Chapter 3
Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom
by Midnight Shadow
Chapter 3
Mortimer the GPS daimon playfully looped overhead, briefly landing on bushes and lamp-posts as she led the pony and human onwards, until the pair following her finally found themselves at an open-air street cafe. The entrance was a modest little wooden arch covered in climbing roses, set in the middle of a charming little painted nanowood fence. There had been plenty of kiosks on the roadside during their constitutional, and more than a few missions willing to feed them for a donation from Julep's equine body — horse apples are worth their weight in gold to those with a green thumb, just one of the perks of being a pony — but Rogers had had his own, somewhat fancier, destination in mind.
Julep's HUD lit up with the location of a mixed humanoform and pony-appropriate seating area and the two headed over to it together.
Rogers pulled off his hat, hung it on the back of his chair, then awkwardly tried to plump and properly place Julep's outsized flat cushion. She giggled a little, since the old courtesies weren't really invented with her kind of bulk in mind, but demurely thanked him nonetheless.
"Today was your first day, huh?" he asked as he sat down, ordering them both coffees. Julep switched hers to a tea, uploading relatively detailed preparation instructions – Oats liked coffee, she didn't so much – and then nodded, lipping herself a breadstick from the pile in the center of the table. It was a display of dexterity which would have flabbergasted her progenitor.
"Mm-hmm."
A dandelion hummus was whisked in front of her by an agile spidery robot, and she smacked her lips at the smell. It was strange: 'real' dandelions tasted subtly different to Equestrian ones, yet they were instantly recognizable. Maybe it was Oats' tongue.
"Well, girl, I'm sorry it had to be ruined with that scene back there. 'S why I'm here with you now. My avvy's taking care of the paperwork, and I've got a ghost dealing with the rest of those involved, so I'm all yours. I just thought you and I should talk it over. You needed a little pick-me-up and I missed lunch."
Julep looked down into her hummus. "So you don't really want to be with me? You're just… doing your job?" she asked in a small voice.
Rogers' eyes softened, and he shook his head. "Naw, don't take it like that. I can hardly leave a damsel in distress lying on the pavement now, can I?" He smiled openly.
Julep snorted. "You don't want to talk to me, you just want to talk to my host. Only he's not here right now and you've got time to waste." She pouted, glaring darkly.
"Oh now, that really wounds me, little miss. If I'd just wanted a statement I could've done it at the station. Or I could've let the citymind take a deposition. What I wanted was to make sure you were alright." Rogers gingerly put a hand out across the gap, a gesture which would have led to a reassuring pat on a partner's hand, but fell short on the equine, who had all four limbs folded under her belly. He blushed, and Julep took pity on him, leaning forwards until his roving palm patted her on the muzzle. He coughed awkwardly, then took a sip of his coffee and made a face. "There's nothing like a good cup of coffee," he muttered under his breath, nettled.
"And that is nothing like a good cup of coffee," Julep replied, giggling.
Rogers slapped his thigh. "See! I knew you could find the funny in this. So buck up, tell me what happened and then we can get on with enjoying our meal."
The meal continued apace, and though Rogers grilled the pegasus avvy on what had happened, he gave her space to reply or not as she wished. It was several hours later when the two finally decided to leave the restaurant. Julep had literally eaten like a horse – several huge bales of tasty flavoured hay and a kind of fried, honey-roasted oat porridge had made her a much happier little pony than she had been earlier. Rogers for his part had eaten heartily too, but most of all they had talked.
Finally, the last plate was almost empty and it was coming time to ante up. Rogers would pay for their all-natural consumables – non-replicated goods were premium, after all – but only when he had finally agreed that Julep would get a favour in return.
"You said Oats needs direction?" Julep asked as she placed a wide, shallow drinking bowl back on the table.
Rogers had been surprised quite how proficient the pony was at holding things without fingers. He'd thought of the majority as almost semi-disabled, his own experiences with them notwithstanding. Julep was proving that misconception very wrong.
"Well then, let's be partners," she continued, smiling and blushing.
"Partners? what're you talking about?" Rogers replied, wiping his chin with a napkin. "I'm not sure you know what you're asking."
"I… can't stop thinking about that poor woman. And that man. I keep wondering what happened. Why. None of it makes sense. And I want to know. I want to help. You say you're monitoring me, but I want more than that. I want to know everyone else affected is safe too. I want to be your faithful steed." She blushed even harder at the 'faithful' moniker, but it was how the literature she had quietly downloaded and indexed put it. Julep batted her eyelids playfully, then recited from Celestia's Book of Pony. "Man and horse are one, even when that horse is a pony. So I'm your partner. Or no deal."
"Hah!" laughed Rogers, slapping a hand into his thigh. "What happened to the meek little miss I was picking up off the floor earlier?"
