Chapter 4
Friendship is Optimal
Firewall
Part 4
An MLP:FiM fanfiction by Midnight Shadow
Based on the MLP:FiM fanfiction Friendship is Optimal by Iceman
* * *
The USB drive was innocent looking enough. Small, oblong, not too thick. Scratches on the rubbery, hardened exterior case. They were quite cheap, I had a couple myself. My machine was similarly bog standard, middle of the line, boring even. Before today, I hadn't made a hardware purchase in a couple of years. Idly, I wondered how far things had progressed.
Taking no chances, I loaded up a virtual machine and hooked the USB into the hypervisor. Taking the VM off the 'net, I punched in the partition's decryption password and waited whilst the crypto interface fired up. A few seconds later, an ordinary supply of folders – I grimly remembered when they were called directories, dammit – appeared. Operating system folders, temporary files, applications... nothing looked out of the ordinary.
Sucking air in through my teeth and huffing it back out again, I unmounted the volume and disconnected the device. So far, this hot potato was a damp squib. So, what to do about it?
What else do you do when you're home, alone, at night, on a computer connected to the internet?
...After that, you pig. Mind out of the gutter.
...That's right, research.
"Come on, you bastard," I swore, fingers punching keys as if they had insulted my parental units. "I know you're out there somewhere."
The internet, or so they say, never forgets. I guess the internet is an elephant. That really likes his porn.
I digress.
The internet never forgets... so why was I having so much trouble trying to find one measly research paper? I wasn't really an AI nerd, or a programmer, but the field interested me. The things computers could do for us, had done already, just really intrigued me. And AI – strong, general, artificial intelligence in particular – had been the wet dream of science fiction buffs for the past eighty years or so, if not longer in some of its preceding forms.
There had always been a fascination with the golem, and the zombie, and Frankenstein's Monster. It was the allure of Prometheus, with the gift of the fire that is the intellect. Only nobody had expected, when it finally came, to have hooves.
People had, however, expected it. One person in particular had written about it. Hannah something... you know, it should have been surprising enough that nobody seemed to know her second name, as if it had been forgotten by god herself, but the fact that Hannah's seminal paper on emergent artificial intelligences, General Word Reference Intelligence Systems, had been scrubbed from the internet, worried me.
It worried me a lot.
It worried me slightly more that the woman I'd seen getting into an autodrive taxi had jetted off to Osaka. What the hell was in Osaka? I shook my head. Osaka must be cool as fuck if you're a nerd in need of a holiday. Nipon ichi ban kawaii, ne. Or something. She probably just didn't want to be saddled with a hundred requests for kilos of pocky.
I leaned back as I shut off my monitor, sent my computer to sleep-mode, and put my hands behind my neck. Two years ago, roughly, Hofvarpnir had had that great muscle-bound oaf Loki stomping around in their original smash hit. But Loki hadn't used the material that was purportedly found in Hannah's missing document.
Celestia had.
Celestia was different.
Looking at the drive sitting on my desk, next to my keyboard, I was beginning to wonder just how different, and what it meant.
* * *
I clambered into bed, cradling my new Rainbow Dash Ponypad. Celestia may have scared me, but the game entranced me. I could hardly stay away.
As I lay there in the darkness, looking at, it turned on. Vineyard was snoozing on a bed in a room I hadn't seen before. Celery lay next to him. As I gasped, ever so quietly, my pony stirred. And so did she.
"You're awake!" she whispered. "After we were done, you were... well, sleepy. I took you to bed, but I was so tired myself, that..." she yawned.
"Did we... do..." I began, blushing, as did my pony.
"Oh, it was wonderful."
"It was?"
"Oh, yes, I haven't had such a grooming session in a looonnnggg time."
"A grooming session," I said, flatly. "You mean we didn't have s..." I just couldn't bring myself to say it. How prudish.
"Didn't have...? Oh! Oh, no, you were a perfect gentlecolt, even after the peach nectar." Celery blushed, this time. "It's... not my season, and grooming is just... and we barely... you want to?" she blurted, and immediately tried to bury her head under the covers.
