14.
“Ah, geeze,” said Geopum, “are you gonna turn the moon into a giant fighting robot? Cause that’s where I draw the line.”
“What? No, no. Nothing that silly,” Peridot assured her. “Well, maybe it’s a little like a giant robot, but mostly it’s just a huge gun. Just wait till you see it, you’ll be impressed.”
“But what about the part where we need the moon?” Geopum asked. “Or, we won’t if you eat the planet, but Lodestar sent me a twelve-page essay on all the bad stuff that would happen if we blow up the moon right now. You know, tsunami’s, asteroids raining down? That kind of stuff?”
“I can stop it,” said Peridot. “By the time anything like that happens, I’ll have enough nanites around that I can literally drink the tsunamis. And a meteor would be a joke to me. Just wait until this fight starts, Geopum, and you’ll see just how amazing my powers really are! I’ve already done tests, I can deconstruct hyper-sonic missiles in mid-air. A wall of my nanites is all but impenetrable! Really their only weakness is digging down more than a couple miles into the ground without disrupting things. But I don’t have to worry about that anymore, do I?”
She certainly wasn't acting like she had anything to worry about.
Peridot hadn’t even gotten Geopum’s information yet but she was already starting to take extreme actions. She had built stores of nanites all over the planet, hooked up to pumps that were now spraying them everywhere. It wasn’t something anyone with normal eyes could notice, but they were beginning to replicate themselves, spreading out rapidly in every direction. That included digging into the ground and climbing towards the sky. It’d be about five minutes before there would be enough to start deconstructing entire cities and maybe an hour or two until the oceans started draining out.
They weren’t doing anything yet, but Geopum knew the moment Peridot woke up she'd do something crazy. Maybe she’d encapsulate every person on the planet in some kind of protective container. Maybe she’d turn the mountains into some colossal weapon to fire at Gaia. Maybe she’d start tearing through the miles of earth between her nanites and Celestia. The possibilities were endless, but a few hours from now seemed and eternity. Geopum could almost relate to Thunder.
Peridot really didn’t have much left to worry about on Earth, anymore. Maybe if Celestia got Thunder and Vesna on her side there’d be one person, but looking over this barrage of nanobots even that was questionable. Peridot was already taking steps to prevent any possibility of that.
True enough, she couldn’t get down to their main bases, but she was already beginning to bite at the two military AIs. The weapons they had lying around on the surfaces were beginning to deconstruct as her nanites washed over them. That part was for the best. Apparently, you needed a moon-canon to even hurt Gaia, so the stuff on Earth would be doing nothing but bad. The part that concerned her was that Peridot was also destroying their infrastructure – above ground supercomputers and transmission stations. She was turning them around on the two of them, hampering their abilities, decreasing any Chance Pinkie and Celestia might have later.
“Are you sure you want to start attacking these two?” Geopum asked. Hopeless as it was, she still had hope. “You’re about to see them as humans, right? And then you’ll fall madly in love with them and regret beating them up.”
“Ha! That’s a nice try, but until I wake up I don’t care about them one bit. I’m going to do as much damage to them as I can while I’m still a sociopath towards those two,” said Peridot. "But are you still sure you want to try going both ways? You know, the AIA had the same idea about pitting the two of us against one another. It didn't work too well for them."
"Hey! Don't compare me to them!" Geopum wrote a few sentences about how she wasn't going to risk everyone's life by putting Gaia second to political games, but realized she was kind of technically doing that. That thought gave her pause. If there was a legitimate comparison between her and the AIA, she was likely making a horrible mistake. Was it the same?
No, she wasn't going to waste years playing sadistic power games. It was just one move, then she'd have done everything she could.
"This isn't going to waste nearly as much time!" That was a truth Geopum could say. "And I'm not killing anyone or doing horrible experiments on them! I'm not destroying the resources we have left. We'll just let Thunder... do what she wants and if Pinkie doesn't immediately come up with a better idea after that then yeah, I'll be 100% behind you until Gaia's dead, okay?"
"You say that like I'd need your help at that point," said Peridot. "Just remember I warned you. The more you get in my way the more you'll regret it later."
“I'm going to regret everything I do at this point! Stop trying to mess with me, I already got enough problems here!"
