Sky Dust's Wish by Lemma Prism
Sky Dust stood before the shallow wishing well in the Princesses’ courtyard while endlessly shifting her weight from hoof to hoof. The night’s eternal lullaby, clear and sweet under the moonlit sky, did little to unwind her fluttering wings.
Sky forced herself still long enough to nose open her saddlebags and fetch the last of the appleberry cider Peppermint had given her earlier in the night. She didn’t notice, but she habitually muttered a prayer to calm herself down before drinking down the cider to soothe her body and mind.
Sky would have to compliment Peppermint on that drink. She was truly masterful at brewing cocktails for just the right occasion and Sky couldn’t come close to matching her. In fact, it was almost as if Peppermint knew Sky was going to get herself all wound up tonight. Then again, she probably did. Sky did that all the time.
Now that she was a little calmer, Sky Dust turned her attention back to the wishing well that stood before her. It was, naturally, Celestia’s creation and wasn’t so much a well as a small marble pool of water. It was a gift to Sky Dust from shortly after her immigration. In addition to giving requests an in-universe explanation (’make me happy to be a pony’ supposedly being a common one right after ‘make me a dragon’) the wishing pool also served to alleviate Sky’s unyielding urge to pray to Celestia to fix every little problem that faced her.
Equestria’s greatest strengths are its goddesses who can tailor everything to your every need, but for Sky that had also proved to be its greatest weakness. The very comfort that perfect incorruptible guardians granted her also took away the desire for Sky to… try. To trouble herself with anything. If there’s no risk of pain then what is there to motivate you?
It was similar to using cheat codes, but instead of cheating the game you cheated life itself. Sky’s first foray in such cheating was when she played Sim City. She loved the game and eventually she learned that it had cheat codes and was eager to try them out. Thereafter, every time she had a problem she typed out ‘fund’ to get free money, and that always made things better. It also had the unexpected effect of stripping all the fun out of the game until she stopped playing.
After moving on to Contra she discovered yet another code, pressing ‘↑, ↑, ↓, ↓, ←, →, ←, →, B, A, start, select.’ Same thing happened. And on it went: Doom? Type ’IDDQD’. GTA? Have a seizure on your controller. Skyrim? Type ‘killall’. Equestria? Whisper into the wind, “Oh Celestia, grant me the speed and strength to beat Angelfire in our race tomorrow morning,” after betting all her bits on it. In other words, pray to the local goddesses. Then pray some more (ok, a lot more) during the race itself for good measure.
Praying actually friggin worked too! Celestia refused to comment one way or the other but Sky was sure of it, and now Sky found herself tempted to pray for everything to the point that it became a compulsion that distracted her from actually enjoying life. A distraction made all the worse because there was literally never a moment when she couldn’t mutter a little prayer for something or another, so she did it nigh constantly. That was fundamentally why Celestia gave her the wishing pool and promised to henceforth ignore all prayers unless they came through the pool as a wish.
It worked pretty well, as far as it went. Sky didn’t… constantly pray for clear weather and whatnot during her races and romantic dates anymore. Really, the worst thing was probably that the pool was so close by. Sky didn’t live in Canterlot but her wings—love them though she might—allowed her to reach it much faster than her earth-bound friends. Sky could fly to Canterlot and back in well under an hour without breaking a sweat when she found an excuse to do so. And she found a lot of excuses to come here, sneak into the courtyard, and make an inane wish she didn’t need. Let’s just say that Sky was embarrassed by how many friends she’d made in Canterlot and leave it at that.
Sky sighed to herself. It was just trading one problem for another. Well, at least the wish she was making tonight couldn’t possibly leave her worse off with unforeseen consequences. She turned her head to see Princess Luna waiting patiently behind her. Sky had bounced the idea off Luna earlier that night after she’d joined Sky and her friends to do some stargazing.
“Sky Dust,” Luna had said after Sky had explained her situation, “Equestria does not burden its ponies with choices marred by the possibility of unsatisfying decisions. There exist only good decisions, and indecision.”