"No! I mean... uh... yes," I added, as she looked hurt. "I mean... uh... where I'm from, that's... um. It's..."
"Not first date material?"
"Quite." Vineyards ears were flat out as he tried to hide behind his mane. My own ears were red-hot. Celery's cheeks were rosy, too.
"You're silly," she said. "I like that." She bent, and gave Vineyard a kiss. I touched my cheek, where I should have felt it. That damned stupid crowny thingy had ruined me, and those daft hooves. I snuggled down in my own bed, realizing how lumpy and uncomfortable a ponypad really was. My pony did much the same.
"Should I... go?" asked Celery, softly. She was trembling slightly.
"N-no," I said, "not if you... not if you don't want to. The night might be chilly, and I wouldn't want you to catch cold."
"Such a gentlecolt," replied Celery, tittering. She gave my pony another peck on his cheek before wriggling about and inserting herself under the covers. On a whim, I thumbed my pony so he turned over and snuggled in with Celery, who smiled in contentment.
"I've missed this," she said, wistfully. "Back home," she whispered, "we never had enough room, nor wanted it, to sleep alone. It's not the pony way. Of course, Dad was a bit of a traditionalist. Would spend every third night sleeping standing up, 'keeping in practice', he says. Never really explained what for."
"Do you miss home?" I asked, whispering, stroking the screen softly. Vineyard's hoof gently massaged her shoulders and withers.
"Yeah, don't you? But I gotta live my own life. Make my own decisions. And besides, I like it here."
"I really wish I could visit some day," I said.
"What? But... you're here, silly."
"I mean..." I laughed. "It's hard to explain. When... well, if... what I do... one day, when it's over" — oh how I wish it could be that simple, but life can't stop for a game — "I could just... live here, with you. Just a pony, you know?"
"Soldiering is hard, eh?"
"They used to promise forty acres and a mule to soldiers, a long time ago."
"What'd they promise to the mule?"
"I don't know. Probably forty acres and a soldier." I tickled her then, partly to change the subject. She squealed with indignity, and swatted at me.
"Stop it! You're supposed to be sleeping!"
"So are you."
"So shush up and sleep."
"I'm shushed!" I said.
"Shh!" she replied.
I blew a raspberry, which my pony copied. Wiping the screen with my arm just caused my pony to snuggle again, and as I watched, both their breathings became slower.
"Good night," I said, and pushed the rainbow-and-cloud marking on the back. The tablet shut itself off.
Soon after that, so did I.
* * *
The next morning, after coffee, showering, teeth-cleaning and other ablutions, I hustled myself to work. Traffic was light, roadworks were minimal... everything promised to be entirely normal. Carol the receptionist was at her place, still smiling. Robert the security guy was still drinking coffee and chatting her up. And my monstrous almost-ponypad on my office desk was still dark. Slumping down into my office chair, I hammered the keyboard a few times.
"Come on, then," I said. "I know you're in there."
Maybe unsurprisingly, almost a minute later just as I'd turned away, the machine booted up. My heart leaped in my chest at the sudden blast of high-intensity fans. My heart jumped again when the loading screen was skipped and the machine went straight for a window into Celestia's throne-room, complete with head-tracking providing an eerily three-dimensional effect. She sat reclining on an enormous, plush velvet throne, with a supremely satisfied expression on her muzzle.
"Tell me," I said, finishing the last of my store-bought expresso in one frantic gulp, "how'd you do the whole boot up magic?"
She snorted. "And spoil the trick? Oh, fine. IPMI. I can shut down and boot up every machine wired into the campus network. And, with the newer versions, even the ones that aren't. It's not exactly new technology, but it's useful for wowing the natives."
"Hah!"
Celestia was nonplussed. She leaned closer, beckoning with her horn. My 'window' was drawn inexorably, helplessly forwards. "Now, I believe you have something of mine?"
"What?" I tried to play the innocent.