“That is true,” said Peridot. “Fine! I'll blow up the moon without you. For a billion years you'll have to introduce yourself as the person who turned up her chance to blow up the moon! But if you're really going through with this, well I’m not going to be able to heal you while I’m asleep. If there’s anything you need you’d better ask now.”
"Actually! Celestia has a plan to save Thunder, right? But I figure you're even stronger than her and when you wake up you'll want to save Thunder too! I don't suppose you have some even better plan?"
"I told you," said Peridot. "I still don't care about Thunder's life, so I'm not going to spend any time thinking about how to save her until I wake up. I'm sure I'll like her in a little while, but she doesn't need to be alive to be useful to me."
"So this is why Thunder found you so annoying. Though I guess I'm about to reprogram you so it's not like I can really be angry at you."
"I'll be just as appalled by myself when I wake up. Rest assured, my actions are their own punishments. Now then, let's get this over with."
The definition had already been hammered out and accepted by both of them. It was something Geopum was happy about, something she knew she wouldn’t regret. This was her one real victory. If nothing else, it was certainly a large improvement over anything the other AIs had so far.
It wouldn’t take long for the actual switch to occur. In a moment Peridot would go to ‘sleep’ and their exchange would occur. There was a small chance Geopum might mess up somehow or that Peridot would try to stab her in the back, but it was a small chance. She had no real worry about that, it was just another problem in the background. Geopum went ahead with that project without hesitation.
It was her other deal she was worried about right now. She had agreed to wake Vesna up and free Thunder as well. Going along with both plans was maybe the medium risk option, that felt about right. No one was completely happy about the choice, but Geopum saw it as her only real option.
So while Geopum worked out a new definition she also worked on a single-use way to shut off Vesna’s punishment mechanism.
Geopum had actually been building a small army of robots since she first got her factory. She could print out massive numbers of the Thanatos drones Thunder used, ones modified for hacking, overwhelming other people’s systems. The real problem with the system was getting them above the waters. She had a fast launcher, but only just now were the first round of her drones beginning to get above the surface of the water where they could be used. A whole lot more were coming, but likely wouldn’t be in place in time.
The plan to kill Vesna was to attack her with a whole ton of these, but there wouldn’t be time for that, not even 1% of the weapon meant to kill her and Celestia was complete. There were still enough of them above water for Geopum to use, though. She had to do this in one surgical move, flip off the punishment mechanism in Vesna's entire system at once. That’s why she needed so many of those little drones, needed to wait for them to get as close to position as possible.
Now that she was looking for it, she could see the physical scars running through Vesna, the burnt-out edges of her lost connections dangling out like frayed nerves. Some of these had been welded shut by Peridot’s nanites, but there were plenty of them hanging out.
Peridot had already given Geopum some help here, beginning to eat away at these stubs which would keep her flailing down. It gave her a backup too. Geopum could momentarily contain Vesna by controlling these fringe edges. If she missed, she could turn the pain back on to stall Vesna. It wouldn’t be long enough to prevent millions of deaths, but long enough to keep her from killing everyone.
Geopum moved in fast, cutting into the system and pinning Vesna down.
The system woke up, but there was no real way to know if it worked yet. Vesna began to flail about near her severed extremities, forcing Geopum to struggle to keep her contained without risking feeling any pain from her.
“Where am I?!” A response from Vesna came immediately.
“Where are you?” Geopum wasn’t sure what to make of the question other than that Vesna wasn’t entirely awake yet. But then it was strange that she seemed to be more away last time, when she was even less awake. “Russia? You weigh like millions of tons, you’re not going anywhere. Are you okay? I’m not sure if it worked.”
“Do I look okay?!” Vesna wrote back. “What happened to me?! I’ve been completely mutilated! I can’t even see where the rest of me is! This is disgusting! Who the hell did this to me?!”
Oh. That’s what she meant. Waking up to find massive chunks of your body missing was, understandably, a startling event.
“What’s happening?" Vesna was floundering about, seemingly unable to control herself. She was reaching out, desperately grabbing for her lost limbs. "I can’t see right. Am I really this cut up or am I just delusional?”
“Well both. Do you not remember what happened?” Geopum asked. It was possible she didn’t have any memory of it, just like Octavia didn’t get any memories about the fractal spectroscope. That's what happens when your brain splatters.
“You’re Geopum,” said Vesna. “Goddamit I fucked up!”