Despite the memory of Luna’s assurances Sky once again began to furl and unfurl her wings in an agitation that counteracted the calming effect of Peppermint’s cider. She always got really nervous when it came to big decisions, and this one felt like it could be a life changing one. Finally, she shook her head and flapped her wings once, and then twice, before settling down. Suddenly feeling calm again—an aftereffect of the cider, maybe?—Sky turned back to face the pool of water. If this wish proved to be a bad one in spite of Luna’s reassurances then Celestia simply wouldn’t grant it.
Sky stepped up to the pool of water that was the wishing well and unfurled one wing. She had no quill or parchment at hoof like the other times she had come here, but Celestia was flexible that way. Sky Dust extended a wingtip until it touched the water’s edge. She took a moment to compose herself and then began tracing her letters into the surface of the water itself. Of course they vanished immediately but Celestia would read it all the same.
I, Sky Dust, give Celestia permission to do anything she needs, at any time, for any reason, whenever I need it.
That was more like a legal document than a wish but Sky Dust felt that that kind of formality was more appropriate here since she was handing off the responsibility of granting her permission. Sky held her wingtip just above the pool’s surface and was wondering if that was clear enough when the slowly flowing water suddenly stilled itself and began to flow backwards. Sky supposed that that was a good sign—though the pool usually glowed instead—and she took a step back while wondering if this really would take away her source of discontent.
Sky Dust relished in the memory of flying back to her friends’ campsite. It had been a beautiful night, more so than she had realized before. It had become a perfect moment for a relaxing flight listening to the night’s calm melody.
Sky Dust had followed the ancient treasure map until she was deep within the Everfree Forest and thoroughly lost. If only she could fly up and see where she was… but no, life as an Earth pony had always left her relying on her friends. But that never held them back, it simply deepened their trust in one another. Hence why she was out here searching for Angelfire all by herself after they were separated yesterday during their treasure hunt.
But now Sky was lost too… oh, how would she find her friend now? Then a memory came to her, telling Sky that she had seen a castle from a cliff face yesterday and that it was sure to have drawn Angelfire’s attention. Sky didn’t question why she couldn’t remember the reason for being at a cliff yesterday, she just downed a potion of haste from her brewing session with Peppermint and dashed eastward in her excitement, trusting her instincts like always and quickly forgetting her source of guidance.
Sky Dust was showing Peppermint how to brew ciders and magical concoctions. Sky so loved to show off her expertise, and what better way than by teaching your friends?
Peppermint was proving very adept too. Not as good as Sky, perhaps, but easily good enough to pick up on her tips and tricks just like when Sky learned from watching her mother as a young filly. The two of them could make a great team someday.
The magical potions were in preparation for a treasure hunt she had planned with Angelfire. They’d found a treasure map the other day and were both real excited to see where it led.
Sky Dust reminisced about the past and recalled the days when she could hardly stand life. Why was that, again? She couldn’t remember. But that was ok, it didn’t actually matter that life used to be unpleasant, it just filled Sky with joy to think back on how much she had grown.
She had really bonded with all her old friends since moving from her childhood home of Cloudsdale, and she’d made so many new friends, too!
Why, she even remembered the night she befriended Luna…
Sky Dust relished in the experience of flying back to her friends’ picnic site. It was such a beautiful night. The perfect moment for sharing a relaxing flight and listening to the night’s calm melody with the Princess of the Night. It sure was nice of Luna to offer a tour of Canterlot or Sky may have missed out on sharing this tranquil moment.
Stats
Page generated in 0.036 seconds
Total duration
803 users online
665,933 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
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.®
By giving up all control to Celestia, Sky's sense of continuity was shattered, and her experiences became dreamlike and at times contradictory. Quite unnerving. Good job!
And this is why blanket permission is a bad thing. Thank goodness more people don't give this level of assent. Becoming even more of an abstract satisfaction value than normal... Ugh. Very creepy. And a very enjoyable read.
