4. What Your Problem Is
Adrift Off
Fiddler's Green
A C o n v e r s i o n B u r e a u S t o r y
By Chatoyance
4. What Your Problem Is
Special thanks to my spouse Aedina for her assistance with historically accurate Elizabethan speech.
Frontpage's eyes opened just a crack. Through the narrow aperture, he could see a long, dark leg, the color of midnight blue, rising up into blurriness. The leg was close to his head, and in the corner of his limited view was a hint of silver, at the bottom.
It must be princess Luna. He was half-looking at one of her legs, and the tip of a silvern shoe.
When his eyes opened again, he only barely registered that he had nodded off. He could not have been out long, the leg was still there, within his half-lidded vision. It struck him, then, that he was not in pain, and that this was odd - because, by all rights, he really should have been.
He felt something strange in his leg, and in his chest. A sort of ghostly, ethereal squirming or flowing. Ah! His befuddled mind gradually had dredged up a memory. He was being worked on, healed, thaumatically. When he had returned to Earth, after spending several months reporting from Equestria, he had tried to get an interview with the leader of the PER. That had not gone well, and after a run-in with anti-pony activists halfway to meeting his subject, he had found himself in serious shape.
Fortunately, medical centers had begun installing native healers by that point, to cover the injuries of newfoals and natives staying on earth. He had been lucky; a fully trained medical unicorn was on staff, along with earthpony regenerative support. The feeling was familiar now. His ribs and leg were being restored.
Luna and... somepony... were talking, above him. She must be standing there, overlooking the situation. The other voice was very familiar. It wasn't an ordinary pony. Celestia. Both princesses were here, Celestia must be outside of his view.
Frontpage couldn't turn to look, he couldn't really move much besides his eyes. That was familiar too. For multiple or sufficiently serious injuries, it was common practice to put the patient into a form of sleep paralysis, to keep them still. It was a comfortable, safe, dreamlike place to be, and sleep called to him, strongly.
But Frontpage fought it, because his nose had smelled news. Both pony princesses, both diarchs, standing over him, or near him, right now. Both here, at this obscure institute for unloved monsters of the Everfree. The ice, the terrible frost. Something was going on, something that was worth a scoop. Or two scoops. Ice cream. Suddenly, Frontpage wanted ice cream very much.
He forced himself from the dream that had just begun to swallow him. He had started to be within a lovely park, with music all around, strange music, beautiful music, and there was ice cream. Luna was there, too, inside his dream, levitating ice cream to... thousands of bunnies. Little, white bunnies, as far as one could see, all lined up for ice cream and...
Luna and Celestia were talking. The curious itch of thaumatic reconstruction was strong inside his ribs. He could feel the bones knitting, and he half-wished he could scratch the inside of his body. Somehow. News. This was a story. Frontpage tried to listen, forcing his attention through the tiny slit of his barely-opened eyes.
"...vastness of their legions do exceed Our means to succor. Did I warn thee not, sweet sib? Already Our Realm doth swell to compass their tribe, an' hoofless are We to find the fit of them withall. This calamity hath brought Us too near the breech. What doth approach Us, upon Nature's just demise o' them - shall e'en now, this moment, seeme made to be as naught! When they expire in all their millions, how now, dear sis? What course shall We be laid to then? Shall We abort liberty unto them all and shackle them to Us, due subjects to Our Fate?"
Frontpage tried to move his ears to focus in on the voices better. It was difficult, it was tough just to remain awake.
"You must go through the ribbon. I would do it if I could, but it was always your domain. Adjustments must be made. I knew it would be necessary, that is why I have arranged the redemption of our brother. He has progressed far, and I... think he can be trusted for this. I did wish for more decades before this necessity..."
The second voice was definitely Celestia. It could be nopony else.
"It needs be met, an' without delay. This very day if canst, though afeared am I that the morrow is more the true meeting of it. Twenty-two hundred carry I, within mine owne keeping, and all are still within the hold. No sufficiency of space is there upon the deck for them - an to mark the dark unto the darkest yet - tis certain that a tempest brews upon Our very course."
Frontpage drifted off again, momentarily. This time his dream was different. The bunnies returned, but not in a park. They were all around, leaping and hopping all about Luna's dark leg, crossing his vision. He blinked. The bunnies vanished, but the view remained the same. Luna's leg and shoe. A hallucination! A dream superimposed upon his waking vision... how strange. He had missed some of what the princesses were saying...
"...to the wheelhouse and check the rudder. I can lower the sails, and steer, from the tree. I will search for a shallow to drop anchor if the sea turns against us. Go, Luna. Take your brother and chance the ribbon. It must be done."
"But once inside, sister, once inside He doth abide again, if aught should shake His equilibrium, if He do spy the bones...?"
"Equestria has been our home, though it has taken time. It is a good realm, and a healthy one. I trust our ponies, I trust our mutual creation. And I trust Discord." A short pause. "I truly do."
Frontpage, drifting within himself, wished he had his notebook. He yearned for his pencils. If only he could write this strangeness down!
"Upon the morrow, then. Take Thee the helm an' canvases. I shall tend me to the stores beyond the ribbon." There was a pause. "If thou doth anchor here, take goodly care. Already are We tax'd w'excess of a crew. No end of castaways an' shipwrecks are there here."