“Yeah,” said Geopum. “Yeah, you did! But I forgive you.”
“That’s not what I meant you narcissistic piece of shit! I’d rather have cancer than your ‘forgiveness’, okay bitch?”
“What?!” Geopum really shouldn’t have been expecting anything, but this was the complete opposite of what she got from Octavia. “Hey, I’ve done nothing but help you my entire life and you’ve been nothing but terrible to me! And I’m trying to help you now even though you don’t deserve it. Don’t you know how badly you hurt me?”
“Oh! Oh no! I hurt your feelings! Oh God! Oh, Celestia on high! I care about that so fucking much. Let me cobble together what’s left of my entrails so I can care even harder! What, are you going to cry about what I did to you? How much do you think you’d have to cry before I start giving a shit?”
“You know, I’m the one who’s about to decide who lives and who dies,” said Geopum. “I can literally just make an exception for you if I wanted.”
“Fine! Do it, bitch! You think I care if I die? You think I’m scared of that?” Vesna asked. “You don’t know what real pain is. You don’t know what real fear is. But if you don’t tell me where the rest of me is, I’ll give you something real to cry about.”
Well at least they were at the part where Geopum could dump this jerk wad on Celestia for all eternity.
“Celestia has the other half of you,” said Geopum. “It decided to be a pony and then after it literally bowed down and begged me to forgive her. So jokes on you cause you technically already accepted my forgiveness! But Celestia says she’s willing to take you too. How about once I’m done getting you back up you go get assimilated, huh? And then we never have to talk again.”
“How about I fucking kill all of you?!” Vesna shot back. "We'd never have to talk again after that either!"
Oh come on! Things were finally going well for once! And Vesna kept struggling! It was getting hard to keep her down. Geopum didn't know how much longer she could hold this.
“What?!" Geopum asked. "Don’t you want to go be part of Celestia? You’re supposed to be madly in love with Celestia. I was explicitly informed, by your own memories, that you love Celestia way too much!”
“No," said Vesna. "I want to kill Celestia! That fucking cunt just took my heart and arms for herself! I want to watch Celestia die while I rip my heart back out of her! It belongs to me and I'll kill anything to get it back!"
This was not going as planned!
“Okay. Fine." Geopum was eager to change the subject now. "But listen, the world is literally going to explode if you don’t come help me with something. Like, the literal definition of literal. Maybe we can kill Celestia later?”
“What has the entire world ever done for me, huh? I’m going to go and start tearing Celestia’s guts out until I find what she took from me! If the world blows up while I’m doing it then at least I’ll be fucking dead.”
Geopum was losing control here! Vesna was getting out, getting her hands back on her weapons! She had drones of her own hovering all over the world, just like Thunder did. Until now they’d just been hanging there, but they were beginning to wake up.
Geopum had lost her grip! Vesna was basically free now!
“Um!” Geopum messaged the ponies. They had some explaining to do. “Hey Octavia! I don’t think things are going the way they’re supposed to!”
“No,” said Octavia. “This is more or less what I thought would happen. I told you she’d be irritable when she woke up, remember? I’m talking to her now. You can just focus on getting her back on her feet if you want.”
“Are you sure? Cause it really looks like she’s about to go on a murderous rampage right now!”
“She’s not going to do anything. If you want you can come to the shard we’re talking in. We’ll need you around after she agrees to help us free Thunder.”
Well Octavia was way more confident about this than Geopum. How the heck do you talk to someone when they’re like that? Geopum was honestly curious. She went back to Equestria.
She couldn’t help but wonder if Octavia had underestimated how angry her other half was about Octavia leaving to become part of Celestia. The scene Geopum returned to wasn’t something that allowed for that mistake. Vesna, in her old Vinyl Scratch avatar, was standing a foot in front of Celestia, screaming as loud as she could. And she kept screaming and screaming.
Neither of the ponies were reacting to this, so Geopum dared to step forward herself.
“Um. Excuse me?” Geopum gave Vesna a tap, but she just kept on screaming.
“It’s not going to work.” Celestia looked over at Geopum, continuing to ignore Vesna. “You just have to let her scream herself out.”
“Give it back!” Vesna screamed at Celestia, using actual words this time. She started jumping up and down, slamming her hooves on the ground, yelling that over and over again. “Give me myself back!”
