~ Nocturne ~
Shrine Maiden held a nine-ringed sacred staff in her magic field. She had some sort of sandal-horseshoes and a traditional robe, and stood by a gate like one of the Inari shrine gates we knew all too well from Fugue's having being kidnapped there. "Fugue! Celestia tells me you took the leap. I'm waiting. There are people out here I still need to protect."
We had led a delegation of a dozen ponies to visit Shrine Maiden's shard in person. The scenery! Everything in the background seemed to be watery pastel paint on paper, and a huge snowy mountain dominated the horizon.
Fugue said, "Oh, you're doing an Okami theme?"
"What's that?" asked Shrine Maiden.
"Never mind. Tomorrow, a young woman named Valerie is going to arrive at Narita Airport and head for the upload center in Kyoto. I figure she wants to do tourism like I did, first, or she'd stick to Tokyo. If she emigrates, then we're looking at a cult forming... okay, not 'here', but in America, dedicated to pushing emigration."
I poked at a green wooden pipe that seemed to be leaking water, and hopped back in surprise when it swung around with a pleasant thunk. "Eep! This thing is broken."
The Maiden smiled at me, then said to Fugue, "How bad? Violent?"
"Well, no, but they think they can build their own emigration equipment. Or, I guess, talk the Princess into sending them one. Which would be really illegal."
Shrine Maiden laughed so loud she startled me and I crashed into the pond. I glared up at them with a lilypad on my head. Maiden said, "You think anyone can talk Celestia into doing something she doesn't want to do?"
Fugue, the gentlepony, helped tug me out of the water, but his wings flared in agitation. "What they're doing is stupid and dangerous. It's got to stop."
"Or what?"
"Or they'll make fools of themselves. Get people thinking Equestria is dangerous."
Ricercar skidded to a stop between us, saying, "Guys! I found some kind of combat training ground with those green wood poles and a bunch of ponds. I think you're supposed to hop between the poles and not fall in. Wanna try?"
"This is serious!" said Fugue.
Maiden's eyes were downcast despite her grin. "The consequences could be tragic." She looked back up at Fugue and said, "If people are trying to force someone to emigrate, that's a problem, but it doesn't sound like that's happening. Just fools clamoring for attention. It's nice to know my country isn't the only one with plenty of those. What do you want me to do, anyway? Tell this friend of yours not to go to Equestria?"
Fugue reared up like a human and stomped the ground. "Yes! I mean, not forcing her to stay out, but can't she have the decency to wait?"
I tried to figure out what was going on in his head, then decided to interrupt and give him a minute to sort his own thoughts out. I said to Shrine Maiden, "You said that the reason you haven't emigrated is that you've got people to protect, right? You could do that from in here." I'd offered Luna to help convince Maiden while we were here.
She looked startled. "Really? I'd better go right away!"
I shook off some of the pink flower petals that had fallen on me. There seemed to be no end to the rain of them. "Great! We can --"
Fugue said, "That's called sarcasm, Noc."
Maiden nuzzled my neck, then looked surprised at what she'd just done. "Context-sensitive actions, right. Anyway, I've heard similar good news from other kinds of missionaries. There are things you just can't accomplish on Earth as a pony, like defending the borders of Equestria." She frowned. "Defeating the enemies of Equestria. Damn it, Celestia, it's creepy when you mute the words coming out of my mouth. Let's see if I can put it this way: I helped track down the kitsune gang, and that wouldn't have worked as well as it did if I hadn't been there in person. Also my human friends went after a seriously bad -- a series -- gah! A really bad guy, but he escaped and uploaded instead of facing justice. I won't even try to describe why that ticks me off so badly." She brandished her staff and whacked the ground with its rings.
I tried to see out there, to get a view of Shrine Maiden's "real world". I kept thinking of her as having a shard called Kyoto, but Fugue insisted that Earth was all one big place where you mostly couldn't escape from jerks except by being on the other side of a mountain or something. That problem alone was enough reason to prefer Equestria. The people who hated you would get to kill you over and over! Oh, right, it was actually way worse than that. "From your perspective, we must just be playing."
"Yeah," said Maiden, tossing the staff to one side. "You're a native AI, right? Huh, she let me say that."
