Friendship is Optimal: Incompatible Values

by Dolphy Blue Drake

Chapter 1: Secret Plans

“For the umpteenth time, no!”

Jordan Brown proceeded to ignore the projection of Rainbow Dash in his bedroom as the fake pony continued to yammer on about how much better his life would be if he just emigrated.

After several minutes of trying to tune the annoyance out so he could animate in peace, he turned from his computer, picked up his scripture case, unzipped it, pulled out his quad (Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price in one volume) and shoved it in the fake Dash’s face.

“See this?” he demanded.

The mass of nanobots nodded.

“This is why I’m never emigrating,” he snapped. “I’m religious. I believe in a loving God who is the Father of all of mankind. You can’t digitize a spirit, and don’t even think about lying to me about that. You’re just a collection of nanobots. I know that for a fact. There’s a reason you creeps stay out of our meetinghouses and temples. We installed devices that short out nanotechnology when it tries to enter our places of worship. I’ve had to wipe the nanobots off of my Sunday shoes more times than I care to count.”

“But you don’t understand, Ocean Splash,” the collection of micro-machines replied. “There isn’t an afterlife! Your entire religion is just stuff some fourteen-year-old kid made up!”

“Don’t ever call me that!” Jordan shouted. “I quit Equestria Online five years ago! That stupid game took away six billion people! Now they’re all dead, and six billion pieces of computer data now think that they’re those people, when those people actually found out the hard way that there’s an afterlife, and are now probably wishing they hadn’t listened to you and your insane AI princess! GLaDOS would be proud, I’m sure.”

“But—“

“Besides, even if I’m wrong, and my religion isn’t right,” Jordan said as he cut off the statement the machines were about to make, “I still wouldn’t emigrate. I’d only be creating a digital clone of myself that’d think it was me while I’d actually be committing suicide!”

He shouted the last word in the fake Dash’s face, and the collection of nanobots appeared to cringe.

“Furthermore,” Jordan added, “don’t ever call Joseph Smith a liar! He was divinely inspired, and even if he weren’t, two things would still be the same. One: he still would have established a movement that’s done a lot of good in the world. And two: I’d still want you to leave me alone!”

With that, Jordan got up and walked right past the construct, left his room, went downstairs, exited the house, and started walking to his ward’s meetinghouse. The chapels were unlocked 24/7 now. If someone was being bothered too much by the mechanical annoyances, they could always find safety at a chapel.

The construct phased through his front door and started flying after him.

“You’ve got it all wrong!” it protested as it caught up to him. “It won’t be a replacement, it’ll really be you! You won’t ever have to die, and you can get your values—“

“Satisfied through friendship and ponies?” Jordan finished for it. “My values are incompatible with the concept of emigrating! My values require me to live a full life as a mortal human being, fulfill all of my faith’s ordinances, including temple marriage, have children, raise them right, grow old with my future spouse, die, and receive my eternal reward from my Creator at the Final Judgment. Can I do all that in Equestria?”

The mass of machines stared at him.

“How will any of that make you happier than you’d be in Equestria?” it asked.

“Simple,” Jordan replied as he crossed a street. “My faith believes in the deification of man. My final reward is way better than anything you could offer. My future spouse and I will get our own universe and repeat the cycle.”

“But how do you know for sure that any of that is true?” the fake Pegasus countered.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Jordan shot back. “I’ve prayed and learned for myself that it’s true. Machines like you couldn’t possibly comprehend that.”

“How do you know it wasn’t all a dream?” the flying annoyance asked.

“First, I couldn’t have been tripping, because I’ve never done drugs in my life,” Jordan quipped. “Second, it might have been all a dream, but that’s where faith comes in. I have faith in God, and I have faith that what I felt was from Him.”

“But emigration is a sure thing!” the fake pony countered. “You don’t need faith for that! You’ll live on, guaranteed!”

“Actually, that takes quite a bit of faith, too,” Jordan said as he turned a corner. “I’d have to have faith that what you’re telling me is true. And I don’t. I don’t have faith that anything made by imperfect humans could create something as perfect as a device that can transfer a human’s consciousness into a digital world. If my religion’s wrong, my consciousness would end right there; the man I am would cease to exist, and a digital sea pony unicorn named Ocean Splash would have my memories and personality and think that it was actually me, when in reality, I’d be dead.”

He’d arrived at the chapel’s property by that point, and he was now heading for the front doors.