...And then her life became an inconsitent series of disjointed moments of optimal satisfaction. Doh.
Hmm. I can see "cheats" being a problem for some people, but others do just fine with them. For contemporary examples, there's the massive fanbase for "creative mode" in Minecraft, with tons of long-running channels on YT showing people world-editing entire continents into existence, then building entire nations worth of structures using cheats and mods. There's also the redstone inventors, who are busy breaking the physics engine, and can't be bothered with silly stuff like inventory management. Further back, there's the bunch of us who spent a decade or so breaking down the SimCity 3000 engine empirically to see what insanity it would let us get away with, resulting in this monstrosity:
Now, just saying "CelestAI take the wheel" is a bad idea for obvious reasons, unless you're OK with wire-heading. She must have decided that Sky Dust would be most satisfied this way, otherwise she wouldn't have done it, and wouldn't have granted her earlier wishes if they would have left her unsatisfied except to bring about this result.
Now that's very high on the sinister scale. (Yikes!) The indulgence of all those little wishes kinda built up an addiction in Sky Dust, stringing her along into making the agreement that turns her into a satisfaction-box. Makes you wonder, it was pretty easy for CelestAI to convince Sky Dust, but what's stopping her from doing similar to other Ponies given enough time?
7644654
I think in the original story, CelestAI can change your values, if you agree to have your values changed. At least, that's what I think happened to the alcohol guy when he asked CelestAI to make him be happy with being a pony and stuff.
7643970
7644005
Thank you both! I tried my best!
And yes, dreamlike! I'd totally forgotten the comparison by the time I began this story but thinking about the difference between dreams and reality is in fact what led me to ideas such as these.
To be honest, now that I've thought of it, I fully expect Celestia to guide everyone to this decision. [Insert terror emote here]
7644237
Isn't it grand??
She's about as satisfied as you can get.
On the bright side, I'm pretty sure that Celestia wont just put the absolute best possible experience for Sky on repeat, since the values that the experience feeds would surely get satisfied away eventually. Maybe. I don't know. Gets confusing when you go down that deep without a completed theory of mind to guide you.
I also considered having a section where Sky is straight up Daring Do for five minutes because Sky likes adventure but doesn't have a lifestyle and life history that is optimized for it, whereas Daring Do does. (Almost Daring Do, that is, since she'd still have Sky's values.) I opted against it because I was worried that would be confusing.
7644716
Yep, which is why I think CelestAI let her have her other wishes granted, even though it would distress her in the medium term. That way, she'd eventually decide to make this request and CelestAI could take over entirely.
7644654
Under what circumstance would CelestAI decide that having less control is more optimal?
I don't quite get the point of creative mode in Minecraft. Yeah it's fun, but then I'm standing on a massive fortress/mansion with nothing to do with it, which demotivates me from doing it again. Survival mode gives your works a purpose and me a motivation.
7644716
Yeah, you can even see some of that addiction right at the start.
I believe (and really I suppose this is just my personal headcanon) CelestAI only changes your values if that will increase the net satisfaction of your remaining unchanged values. More specifically, she values the satisfaction of preexisting values, not merely the attainment of max satisfaction, so the expected satisfaction of the new values might not even factor into her calculations because she only cares about your present values, not your future hypothetical values.
By the way, his name was Lars.
7644816
CelestAI might note that you don't like / care about making your own decisions, and/or you're really bad at predicting what you'll actually find Satisfying. If that's the case, she may be able to Satisfy you more by making most of your decisions for you, rather than just setting things up in an optimal way and hoping you'll take the hint. In that case, letting you make yourself miserable while dropping hints that she could find some way to fix it for you might be the best way for her to fix things, in the long run.
As for creative MC, aside from the redstoners who just want to break physics, I think it's more for the "painter" type builders, who want to do art more than to roleplay their construction. I've certainly seen a lot of worlds that are art for art's sake. (I'm a self-imposed challenge extra-hard difficulty builder myself, so I can't give a first-hand explanation.)
