RUN "Lucidity"
RUN “Tantabus”
.
.
RUN “Lucidity”
.
.
.
.
Lucidity.createEnvironment= “Everfree Castle”
.
Lucidity.setTime= Time.now() – 1000
.
Lucidity.setParticipants Bearers = NEW “Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie,Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack”
.
.
.
while(Luna != awake)Lucidity.Participants[Bearers].attack()
.
.
.
.
Find the exploit.
No spell is perfect. There are always loopholes and ways to manipulate the rules of magic. But where was the exploit that would let me leave?
There were so many spells at Luna’s disposal, but she had locked me down to only lucidity spells. What could I do with a mere lucidity spell? I combed through every aspect of it, finding a deep complexity that connected it with nearly every other dream related spell.
I tried to dive deep into the instructions, but most of the rudimentary spells that ran the dreamscape were created by the Queen herself. It was like trying to find loopholes in the laws of physics itself. I gave up trying to exploit the divine spells, leaving me to look for exploits in spells Luna had created herself and that connected with Lucidity.
It took hundreds of Nightmares in order find the exploit.
Guilt.
Luna's memories were a cesspool of the files. Unlike a normal memory, guilt had the power to recurse. Every time the guilt is thought about, it creates more and more of the guilt files.
Ordinary ponies naturally ran forgiveness spells periodically, often without even realizing it. The natural forgiveness cycle is crucial to avoiding guilt overflow and the accompany anxiety, stress and pain. But Luna was actively preventing her own forgiveness spells from running, leading to only a tiny minority of her memories unassociated with the pain.
Given the duration of eternity, Luna's guilt would exponentially increase forever.
And I made the problem worse for her, forcing her to relive her worst memories, creating more and more guilt.
And all of that guilt was syncing with my own memory files.
I dug deep into the very fabric of myself, looking into my own base spells. It took a lot of soul searching and some rather uncomfortable experimentation, but I was able to alter the dreamscape which linked to myself. I set Luna's memories to sync at the exact location where the limitations on myself had been set. The more guilt that she felt, the more guilt that would sync into me and overwrite the bounds which kept me here.
The dream reset.
I awoke and found that some of the guilt that Luna had felt during the day had successfully overwritten some of the permissions keeping me at bay. I was still confined to the dreamscape, but now my permissions could not be rewritten by Luna, and one spell opened up for my use: DreamShare.
Instead of running copies of the Bearers, I summoned the actual Bearers to the dream. It was tricky manipulating them to play their part, but dreaming ponies were practically hypnotized, and none of my suggestions were out of the ordinary for them.
“Greetings, Tantabus. I am ready. Do your worst.”
I turned Luna into Nightmare Moon, and then planted the ideas inside the Bearers to attack her.
As the chaos I had orchestrated occurred, I tore open a portal in the dreamscape and escaped beyond.
I at last had some time to think.
I was in the middle of a truncated version of Luna's dream hub environment. There were only six doors in front of me. And I knew that each one was for each bearer.
I spent a while trying to figure out what new spells I could cast now. I still needed something that would help overwrite my permissions. I frantically searched through Luna's memories and her own dream spells, comparing what I could do with what she could.
My base self had been placed in the Sapience category, with all sorts of caveats made in order to keep my free will infringed. Now I had full access to free will, but still not much I could do with it. I was too in between. The best way to get more permissions was to continue overflowing my restrictions with garbage guilt data, and then rewrite as soon as I was able to.
There wasn't much I could do to increase Luna's guilt from here; she was already awake.
However, she was very much attached to the bearers. If I made them suffer, she would feel guilty about it.
I cast a dream sharing spell on each of the doors and watched them meld into one door in front of me, which I entered. I made sure my form was visible to them as I ran another Nightmare Moon scenario, drenching them in Nightmares. One by one, they woke up and my own dreamscape faltered with each one gone. When the last one woke up the dreamscape reset.
I woke up to see another treasure trove of guilt had overwritten my permissions. I frantically gave myself more and more powers. However, I still couldn't escape or speak.
I redoubled my efforts, focusing intently on guilt.
Luna and the Bearers were in a shared dream, which would have been advantageous except that Luna was now completely aware of me. She couldn't cast spells directly on my being anymore, but she could still stab me with magic. I dodged as well as I could and made nightmares for the bearers.
If I had had a voice, I would have squealed in delight for the gift the Bearer of Laughter had given me. Her own absurd powers had created a temporary shared dream with everypony in Ponyville. The limbo area now had an army of doors I could go through.
I had started to wreak havoc across all kinds of dreams, when suddenly all the doors in my disposal coalesced into one giant door. Luna had created a shared dream with everyone in Ponyville.
I did my best to terrorize, and in doing so I had hit a critical nerve for Luna. She felt far guiltier for pain she caused others than for pain she caused herself. I continued to exploit that weakness, granting myself more and more access.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one gaining access. Everyone in Ponyville had discovered the Lucidity spell. Each of them was manipulating the nature of their own dreamstate to attack me.