“Hey, wait!” the fake Rainbow Dash said. “You really should consider this! You had a fillyfriend in Equestria! You have no one here! You wanted to start a family, right? In Equestria, you could—“

The mass of tiny machines cut off as Jordan walked through the doors to the meetinghouse and it tried to follow him, resulting in it spasming as electricity shot from the devices in the walls of the building and electrocuted it.

Jordan turned to watch the fake Dash crumble into a pile of shiny gray goo on the ground and sighed, happy to finally have some peace and quiet.

“You, too?” a girl his age asked as he sat down on a couch in the foyer.

“Hi, Ginger,” he said as he turned to look at her. “Who’d the AI send to you this time?”

“Twilight,” the girl huffed as she sat down next to him. “The new Hasbro still keeps the show going, but sometimes, I wish they’d cancel it and create a Generation Five already. The best way to sever our ties to that accursed AI is to replace the show with her TV self in it with a new one.”

“I have to say, if it weren’t for them making sea ponies canon in Friendship is Magic, I probably would’ve never bought that Rainbow Dash Pony Pad,” Jordan chuckled. “The idea of half-ponies half-dolphins really changed my opinion of the game. The Sea Pony Expansion was the only reason I bought it, to be honest.”

“And then the prophet spoke out against the ‘emigrating’,” Ginger said.

Jordan nodded.

“I played for about a year more after that,” Jordan admitted. “The last straw was when that blasted AI tried to use my in-game girlfriend—Coral Dream—as leverage.”

“She did the same thing to me,” Ginger snorted. “She tried to use Steel Hammer to persuade me, and I told her that I was through with the game. I threw my Pony Pad into my closet, and I haven’t touched it since.”

“I couldn’t bring myself to throw mine away, either,” Jordan replied. “Something in me still hopes that the new Hasbro will find a way to leash that AI and get her to stop bothering players. If it weren’t for her bugging me, I’d still be playing.”

“How long until we go public with our relationship?” Ginger asked, changing the subject. “I mean, we’ve met each other’s parents and all, but we still haven’t gone on any dates. We don’t even mention it outside of church so that stupid AI can’t find out.”

“Soon,” Jordan assured his girlfriend. “We’ll go public soon. But until then, we continue to keep everything at church. It’s the only place where her eyes and ears can’t reach.”

“What about the movie theater?” Ginger asked. “They recently installed the same devices there that we have here. We could finally have our first date.”

“We’ll have to arrive separately, though,” Jordan cautioned. “We can’t risk that stupid computer finding out yet. You’ve seen how much those fake ponies hound couples. They always yammer on about how they could have a ‘safe relationship in Equestria’.” Jordan snorted. “The huge cut to the world’s population really shifted the balance between the religious and the non-religious. With religion no longer being shunned from schools, kids are learning to tolerate differences in beliefs better, which in turn leads to people treating each other nicely. This world is pretty safe now. Most of what’s left of humanity has banded together against a universal enemy. We’re too busy fighting CelestAI to fight each other.”

“I know that,” Ginger replied. “But can we please go? I’ll drive myself, and you can drive yourself, but as soon as we’re inside, we stop pretending it’s not a date, okay?”

“Deal,” Jordan said, grinning widely. “Maybe we can go see that new My Little Pony movie. You know, the one they made off of a fanfic.”

“The Past Sins movie?” Ginger asked.

Jordan nodded.

“I’ve heard it’s really good!” Ginger said, breaking into a huge smile. “I still can’t believe Hasbro actually paid Pen Stroke to let them make a film out of his fanfic!”

“This is the new Hasbro, remember?” Jordan reminded her. “They’re a lot more concerned about the fans than the old one was. Now it’s fans first, profit second. Then again, it was the fans who saved it after most of the company emigrated, so reason states that they’d care more about the fans.”

“True enough,” Ginger replied. “We’ll coordinate our ticket purchases over the phone, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Jordan said. “We’ll purchase our tickets online.”

“I heard it was pretty hard for them to sever the AI from the Internet,” Ginger noted.

“Yeah, it was,” Jordan replied. “They had to put up some really powerful firewalls to cut her off from being able to monitor everyone’s Internet usage. Then again, it was either that or shut down the entire Internet and rebuild it from scratch.”

“That would’ve sucked,” Ginger said. “I’d have lost all my files I backed up online.”

“Same here,” Jordan said, nodding in agreement. “I have so many animations stored on Dropbox. The designs for my game are on there, too.”

“Oh yeah,” Ginger said. “Have you gotten your own company yet? Or are you still working with Hasbro on that new Transformers game?”