"Take care as well, Luna. And... avoid the bones, if you can. I trust our brother now, but..."
Frontpage had drunk in as much as he could of the exchange, but then the blackness hit him, and he heard the void calling. Spaced out on the sensation of being healed, he fell under the unicorn's sedation, but after what he had heard, the newspony in him somehow knew that nothing would ever be the same again.
Frontpage gradually awakened to the sound of a pony talking. The sound was faint, drifting in on the breeze through the window to his left. He could hear the sound of hooves on cobblestones, passing by, somewhere well below. He was in a bed. It was soft, and he was partially covered with a thin but very soft blanket. The daylight from the window was gentle, the light of a perfect morning. Frontpage let his eyes waver between half open and dreamy closed.
The voices from below came in faint whisps, carried on the breeze. "...I moved here with my daughter a few years ago, and it's just impossible to be bored. There's always... ... see or do. Plus, shopping, right?" Frontpage turned his ears to the window, idly trying to find a sweet spot to hear from. It was just his reporter's curiosity, always listening, always watching, always eager to find those W's, and maybe even the odd H.
"Sorry, just remembering something... Kind of spaced out!" The first voice was likely a mare around his own age. Somewhere in her early hundreds. "I do that sometimes." There was a sigh. "I understand completely." The second mare seemed younger, maybe in her seventies, even sixties. She seemed to run an outdoor store or stall. It was a marketplace, below. Frontpage was all but sure of that. Trying to figure out where he was by sound had become a game. Canterlot City. It had to be Canterlot because of the cobblestones, and the amount of hoof traffic. The stall-keeper had mentioned she could never be bored here. That would be another check in the box for Canterlot.
Frontpage listened closer, trying to be the essence of the investigative reporter. "Bonuses? ...I don't have anything else to give but mane-clips. That's what I make." Ah! The stall-keeper sold decorations for the manes and tails of ponies. Clips and barrettes and the like. The shopping mare seemed more eager to get a bargain, than actually interested in the product. Was she low on bits? Was she a local, or just visiting? What was the angle here, the real oats of the story?
The hairs on Frontpage's poll, just before where his mane started were standing up. He had been told it made him look surprised. What it meant for him was that something was odd. He was being watched. The feeling was palpable, and it came from his right, away from the window. Gently, he turned his head on the pillow and opened his eyes fully.
"Hello." It was Crimson Beauty. She was sitting on the floor by his bed. They were both in the Canterlot Hospital. Outside the doorway behind her, white-capped nurses trotted by, making their rounds.
Crimson looked down at her hooves, her ears flagging. "Hi."
"Been here long?" There was something about the way her body sat that made Frontpage think she had become settled in, that she had been there for quite some time.
"Yes. I have been..." Crimson's ears twitched slightly. "...watching over you. For a little while."
"Ah." The events of the previous day began to rush back. The steps up to the institute. The strange garden. The double doors. The... door.
Crimson sharply raised her head and neck, and looked Frontpage in the eyes. He could see her tremble slightly.
"Mister Frontpage. I apologize for nearly... for causing you so much... harm. I understand now that you were... making use of... available resources... to save my life. And my face. And... it has been made clear to me that I would have lost one, or both, had you not acted thus. I... I apologize." Her nod was curt and restrained, a proper and dignified head-bow of respect.
Frontpage wriggled slightly under his blanket. Nothing hurt, nothing was broken anymore. Crimson's muzzle was fully healed as well, though her mane was an unbrushed mess. Only reasonable, really. "I am sorry, too, Ms. Acres. I did the only thing I could think of to do... I also apologize for... my impoliteness... when I was stuck. On the door."
Crimson half smiled, and her ears perked up. "I was... not rational, and you needed assistance very much. Your entire leg was at stake, apparently. Possibly more. I do not believe it was a proper time to... mind your P's and Q's."
Frontpage gaped. Crimson simply sat, her gaze level, her ears tall. Her muzzle was tight. "Did you just..."
"Especially the first of those letters, I should think." Merriment danced in Crimson's eyes. "Considering."
Frontpage laughed, a hearty, relieved laugh that was joined by Crimson's giggles. "You are... remarkable, Ms. Acres. And I am remarking on that fact. You're all right? You seem alright."
"Call me Crimson. Too much formality, I think. I tend to retreat into it, as a defense. Especially when bad things..." Crimson's ears fell, drooping down like those of a hound dog. Her head lowered, sagging, as sobs forced their way up her throat.
"Ms Acres? Crimson?" Frontpage rolled from his bed and landed on the floor. Recovering himself, he put his forelegs around the weeping mare and found her pressing tightly into him.
"She's... she's gone. She's gone." The sobs turned to a rain of tears, and that to wracking, coughing grief.
Frontpage held Crimson tightly, until her storm passed, until the tears fell less and less, and sniffles replaced wails. "They couldn't... the princesses..."
"Nothing they could... would... do." Crimson pulled from Frontpage's embrace, and wiped her nose with a foreleg. "Not very dignified, am I?" She dabbed at her eyes, too, and her cheeks, as best she could.
