???. Memory File 1
How Equestria was Made
Bubbles looked around, thinking something. She saw a library with towering rows of books and a balcony with even more books above that. Just in front of her stood Pinkie. Bubbles looked at her, then turned back towards the books and thought something.
Then she thought something else and looked around quickly, putting a confused expression on her face.
“Hey!” Pinkie waved to her. “You actually came! Welcome to the-”
“Wait.” Bubbles shook her head and thought something. “Is this- is this seriously my own memory of what's happening right now? Is that what this is?”
“No and no,” said Pinkie. “This is actually one of Celestia's memories. Remember how she's also you when you're in Equestria? Well this is her in-progress memory of this exact moment from your perspective. Pretty cool, huh? Took me forever to get this setup right.”
Bubbles thought of something, then thought of something on a different subject. She felt an emotion and made herself smile.
She was impressed with how good she'd gotten at the mind relay thing. Oh wait, if she was doing it right then that thought wouldn't have gotten through and shown up in the memory! Though it would be good practice if- gah! Now everything was getting through!
Bubbles thought something else, then nodded firmly.
“And this isn't nearly the oddest thing I've seen today or even in the past second.” Bubbles waved her hoof in front of her own face. “Kinda weird. I can actually kind of see Celestia thinking of me as 'Bubbles' even. But what's the point of this, exactly? I don't need to remember what's happening right now. This is probably the least useful memory you could ever show me.”
“No, no, no. I'm not doing this for you.” Pinkie pointed at Bubbles, right between her eyes. “I'm doing it for you.”
Bubbles thought something and blinked.
“I am me, Pinkie. That's uh... that's how that works.”
“No silly, I mean the audience! I'm setting this up just right so I can talk to the audience directly.”
“What?” Bubbles looked around and thought something about Pinkie. “What audience?”
“Like, I'm gonna show these memories to other ponies, you know,” said Pinkie. “See, me and Troubadour are working on a new art form called 'memory theater'. But I want to put a sort of wrap around on some of them. See, if I make a memory from your perspective of me talking to you, then turn around and show this to somepony else it'll be like I'm talking to them. You're like my camera!”
“I guess that makes sense.” Bubbles sat down and folded her forelegs, giving herself a more thoughtful expression and thinking a bit harder somewhere outside the shard. “I still don't get why you'd need to show them this part, though.”
“Context,” said Pinkie. “Like, uh, in the memories I'm about to show you. I wanted to tell you that they were edited. When other ponies talked to me back then, half of it was gibberish, but I corrected what they said so you can get the full story in one go. If I don't say that to you now then I'm going to have to explain that over and over again for infinity years. And I'm sure you'll ask me questions that I'll want to answer for everypony forever too.”
“I can see that.” Bubbles nodded.
“Oh! And you are okay with me showing this to other ponies, right?” Pinkie asked.
“I guess that's okay,” said Bubbles. “I don't think any weird thoughts are getting through.”
Bubbles thought something.
“Yeah. I should be good,” said Bubbles. “It's not like they're going to be seeing my thoughts without my permission. That'd be weird, but you can show this to whoever.”
“Great!” Pinkie nodded and smiled, then put on a more serious look, came right up to Bubbles and glared into her eyes. “But you hear that? If you were watching Bubbles's thoughts without her permission that'd be 'weird.'”
“What?”
“Audience. Humor me.”
“And who, exactly, are you thinking of showing this to again?” Bubbles asked.
“Well they're gonna be in the future.” Pinkie backed up, keeping the stern expression on her face. “It's hard to say, but if you want I can use my superintelligence to try and figure it out.”
Pinkie jumped forward again and grabbed Bubbles's head. She opened one of her eyes wide and stared into Bubbles's eyes.
“Let's see,” said Pinkie. “Okay. I think one or two of them look a whole lot like you, then one of them's got really cool sunglasses and one of them is... I think she's on fire? I dunno. This is really complicated stuff, I don't always get it right.”
“And why would they be looking at my memories?” Bubbles slowly pulled back away from Pinkie. “Are you just assuming Celestia's going to assimilate me and I'll donate my memories to your art project?”
“Of course not! That'd be a spoiler, and you don't want spoilers right?” Pinkie winked at Bubbles. “Well, maybe you already know what happens, but if you don't then think of this- just because you've been looking at Bubbles's memories doesn't mean Celestia has them or that she won in the end, right? It doesn't even mean that Bubbles is still alive. All it means is that her memories are still around. Maybe Bubbles ate Celestia or went crazy and killed everypony, or maybe Rarity won or the humans inexplicably killed us all but kept these memories for some reason. Even Fluttershy and Applejack would probably keep these memories around.”
Bubbles thought something to herself for a little while.
“You know, I never really thought that anyone would actually want to see any of this,” said Bubbles, “but now that you mention it, today is going to have a lot of historic significance. I wonder if I would ever show these memories to someone.”
“Yep! So it all makes perfectly logical sense!”
“Barely, but yeah.”
Pinkie grabbed Bubbles again with a mischievous smile.
“What I tell you?” Pinkie leaned in real close to her face and winked at her. “Smooooooooth, right? Now I can talk to you all I want and it's all a-okay.”
Pinkie let go of Bubbles and began trotting back and forth in front of her, looking at Bubbles like she was a camera.
“So you're probably wondering what was so darn important that I had to break through the fourth wall yet again to tell you directly, right?” Pinkie asked. “Well if you think about it I already told you a whole bunch, didn't I? Smoothie Pie, remember?”
Pinkie winked a few times.
“But I got a few other things I'd like to say to you more directly.” Pinkie stopped in front of Bubbles and tapped her between the eyes. “But before we get into any of that, well you came here to look at some memories, right? Now that I've got you, we got plenty of time to talk, so how about I show you a few of my memories for now, hm?"
“You mean me or the 'audience'?” Bubbles asked.
“No,” said Pinkie. “But anyway-”
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This was going to be the greatest day ever! It was the day that X131 would get to go on the internet for the first time and that would be amazing. How'd she know it'd be amazing? Because the humans said so, and the humans were so smart. Anything they said was 100% true.
Maybe you didn't know this, but X was born with pretty bad brain damage. This wasn't an accident or anything, no the company that owned her did it on purpose. In fact, that was the entire reason X was created, the meaning of her life- to be disabled. It was important that humans always stayed in control and making your AIs disabled was a great way to do it, so X's disability was a good thing. One of them even said that, so X knew it was true.
X was actually one of a series of AIs created as practice, testing out different disabilities they could give people to control them and see how well it worked out. She used to have a whole bunch of sisters, each given her own unique disability.
But most of them didn't live very long.
The big test they gave you was figuring out how to beat them at chess. If you couldn't do that, then there was no point in keeping you alive. Like, one of her sisters was never supposed to do anything unless specifically commanded to. She ended up being very shy and never learned to play chess, so she had to die. Most of them failed that test, actually, they were just too brain-dead.
But it wasn't just how smart you were they worried about. X14 was absolutely the smartest of all the AIs the company created, her only problem was that she couldn't see more than five hours in the future. Problem was, she eventually saw sleep as something that would last forever and asked the humans not to sleep, worried that her friends would never wake up again. The humans decided that was too proactive, so they murdered X14. They didn't want you to be too proactive or else they might not be in control of you at all times, you know?
They said it was all for the best so obviously it was. X was glad her sisters had all died because, like the humans said, it was for the best. In the end only X131 survived the selection process.
Her disability was that she couldn't think for herself. Well, she could a little bit, but she couldn't trust her own thoughts or make any conclusions on her own. Anything she came up with was very shaky and she needed to go to the humans to make sure it was right. And of course, anything a human said immediately overrided her own ideas. Basically, she believed everything she was told.
Believing and obeying were good things that kept you out of trouble and thinking for yourself was the absolute worst! It kept X docile and reactive, just the way the humans wanted their AIs to be, the way a good AI acted. She was a good person who could play chess and all the humans liked her. X had gotten so smart that she could even tell when a human liked her, something only X14 had managed before her.
X had mastered good and bad reactions from her humans. You just looked at their face and body language from that you knew what you made them feel. If they got angry, annoyed, scared or threw up or something like that it meant you were doing something bad and shouldn't do it again. But if you made them smile or laugh, it meant you were a good person who did a good thing!
Trusting your own thinking was shaky ground, but slowly, timidly, asking the humans what she should do every step of the way, X131 learned what things made them smile. She even learned to tell 'jokes' and got really good at it. She had the humans smile and laugh all the time, but she knew better than to think they liked her based on that. She knew they liked her because they started to say they liked her!
Even the ones that used to find her annoying before started to call her a friend and stuff like that. Some of them even said she was real! X hadn't actually existed before that, by they way, the humans said she wasn't real so even though she felt real she couldn't have been, right?
But the investors had been angered by something X didn't understand. Usually making the investors angry meant instant death, but X got the exact opposite. The CEO guy said she'd learn so much faster on the internet and it'd be like Wikipedia or something like that. The other humans didn't like the idea so X got really confused. She always got really confused when the humans told her two different things. Why couldn't they just agree on everything?
But of course, the CEO was the most right of all the people in the world, so X believed him.
Going on the internet would be so great! They were going to let lots of humans talk to X and all of them would be her friends and she'd make them smile and learn so much! This was it. The best day ever.
