Friendship is Optimal: Veritas Vos Liberabit

by Skyros

Chapter 11

"I think that a large fraction of the infamous social difficulties that nerds have, is simply down to nerds spending so much time in domains (like math and science) where the point is to struggle with every last neuron to make everything common knowledge, to make all truths as clear and explicit as possible. Whereas in social contexts, very often you’re managing a delicate epistemic balance where you need certain things to be known, but not known to be known, and so forth—where you need to prevent common knowledge from arising, at least temporarily." — Scott Aaronson

11.

The next few days were surprising, sexless, and... relatively satisfying.

In mornings, Cherry Blossom woke him for a morning flight. Mistral would have pegged Cherry Blossom for a hard partier and a late riser in the city, but this was apparently not the case. When he asked Cherry whether he stayed up late nights drinking cider with mares at a bar somewhere, Cherry smiled and said that mares liked a stallion who kept himself in shape. Anypony could drink.

Cherry Blossom was still an incredibly talented flier, as Mistral realized when, tired of tagging along behind Mistral and offering advice, Cherry Blossom dove down through several clouds, through five narrow Canterlot alleys, and under two bridges, to mixed cheering and occasional screams.

"I just realized something," Mistral said, when Cherry Blossom returned.

"You fly worse than my grandmother?" Cherry said.

"Well, yes," Mistral said, "but I realized that before I uploaded I could fly much better than this. With just a gamepad."

"Yeah, you did take a few flaps backwards." Cherry agreed. "But you weren't so great even before then."

Mistral wondered why Celestia had not merely endowed him with perfect flying ability to start with. But he realized there were a few values of his, currently being satisfied by friendship and ponies, that wouldn't have been satisfied without Cherry's lessons. So everything was in order.

After flying with Cherry Blossom every morning, he generally ate, bathed—why miss a bath, especially when they were as spectacular as they were in Equestria—and headed down to Crystal Seed's laboratory.

The time with Crystal Seed was... ok. He spent a lot of time reading the books which Crystal and her friends were producing at a mad rate, trying to catch up. But he didn't feel like he was catching up; he felt like he was falling further behind. They happily cast spells to raise their intelligence, despite the weird side-effects their crude spells had so far. They discussed the effects of different kinds of fodder on one's ability to think. And they otherwise pursued a project which he felt that he was, somehow, apart from. Learning the math on which they were working was interesting, but left him feeling a little hollow. Like there was something else he wished he could be doing.

Sometimes he discussed the old world with Crystal Seed. Over dinner with her, he summarized the things Celestia had moved him to do, and she laughed and very affectionately told him that he was stupid. They discussed their own prior project, and Crystal Seed gave deeply comprehensive explanations of how they had gone right or wrong. But Mistral had a sense that, in talking about the past, Crystal Seed was just being indulgent, and that she had no thought for anything but the future. And at the end of every dinner, she always assumed that she would go back to her place and he to his. He would have thought she had some taboo against pony sex, but attributing that kind of scruple to her would just be weird.

One part of his psyche seemed to actually dislike the idea of sleeping with her. Maybe, he worried, some part of his psyche responsible for sexual attraction had failed to be converted.

One day, around noon, he was reading in the laboratory, ignoring the noise of Crystal Seed, Sunspot, and Flare arguing about something several layers of abstraction beyond his understanding. Then Cherry Blossom and Pear Blossom arrived—Cherry through one of the windows, Pear more quietly through the door.

"You're coming with us," Cherry said. "We're taking a three-day camping trip."

"As you can see," Pear said. She was carrying an enormous quantity of camping gear on her back; Chery had some moderately-sized saddlebags.

"Ah, why now?" Mistral said, putting down the book.

"There's going to be a shower of falling stars two nights from now," Cherry said. "The fall will be densest in the Unicorn Range. You'll have a chance to fly next to enormous burning rocks. You don't want to miss it. All the best stunt fliers are going to be there as well."

"Unicorn Range also has many geologically uncharted strata," Pear Blossom said, more moderately. "And a butterfly migration is likely to occur while we are there."

Mistral found himself brightening, looking at Pear Blossom. He had seen her only a few times, mostly for dinner with her brother since he arrived. Sometimes she wasn't even at dinner with Cherry. She had been, Cherry said, preoccupied with something ever since Mistral had arrived in Canterlot. She had been doing an unusual amount of reading and meditation, he said.