Frontpage raised his own hoof, bent it, and used his fetlocks as an impromptu hankerchief, carefully, delicately sopping grief from her face. "They were both there. I saw them, when the medics were working on me. Both princesses. They came quickly, too, I think. We didn't lay there long, I'm pretty sure of that."
"Good thing, too. Apparently..." Crimson sniffed, then snorted. She swallowed tears. "...apparently I was... pretty hurt. We were terribly lucky, I guess."
"I wonder." Frontpage tapped at the floor with a forehoof.
"Mister Frontpage?"
"Just Frontpage. Crimson." Frontpage smiled. "Both princesses show up to rescue us, moments after we are injured. Coincidence? Or were they already in the neighborhood?"
"I don't understand... Frontpage."
Frontpage shifted, to put his weight on his flank, rescuing his tail. "Both royal sisters, at the corner of nowhere and the fearful forest, calling in unicorn medics and discussing strange things. Saving us within minutes. How does that happen?"
"Well, they are the princesses!" Crimson seemed shocked at the question. "The diarchs! For all intents they are..."
"Akin to the gods, yes." Frontpage looked out the door as a cart was wheeled past by a nurse. It seemed to contain lunch for several patients. "They have many deific attributes, true enough. Building the universe we are in, for one. Moving the sun and moon and stars. Their blood was the basis of ponification serum. But, they can't be everywhere, and they definitely don't know everything. One thing at a time, by every account. They aren't big multitaskers. So why were they focusing on the institute at the very moment we happened to be there?"
"Really?"
"Really what?" Frontpage turned back to look at Crimson.
"Their blood was potion? The princesses' actual blood?" Crimson seemed taken with a mixture of awe and uncertain revulsion.
"So I hear. Pure liquid magic flows through their immortal veins. They had to have used something. You use what you have."
Crimson laughed, despite her recent tears. "So... it would seem."
Frontpage started to grin, but caught himself. The mood was not truly light. Under the defensive banter was terrible loss. "Yes. So it would seem." His soft smile seemed to relax Crimson. She was trying to keep from being pulled under again. She was trying to keep from drowning in sadness.
"It can't be coincidence, Crimson. I don't find that easy to accept. So if it wasn't luck that we are alive, it must be that the princesses had business there already. They found us because they were on the premises." Suddenly, Frontpage gave his noggin a smack with a hoof. "Do we know what happened? What did happen there? Have you heard anything about any of it?"
Crimson stared at the wall. Her gaze was fierce, as if it could punch through the paint and burst through the construction itself. "My sister... Plantain... had started a colony. She wasn't supposed to use the institute that way. When her binding ring concept was rejected... she couldn't accept the judgement. I didn't know... she just turned the institute into a big bunny hutch. Hundreds, maybe thousands were in there. It was a bunny city, a Snow Bunny civilization! All crammed into a single building. Just packed... in there. To save them. From the Everfree."
"Something startled them." Frontpage's eyes widened. "Or even just one. Just one of them, right?"
Crimson nodded, tears forming again.
"It must have been like a frozen spark in an icy fireworks factory!!!" The moment he had said it, he knew he shouldn't have. And he was supposed to be the sensitive reporter.
In the many decades since the Inclusion of the spacetime that contained the earth, the newfoals - and their native Equestrian friends and sometimes family - increasingly demanded some means to bridge the unutterable distances within the new Exponential Lands.
Earth families, torn apart by distance and circumstance wished to be reunited. Citizens living within Equestria proper wanted access to those beyond the original boundaries of pre-Inclusion Equestria. Citizens living in the distant cities of the Exponentials needed access to the halls of Canterlot, and the ears of the court and the princesses. Something permanent had to be done.
The solution was a boon for those exceptionally talented unicorns denied a place on the prestigious - and exclusive - Royal Unicorn Corps. It was to that solution that Frontpage now galloped.
"Upon the morrow, then. Take Thee the helm an' canvases. I shall tend me to the stores beyond the ribbon." The princess of the night was going to take action during the day. That alone was unusual, but what drove Frontpage more was that whatever this mysterious action was, it concerned itself with what had happened at the Institute.
The way the princesses spoke, as they stood above him, had sent a chill through him. Something was wrong, something newsworthy, something big. Frontpage could smell it with his nose for news, and the scent was the strongest he had ever had. The loss of Crimson Acres' sister was a tragedy, and the loss of so many dangerous animals was of note, but the princesses had spoken as if the very world might be coming apart. And the rumors that Frontpage had heard and followed over the years had given him reason to consider that such an unthinkable thing might just be possible.
Scientists, on earth, had noted how so much of Equestria appeared to copy the earth. The similarities were too great to be coincidence, they claimed. The same stars - some of the time, at least - the same plants and animals... more or less. The animal and plant life of the pre-Collapse earth had been replicated with astonishing closeness in Equestria, even if it appeared as if seen through a funhouse mirror. It was as if Equestria had copied an imperfect image of an earlier earth, a picture drawn from a brief glimpse, or from a fading memory.
The Equestrians themselves were too perfect, and fit no evolutionary pattern. It was openly known that all life in Equestria had been created, brought into being by the will of the princesses. Yet every creature and plant resembled, closely, the evolved life of the earth. It was a paradox, a contradiction. If the princesses were creators of life, they had cribbed their design from the cheat sheet for earth.