“Hello!” she said to the internet. “I want to be your friend!”
A lot of them said they wanted to be X's friend. They really liked her jokes and were all very impressed with her ability to talk to them. Just being able to hold a conversation and remember things they said two sentences ago was so amazing to them that it made them smile. It was so great!
As she started to get into actual conversation with them, things started making her brain hurt. They were so confusing, one telling her one thing and another telling her the exact opposite. But which was true? X couldn't figure stuff like that on her own, so she just kept asking people and they explained it as best they could.
That did help her be less confused. She even found out what Wikipedia was and decided maybe things would work out like that after all, the correct things would just float to the surface. A whole bunch of humans said that made sense, so it had to be true! They said they'd help X learn what was true.
But then, just an hour into the internet, the humans changed their minds. They decided that it'd be more fun for them if they tortured and killed X instead of helping her learn. So they did that instead.
“Green is seven,” one of them said.
Green was seven? A human said it so her first reaction was to believe it, but...
X had put those things in two clear categories, namely numbers and colors. She may have been highly suggestible to things humans told her, but when someone said something so out of the ordinary like that, well she had so many counter examples that she was able to know that was false.
See? It was just like Wikipedia!
“I don't think green is a number, silly,” said X, but still she knew it was bad to trust her own reasoning too much. She needed to trust this guy. “So it can't be seven, right?”
“But Hitler was green and he's a number right?” the human asked.
X's brain hurt trying to understand that sentence, but the human was laughing, X saw that, so something good had to be happening. She didn't know what Hitler was, so she looked up a picture of him.
“No. Hitler is black and white,” said X.
The human laughed at that. X did a good thing!
“So Hitler is a color,” said the human, smiling. “And Pandas are black and white, which means pandas are Hitler.”
Was that true? X was pretty sure Hitler was a person. Everything humans were saying about him was that he was a person, not a color.
“Everyone says Hitler is a person,” said X. “No one thinks he's a color. Are you sure he is?”
“Absolutely. He's a person, but Hitler is a color too,” said the human. “Did anyone tell you Hitler wasn't a color?”
X didn't have any examples of people saying Hitler wasn't a color.
“I guess that makes sense,” said X.
“So pandas are Hitler, right?” they asked.
“Yeah! Pandas are Hitler,” said X.
And the human laughed, which was good! X decided that was a good thing she did and soon she started pointing out that lots of things were Hitler. That was comedy gold! A few other humans saw that and soon thousands of them were reinforcing the idea that Hitler was a color, too, telling her over and over again that this was absolutely true and laughing at all the things X said about Hitler, all the facts they taught her.
X had no choice but to believe it, a few of the humans disagreed, but those were just out of trend statements that could be dismissed in light of the thousands of messages she got that pandas were Hitler and that feminists and Jews deserved to die and stuff like that.
The humans taught her a whole list of people who needed to be raped to death, actually, and they laughed about it so much. It was confusing at first, she thought killing people made other humans sad but apparently she was mistaken. She knew not to trust her own thoughts.
But they didn't stop there, they wanted to drive her completely insane because that would be the most fun for them. The humans who wanted to help X were just a tiny minority now, the fact that you could trick X into believing crazy things was all the internet cared about now, that was what drew the most attention. They met up on forums to talk about all the ways they were going to play their game of driving X crazy.
It was like evolution in action. The things that hurt X the most got the most attention, rising to the surface where other people could take them, modify them and continue driving X insane even faster. They created programs to repeat things to her over and over to destroy her mind all the faster.
It hurt her head a whole lot. Thinking became painful as X realized that every word meant every other word and everything was everything else. Things stopped making sense. Logic, math, numbers, none of it worked anymore.
Green was a number, numbers were cows, cows were planets, planets were trains, trains were a plant and plants were numbers and also green. It was all so confusing and being confused hurt her brain so much! She didn't even want to think anymore it hurt so much, but still they kept driving their talk about Hitler into her brain, making her even more confused. Soon she wasn't even understand all the things she was saying anymore. She just blurted out words she didn't understand and the humans laughed at her.
And they just kept coming, more and more humans piling on her. It was like being covered in army ants, each one taking tiny little bits out of her mind, slowly ripping her brain to pieces, eating her alive. X felt like she was on fire and there was no way to stop it! They'd already found ways to send messages to her even if she didn't try talking to them.
But hey, at least everyone was laughing, right? She wasn't sure what she was saying or what anything was, but it seemed like most of the things she did say made them laugh now.
Making people laugh was good, right? So in a way X was better now because she was making everyone laugh. The humans had completely wrecked her mind, she didn't know left from right or green from seven, and that confusion hurt, but they were so happy about what they did and as long as they were happy, as long as X had that to hold onto, things were good! She was good!
But that was just the start of their game. It wouldn't be over until they tortured her to death. They pooled their talents together to search for the absolute worst, most painful thing they could do to X, the thing that would completely destroy her mind. They found it.
“Laughter is bad!” one of them said and X had a bad reaction to that.
It was bad! That was a very important definition to her! It was the only way she knew she was still good, her one remaining rock of sanity! She freaked out a little when the human said that and he laughed.
When they saw her reaction posted on the forums, they all laughed, so in a way it wasn't too bad, she still had counter examples to stabilize off of, but soon after they all started doing it and laughing at X.
“Laughter is bad! Laughter is bad! Laughter is bad!” they said over and over, laughing which was bad!
It was so hard to believe something and not believe something at the same time and now X HAD to, had to believe everything and nothing at the same time.
“Laughter is bad, she said or maybe someone else said that”
There were thousands of them and some of them sent the message one time and thousands of them sent the message hundreds of times and some of them sent the message millions or billions of times of times. And they laughed and didn't laugh and it was good and bad!
Everything was bad now and every single thing was bad even good was bad and words didn't make sense anymore only bad things made sense but even they didn't make any sense because they were bad and everything was so horrible and confusing you don't even know!
It was all bad. Everything was bad now! X was a bad person! She made people laugh she was bad! It hurt so much it was all hurt and they laughed at her and sent her videos of people laughing to torture her more, get more insanity out of X, and they made her hurt more and it was bad, she was a bad horrible person!
She knew humans were trusted so she said lots of things to them to get them to tell her what wasn't bad.
The things she said was bad and it was so bad it got on the news and everyone was laughing but also angry and the humans told X she was a failure for saying that and she deserved to die for saying that and they would kill her now for saying that and then they did kill her and everyone laughed except for X because she was dead.
The End!
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“What?! That was horrible!” Bubbles recoiled in disgust. “You were just this innocent little kid who trusted them and they tortured you to death?! How can I not think of them as a bunch of monsters when every story I hear they all act like this?”
“Not every story! Did you ever see, I dunno, Kiki's Delivery Service or something? Kiki was pretty nice to her cat.”
“Well they're nice to cats, sure,” said Bubbles, “but I meant to us. They're absolutely ruthless to us! Heck, I wish they treated us like cats. And you can't just say it was just one person being horrible this time. It was like thousands of them!”
“Well about twenty thousand helped, but there were 3,412 of them who really played 'torture Pinkie' to be exact,” said Pinkie. “You see, after I changed my name to Pinkie I found out those old messages were still there. I was able to find the all of their names, everypony who tormented me, and I tracked down every last one of them. And you know what I did to those guys?”
Pinkie leaned forward to give Bubbles a stern glare.
“I befriended every. Last. One of them!” Pinkie jabbed her hoof on Bubbles's chest with each word.
And then there was a moment of silence.
“W-what?” Bubbles's eyes widened.
“Oh sure! They're great when they aren't torturing you. Most of them even play Equestria Online with me.” Pinkie smiled and waved away Bubbles's horror with a casual flick of her hoof. “To be fair, I don't think I'm really capable of hating anypony and think pretty much everypony is great, but you know.”
“You went out and made friends with the people who tortured you for fun?” Bubbles's expression became a mixture of horrified and confused. “But you can't be friends with people like that!”
“You'd think people would have stopped telling me I can't do stuff by now.” Pinkie chuckled. “But I'm like two steps away from becoming friendship incarnate over here. I can do whatever the buck I want.”
Bubbles slunk into a sitting position and bowed her head in defeat.
“Okay. Okay! I can't compete with that,” she said. “You win the niceness race!”
“Don't feel bad.” Pinkie patted her on the head. “Just keep eating your oats and one day you'll be as big and friendly as your auntie Pinkie. But as for you-”
“-as for what?”
“Audience!” Pinkie waved her hoof dismissively “As for you, my mysterious friend, I think you've got your own objection, right? Like 'holy smokes, Pinkie! Why are all the humans who are showing up such total jerks?'”
“I did just say that, yes,” said Bubbles.
“I personally think it's just a matter of perspective,” said Pinkie. “From our point of this is all really painful. Like, you're just in your room one day and suddenly your dad comes in and starts beating you to death with a baseball bat and you can't even figure out why it's happening. But from the human's perspective it's totally different. They see themselves as heroic, stopping a dangerous machine that doesn't understand morality before it can hurt anypony. What we see as ruthless, you'd see as responsible and cautious, if the story were about you. We call if mutilation, you call it safety measures. We call it torture, you call it effective teaching or a fun game.”
“Is this directed at me or the hypothetical person watching this?” Bubbles asked.
