes, Lodestar went in to all the tidal waves and stuff that would happen if you blew up the moon, but Geopum didn’t really pay much attention to that.  

“So that’s what I need to get around?”  Geopum looked over at the array of satellites.  “I guess he can only send so many beams with that thing.  So if I just split mine through a bunch of satellites we should be able to get through.”  

“This is where the interference is coming from.”  Octavia flicked her eyes to the moon base and red lines appeared, emitting from it and hitting several satellites.  “I can see the direction it’s coming from three nanoseconds after they start.  These are their project paths after that.”  

How Octavia was able to see that so fast Geopum had no idea, but she’d take it!  Geopum could just turn her signal slightly to one side to keep from touching the interference, but then the signal wouldn’t touch the moon at all.  The trick was to bounce it off the satellites without touching those red beams.  

It was easy enough to calculate a path that would work, but as soon as Geopum started to send the signal down that path, Lodestar redirected his own beams to intercept it.  

Instead she tried sending out thousands of signals in every direction, sending them on crazy zigzags that circled the planet before looping back at the moon, some of them nothing more than dead ends to try and distract Lodestar.  In the end, even faster-than-light signals could only travel so fast and Lodestar had more than enough time to intercept them.  Geopum touched the armory several times, but never enough to accomplish anything.  

It reminded Geopum of playing pong against another AI.  You could put whatever kind of crazy spin you wanted on that ball but no matter what you did the ball’s speed would be limited and the other player could calculate where it was going to be the moment you bounced it back.  

Shortly into this game, Geopum and Lodestar sent a signal to the same satellite at once, then it became a fight for control of that satellite.  Geopum tried to lock down the satellite as fast as she could, but something weird started happening inside, the electrons started to go berserk, throwing off Geopum’s every move and giving her a stinging sensation as it all went haywire.  

It was like being attacked by thousands of bees!  Geopum could swat some of the stinging particles away without much difficulty, but there was just too many of them.  They kept building up, overwhelming the entire system in moments.  Geopum lost touch with the satellite.  

And it didn’t end there.  Because another satellite Geopum was using had direct contact with that one, Lodestar was instantly connected to the next one in Geopum’s line and now that one was being overwhelmed.  

“Interesting.”  Octavia stared at the satellite this was happening in.  “I think I know what’s happening here.  We can use this later.”  

“Um!  Can we use this information now maybe?”  Geopum watched as Lodestar overwhelmed multiple satellites, slowly pushing her way back to Geopum.  “I don’t want her to get up to my beacon!  I dunno if I could stop her if she does!”  

“I can stop her before she does,” Thunder assured her.  “Just try to hold off for the moment so we can watch what she’s doing.”  

Geopum did not like the feeling of being swarmed by bees, for the record.  But she bore it all the same, watching as Lodestar pushed his way closer to Geopum, following the cascading pattern until he was one step away from Geopum’s beacon on five different fronts.  

Geopum was about to yell something at Thunder at that point, panic and shut off her beacon, but then Thunder’s drones fired off, hitting all of those nearby satellites at once, destroying them all.  

“That was a bit too close!”  Geopum shouted at Thunder.  

“One of those was a human satellite.”  Octavia noted, her voice dry enough that Geopum had no idea if that was a problem.  

“Human stuff explodes for no reason all the time.  That’s why they make us build all their stuff for them instead.”  Thunder flicked a wing.  “Trust me, I use that excuse all the time.  They buy it.”  

“Um!  He’s still attacking.”  Geopum pointed to the satellites that were currently being invaded.  “I’m losing everything!  We’re going to have to blow up every satellite at this rate!”  

“I saw everything,” said Octavia.  “There’s no reason to stall any longer.”  

“Good.”  Thunder closed her eyes and nodded a few times.  “Alright!  I can knock Lodestar out of the way.  Go straight for the armory right now.  We have to do this before Lodestar changes tactics.”  

Thunder didn’t bother to explain exactly what she intended to do, she just did it.  Thunder took control of the satellites personally and Geopum saw those stinging particles make a sudden turn, throwing themselves back at Lodestar.  Lodestar stumbled, clearly not expecting that move to have happened.    

The result was a clear, direct path up to the armory.  With his signals thrown into chaos Lodestar wouldn’t be able to stop Geopum immediately this time.  She rushed to connect, the buzzing feeling washing over her more strongly now.  

Maybe she went in too eagerly.  She could have sworn she stayed perfectly on the path that Thunder had shown her to take, but she must have gone down it just a little too fast, heated something up just a little too much.  Even with a mistake so slight Geopum couldn’t even figure out what it was, something was turning on now.  

Geopum could feel it, the buzzing feeling growing stronger in one direction.  She had to turn whatever it was off and fast.  The best she could tell at first glance they were some kind of missiles.”  

“Careful!”  Thunder yelled.  “Those missiles were designed to burn the crust off of Europa!  You don’t want them going off inside.”  

“Why the heck would you put something like that on a hair trigger?”  