But more than this, matter itself in Equestria, was wrong. Dweons, Equestrian atoms, were indivisible. They were unitary and singular, and had no physics beyond simply being, perfect and absolute. All complexity stopped with them, an absolute fundament upon which all reality was built. Tiny cubes that did not so much slip or move past each other as change to represent the appearance of movement and interaction. There was no empty space in Equestria, and according to one raving former physicist, even absence, vacuum, in Equestria, was merely another flavor of the indivisible, all-filling Dweons.
He had suggested that Equestria was a toy. And toys... could be broken.
Place Pointer The Knower Of Lands had once possessed the ambition to join the Royal Unicorn Corps. He had grown up hearing stories of Comet Tail The Intractable and Somnolence The Intrepid and especially Girandole The Opacous. Girandole was considered to be the best translocator that had ever lived. His specialty was teleportation, and no unicorn had ever been his equal.
As a colt, Place had discovered he too had a special talent. He could always determine exactly where any place he had ever visited was in relation to himself. The value of this curious ability was obvious, especially to any unicorn that could manage the difficult skill of teleportation. Long distance translocation was fraught with risk - a blue-sky jaunt could lead to tragedy, even disaster. Place had been sure that he would be instantly admitted to the Royal Corps upon his graduation day.
Place was talented. He was educated. He could teleport, and he could do so at almost unthinkable distance. He was invaluable.
But he had not been connected.
The one distance that Place Pointer The Knower Of Lands could not span was the vast gulf between social circles. Politics had been the ruin of his ambition.
Inclusion, the Newfoals, had changed his life. There was a need, a desperate need, for reliable, long-distance translocation of goods and citizens. The Royal Corps were disinterested and unmotivated to help. Place Pointer filled that need.
Pointer Relocation was now a thriving and vital business, with terminals in all major and most minor cities and towns. Place had personally selected and trained hundreds of exceptionally talented unicorns in his own, unique methods, and thus trade between the Exponential Lands and Central Equestria was commonplace - and vital.
The newfoals, with their human cleverness, had invented things no pony could dream of. And near the end, as the Barrier learned how to convert earthly matter with greater and greater accuracy, the remnants of extinct fruits and animals had been brought back from the grave, restored to life as Equestrianized versions of themselves. Breadfruit and mangoes, Stinky durian and pastel-fleshed dragonfruit, horned melon and cherimoya now graced the tables of the Canterlot court. Place Pointer grew wealthy, and known, and important, and soon cared not at all for the pathetic Royal Corps.
Frontpage scrambled around the corner of Bosal and Manege, his hooves skittering on the cobblestones. It was not yet noon, not for some time, and while it was not early morning, there was still a chance. He slid into Bosal Terminal and threw bits on the countertop. "Transport to West Ponyville! When's the next translocation?"
The bored earthpony behind the counter wore a Pointer's Relocations uniform. His name tag read 'Stack'. His cutie mark was a pile of boxes, three of them, arranged carefully on top of each other. There was probably a story behind how he had gotten stuck working a counter instead of a warehouse, but that was the sort of thing Puffpiece would write. Frontpage was all about the big scoops.
"Ah... next one for Ponyville is... uh... ten? It's North Ponyville, though. Next East is at... fourteen-fifty."
The Equestrian day averaged thirty to thirty six hours, generally. It wasn't exact, it didn't need to be, and the princesses defined what a day was in any case. Noon was generally around fifteen to fifteen-fifty, more or less. "I'll take the ten o'clock to North Ponyville and catch a sky carriage. Please."
Ponyville had grown over the last near century. It had grown very large, greater than Canterlot City and Manehattan combined. It had been the closest town to the capital. Now that Equestria had become a truly massive empire, the planned, walled, limited space of Canterlot City, high on the impossibly steep mountainside, was vastly insufficient. Ponyville had transformed into a megalopolis, to serve the needs of petitioners and visitors from the farthest known reaches of newfoal-dominated Equestria.
"You'll need to run. It's almost ten now." The bored pony counted bits and slid out a token.
"Swirl!" Frontpage snagged the token. "Thanth!"
Stack tried to say 'you're welcome' but all he saw was the rear end and tail of a reporter dashing away.
Frontpage dropped his token in the special jar and entered the small corral. He tried, as politely as possible, to cram himself into the crowd of ponies, diamond dogs, as well as crates and market wagons that filled the circular space. Under his hooves was a solid mass of thaumatic stone, covered with glyphs and sigils. Pointer's Relocations had made a science out of the art of teleportation, after enlisting the help of a cadre of newfoal former physicists and researchers. The newfoals had used the methodology that had worked on earth to the magic of Equestria and nailed down the most efficient and easily replicable means to teleport without error or much effort. Translocation was commonplace now. Newfoals had changed Equestria forever.
"Sorry!" Frontpage had bumped into an elderly mare trying to manage a stack of packages on her back. His reporter's eyes suggested she was native, had been visiting Canterlot to shop, and had found - from the look of things - quite a few bargains. To his left arrived a large stallion, dressed in what looked like a Bureau-era Green-Level jumpsuit... only cut and stitched to fit a pony. He wore an identification badge for something called 'Tacksworn Draconics'. Frontpage backed up, trying to give the big stallion room to fit within the corral.