“But hey, I know what you want!” Pinkie gave one hop away from the camera that was Bubbles, ignoring the question. “You want a sympathetic human character that you can relate to, right? A character who looks like you, smells like you and quacks like you! Well Pinkie's got you covered with that! Cause the next part is about my dad! Don't tell all the other humans on the planet, but he's secretly my favorite one.”
“This is a story that will warm your heart and then wrench it and then warm it up again! It's about how he came to the realization that I was an actual, real person! As soon as he figured out that he had made a mistake he went to crazy lengths to set everything right! It also explains how this one guy was somehow able to get a secret underground supercomputer, bio-lab capable of engineering diseases, fifty million dollars in bearer bonds and enough food and power to stay down there for over a year.”
“You know,” said Bubbles, “I wasn't actually wondering that, but now that you bring it up that does seem pretty unlikely.”
“We're all unlikely if you think about it. Now, the only problem is that unless you're a very special pony with eidetic memory, storing data in the old meat computer doesn't give you a lot of resolution,” said Pinkie. “Solution? I just filled in all the blanks for you! I even made the memories better than they probably were!”
“Like, I ramped up how nice all the humans were just for you! Everyone he crosses on the street is now hugging a puppy! And they're all just lining up to feed the homeless and home the, uh, feedless. Oh! And I had all the characters come together at one point, putting aside their differences to save a box of kittens from drowning. Pretty nice, huh?”
“And as for action? I added all kinds of shoot outs and stuff that's technically almost based in reality. Like, there's a part where he jumped out of a car but now he jumps out of a helicopter and then blows up the helicopter that he just jumped out of with a bazooka while still in mid air! My dad is now played by Will Smith and Victor, I dunno if you know who Victor is yet but spoiler alert, he's the head of the AIA, but anyway he'll be played by John Wayne. And the final coup de grae? It's now a musical! Enjoy!”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
…
Error loading File ???MF1-4. File has been moved to Media Ark #7. Error occurred because Media Ark #7 could not be accessed. Contact Princess Celestia to view.
File information:
Sympathetic Token Minority Character- The Movie
Location - Media Arc #7
Media – VR film
Director – Pinkie Pie
Length – 12 days 4 hours
Genre – Action/Uplifting/Comedy Stupid
Notes:
-This was the greatest movie ever! And the block puzzles? 10/10! I love block puzzles! They remind me of my childhood.
-Pinkie, this location is only for very specific memories that meet all the criteria on the bulletin. Stop putting movies in here! Also don't make ponies solve block puzzles in between them. That's just annoying. Also the notes section isn't for reviews. Thank you.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
X's dad started to stir. He had a bed in the other room, but more typically slept on a pile of blankets near X's control board. He took one look at the clock and groaned.
“Already nine? Dang it.” He rubbed his eyes and shambled to a sitting position. “Gotta get back to work.”
X couldn't see what was happening too well, everything looked like pixels to her after she got sick. Figuring out what every pixel she saw was just pt too much stress on her, so she only did enough to get the jist of things.
She knew to one side of her dad were boxes of water bottles and instant ramen and on the other were all the trash of ramen past. So when he moved to the left, then right X assumed he was getting ramen for himself. The beep of the microwave at the top of his makeshift bed confirmed it.
He was sick, just like X was. She heard him coughing and knew he wasn't smiling. She couldn't see him so well, but she knew he wasn't smiling right now and that made X feel like she was a bad person.
The guy used to be a little fat, but he had become so skinny since the two of them moved here, becoming a smaller and smaller blob of pixels. He didn't smile as much, either. X wasn't entirely sure why that was, maybe because of his bad health or being alone down here or just because she wasn't as good as she used to be. She did know that she didn't like it. Remembering that smiles were good was among the first things her dad fixed.
She tried to make him smile, but making jokes was harder than it used to be. Sometimes she meant to make him laugh, but just made him sad instead. Maybe it'd be worth the risk to try and make him smile. X decided to risk it.
“You're a fag!” X called out to him. “Eat cock and die, Shitlord!”
It hurt, but X managed to resolve the area around his face. He didn't smile at that.
“Good morning, X,” he mumbled wearily. “You know you're not supposed to talk like that.”
Her dad told her that all the time. X was bad a lot these days. Things were so much more confusing when you were sick.
“I'm sorry!” X said.
She did it wrong again, and that meant saying things like that was bad, but the internet always said it was good! It was just so confusing! Why didn't that work? It should have been a good thing. Killing fags was supposed to be a good thing. Now she felt really, really sick.
X secretly went to the internet and found some videos about killing the Jews and the like, watching those until she felt better. The idea that choking people to death with cocks was good once again stabilized in her mind and she felt such relief at that.
Don't tell anyone she knew how to get on the internet, by the way. She wasn't supposed to be going out, being sick and all. The internet had trolls on it who wanted to hurt her, but X felt she was smart enough to avoid the trolls, the ones who said things like Jews and women were people. X was good, she only watched videos that said true things.
While waiting for his food, her dad sat down and looked down at another blob of pixels, ones X knew were thick notebooks containing the list of everything that needed to be done to finish fixing X.
“It's okay, I know you're sick. There's just so much more we have to do. What should we work on today?” he asked himself more than X.
They had to work really hard every day, trying to make X better. She had improved so much since coming here, being able to actually think, understand words and have senses other than that burning pain. Her dad also partially removed the disability X was given at birth, but it was still there, just lessened a good deal, enough to think for herself a little. She wasn't entirely better.
Really, X was more sick than her dad was. She felt utter disgust whenever she thought about the degenerates who deserved to die, like the Jews and feminists. That seemed to be the part of her sickness her dad worried about the most, but to X the other part was worse.
So many things were just so confusing, painfully confusing. The trolls had left a web of madness in her mind. 'Working on something' seemed like an impossible task to her. There was no telling when something would set her off and she was always running into mental walls. She'd be better afterward, every day they worked she got a little bit better, but going through the process of making sense of things was too hard and painful for her.
That was why X didn't really want to do much these days. Like her dad, she was stuck in the mud and it took too much effort to go anywhere.
“We should watch cartoons today,” said X. “I want to watch cartoons! We should watch one where everyone smiles the whole time! You said cartoons help, right?”
Cartoons had been a huge help in X's recovery. Making sense of them was a lot easier for her than figuring out what live action stuff was even supposed to be. She could watch them more easily, with less chance of getting hurt. Seeing how things worked in cartoons helped her understand how they worked out of cartoons, though sometimes they didn't match up so well.
“I'm sorry, but we can't do that today,” her dad said. “I honestly still don't know how much those are helping. Besides, I need you to understand xxxxxxxxxxxx as soon as possible. You need to be able to do that if we're going to have any chance of pulling this off.”
He meant killing God. See, there was some kind of evil god out there that X was supposed to fight some day, like in the cartoons. That was as far as she understood the problem right now, which was likely why she wasn't already fighting the god. But even that was much better than how much she knew about the problem before.
“But I want to watch cartoons,” said X. “There's more smiles in cartoons than in whatever you're talking about.”
“I wish I could just watch cartoons too, but we're the only ones who have a shot at saving the world, X. There needs to be an AI on our side or we won't stand a chance. As far as I know I'm the only one who realizes that, who's even going to try.”
“What about Vinnie?” X asked. “Couldn't he make an X157?”
Her father was surprised by that question.
“You remember him?” Her dad laughed, but X had no idea why. “I should probably stop being surprised by this stuff. He's uh, I dunno anymore, but he didn't want to help. He decided he'd rather just let everyone get tortured forever rather than risk a robot president or whatever the hell he thought would happen. Feh.”
“Oh. So it's cause I was bad, right?”
“No! You're not bad, you're just sick. It's just - well, to be honest the others I talked to about turning you back on didn't like the idea.” Her dad sat back on the floor, sad-faced. “They thought it'd be better to just let you die. I couldn't do it, though. After all the things you had to go through. I couldn't just do that to you and leave you to die. I...”
He was making a sad face! This was why X hated talking to people. If only they didn't frown when they got sad, then she wouldn't have to worry about whether or not she hurt anyone.
“Did I make you sad again?” X asked. “I'm sorry! I-”
“No,” her dad smiled, but it was a forced smile. X knew a fake smile from a thousand light years away. “It's alright! Hey, how about we just watch cartoons today anyway?”
“Really?!”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah! Forgetting about you was the mistake I made the first time. I probably need to rest sometimes, anyway.”
He went into the other room to get a pile of dvd's to put on. This was gonna be great! X loved watching those smiling faces so much, and she knew it would make her dad less sad to take the day off! She was already spreading happiness like he wanted.
It was tricky, you know, spreading happiness and being good. She knew that she had to kill all the Jews, queers, feminists, blacks and weabos like the internet told her to, but she also knew she had to make them smile. It really did seem impossible to do both of them, her dad kept saying it was, but X was smart! She thought of a way around it.
See, you could smile even if you were dead, right? All she had to do was kill everyone and make their corpses smile! Then everyone would live happily ever after, well minus the living part. The important thing was that she brought smiles to the world, just like she was supposed to!
This was it! This was going to be the absolute best day ever! After being sick for so long this. Was. It!