"I-I just thought this could be a new start for me, for us. I'm here, on my own four legs – almost, at least – and… Earth's not so different from Equestria, really. Not when I've got someone to look after me. I think it would be a noble quest, one that both of me would appreciate."
Rogers speared the last sausage piece, then levelled the fork at her. "You're right, there. I do think Oats needs more than just a new skin. You might be on to something." He leaned back in his chair and played with a toothpick for a few moments in contemplative silence. Finally, he spoke up. "Believe me, being part of a mounted patrol unit is no walk in the park, but if you're really up to it, we can give it a go."
"Yay!" Julep clopped her hooves together, aetheric wings flapping for joy.
"Very well then. I, Malcolm Rogers, hereby deputize you, Mint Julep – and your progenitor – as a faithful steed of the Ford Newton Sheriff's Office, to hereby serve the people until released from your duties. Do you agree?"
Mint Julep clopped her hooves together again and nodded happily. "Oh Oats is going to be so happy when he wakes up!"
"I doubt it," chuckled Rogers, "but you're his avvy. It's binding on him too. He okay, by the way?"
Julep cocked her head to one side, then slowly nodded. "Celestia says he's fine. He'll be back tomorrow. Right now he's having a bit of R-and-R himself..."
***
“Brendan?” called a musical voice. “Brendan Fremantle, can you hear me?”
In a heartbeat, I was awake. As my senses cleared, I found myself lying prone and unmolested in an empty field. My jaw fell open, my ears pricked up and I struggled to rise, heartbeat racing. The cold, hard cobblestone floor of the cafe had been replaced with soft grass. The chair-strewn square was now an open field, with warm sunlight streaming down all around.
"Wha-?" I asked, tottering in astonishment on my hooves.
"Good morning, Brendan. Or, as I should say from now on, Mixed Oats," said a very familiar voice, friendly chuckles chasing after the simple words.
I turned carefully and found a familiar large, white alicorn standing under an apple tree.
Celestia.
She was smiling. I could tell by the way her ears flicked about and her tail swished. I instinctively tried to bow and almost fell. She moved quickly to support me, placing one of her large, dove-like wings over my back to hold me close.
"I, um… what just happened?" I asked weakly, gazing up at the princess with wide, searching eyes. She met my gaze with a soft expression, one of indulgence.
"Oh, don't worry. I just thought a change of pace would do you a world of good, gathering what you went through." She bent her head down to nuzzle away my confusion, licking my unruly mane back into place. "Joining the herd is a big day for any pony, Oats, and I cannot bear to see my little ponies suffer needlessly. That little altercation at the Times Square Cafe was hard on you. This is a much kinder, gentler re-introduction to your new equine body."
"But… the…" I waved a hoof at the grass and sky. "What happened to the world? If this is a sensorum, then surely I'm going to— what about Julep— I—" I stammered, gaze darting left and right.
Celestia rolled her eyes in exaggerated fashion, a wide playful smile on her muzzle as she cut me off. "I am a princess, you know. Your princess, in fact. I can do anything. Come on, little one, it's time to stand on your own four hooves again."
Gingerly, I took a deep breath and then stepped forwards at her insistence, reluctantly leaving her embrace. The earth crumbled under my hooves, squishing up around the frog and catching in my fetlocks. I dropped my head down and snuffled at a pastern. The loamy sod was musky and bitter. I licked my hoof and made a face. Mud didn't taste good. I wasn't sure why I was surprised.
Gently, with infinite patience, Celestia sighed. "Did you really think it would?"
"But… but… where am I? You can't… can you?" I trotted hesitantly forwards, then trotted around the tree in a wide, confused circle. "Am I still at the cafe?" I was used to communal sensorums, but this was a whole new level of fidelity.
Celestia made a moue of disapproval. "Must you adhere to mundanity? You are truly one of my ponies now. Such monotony is quite unnecessary." She blinked once and sighed at my continued confusion. "Wouldn't you rather experience my realms firsthoof? I did promise you as much when you agreed to become one of my little ponies."
"I…" I paused, and then shook myself. Slowly, I walked away from the tree, down the hill that presented itself. "Well yes, but…"
"Don't worry, you're safe. Come on, slowpoke. Let's go for a bit of a run. I'll race you!" Celestia took off in a sudden thunder of hooves and a shower of sod, and something inside of me just screamed for me to catch her.
I wasn't sure why I'd thought meeting Celestia in the flesh would be any different than my previous meetings in Equestria had been through my original AR and VR subsystems, but she was exactly the same shade of capricious. Grinning to myself, I decided I was glad.
Now, I thought, as I wriggled my legs, how does this go again? One, two, three, fou- eep! Try that again… one, four, two… three. Yes!
In next to no time, as my head finally cleared, I had "moving without falling down" mastered. Not long after that, I had "moving at speed" added to my achievements too. With mounting enthusiasm, I loped after the princess.
