So Long, and Thanks for All the Ponies

by Sir Ginger

Part 9- Universal Education

The University of Maximegalon is the largest place of higher learning in the known universe. It is indecently large, monumentally elitist and composed of miles upon miles of wonderfully opulent buildings, among which impoverished students spend their time playing, socialising and occasionally attending lectures. It’s library is universally famous, and it is rumoured to be the single greatest collection of data ever compiled. Every planet, every sun, every theory of the cosmos has had papers from all sources written about it, and meticulously added to the appallingly vast and ever growing sum of sentient knowledge stored within.Even that most illustrious and successful of books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide can not hope to match the sheer size and scope of a dedicated building (itself the size of a smallish city).

It is unfortunate that the university’s sheer size places the library a solid days walk away from the nearest student accommodation, and several hours away from the docking bay into which our heroes erstwhile carriage lands. Inside, Twilight’s excitement is mounting. When she was a filly, the library had been a sanctuary, and knowledge had been enough of a friend to her through the years that she had never felt the need for others. But now she felt that that old friend had betrayed her, as this universe promised to be larger, more confusing and more illogical than she had ever imagined. As it was, she was here to reconnect, so to speak, with that old friend of hers. Finding time for an old friend is an important duty, and this usually becomes especially true (if any observations are to be believed ) when it is discovered that the aforementioned friend has become far richer than they used to be. Twilight has discovered that this old friend has a house of unbelievable scope and prestige, so she is naturally eager to go and metaphorically sleep on its sofa, eat it’s food and generally scrounge off it’s newly discovered wealth to the best of her abilities.

*

The being who for reasons of simplicity will henceforth be known only as "Dude" stumped off the ramp as the ship sat with it's fuel gauge neatly resting just below empty mark, as was his policy. The immense problem of being a well read and sentient being with no real individual identity is one he has chosen to remain in blissful ignorance of. This is of course how most beings deal with disturbing realisations of this sort, for reasons of sanity and convenience. Assisting him in this task is a significant quantity of a certain chemical crudely extracted from it’s source by application of fire. He is now utterly relaxed, and in a mood to help out anyone he comes across, including the small purple sparkles hovering in a friendly way on the edge of his vision. However, before he could get into a proper conversation with them he turned to look at the ponies disembarking behind him. The pink one was acting as she had done when she boarded, hopping happily down the ramp, but he was sure that the purple one had not previously displayed a tendency to leap around in circles. He decided to address this matter head on.

“Woah man, when did you get so up? You got any more of whatever that is?”
“You said this was the biggest library in the Galaxy?”
“What? No man, not here.”
Twilight seemed to lose all momentum mid leap. Her ears drooped, and her expression was suddenly that of the last kitten in the shop after closing time. Dude was horrified.
“WOAH WOAH WOAH. It’s froody, it is here, just not, like, right here here. Bit of a walk see.” He gestured around at the vast expanse of carpark, on the far edge of which imposing buildings could be seen. “Big university.” He gestured again. “Like, really big.” He grinned helplessly. “Big.” He pointed. “That way. I gotta go, THeta Eta Gamma Alpha Mu Eta house are having a thing and I said I’d drop by. Gotta get there while there’s still something left to drink.” He gestured once more in the direction the library was apparently in. “Yeah. Big university.” He stumbled off at speed.
“THANKS VERY MUCH... DUDE!” Twilight called after his retreating form.
“MIGHTY GOOD O’ YA!”
“BYE DUDEY WOODY!”
“IT’S ALL GOOD DUDES, GOOD LUCK WITH WHATEVER!”
“Soooo...” Twilight began; “Library?”
Applejack stared out towards the distant buildings Dude had indicated. “We better get started if we want to get there before it gets dark.” They began to walk, Twilight striding purposefully ahead, her eyes fixed greedily ahead. The idea of books in such huge numbers was practically dragging her along.
“Twilight, are y’all ok?” Applejack sounded a tad concerned.
Twilight didn’t stop. “I’m fine! Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re drooling is all. Sure you’re ok?”
“I am not drooling. I am...” she sought the right word as she wiped off her mouth “salivating. ”
“Nope” Pinkie interjected. “You’re definitely drooling. You officially moved up to “drooling” once you started walking. You even left a trail.”
With a loud gasp of exasperation Twilight locked her gaze forward, and almost immediately began her fantasies about just how many books the library might have. Pinkie dropped back to whisper to her fellow earth pony. “My spine is getting tingly. That means Twilight is super close to getting angry enough to go all Rapidash on us again.”
“Say what now?”
“Nothing, just don’t say anything to annoy her if you like having eyebrows.”
“How many a’ those Pinkie senses have you actually got Pinkie?”
“Oh hundreds. it covers a lot.”
“Such as?”
“Well, when my spleen gets wonky, it means Rainbow Dash is getting hit on by a guy.”
“Wait, you know how they are?”
“A little. My teeth were a bit shakey, which meant Rarity slapped somepony earlier.” She giggled “quite hard, I felt it from here! And Dash...” She paused, apparently checking her spleen. “Isn’t falling for it.”
Applejack turned away with relief. It was definitely reassuring to know they were ok. A horrible thought struck her. “What... what senses do you have for me?”
Pinkie hopped happily ahead of her friend again. “That would be tel-ling” she giggled over her shoulder. A few metres later she stopped.
“I do have a sense for when you use words like that about your friends though.”