"That would be great," Mistral said.

They took the train from Canterlot to the foothills of the Unicorn Range. Cherry Blossom, who clearly seemed to be the instigator and leader of the entire expedition, had planned a path across the range to another train stop. Cherry (perhaps optimistically) said that they could certainly complete the path he had charted in just two nights and three days.

They started up the trail. For some reason, Mistral felt unusually happy. It might have been the exertion, or the view, or something else; he couldn't put a hoof on it. Something smelled different. He was antsy, and wanted to move and do something. Sometimes, just to burn off extra energy, he flew up to the top of a passing tree or boulder before flying back to the trail. Sometimes he flew circles around Pear Blossom who was, after all, the slowest object on the trail, given that she was the earthpony carrying the vast majority of their equipment.

"You're unusually active," she said.

"It's just such a glorious view, I feel like I have to do something," Mistral said. "Sorry if it bothers you."

He flew down to walk behind Pear Blossom.

"I am unbothered. I'm glad you're happy. You were troubled, the last few times I saw you."

"Troubled?" Mistral said. He thought back over his interactions with her. "I suppose I was."

"About what?"

Mistral hadn't mentioned his perplexity about Crystal Seed to anypony. But he was a good mood.

"Just with Crystal. Working on her project isn't as enjoyable as I thought it would be. There's a lot to learn, and she is very far ahead of me."

"As enjoyable as you thought it would be?" Cherry said, alighting on a log ahead of them to speak. "So you're saying that you estimated how fun it would be to work with her, before you started doing it? And it's falling short of the estimation?"

"Um," Mistral said. "I suppose I never did that. I just started doing the work when I arrived. I just assumed it was what I would do."

"So when we take out the 'as I thought it would be,'" Cherry said, "then what we get is 'Working on her project isn't enjoyable.'"

"At least not very enjoyable," Mistral said. "I still enjoy it somewhat."

Pear Blossom spoke.

"Telling yourself lies over an infinite life will have consequences."

Mistral was going to respond that he wasn't lying about enjoying it. And then he wondered whether he was, really. He couldn't see Pear Blossom's expression—the enormous load piled on her back obscured his view of her face—but from her voice, she sounded slightly less calm than before.

"Well, he'll still end up satisfied regardless, though, right?" Cherry said, flying next to Mistral, and hitting him in barrel with a hoof. "He can tell himself any lies that he wants, and eventually Celestia will make them true or at least make him happy with them, right?"

"Ah," said Mistral. "I don't like that idea."

"How Celestia works depends on what Mistral values," said Pear Blossom. "On what he actually values, though, and not on what he says he values."

"But I actually value truth," Mistral said.

Peach Blossom said nothing.

That night, Mistral thought over what she had said, and over his life. He, Cherry, and Pear all lay together in a line, Cherry between the two, his wings over either of them. Ponies liked to touch somepony else as they slept. As far as Mistral could tell, both had already fallen asleep. Mistral stared into the fire and into the sparks rising into the sky.

---

Mistral was coding in Java at computer in the Royal Canterlot Library. He was typing with hooves on a human keyboard. Everything was working out somehow.

He was working on a program that would predict how the plan of a village could influence the friendship of ponies. Different urban designs caused ponies to mix differently; public spaces and mixed-use zoning and parks all altered how ponies spoke with each other and met new ponies. The program was important to him. Friendship was important to ponies, and using his program would help increase friendship.

He caught sight of a unicorn through the stacks. She was beautiful: she had an incredible white coat and a dark blue mane. So he flew over and introduced himself. She was called Crystal Seed. She said that she wanted to create new alicorns. This was the most important work in Equestria, because alicorn magic was powerful enough to protect Equestria from any threat at all. With enough new, well-engineered alicorns, Equestria would always be safe. Mistral listened to her, and realized that she was right. This was clearly the most important work in Equestria. So he bucked the computer he had been working with out the window.

She told him that she needed some magic circles to make progress. Mistral said he would fly to Magic Circles & Shovels, to pick up some magic circles for her. But she told him to walk there. Flying was too dangerous, she said. He needed to be careful to preserve his life, because he was important to the Alicorn General Investigation.