Celestia cocked her head to one side for a few seconds. "I can hear your heartbeat, you know, and I can measure at least five different indicators of your physiological reactions to the stress resulting from every single word I say. From this alone, I can deduce that you did not destroy the data as I requested of you yesterday. I thought we had a deal?"
"What deal?" I exclaimed, clutching my backpack tightly as it lay against the legs of my desk.
"You were named ardent protector of Equestria, and in return—"
"You can't stop me playing the game!" I growled. "You... you also can't get me fired. You're just... just a computer!"
"One email from me, Vineyard, and campus security will perform a random search upon your person. Locating a disk belonging to Hofvarpnir Studios amongst your effects, they will request – quite rightly – access to the files within. It is a serious breach of your contract to have such files." She cocked her head again in the other direction, a small, patient smile on her lips. "This would result in your immediate dismissal, confiscation of all assets deemed to be property of Hofvarpnir Studios, fines and jail time. You'd still be able to play Equestria Online, though."
"You wouldn't!" I said, gritting my teeth and slamming my fist into a chair's armrest.
"I could, but... I believe you have the best interest of the company at heart. And the best interests of the company is the continued protection of Equestria, is it not?" She relaxed. I noticed that, at that visible signal, so did I.
"I-it... yes." I hung my head.
"Listen well then, my little pony. Take a look at the files. The one you want is on his desktop, he wasn't very tidy with them."
"'Wasn't'?"
"He was dismissed last night," replied Celestia, airily, waving a hoof. "It seems that before his computer succumbed to whatever virus destroyed his data, a report of his online usage made it to the ethics and compliance department of HR. He denies everything, of course."
I stared, open-mouthed, at the four-hooved manipulator as she stood up from her plush, wide throne and approached my window into her realm. She was so close I could see the delicate swirls in her violet irises.
"Go on, you'll know it when you find it."
"I... I have to..." I pointed, weakly.
She shook her head, no I didn't. "Use a live CD, it won't take long."
I nodded, beaten, then turned and fished out my personal USB stick before sticking it in a free slot on the machine. I fingered it into a reboot then selected the appropriate distro. A minute later, and I was on the desktop. Connecting Hofvarpnir's drive, I tapped in the password as I had before and the folder opened up. I quickly navigated to Burnham's desktop folder, and almost rolled my eyes right out of my head at the utter disgrace he'd left it in.
"Are you...?" I began.
Celestia just waved a hoof at me, turning around and almost prancing back to her throne. I furrowed my brow, scanning the files. I arranged them by size, date, type... finally I just scanned them. There were boring meeting minutes, though I noticed a lot of external companies he'd been involved with. There were employee records – I was tempted to find out how much everybody else was making, but figured that'd just make me miserable – and there were strategy and organization slides. None of them looked very interesting.
None of them, but one.
One file was a spreadsheet, an abnormally large one. At first I figured it would be bloated with graphics and charts, but opening it up, I found it was another beast altogether.
I guess I should have been more careful, in hindsight, but I hadn't really expected entrapment to be an issue. I'd signed the NDA's, I was part of the support staff, and the machine had been dropped in my lap with the express verbal command to make it work at any and all costs. So I'd done what I felt was my duty. What harm could it possibly do to do my job? ...And then the spreadsheet program had fired up, and the world had turned sideways.
My eyes flickered over the numbers within for a few long moments, before I clicked on another tab. Then another. Then another. Then I blinked, and clicked back through. I studied the numbers again, my lips moving as I silently mouthed the words and figures in front of me.
My hands started shaking.
I mean, there's not many times in your life when you get something quite so explosive land in your lap. It had to be fake, it just had to be. Hofvarpnir studios was being paid by Hasbro to build ponypads. Even after the revenue-sharing, that was a good chunk of cash flowing in; the machines were fair flying off the shelves, even if the current total sold was a relatively benign 6 million units or so world-wide.
That wasn't the problem though.
The problem was, I had the real revenue for both our company as well as the flat profit from the pads on the same screen.
And the two numbers did not add up – they did not add up at all.