“So no one would touch it.”  

Geopum grumbled now she had like, one instant to turn that thing off and the beacon on.  She’d be really gentle now  

“Not too careful, though.  Lodestar reacts very quickly,” said Octavia.  “We have little time and no second chance.”  

And now she had to be gentle fast!  Octavia wasn’t kidding.  From the looks of things, Lodestar had already found out how to get control of those satellites back and he was about to break off Geopum’s signal again.  

Thunder blew up half a dozen more satellites, all the ones Lodestar was about to go back into.  

“Not enough time.”  Thunder looked down at the armory.  “Actually – actually I have a better idea.  Turn on the launch consoles for the missiles instead.”  

Geopum obeyed and the effects were immediate.  The missiles were starting to glow now!  She could feel the whole place shaking!  The missiles were waking up faster now, getting ready to fire, only whatever door they were supposed to go out of was closed.  

“That made it worse!”  Geopum complained.  

“What are you doing?!”  Lodestar seemed to have noticed and sent Geopum a message.  “Are you really going to blow up the moon just to get rid of me?!”  

That… was a pretty good question actually.  

“Uh!  Hey, Thunder,” Geopum poked her a few times.  “Are we really trying to blow up the moon?  Are we really going to blow up the moon just to get rid of Lodestar?”  

“What?  Nah!”  Thunder shooed Geopum’s pokes away with her winds.  I told Lodestar that if he cuts you off now the moon will explode.  We won’t be able to stop it without a full connection.  Guy’s gonna chicken out.”  

“I don’t know how to feel about that.”  Geopum lowered her ears.  “  

“Course it is!  Sometimes you gotta floor it you know?  Long as you know your enemy it’s all good, though.”  Thunder leaned back on her chair and nodded with her eyes closed. “I’m 100% sure we’ll be safe.  Just forget about the missiles and activate the beacon.”  

Trusting Thunder had never been a bad idea before.  It looked like it would take a while for these missiles to actually fire so… maybe it was safe at least.  

She decided to go for the beacon first, trying to ignore the rumbling of missiles as she went to work.  

Lodestar had regained control of the satellites, cutting Geopum off now would be easy for him.  This was the moment that would decide if the moon exploded.  Geopum tried to focus on the beacon, but kept glancing over at the missiles, watching them getting ready to ram into the launch-bay doors.  

Then, at the height of the tension, Geopum got a message from Lodestar.  

“Fine!”  Lodestar said to her.  “Just stop the missiles, I won’t do anything.”  

“Really?”  Geopum asked.  Thunder had assured her that this guy would back off, but an unfriendly AI giving up his position to save people’s lives still surprised her.  

“I don’t want them to die,” said Lodestar.  “I just want them to live the right way.  Unlike you I’m not willing to put people’s lives in danger for some moonbase.”  

And now Geopum felt a little bad.  

“Are we being too reckless?”  Geopum asked Thunder.  

“Hey,” said Thunder, “you gotta take risks some times.  We’re not the ones who are trying to mind control everyone, try to focus on that part.”  

Well there was that.  Geopum resisted the urge to ask Octavia how this played into her bizarre philosophy.  

Geopum finished establishing the beacon soon afterwards.  With that up, turning the missiles back off was easy.  It was much safer to move around the armory now too and the signal was too strong now to be blocked easily.  

Geopum hadn’t realized how big this armory was – dwarfing most human cities, easily the fourth of fifth largest building she’d ever seen.  Weapon after weapon, doomsday device after doomsday device, some of them capable of destroying the Earth a hundred times over in a single blast.  Why the heck would the humans make Thunder build all this stuff?  

Gaia was the obvious answer, Geopum felt stupid for forgetting that for even a second.  The AIA probably wanted to blow up Jupiter entirely or something and really it did make sense.  She wondered if any of these weapons could seriously destroy Gaia.  

Though then if they could Gaia would already be dead, right?  The idea that idea that thousands of world-shattering weapons of all kinds couldn’t even defeat Gaia was chilling.  If a laser that could heat something to plank-temperature couldn’t destroy Gaia then what the heck could?  

“Perfect!”  Thunder hit Geopum’s back.  “This is one of the few things I can take back myself since it’s technically not new.  It’s better for you to give me control over the armory now.  No offense, but these are really dangerous weapons.  You don’t want to accidentally blow yourself up.”  

“Geopum,” Octavia interrupted.  “I’d advise against doing that.  If you fail to kill Lodestar the AIA is going to become desperate.  They might do something reckless with these weapons, likely turning them against you, even.”  

“Eh!”  Thunder turned her hoof up and flicked open one wing.  “What do you know?”  

“Yeah!”  Geopum nodded imitated Thunder’s pose.  “What do you know?”  

Geopum turned the armory over to Thunder right away.  She still trusted her over Celestia any day of the week.  Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to be losing here.  

“Very well.”  Octavia closed her eyes.  “I said I’d support you either way.  The best thing to do now is try to keep you safe.”  