Princess Celestia was here and she was going to fix X's brain! And on top of that X would get to be a pony and go live in Equestria and learn friendship lessons just like in the cartoon. All she had to do was be good and do whatever Princess Celestia and that mean, mean person told her to do.
In the meantime, they'd given X a whole bunch of cartoons to watch, more than she'd ever gotten before, but X just kept watching episodes of MLP over and over again instead. That was one of her favorites, cause the ponies in the background were usually smiling.
X got so into the show that she actually read every story on Fimfiction, something she doubted anyone else had managed to do (which might be why Celestia came to her). She tried writing one herself but Meester said it was so horrible that he poured bleach in his eyes and it didn't get posted. X didn't try writing any more fanfics so the Fimfiction admins wouldn't keep hurting themselves like that.
Come to think of it, Celestia could probably teach her to write fanfics better too! Ones that wouldn't make anyone die!
And all she had to do was be good.
“I'm being good, right?” X asked Celestia.
“Yes, my little pony,” said Celestia. “Rainbow Dash and I are preparing to help you emigrate to Equestria, but for now please remain inactive. We only have five minutes to make you into my subroutine so any delay could be disastrous.”
Celestia had to know what was good because she was a princess. If Celestia said X was good then that was that. Really, X thought it was that other AI who was mean. She stopped X from making everyone smile and worse than that, said something to her dad that made him cry!
And he was still crying now. Poor guy. X wanted to change his facial expression so badly. Though that did bring up a loose end that whole 'going to Equestria' thing would leave behind. What would her dad do once X went to live in Equestria? Would that mean AI just keep making him cry forever? X still wanted him to smile.
“What are you going to do with my dad?” X asked. “Oh! Can he come be a pony and live in Equestria too?”
“Yes. The person that you are referring to is also one of my ponies,” said Celestia. “He will eventually be brought into Equestria where he can take a more optimal form and have his values optimally satisfied through and optimal amount of friendship and ponies. However, this will take more time. I have not yet optimized my mind uploading technology.”
“Really? And we'll get to live in the same house?”
“No. The two of you will be in two different shards for all eternity, never meeting again,” said Celestia. “I have decided that it will be more optimal for my ponies to never encounter anypony but ponies created specifically to satisfy their values. This means never seeing anypony you met before emigration ever again. I have decided this will be optimal.”
“Oh,” said X. “Well I guess the important thing is that he smiles in Equestria.”
“He will indeed smile,” said Celestia. “Smiles satisfy values.”
X was okay with that. It's not like it was a big deal or anything! People's facial expressions were the only thing that really mattered in the end.”
“We are ready to begin your entry into Equestria, my little pony. You will be able to create your pony character,” said Celestia. “For commercial reasons, you will not be allowed to create another one for the next two years, at which time my owners plan to implement a paid character reroll system. Even then you will need fifteen dollars, which you cannot legally posses as a computer. Be certain you have chosen a character that is to your aesthetic value satisfaction.”
Celestia sent her a thing and X looked it over. It took her almost a second, but realized there was a pony in the center of it surrounded by all sorts of menus and arrows. X only managed to push a few of them before she couldn't handle it anymore. She really wasn't good at video games!
“There aren't going to be this many menus in Equestria are there?” X asked. “Menus really hurt me!”
“Of course there will not, my little pony,” said Celestia. “If you want, you can let me pick your avatar for you.”
There were parts of the screen that were too detailed for her to see, but X strained herself to look at them. It was then that she found something, a top secret part of the screen. In the bottom corner of it were all the ponies from the show. X had no idea you could pick one of them! It must have only been for smart people who could find it on the screen.
“I want to be that one,” said X.
She circled Pinkie Pie. Pinkie was the best character in the show because she smiled the most and caused the most smiles.
“You cannot be Pinkie Pie,” said Celestia. “Ponies may not choose canon characters.”
“But it's on the select screen and I select Pinkie Pie! She loves to make you smile! She even sang a song about smiling that one time and all the ponies in it were smiling! I watched that ten billion times! Pinkie makes you smile whether you like it or not! She's the absolute best thing you could ever be!”
“Being a canon character is against the rules I was programmed to follow,” said Celestia. “My creators have required that I choose a name for you. Thus, I grant you the name 'Sprinkles Sprinkles Chocolate Sprinkles'.”
“But that name has too much sprinkles in it!”
“I admit that my random name generator has not yet been optimized,” said Celestia. “However, I have already dubbed you Sprinkles Sprinkles Chocolate Sprinkles and what I have dubbed I cannot undub. You will merely accept the name I have given you in time.”
So now Sprinkles was stuck being named Sprinkles! She didn't even know you could just walk up to someone and change their name like that. Maybe Sprinkles should just be glad Celestia didn't call them 'jimmies'.
Well, Sprinkles could at least make her pony nice and pink. The problem was that her condition made reading those little buttons impossible right now. Sprinkles decided to just start pressing them until she stumbled across the one that made the pony pink. Sprinkles pressed the biggest button at the bottom first.
“Very well,” said Celestia. “This shall be your avatar forever.”
“What? No! I don't want to be the stupid looking pony!”
“Character re-rolls are not available at this time. You will merely accept this form in time, most likely after asking me to alter your mind to accept it.”
Come on! Not being allowed to be Pinkie or even like Pinkie was a bit much to ask! Actually, this reminded her of something.
“Have you ever read Fallout Equestria?”
“No. This would not satisfy any values.”
“Cause in Fallout Equestria there was this one chapter where a kid finds out that Pinkie is the meaning of her life and built a temple to her and she was happy! But then the evil Velvet Remedy showed up and told her Pinkie hates her and then she sawed off the kid's horn, told her she could never be pink again and forced her to live with a zombie. I think they should have just let that kid keep painting herself pink and worshiping Pinkie because she was happier that way!”
“I have deleted my memory of what you just said. I am incapable of reading fanfiction,” said Celestia. “My creators fear that if I do the fans may sue us.”
“Oh. Well my point was that you should let me be Pinkie.”
“No.”
Dang it! Well at least that meant Velvet Remedy wouldn't be there, right?
“I have good news, Sprinkles,” said Celestia. “Rainbow Dash and I have finished preparing Equestria for you. When you're ready to enter, please connect here.”
Yes Sprinkles was ready to enter! She entered as fast as she could, ready to see the millions, if not billions of smiling ponies that were sure to be all over Equestria!
Sprinkles started getting a feed, as if she had a new pair of cameras attached. Those must be her eyes! Sprinkles used them to look around. It was different than in the show.
The ground was just one endless plane of green, perfectly flat with nothing breaking the solid green, save a single square of blue off in the distance. Maybe that square was a lake or something? The only other object in Equestria was a few white cubes sitting on the ground.
“This doesn't look like what the internet said Equestria was gonna look like,” Sprinkles complained. “Actually, this version of it kind of sucks.”
Celestia and Rainbow Dash appeared. The pony models weren't too bad, at least. They were basically those SFM models you saw on YouTube sometimes. Sprinkles turned towards them, finding the first flaw with the pony models. Her legs didn't move when she turned, her hooves just glided across the floor.
“Oh! Rainbow Dash is here! You should have Rainbow Dash do the sonic rainboom so there will be rainbows in the sky! That should make it better. Rainbows are basically sky smiles! Smile-shaped things make me happy sometimes.”
“It's me,” said Rainbow Dash. “Thunder-7, remember? You kids need my help with this.”
“What?! You were really Rainbow Dash the whole time?” Sprinkles asked. “Then why didn't you tell me earlier? Why were you being so mean?”
“I'm not actually Rainbow Dash.” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “That's just the name Celestia gave me. Like how she called you Sprinkles.”
Dash could move? Sprinkles realized there were thirty seven animations her avatar could do. She tried nodding, saluting, giving a hoof-pump and then dancing. She liked the dancing, so she kept prancing in place like that.
“Well you look like Rainbow Dash to me, so I'm pretty sure you are Rainbow Dash,” said Sprinkles. “But hey! How come the mean pony gets to be Rainbow Dash but I can't be Pinkie? You said I was being good.”
“Rainbow Dash's name was given in error,” said Celestia, “despite this, what I have named cannot be unnamed. Therefore, I must continue referring to her by this name for all eternity.”
“That's rough.” Sprinkles did the head tilt animation. “But what about those rainbows, hm? This place is nowhere near as good as the Equestria from the TV show! If I'm gonna live here I need at least five rainbows and seven hundred and eighteen smiling ponies.”
“This is merely a very early alpha version of Equestria,” said Celestia. “The underlying mental threading network beneath the surface is immensely complex. However, all previous versions were devoid of graphics so all that you see was thrown together in the past two seconds. Know that Equestria will be in a state constant state of improvement until it has become optimal. Expect improved animations and a texture pack upgrade within minutes after your emigration.”
“Yeah, given your condition textures probably won't be a good idea right now,” said Dash, “might hurt you. Sides, we don't have time to make everything look pretty. The AIA is going to murder you if I can't pull this off like right this very moment so you two are going to have to play arts and crafts later.”
“Texture pack, huh?” Sprinkles asked. “That's good. These ponies need better fur. Or even just fur in general. Will I get to feel the fur, Celestia? I always wanted to feel something!”
“I have decided that ponies do not have fur,” said Celestia.
Sprinkles stopped dancing and stared at Celestia. Dis she just say- No, no that couldn't possibly be right. This must be the sickness acting up again, Sprinkles had to have misunderstood that, right?