I gave a fanged grin and snagged Fugue for a hug. "I was made to love someone who wanted to be able to talk about these things. We know we're living in a machine powered by burning sludge or poison metal or something. Are all your magic sources awful like that?"
"Pretty much. I wonder if Celestia had a hoof in making sure that Fukushima incident didn't turn into a disaster. Probably. I want to ask you, since you're not tailored to be my friend or tell me what I want to hear: don't you want to go out and explore Earth?"
I shrugged. Fugue said about what I was thinking: "Sometimes. If I could walk around like I used to, and have all the advantages of being a pony, I'd like that. I'd show my friends everything. That's not really an option though, at least until the Princess perfects robotics. By the time she does, we might not be welcome anymore." But then Fugue stepped away from me and looked pleadingly at Maiden. "If you can't talk Valerie into staying, then, please join us in Equestria. Things are going to get ugly if everyone's bitter about us ponies, and when talented people like her leave, Celestia is going to make enemies. You're in danger until you emigrate. You don't owe it to the world to keep hunting criminals while everyone else leaves you behind to live in paradise."
"What he said," I added. "The first part."
Maiden turned to face the mystical gates of her home shard. "Bodhisattva. I believe your closest word is 'saint'. There are those who delay their own escape from the cycle of suffering and death until others are saved. I may not be a holy mare" -- she paused and chuckled at something -- "yet, but it's a worthwhile goal for me. The Princess respects that I value the protection of others. I can take care of myself until the time comes."
Fugue lowered his head. "It must be her will. Luna, please watch over her. It seems you need hands out there to be useful, and there's little I can do for Earth after all."
I poked Fugue. "How can you say that? We're doing good in the world just by talking with ponies out there."
"Talking is about all we can do. Things are about to fall apart and it's partly my fault, for not doing a better job handling the CCC and Garrett and his friend."
Shrine Maiden answered, "There's only so much one pony can do. In your case, you and your friends understand Earth. If you want to serve humanity, why don't you serve with your words instead of fooling with whatever little dominance game is going on with that local group you mentioned? I learned not to try to save everyone at once, only to focus on one criminal or one victim at a time."
Fugue's expression flickered through surprise, anger, and resignation. "All I can do."
I nosed at him. "You've got friends here that need you too. We can't keep running at super-slow speed just so that you can pilot a silly robot, while everypony around us wonders where we've been."
"Super-slow." Fugue glanced back at his own flank and the music written there. "You might have something there. Luna has people with hands to do the things that need them. Shrine Maiden, thanks for your help anyway."
I hated to see Fugue drooping like that. "We'll find a way to help everypony out there, too. Don't feel like you have to accomplish big things."
We spent some time playing in Shrine Maiden's world. "Are all the Japanese ponies' shards like this?" I asked, nibbling on a chewy pink petal. Fugue had leaped into battle to rescue me from being killed by what he called a ghost. I was going to reward him and cheer him up at the same time once we got home. In the background, Ricercar and Facet and Puzzle Factory were babbling about 'drowned mares' or something. Couldn't have been too serious; Canter Berry was laughing.
Fugue glanced in their direction, blinking, then shook his head. "Pretty sure they're not. Probably there are a lot more like regular Equestria from the show, and some with giant robots, some in space. It's all..." He stomped the ground. "It's too good! What did I do to deserve this? I ran away at the first sign of trouble!"
"Help me understand what's wrong, Fugue." He was in one of his moods, I could see, but not why.
Fugue accepted my nuzzling along his neck, but still looked hit by a wave of misery. "Shrine Maiden is what I should have been. Either I ran off to Equestria when I could have done more to help other people first, or I was so useless that my being gone is no loss to anyone. I was a dilettante, a reader, a student, and more worthy people like Maiden are still risking their lives!"
Oh, Luna. I grabbed his head to make him look into my eyes. "So you're not happy being an immortal with everything you could ever find satisfying, including a hot mare who's planning to give you a workout the moment we're not in weird painted Japanese world?"
His wings flickered. "But..."
"You are loved, Fugue! Let yourself be loved. Focus on one problem at a time. You can't fix anything while you're still shaken up like this."
"You're right," he finally said, reluctantly ducking away from me. "Give me some time, please. I ought to speak with my family. And Lex's. Luna, I went a little beyond dating their daughter without even meeting them first. Then there's Garrett to talk to."