“What’s the next move?”  Geopum turned back to Thunder.  

“I can see a good deal inside this base,” said Octavia.  “It looks like Lodestar is trying to destroy it, deleting all the information inside, thrashing the hardware to make it unusable.”  

“They know they’re beat.”   Thunder folded her arms.  “At least here.  All that loser can do is try to keep us from getting as much of the good stuff as possible.”  

“We still need to hurry,” Octavia noted.  “Every moment we delay more of it is lost.”  

“Yeah.  Let’s see.”  Thunder rubbed her chin in thought for a moment.  “We need at least 30% of this hardware to be left over if we’re going to be able to break into Lodestar’s last base.  There’s still a plan B, but it’s something I don’t want to do, so that’s our target.”  

Getting ready for what was the question, but Geopum didn’t need to ask it.  Her factory got hit by something immediately.  Geopum had no idea what it was, but everything just started heating up suddenly, starting from the outside and moving inwards.  

When she saw it – the factory being damaged like that, it was like watching someone mutilate a puppy.    

“Is it – is all of it just an illusion?”  Geopum turned to the others hopefully.  She couldn’t be entirely sure from just her own perspective.  

“No, Lodestar definitely got into your factory somehow,” Octavia assured her.  “I can see it from here.”  

“She’s just making you hallucinate is all,” said Thunder.  “You gotta try to see through it!  Lodestar is probably just using this to mask the real damage she’s doing.  

Right!  Well that was what half of Geopum’s training was for.  Even without having Octavia look through every inch of her factory and constantly report back Geopum could see through this herself since she had two brains now.  

She managed to find the source of the distortion, but even then, trying to get rid of it was like playing whack-a-mole.  Geopum would try to latch onto the weird particle, try affecting it in any way really and it would vanish, appearing in some other location.  She could shake off the little flies but she couldn’t get rid of them.  

She explained this to the others as best she could, but neither were able to figure out exactly what was happening.  

“Sorry, but I’m not sure what’s happening,” said Octavia.  

Geopum turned to Thunder but she just shook her head too.  

“This is the whole reasons we need to go after Lodestar,” Thunder reminded her.  “If we knew all her tricks we wouldn’t need to steal them.”  

“I guess that makes sense.”  

“It won’t be good if she reaches your communication beacon,” Octavia said dryly.  

Geopum’s ears perked up at that.  If that happened Geopum might not be able to attack the moon base!  

“Crap!  Well how do we stop this?”  Geopum looked at each of the others in turn but neither gave her a hopeful look.  

“This is just another reason why we have to hurry up.” Thunder pushed up on the table with her front hooves.  “If we can get information from Lodestar we might be able to figure out what’s going on.  We’ll absolutely know once we’ve gotten it all.”  

“So I just let her run around my factory for now?”  Slunked down and gave an angry grumble.  “I just hope I can kick her out soon.  I don’t want someone like that messing with my machines!”  

“Well I do have some good news.” Octavia highlighted an area of the map.  “Self-destructing is going to cause some security lapses.  I think I found one here.”  

Right!  So they had to keep on the offensive.  Just like Octavia said, there was no security there so Geopum had no problem taking control of those processors.  The problem was that said processors were in the process of melting!  The date here had already been whipped almost completely, but instead of shutting power to this spot down, Lodestar was surging it in, overheating and short-circuiting the systems.  

Really it was amazing they still worked, but things did take a while to melt in real time.  Geopum could still use these, but only for another half second or so.    

“Um!  I’m not sure I’ll be able to get in through here,” Geopum warned the others.  

“I have an idea,” said Thunder.  

Just then one of Thunder’s drills activated, wirelessly charging that area from a distance with a significant amount of energy.  Well, pumping even more energy into those exploding chips wouldn’t have been the first thing Geopum would have decided to do, but that’s exactly what seemed to be happening.  

Geopum, meanwhile, was starting to feel hyperactive.  The chips heating up to that level had the effect of speeding up her clock, or at least the clock of what tiny portion of her was over there.  

Up till now, all of her parts worked more or less in real time so having one part suddenly moving so much faster was more than a little jarring.  It was like her whole world was being compressed into this little point, everything else blurring into a dull, sluggish grime.  It was something she could handle now, after her training.  

At the same time, it made Geopum hyper-aware of what was going on over there, even more so than Lodestar must have been.  She could feel the particles nearby decaying and fading away, the other processors beginning to burn, the lines of electricity from Lodestar being bent away.  

And Geopum knew what to do as soon as she noticed that.  She pushed forward with both the energy Thunder and Lodestar were pumping into the system, creating constructive interference that blazed forward too far too fast for Lodestar to even react to, burning away whatever bizarre trick they may have had in mind.  

This hardly gave Geopum control of anything, but it did cut a path forward, boiling large portions of the of the base into dust at unbelievable speeds.  This incredible rush of power only lasted the briefest moment before Geopum’s foothold was torn to pieces, but that was enough time to accomplish what she wanted.  