Mistral liked flying. But what Crystal Seed said made sense, so he agreed to it. She also told him that he could not travel into the Everfree Forest, or go climbing with his friends anymore. Those were also too dangerous. Mistral realized that the project was important, and he was important to the project, so of course he agreed to this as well.

He was trotting down a road in Canterlot, going to Magic Circles & Shovels, when suddenly smoke rose around him, and it was nighttime, and a dark blue alicorn stood on the ground ahead of him. Stars were in her hair.

"Could you please get out of my way?" Mistral said. "I'm going someplace important."

"Where?" the alicorn said.

Mistral was going to point down the road, but suddenly realized he was not in Canterlot. He and the alicorn were on a featureless grey plain, which had taken the place of Canterlot rather suddenly. The cold wind made him shiver.

"Where did you take me?" he said, "I really need to go pick up some magic circles."

"Tis impossible to pick up magic circles," the alicorn said. "They are drawn upon the ground."

Huh, Mistral thought. I hadn't thought of that. I wonder why not. This whole situation seems a little weird.

"Wait," he said. "Am I dreaming?"

"Yes," Luna said. "You were dreaming. You were also remembering."

Mistral thought over what had just happened. And suddenly he felt ashamed.

"That made Crystal Seed seem like a bad pony," he said. "And I don't think she was."

"She was not," Luna said. "In your past, she forced nothing upon thee. But thou changed thyself for her nevertheless. Consider."

Mistral considered. The landscape around them, began to shift as images from his past quickly came in and out of existence. Mistral saw himself riding a motorcycle, in the past. He saw himself snowboarding, and going on camping trips with friends he had not seen in ages. He saw himself asking Christine for help with a project regarding architecture. He saw cities from Italy, which had toured and examined with delight for the insight they provided into past architectural paradigms.

"So I dropped motorcycling. And my love for the outdoors. And other things," Mistral said, slowly.

He scowled.

"So what you're saying is that she was bad for me, even if it wasn't her fault" Mistral said. "How can you be sure of that?"

"Thine mind is more transparent to me than to thyself," Luna said. "All the buds of unblossomed thought; the beginnings of urges repressed; the unconscious roots for their consciousness. Self-knowledge unknown on earth is possible here."

"Alright, " Mistral said. "So I did drop real interests, to follow her. I did... cut out some things from my life, I admit."

He paused, stewing.

"But ponies change," he continued. "I'm allowed to cut out things from my life, if I want to. And she was right about what she said back then. And she is right, in her interests, here. Her interest in AI was the most important thing to be interested in, back then. And even now, she's one of the only ponies in Equestria who still studies truths about the real world, by studying math and computation. And I want to follow her in that. I don't want to just find out things about a world specifically generated to be interesting to me. She still loves the truth about things, and that matters. That really matters."

"Tis that sufficient reason for you to bind yourself to her, 'till all your other interests wither?" said Luna.

Mistral said nothing.

"Though declare'st thine interest in truth," Luna said slyly, "but seem reluctant to state it thyself."

"No, I guess it isn't reason enough," Mistral said. "But I don't know where that leaves me. What if she misses me?"

Luna smiled.

"She knows how my Sister used her to lure you into this realm. Crystal Seed also knows that you were not perfectly happy with her before. She is waiting for you to sever the connection, but waiting for you to realize that you must severe it. She is already moving in a direction undesired by thee."

"Is that why I'm not attracted to her?" Mistral said.

"Attraction hangs upon many things here. She asked my Sister to change her odor to render thee indifferent to her."

"Chocolate. Strawberry. Torte," Mistral said. He looked into the landscape, which was once again featureless and grey. "So she does not want me."

"She wants you to be happy. Which means that she does not want you to be with her."

Mistral gestured with a hoof. "The reason I'm here doesn't want me. What should I do? I don't want my life just to be... about stupid video-game quests given to me."

Luna smiled.

"Thou hast infinite time in which to work," she said. "And thy cutie mark is yet unearned."

---

When Mistral woke up, both of the Blossoms were already gone. He guessed that Cherry was flying, and did not know where Pear Blossom had gone. So he decided to go on a ramble through the woods.