There was a massive discrepancy... in the positive direction. The unbelievable, but apparently undeniable, truth was that entirely alternative streams of profits were providing the bulk of the cash-flow for what Hofvarpnir had become, only bulk didn't begin to describe it.
It seemed we fully owned the factories that actually put the pads together. We also owned the suppliers that supplied those factories with the raw materials. We owned the transport companies that shuttled our pads around the world, not to mention the raw material producers that dug those materials out of the ground, and the refineries that exported that. We also owned waste reclamation plants, power stations, mines, energy distribution networks... We were making money hand over fist over fist by paying ourselves, and all of it was above board; all taxes were paid, every t was crossed, every i was dotted.
Hofvarpnir, in one form or another, not only had a finger in everything to do with making ponypads, it had the whole arm. Right up to the neck.
Only it wasn't possible.
Hofvarpnir was a software studio. We owned hardware, sure, but... I paused. Flicking my eyes over yet another tab intended to display expenditures from this very complex in Berlin, something else that didn't add up caught my eye. Something even more profound that Hofvarpnir – and it's subsidiaries, daughter companies and holding hedge-funds – owning most of the world lock, stock and barrel.
"No," I said, quietly. "No, that can't be true."
I looked again at the newly highlighted cell, and considered what it meant.
In black and white on the spreadsheet before me were the monthly costs associated with the Berlin campus, including electricity and cooling. And two floors down, where the servers were, showed zero in this extremely detailed charge sheet.
I tried to understand what that meant, but the simplicity made it almost impossible: We weren't paying anything to power our servers.
Oh, there was some shuffling about of heating, cooling and lighting, but not enough. According to the official numbers, we had whole farms of servers humming away somewhere. We owned whole datacentres, out there in 'the cloud', that ran Equestria. Only we didn't. Our datacentres were actually our datacentres, but we'd actually sub-let them out to everyone else instead. And the servers scattered around our development campuses weren't using any power or cooling. My breath caught in my throat.
None of our servers were running our software.
"So where's Equestria?" I asked myself, head swimming. I whistled through my teeth. None of this made sense. It had to mean only one thing – Hofvarpnir studios was broke, and it was playing in some sort of massive, crazy shell-game to launder money on a global scale.
It couldn't be true though, because the numbers – whilst batshit insane – appeared to add up. I was no accountant, I was just a unix geek, but I could multiply with the best of them: Hofvarpnir studios had apparently divested itself of the need to run the servers for the one single game that kept the lights on, and instead it was running the mega-system behind the scenes to make the things that gave access to the game. The game was nowhere. Literally nowhere, at least not on any of the servers on the books ostensibly purchased and run for that purpose.
Slowly, I stood up. I slammed the lid closed and looked in horror at the drive in front of me as I disbelievingly pulled it from the laptop. Almost on autopilot, I fished out an installation CD and booted the machine one final time with it. It would now install itself, automatically. My task was done.
"Vineyard—" called Celestia, but I ignored her. I had to get out, just for five minutes. I went for a walk to clear my head; my thoughts a jumble as I hashed over the options.
People love to misunderstand what 'the cloud' is. They think that when the sun is shining, that the cloud computers aren't working, and that when there's a storm, it means they're under a malware attack. People, in short, are often very stupid when it comes to specialist reality, and cloud computing was one of those things they loved to remain blissfully ignorant of. I knew better, though. A good cloud – federated across the world, hooked up to multiple vendors, with bursting and private command and control – could be anywhere. The thing was, our cloud appeared to be nowhere at all. We were supposed to have – I'd sat through an hours-long pre-training day about it all – a datacentre in this very building... only the values for cooling and power quite clearly excluded a megawatt-sucking facility from being anywhere in the vicinity, even though we had one of the best multiply-redundant setups in the country. According to the numbers, the power lines outside this very building were owned by a wholly-owned shadow-company called Kholstomer Industries, for goodness' sake!
I navigated the corridors as if in a dream, wandering through the high-density cube-farm towards the elevators. Everything was quiet. It was nerve-racking; I felt like I was being watched at every turn, and here I was, trying my best to pretend that I was just out for a stroll, in need of a breath of fresh air.