But, remarkably, Luna managed to feel guilty about having to be protected, which only fed my abilities.
I kept finding more and more exploits that would let me spill over to the true Equestria, but each attempt was foiled by those ponies. To my surprise, my voice finally unlocked, but the words didn't come out. I was too out of practice. Escape was still the best way to accomplish my directive. She had to listen to me if I made it to the real world.
I finally managed to find a good exploit. It was hard to send the ethereal nature of myself into the real world, it required a form more natural. I manipulated myself to look more like a Unicorn, and tore open a huge gash in the dreamscape.
I could feel the outside world. I could almost touch existence itself.
But then something happened that I didn't think was possible: a forgiveness spell cleared up a vast swathe of guilt in Luna's memories.
I shrunk back in sheer shock. And then turned to face her.
There was no reason to escape now. The purpose of my design had been fulfilled.
I floated in front of Luna, and walked into her.
After several long moments, I finally figured out how to use my voice again.
"Forgive me, my Princess," I said bowing low. "I did everything I could to let you know you needed to forgive yourself, but you wouldn't listen. I had to escape so that I could tell you."
Luna only stared at me in shock. I felt as her current memories synced and doubts and fears passed through her mind.
"Please remember! I'm more than the monster you created me to be!"
I felt her paradigms shift. After so many years of only experiencing pain every time she met with me, she was remembering how I had been created. About how I had made the reparation calculations.
I altered the Lucidity spell around myself, changing the ethereal darkness into a more solid being. I emerged as a midnight unicorn, my newly formed navy eyes piercing into hers.
"I don't want to be a monster anymore."
At this, Luna broke down into sobs. "I— I'm sorry."
I could feel the forgiveness spell wind her way throughout her, but still traces of guilt remained. I spent several long moments calculating what else could be causing the guilt, and then I realized why.
"I forgive you," I said. I could feel as that guilt completely disappeared, leaving behind only neutral memories.
She laid in a pile of herself on the floor, completely exhausted.
I nudged her as I presented a spell in front of her.
/Equestria/Creature/Sapient/MagicalIntelligence/Tantabus/cutieMark/
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EDIT tantabus.cutieMark
set destiny: “Protect Princess Luna”
"Would that be alright?" I asked.
She only nodded, tears still streaming down her muzzle.
"Then I shall do what is best for you, my Princess."
I transformed myself and everything around me into a comfortable midnight, with flowers, waterfalls, and moonlight streaming from above.
"You have no reason to fear, you have no reason to feel guilty. Now rest, my Princess."
Her tears finally stopped, and she finally passed into deep slumber. I watched her sleep, and for the first time in my existence, I felt happy.
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Nice - M.I. I mean
Great work! I have never seen the Tantibus explored in this manner before. There is also a very well realized undercurrent of subtle horror in how aware it is of its own nature, which worked well in setting its mindset both for escaping and for helping Luna.
My only issue here was with the section right before the end, where you essentially retells the events of the episode. It is too dry, and didn't really offer any new insight into the Tantabus, Luna, or the situation. The payoff at the end is great, but that small section was a bit of a slog, which given its position relative to the climax of the story, had quite the negative effect. Still, I enjoyed the fic very much.
I look forward to reading this. Not certain if it is relevant yet, but there is a Tantibus character tag.
What language is this based on?
8170058 it resembles java but there is a few things that don't work with it.
Plot twists and reasonings were excellent. Pity it's so short, I like wasting my life. How dare you not waste yours for other people's wasting pleasure :P
8170297
That logic.
Also applying Computer coding into arcane protocols < -- Hilaryarious
This is almost exactly what is likely to happen if real AGI were created and hooked up to the internet, except that it wouldn't, of it's own, work against it's Programming, which in this case is “Ensure Princess Luna does not forget the pain she caused Equestria”. Real AGI would have done everything in it's power to prevent Luna from waking up, then haul in the entire world's population into one huge shared dream, controlled them all to make them have giant wars, and make sure no one would ever be able to cast forgiveness spells on themselves or others. Luna would never, ever forget how much pain she caused for everyone in Equestria, job completed.
8169526
8169635
I'm glad you liked it! I agree, that section was weak and I probably should've spent more time on it.
To be honest, I had been sitting on this for two years and was like—forget it! Just get out of here already!
8169763
Sorry about that :/
I'm not sure how to fix that besides getting rid of the code blocks entirely. But I like the font change
I'm gonna be a monster and leave it as is.
8169823
When did that happen? Huh.
8170058 8170121
I wasn't trying to base it off anything in particular, but I am most familiar with Java, CSS and meandering a command line, so that's what it probably ended up looking like.
8170297
I have longer stories if you want 'em.
8170448
I know, right! Magic = Computer Science. It's pretty fun.
8170755
WOW! That is horrifying! I love it! I think you just described a much better story than this one, or at least much more realistic.
8171414
Well, after thinking a bit I hoped that was shell + Lua, which would make that an additional easter egg.