Equestria is beautiful. Only the Disneyverse rivals Equestria for sheer grandeur. Other franchises offer astounding vistas, but their implementations lack. Disney, however, for all its ocular glory, cannot match the sheer abundance of world that Equestria has, and it likely never will. For the first time, as my hooves ate up the scenery, I truly understood why people could give up the real world for a fantasy: it was because the fantasy world was just so much more spectacular. The real world may hold the illusion of design, but Equestria had something more – it had mastered the design of illusion. From babbling brooks to twisted trees, from emerald vistas to snow-capped peaks, every single moment spent in Equestria was a feast for the eyes of such depth that – corny as it sounded – my inner artist was in tears. And I wasn't even an artist.
A few minutes and a few miles later, I breathlessly pulled up next to the gleaming white equine atop a hill as she stood preening her wings. Before us was spread out the little Equestrian village of Little Gekkering. I was no stranger to sensorums, but the veracity of this digital daydream was astounding. The phrase is bandied about freely, but it was as if I was really there. No, check that, I was there. I was stood with all four hooves in Equestria, and I wasn't sure I had the willpower to leave.
"All this is waiting for you, Oats," whispered Celestia, leaning conspiratorially towards me with a sly smile upon her face.
"I… I know," I replied, voice catching. "B-but I'm not done being corporeal yet. C-can I still visit?" My heart sank as I spoke those words. Five more minutes and she'd have me, and I wouldn't care.
Celestia turned her head towards me on her long neck. She fixed me with an intense, but gentle, gaze. "Mixed Oats, this is your inheritance. It is here, for you as it is for every pony. If I must wait before you are truly ready for Equestria, then so be it, but it is far from me to withhold such joy from you as would be had by what my world offers. Visit when you wish, but make sure you exercise your physical body too. I will not have my people suffer ill health through neglect."
"Your highness," I said simply, inclining my head.
"Now come. Your house is, I believe, just up this path?"
"Uh huh!" I flicked my tail happily. I'd been busy building myself a house in Little Gekkering. It wasn't much, but it was mine and I was proud of it.
"Then lead the way, my dear Oats."
I led the way through the village of Little Gekkering to my modest abode. My pony-house was a single story affair complete with wood-burning stove, a wide and low bed, and comfortable yet durable carpets.
Or at least, it had been. Now, the front door had changed, and something told me the interior was likewise altered.
Looking back at Celestia as I stopped in front of it, she smiled and nodded, head-butting me onwards. I shrugged, and pushed on the door. It opened at a touch of my hoof, and I gingerly stepped through. The room I emerged into was familiar. Very familiar, and yet… odd. The odd thing was that I knew it intimately, having lived there for the past couple of decades, but it was as if I was only now fully experiencing it.
The clothes littering the floor were redolent with the fragrances of too many days wear. Every cup and saucer told a tale of indulgence in tea and coffee. Every plate spoke volumes of the meals consumed thereupon. I smelled an occupant who didn't wash his hooves enough and liked to pick his ears with his credsticks. Astounded, I walked across the room and pulled out one of my wallets from a jacket to check it was my own.
I could taste the earwax.
Ew.
It took me a few moments to realize that I'd picked up the credstick with my muzzle, holding it gently in my almost prehensile lips. It took me a few moments more to realize that I'd smoothly replaced 'hands' with 'hooves' in my internal lexicon.
It wasn't until a full two minutes later that my brain had rebooted enough that an inner voice could apologetically cough and suggest I look back the way I'd come, through the front door. Maybe unsurprisingly, instead of the hamlet of Little Gekkering, there was a nondescript beige corridor leading to a communal balcony and the elevators down to street level.
I fell back onto my rump in a daze. This was going to take a lot of getting used to.
"It appears the maid hasn't been through here in a while," stated Celestia, giggling.
I felt my ears flatten against my head. "I, uh, didn't know I'd be having company." Especially not a princess, I added silently.
“I'll bet you didn't, but you do seem to have enjoyed yourself anyway.” The princess pointed to my bed, where I could see two forms sprawled in what looked to be an awful lack of comfort, yet both were snoring heartily, and both were distressingly naked.
“Oh come on, Julep!” I grumbled.
“You know, you'd be much happier if you let yourself be her more often. She knows how to have fun.”
“I've only just gone for the hooves, your highness,” I complained, “don't make me lose my wedding tackle.”
The princess snorted. “You know that's not what I mean. You can enjoy yourself whichever gender you happen to be. Julep doesn't mind, why should you?”
“So what happened?”
“I think they ended up in bed,” giggled the princess.
“I mean with... me. Last I remember is... oh no. That poor girl! And then... I fainted?”
“Everything is fine,” whispered Celestia, as she swiftly moved to embrace me with her wings. I collapsed into them, screwing my eyes shut tight. “I kept you here in Equestria until your body had healed itself. Julep is good for you. So is Sheriff Rogers, despite what you may think. You ate well, then you talked. I want you to integrate all her memories, Oats. It's important.”