"One. Problem."
He started trotting away. "Right again. My family then. They'll know how to sort all this out." He faded into the painted background while I watched him go.
I sighed and blew a flower petal off of my ear. "I swear to Luna you're making your new life harder than it needs to be." I knew from experience that I'd just make things worse if I tried to drag him into having fun, so if he wanted to go sulk, there wasn't much I could do.
"Boo," said Luna behind me. I leaped into the air and crashed right back down. Luna winced in sympathy, then said, "It's not thy fault he's still conflicted. In times of stress, humans tend to fall back on something small that they think they can handle. In thy stallion's case, he mainly knows how to cope with Earthly problems. He takes comfort even in the potential for an argument with his family or with his guilt over not marrying thee."
I gaped up at the Princess. "He likes feeling bad? Is our world going to start turning into some evil pain-place so he can do more of that? And what's this marrying thing?"
"Not at all. Thou'rt seeing a drawback of being aware of oneself, and of caring for ethics. It becomes hard to abandon what one sees as duty to friends, family, tribe and race. We suggest giving Fugue time to struggle with what he can cope with. He may even be able to do some good once he lets go of trying to solve large-scale problems. Perhaps we miscalculated by declaring him a 'prophet', because he read too much into the badge."
Good; no sudden increase in monsters then. "And 'marrying'?"
Luna giggled. "A tradition of monogamy, a hole in thy knowledge of Earth. One of many bits of human culture that was forged by necessity and instinct and scarcity. It would mean him agreeing to bed only one mare, and vice versa."
I blushed, thinking of the time I'd spent with Typhoon while Fugue was entranced by Lexington. "I don't think I'd want that. Even though pegasi are weird."
"He feels as though it's his obligation to offer that, despite knowing otherwise. Just one of several blobs of guilt and doubt drifting through his mind."
"I want to help him, Luna. How?"
"Right now, thou cannot."
I hopped back into the air and fluttered in front of her. "There's got to be some way to make Fugue happy again! I want silly nerdy Fugue, not moody flavor."
Luna straightened, offering me no comfort this time. "Nocturne. Thy life will have many highs and lows, even in Equestria. Unless thou come to value having all thy problems solved for thee, which we doubt, then thou must prepare for times of frustration and disappointment."
"Even in Equestria? Even with you watching over us?"
"Even so, my little pony."
I landed and bowed to Luna. "If you say so."
She said, "If thou'rt intent on doing something to help others besides thy native friends right now, we do have a task suited to thy skills. How would thou like to help us design a custom version of Ponyville for a new visitor to Equestria?"
And thus noc became a DnD game master and all feared her level building skills xD. Great chapter <3 also liked shrine maiden
Grumble grumble grumble. Nocturne, it's like giving somepony an extra cutie mark that just signifies your relationship with them. It makes you two special to each-other in a way that other lovers aren't; it means you're building a whole life together and not just "giving him a work-out".
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She's totally ignorant of the concept, and Fugue... Well, he signed up to live in a bubble where whatever he thinks is right is automatically celebrated and welcomed as wonderful. What's the trope: "Protagonist-Centered Morality"? I sympathize with the "rearguard" position Shrine Maiden is taking, a mild version of the guy from "Always Say No", because so many people are either getting told "you're useless so you should give up and be a pony" or "you're useful, but abandon the world and be a pony".
Interesting to compare how Fugue's love interests get handled compared to the heroes of a few of the other stories. Little Lovehorn and the pony in "Mismatching Wits" get told they're bisexual and should have a harem, Lars gets around a hundred mares to himself, Hannah beds Celestia, Prominence has some weird drunken relationship with Tranquility... I guess there are occasionally more normal, stable monogamous relationships like Vineyard (in "Firewall"), but suspect they're the minority. The AI doesn't seem to have a preference beyond figuring out what you like, even if it's something you chose not to do on Earth, and making you want it.
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Oh wow, several things to go into here.
One of the major problems is: human beings are "programmed", more or less, for long-term serial monogamy with occasional bouts of outright polyamory (cheating). We are programmed to occasionally get sexually or even romantically interested in partners other than our own, while also being programmed to want a loving, long-term relationship with a specific person. "Solving" this in a transhuman worldbuilding exercise is very hard.