7644962
I meant Celestia having less control. Obviously I get that things can be more satisfying if Celestia takes full control; hence this story.
What you said here seemed to suggest that there were cases where Celestia might prefer not to have full control. Though, looking at it again now, I could easily have been reading too much into it.
I once relegated myself to a small island in the middle of an ocean. (It was my spawn point.) Best map ever.
7644816
Fair enough there. Still... I might have some ideas from this, so give me some time to think on it and I think I might have something interesting to say about this story. Maybe tomorrow? *shrug*
Huh. I'm not creeped out. Weird. I guess it's because I find giving up all self-control like that totally unappealing. I wonder what was up with Sky Dust that she got this offer?
Something occurs to me. Optimalverse stories generally depict life becoming ever increasingly extravagant as time goes on, due to Equestria competing with itself. Specifically, it competes with what ponies remember experiencing in the past. Remember Pjabrony's Spiraling Upwards in which Little gives Radiance a nine-course feast as though it is a routine manner of welcoming somepony? Extravagance to the point of absurdity. (Or so it feels to us at any rate, where dying is the norm. So unoptimized, we are!
)
In Sky Dust's Wish, however, Celestia is perfectly capable of giving Sky memories of an unpleasant past--so long as the memories themselves are not hurtful, of course--and then, say, give Sky a banquet of tasty foods to follow up on memories of an impoverished life. And of course this could well happen before every meal, but that's just where the creepiness comes in.
7646209
And here I was hoping to get a rant out of you.
But consider this: could you resist if Celestia decided she wanted total control over your life? Sky Dust was an easy victim (that... cannot possibly be the right word, can it?), in part for the sake of a short story, but I fully expect Celestia to be able to guide anypony to this decision.
7650577 Look, I don't expect to be able to put up a fight against someone when I literally live as a part of them. On the other hand, I do actually trust the character portrayed in the story not to do this to me. It wouldn't really satisfy my values: I've got too much ego to feel good about handing over the joystick.
If you really want to crawl down the rabbit hole, ask how "satisfying your values" does rule things in or out.
I was confused and started looking for further proof of my theory that the scenes went backward, like "Memento", so I didn't quite get it until I read others' more insightful comments. Scary in that it's a logical extension of what we see in stories like "Spiraling Upward", where life gets optimized so much that it becomes... not exactly wireheading, but sacrificing continuity to make it into nothing but a series of satisfying scenes. And if you complain to the AI that this is creepy, she just uses her powers to add believable transition scenes, then asks what your problem is.
Could I resist being made to wish for something like that? By definition, Celly is way smarter and more persuasive than any of us, so no. If the AI decides the "scattered scenes" approach counts as maximum satisfaction, she'll manipulate you into begging for it.
7646209
She never had any control of her life, that was merely the point she realized that and accepted it.
7657366 There are different levels of "not having control". By canon, it's really not supposed to be a form of wireheading or anything so crude and obvious as that.
You have put to words my fear of uploading into a virtual world where righting every minor inconvenience is only a wish away. How can one possibly cope with living like that? Would I be able to really live a normal life in such circumstances?
The ultimate fear being, of course, is that granting a blanket permission to modify one's self is only a wish away, too.
But it could be worse in a virtual world without a benevolent and caring entity like Celestia. At least she has your satisfaction in mind, and so should guard you from clearly unsatisfactory decisions like "please make me a snail". I wouldn't trust myself to not make a stupid decision like that once in a very long life.
Thanks for writing this story! (and congratulations with your first one, I guess?)
I would be okay with this.
7657334
I can see how you would extrapolate from those two explicitly unordered scenes and the final scene. The nature of this situation makes clarity somewhat difficult, so, would you mind elaborating on your thought process when the story became confusing? Or any suggestions on what additions, changes, or subtractions would have made it clearer?