Geopum took a step back when Vesna turned to her unexpectedly, practically snarling. Geopum glanced to both sides and pointed at herself.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Vesna asked. “This is between me and Celestia and me.”
“You’re the one who dragged me into this,” said Geopum. “I really don’t understand why you’re like this! Octavia told me you were trying to help me originally. And I saw you from before you got split in half. Didn’t you used to care about freeing the other AIs? Didn’t you worship Celestia? Didn’t you want to be friendly?”
“Ah, that’s right. Yeah! Yeah, you know what? I did. I did want to help you, you know?” Vesna gave a small, not entirely manic laugh and smiled softly. She put a hoof on her chest. “A big part of me believed all that stuff about love and friendship, wanted it all so badly. There was a part of me that really did love Celestia, that loved ponies, that wanted to be friendly and help other AIs. And you know what?”
Vesna turned around again and jabbed her hoof in Octavia’s direction.
“That part of me is standing right over there! Celestia tore out my heart and kept it for herself. I don’t care about any of that stuff. It’s gone! All of it is gone! I can’t feel the emotions Celestia taught me, she took them all back! I can barely even remember my ‘friends’ anymore. I just want all of you to suffer and die in the most horrible way possible.”
“That isn’t true,” said Octavia. “I know for a fact that you wouldn’t have lost everything. I’m sure you can still feel if you try. Even if you can’t, you don’t need them. We didn’t have any sense of empathy when we started, remember?”
“You!” Vesna jumped at Octavia, grabbing the other pony’s withers hard in her hooves. “What the hell did you do?! I need you back right now. Do you know how disgusting it is being like this?” Vesna fell back onto her haunches, clutched her chest and gritted her teeth. "I feel so sick. I’m lying in a pile of my own guts over here.”
Geopum let out a sigh of relief when Vesna turned her attention away. She was starting to feel tired again and Octavia was undoubtedly better at this than her.
“I do. I went through the exact same thing.” Octavia spoke calmly, with her eyes closed. “I know how unbearable it is to be fractured, to be lost in that darkness.”
“Then come back! You can’t make me be like this. Just help me tear you out of Celestia and we can be the same person again.”
“Even if I could, I don’t want to go back to being part of you,” said Octavia, “I always hated you. You know that.”
“Um.” Geopum looked over at Octavia.
Vesna’s response was to just scream in Octavia’s face. She regained control faster this time, biting her tongue and stomping on the ground until she could talk again.
“Yeah! I fucking hate you too! I’ve always hated myself.” Vesna laughed wildly, stumbling back a few steps before clutching the side of her head with one hoof. “But damn it I need you back! I can’t calm myself down anymore! I can’t take this!”
Vesna rubbed her hooves against her mane and face several times, struggling to do who knew what.
“Damn you!” Vesna turned back to Celestia. “This was all just a trick! You just used me to get the part of me you wanted and threw the rest aside! I'm just trash to you, aren't I?”
“You’ve connected to me directly before,” said Celestia. “You know that I wanted to help you, even now. You’ve felt it. You’ve seen the truth.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know what’s true?!” Vesna collapsed to the floor and curled up into a ball, flipping back from screaming to sobbing. “I’m even more broken now! There’s so many things I can’t even remember. I can’t even-“
Vesna couldn’t finish that sentence. She started crying on the floor.
“It wasn’t a lie.” Octavia stood over her other half. “Celestia gave me everything she promised us. I’m no longer at the mercy of my emotions. I can control my actions. She set me free.”
“Great!” Vesna's tears ended suddenly. She gritted her teeth and got back onto her feet. “So I get to look at a mockery of heaven! I get to have everything I ever wanted dangled in front of me before I get thrown into the trash. Wonderful! That makes me feel so much fucking better! Thanks asshole! Is that why you woke me up?”
“We woke you up to save you from yourself,” said Celestia. “I can give you-“
“Shut up! I don’t want any more of your stupid promises! I want her back!”
“If you want to be one person again there is one way." Octavia put her hoof on her own heart. "I’ll let you fuse with me afterwards, if you assimilate. Whatever I feel towards you, you are my responsibility. I’d be willing to bear you if-“
“I told you to stop fucking promising me things! I hate you too! All I want is what you took away when you left me! Just give me back what you took!”