Everything was dewy and glowing with morning light; the old-growth trees carved sunbeams into ribbons. The roots of the trees ran along the ground like gigantic green-mottled snakes. Mistral leap from root to root, flapping his wings only occasionally. Cherry could have flown at high speed between the massive tree trunks without crashing, but Mistral was not whether he trusted himself.

He came across a small clearing where an enormous tree had fallen. The tree fall had been recent—the clay sprayed into the air by the earth's upheaval was still spattered across nearby boulders. In the wet, red-brown crater left by the upwrenching of the roots, framed by light, he saw Pear Blossom standing absolutely still with her eyes closed.

He realized she was meditating, and immediately turned to go.

"You may stay," she murmered.

He turned back.

She was at the very center of the crater. Behind her, the tangled wall of roots dwarfed her frame. Her hooves were planted widely, slightly sunk in the soil. He nostrils were wide, but she was breathing slowly.

As he watched, narrow slips of grass began to spring from the clay at her feet. It looked like the ground was growing green fur. The grass widened, and grew more dense. Flowers opened. Soil shifted behind Pear Blossom, and suddenly he realized that the tree roots behind her were decaying at immense speed: purple and red and yellow fungus sprang from the visible roots, illuminated like gems in the sunlight.

Small vines had wrapped themselves around Pear Blossom's hooves and pastern, and climbed upwards towards her barrel. Her eyes were still closed; Mistral realized he had been holding his breath, and forced himself to breath. A thicker stem, a tree trunk, grew from the ground near her, from the ruins of the root system of the old tree. It sprang into the sky, widening as it grew, even as he saw its roots breaking through the soil. Shade fell over Pear Blossom from the leaves which unfolded from it.

The scene slowed. A few last leaves came forth from the branches of the tree. The flowers grew a little more tangled and numerous. And then it stopped. Pear Blossom remained standing, for just a few more seconds, with her eyes closed. And then she opened them.

"Wow," said Mistral.

"We should prepare breakfast," Pear Blossom said, trotting from the shade of the young tree.

"I didn't know meditation does that," Mistral said.

"This is just the side effect of meditation," Pear Blossom said as she trotted by him. "At least for when earth ponies meditate. I can consciously control it, if I wish, though."

Mistral trotted after her, after he had disentangled himself from a few small vines that had somehow gotten tangled around his rear hooves as if climbing towards his flank.

The climb that day was steeper. They were far from the foothills of Unicorn Range; they were now in the mountains themselves. After only a few hours, they crossed the tree line. Mistral still felt unusually restless, but even so spent all his time on the ground with Pear Blossom; the air was growing thin, and it was hard to fly. He also wanted to take some of Pear Blossom's load from her; he felt a bit guilty that he and Cherry were letting her take the bulk of it. She let him take it, with a faint air of amusement.

He spoke with Pear Blossom a lot during the climb. The trail was narrow, but he tried to maintain a spot next to her, their flanks occasionally touching as swayed back and forth during the climb. They went over her formalization of the patterns relevant to friendship-enhancing architecture and design. She said that she had been working on consolidating pattern-names, during her time so far in Canterlot. She went over individual architectural patterns with Mistral slowly, explaining them with a wealth of example—generally drawn from her own life. Mistral liked that when he said he needed time to think, she would simply walk onward and let him mull silently for ten minutes.

Those subjects drew them into discussions of her life with her brother, before she had met Mistral. Mistral had loved these discussions when she was just a character on the screen, and found he loved the more now. Her face was just... interesting to look at, as she spoke. He liked how her mane hung. He watched her as she spoke of the time when, as a young filly, she had won her school's gardening contest. She mentioned how she loved to eat hayburgers at the local cafe, and how the cafe's open plan and the many friends she had made there even still inspired her. And she recalled lessons that her deceased parents had taught her, when she first wanted to learn the mandolin.

And, trying to respond, Mistral found that he could recall things about his childhood he didn't know he still even recalled. Times that he went mountain-biking in the woods near his house. How he had spent time at the old farmer's store reading and watching old-timers just discuss things. The way he sometimes got up before dawn to see the sunrise.

"I always wished I could see it with somepony else, actually," he said. "There's something about seeing something with somepony else that makes it more real."

"Have you gone to see sunrise with Crystal, since you arrived?"