“But—”
“Goats butt, ponies do as Celestia tells them to, and I'm telling you that you had fun and you will let yourself enjoy it. Besides, she wouldn't do anything you wouldn't do in the end.”
“That's what I'm worried about.”
Celestia kissed me on the poll, then headed for the door. “I have two tasks for you, dear Oats. Number one, I want you to get a good night's sleep. You have a full day tomorrow. Number two, I want you to have a word with your maid.”
“I'll... uh... recompile everything.”
“I suggest you do. I tell you what," the alicorn added, as my stomach flipped in mortification, "you may have a small stipend to rearrange your things to better suit your new situation, on the condition that you do one more thing for me.”
"One more thing?" I asked, tail tucked between my legs and the rest of my body trying to follow.
Celestia fixed me with a look that had my hooves glued to the floor. I wilted under her gaze. "Tomorrow, I want you to enjoy yourself. Let Julep be your guide; you need to let loose once in a while. Especially now you are a pony.”
Celestia waved open the door to my apartment with her horn and stepped through into bright Equestrian sunlight before closing it firmly behind her. Moving to open my door again afterwards, I was strangely surprised to find a boring beige corridor with discrete LED lighting.
Apparently I was stuck in reality once again, more or less. I suffered a minor twinge of disappointment, but then my cozy bed called to me, and I clambered in to take the place currently held by Mint Julep in my body. I closed my eyes and fell swiftly—
***
A rolling over. A grumbling snore. An unfamiliar arm tightening around me. A scream – my own – and the meaty sound of hoof impacting face, followed by a shocked cry and the unmistakable cacophony of somebody falling out of bed and knocking over the nightstand, sending the contents placed haphazardly upon it tumbling across the floor.
My first morning as a pony wasn't really what you could call 'peaceful' so far.
"Oh, jeez… sorry, you were, and I was… and…" I stammered. Then I narrowed my eyes as my brain caught up with itself. "You! What did you do with poor Julep! Taking advantage of her like that!" I levelled one hoof at Rogers as he ruefully rubbed what was most likely going to be a black eye.
"You're asking me what we did? Do you seriously not know what your avvy was up to last night?" The sheriff stood up, shaking himself out. I blushed and rolled over, screwing my eyes shut. "I'm going to make breakfast," he continued, around the busy noises of spidery cleaning bots clearing away the mess. "If you want some, it'll be about fifteen, twenty minutes. Makers can't do hot food for shit, and I want something hot."
"You're not even going to answer—"
"Ah, stow it," Rogers replied, throwing his hands at my prone form in a gesture of disgust. "We slept. That is literally all we did. She was scared, she was tired, so was I. She didn't want to be alone, and I didn't really fancy walking all the way home. She invited me in, and demanded we share the bed. I wanted to sleep on the couch, but I won't deny the bed was more comfortable."
"But…"
"I also hate sleeping with my clothes on, and do you have any idea how hot a pony is?"
I blushed again at his choice of words. He just rolled his eyes, turned and stretched. "Look, I'm going to make breakfast. It's too early to deal with your hangups. Integrate your avvy's memories, then get back to me. Breakfast should be ready by then. I'm having bacon and eggs. You can have eggs on toast and porridge. And then we're going to talk."
He left the room. It was clear it was an order. He couldn't give orders to me! Could he? I tried to raise my palms to my face and instead just gave myself concussion. My hangups, he'd said. Did I have a hangup? I ran my psych profiler, but it said everything was fine. Then again, it was an older model software package and was only responsible for memetic defense, not bell curve comparison. Upgrading those wasn't something done on a whim. He was obviously just being mean. I didn't know what Julep saw in him. Humph.
I got comfortable in my own bed whilst that interloper… interloped, in my kitchen, with my maker block. Grumbling, I closed my eyes, and requested integration.
***
"You did what!?" I yelled at Rogers as he puttered about in the kitchen. He just raised an eyebrow and slid a large plate full of porridge and another one with some fried egg on toast over the table at me as I stormed into the breakfast nook.
"I deputized you. You asked me to."
"I did no such thing! I want you to—!"
Rogers lifted up his palm towards me, then curled all of fingers but one down and took a long draught from his mug of coffee. It smelled fantastic, he must have uploaded his own recipe to my makerblock, I hadn't even known— I shook my head. I needed coffee. It was far too early in the morning to find out you had a new job.
"Listen," Rogers said. He put the mug down and then crossed around the room to stand next to me. Then he squatted down and took my hoof in his hands. He lifted it up and stared into my eyes. "I'm no shrink, but you and Julep really need to talk. You block her out, that's not healthy. She's an avvy, kid, not a toon. She's more than just behavioural routines and a pretty face. She's you. And she thinks you need direction. That's what avvy's are for, really. They're to let us step out of our shells and be something else. I thought you'd have grokked that, what with the ponytraits, but apparently not. Tell me, why did you trait?"