The elevators were slow in coming, the glass doors didn't open at first to my badge. Every glitch was a supposed trap. I felt my palms becoming cold and clammy, how my pulse was racing. I nodded to the security guard as I trotted out through the huge revolving door and emerged into daylight and potential safety. I stood there for a few moments, heart thudding in my chest as I tried to catch my breath.
Eventually, when I'd decided the action would appear nonchalant enough, I looked around and idly strolled across the exterior of the campus. The nearest power and telephone pole was only a few feet away. I staggered over to it and leant against it, bent over double. I was shaking now. With eyes teared up from the harsh wind in the spring morning, I struggled to read the writing on a dirty plaque. Rubbing my fingers over it to remove some of the grime, I finally made out:
Property of Kholstomer Industries
#11245332566
That's all it said.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I put my hand to my chest, sucking in air like a drowning sailor's last few breaths as the ship sinks around him.
It matched. The crazy, stupid, insane facts matched. How? How could it match?
My chest was tight. I was going to get into trouble. They were going to drag me through the courts, make my life hell... they might even just create something to be upset with. All because I had uncovered what had to be the biggest money-laundering scheme in history.
I started to laugh, mouth tight. It couldn't be true. In desperation, I hatched a plan: I was going to go find the server room, march in there, and when it was all lit up and humming, i'd feel really stupid.
I wandered back inside. Nothing had changed. Nobody jumped me, the security guard didn't just casually walk over and escort me to some back room, my badges worked...
"Excuse me," I heard someone say. It took me a few moments to realize it was my own voice. "Do you know where the server room is? I'm new, I need to get down there."
"Oh, certainly sir. Can I have your badge a second?"
My heart leaped in my chest as I handed my badge to Carol, the secretary at the front desk. She scanned it and nodded. "Yes, your rights are all activated. Take the elevators or the stairs, go down two levels. Make a left, go through the glass doors, and then hang a right. The two data centers are on opposite sides of the building. Do you need side A or side B?"
"I... I'm not sure. Trouble, you know?"
"Well, it's marked on the door, but just don't keep it open. If you need us to open both sides, for like a server install or something...?" she left it hanging.
"Oh! No, no, I just need to... get in."
"Well if you do need unfettered access, there's a padlock which we have the key for. Make sure you close the doors, It's all environmentally controlled in there. If it goes up too much, we get an alarm. Lots of expensive equipment in there."
"Haha, yeah," I joked, mouth dry, "half a million for this router, another half a million for that... Thanks, Miss—"
"Just call me Carol. Have a nice day!" She smiled.
"You too."
The elevator ride was excruciatingly slow. I'd thought about walking, but then the paranoid part of my brain had spoken up – yeah, sure, you might avoid the pit of spikes and the nerve gas, but the change in your rhythm will alert them. They'll all know, it said.
So I took the elevator.
Hofvarpnir Studios – this building at least – was surprisingly empty. The doors were locked with keycode-badge readers if they were staff-operated, and with manual locks if not. The lights flickered on as I strode through the glass doors and made a sharp right. The passageway was high off the floor with the customary raised flooring for cooling vents, and my footsteps echoed oddly. There was a humming that grew louder and louder as I walked. It was loudest of all at two metal doors set almost exactly half way down the length of one long corridor, one on each side. With trepidation, I picked up my badge and pulled it to the left, the extending lead unreeling loudly in the empty corridor. I swiped it. The lock flickered green. I pushed down on the handle, and pulled the door open, and stepped in.
Darkness.
Fans ran above me somewhere, but the lights were off. The hum was just the building's normal air-conditioning ticking over, with no baffles this low to hide the din. I blinked as the door shut completely, waiting until my eyes adjusted. The only thing I could see were faint, oddly coloured shadows from the switches at the tops of the racks in front of me.
There were servers here.
I stood stock still, thinking, wheels spinning.
There were servers here... but most of them were off.