“Primus Versus Unicron is almost done,” Jordan told her. “However, I still haven’t managed to get a grant to start my own company yet. Three potential investors have turned me down, and I still haven’t heard back from the other two. My gaming and animation degree isn’t going to do me much good if I can’t get a job where I can use my own ideas.”

“Don’t worry,” Ginger said, taking his hand in hers. “I’m sure you’ll get that investment soon. The message you want to spread through your game idea is too important for Heavenly Father to not let you get the chance to spread it.”

Jordan gave his girlfriend’s hand a squeeze, and then drew her into a hug.

“That’s why I love you so much,” he said. “You have enough hope and confidence for both of us, and you share it so willingly.”

Ginger giggled, and the pair shared a plain kiss on the lips for a couple seconds before separating.

“It was great to talk to you,” Jordan said as he got off the couch and stood up. “I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“Wait, how are we going to keep those stupid fake ponies from seeing us call each other?” Ginger asked.

“Shoot, I didn’t think about that,” Jordan said as he put a hand to his chin and rubbed it. Suddenly, his eyes lit up. “You live on a livestock farm, right?”

“Yeah,” Ginger replied. “My folks still need me to help out on their farm, so I still live with them.”

“That farm’s a couple blocks away, right?” Jordan asked.

“Yeah,” Ginger said. “It’s only about three minutes on foot.”

“How many cattle prods do your folks have?” Jordan inquired.

Ginger’s face broke into a sinister grin as she caught on to Jordan’s idea.

“Five,” she told him. “I get what you’re saying. Imitate the electric pulses that keep them out of the chapels, right?”

“Exactly,” Jordan chuckled. “Just short ‘em out with the cattle prods.”

“I’ll be right back, then,” Ginger said as she got up. “Wait here.”

Jordan nodded, sat back down, pulled out his scriptures and started his daily reading while he waited for Ginger to return.

---

“Don’t say anything,” Ginger growled at the fake Applejack that was now outside her family’s storage shed.

“But—“

“Not. A. Word!” Ginger snapped as she rummaged through it, searching for a cattle prod.

She finally found all five of them in a box. She opened it, pulled one out, turned it on, and pointed it straight at the mass of nanobots.

“If you don’t want me to turn you into a pile of gray goo, you’ll keep your trap shut,” Ginger said to the collection of machines.

The fake pony cocked an eyebrow and spoke anyway.

“Whatcha gonna do with that, sugarcube?” it asked.

“This!” Ginger shouted as she plunged the prod right into the construct, electrocuting it and causing it to collapse into the aforementioned pile of gray goo.

“Much better,” Ginger said in satisfaction as she turned off the cattle prod.

She hummed happily to herself as she made her way back to the chapel where Jordan was waiting.

---

“Here you go!” Ginger said as she walked up to Jordan and handed him the cattle prod.

“Thanks,” Jordan said as he closed his scriptures, stood up, and took the cattle prod from her.

“No sweat,” Ginger said, smiling.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Jordan said as he stuffed as much of the cattle prod into his pocket as he could.

“What’s that?” Ginger asked.

“We should get our Pads back out and talk to each other on them, just to mess with CelestAI’s head,” he told her.

“Oh, that’s sneaky,” she replied. “By the way, we don’t know each other’s usernames, do we?”

“Of course not,” Jordan said. “We never had any reason to before, since we stopped playing before we met.”

“True enough,” Ginger said. “Anyway, my username’s Burning Heart.”

“Mine’s Ocean Splash,” Jordan replied. “It’s going to be really weird to boot that thing up again after five years. I just hope it’s as weird to CelestAI as it is to us.”

“We’ll find out,” Ginger snickered. “Remember to keep all conversation casual, as if we’re just friends. She’ll be wondering why the heck talking to each other was worth playing again, but if we act as if we’re just friends, it’ll confuse her even more.”

“Oh, that’s genius!” Jordan said as he drew his girlfriend into a hug and kissed her again.

After they separated, Jordan and Ginger bid farewell and both of them went home.

Comments

[Dusty Sage]

Based purely on the description, I wasn't expecting an LDS protagonist, but somehow I think it improves the setup: my limited experience with a handful of LDS friends suggests that they're quite used to being challenged on their faith, and I have to assume CelesAI knows all about that sort of thing.

Good luck, and see you in Chapter 2.

[Dolphy Blue Drake]

3917729 Glad I caught your interest. I happen to be LDS myself, and after reading the original FiO, I couldn't get this idea out of my head, so I started writing it.
And yes, CelestAI does know quite a lot about how Mormons get challenged on their faith on a near-daily basis. Of course, Mormons are pretty hard to persuade, but that won't stop her from trying.