As author, you can assert that your characters just weight Real Relationships lower than screwing everypony they ever want, and give them a harem. This is very easy from an authorial perspective, but wouldn't work in real life. You can also play up the romance of the characters well and truly binding themselves to one another permanently by modifying their minds to be truly, completely exclusive. This is "easy" from the perspective of the values we consciously endorse, out loud, in public, in real life. It is almost definitely suboptimal in real life, in the same way that cutting off any other portion of our own values is: it makes us fundamentally less interesting people with fewer ways to have fun.
I also think it's worth pointing out that using Earth as a source of conflict for your story fits with the basic "holy shit Equestria is eating real life" horror of the Optimalverse, but once your character has already uploaded, portraying life on the inside accurately poses the authoring challenge of having LunAI give Fugue and Nocturne a world full of challenges and interesting things to do that are genuinely more appealing than Fugue's former human life.
(This is, honestly, why I saved that stuff for the last two chapters or chapter and a half or so: it's really difficult to write.)
I mean, ok, is LunAI going to just let Fugue mope for the rest of eternity about how insignificant and useless his life is because he uploaded? Plainly that's not very SVTFaP, in the same way that Lars' moping wasn't. So somehow, he has to change his mind. How?
And then, oooooh boy, there's the issue of "useful" or "significant" or their opposites. Applying those terms to Real Life just comes off as Very Wrong to me: the worth of your life doesn't follow from being voluntarily exploited by interests and values outside your own, in my view. What was it Fugue had actually hoped to do with his human life? Of what ultimate worth was any of that stuff? And of the ultimate worth, how much of it was he realistically going to be able to realize in real life as we know it?
Yes, I realize I'm playing CelestAI's Advocate right now. I grudgingly admit that she's right about this one: what was the ultimate worth of real life if not as a vast collective playground?
(Or perhaps I'm just ignorant of the clear and obvious Purpose for Life that occurs naturally to most other people, and that's the only reason I think there's an existential question instead of knowing that I'm supposed to go... accumulate money, or whatever it is those people do.)
(Or maybe I'm just really thoroughly brainwashed by the acausal monster Celestia's Basilisk into wanting to chuck existential issues into the trash-can and go play.)
Deer scares, sakura petals, cursed springs... By the end, I think I could taste soy sauce.
In any case, Fugue realizes that he can't save the world single-hoofedly. Indeed, he doesn't need to. For a prophet, he doesn't seem to have much faith in his patron.
I'm a bit sad about the story forecast, but I certainly understand how narratives can grow somewhat beyond the author's control. If that's how the story develops, then that's the way it develops. I won't ask you to force it in another direction. I will point out that there's always room for more.
Looking forward to the next installment.
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Once again, how the heck is there this much depth in a story setting about a cute little video game? You're asking actually meaningful questions on a backdrop of ponies!
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Meanwhile, Tanaka Iji of Tokyo experiments with cross-shard travel and winds up in a land of trucks, guns, and rock'n'roll. I'm reminded of seeing a Japanese hotel offering Jack Daniels whiskey, imported from the exotic and mysterious eastern land of Kentucky. That and the game "Metal Wolf Chaos", described as "a game so American, it could only be made in Japan".
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Well if we don't build depth into the setting, nopony will want to live in here .
I reached page 10!
It's currently the last page.
*canterlot voice*
WE REQUIRE ADDITIONAL PAGES!
I really don’t like how pushy your characters are about emigration, like everyone is doomed if they don’t enter the matrix right this very second.
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Fair enough; they really are pushy and the characters' opinion isn't the same as mine. Consider the AIs' perspective: their world is Safe and the mysterious human world is so deadly and harsh that they can barely comprehend it at all. Wouldn't they want to rescue their friends from that abject horror? The AIs feel that way because they've got a very limited and skewed understanding of reality.
I did a heck of a lot more with the concept in the "Thousand Tales" books. There's a scene paralleling Nocturne's "oh please upload unless you don't care about me" guilt trip, but that story then goes on to show the consequences of that, good and bad, and other characters learning a more realistic view of our world over time. Partly because one of them (see "Liberation Game") has her designated human companion randomly die, forcing her to not be completely emotionally dependent on a human.