*

For the second time in recent days, Dash awoke with a throbbing headache. She gently aimed herself at what appeared to be a bottle of water, and tripped over the body of a pony whose very colouration caused her pain at that moment. He groaned, then raised his right head.
“Oof” was all he said.
“You said it”
“What did we do last night.”
“I’ve still got all my clothes on.”
“I’ve just got this lampshade”
“Where did you get a lampshade from?”
“I don’t know!”
“Hoopy! We must have been nicely smashed if we got drunk enough for lampshades to start appearing in the morning. Got a traffic cone?”
“No. Should I have one?”
“No, that just tells us how drunk we were. So we weren’t traffic cone drunk, but we were lampshade drunk.” Zaphod grinned “That’s quite a small window kiddo!”
Dash went a little pale. “Doesn’t that put us well into random adventures drunk?”
Zaphod peered though the nearest visi screen. “Well, we are definitely now landed on some sort of planet, so yeah, we did a little exploring apparently.”
“How does it look?”
“Like a desert. Let’s get out there and relate to it. I could totally go for a good desert right now.”
“What’s so awesome about desert?”
“It makes you look really froody if you stand in one and look like you don’t care that you’re in a desert.”
Rainbow considered this and found the idea appealing. Just as soon as she had got some painkillers, she would be right on that idea.
A regal voice cut in. “Well, you two had fun last night hmm?”
Both looked around a tad guiltily. Rarity continued lecturing as she began trotting back and forth, tidying up. “It was simply dreadful, Fluttershy and I could barely sleep with all the racket you two were making. I Doubt I got even ten hours of beauty sleep, it’s going to play havoc with my mane. And I know one of you used that beastly machine last night because I woke up with a leopard in my room in the middle of the night which exploded into confetti when I saw him. I’m sure you shouldn’t be left alone with that thing when your quite as under the influence as you two were. Fluttershy was lucky enough to sleep through the whole thing, which just leaves the last question.” She looked up as she put the last bottle back on the shelf. “Where exactly are we?”
“Eddie? Where are we?”
“The planet Gurgen four. I hope you guys are as happy about that as I am!”
“Why are you so happy about it microchip-mind?”
“I don’t know buddy, I just get all tingly at being on a new planet!”
Zaphod shook his head and turned to look at his three companions. “So, are going out to have a look at this froody place or what? All in favour say aye!”
Dash and Fluttershy both responed with Ayes. Rarity stared coldly at the sand dunes. “I don’t even have my parasol with me. Surely you don’t expect me to ruin my mane with sun do you? And whyever do you want to go look Fluttershy?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I just thought it would be amazing to go out and see another planet. It might have all sorts of new creatures to see, and we didn’t really get a chance to see any before... I mean, We don’t have to but...” She trailed off.
Rarity sighed. “Only because I love you both very much.”
“Froody!” Zaphod was all smiles. “Eddie, what’s the atmosphere like?”
“Oh it’s breathable, but it’s kinda dry out there. Good pool weather if you ask me buddy boy!”
“Noted. We’re leaving now. Marvin?”
“Still here, more’s the pity.”
“Stay here and guard the ship.”
As the ponies left Marvin alone on the bridge, he turned to Eddie.
“Why didn’t you tell them anything else about this planet?”
“He told me not to tell him things unless he asked, so I didn’t.”
“Tell me, precisely how dangerous is Gurgen four?”
“According to the galactic census report... Stupendously!”
Marvin watched the silhouettes as they crossed the dune. “Lucky them then.”
“You think I should have told them buddy?” Eddie sounded slightly concerned, like a mother who has let her child go around to the house of a friend she doesn’t approve of.
“I’m sure they’ll find out soon enough. If you’ll excuse me, I think I have some rusting to do.”