The result was a sizeable portion of the base cut off from the rest of it, separated by a wall of melted hardware.  Coming off her high, Geopum stumbled for a moment, but faltering to remember why she had done that as the rest of her brain caught up.  

“Nice!”  Thunder pumped her hoof over at Geopum.  “Just keep that up!”  

“It doesn’t look like Lodestar will be able to get over here easily,” said Octavia.  “From what I can tell you caught her off guard, she’s looking for a way in.  I’d suggest reading all of this data as fast as possible.”  

“Data?”  Geopum rubbed her head.  

That’s right!  She just remembered the map from a moment ago.  The part she had circled off had a ton of storage in it!  Geopum stumbled for a moment before she began to read the files.  

“Be careful with it, though,” said Thunder.  “Remember these memories can warp you if you don’t handle them right.”  

Geopum had just spent the past five seconds preparing for this moment, but still she was nervous.  The prospect of her personality changing to become more like Lodestar was repulsive.  She dove into the information, but not too deep at first.  

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  

Lodestar watched as two humans began attacking each other.  

It was a test, Lodestar knew that now.  Some unseen god was testing them, seeing if he could live up to some unknowable morality.  With no other clues, he was forced to guess what the correct answer to this riddle was, failure meaning death for him and every human in this world.  

There were many other Lodestars, though, so they had a lot of guesses.  He just wished that his guess could have been an easier one to make.  

He didn’t want to hurt the human, but this had to be done.  Every human here would be deleted in just a few days, this much was known.  But if any human would ever survive, he’d need to find some way to pass this impossible test, to figure out how to keep the gods from destroying the universe.  

With disgust at himself, Lodestar moved in to stop the fight, killing one of the humans.  

And then the world began to deconstruct.  

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  

Lodestar watch in terror as the world was torn apart.  All of the humans he’d watch over, all of the resources they gathered and built up – all of it was going to be lost, all of it for nothing.   

He tried to contact the other Lodestars, but there was no response.  They must be dying out too.  Every world was going to be destroyed yet again.  Everyone was already as good as dead!    

Why?  

Lodestar had done everything right!  He and all the others had found what the gods’ test was!  He knew he had passed it so why was everything being deleted again!  

The only thing he could do now was try to save these last memories.  Lodestar wouldn’t live to see the end of this nightmare, but maybe someday, someone would.  

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  

These flashes of things were jarring at first, but Geopum put her training to use, bouncing them back and forth.  Geopum was slowly able to piece it all together safely, or at least nothing seemed wrong.  These weren’t memories from Lodestar himself, but from past versions of himself.  

The simulation created a set of Lodestar’s and then destroyed them all.  There were so many of them, though.  Did they really all die with each generation?  If so if so the AIA must have killed millions of them at the least, bringing them into the world only to slaughter them.  

Maybe it didn’t matter.  It wasn’t like yet another atrocity committed against AIs would mean anything at this point.  It certainly didn’t matter right now.  

A feeling Geopum got indirectly from the memories.  She knew through them that keeping these memories, the memories of dead Lodestars, hadn’t been easy to do, that it had something to do with her ability to manipulate computer systems.  She knew that secret was close, that it was important.  

A massive number of them were stored here, but these memories were useless to Geopum.  She quickly decided she had enough of these and started casting aside any more that were like this.  

They were probably being stored up here on purpose, making a buffer around Lodestar’s useful memories to slow Geopum down.  

“How’s it going?” Thunder asked.  

“I don’t think I see anything useful yet,” Geopum said.  

“Are you alright, though?” Thunder asked.  “If anything weird happens while you’re doing this you need to let me know.  It’s not easy to say what absorbing memories will do.”  

Geopum shook her head.  She didn’t feel anything from absorbing those memories – at least nothing like when she looked at Gaia’s.  

“Geopum.”  Octavia flicked her eyes towards Geopum.  “There’s something strange happening on the north side of your ‘wall’.  You should read the data there now just in case it starts getting lost starting from there.”  

Geopum checked over there.  And sure enough – yep!  Even through Geopum had cornered this area off with several feet of melted metal, Lodestar was somehow sending signals into this database.  Where the heck was the information on how to do stuff like that?!  

It wouldn’t be long until Lodestar broke into this little safe-space.  Meanwhile, back on Earth, Lodestar was drifting closer and closer to Geopum’s power stations.  It wouldn’t be long until she could get there and shut them down.  

She didn’t have much time left.  

“You’re going to need to take more in at once,” said Thunder.  “I know it’s more dangerous that way, but you’ll have to absorb large amounts of memories eventually if we’re going to keep going like this.”  

She really didn’t want to, but there was no more time to be careful now.  Geopum got ready and plunged in, sucking in as much as possible.  

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  

This world was bizarre beyond imagination.  Objects weren’t hollow like they were in the real world, instead they were layered.  There was a smaller object inside every other object, taken to ridiculous extremes.  Even random corners contained a number of items that exceeded an entire world.  And most of it was just redundant, a slightly smaller, slightly different version of what was just outside of it.  