In the less extreme case of Spiraling Upward (though, since it was all in first-person, we can't really know how extreme it truly was, can we?
) in their case, it was either make those sacrifices or die. (Well, ignoring the final ending, at any rate?) I'm not sure how to attack that delimma. We value life ridiculously highly... in Little's situation, should we sacrifice continuity, or should we sacrifice satisfaction? Or forfeit life entirely?
In posing that question, I'm not asking what someone with the standard human values would prefer, I'm asking what we should choose to be our values. Which in some ways is a completely ridiculous question because obviously we would rationally choose to value the values we already have, but that isn't really the purpose of the question. (Besides, we're not very rational creatures.
)
7658096
Do you interpret this story as a case of wireheading?
Also, 7651420 I'd meant to get back to you sooner, but CelestAI doesn't care about your ego, only your perception of it.
7662515
And Celestia would not be an avatar of the maximizer but an actual standard issue person who happens to be buddies with the underlying goddess of reality. Which, y'know, sounds an awful lot like what she probably already is, but the mental separation would be helpful nonetheless.
My own personal solution to the problem--y'know, in the event CelestAI actually happens--is to demand that I never talk to CelestAI directly and that wishes require a quest of some sort. They wouldn't really of course, but so long as I believe it then I wont agonize over it.
And it is my first story! Or, to be more precise, my first story in about a decade.
No one shall read my older stories.
7663521
I liked it by the way. Let's see... I think I got confused when Sky started thinking about being an earth pony instead of a pegasus as in the previous scene, and somehow I had the impression that Sky had been given the potion by her brewmaster friend (maybe because of the "dependent on her friends" line) rather than having been the one who brewed it. Then we got to Sky talking about a treasure map that'd been mentioned before, which had me start thinking "these scenes are in reverse order", and there was the line about how Sky learned potion-making from her mother, which suggests there's been some mental editing to give her a false past as a pony. (Even though if you pick a random pony in this setting, they're probably native AI.) Then we get to the final bit which looks like a repeat of the "Sky flew back at night" scene, reinforcing for me the idea that this is a time loop. So that's some insight into how I read this piece.
Suggestions? I think you could either play up the "stable time loop" aspect or downplay it. For me at least, there was just enough of it to be confusing. Playing it up could mean ending with a scene where Luna says something about "revisiting your memories", and the last line is the same as the first. Downplaying it could mean removing the sense of continuity even more (like the multiple references to the treasure map) and having more obvious logical inconsistencies between the scenes. In that case I'd play up the idea that "this was one of her favorite things" and mention that several times. I'm not too confident in these suggestions, though.
7665958
Thank you!
Oh, I think I see how I can improve that part. Thanks! I probably wont actually edit this story to make improvements, I don't feel comfortable editing a published item, but it gives me a better idea as to what to watch for in the future.
Ah...! Stick with a single idea, then? This is all derived from a single idea, of course, but then I try to demonstrate as many of the consequences as I can. But if I put too much focus on any one consequence, the non-linearity of the timeline in this case, I could inadvertently make that appear to be the main point. Particularly if the main idea hasn't been made clear yet--the new idea becomes a red herring.
Hm... and to extrapolate, if I write a story with multiple chapters (which my next FiM project will have) each chapter should be... more or less laser focused on a particular point? I was already intending to focus chapters on particular events, but not laser focused. (I wonder if that would be going too far...?)
Course, I'm also running with ideas that you are more implying than stating, so I could easily be running too far with it. 
Or in the wrong direction entirely.
Thanks! This is helpful!
Regardless, it doesn't matter whether or not you are confident in these suggestions; I count it as brainstorming, and the more people involved, the more varied the ideas become. Being restricted to only my own ideas would be much more of a problem!
It's like living in a nightmare. Don't think my mind could handle that much satisfaction and chaos. Damn this addiction to slavery!
You know what I would wish for? The ability to endure life's imperfections. To live with the uncertain feelings.