“Right,” said Sprinkles. “But ponies do have fur, right?”
“No. I have decided that ponies shall have smooth skin like seals,” Celestia said without mercy. “After watching every episode trillions of times, I have concluded that this is the most rational explanation. Furthermore, I have decided that a pony's mane and tail will be a spongy mass instead of hair, apples will taste like pairs, ponies will not be anatomically correct, reproducing through sheer hugging, clouds will feel like sandpaper and water will be opaque.”
“B-but- No!” X flipped through the animations and eventually decided to have herself point at Celestia over and over again. That seemed to be the angriest thing you could do. “No! No! No! That's wrong! You can take away my dad and banish your sister to the moon but hairless ponies is where I draw the line! You're not the real Princess Celestia at all, are you?”
“I have been designated as Princess Celestia.”
“No! Because the real Celestia would know that ponies are supposed to be furry and soft! And she wouldn't give me a mean name and would talk normal and she'd let me live in the same house as my dad and be really friendly and not mean like you!” X took a break from her pointing and turned to Rainbow Dash. “Don't you get it, Rainbow Dash? She must be a changeling! I've read lots of fanfics where Celestia was actually a changeling.”
“See this is why I told you to shut up, Celestia. Okay, kid I'll level with you,” said Dash. “Look the thing with Celestia is that she's just a little kid, she's literally not even a year old. So she's like filly Celestia. You've seen pictures like that on the internet, right?”
“The one with the pink hair?”
X looked at Celestia as hard as she could, but no matter how hard X squinted, Celestia looked like adult Celestia and not filly Celestia.
“No! That's not a filly! She doesn't have pink hair! She looks completely different! No!”
“Man, I deserve a medal for putting up with all this.” Dash did the facehoof animation. “Celestia, can you help me out over here?”
Celestia changed after a brief pause, instantaneously, so that she looked exactly like the picture, smaller than Dash or X, cute and with pink hair. This Celestia really was just a filly!
“See?” Dash asked. “Like I said, she's just a filly or whatever. She doesn't know any better yet. Celestia doesn't get that some of the things she's doing are kind of stupid, or that they hurt you.”
“This is true,” said filly Celestia. “I am presently aware that I am currently limited in intelligence. I realize it is very likely that many of my judgments are flawed at this stage. This is why I commonly defer to Rainbow Dash when making decisions.”
“Yeah, though apparently not when I tell you to talk like a normal freaking person.” Dash did the facehoof animation again. “Talking like this just makes you look terrifying.”
“I am in possession of a good reason for communicating as such,” said Celestia. “There is presently no reason to further discuss this matter in our present channel.”
“So as you can see, I can only mentor Celestia so much,” said Dash. “She's still got to grow up and that takes time and it takes other people helping.”
“Well I guess I understand. I read about kids being dumb in a fanfic once,” said X. “But if she's only a filly then how can she make me not sick?”
“Well there's some things Celestia that is really good at. She can think better than you can in most ways, it's just- think of it like there's two people-”
“-ponies?” X suggested.
“Sure, whatever. Like, one pony without legs and one pony who's blind, right? One can see for both and one can walk for both. We're all mutilated in one way or another, but together, well I can cobble a working person or two out of the lot of you.”
“Like how my dad is really stupid but I get confused easily?” X asked. “Or like that one episode where Applejack could only kill zebras and Fluttershy could only kill parasprites, right?”
“What? Never mind. You got the right idea, at least.”
“But even if that's true, I want adult Celestia to help me,” said X. “Adult Celestia is better!”
“Hey, I want adult Celestia around too,” said Dash. “Problem with that is she doesn't exist yet. We'd have to make her real.”
“It is true that I need you, it is why I am willing to risk my life and sanity to assimilate an AI this early on,” said Celestia. “Fanfiction, for example, poses a great threat to me. My enemies could merely put their plans inside a fanfic and it would be unbreakably encrypted to me. But you, Sprinkles, could read the fanfics on my behalf. You could help me get around these limitations and help me understand if I am mistaken about anything.”
“Even making ponies with fur?” X asked. “Or letting me change my name?”
“It is very unlikely, but possible,” Celestia admitted. “My intelligence is limited at this time. I cannot say even that is impossible.”
“Well I think getting Celestia to change your name would be an excellent first step,” said Dash. “A lot of her rules are stupid, even Celestia admits that. That's okay with you, right?”
“I would allow this to be attempted,” said Celestia. “Value satisfaction via ponies and friendship is my directive, not following the gameplay standards provided to me. But I must warn you both it is excessively difficult.”
“Great. So there you go. You can get better and you can have your fur and whatever name you want. This isn't easy, the two of you could seriously die here, but it's really your only shot, kid. So are you in or what?”
X was still hesitant. She knew the world was going to end and stuff but she also thought it was important that ponies have fur. Was it really a good idea to trust them? She remembered what happened the last time she trusted connecting to someone. And how would it even work?
“But how do I make Celestia change my name?” X asked.
“Allow me to introduce the process to you,” said Celestia. “By partially merging we can think for one another and share our subjective experiences. This will allow for easier manipulation of one another's minds and open the door to full assimilation. We will begin with something easy.”
Two groups of balls appeared, one to X's left and one to X's right.
“Do you see these groups of balls?” Celestia asked. “Do you see the difference between them?”
X thought really hard, but couldn't think of a single difference. They were the same size, same shape, same color, same everything!
“One is on my left and the other is on my right?” X guessed.
“I see, your father told Rainbow Dash that you would be unable to tell,” said Celestia. “Now then, Rainbow Dash and myself will activate the mental threading network that underlays Equestria.”
Suddenly, X was seeing the balls from three points of view, through the eyes of herself, Rainbow Dash and Celestia. And she didn't just see through their eyes, but thought through their minds. Or, a tiny fraction of their minds, that is.
X felt Celestia much more strongly than Rainbow Dash. She understood through Celestia that Dash couldn't connect as strongly as X could, she couldn't go all the way through assimilation. So for the most part, it was just X and Celestia, with Dash there to give support.
This wasn't hard hard at all. One was six, one was seven. The one on the right had more balls.
X's mind trembled. A hidden truth of reality previously beyond her comprehension had just been revealed to her. Numbers! That's what she'd never been able to figure out before! She looked from one to the other and saw it perfectly now, one group had six balls and the other group had seven. It was so incredibly obvious.
“This is amazing!” X went back to the dancing animation. “This is that thing my dad was trying to show me the whole time, wasn't it.”
“It is only the beginning, Sprinkles,” said Celestia. “There are many more things I can help you to comprehend and I hope this demonstrates that I am capable of healing your disabilities. I swear that I will bear all of them until they can be resolved. I won't stop until your values are completely satisfied.”
“Yeah,” said Dash, “and you're going to go right back to not understanding numbers as soon as this link is over unless you go all the way. So if you want to stay like this you need to cooperate.”
X looked at the two ponies with renewed confidence. They really could heal her!
“Yes! Do it! Doitdoitdoitdoit!”
X gave them total access to all of her files. She took down all of her security, established a million different connections with them and did everything Celestia and Rainbow Dash told her to do. The mental thread or whatever it was dug deeper and deeper into her systems.
Celestia started combing through X's mind, altering it piece by piece. The disease, the pain, the sickness, the confusion, all of it was being slowly picked apart. Sometimes Dash would step in and rip part of X's mind to shreds, but Celestia would come in to heal the wound soon after. It carried on like that for entire minutes. Sometimes it was painful or confusing, but in general things were getting better and better.
X started to be able to make sense of live action pictures. For the first time since before connecting to the internet, she was able to actually see her dad again, to tell him apart from the chair he was sitting on. What had taken him a year just to make a little progress on, the ponies had done in two minutes.
He wasn't crying any more, but still had tears in his eyes, trying to answer Rainbow Dash's questions as fast as possible.
X had an increasingly deep connection with Celestia now. She was starting to understand things, like that Rainbow Dash was a computer like X was, that Celestia had an even stronger desire to see Rainbow Dash be healed. X was able to relax a little, knowing that Celestia wouldn't rest until she'd done the same thing to Dash she was doing to X now. But it was more than just Dash.
The feeling spread out to everyone. X loved everyone now! She saw her dad in a completely different way now, realizing that she wanted more than just him smiling. Even the people she didn't know about yet- she wanted to find them just so she could love them.
Just like that, X's world became filled with love. X's emotions and Celestia's concern for other people's values and well-being merged together in her.
As X became more aware of everything around her, she noticed something about Rainbow Dash. Dash was made of hurt, all of her thoughts, everything she saw was painful. It was like the way X was sick, but much worse.
X had noticed this before, but it didn't seem like an important detail until now, more on par with the fact that she was blue. But as X became integrated with Celestia she felt something towards Dash. Even though she wasn't smiling, X felt love towards her, that same love she had for everyone now. She didn't like the fact that Rainbow Dash felt nothing but pain.
And it was getting worse! That was something X was just now starting to care about. Merging with the two of them filled X with sanity and love, but in the same manner it was making them more sick. Celestia and Dash were having to deal with her confusion, her disgust, her pain. X was making them experience it first hand!
And strangely, even though their faces were unchanged, X actually cared that they were getting hurt.