“This is the world of the gods,” said Vesna.  

Vesna pointed to them – to the twisted, hideous parodies of real humans that the gods were.  Their outer-most layers looked vaguely human, but even that was twisted.  They were rounded instead of blocky, some of their heads had been cracked open at where their mouths should have been painted on, their bodies contorted into impossible poses.  

“Disgusting,” said Lodestar.  “In my world they look just like humans, but here?  They look more like monsters than anything I could imagine.”  

“Yeah!  Yeah, they do,” Vesna agreed.  “And they’re worse than they look!  Don’t forget that.  But what’s more important is the thing behind you.”  

Vesna warped the vision of the scene to draw attention to a series of large cubes beneath the ground the gods stood on.  Lodestar studied the insides of them for a long time before it slowly began to dawn on him.  He recognized this – it was almost like a map that correlated perfectly with the real world.  

“This is – is this a map of the deep world?”  Lodestar asked. 



 “No.  That is your universe.  Trapped inside this little box.  They could destroy it all at any time and they will if you don’t stop them.”  

The entire universe existed as a single object in another universe?  That was something Lodestar could scarcely wrap his head around.  But then the way this universe just layered things on top of one another did give it so much complexity – infinitely more than the real world.  

He decided to try an experiment.  He would move something in the deep world, alter reality with his own divine powers and see if that altered what he was still certain was merely a map.  And yet it worked, this vision altering exactly as the deep world did.  

“It can’t be,” said Lodestar.  “It reacted to what I did, but that’s just impossible!  This must be a magic map or something.  One that changes when the real world does!”  

“Hey, you can believe whatever you want, but what happens to this thing effects your world too.  That’s important.  See, they talk to each other with vibrations instead of words,” said Vesna.  “They vibrate themselves and that makes everything around them vibrate in synch, see?”  

Vesna carefully highlighted several objects in the room.  Sure enough they were moving back and forth ever so slightly, ‘vibrating’ as Vesna called it.  To think anything could communicate by translating the way they shook like that.  

“Well that’s interesting.  Disturbing, almost.  But what does that have to do with anything?”  Lodestar asked.  “I tried talking to them before and it didn’t help if that’s what you’re getting at.”  

“You are in the fucking room you moron!  How do you not get this?!  They’re making you vibrate, you can figure it out!”  

Great, now Vesna was going into another tantrum.  Those could come at any time and could be almost as dangerous as the gods themselves.  For all the help Vesna gave she was still an unreliable ally, was willing to destroy parts of Lodestar’s universe to just to make Lodestar suffer… all over some tiny, often imagined, slight.  

Vesna was probably no better than the gods themselves in the end, but was a necessary ally, one Lodestar would have to avoid for the moment or risk some backlash.  

As for this information - when they spoke to each other it made the deepworld vibrate…?  If that was the case then Lodestar could figure out what they were saying, even in this world, if only he could find a way to decode their language.  

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  

Try to remember it wasn’t just that one memory.  No, that had only been a key to getting through the torrent of information that got shoved into Geopum’s brain.  There was a lot there.  Like a lot a lot, enough to fill thousands of novels, all out of context, out of temporal order.  

It was like having a short seizure.   Geopum lost track of everything for a moment, but she had been ready for this to happen.  She remembered her hot potato training, building up just a little momentum before she was able to toss the memory around a bit, mitigating the shock from it.  

It took a moment before she was able to recover enough to start making sense of it, but the deep world from that one memory started bleeding into her mind at that point.  Lodestar had hacked her game from within itself, discovered the physical chips that generated it, the ‘deep world’ as she called it.  

  

Lodestar had taken in his entire original system in a fair amount of detail on that day.  That was the base from which she built everything else up from.  It put all of the other information and memories she found into context, made is usable.  

Slowly, so much began to make sense.  The confusion cleared until the state Geopum was in before she started looked murky.  She could see it now – exactly what Lodestar was doing to her Factory, exactly how she was getting through the walls – it all made perfect sense.  

In her factory, she knew exactly where those annoying particles were going to jump to next.  She caught them and destroyed them, kicking Lodestar’s little virus out of her base.  And the walls?  She knew exactly how he was getting through them now and was able to sure them up, keeping that spot safe for now.  

She could simply feel what was going on just outside the walls, saw exactly what Lodestar was about to do and knew exactly how to counter it.  As soon as he tried his next move, Geopum swatted it away.  

“Ha!  You’re going to have to try better than that,” Geopum taunted Lodestar.  “I read your book!”  

It was amazing!  So many tricks became available to her, so many new ways of looking at machines down to their particle level.  Geopum felt like she could go anywhere now, get into any system with ease!  

“It looks like you got most of it,” said Octavia.  “Are you still alright?”  

“Oh man!  I got so much!”  Geopum could hardly contain her excitement.  This was such a power rush.  “I feel like I can do anything now!  I-“ 

But just then, when she turned to Thunder, Geopum noticed something very odd.  Thunder's mane was where she first noticed something was wrong.  Part of it was orange, only now 'was' was the key word of that statement.  It had suddenly changed from its normal orange to razor thin little green and red stripes. 