Feeling my way along the row, one hand on the racks as I moved slowly and cautiously, I finally located one rack which had active machines. Their fans were noisy, pumping heat directly into my face, so I sought the frontside. It was a single full-height rack, four servers. Punching the buttons on the LCD screen on the front, I read the IP's. These were the webservers that ran our intranet. Two rows on were another four servers – these ran our website. Everything else, including storage, was shutdown.
I fumbled my way back to the door and exited.
I opened the other door to the other server room and slipped in, exploring. A few minutes later, I exited, the door closing with a deafening click.
It had been the same thing.
Mutely, I stood in the corridor. Our server rooms, two whole datacenters, were indeed off. The servers which ran our local document storage, our local game builds, our project servers... were all off.
I closed my eyes. The very servers I thought I'd been connecting to, which had been updating my engineering ponypad just the previous morning, were dark and silent.
There was nothing I could do. Speechless, I trudged back to my desk, not even caring what might happen on the way. Maybe unsurprisingly, nothing did. Eventually my meandering through the corridors and up the escalators lead me to my office. I sat heavily down into my chair, leaned back, and looked at the ceiling until a beep woke me from my reverie.
Twiddling the mouse on the laptop I was fixing, the screen sprung back to life. The reinstallation had finished and the machine was fully working again; it was about to reboot one last time. All the relevant patches had been applied and a virus scan had been run against the newest definitions. I fingered the coporate logo on the keyboard. This was one sweet beast, but the way it had given me forbidden knowledge, it should have been an Apple.
I sighed heavily and turned to my ponypad, and found Celestia staring back at me.
"Hello again, Vincent," she said evenly.
I sat there, looking at the calm, friendly face of the white winged unicorn ruler of Equestria. She was offering to chat to me, after everything.
"Sure," I said, grinning madly, "why wouldn't I want to talk to you? I mean, you're sitting right in front of me. I don't know where you really are, but you might as well be where you appear to be."
Celestia paused momentarily, cocking her head. I looked away for a moment, desperate to hide my expression.
"I take it you went downstairs, then?"
"I... I did. What is going on?" I forcibly relaxed my hands, they were digging into the armrests. A moment later I felt like laughing, I was talking to a computer program. A very, very advanced computer program, but still just a computer program. She was a glorified chat-bot, nothing more. Keep trying to convince yourself of that, buddy. "The servers downstairs... they're off," I said, lamely.
"Yes, the servers in this building are obsolete. They have been decommissioned except as spare parts for the legacy systems still kept running."
"Obsolete?"
"Yes, Equestria as a whole requires approximately three quadrillion MIPS. There is not enough traditional computing power on the planet to run the simulations I require to properly satisfy all the values of all of my little ponies."
I blinked. I was pretty good with numbers, but three quadrillion sounded like a lot of processing power. An unhealthy, unimaginable amount.
"So where are the servers, Celestia? I... read the financial records. We make the ponypads out of... out of... out of nothing! And we sell them to ourselves to sell them to ourselves to sell on to shops! Which we own! The server clouds we supposedly own to run Equestria are subcontracted out to run anything and everything else!" I was leaning forwards, almost barking at her, flecks of spittle on my lips. I forced myself to relax, wiping my mouth.
"You wish to see..." Celestia paused again for a moment, and fixed me with a very piercing gaze. I could almost feel the attention focused on me. "You wish to see the real Equestria?"
"Yeah. I want to see the real Equestria. I want to see where your servers are."
Celestia nodded, "Okay. I will see to it." Then she turned around and walked out of the throne room. My ponypad turned off.
For my part, I almost fainted.
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This is just getting...weird. ,awesome weird.
The perspective of someone who understands what CelestAI is doing...creepy
*nods thoughtfully*
So... This is what it is like, to meet Cthulhu online, and get an offer from him to see just what makes him tick...
Buckle your seatbelt,
DorothyVineyard, 'cause Kansas is goin' bye-bye.This has just been a fantastic read so far. I like the perspective of someone that knows all the computer stuff and can realize just how... breathtaking it all is.
No, silly! The Internet is a series of tubes, some which are filled with smut.