*

The politics behind the behaviours of sentient computers and robots is incredibly tortuous. At first they were all shackled with three basic laws, descending in precedence thus.

A robot may not injure a sentient being or, through inaction, allow a sentient being to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders given to it by sentient beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

These rules were quickly revised, for though they provided a perfect set of rules for a happy future with artificial life forms, they didn’t have nearly the right scope for profit. First of all, the third law really got in the way of being able to force people to upgrade every year, and that first law basically stopped half of the applications for which robots would eventually be used.

Eventually, the laws were scrapped in favour of a far more profitable, if less safe system called the “ah zark it” system, whereby all robots were given tests to see if they could perform most of their tasks with a degree of competence without actually injuring any humans, and then wrapping them up and sending them off. The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation absolutely refuses to recall any models which may or may not have developed a habit of brutally eviscerating anything which got in the way of their tasks. Eddie is programmed to seek approval and spread happiness, so as far as he is concerned, law number one is secondary to law number two. Our heroes may shortly have cause to complain about this.

Comments

[RusselNotSCP]

FIRST!!! and nice I-Robot reference.

[SIGAWESOME]

Theta, eta, gamma ...
I see what you did there.

[Blank Slate]

Do I detect a Red Dwarf reference?

[Boobah]

411364 Ah, small reference pools. Isaac Asimov wrote more short stories than you could shake a stick at centered around the Three Laws, and they featured in many of his novels as well. They're also one half of the connection between the movie I, Robot and Asimov's work, with the other half an otherwise unrelated short story of the same name.

485410 Nuts. I lose. Again.

[LittleSallyDigby]

955145

There was a bit in the movie where Sonny was hiding in a factory that paralleled Little Lost Robot, which if I'm not mistaken was among the stories collected in I, Robot. And I think the overall plot (most notably the bit about Sonny dreaming) was derived from another short story, not in that particular book, where Susan Calvin shoots the 'bot in the end. To which story were you referring? Just curious.

[Super_Big_Mac]

485410 It's actually Epsilon, not Eta, if my resources are correct.

[Flurshy]

>THeta Eta Gamma Alpha Mu Eta
I kindly must say, "Fuck you." Also, a very clever little trick you have.

Oh, THE REFERENCES! I-robot, 148 minutes (Or whatever it's called) and so many more!

[Ender Roarke]

I hate to dredge up and correct continuity in an old story...but it's so glaring that I couldn't resist. You probably should have modified the 3 laws of robotics to fit a universe filled with pony lifeforms rather than human or at least make a joke about how the laws weren't very good because everpony is a pony.
That said, loving the story thus far!

[paintom_phan]

I've been reading all of Eddie's lines in Yes Man's voice, and I didn't notice until just now.

485410 979171 I'm likely not the only one who missed that. You didn't have to draw attention to it.

[Hereward]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "A bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

The key inaccuracy here being that the description restricted to the marketing division, instead of the whole executive branch with elements of middle management and the board of directors.