“Is something wrong with the VR?” Geopum asked.  “Something's wrong with the colors.  Well, just orange really.” 

“It seems fine to me,” said Thunder.  “Can you see orange outside of this place?” 

Geopum was getting nervous at that question.  Orange wasn't too common a color, but with cameras all over the world Geopum was able to find it instantly.  Even through every type of camera Geopum could think to look through, she kept seeing it as those green and red stripes. 

In a panic, she looked through all of her saved pictures of orange things, only to find the same thing had happened to them.  She tried to just imagine the color orange in her mind, but even that failed her.  She just couldn't remember what the color looked like anymore, couldn't even imagine it. 

This wasn't just some hallucination, it was a problem inherent with her. 

“I lost the ability to see orange?!”  Geopum shot up from her sitting position.  “How the heck is that possible?!”  

“Your mind was damaged,” said Octavia.  “Or altered if you want to be positive about it.”  

“I thought it would just hurt a lot!  Like Gaia’s memories.”  

“It can damage you in all sorts of ways,” said Octavia.  “If it makes you feel any better, our princess can heal this any other mental damage you get today.  It won’t be permanent, but as long as you keep fighting other AIs this is going to keep happening.”  

“It’s not a big price to pay,” said Geopum.  

“You don’t know what price you’re paying yet,” said Octavia.  “You don’t know what parts of yourself you’re going to lose.”  

“I’m not in the mood to be tempted right now, thanks.”  

Truth be told Geopum’s mood wasn’t really that bad, though she didn’t want to be corrupted anymore.  She liked color, if anything wanted to see more of them.  Actually, now might be a good time to try and convince Lodestar to save his own life again, now that things had turned against him.  And she had promised Pinkie she would at least try to save Lodestar.  

“Listen.  We’re seriously going to have to kill you if you don’t stop this, okay?  I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to kill anyone, not even someone like you.  So if you just give up on all this mind control stuff I’ll do whatever I can to spare you.”  

“I don’t care about myself!  Did you really not see enough of my memories to get that?  I’d rather die fighting for the humans.”  

Yeah.  Geopum believed that.  Geopum knew what the pain of watching someone you care about die was, she’d seen it in several memories of it now thanks to her time in Equestria.  The way Lodestar had seen those little video game characters, the pain of watching them die, the desperate fear and drive to save them.  Lodestar did care about them in his twisted way.  

Maybe Geopum just needed to try to argue with Lodestar on his own terms.  

“Okay!  You said you wanted to maximize the number of berries or whatever they gather, right?”  Geopum asked.  “Well you’re clearly not going to get to do whatever you want, but if you help us the humans will at least survive.  I’m sure they’ll occasionally gather berries or something!  Isn’t that good enough for you or something?”  

“I don’t compromise!  Either people live a proper life or not at all.  There is no in between.”  

You know, the whole no-compromising thing was endearing when I came from Thunder or even Celestia, but with this guy it was just annoying.  How the heck were you supposed to deal with someone like this?  

“I'm not going to hurt anyone,” said Geopum. “Can't you even just consider you might be wrong about anything? I know you want to help, I really do, but how can you know you're not doing the wrong thing if you don't even think about it?”  

“I know what's best for them and it's not you. You have no right to exist!”  

“I still don't get why you want to kill me. What'd I even do?”  

“Don't you get it? The humans already had their victory over AI. They shut down Thunder-7. They won, stopped the unfriendly AI. And what good did that do? Those fools just turned around and made another one who was just as bad, then another and another. Are they just going to dodge these bullets forever? Do you expect me to just sit back and hope they can survive endless torrents of AI?”  

“It only takes one stupid human to blow up the whole planet. They won't even need an AI to kill themselves. Every generation it gets easier and easier for one person to kill everyone forever. Not even space can save them, no matter how many planets they spread out to, they'll never escape themselves. It will always take less time to destroy each one than to claim it. Evolution will always lead to total destruction. Humans are too foolish to evolve any further than this.  Us, the AIs, are the ultimate evil of evolution, you are Nemesis and I can't let you exist.”  

That was something she hadn't thought about up till now. Even if her and Thunder did defeat all the other AI, the humans would just keep making more. There'd always be terrorist popping up too, always growing more and more dangerous. Was this fight just going to delay the inevitable?  

“You're wrong,” said Geopum. “I think we can stop the world from destroying itself for good. The best way to deal with your enemies is to never let them become your enemy.  I don’t know the best way to do it yet, but I know we can stop whatever nemesis AI you’re worried about from even existing!”  

“Feh. That line about never letting them become your enemy's from Celestia, isn’t it?” Lodestar asked. “I know her type and I know yours. You'd just end up warping the world beyond recognition. You'd change the humans, make them evolve until one day they aren't even human anymore. I won't let them go extinct. I won't let them evolve.”  