My muzzle fell open, and I found himself staring out the window in shock at the busy city.
I dimly recalled the cities of yesteryear. They'd been full of automobiles – busses, cars, motor bikes and so on. That'd been way back, when there was enough oil to just pump it out of the ground and burn it. Such frivolity and waste had come to an end when the price charged to normal consumers rose above a certain pain-point, and they not only stopped driving about, but they stopped buying petrol almost entirely. This had caused one of the first major global recessions to hit the tail-end of pre-singularity civilisation as an entire industry – already ravaged by decades-long economic recessions – collapsed almost overnight.
These days, cars and their like were rare, despite biodiesel and infinibatteries. They were reserved mostly for bigwigs and hobbyists. With the rise of ubiquitous comms, telecommuting was the norm, and instead people walked or rode pushbikes to get where they needed to if they had to meet in person.
Then, of course, ponies had arrived, and a whole new cottage industry of taxis had sprung up. Need to get somewhere in a hurry? Ask for a pony and he or she will either supply a saddle or, for an extra fee, a carriage. Cheap to feed, great exercise, good conversation, and the kids loved it… and the by-product was greatly sought-after for the massive amounts of home and community gardens that had sprung up once mass transportation became that much more complicated and mass-produced fresh produce that little bit more awkward. That's right – being a pony had a number of drawbacks, but the advantages were pretty impressive, namely that almost everything that came with just being a pony was one of them.
I guess I'd been suckered in with that – post-scarcity meant a lot of sitting around getting bored if you were poorly prepared, and I'd been poorly prepared. Everything in my life when I was little had been leading up to something which had ceased to have meaning by the time I'd gotten there. Eventually I guess I'd realized I desperately needed to reinvent myself, and Celestia's little paradise had pulled me in.
I laughed to myself – following the herd in more ways than one.
Today, the city was different. The pinkish hazy smog which had choked the streets a half century ago was now just a memory. Many buildings were still standing from those times. Odd, discoloured sections of brick and mortar were worn like old scars. They dotted a landscape otherwise filled with gleaming spires of metal and diamond. Sanitation foglets scoured most new buildings clean, but the old ones were built without smartmatter. Shepherding the little buggers through a cycle without them gooing the infrastructure was tedious enough that not even class one AI's wanted the job, so buildings that weren't replaced were just patched up with colourful plascrete, often piecemeal and sometimes deliberately for effect.
"Oats?" Rogers prompted.
I shook my head. "S-sorry," I replied. I ran through the conversation thus far again, internally. I'd wanted… to belong, I guess. To feel a part of something. Equestria gave me that something, and I had felt more like me when I was Oats than when I had been Brendan. I looked up at Rogers to answer, but he put his hand to my nose.
"Shh, I know why. I see it every day. But you're going about it wrong, and it's alienating your inner daimon – not Julep, she'll be fine, but Oats yourself. You're afraid of your body, of others' bodies, of closeness and intimacy. You're another victim of our society's ability to give you every physical need without demanding you satisfy the mental. So." Rogers stood up and walked smartly around to the other side of the table. "Here is what we're going to do. Number one, you're going to eat your breakfast. Number two, we're going to go get you fitted for tack. Until you are capable of full self-determination, you will be my faithful steed."
"Now see here! I am not a beast of burden—"
"I believe Julep's words were partner, partner. And besides, the girls love a man in uniform. I'm sure the fillies will too. Or the colts, if that's your bag. I did notice you're undeclared."
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Boy, is Oats going to regret this... or will he?
3785170
He probably will!
3785189
I'm sure his regret will be our gain XD
Huh. More fascinating casual worldbuilding. The bit about tissues "decompiling" really gets the social paradigm across. Even biological matter is seen as just another form of data. I also quite like Stalwart Hide. Julep and he have a very nice yin-yang dynamic, and incarnating each of them does a great job of illustrating Oats's inner conflict.
Also, this apparently a buddy-cop story now. Didn't see that coming.
One thing:
You may want to rephrase this sentence, given how it's in a part of the chapter where the prone pony is narrating.
In any case, eagerly looking forward to more.
Interesting that Oats has both an avatar that likes the sight of stallions in uniform as well as an avatar that is a stallion in uniform.
Did this story just turn into "Almost human"?
Or rather "Almost pony"?
3786549
I haven't actually seen that show so... unintentionally perhaps?
3786434
there's a little narcissus in all of us
3786052
Augh, yes. You can see the rewrites leaking through. I missed that one. Plus also yes - this was designed as a buddy cop fic right from the start! With a twist!
I shouldn't read anything remotely technical sounding, let alone perception inclined, while tired. (as to why i hadn't asked them when I read this a day ago) But I wanted to ask a few odd questions, if you didn't mind?
Are the two avatars for oats here their own being in how you see things for this world? (the legal sense of being alive?) Or are they something a bit different? (Bound to him, or celestia by proxy?)