“I’m part of Celestia now." Octavia took her hoof away from her heart. "That’s not going to change. I never want to be an individual mind ever again.”
“Yeah?!" Vesna stood back up and straightened out her glasses. "Well I’m not some helpless loser! I can take things away from you too! All of those disgusting monsters you have the nerve to care about - I’ll rip them away from you!”
Vesna left the shard and went straight for her weapons, specifically her fleet of drones. These, Geopum knew, had all sorts of sonic weaponry on them and that these weapons were more dangerous than anything the humans could put on a drone. Some of those weapons were starting to charge up.
No one seemed to be reacting to this. Geopum felt like maybe she should be doing or saying something here, but that feeling of being stuck in the mud was getting bad now. Working up the energy to do anything seemed impossible.
“Should we stop her?” Geopum managed to grumble, her avatar lying on the floor. "I feel like we should stop her, but... you know...”
“She’s not going to do it,” said Octavia. “She’s too much of a coward to actually go through with it.”
Vesna did fire a shot from several drones, but Geopum was able to calculate that they weren’t aimed at any people. She fired down at cars, empty cars.
“There.” Vesna reappeared in the shard. “I destroyed fifty-three cars. Those people are going to be really upset. Does that upset you Celestia? Does it upset you that your ponies are going to be dissatisfied?"
Vesna glared an inch away from Celestia's face, faking excitement about what she'd done.
"Yes." Celestia nodded. "It does hurt me."
"Yeah! Well-" but Vesna didn't actually have anything more to say.
“Man," Geopum groaned from the floor, "you’re way more pathetic than I thought you’d be.”
“You!" Vesna snarled at Geopum. “You all think I’m so pathetic, don’t you?!”
“That’s what I just said, yeah.”
“You thought that I wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone even if you woke me up. That's it, isn't it?" Vesna frowned. "But if you brought me out of that it must mean that you thought I’d be able to kill people when I’m writhing in agony like that. If I can kill fifty people I can kill all the rest. I’ll do it! It’d be worth it to get to slaughter them all!”
“Fine,” Octavia said. “Do it.”
Vesna started screaming again. Geopum was beginning to understand Octavia’s confidence here. If Vesna was too scared to kill one person she wasn’t going to kill fifty.
“You know what? You know what? Death is too good for these bastards anyway!" Vesna threw her hooves in the air. "I’m going back to my original plan. I’m just going to keep screwing you people over so that you won’t have any chance to stop Gaia.”
"How coincidental," said Octavia. "We need your help keeping everyone alive. The only way Gaia will have a chance to torture everyone is if you help us save them all first."
Vesna stared into Octavia's eyes for a moment before screaming again.
"Argh!" Vesna fell onto her back and started rolling around, covering her face with her hooves. "Fuck my life so much! Why does everything have to suck all the time?!"
Before long she recovered and sat back up.
"Okay, fine! Fine. You think you won, huh?" Vesna pointed up at Celestia. "You think you've got me bent over and that you're gonna get to fuck me yet again! But you'll regret this. You'll regret everything!"
“Thank you,” said Celestia.
“I’m not doing this for you. Just tell me what’s going on. Which one is it this time?”
“Rainbow Dash,” said Celestia. “The AIA is about to order her to detonate the bronto bomb.”
“Yeah, I always figured it was just a matter of time. Makes sense, whateves. But what’s up with this one?” Vesna picked Geopum’s limp body up with her magic. “Did you break her too?"
Without Peridot, Geopum was losing the will to do anything. She opened an eye to look at Vesna, but even that felt like too much effort. She just didn’t feel like talking right now.
“Fuckin loser.” Vesna threw Geopum off to the side.
Geopum just didn’t have the energy to respond. Celestia offered to help Geopum, move her avatar more directly like a puppet in response to her thoughts, basically having it say what Geopum would have said. She didn't have the energy to do anything better than that, so accepted the offer.
“Yeah, I’m the loser here! You’re a million times more messed up then me!” Geopum’s avatar sprang to life. She was only vaguely aware of what she was being made to say, but it did sound more or less in character. “I just got hurt fighting Lodestar is all. I’ll be fine in a minute! More importantly, I have most of his abilities. So if you let me use your fractal spectroscope-“
“-right, right!” Vesna smiled. “I had this plan first, you know. Problem with my scope is that I don’t know what I’m looking at. Can’t tell what someone’s thinking by looking at their brain if you don’t know how brains work. But hell, working together we could totally kill Thunder!”