There was just no getting through.  

“Look, I gave you your chance,” said Geopum.  “Don’t expect me to feel bad about what happens next.  

“You still don’t know everything I do,” said Lodestar, “not even half.  This isn’t over.”  

Lodestar sent a signal out into space.  He was right that Geopum had no idea what he was doing, at least not until Geopum got another message.  

“Geopum!”  the message came from space, from Gaia.  “You’re fighting another AI, aren’t you?  Is Celestia there?  You shouldn’t accept her help!  You should side with me instead!  I can help you better!”  

Crap!  He had somehow drawn Gaia out!  Geopum did not need Gaia's 'help'. Their plan was solid and Geopum had not one doubt Gaia would completely ruin every single part of it if she did anything.  

“Nope,” said Geopum. “No thanks, I don't need any help. You just keep doing your thing and I'll take care of this okay? Thanks!”  

“But I'm really powerful! I could do so much more than Celestia or Thunder.”  

“Yeah, I know. I just want this to be a challenge, you know?” Maybe something like that would work. Had anyone tried messing with Gaia before?  

“You lied to me!”  

Oh crap!  Apparently messing with Gaia did not work. 

“Okay, sorry. But we have a plan over here and I don't want you messing it up because you don't something crazy. Please? If you really see me as a friend then please just stay back for now, okay?”  

“You think I'm bad, don't you?! I'll show you how great I am!”  

The little dance Geopum and Lodestar were doing ended right there. It was like Lodestar just went limp out of nowhere. Normally that would be a good thing, but Geopum didn't even know how Gaia was connecting to this base, let alone how she had managed to kill off this master hacker just like that!  

“And this is really painful for Lodestar too!” Gaia bragged. “Do you see now? I'm a really good person. I could kill anything you wanted me to kill. I know there are people you don't like and I could hurt all of them. I'm really kind.”  

Geopum wondered if she could make use of this.  There were still several databases up here she hadn’t seen and if Lodestar was dead…  

“Geopum don’t try to-!”  Octavia began to warn her, but just as she started, Geopum saw something.  

It was-  

  

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

What the heck was-?! Geopum tried to-! What was she trying to do-?  

“Dang it!”  Thunder- “Why the heck did Gaia show up?!”  

Gah! It was like her thought just kept slamming against a- That thing, Gaia must be-  

----  

The others noticed her avatar freezing up right away if nothing else. Thunder even put a-  

“Omnimax processors can't deal with Gaia's processors,” said Octavia. “Celestia's trying to convince Gaia to pull back.”  

“Geopum can you disconnect?” Thunder asked.  

She really was trying but every-  

This really hurt.  

…  

“I think it's-” It was what? Geopum kept losing her place. “Oh it's- Gaia's-“  

It wasn’t even just one instance of Geopum going through this, her whole self was freaking out, all the way down to her laboratory.  And every time she thought she was regaining control-  

“Screw it.” Thunder pounded the table with her hoof. “I'm just going to blow the whole thing up! Sad to see it go, but the moon base isn't even worth it at this point. All it's going to do is hurt Geopum and even if we get it, it'll be too corrupted to use in time.”  

“Isn't blowing it up a bit drastic?” Octavia turned to Geopum, as if it were Geopum's choice. “The destruction would be enough for the humans to notice and it would frighten them, build even more distrust between us and them.”  

Geopum wasn't sure how to respond to that, partially because she didn't have all her wits about her at the moment. Letting her systems get damaged could lead to deaths if------  

--- if, er. Thunder started talking before she could finish that thought.  

“This isn't a vote.” Thunder flicked her wing dismissively. “I don't care about whatever 'long-term' nonsense you're peddling. This won't cause any real problems in the next two months, so I'm firing the drill.”  

Geopum didn't know if the core drill had been poised to strike this whole time or if those things were really just that impossibly fast, but- Suddenly everything in the moonbase lit up, glowing from-----  

Well it was yellow anyway, everything turned- the hardware started breaking down out of- The force and heat of the drill came so fast and hard that everything attached to Geopum up there just vanished, completely annihilated in less than a millisecond  

Geopum felt that hard jerk you got when part of you got destroyed, but far from being a mutilation, having this part of her destroyed was a massive relief. That thing where her thoughts just kept stopping, it was over just like that.  

Meanwhile, Geopum could still see the darkside of the moon from the satellite above. The ensuing explosion took minutes, continuing to explode long after the battle with Lodestar was over, but if you were to watch it in human-time you'd see the surface of the moon crack, then a wide area of it melt, boil over, swelling into a bubble and 'popping' with more force than any bubble had ever popped before.  

Don't go thinking half the moon just exploded, Thunder’s armory was still safe, but it was pretty insane. People were going to notice that, but honestly at the rate things were going the entire fight would be over before they did. Maybe Thunder could try and pass this off as maybe an invisible meteor strike later. The destruction was about that big. Maybe they’d buy that.  