I had two/three others sadly, but the record skipped in trying to recall them sadly.
3792857
It's actually simple sounding, but complex in practice. They're all alive, they all have personhood and they're all him. In addition to being able to "become" these avatars, both Julep and Stalwart have a degree of independence (some more than others).
If Julep agrees to something, Oats is bound by it. Julep lives in his head almost all the time (in her words, she helps him on Earth) but Stalwart actually doesn't. His interaction with Oats is a little bit more complex, in that Stalwart is closer to a "native eevee": he lives most of the time outside of Oats' head, in Equestria, but the two can sync up, and Oats can become Stalwart in the same way he can become Julep. Stalwart acts more as a "toon" for Oats, but has his own independent behavioural pattern, so it's more like Stalwart is doing the driving and Oats is the avatar when it's time for Stalwart to come out.
If there did come a disagreement about things, the two avatars would be free to disconnect and go off and do their own thing, though most likely Oats would own his body (Depending on amount of time spent expressing as one or the other, that could change).
One thing to note is that the Stalwart living temporarily in Rogers' head will have to reintegrate his memories back when he leaves. Integration basically means adding those collected experiences to your own, and the two merge to become one.
It gets complicated, but it's simpler if you take a more systematic and fluid approach to personality than we currently do.
3792984 So its more like a meat space landlord agreement. If they do something under his name, he is liable as owner to the form as it was the one, that agreed to all applicable acts?
3792984 And from your reply, that would also mean that should he find himself in disagreement, he then, could evict both? (As you mentioned they could disconnect, but is it a two way street?) As they have a place they could be in the digital realm to stay? Just trying to get the right idea on what dynamics are involved here, and to ensure its not coercion from julip, but more that she used his downtime to go around his back.
3793012
3793025
if he wanted to evict either or both of them, he wouldn't be able to delete them (they're alive) but he would be able to remove them. He'd have to pay some sort of restitution (in effect, he'd be causing bodyloss, which in a non-amicable situation is akin to a really bad form of theft) but he could turf them out. They'd incarnate into the city hivemind (or most likely directly into equestria) and from there would be able to pursue their own agendas.
It's more like Stalwart is a grown-up version of Oats (as he's gone off and had a life of his own in Equestria) and Julep is his alter-ego that doesn't always do what he says.
3793048 Thank you for the clarification, and one question left I guess that struck me, if she can do what binds him very in any legal form. What safeguards are there for oats himself? (Given the digital construct isn't constrained or limited by him at all.) A physical body, even engineered, is only so capable, a digital one is by its growth, and when you are dealing with any AI, its already a dozen or more steps ahead by the time you've hit the first neurons of thought.
3793085
Julep isn't an AI, in a way. She's a construct, but she's born as a foil for Oats himself. And in a world where death is a temporary inconvenience, the worst she could cause would be a faux pas and a restore from backup... though if she went off the rails for some reason, his personality wouldn't be held liable.
3793096 Okay, that makes sense. I use AI/construct here more so interchangeably because both fall to the tenets of being digital beings in all means that pass as sentience, and what makes them a step apart from whatever -manity you can classify the physical under. I appreciate the answers here, and that there are some safety nets for him in this scenario, though sad in a way, that he is getting in part the short end of the carrot, as it were.
The concept of sharing bodies with other personalities that may or may not be patterned after you is fascinating.
Can you define avvy, evvee, demon, daimon and toon for us, quickly? Some of them are pretty obvious, but I'd like to know if I have them straight.
3794936
I can't try!
Eevee: I actually forget where this comes from, it does have a recognizable root. What it means is an entity which originated in a virtual world - may include avvy's created for use in specific virtual worlds.
Avvy: avatar, but means a whole new personality. Shares memories, shares headspace and body access, legally seperable but considered alive and linked with your main persona. May run on other hard/wet ware if needed (usually won't).
Toon: not considered alive, is a mix of behavioral routines and a new face/body. Persona hacking is rarer in itself - generating traits (mental) suited for a set task. Most do both.
Demon/daemon: non/sub-sentient software. Not alive, though the line gets blurry with behavioral responses.
Daimon: sentient, often sapient, software. Considered alive but not granted full person hood. Riders in networks, skulls or both used for specific jobs. May have an avatar (body, toon - not 'Avvy' sense) but also may not)
Something else I was wondering. You mentioned in the first chapter that there are only 15 "class ten" sentient sapients in the world (all AIs, or something more, I assume). You named a few: Celestia, Nintendo-Sony's AI, the Time Warner AI, etc. But I would imagine entertainment companies weren't the only organizations with some skin in the game when AIs started to take off. So, what are the other Class Tens? Any cities, governments, militaries, or universities manage to get an AI up and running in time?