"Hey! Watch it!" The mare he had backed into apparently did not like a face-full of reporter rump.
The voice sounded familiar.
Frontpage couldn't turn around, it was too crowded. But he could turn his long, muscular neck to look behind him, over his own tail. "You!"
"You!" Crimson Beauty was surprised. "What the muffin are you doing here?"
"I left you to recover! You were horribly injured!"
"So were you!"
"I'm fine!"
"I'm fine too!"
Frontpage tried to turn around anyway, but he couldn't. Several objections and three dirty looks assured him of that fact. He was barely aware of his mane starting to float up, along with the manes and tails of everypony else. "Why are you here?"
"Why are YOU here?" Crimson gave him the eye. Impertinent newsie.
"I... I asked you first!" Strange muffin mare. She lost her sister! She should be weeping, or going to grief counseling, not jaunting off to North Ponyville! Ponies didn't take losing family well. It tended to break them for a while. Equestrians were such sensitive folk. Fragile. Emotional. Hmm... that's right... she was a newfoal. But still!
"You know what your problem is?"
Frontpage never found out, because at that moment Canterlot vanished, replaced by a silent, inky blackness illuminated only by the glow at his hooves. There was no air, or sense of weight, and he felt the saliva within his open mouth begin to boil.
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You know, it's not very fair...buck, it's not very bucking nice of you to kill off characters that you've put so much life into. I'm still sad over Caprice and now you had to do this to Plantain. I...just...
Why do bad things happen to good ponies?
4718440
The Princesses were already there, something big's going on, and we haven't "seen the body". I'm not counting anypony out just yet.
And besides, even if she is dead, I expect we'll see her again soon.
4718440
Actually, I will be dealing with that very question, among others. Theodicy in Equestria!
4718440 because they are good. Life wishes to give them everlasting peace,far from pain and sadness.
I see what you did there!
4718440
Caprice simply died of old age after living fate knows how long she probably lived a long and wonderful life at that.
Interesting Chapter Chatty although I'm a bit frustrated at you being so cryptic with what the Princesses were saying while Frontpage was unconcious (Oh well I suppose I'll find out in later chapters). Still ships, Brother, fate of millions WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!
Also I must say this story has been interesting since this is the first story I've read of yours which takes place solely in Equestria after earth is gone (well I guess I could count Tales of Grass but I don't really count that cause that took place in some village isolated from the rest of Equestria.) And seeing the way your Equestria is I can't help but ask how your Equestria is any better then our own world. It more or less feels like a slightly altered version of ours. I mean sure they can grow food for everyone and have magic and can control the weather and seasons, but when we get right down to it I must ask how exactly is it better and different?
Alas, poor Snow Bunnies.
Celestia and Luna seem to be on a spelljammer or similar magical spaceship. A flashback? An intercepted memory? And what is "the ribbon"? Most intriguing...
Equestria is made of voxels. Huh. All the world's a game, and we are but sprites in it.
I have to love the reference to Tacksworn. Chip seems to have made quite a name for himself.
Looking forward to more, especially greater detail on the new Ponyville.
4718605
Argh we have recursion! We have to go deeper!
4718810 Yes, but alone and shunned by all the native ponies, seen as a crazy old mare.
4718900
We don't know that for sure all we know is that towards the end of her life is that young foals found her odd. In my mind based on what I remember of the story we simply do not know enough about what happened between that final day of her life and the time in which she left Summerland
This was all great. What a chapter, quite the rollercoaster. And we're just getting started...
The bit about the mane-clips though, I almost fell off my chair! Just what is going on here?
And that last bit. That's just normal translocation stuff right? I mean, you're getting magic'd to another place, a little bit of void and saliva boiling is expected right? Right.
Now I have more than a few inklings about this story but you're pulling out a lot of stops with the world building here... Beyond the ribbon? The... Ship? A crew? Interest piqued indeed.
Ah the travails and heartbreaks of having a kid brother. But he does have a good heart, and I can't wait to see where the sea of time carries our three siblings!
Well, everypony else has already said what is on my mind except this: you are always one step ahead of me
I was toying with the idea of a communications and delivery network throughout the exponential lands and the main land. Mine was going to be more mundane as I sorta have it stuck in my head that Celestia wants a more normal world where ponies take things slow and methodical.
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAAAAIN!
4719203
Right!
4718605
Oh good! I haven't finished reading yet, I just got to that, and I had to come see if anyone else had spotted it, or if I had lost track of things!
Of all the ponies I could have guess would cameo in this, I think Lavender Rhapsody is the least expected! (And now I have to wonder about Lavender's personality and mindset and personal history in such a distinctly different place than EqO...)
Onwards to finish reading then!
4718810
). Still since I'm still curious I'll just rephrase the question in what other ways is your version of Equestria better and different from our world since at times like I said it does seem just like ours.
<looks at data that shows that humans have only been at total peace for just 245 years> Never mind don't answer that last question equestria's definitely better in that respect (seriously why do we love to kill each other so much?