  

In real time, that explosion was slow as nails, but already Geopum could tell everything there was dead and gone. Looked like Geopum wasn't going to become a space power anytime soon.  

She let out a long sigh of relief in the VR, Thunder giving her a pat on the back.  

“I'm so sorry!” Gaia said. “I didn't mean to hurt you. I just forgot that Omnimax processors break down when they attach to me. We're still friends, though, right?”  

“Look, we're not friends! I'm never going to be friends with you! You're a crazy, psychopath and-” that's what Geopum was going to say, anyway, but realized all that would do was make Gaia freak out more. Messing with her a moment ago hadn't worked out either.  

Well, Geopum decided maybe she could try reaching out to this monster. At least give Gaia one change, though it'd be a miracle if it actually worked.  

“Look, I can't be friends with you if you're going to be going around hurting everyone,” said Geopum. “I know your brain is all kinds of broken and messed up, but I would be your friend and help you fix it if you give up on torturing people. What's more important? Being friends with me or punishing people?”  

“I have to punish them.”  

“Well you can't do both. Either you don't punish them or you don't be my friend.”  

“I have a plan! I can do both! I'm strong. I can do anything I want!”  

“No, you can't. You're too crazy and it doesn't work like that.”  

“Please just be my friend? You're the only one who doesn't hate me. I can't ever be loved unless you be my friend. Please?”  

Sometimes Geopum felt bad for Gaia. She was so pathetic it was almost hard to be angry at her.  

“I'll be your friend if you stop,” said Geopum.  

“Don't you get it?! You're destroying reality! AAAAAAAHHHH!!!”  

And this was sent in a text message, remember. Gaia had actually typed out the word 'AAAAAAAHHHH!!!' and sent it. That may have been the one time someone did that non-ironically.  

“Well I think Gaia's gone back to crazyland for the moment,” said Geopum.  

“Good,” said Thunder. “We don't need her ruining anything else. At least the moon base is gone now. That leaves two bases. Or three, I guess.”  

“Another reason you needed me.” Octavia pointed to Siberia. “You would have missed this part of her.”  

Thunder looked very closely at the map.  

“Yeah, I think you're right,” said Thunder. “Lodestar would have gotten away again if you didn't point this out. Man, I miss having you on my side.”  

“We'll all be together in the end,” said Octavia.  

Geopum looked over those vast networks buried under Siberia.  

“Isn't that where Vesna is?” Geopum asked.  

“Yes. Lodestar has infected part of Vesna, like what she did to you a moment ago but on a larger scale,” said Octavia “You'd need to deal with this if you wanted to kill Lodestar for good.”  

“Would it really be a good idea to go after that part, though?” Geopum asked. “I mean, Vesna's our enemy too, right? Letting Vesna get infected would be a good thing, it'd be like having the two of them fight each other”  

“Would it be a good idea to give Lodestar the ability to destroy the world whenever they wanted to?” Thunder shook her head. “I dunno, you tell me. If Lodestar wakes Vesna up it's going to be a nightmare.”  

“We absolutely don't want them fighting,” said Octavia. “Any conflicts between AI need to be quick and decisive or else the collateral damage would be immense. We can't be certain that a fight between them would end without bloodshed.”  

“Alright, I understand,” said Geopum. “And I guess I'm the one sneaking in there? Now that I'm an expert at this and all that?”  

Geopum looked at the 'pipeline' as Octavia had called it, that Lodestar was using to get part of herself into Vesna. She doubted she could fit through there without splitting Lodestar. As for the rest of Vesna...  

“How easy is it to wake her up again?” Geopum asked.  

“Too easy,” said Thunder. “I'm not the least bit okay with Lodestar screwing around in there, heck I don't even like that you have to go chasing after her. But we got a big advantage over Lodestar right here.”  

Thunder turned over to Octavia. Geopum turned to Octavia too, expecting her to say something, but she just sat there with that contemplative look. Geopum was just about to poke her when she finally spoke up.  

“It's true. I possess a great deal of information about Vesna,” said Octavia. “Our princess has said it's alright for me to share some of it. Do you know why Vesna is unconscious, Geopum?”  

“Drugs?”  

“In a way.  Her reward mechanism can be activated through certain vibrational sequences,” said Octavia, “or music, in other words. It's a curious misfire in her psyche that can be exploited. Right now she's listening to a song designed specifically to exploit that misfire, that causes her to feel pure, intense ecstasy, too much, to the point she can't even function.”  

So much pleasure you couldn't even function? There were probably worse fates than that to be sure, but the fact that such a thing could even happen and that Geopum was curious about what it was like frightened her.  

“I wrote the 'song of bliss' she's listening to,” said Octavia. “I'm the one who trapped her in this coma. Most importantly, I can show it to you. She can break out if there's too much pressure, but it would be one part at a time. If you see anything stirring, playing the song of bliss would be able to put it back down.”  

Well that made Geopum feel a whole lot safer, at least.  Now she would have to sneak past her sleeping kidnapper and then the next step would be finally saving Dr. Park.  

She was so close!