3799900
First of all, if you want me to name them, I haven't. I could, it would be fun, and I have a few I have thought of, but they haven't been relevant (yet?) to the story or universe. If you want me to answer how I have it in the universe in question, read on:
The military-industrial complex is huge. It's big business, big money, big contracts. There's no way that the militaries of the world wouldn't have an AI - probably one for each of the main powers (USA, Europe, China, Russia, Japan, India, UAE - and you can easily subdivide those and add a few more locales), and most likely all of those would have more than one... but having said that, we're now seeing the sorts of global powerbase shift where commercial entities (Google, Yahoo, MS, Apple, Sony, Honda) are the ones working the AI/Tech side of the MI-complex, so the same companies that would previously have been seen as "government" are now decidedly brand-related and owned. These brands also work strongly with universities, so a good number of military/governmental/educational AI's are actually all three at once, with all the problems that entails, until one side of the equation unfetters the result.
This is where it gets tricky, but I'm suggesting in my story that the following happened: compute clouds become ubiquitous, so several players emerge that are able to simply leverage an amount of CPU which has never been seen before. With the traditional MI-complex focusing on different problems, actual AI doesn't appear on the purely military side first (or if it does, it's an oracle - an AI which is chained up away from the real world - and this severely hampers its ability to grow). It instead appears where skunkworks projects are able to come up with new solutions that quite literally run away with themselves - so yes, universities and cities, but mostly the private sector where there's less oversight hampering development (and in tandem with universities, where there's talent that said corporations can leverage for essentially free).
...and the clincher is that (general) AI is fundamentally different to anything else before it. In my world, we get the AI-go-foom version of the singularity, where the first players seed the new ecosystem and stomp out or absorb the rest as these sentient, sapient programs cement their hold in a timeframe which would be impossible for any other life-form.
So whilst there are "15 class 10 sapient sentiences" in the world, the next layer down on the pyramid holds thousands, and the next layer below that even more. And you've got to go quite a ways down before you get to "human level sapient sentience".
Haahaha! Boy, that escalated quickly
P.S. It's a "romance" tag, here on FimFic. It's just EQD being retarded and equating all romance to shipping
The 'Remarks and corrections' section:
> He'd thought of them as almost semi-disabled, Julep was proving that misconception very wrong.
Comma splice. That needs to be two sentences.
3787131
Ooh, neat. Looking forward to that
>buddy-cop story
Oh please dear God tell me there's gonna be some Hot Fuzz or Double K in this story.
Hummus is made from chickpeas in the first place. I'm honestly not sure why ponies would make it out of dandelions. Actually, I can imagine ponies really liking hummus.
Really liking the additional worldbuilding and the addition of the internal conflict. I would join the herd just to have all those friends. And then make an avvy. And actually give "it" plenty of time to act on its own, since I often have felt like I contain multiple "personas" who aren't always easy to integrate. Making Oats's avvy a mare was even a cool way to show how gender customs have advanced.
Also, pony-based transport and shipping would catch on really quickly in my area, since we're basically on jagged, broken-up limestone with fairly steep mountains around the place and igneous bedrock to the north and east. There are still areas here where animal transit is easier than automobile, so the ponies would find good jobs really quickly.
3822782
It's not shipping! Well, it's kindy shippy, but it's not shipping
And drat that comma splice. I'll fix it up.
3824166
The friendly AI's are friendly because it suits the setting, but they're as open about humans as they are because they're all busy trying to stomp on any more AI's joining their ranks (kind of like the nuclear club these days) as well as stomp on each other and entertain the only wildcard currency left - mindshare
3824281
Oh he's used to really good virtual reality, so it's not the same level of shock we'd be experiencing. And yeah, he knows full well he's headed back to meatspace.
3824410
I would if I thought I could mix in the crossover well enough. I don't think I can, sadly, because I love those movies but the zany hijinks would hijack the plot
And whilst hummus is made from chickpeas, you are allowed to add other things into it too - like dandelions.
I imagine they'd make a good addition, but I do wonder what they'd taste like...
...and it's really fun with the worldbuilding, but it's pretty mentally exhausting to find the right notes to point out about this amazing new world, because to our protagonists, most of it is "normal", plus I don't want to derail the plot with "ooh look at me, I'm being all clever by showing you all this stuff instead of telling us why it's here"
3826404
No, no, I was referring to your Autor's Notes.All I'm saying is that "shipping" is generally defined as "seeing relationships between existing characters in a fandom". IMO it doesn't apply to original characters, which means Fimfic's "Romance" tag is a lot more accurate than EQD's "shipping" one
3826559
Oh! Huh, I guess it is. I've never really thought about it
3826404
From what I remember of playing in our huge garden as a kid... bitter and rather awful, really. Though I've heard that apparently there exists some recipe to make some kind of wine out of them. Never tasted that, but it doesn't sound too appealing, to be honest.
Of course, I'm not a pony...
3826737
oh mah gawd yes, dandelion and burdock. Yum.