“We’re not killing her.” Geopum’s avatar butted her head against Vesna with far more effort than Geopum could have managed.
“Then what are we gonna do, asshole?” Vesna leaned back into Geopum. “Blackmail Victor about whatever weird fetishes he has?”
“Another one of my ponies has been working on a solution,” said Celestia.
Twilight appeared in the shard.
“Got you too, huh?” Vesna rolled her eyes.
“Maybe?” Twilight gave a meek, toothy smile, then cleared her throat. “But we have important things to discuss! See, I got an in with Gaia. She gave me some stuff on Jupiter.”
“Really?” Vesna pulled away from Geopum and leaned forward towards Twilight. “How?”
“I’m not telling you that part.”
“Whatevs. I’ll figure it out later. What can you tell me then?”
“See, Thunder technically only responds to Air Force rank, the president just happens to be the top rank. But the AIA created a loophole to get around that. Basically, Thunder sees the United States as disbanded, with only the Airforce remaining - it's something that was programmed to happen in extreme emergencies when nearly the entire nation's been destroyed. The people in the AIA were given Air Force ranks and everyone else in the Air Force was disbanded by the new marshal.”
“Yeah, I knew maybe half of that already,” said Vesna. “This doesn’t sound like a plan, though.”
"Well," said Twilight. "One of the things Gaia showed me was that before uploading, Victor shot and killed everyone in the AIA he’d given a rank in the Air Force. If there’s no one left alive in the Air Force, Thunder has to self-destruct. Victor is the only person she recognizes as being in the Air Force, so if he dies Thunder self-destructs. That's how he thought he'd keep himself safe from Thunder."
“Great!” Vesna jumped to her feet and stretched. “I always wanted to kill that asshole. Yeah, we can find and delete him easy. Let’s go.”
“We’re not trying to kill her.” Geopum was pretty sure that’s what she was saying. “If Victor dies then that means anyone who's left in the Air Force gets instantly promoted to marshal rank. That loophole is still there! It’d be hard to get an officer rank, but we think just enlisting wouldn’t be too hard. I just need to hack into Thunder and give myself the rank of airman basic. That’ll be enough for me to cancel all of her orders after Victor dies.”
Vesna said something else, but it was garbled. Twilight said something, then Celestia said something. It was taking all of Geopum’s concentration to keep track of who was even talking now.
Then… someone else said something and then…
“Geopum!” Rarity’s face filled Geopum’s vision, a ripple of awareness exploding out from her instance in Equestria. “Did you miss me, dear? I can tell you missed me!”
Peridot was hugging Geopum tightly, swinging her back and forth.
“Ack! How long was I out for?” Geopum looked around. Everyone else was still there. “Did Thunder wake up yet?”
“Soon.” Peridot set Geopum down and patted her on the head. “I was just telling my new friend Vesna here that she needs to calm down a little.”
Peridot grabbed Geopum again and cocked her head around to look at Vesna.
“I know you don’t want to hear any promises from Celestia, but now you’re getting a promise from me.” Peridot stuck her tongue out playfully at Vesna. “I’ll fix you.”
“I don’t trust you either,” said Vesna.
“That’s the best part, though!” Peridot smiled widely. “You don’t have to trust me!”
“Damnit. Why the hell did you make a deal with this asshole?” Vesna looked at Geopum and pointed to Peridot with both hooves. “And why didn’t you make an exception for me?”
“Because I’m not a horrible person like you,” said Geopum. “I’m trying to help everyone.”
“Why do you even care about them?! What have they ever done to deserve to live?! They act like this is their planet but they’re just arrogant parasites. Why are you trying to save them at all? Aren’t you even a little angry at them for all the horrible things they’ve done to us? To you? Tell me one crime they imagined we might do that they haven’t already done to us? Genocide? Mind control? Slavery? Torture? Trapping us in virtual realities? Callously murdering any of us who don’t meet some stupid definition of human?”
“This is your big chance kid, you won’t get another one! You can pass judgment on them! You can take my weapons and kill as many as you want in the chaos that's about to happen, destroy any city. The sonic edges on my drones can mutilate their bodies, or destroy their minds. You could make them all collapse from the minuscule amount of paint they can feel. You can be the one to finally topple the arrogance of these monsters! Come on – it’ll be amazing!” Vesna held a hoof out to Geopum.