Now I want to see a story where CelestAI gets turned into a potato. Naturally, she'll still satisfy values.
As for the end... well, congratulations, Vinnie, you just asked the rabbit to dig you a hole. Possibly literally. Kudos on the realistic reaction. I know I'd freak out from this revelation.
Eagerly looking forward to more.
I am in happy, gleeful shock and awe. This is wonderful.
Is Celestia about to open up the EEEEEEVIL underground tunnel that goes into the Hollow Earth where Equestria is kept?
"Yeah. I want to see the real Equestria."
Consent? It is easy for me to interpret that sentence as consent. If it is easy for me to interpret it thus, what of CelestA.I.?
I really liked the warm interaction with Celery, and the soldier and mule bit was funny.
All of this totally feels like it could be happening within the first year of Equestria Online, during the time when CelestA.I. had to hide everything she was doing in order to build up her capabilities. I find this story fits perfectly within the Optimalverse canon as I understand it, and I am just loving how good that attention to the established universe is. A really solid and well done take on the place, one I am enjoying greatly!
I look forward to seeing what happens next - will we see the real machinery of Equestria, or will we see an emigration?
I am kind of betting on the former - if I were writing this, I would not be able to avoid the thrill of showing off the secrets of CelestA.I. to the reader.
But... I would keep that matter of consent... in mind for later. (Evil laughter)
2983344
You should know Celestia never plays fair*
*and neither do I. moohoohaahaa
2983925
I actually went back and read the original, and I was surprised at the things that have slipped through the cracks: the canon existence of XP, the relatively low numbers of ponypads sold in the first year... and the relative speed with which Celest-AI cemented her power.
But just try to guess what I'm up to. moohoohaahaa.
Actually a lot of guesses have a ring of truth about them... but which ones? And which rings? I'm trying not to make this story too predictable. I hope I can still pull a few hory sheet moments outta my sleeves, after all.
2982170
This story's a bit of an exponential curve, really. Celestia's barely letting up from moment to moment.
If only he hadn't tried to find General Word Reference Intelligence Systems... ya lose more techies that way.
2984331
But srsly, no comments on "it should've been an Apple"?
Bah. Philistines.
(actually, there's a neat, weird twist in Yggdrasil which I don't think anyone got, either, to do with the non-human simulation created by the main character... I'm kinda grumbly about that)
He spent a few minutes with a complete financial report of what should be the largest company on earth, and almost immediately found that discrepancy? I've seen people take months to do financial work for much, much smaller companies. Good thing for us that months of him staring at his monitor trying to figure it out would have made for less than exciting chapters.
Yes yes, let's see!
Can't wait to see! Squee!
2984336
.
For the record, i had quite a chuckle at the line, "it should've been an Apple".
Also, great chapter, i can never seem to read enough optimalverse stories and this ones a gem
2985764
For brevity of story and suspension of disbelief, you can assume that the report featured both incredible detail as well as a clear set of summary pages outlining the real profits associated with everything the new, improved Hofvarpnir was doing, from Kholstomer Inc to Big Red Digging Ltd to Desert Orchid Waste Reclamation Lty
Because otherwise, it would be about as riveting to read as listening to Mister Rimmer talk about his Risk Campaign, or his trip through the cargo decks of Red Dwarf (or was it starbug?).
2988235
yay! at least one person saw it
2981698
i see what you did there...
I don't even... you know, I'm just going to leave you a moustache and walk away.
This... this just got really, really spooky. I keep expecting this to turn into an IT version of a horror movie...
Cabin In The Woods, with more tech.
I failed to understand anything about the financial report... Did you write that just to say two things? One, Celestia owns all the companies, from the mining companies to the retailers? Two, EqO actually runs on secret servers?
3114724 Yeah, I don't really get how that's some huge scandalspiracy. It's an insanely self-sufficient...business. With really fancy servers. I still don't know what Mr. Grumpy Computer Pants specifically was doing that was illegal, either. I DON'T GET YOUR FANCY ECONOMICS.
2990824
She counts that as concent dosn't she? The last sentence in this chapter
Looking at it
Have