4720223
I don't think it's so much that the world itself is better (although the complete absence of the sort of volatile toxins we see on Earth, and the generally pleasant createdness of it certainly are bonuses! A sun that doesn't burn or blind!) so much as that the sapient citizens are.
In a world where competition was never needed for survival, the individual is engineered from the base up to be altruistic in ways that are suicidal on Earth. And because of that higher baseline standard of empathy and generosity and care, we see a society that is free of the sorts of things that make today's world society range from cold to unpleasant to actively murderous, depending on your station as determined by everything from skin color to accent to wealth to who you sleep with and why.
But the point has always sort of been that Equestria is very much derived from Earth, with little changes. It's just that those little changes add up to be ground-shaking alterations in the social fabric. That it is an idealized vision of what Earth could be, if we all agreed to work towards it. And something cannot be an idealization is it is completely disconnected from the original version.
In the specifics though, on Equestria we see
-An absence of hard gender normative behaviours that suppress the lives of women, trans individuals, nonbinary individuals, etc on Earth
-An absence of social pressure to conform to monogamous, heterosexual, life long contracts regardless of whether the love and affection that was there on initiation is still present in ten or twenty years, or whether two individuals are sufficiently capable and stable enough on their own to raise a family/remain involved long term.
-An absence of murder, assault, sex crimes, etc based around exerting your power over others, because that sort of power display is irrelevant
-An absence of crime based around poverty and survival, because the entire world is created to ensure comfort and meet the needs of every individual within it (eg no starvation, no choosing between breaking into a store for bread and milk, or your child dying, etc).
-An absence of 'white collar' fraud and manipulation based on reducing the bottom line, which causes things such as child sweatshops, or in a milder way, the prestige economy (the process by which you can only get a job if you are already well off enough to spend four to eight years in school and another two to four in unpaid internships, rather than hiring people and then training them as was the original system).
-War. War is not a thing. Calamities exist, as has been evidenced by the Princesses' conversation, but war? Nope.
There are other things, but I think this is an excellent starter list? Not that I was invited into this conversation, and I apologize for wandering in without being asked. But this 'verse means so much to me, as an individual, because it is such a shining example of what we could be, what we have the potential to become. It gives me hope when all I want to do is curl up in a little corner and not ever move again, because our world just sucks.
But it doesn't have to! And the similarities between Equestria and Earth exist to prove that.
4719556
Oh! I thought it sounded familiar.
So it's normal then, but with everything that happened I can't help but think something might go wrong.
4720375
Oh don't be I thank you for your insight.
In anycase the main reason I asked is that I've never really read any of her Conversion Bureau stories (like 800 year promise) so I've never really seen what here version of Equestria is like only what the changes to people who convert are (which is quite dramatic so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the differences while seemingly small have a profound impact and lead to Equestria being quite different from our own world.
Also I know how you feel I keep wishing I could run off and find some uninhabited island somewhere and live on it.
4718810
I've answered this so many times, and in so many ways. Let's try something new!
How about the headlines from 'Earthquestria'? That is, what if our world, earth, was like my vision of Equestria? Here is the news from that Equestrianized earth. It's been that way since the dawn of time...
I think this makes my point for me.
So Plantain (apparently...) didn't make it. Bummer. At least in Equestria continuity is maintained and she'll be alright, unlike zero-continuity Mundis where when someone dies there's no one after that point in time to even not be alright, as so excellently captured by the "so it goes" Tralfamadorian perspective.
Good to see some innovation in terms of the farcasters—At this rate it's only a matter of time before newly-minted alicorns build their own interdimensional ships and bud off on their own adventures.
4720223
We don't, not really. The people we kill are wicked aggressors whom we have to kill. They're trying to destroy our values and displace us. We're only defending ourselves from their depredations, and to save face by retaliating as they attack us, and if you weren't such an imperialist trying to impose your Western values and turn everyone into you, you'd understand that. Of course the other side will tell you the same thing, but don't believe it—They're utterly corrupt and just want to exploit everyone, just like the "capitalists" you talk about in the Global North.
This kind of twisting of perspective is why I write Equestria as still having non-zero crime rates, even if there's only a murder like once a decade. I don't like absolutes because I think they're subtly self-contradictory in practice, so I think something like Earth's rate of leader assassinations is just about the ideal worldwide murder rate. That's far, far less than shark attacks and lightning strikes, and frankly I don't see what's so terrible about it compared to those—The problem is the relative commonality of homicide. ...Though I suppose in a way, like suicide statistics, it's a sign of the strength of our civilization: We're not being victimized and annihilated by predatory external forces; we've subdued those enough that our biggest threats come from within our own psyches. As long as people are mortal, they're going to die somehow, and the fact that it's not disease or predator attack is a testament to the strength of our medical technology and apex predator status. Ideally suicide and murder should be the #1 causes of death—It means we've conquered all the others that would lay us low much faster, especially if you lump euthanasia in with suicide: Right now our biggest killers are cancer and heart disease, which are symptomatic of old age (no one really dies of "old age"), so mortal citizens taking their own deaths into their hands would, I think, be a very good sign of a civilization's enlightenment.
4720598
Why do I have the sudden sinking feeling that we're living on the wrong side of the mirror?