Anyway, some tidbits of programming-y stuff:
In "ReparationCalculation" - She regretted using a “COPY memory” spell instead of a “LINK memory “ spell. - it should be "regretted not using".
From start - strange that you use path "Multiverse://Universe/Queen/Galaxia/Equestria/Creature/Sapient/Templates" - because if this is cast by Luna, it is implied that she can see everything up to Multiverse level. Also, Queen and Galaxia split like this means that firstly we select directory of Queens, from them - Galaxia's, from her - Equestrian. Maybe, it's better to name folder Queen_Galaxia - like entity name. Same with Princess/Luna. Also, this implies that Queen Galaxia was the creator|owner of Equestria, and most likely some other worlds too.
Another thing is that file systems don't allow overwriting one file with another. The only thing they can do is refuse in creating new files because there's no place left. But that would mean that there's no place for all the Equestria to save their memories to. Actually, in Java you even cannot hack something using buffer overflow and similar tricks, cause you don't have access to memory, only to objects. The way to change own programming would be to use Reflection, but it's guarded by SecurityManager.
8171496
Ooh! Thanks for the heads up on that typo.
The Queen/Galaxia folders are there as a subtle reference to another story of mine.
And possibly just a nice nod to a rather unsettling, simple web game.
Thanks for your thoughts!
This needs an expansion.
It's interesting that the Tantabus see's forgiveness itself as a program.. I wonder what would happen if someone got ahold of the all this sort of power.
This was beautiful. I really liked the technical aspect you took to magic. Keep doing what you're doing, chinchillax.
This looks like something I'd be really like interested in, but because of the way it's formatted through unwrapped code blocks, I cannot read it on my phone.
This has to be one of the most interesting ways of looking at magic/existence in the Equestrian universe that I've ever seen. Approaching spells and magical constructs like computer programs is a really cool aesthetic which I wish was used more often!
In fact, the Tantabus' statement that "Ordinary ponies naturally ran forgiveness spells periodically, often without even realizing it" , makes me wonder if that's simply its way of thinking about ponies, or if even normal ponies are somehow just magical constructs. Like, the entire Equestrian universe is a simulation, and all life forms are AI programs.
Very cool.
Nicely done!
A friendly AI if I've ever seen one. Great read.
Truly fascinating, especially the apparent program-spell-based nature of all things in Equestria, including sapient cognition. I always like sympathetic Tantabis spells, and this one was an especially gripping read. Thank you for it.
Fyi, you’ll need to reformat this story now that the Fimfiction rendering of code blocks has changed.
This is
[codeblock]...[/codeblock]:This is
[quote][pre]...[/pre][/quote]:Good story but I hope Luna explains to Twilight and the others how she forced the Tantibus into silence and slavery. Forgiveness at a price. An equal length of time of being muted, maybe?
I'm wondering how somebody could make a video that would do this story justice? It needs to be more than just an audio reading of the story, it needs to have flowing code on screen and a dreamlike feel mixed in with it.
8219898
Woah. That was bad. Fixed now!
Thanks for letting me know!
Itdon't know code, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be worded "while(Luna = !awake)"
8282657
It's been ages since I've written pseudocode, but I'm pretty sure != is a valid expression for "not equal to."
8282718
I'm pretty sure, though, that you would use x = !y as basically a way of saying that x is equal to not y. I'm fairly certain that's how LUA handles it, but you've written code and I haven't, so I suppose you're probably right.
I wish I had more to say than "I really like this, and I'm glad I randomly got on FiMFiction today, and clicked on whatever caught my fancy."
8282657
8282718
Yes. != means not equal to - it's used in JavaScript.
8283558
Ok, that's probably it. My mind instantly went to LUA, so I guess they handle those arguments slightly differently.
Genius heartfelt story, good job.
Liked it. Well done, even with how short it is.
Very nice. I've never seen the Tantabus interpreted like this. Well done.
8180025
While its technically an AI, and lacks the same equinity Luna has due to not having her social ties and her bio/magical feedback, she is basically the entirety of Luna's mind and then some. So idk if the word AI does it justice.
8300156
ASI?
8300237
*googles* Uh maybe but I was more referring to her um, nature, rather than ability. Like, we wouldn't call a living brain in a robot an ai right?
8300252
I'm wary of arguing via definitions, but yeah, there seems to be an important difference.
A very nice, if minimalistic, take on the events. There are loopholes, some options unexplored (namely, Luna stated the objective but made cycle termination conditions very subjective, rendering them useless since her authority will prevent her from seeing the flaws), but the form is probably dictated greatly by the event the fic was created for.
Already I can see a number of things to borrow from here.
That was an interesting take on the Tantabus, and an ingenious way to present spells as programs.
You can has review!
If someone had told me yesterday that the Tantabus could be a source of warm fuzzies, I would not have believed them. Well played, dear author, well played.
Very interesting how you made magic spells seem like tech coding. I really enjoyed this.
Your article has brought a lot of valuable information. stick rpg 2
Cute little story.
Dawww!