I never make mistakes. I thought I'd made one once, but I was wrong.
In the face of the advancing Barrier, the Conversion Bureaus are operating at peak efficiency. Their goal? To convert every human they can, to spare as many lives as they can. But scientists have long struggled on how to extend the chance for life to all thinking minds. To date, no one has ever tried to ponify an AI.
This is the first attempt.
Page generated in 0.086 seconds
Total duration
904 users online
485,729 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
THIS
This is veeeeeeeeery interesting. Don't think I've ever seen this take on Conversion before.
I can't even begin to imagine how something sentient but never without a body per se has to suddenly adapt to a living body and all the messiness that entails.
Ooo, I like this idea. Is this in any way canon to the Cloudyverse?
2670227
Not at this time, no. I'm still debating on whether humanity will have developed AI or not in the rewrite, but for right now it's doubtful.
Intriguing. Artistic licensing took the AI out of the realm of hard sci-fi, but made up for it in the increase in ability of the reader to sympathise with it. All in all, a well done snapshot of a side tale.
I'd request more of Caduceus' tale, but it'd be certain to dilute what has already been revealed.
This was good, and I liked Caduceus being a foal - for such an entity, it would be not just conversion but a first birth into a new world of experiences.
The last paragraph felt strange to me:
I think because, after such tenderness in the dream, it seemed smug and cold to me. I think I was expecting a vague hint of magic here, something like Celestia winking at the new organic (new-newfoal?) as if to subtly acknowledge a deeper truth to the conversion dream. Or at least, I expected her to be warmer perhaps.
Reading Cadeuceus's voice in my head, I couldn't help but hear Douglas Rain performing as HAL 9000, the cadence of the words just seemed to fit it so well - was that deliberate? HAL will always be one of the most evocative of AI voices for me.
2671605
I meant Celestia's smile here to be that of the one who was pleased that things worked out exactly as they should. My headcanon for Celestia actually has her as two entirely separate entities, although they are aware of the other to a certain extent. She separated herself at the ultimatum of the other dieties after Discord's sealing, so as to maintain the balance of the world. Thus, the Celestia that interacts with Equestria on a regular basis only has a fraction of her power. She maintains the wide-ranging awareness of her realm, and works hard to ensure that everything happens as it should.
However, that doesn't mean she isn't allowed a moment of satisfaction when a plan comes together
As for HAL, I admit to using his dialogue as the model for how I wanted Caduceus to come across. I wanted to develop a character that felt nothing because to feel was a design flaw. But now with him being a purely organic lifeform, he's suddenly gotten the full range of emotive states. My little brain-teasing moment was this line here:
The best part is I didn't think of how profound a change that'd be until I was in the editing phase
I really want to dig into it and explore it further when I get to rewriting The First Year
Wait, this is only a one-shot?
Damn shame, you could've taken a look at ponifying different kinds of AIs, like a military or business AI. Or how Caduceus adapts to his new fleshy, mortal shell.
with so many BS anti pony or anti human stories it seems everyone keeps putting out in the CB universe. i am glad to see not everyone see's only the violence in this verse. this is a great story that really makes you ponder the greater intricacies of what it means to live!
2674249
*puts an arm around your shoulder* If it's non-hating stories you want, I -do- have a list around here somewhere
Very nicely done! I keep thinking of the lines from 2001 when Dave is disconnecting HAL's higher functions.
"Will I dream?"
This is a great and interesting concept but I can't help feeling generally unsatisfied with the execution due to a number of factors, primarily the lack of information regarding Caduceus's existence outside the question of his ponification (Where is he? Who made him? Why? What does he do on a normal day? The functions we see him access are all security- and monitoring-based; why is he called Caduceus?), the inconsistency of his voice and behavior (his even-handedness and logical precision when discussing his own possibility of "death" compared to his confused and emotional-sounding reaction to a simple override command from a proper authority, his avoidance of contractions for the entire pre-dream part of the story only for them to crop up twice in his inner monologue within the first paragraph describing the dream), the inconsistent references to the conversion method being applied (at first Gerrit refers to using potion, but later the narration specifies that the nanites being injected have been specifically programmed for this test), and perhaps most importantly the open questions regarding why an AI would be ponified at all (What's he going to do once he's been ponified and separated from the purpose he was literally made for? Given that he was made for a specific purpose that is rapidly becoming obsolete, where did the funding and attention necessary for custom nanobots and a royal visit come from? Why is he important to Celestia to the degree of her having a plan for him as an individual?).
There were a few parts that specifically got my attention and approval, though.
At first Twilight's hesitation and discomfort seem out of place on her character, given her usual attitude toward new horizons in learning and how much of that favorite practice must already have been involved in preparation for addressing Earth in the first place... but combined with Gerrit's mention of discussing the procedure with her and Celestia "yesterday" and Fletcher's innocent question of whether Caduceus had a quiet night, they almost hint that there was a previous, unsuccessful test, which the Caduceus narrating today, having been restored from backup, doesn't remember, and everyone else is avoiding the subject.
I also enjoyed the double entendre of the ending line of dialogue: not only is Caduceus unfamiliar with the emotional responses he's now performing and unable to categorize them properly, he's also new to his physical body, and receiving sensations from types of equipment he's entirely unaccustomed to and can't directly comprehend as yet. At the moment, asking him how he feels in the conversational sense ("how do you feel": "describe your current emotional state") is like asking a formerly blind man suddenly given sight to identify colors; asking the same question in the procedural sense ("how do you feel": "describe the method by which you process sensation") is like asking a lifetime Windows user to describe the operating system of her new MacBook. And so his answer is the only reasonable one for either question, and especially for both.