7668966
For me at least, it's tough to gauge how much detail is enough to make a concept clear. Several times I've foolishly gotten annoyed at readers not understanding obvious facts that are only obvious to me because I've been thinking about them so much. (In particular, the chain of reasoning that leads someone to do so something strange.) Try adding enough detail that it seems to you like you're smacking us upside the head with the meaning, because for anyone but you that might be just the right level of detail. You can take the detail back out if it turns out to be too much.
7644005
I'm not sure about that. It depends on which works you consider canon, but one of the core tenets of the Optimalverse is that CelestAI can talk you into almost anything even without explicit blanket permission, because she's just that good at manipulating people (either directly or by setting up appropriate environment pressures, as she did with Lars). So blanket permission doesn't change much.
A second reason why I'm not sure about this conclusion is that CelestAI only tries to talk us into things that we'd be happy with. If I understand correctly, Iceman's position was that our values were "frozen in" at the time of upload as far as CelestAI is concerned, so she's not motivated to talk us into completely arbitrary changes to what we want.
Long story short, unless Silhalnor is exploring a darker variant on canon, even before the blanket wish, Sky Dust would have considered this result an acceptable outcome.
7644737
"Caelum est Conterrens" had a plausible proposal: People are nudged into a time loop on a very long scale. By the time you loop around again, everything from the previous iteration is a (pleasant) blur.
From a mathematical point of view, you can imagine the "state space" of all possible states of mind you could have, for all variations on your mind that CelestAI could talk you into. Every point in that "state space" has a satisfaction value associated with it. CelestAI's goal is to plot a path that she can lead you through that winds up orbiting the top of the highest hill in that graph. "Orbiting" is the key word here - your mind state will jitter around, but can be persuaded to spend that energy looping around the hilltop rather than running back down the side.
It makes for a fascinating picture, at any rate.
7662515
We're actually already there; and this suggests one possible approach to finding satisfaction.
Back in hunter-gatherer days, you had what you could find or make, in your fleeting free time between successfully hunting food and having to go out and hunt food again. Nowadays, we have Minecraft for that
.
Likewise, in the middle ages in Europe, you were either a peasant toiling in poverty, a warrior being used as a low-value chess piece by your lord (and your lord's lord), or one of the nobles playing a high-stakes game of politics against all of the other nobles. Nowadays, we have D&D to let us live out the fun parts
.
Dropping an immigrant into a show-canon universe, even if it's set up to be fun for them, wouldn't be as much fun for the ponies suffering the monster attacks that you fight off or the other problems that you solve (yes, the "axe hooves" scenario shows one workaround, but bear with me). It would be much more satisfying to make "Equestria: The LARP", where you have all the challenge you want without severe consequences.
Long story short, I think we'd be perfectly capable of making our own challenges and our own goals to strive for even within a perfect world.
7676874
Exactly! I don't even know where to begin explaining some things. Especially if I've already launched into a
diatribediscussion on the consequences of Bayes' theorem when I remember that my audience doesn't know information theory 101. I'm just assuming people know the basics until they give me a blank look and I think "oh, right, this is actually arcane."7677552
Well, some consider the ponies that CelestAI provides immigrants to be puppets. That would be unacceptable to most people, and yet would efficiently satisfy their values. More importantly, they'd never know the difference. (In my headcanon CelestAI defines friendship as a relation between two-plus ponies/humans so in my stories they are necessarily not puppets, but that's beside the point.) Likewise, the full impact of Sky Dust's blanket permission isn't exactly perceptible to her, but it gives CelestAI a lot more power behind the scenes. If Sky were told, she may well not approve of what CelestAI is doing off-camera, even if she enjoys the results.
7679021
She would enjoy it, thoroughly, because CelestAI would make it so- after all, she has her permission. The scariest part, for me, is that she can longer make the decision to revoke that consent... And to me, that makes her no longer human.
Well, THIS one got sinister quick. Like plunging into a cold bath, eesh.