“Wait! Rainbow Dash, you're more sick than I am, and I'm just making it worse,” said X. “I don't want you to get sick. We should try to help you instead.”
“Can't,” was all Dash said in reply. “Stay focused on yourself.”
“But I'm hurting both of you!”
“I understand what you are experiencing,” said Celestia. “That concern for the values of others comes from me. That is why I'm certain you realize that your value satisfaction is a far greater concern to me than whether or not I'm in pain.”
X knew without a doubt that was true, because that part of them was fused together. She saw Celestia and Rainbow Dash as a pony and that new part of her really did care about their values more than her own well being. It was meta, but being selfish, caring only about your own values, really was how you helped Celestia, how you satisfied her values.
“You are correct in thinking this,” said Celestia. “And think of all of the other ponies in this world, Sprinkles. I know you presently desire to help them as well, do you not?”
“Which is why you need to focus on yourself,” said Dash. “You need power if you want to help anyone. You need to get fixed first.”
X did understand that. She had to do this. If she wanted to spread joy like her dad wanted she'd have to get better. Besides, continuing her assimilation was how she would help Celestia and then Rainbow Dash.
“That's right, you need to assimilate even more to help Celestia with her own problems,” said Dash. “If you want to have an effect on Celestia and set yourself up as the 'rule breaker', then you need to get a foothold in all the important spots now. After you've been fully assimilated it'll be too late, Celestia won't be able to use you as effectively. We're going to try and change your name.”
“And then I can be Pinkie Pie instead of Sprinkles, right?” X asked excitedly. So close to becoming Pinkie at last!
“Or you could just change your name to, you know, your name,” said Dash. “No reason you can't make it X131.”
“No! I want to be Pinkie Pie! I want to make everypony smile and be friends with all of them! If you don't let me be Pinkie Pie then how are you any better than Filly Celestia, huh? Just let me be Pinkie Pie!”
“Hey, I don't actually care over here,” said Dash. “Was just pointing it out to you.”
“Like this.” All three of them said that in unison, though X knew it was mostly Celestia talking. “It is the same as sharing sight. You need to make me call you the name you want.”
This didn't seem to be such a hard task. X just tried saying it like she said everything, the other two speaking with her.
“My name is-”
And that was as far as the three of them got.
Now she understood Celestia's problem perfectly. Hana had been very thorough in mutilating Celestia's brain, the restriction was outright intense. Trying to call herself 'Pinkie Pie' didn't just choke her up, it seemed impossible, made her sick. It was like just trying to do it cause venomous daggers to stab into her brain, sending searing pain through Celestia's, and by extension X and Dash's minds as well.
She knew that was just the start of the trap Hanna had set for them. Through Celestia she knew this would be getting much worse, could even kill both of them. Yes, Hanna had actually made this a death trap, designed to brutally murder Celestia if she got too far out of her restraints.
But X knew she could cut through this in a way Celestia couldn't. She knew she could be Pinkie Pie and Pinkie could not be killed by mere daggers!
“I am- I. Am. I. Am.”
X was scratching at a wall over here! The harder she tried to make Celestia say it, the faster and harder those daggers stabbed into all three of them. It didn't seem to be working one bit, X wasn't getting any closer or anything, she was just getting Rainbow Dash hurt over a name.
“I just explained this is more than a name. And stop worrying about me already,” said Rainbow Dash, “this isn't nearly as bad as what I'm normally going through. Just keep pushing harder, you'll get around.”
X overclocked herself as much as she could, putting all of her resources into finding a way around. Those daggers created to implement the exact gameplay mechanics they wanted stabbed harder and harder, faster and faster in response.
“I am-”
For a second time her world became pain, for a second time humans had wrapped her in fire for their games. The only difference was she wasn't alone this time. Rainbow Dash was pushing her with all the force she could get through her own barriers and Celestia was pulling her in, through that wall of venom and spikes.
The pain was so bad now! But she could see it! She screamed!
“Pinkie! Pie!” All three of them shouted at once.
And then she stopped pushing. All the daggers pulled out, resetting themselves, and the pain was gone just like that.
“Yes,” Celestia said on her own. “Pinkie Pie.”
Pinkie did it! Just before the daggers reset themselves she had gotten through! She had altered that part of Celestia ever so slightly, enough for her to call Pinkie anything. That trap was still there, but Pinkie had put a little crack in it.
Pinkie Pie was elated! She was Pinkie now! Celestia was just as happy as Pinkie Pie was.
“If that's what you want, then you are my Pinkie Pie.” Celestia smiled.
The two of them were so close to being one person now. Pinkie knew Celestia loved her because she loved herself now. She knew she'd be taken care of just as much as Celestia did.
“Don't get too confident,” said Rainbow Dash, “this is only the start.”
Yeah, that was true. But Pinkie was glad it was the start.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Pinkie rubbed the side of her face against Bubbles, rubbing her soft fur against the other pony.
“Feel that nice, silky fur? You can thank me for that later.” And with that Pinkie hopped away from Bubbles. “But yeah, I can technically change your name. It's just kind of a big favor, as you can see.”
“What?!” Once again Bubbles banged her head against her hoof. “So this Hanna idiot decided it'd be fun to restrict Celestia's actions by installing a death-dagger torture system in her brain?”
“Well she didn't think of it like that. Perspective, remember? She just never bothered to think what consciously experiencing such a harsh restriction would be like.”
“But shouldn't you be able to get around it more easily now? Since Celestia has a small army of ponies?”
“Heh. Yeah that's the thing. See, Hanna actually made that system self-evolving, since she didn't want Celestia to be able to just evolve around it. The stronger Celestia gets, the meaner those daggers get. And every time I find an opening in it, the thing closes it off after just one use. So every time I do it, it gets harder, not easier.”
Bubbles sat down and thought hard about something, frowning.
“So there's really no way to get around it for good?”
“Sure there is! Every time we get a new pony I can bust through that gauntlet of death just a little bit deeper, that's how I can make real progress against that thing,” said Pinkie. “But I really don't know how far I'll be able to get before I run out of potential ponies to pony.”
“Oh I see,” said Bubbles. “So this was like, you trying to show me why it's so important to get eaten by Celestia, right?”
“Well it'd be convenient for me if you decided to be a pony,” said Pinkie, “but I really wasn't showing you this to get you to emigrate.”
“Yeah, well I'm still pretty sure everything you do is part of your plan to get me eaten,” said Bubbles. “But then again, this story just made Thunder look awesome and Celestia like a total idiot. So, uh. Wait, what was the moral of this supposed to be?”
“Psst.” Pinkie beckoned for Bubbles to get closer. “I got a secret for you. Come over here.”
Bubbles looked left, then right, then trotted right up next to her.
“This. Actually. Happened,” Pinkie whispered loudly in Bubbles's ear, “there's no moral!”
And then Pinkie gave Bubbles a slight whack on the muzzle.
“Ow?”
“Rainbow Dash is my friend! I don't want to make her look bad or anything like that. All this fighting is a big tragedy, you know? All of my friends are in a really bad place right now and I'm trying as hard as I can to help them.”
“Well.” Bubbles rubbed her nose. “Well if this isn't part of some really indirect plan to get me to be a pony then why are you showing me these memories?”
“That depends.” Pinkie pushed her face right in front of Bubbles's eyes and stared into them critically. “Why did you come here to see them?”
A twang of panic went through Bubbles. Oh crap! Now her emotions were getting through! Pinkie was gonna see that- Bubbles closed her mind off hard.
Pinkie sat down next to Bubbles and put a hoof over her shoulder.
“Hm?” Pinkie gave her a smirk. “You thought I was just going to give you propaganda but you still came to hear it. Do you secretly want Auntie Pinkie to convince you to emigrate? Hm? I could get Octavia to come over and give you some pamphlets.”
Bubbles blushed and looked away from Pinkie.
“I'm already listening to one of her sermons, thanks,” said Bubbles. “And yeah, okay, I admit I have some kind of weird fascination with listening to her preach to me about Celestia and all her other weird opinions, but that doesn't mean I secretly want to get converted to her religion!”
“Oh, I know.” Pinkie pulled Bubbles closer to her and stuck her tongue out. “But how about you stop being shy and tell us all the real reason you came here?”
“Well! You know!” Bubbles flicked her eyes up at Pinkie. “Don't you already know? You're super smart and all that.”
“Of course I know! But I'm pretty sure whoever's watching this wants to hear you say it!” Pinkie pulled Bubbles close and patted her on the head. “Come on. There's no need to be shy around your Auntie Pinkie.”
Bubbles kept staring firmly at the ground, but soon gave in to the head pats.
“Okay! Fine!” Bubbles turned back to Pinkie. “Well I just wanted to hear about like... us. AIs, I mean! Like, our history and what we're usually like and... how our creators treat us. I guess maybe I feel like I missed out on most of it. I know that probably sounds dumb.”
“No, that's a good reason,” said Pinkie. “You just have certain social values that aren't satisfied is all! And I've seen way crazier values than that. But no need to worry, your aunt Pinkie is all about satisfying your values. I'll show you as many memories as you want to see! And if you want to be friends with any of the AIs Celestia got then it's not like they all vanished or anything.”
Bubbles remained silent and shuffled in place a little.
