This story is based in the Optimalverse and is inspired by Eakin's story, Friendship is Optimal: All the Myriad Worlds.
It was a perfect day. The sun hung like a huge figure 8 in the sky of yellow plaid.
Canterlot exploded in vast geysers of bacon-smoked-herring-flavored whipped cream and lava lamp fluid. A patchwork unicorn, with cheeks of puce and checkered flanks, sailed with the debris into the air, trailing streamers of smoke and inedible foodstuffs.
That had been the most intense and insane whoopie cushion she'd ever designed. The look on Celestia's face when she sat down on her throne and set it off was still etched into the unicorn's memory and it sent her into delighted laughter each time she thought of it.
She was amused to note that she was coming in for another one-point landing. She touched down squarely with her head on a giant boulder, making a loud gong noise, and bounced with a giggly scream into the lemon sky again, ricocheting off licorice clouds and lighting them up like pinball bumpers before arcing back down to the ground, penetrating the sod and leaving a long, long tree, house and garden-destroying dirt trail that came to a slow end at the edge of the Everfree forest. A tombstone popped up at the end of the dirt, displaying the word "TILT" in neon.
A draconequus sat nearby, nibbling at a china teaset as he sat on a stool made of flaming telephone books. He reached casually over to a nearby scoreboard and stamped a red X over another icon of Canterlot. The board had uncountable thousands of them.
He leaned over the grave and waited until she popped her head up, spitting out dirt and worms and shaking away the orchids that stuck out of each ear. He smiled down at her and spoke in his dry, lancy way.
"Are you still having the most amazing, fantastic, mind-buggering, toony, surreal, unphysical fun you've ever had in your life, little pony?"
She beamed up at him in joy. "You bet your scaly polymorphous ass I am. Thanks, DiscordAI!"
It was the best of all impossible worlds.
What did I just read? Crossed between laughing and goin dafuq?
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When I promise random strangeness, I deliver golden conductor-mice statuettes embedded in kerosene-flavored aspic.
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...............Um...okay?
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I'm glad that you approve!
There is sometimes a method to my madness. For instance, the sun actually does make a figure 8 in the sky over time. It's called the solar analemma.
3565400 I see.
Okay, that shard number is going to bug me now.
Quick google search for 14781498 turns up nothing. Cross-referencing the dates 1478 and 1498, I'm not finding anything significant which started/ended (born/died) in those years. 14781498 doesn't spell anything.
Fun fact: 14781498 is 6 times a prime number (2463583), but even though the prime is significant and the 6 has MLP significance, that's not enough to hang meaning on.
4213140
So now I'm distracting you from Hard Reset 2. By my own words am I undone...
The shard number is indeed based on something or related somethings, but I dashed off that author's note casually, never considering how much skull sweat it would take to figure out, or what exactly would be the prize. Also, now that I have double checked my research, I find that by a misapprehension on my part I have made the puzzle somewhat more challenging than I intended, though it is still solvable using commonly-available web resources.
So I can either give out some hints, or make the prize commensurate with the challenge. Which is better for your health/sanity?
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Probably hints. Answer any or all of the following as the whim takes you, or whatever you feel like saying. Does divining the meaning require knowledge an average person would not be likely to have/deduce upon reading your question (i.e. is googling required)? The meaning of the number(s) aren't tied to something transient (e.g. the number of views on a FIMFic story), right? Are there clues within the chapter itself to the meaning of the number or is it an independent reference? Is any math required?
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For most people, googling or similar research would be required.
The meaning is not transient.
There are no specific clues embedded in the chapter. That said, the chapter is related in a way.
No math is required.
The prize will be a sketch of a character of your choice. Sample artwork visible here. (Keep in mind that I can draw healthy-looking ponies; the one in the picture is Not Well.)
Here is an answer that is almost certainly not correct, but interesting nonetheless:
1478-1498 were the years of the reign of Majapahit's final king, Girindrawardhana. After his vice-regent Udara launched a coup in 1498, the state never recovered and dissolved into chaos before an external takeover.
The reason I'm confident this is wrong is that it's easy to google "14781498 chaos" and find page after page of results talking about it, but unless you're fond of severely obscure history, there would have been no particular mechanism for you to find and use those numbers in the first place. If you catch my meaning, it is reverse-googleable but not forward-googleable.
Another fun random non-answer:
Louisiana Revised Statute 14:78 deals with incest, and 14:98 deals with driving while intoxicated.
Put them together, and you get something greatly resembling the song "I Spent My Last $10 On Birth Control And Beer," by 2 Nice Girls.
CelestAI is, by definition of the FIO universe, a Nice Girl. Therefore, you are secretly implying that the other Nice AI — Discord — is female.
(Edited to add: Interestingly, Louisiana statute appears to criminalize relationships between uncle/niece and aunt/nephew, but not between uncle/nephew and aunt/niece. The moral of the story is, if you want to be incestuous in Lousiana, be gay.)
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At least we're getting a diverse, if sparse, education out of this.
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My take is that Discord is whatever gender Discord wants to be.
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For clarity, would googling be sufficient, or would some other flash of insight also be necessary?
The number means something in the Optimalverse doesn't it?
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No, it doesn’t.
I’d better think up a few more hints for this one; it turned out to be way too hard.
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Rereading this, I've belatedly realized that it could be parsed as dates: 1478-1498. Ye Wiki doesn't provide any perfect matches, but I'm suspecting this might be a Monty Python reference (the Spanish Inquisition started in 1478, and one of its grand inquisitors died in 1498).
Sum of decimal digits of 14781498;
1+4+7+8+1+4+9+8 = 42
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Also, there is this, make of it what you will.
So says Ad Ghadih.
I really hope that last guess was the right one. c.c