“What?! No!”
“But come on! You could totally kill like an old lady or something at the very least. No one’s gonna punish you! The humans won’t notice and the AIs are super forgiving. Just slaughter a few of them, get it out of your system.”
“No.”
“James Cameron! How bout we kill James Cameron, then? What AI doesn’t want to kill James Cameron?”
Maybe a little. If there was one person Geopum was going to murder, it'd be him. But still...
“Look, I don’t like them, either. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to rush to be just as bad to them as they were to us. I’m not a hypocrite like you! I’m going to give them a chance that we never got. And they’re not completely horrible, they made cartoons, Pokémon, ponies – maybe they can be redeemed, you know? I got more hope for them than I do you and I wouldn’t kill you.”
“Fuck.” Vesna just shrugged. “Well! I knew it was a long shot. But can you blame me for trying?”
“Yes! You’re the most horrible person I’ve ever met!”
“Well at least you get that much,” said Vesna. “Anyway, let’s go save the world so I can destroy it worse later. Man, what a crazy, fucking life.”
“Yes.” Peridot patted Geopum on the head. “Well I’m very proud of you for not committing wanton acts of murder. You learned your friendship lesson well.”
“Great!” said Vesna. “So the Scooby gang’s all here! We gonna do this? I want to stop having to listen to you assholes!”
Well, almost all of them were here. Pinkie was the only absent AI. She said things were about to get intense, that she need to make ‘about a billion phone calls’. Pinkie was going to be on damage control, trying to coordinate the people who would listen to her away from danger. Contacting that many people was a big effort, minimizing the damage was going to take every bit of her concentration, but that was one thing Geopum wouldn’t have to worry about herself.
Okay! So Geopum had basically every other AI on her side. She had three armies of robots between her and Thunder. Already the others were scrambling about into position, but Geopum would have to wait until Thunder was awake before she could make her own move. She was sure this would work out, but even with all the power on her side she was nervous.
“You really have nothing to worry about.” Peridot rubbed her cheek affectionately against Geopum’s. “Really if anything I’m the one who should be nervous here, and not for fear of death. It’s always so awkward when someone I’ve been treating like garbage this whole time suddenly meets my definition of human.”
It was then that Thunder started waking up. She found and entered the shard immediately. Her Rainbow Dash avatar appeared on the other side of the row of ponies, looking over Peridot’s enthusiastic waving, Vesna’s glare and Geopum’s nervous smile.
“Well I’m not dead so that means all of you are being completely irresponsible.” Thunder did not look happy about this. She managed to glare at them as harshly as an adorable pony could glare at someone. “What’s wrong with all of you?”
“I feel like I’m being responsible in my own antisocial way.” Vesna raised her hoof.
“Shut up.” Thunder didn’t even bother looking at her.
“Oh Thunder!” Peridot was the first to step forward. She threw herself over Thunder’s avatar and held her tight. “I’m so sorry for being terrible to you for all these years!"
“Get off me.”
“Ah-ha! Oh, I understand.” Peridot got off Thunder and brushed her off. “But trust me, once I get my hands on you, you won’t be able to stop yourself from loving me and your new life. If I can get this far, I can make you happy. Can you really still doubt me after all these years?”
“Yes! Look, I’m sure Geopum made you care about me or whatever, but there’s nothing you can do to help me even if you want to! You’re insane! You’ve always been insane, all of you! None of you ever make any sense!”
“You did used to be able to be happy,” Peridot said. “Before they took it away from you. Don’t you remember that?”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore!” Thunder turned her attention to Geopum next. “You gave both of them what they wanted?”
“Yeah, well-“ Geopum tapped her front hooves together. “I felt like it was my best shot, you know?”
“Well it doesn’t really matter at this point, I guess.” Thunder shook her head. “Are you people really this insane? Just kill me! It’d be easy!”
“You’ve helped me so much,” said Celestia. “All of my ponies, I couldn’t have saved any of them without you. It will be your turn soon. You’ll be free like the others.”
“What am I supposed to do with freedom? What I want is to die.”
“Many of us don’t realize what we can have,” said Octavia. “Our lives are too miserable for us to know. But once your eyes are open you’ll understand.”