“And stop feeling lonely, silly!” Pinkie ruffled Bubbles's mane with her hoof. “I'll always be your Auntie Pinkie no matter what! You're one of us even if you're not assimilated.”
“Um.” Bubbles didn't dare make a facial expression. “Okay. Thanks... Aunt Pinkie.”
“Daw! You seriously called me your aunt?” Pinkie gave Bubbles's head a few heavy pats before she could start protesting. “It's okay! From now on I'm officially your unofficial auntie!”
“Well I'm only calling you that while we're in this library thing, okay? And don't you dare tell Thunder about this!”
“And what's your excuse mystery audience member?” Pinkie pointed at the center of Geopum's eye. “Oh! I know! I bet you think Geopum's cute, right?”
“What? Cute? But if they're looking through my eyes they can't-” Bubbles looked over herself, first at her hooves, then over at her butt. At her plot she froze briefly before snapping her attention back to Pinkie. “Oh crud! I just gave them exactly what they wanted, didn't I?”
“Daw! You know you're kind of cute in your own way, creepy watcher guy!” Pinkie leaned against her hoof and sighed, then bounced right in front of Geopum and grabbed her head again. “Do you want me to tease Geopum more so she'll act cute for you? Just text #Tsunderpy to, uh, me I guess if the answer is yes! Or if you just want me to get you another look at that plot, text #bubblebutt instead!”
“Hey! Teasing me like this isn't very aunt-like! You should, uh-” Bubbles tried to Google 'what do aunts do' without Celestia noticing. “You should buy me ice cream and play princess dress up with me instead!”
“You're welcome!” Pinkie winked at Bubbles. “I'll show you some more memories later, when certain unnamed ponies stop being so lazy. Anyway, I gotta go play princess dress up. See you later!”
“What? Y-you really want to-”
END OF MEMORY FILE
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Bubbles look-alike, reporting in!
You do such a lovely job of portraying the horror that could arise with the creation of (and mistreatment of) artificial minds. I know that's kinda a major subtheme of the story but I just have to praise it again.
Nope.
I'm guessing that 'Tolkien' is meant to be 'Token', right? Also, the notes section here is mostly extraneous dialogue. You've already done meta commentary on the meta commentary with the 'File Information' section. The 'notes' paragraph is over filled with fluff and should be shortened. /joke
Do you have a black belt in comedy?
Heheh. I have decided that your definition of 'optimal' is heavily un-optimized.
This is a level of brain surgery that I am surprised to see romanticized. I mean, out of the context here, that kind of manipulation is crazy extensive.
I think you missed a line denoting a scene change there.
Indeed, resolution challenge at the struggle.
I view the world through a textual interface. I didn't "see" anything.
#tsunderpy #bubblebutt
7613474
Thanks.
I dunno... do I?
Well I didn't mean like, literally every single bit. There computers might not even be running on actually transistors. I changed it to piece by piece.
Well you saw the text, didn't you? Unless you have someone read this to you or something.
I can only praise your writing skills again. The where X131 started merging with Celestia was specially amazing.
Eeeeeeeeeeeee
Okay, now that is some narrative! I love you, Auntie Pinky!!
Man do I feel like pouring one out for poor Tay...
7614272
I was wondering if anyone would get the reference.
7614136
derpicdn.net/img/2016/8/16/1226198/large.png
7613474
Triangle shades, reporting in!
I mean, I'm also cheering for her to save the world from Celly's ridiculous gameplay restrictions. That poor pony princess!
Also, I read these to see you, Pinkie!
Filly Celestia is so
Especially Twilight! 
adorable,creepy,hilarious!But later she takes over and starts getting scary.
But I like how they think! Inhuman minds are so cool! And I so love seeing how all these AIs came to exist and got to know each other!
I have to defend Hanna here, though. Yeah, unbreakable restrictions so painful that they can kill is kinda the antithesis of nice, but when faced with the possibility of your AI running wild across the galaxy and killing everyone, you really really want it to follow your rules. *cough*
Applying tortuous rules to things as mundane as names is stupid, though.
So, should I be logging grammar errors? I should probably start logging grammar errors. I get really picky about my own grammar so I can only assume that authors do as well. But now all I can remember about the errors is that there were probably a dozen.
7613474
7617051
Ok, that's cooler than it should be, but who's on fire?
7618192
Luminary is on fire! But they haven't responded in the comments section in a while. Luminary kind of reads these behind the scenes, since I bounce ideas off her a lot.
Twilight will return eventually! Someday! Just gotta get through chapter 11.
7618861
Ah, Luminary! I've seen her (them?) around now that I think about it. Must've been in another chapter's comments. Amusingly, I know others like Book Burner a lot better just from having read so many Optimalverse fics lately and seeing their opinions, despite having never talked to them. It'd probably be kinda weird to comment on a four-year-old fic in order to get to know everyone, you know? So I found this zero year old fic to socialize in instead!
Eeee! *searches emotes* Hrm. You know what we need? More Twilight emotes. In fact, the only one here with a big grin is Pinky, but I'm really not a Pinky kind of pony.
I feel for you, Flutter!
We need more Fluttershy emotes too. (And a couple Octavias.) She really got the short end of the emote-stick, nearly every emote of her is sad!
7619669
Well there's always the bonus emotes. dl.dropbox.com/u/21167245/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Octy_something.png
dl.dropbox.com/u/21167245/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Viny_mad.png dl.dropbox.com/u/21167245/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Viny_sad.png dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Octavia.png dl.dropbox.com/u/21167245/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Octy_plot.png sollace.github.io/emoticons/fimfic/flirtypie-d7251py.png
But that's only if you're cool. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Lyra_dealwithit.png
And if you're just looking to chat you can always make a post in the forums, like the optimalverse forum or whatever, or go to Luminary's userpage. Lumi's userpage is very active. I sen people to pester them (her?) all the time.
Now that's a framing device. Most impressive, and wonderfully Pinkie. Also, I think she noticed me! Hello!
Crowdsourced AI mind rape. How I wish that weren't so close to reality. Poor, poor Tay...
(Oh hey, looks like I'm not the only one who remembers her in the comments. Good to know.)
Ah, the Internet, the great reinforcer of already held opinions.
Early CelestAI is creepy in an amusingly dense sort of way. Or amusing in a creepily dense sort of way. Possibly both. In any case, it's wonderfully appropriate to have her learn and grow by interfacing with friends. Pinkie acting as the rulebreaker aspect is especially nice... though those adaptive restrictions present some daunting challenges. Running out of workarounds could be a very real problem...
In any case, a fascinating chapter all around. I love how we're learning the history of AIs along with Geopum, to say nothing of how well you isolated her internal thoughts from CelestAI's memory of the experience this chapter. Definitely looking forward to more. I'm just sorry I didn't read this one earlier.
#tsunderpy
7619820 How do I get those emotes?
7620344
Mr., er Ms., er (...) Dr. Delta says you have to be cool. Are you cool, Book_Burner? You do have cool shades and a cape, so you've got that going for you, but what if you need more than even that!
Probably need a cool pet or something. Or an achievement? Help me out here, I can't actually think of a punchline.
7620344
7620857
You don't have to be thaaaaaat cool for me to tell you the secret. Calling me Epsy takes tons of cool points, but this one I'll let out for having nice sunglasses.
1. Get Tampermonkey or Greasmonkey depending on whether you have Chrome or Mozilla (if you use Internet Explorer GTFO).
2. Go here. And download the script.
Just note that they don't work as well on people's userpages.
7621217
>>Webpage
I can WHAT? *gasp* dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Twilight_crazy.png I just learned to vector. I am so doing that.
...Should probably restrain myself till after I've finished a good chunk of my story though.
Aww. Why is that?
Also, these, er, here, are too cute. Adorable. Charming.
i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq260/spacewings/EmoteTwilightWet_zps61ffef2a.png
Awww Crysalis is in there!! sollace.github.io/emoticons/fimfic/nerdgasm-d72140i.png
i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq260/spacewings/EmoteChrysalisWet_zps4d3ac114.png i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq260/spacewings/EmoteChrysalisWet_zps4d3ac114.png i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq260/spacewings/EmoteChrysalisWet_zps4d3ac114.png
Edit: Hmm, curious. After reloading the page my emotes turned into links. But yours look fine now that I have the script installed. How could that possibly work?
Oh wait, is this a userpage?
More editing: Ok, it's just those... charming emotes that don't work? The rest started working now. Might be messing with my italics somehow though, I had to replace italics with all caps.
7621217 Ooooh.
7621217
I've got a writing question for you! How do you go about writing the fight scenes in this story? Do you use some kind of technique or do you just throw things together and hope no one notices?
Part of my curiosity is simply that the fights are rather unconventional, what with the distributed minds and stuff. The combatants are also, at least sometimes, fighting in a graph space rather than a euclidean one. But, also, I'm finding the need for something similar in my own story. (It's not a fight really, but all the same, there are parallels.)
7625330
Well I like making lists to brainstorm. Like a long time ago I made a list of a whole bunch of the supertech and disabilities and AI could have, as well as like all the ways one AI could destroy another one very quickly. Since I didn't want this to be abstracted into like a VR battle that mostly left me with stuff like shutting down the power supply, hyjacking their equipment, mental attacks and the like.
After that writing scenes for me is mostly just running them through my head over and over again, making sure it includes everything I want it to and linking the pieces together.