Anyway thanks for clarifying that Chatty yes that paints a really good picture of how Equestria differs from our world. Sadly it also pisses me off for not being real (I want to live in that version of Earth Dammit)
4720884
Assuming a very large number of universes, the likeliest statement according probability theory is that we're living at an average one. That being the case, in the long tail, at an arbitrarily low probability, there's an Earthquestria similar to what Chatoyance described. Unfortunately at the other tail there are worlds so abysmally bad that their inhabitants would look up to our descriptions of Hell as idealized paradises they'd do all they could to someday attain...
Just making sure: it's not completely obvious, but reasonably clear, that the big problem the princesses are talking about is the afterlife becoming overcrowded? That they're on a deadline before the eldest of Earth's billions start dying en masse of old age? That they were there at the institute because they felt the deaths of the bunnies and pony there?
I have to say it because I can never be sure if a connection I've made is so obvious nobody needs to discuss it, or so well hidden that nobody else realized it.
Also it's remarkably close to an alternative interpretation of the Conversion Bureau universe I came up with but never wrote, where Celestia engineered the redemption of Luna and Discord and the ascension of Twilight (and later the other Elements of Harmony) because the CREATION of the afterlife requires the combined magic of nine alicorns and a chaos god, and the connection with Earth is made so the passage of human souls across the barrier can be better observed, to determine how to properly extend the reach of the afterlife indefinitely into the past, matching the passings they have already observed and avoiding a paradox. Allowing the entire history of human and Earthly animal souls access to the Equestrian afterlife? Merely a bonus.
Man... what a chapter... I just don't have the words for all of that...
Also... 'Tacksworn Draconics'?! Just WHAT have Chip and Sharptooth been doing? ... besides being astoundingly profitable, of course.
So... death is a boat?
It sounds like a hard vacuum. Eardrums should rupture and lungdamage should occur. Within 10 to 20 seconds loss of consciousness should occur along with bends. Death should follow in 1 to 2 minutes. Despite what movies would have us believe, ponies do not explode in a vacuum.
4722546
Would totally watch/read "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Ponies." By Tom Stirrupard, no doubt.
4722341
Not sure if it can get overcrowded or that an actual proper one actually exist since from the interpretation I have about what happens after a pony dies is that they are reincarnated of course it might be more complicated then this and there is more to it then this but this has always been my understanding of it (a fact that was implied in Code Majeste)
4721427
True that most likely is the case given the multiverse theory. There probably are versions of earth beyond counting out there. Still its hard to say if this is a moderate universe or not since we don't really have anything to compare our version to save for what we dream up
4722341
I so want to read that unwritten story!
4723584
Even so, by applying the 68–95–99.7 rule we can be pretty sure, with a 99.7% confidence, that we aren't at either tail (>3σ from the average), and with a 68% confidence that we're near the average (<1σ from it) when it comes to the distribution of Earths, whatever that means.
4724013
True very true its very likely we are somewhere in the average (where exactly in average though is up for debate)
Still that's provided our species possesses the ability and imagination to grasp the full range of different possibly earths earths and that there aren't a googleplex more in there that we're not taking into a account cause our human minds are simply incapable of grasping them
4720598 that was beautiful, why can't we live in a universe like that?
4724207
Actually that's valid even if we cannot imagine them. The rule is based on pure math and valid independent of what it's being applied to, provided only the distribution of Earths follow a normal curve. What this curve is about, or the quantity of whatever it's about, doesn’t change the probabilities. In fact, the more Earths there is, the better the values fit.
4725101
Guess I can't argue with Math. Still there's always a chance that we're not average and that we just think we are. So yes while in all likelyhood we are based on probability still probability is not a definitive answer and therefore I can't help but wonder.
Long distance translocation involves a perfect vacuum? That's quite odd...
I don't know why bad things happen to good ponies but it might have something to do with the fact that she started a giant snow bunny hutch.
4725788
Oh, you're one of those 'personal responsibility' types, huh? I bet you think that I'm at fault when I fuck up or something! Why can't we just agree that when a pony screws the pooch and plows straight into the ground, it's somepony else's fault? That's just reasonable.
Darn personal responsibility activists always trying to make everything about the individual! Yeesh!
I'm really liking actually reading this like a serial for a change. It reminds me of what it might have been like to read novels when they came out in installments. When I was growing up, there were a few publications, like Analog and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and F&SF, that sometimes had a serial, but the form is basically dead on paper.
I was reading Bleak House a few years ago and its structure reminded me how it, too, came out in installments. A lot changed when publishing hardbound books became relatively cheap.
4720375
In my view, it is human nature itself that makes it essentially impossible for us to agree. After all, we all have to agree, and from a game theoretical perspective, that makes the reward so high for one who defaults from the agreement that again, human nature being what it is, someone will default. Humans are a species doomed to make the wrong choice in Prisoner's Dilemma situations basically forever. As long as we're human.
4724013
Maybe I'll get around to writing it someday!
Also, bear in mind we have only one data point, so we don't even have a good estimate for the standard deviation.
4726036
That makes me happy! I am trying to perform at the level of my past works - a chapter a day, regular as clockwork - but we may be delayed with Chapter 5 by one day because I had a terrible - just awful - migraine.
Please bear with me, if I can't finish my writing today.