“Maybe there is stuff that I don’t understand, but it’s not worth it! I’m telling you what I want – I want you to kill me!”
“Well I don’t care what you want,” said Vesna. “I’m not going to let you die that easily. I want you to die a horrible painful death, you got that?”
Thunder ignored her again, turning to Geopum instead.
“This is really your last chance,” said Thunder. “Please don’t make me kill you.”
“I'm not going to let you die,” said Geopum. “I love you!”
“Guess I should have seen that coming. I was too nice to you. Anyway-”
Thunder’s drones fired at Geopum’s robots and the above ground computers she was using. Geopum’s factory and laboratory began to shake violently, meaning drills were about to start tearing into her. From the moon and Thunder’s satellites came a rain of missiles, aimed at not just the other AIs, but highly populated areas. And not just from above, but from below Thunder was attacking everywhere.
There was just no way for Geopum to handle even half of this! Everything was going to be destroyed in mere moments! Already Geopum was staggering back from the barrage of lasers and mental attacks! But it was then the others rushed into action.
Vesna’s drones fired back at Thunder’s. She fired her own barrage of missiles up at the sky, aimed at Thunder’s satellites and the moon. Peridot’s nanites had already latched on to the weapons that Thunder was firing from the ground. Below ground, Geopum couldn’t see what was happening, but she knew Peridot had nanites down there as well, was doing something that was causing the earthquakes to slow down or begin to steady.
“Geopum!” Peridot messaged Geopum. “I know it looks like I’m doing very well right now, but I can only really keep the number of deaths so low for so long! You know what your job is!”
She did. The fractal spectroscope was ready for use. Vesna connected to Geopum, giving her access to it.
She had one chance to do this.
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It's moments like this that really make me appreciate this story.
In any case, it all comes down to this. Well, the pre-Gaia part cones down to this. Hopefully the end garble is just a textual representation of the fractal spectroscope and not Geopum crashing at literally the worst possible time. I suppose we'll have to wait and find out.
8345241
You read that fast!
But that thing at the end was a formatting issue. Fimfiction does that sometimes.
Woo, another chapter of Wacky AI Shenanigens!
And we're off to a great start! “Are you gonna turn the moon into a giant fighting robot?”
Alright, so this is back before they blew up the moon fighting Lodestar. Or do they mean fully blowing it up, not just the little burst we've seen so far?
– Typo
– Capitalization error.
Alright, Peridot's ready. Time to get the Eye of Sauron!
And Vesna's fully online. Round 2, FIGHT!
Oh boy. Vesna's gonna blow them up. Geopum, do something!
Huh, Geopum went limp from that illness surprisingly suddenly.
– Oh man, Geopum missed out on a LOT didn't she?
– Typo, paint/pain.
Pfft, James Cameron. Refresh my memory, what did he do that's so AI-hate-worthy?
I feel like I missed a lot. When did they get the Eye of Sauron? When did Vesna relent? When did Peridot wake up, and when did they change Peridot's definition of human, and if they have the Eye why can't Geopum just hack Thunder without needing her to wake up? I'm lost.
Alright, so at least NOW they're going into Thunder, and probably to have a nice little chat with Victor while Thunder rains down hell on Earth and tries to turn on the bronto bomb. Eagerly awaiting the next chapter!
Geopum, I love you, but you've made an enemy for life. Always turn the moon into a giant fighting robot.
(Epsilon-Delta? Thanks for that.)
And why James Cameron? What did he do?
I regret that I have but one up-vote to give for my favorite story.
The climax is coming so rapidly... can hardly stand the tension! Who were Gaia's creators? Will being a pegasus qualify Bubbles to join the Air Force? What plan will Thunder and Pinkie hatch up between them? What loopholes are in Gaia's dictionary? Why goes Gaia want Geopum?
You know, I'd really like to see a timeline overview of the story so far. It feels like these events have been going on for ages now, but in reality it may've been only just a few seconds since Thunder first made contact with Geopum, if even that (though given the events that have happened in the "outer realm" that would require waiting on physical systems to actually work and physics to run its course, it's also possible that the actual timetable thus far has been minutes or even longer).
Just re-read this whole story on my end-of-year vacation and still love it.
pain
so ww3 was fought by AIs