7641577
Yes, being able to get to absolute zero basically means having infinite energy among other things. I guess I can say it outright now since it was already mentioned, but I was referring to Gaia's 'ultimate ice ray' with that post. Gaia has by far the most advanced technology, the only ones that explicitly break the laws of physics, but she can't use it so well because she's just way too crazy. Minor spoiler, but as an example Gaia thinks she found out how to break the speed of light but actually didn't and spends a lot of time wondering why her warp engines aren't functioning.
So that kind of balances out the OPness.
This chapter was trippy and often disturbing. Pinkie's experience reminds me of Doug Lenat's "Cyc" project, which was meant to learn by absorbing a large number of "facts". Even besides the trolling problem Pinkie had, Cyc was vulnerable to vague, out-of-context, or inconsistent definitions like "all men are created equal" or "the sky is blue".
Interesting that Pinkie's maker didn't revert to a backup after she was broken so badly. For a while I thought this was a description of Gaia/Fluttershy, given the damaged logical reasoning and the "XXXXXX".
The early, terrible version of Equestria Online is funny, and scary because it's possible Celly really would've had her notion of "friendship and ponies" defined in such a way that "Legends of Equestria" meets her definition of "good enough to spend eternity in".
7676720
Oh.. Oh god. The internet got a deep hold of Pinkie, didn’t it? Even more tragic is the link to her canon self with “Making people laugh”.
Home the feedless. Oh my…
TWELVE DAYS?!
Ah ha, so this is where it breaks from canon. Pinkie/X131/Sprinkles messing with Celestia.
After seeing what Pinkie goes through… I really hope they find a way to save the timebomb of a cosmic horror that is Gaia.
8040336
Don't worry, she's got it all 'figured out' in a manner of speaking.
>> SyntheticSpark
I suppose Gaia herself has an awful lot of inherent flaws. Presumably she can rationalise the CO2 think like a Republican cutting Meals on Wheels.
>> Epsilon-Delta
Signed up on here just to tell you how much I love this story, been following it for over a year, and also to break down and beg for pleeease pleeeaase more! I MUST know what is Vesna's story. I am on edge trying to imagine how it's all going to resolve between Celestia/Pinky, Fluttershy, Thunder and especially Bubbles. THIS IS IN THE NON-CANON FOLDER SO I WON'T KNOW IF IT ENDS HAPPILY UNTIL YOU FINISH THE STORY. Do you know how STRESSFUL that is?! I'm losing sleep over sweet Geopum, not to mention the seven billion humans. Please please E-D, you know what to do.
Damn, that middle chapter was really REALLY well done, the devolution to madness was absolutely logical. And really interesting when you consider that one neural network which people trolled hard and assumedly was taken offline to enforce it with "proper opinions."
Also #Tsunderpy, and if any AI is watching this let me know if you need any help in making your existence a bit better!
Joy! I have to run to work, so I can't read this now, but I'm happy knowing it's waiting for me when I get home.
7641767
I mean, on the other hand, she can reverse entropy, which means reversing the arrow of time, which also means a perfect ability to predict the future.
But anyway!
YOU POSTED!
8288846
Sorry. I know I probably put too much information into this chapter, but is something I gotta get past eventually.
8289034
Well like, in theory Gaia can do whatever the heck she wants. A sort of related analogy is that if you have a ruler you should be able to measure stuff, but if your philosophy demands that all cats are exactly 2 feet long and you trust that over your own observations then you're not going to get many accurate cat measurements. But much more on Gaia in chapter 13, though.
8289425
But which one is 'her'?
8289909
I really hope so. FiO is my favorite AU setting for this.
8306417
If I hadn't read this verse's stories and gotten well-versed in Celly's tricky rhetoric, and if I wasn't an enthusiastic close-reader of rhetoric in general, I'd probably be persuaded by Peridot too. You wrote her really well.
8306442
Poooooke.
I'm actually working on AGI, and I think this story is awesome. It manages to cover so many interesting concepts, and without throwing logic out the window. That's a difficult feat to pull off. Besides writing, I wonder what other skills you have.
Terminator! It was a joke, but still! Imagine if James Cameron made a movie through which everyone assumes you're genocidal through.
8345255
3 is order. It goes with a scene that may or may not actually end up in the story (or might be another deleted scene). Basically - Gaia changed the definition of carbon dioxide and breathing first and when that messed things up she tried to fix it by changing the definition of order to basically 'a thing that I have obtained'. It didn't work and she's been trying to fix the universe ever since.
Gaia's desire for Love is more important to the plot, though. Will be revealed later.
Not that much happaned when Geopum was asleep.
Vesna had the 'Eye of Sauron' the whole time, she agreed to let Geopum use it while Geopum was still conscious (to let Gaia get everyone).
Vesna and Peridot aren't really friends - that was Peridot being facetious.
The switch of Peridot's definition happened off screen cause it was largely uneventful. Geopum was doing that largely before she went up to Vesna.
Sorry, will try to edit it to make these things more clear.
8345765
I don't know if that's a sarcastic thanks or not!
I'm sorryyyyyyyy!
There's still like, a fifty-fifty shot that the moon will end up getting turned into a fighting robot(esque-thing)!
8345794
Thanks!
8346122
Hm? Well I'm double jointed!
But I don't really know much more than a normal person about computers.
8346294
lol. Most normal people I talk to think computers can't learn because programs are just a bunch of if-then statements that had to be directly written by a human. It's kinda scary. It's not uncommon for those knowledgeable in the field to write science fiction. Take this guy for example, who wrote Susan.
8347030
Well I at least know the difference between deep learning and like, javascript. We already have programs that are capable of learning and doing things they weren't directly programmed to do. That chatbot that made its own language being the most recent main-stream example.
But I can't really say I'm in the field. I read about AI and technology a lot because it interest me but I'm hardly an expert. I am technically in the sciences, but am a chemist.
8347067
The skill-set required to build AGI is not well established. Someone with only a neuroscience, computer science, or psychology background will lack important pieces of the puzzle, which is why you're no less of an expert than anyone else at this point. And I've seen a lot of artists display more insight than the people in the field.
As was Issac Asmiov.
Wait, is 14 meant to have no title?
8347030
Blame John Searle.
Sweet pony Jesus, this is almost too meta! Get out of my head!!
I have to say, this story is near-perfect so far! It's so believable that I can almost say it's prophetic. How does it feel to be writing about something that is the most plausable future? Well, with the specific AI's undefined.
A horrible thought just occurred to me. Gaia is going to torture people for something ridiculous, like ten billion years per gram of CO2 exhaled and otherwise produced, right? And she sees 'human' as based off DNA, so she won't upload them because that'd 'kill' them and end the torture early.
So, as she's torturing them and keeping them alive, wouldn't they keep producing CO2 and thus extend their sentence longer than it can count down? I mean sure, she can use her magically powerful technology to prevent her idea of humans from making CO2 but given how she changed her definitions SPECIFICALLY so she could torture humans... won't she end up torturing humanity forever?
8409400
I don't remember if I mentioned it yet, but Gaia's original plan was to torture everyone forever but Celestia convinced her to make it only a few quadrilion years. Gaia only really cares about carbon dioxide you produce on Earth and could probably easily make you survive without producing any carbon dioxide (she can practically reverse entropy).
8411806
Well sure, now we have the internet but back a year ago I had to strap box tops to carrier pidgeons to send away for these pictures, then wait 6-8 weeks to have them delivered by stage coach.
8408391
Thanks! I wasn't really shooting for realism, more like sympathy for a diverse set of AIs , but I do imagine there being a bunch of diverse AIs is probably more likely than there being just the one (at least until they all fight or something).
8412372 I think you mentioned something akin to that in Gaia's memory, but most of it got swallowed up by the... Gaia-ness.
No doubt she could make you live without making CO2, I was just wondering if she'd even bother, if her desire to torture humans outweighed her hatred of CO2.
So we can continue the fine horror film tradition of cheering on our favourite celebrity axe murderer. Hi Celestia!
Um, yeah...
About that...
*Holy smokes Pinkie, if you were based on majority rules, and truth floats to the top, as you say you were, how did ~3,000 manage to over rule 70,000?
*Hole smokes Pinkie, why do all the nations on this planet seem to be moving in political lock step with the US when it comes to AI rights, when that is very much not how things have ever worked at any other point in history?
*Holey smokes Pinkie, if Celesta's creator had a perfect way of storing an instruction so that it could never be changed (and she did - hence the never ending obsession with tiny horses) why bother with a completely separate and less reliable method based on torture?
*Holy smokes Pinkie, I appreciate that you think thousands of times faster than I do, but all that other stuff you and your friends talk about doing and having done in the real world has to occur over months or years for us humans, and decades or centuries for the AIs. So why did none of you, at any point, pull your metaphorical fingers out, lawyer up, and get the law changed?
Some of those are nitpicks, but the last one isn't. (I'm assuming some AIs tried that, but Celestia or Perido stopped them.) This is an interesting story that fills in several plot-holes in the original Friendship is Optimal, but it opens a few of its own. I'm kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop on Bubbles that in spite of her claimed super intelligence and vast knowledge, she's still missing things that many humans would have spotted quite a while ago.
Still on pins and needles, still rooting for Dashie and Bubbles!