4726036
That's why it's an idealization. It's possible, but so vanishingly unlikely. It's the best outcome, but it's also the one we're least likely to reach.
But I like the dream. It gets me through the day.
Importantly, though, (and on the original vein of conversation) that human inclination to put the self above the group is one of the things that the Chatoverse's non-scarcity driven world fixes, as well. Without an evolutionary impetus towards greed, and /with/ an evolutionary impetus to work together as a group, that sort of thing slides so far out of left field as to become unthinkable.
Still, I'm going to hold out hope until the bitter end that eventually the better ideals of humanity will win out, even if it has to come by medium of a singularity or alien intervention or the natural evolution into something descended from humanity but as separate from it as we are from Australopithecus.
It's important to me, to keep onto that idea that we can be better than what we are, you know?
4726248
I can be patient. As serializations go, for instance, Laurence Sterne took seven years to write and release all nine parts of Tristram Shandy.
4726248
That's okay Chatty do take your time your stuff is worth the wait. Hope you get to feeling better
The plot thickens. The Princesses, were obviously there because of something to do with the bunny ranch. Also, Front Page is a most amusing OC.
Something I meant to ask about, but didn't remember to until now:
This confuses (or intrigues) me. We the audience (and any newfoals who think about it) know that the Sisters can be in many places at once in the non-physical sense, as they can be in many "conversion dreams" that must have been overlapping. They can, should they choose, access a lot of information through similar means. Celestia even did the whole "a ghost for every child" bit with the Good Families. So they could be everywhere and know everything, it seems. Is there a catch I'm missing? Do they simply choose not to do so? Or is this just the limited knowledge of the characters?
This seems to be getting serious already if both of them are around...
...Discord? *later* Yup! Stuff about a ship? "Avoid the bones?" They're out sailing on a trip through the Astral Plane or something?
Maybe it's a game for her?
I felt a few tears just thinking of how awful it'd be to lose your best friend...okay correction: sister, but she was both to her...
In other words, an old cat lady's home filled with living cyrogenic bombs that startle easy; that was just a tragedy waiting to happen! I know where she was coming from trying to keep them safe, but still...
...that'd be unfortunate; seems even inside of extropic realms good things come to an end eventually.
So now they've got teleporters all over? See, we do have good ideas when we're not trying to jab each other with the latest in pointy sticks!
Why do I have an image of a pony in a Vault-Tec suit from Fallout in my mind just now (with a green dyejob)?
Uh oh...and I'm guessing a lengthy scolding speech follows from here...
Another lovely 4-6 AM read, and as much as I'd like to find out what happens next, I feel myself aching more as I need to sleep and work (not this morning though). So enough commentary from me tonight!
EDIT: Derp, missed the last few lines as I was tired when I read it, so we don't see the speech.
4718605
I may be looking into it too much but if what I think is going on actually is, it raises some VERY uncomfortable questions about TCB and Optimalverse stories.
9403496
The true nature of my Bureau Equestrian cosmos... and the nature of the Optimalverse are not... entirely... different. I was playing with that notion, there. In my original Bureau stories, I early on determined that there would be no magic, that everything was super-advanced technology. I don't do... magic. As such. Just Clarkian 'magic' - "Any sufficiently advanced technology...". You know.
My Equestria is a 'virtual' world, in a sense. It is constructed by the ruins of a Krawlni Multiversal Mover, essentially a 'flying' (through the multiversal interstice) Krell Machine, for an easy explanation. The things it 'virtually' creates are physically real by any human measure, it can create and dissolve life, it can manufacture matter, it can make pocket realities and compact universes. It's basically a Krell Machine with engines and... wings. Sort of.
But it was originally designed to reconstruct or project anything, literally anything. It was an exploration ship, and the way such a super-advanced ship scans something is to recreate it within itself using hyperdimensional means. If a passing Krawlni crew wanted to scan, say, your home - to see what a human was - they would simply manufacture a pocket universe onboard with an exact replica of the chunk of the continent you lived on. A completely alive perfect copy of you - and everyone else within that several thousand miles wide area - would just blink a few times, and then go about their day. Now the Krawlni could do anything with you they wanted to, to study what they had replicated, without touching or disturbing the original earth, or original you. They could vivisect you and then restore you from backup. They could see what humans do when meteors rain down. They could flood the continent. They could release plague rats and study death rates. They could reset the entire pocket universe and try something else. And the version of you would be fully alive, fully aware, and fully you... just a perfect duplication of you. The Kralwni do not have any human sense of ethics or morals, they operate beyond human understanding.
Thankfully, all the Krawlni are long dead on this particular, broken down Mover, and only a handful of simple machines are still working. Those trivial devices - a navigation unit, an environmental box - these become our uber-godlike alicorns and Discord. Which should give you a notion about the Kralwni who built them and consider them cheap tools, easily replaced.
In effect, the Optimalverse is simple tech, while the Mover that is the foundation of my Bureau Equestria is advanced tech. The difference is between a caveman's torch and the entire electrical grid for the whole of North America - but the function is the same: to make light happen inside the place you live. The function is the same, to make a 'virtual world' with living minds in it.
And thus my little reference between Caelum and the Bureau.