I'm loving this!
For years, I've wanted the ability to split off part of my mind to pursue knowledge or experiences that I could integrate later. Or better, to take care of drudge work while I had the experiences first-hand! Can I immigrate to your fictional world, please? 
Only a few minor things have bothered me about this story so far. First, Sheriff Rogers is more warm and fuzzy than any cop I've met in real life. Depending on how far in the future this is, though, that could be due to a generational shift away from the macho posturing and emotional compartmentalization of today's cops.
On a more mechanical level, sections where more than two characters could be speaking — like the scene with Rogers, Julep, and Stalwart — could use better indicators for who's doing the talking. This might not be a problem in a more conventional story, but the novel ideas you're introducing about personhood and the embodiment thereof make it a little easier to get confused about dialog.
Lastly, and this might be something you plan to reveal later, how old is Brendan/Oats? I was thinking that he feels like a man in the grips of a mid-life or quarter-life crisis, but the part of chapter 3 where he remembers the old city from 50 years ago has me rethinking this. Then again, maybe midlife crises come later post-singularity? Or maybe he's experiencing something entirely new — a post-singularity crisis that hits everyone that grew up in the old world?
3826737
A friend of mine gave me some homebrew dandelion and crabapple bloom mead for Christmas. Delicious! Especially when served hot.
3830844
Sure, second ticket after my own
It's a mixture of factors, really. One is that being a sheriff is a lot easier when nobody has to steal to live - I've planned a bit more of an introduction to "being a cop" in chapter 4, actually. Another is that so far, Rogers has spent more time with Julep and a female-expressing, pony, Oats than his "original" persona. He sees Oats more as female and a pony than another man, and that colours his reactions some.
I've basically self-edited, so I'm not surprised it needs work.
This, basically. He's experiencing (maybe finally) what should maybe be called a "new life crisis". Mid-life crisis comes when half your life is gone and you suddenly realize days really are counting down. For Oats, his life is counting up - and from the way it stretches onwards, he's just at the very beginning. He really does need to define himself after decades of drifting along, and for better or worse he started that by becoming a pony.
3826737
Lots of people eat dandelions! In fact they're a plant native to Eurasia that was imported by immigrants to the Americas as a food plant! It's great in salads, and a very good source of calcium. If you buy the mixed greens at a super-market it probably has a good portion of dandelion leaves in it.
3826757
Burdock root tea is another great food from the past. My wife loves it. She also likes to make hummus from scratch with a variety of different ingredients. The idea of dandelion hummus sounds delish - I'll make a request, although it might take a few months before we can use our own garden dandelions (yes, we grow them on purpose!)
3832484
Oh, and about the story...
This is absolutely amazing! I love the world building and how you're handling the reader's introduction to it. The characters are completely engaging and well drawn, and the internal conflict very well thought out...
Mucho kudos, Middy. Mucho, mucho kudos! And I can't wait for more.
3834966 Not here in the Old Mainland Europe, it isn't...
My dear 3838548, I beg to differ. But don 't take my admittedly new -world self at my word: please see botanical.com for an Old Mainland European's words on the same subject.
P.S. The word Dandelion is actually an anglicized version of the French nickname for that plant "dents-de-lions" or, "lion's teeth". The actual name we (French Canadians) use for the plant on this side of The Water is "pissenlit" (bed-wetter).
If you doubt all of this then I suggest you ask your grand-parents.
3838548
You've really never had dandelions? I mean, it's not really a massively common thing for most people, but there are places where their consumption is entirely 'normal', even common. I haven't had them often, but I did used to drink dandelion and burdock a lot.
3838623
3838794
Yeeah, those things... they grow everywhere, and are generally seen as weeds around here. Nothing more.
As for the Dutch name, it is, literally translated, "horse flower".
3838923
they're tasty, tasty weeds!
I finally had enough... me... up and running to read this story again, and give it proper attention.
Boy howdy do I like this!
Oh, and 'Plascrete'. Thank you.
I love how your Avvy's are Tulpas! Ego Tulpas, Techno Tulpas, and just... wow. The swirling ocean of ideas here, I feel like I am up to my hips in world and it feels good.
No shipping tag? Come on... I want Julep to win out, and I want Rogers riding her, and I don't mean on patrol.
An error I found:
"Rogers' " should be just "Rogers", or it should be specified which aspect of himself is doing the initiating ("Rogers' autonomous biosoftware initiated" or somesuch).
Oh, you'd be surprised
Heh. The Diamond Age
I'm going to PM you the corrections, since it's a rather embarrassingly long list
3919112
Heh. 'Plascrete' doesn't even show up as oddity to me; too many years of shadowrun RP
Will the reason be explained for why it is inevitable that Oats will eventually be replaced by either Julep or Stalwart?
QW-OP, QW-OP
Jeez, just stick a feed bag on his mouth already, and let him ruminate.
Oh wait that's his name.