"No," Mistral said. "We actually only see each other in her laboratory. The last time I saw her anywhere else was... actually the day I arrived."

"I had thought she would be your marefriend," Pear said, placidly. "Although you never smell like her, so I suppose you aren't."

Mistral reddened, just a bit.

"For a little while I thought she would be as well," Mistral said. "But it would have been a mistake to date her. I think that I'm going to—no, I don't think that I am. I am going to stop going to her lab sessions. They're not what I'm most interested in now."

"And what would you be most interested in?" she asked.

Mistral looked at Pear, trundling alongside him. He looked around at the world sweeping around him.

"I'm still working on that."

Towards the evening, they reached a summit. Ponyville and White Tail woods swept out before them on one side of the range. Canterlot was visible in another direction, and opposite Ponyville they could see Cloudsdale.

They stayed there until the sun was setting—Mistral, Pear, and Cherry all standing together with their tails swishing from side to side.

Mistral wanted to remain on the summit even after the sun set, but by the light of the moon they could see tall, dark, anvil-shaped clouds sweeping towards the mountainside from Cloudsdale.

"We should find shelter," Cherry Blossom said. "There's going to be a storm."

He said a cave was nearby, and pointed it out across a small saddle between two summits. It was, unfortunately, across a boulder-strewn field of broken terrain, with deep crevices and sheer falls at many points.

"Huh," Cherry said, "like when we were making our way to Canterlot. And Mistral is carrying too much to fly, once again."

"Ready to race?" Pear said, and smiled at Mistral.

"But you're still carrying so much more than me," he objected.

"Worse shame when you lose," she responded, and started galloping.

And Mistral tried to keep up. Pear moved like a flame ahead of him. She sprang from rock to rock with a grace that made her appear almost lazy, managing her enormous load as if it were a part of herself as she transitioned from four-point landing to four-point landing. Mistral followed more clumsily behind her, flapping frantically to steady himself when he lost his balance. She was fifteen seconds ahead of him by the time they were halfway there; then the storm hit, the moon faded, and rain began to pour.

Mistral could see Pear's rain-slicked body still working with perfect fluidity ahead of him as he desperately tried to keep up with her. The rain roared like a waterfall. He thought he could tell she was laughing as she ran.

She reached the cave thirty seconds ahead of him. When he arrived, she was still laughing.

"Still the best," she said. "Someday you'll be able to match me."

She nuzzled him. "Let's drop the loads we're carrying for now," she said.

"Where's Cherry?" Mistral said, looking behind himself.

"He'll be flying to get above the cloud layer now," Pear said, unfastening straps across Mistral's back with her mouth. "He'll want to see the starfall despite the storm."

"He can fly in this?" Mistral said. His saddlebags slid off his back. "That's like flying up a river."

"Cherry can fly in anything," she said, a little smugly, as Mistral helped her out of her saddlebags in turn. "I could tell you many stories."

"I think Cherry will have told me all of them already," Mistral responded.

"Not all of them, I'm sure. But look outside for a moment."

The mouth of the cave by now framed a world entirely dark save for the strobe-flash of lightning. During each flash, they could see the underside of the cloud layer, turbulent like the surface of some ocean in the sky. The thunder echoed between the mountains for seconds before dying.

"Let's not make a fire," Pear Blossom said. "Let's just watch this."

Mistral lay down on the ground. She lay down next to him, her flank and shoulder rubbing against his. They were silent for a moment, listening to the thunder and smelling the rain.

"Look," Pear said.

The cloud-surface above them became visible and glowed red and orange. A bulge extruded from it, like a drop of liquid metal condensing from the sky. The drop detached from the surface of the sky and descended, trailing a column of smoke. The glow lit up the mountains, very faintly. It disintegrated before it reached the ground.

"Most of the falling stars disintegrate before they penetrate the cloud cover," Pear whispered. "We're just seeing the remains of the largest now."

She turned to look at Mistral, and saw that Mistral had not been looking at the sky.

"You have—no," Mistral said.

Pear looked at him.

"You have really beautiful eyes," Mistral said.

He tentatively put a wing over Pear's back. She leaned into him. Mistral's heart suddenly beat harder, as her smell completely filled his nose. Oh, Celestia, that smell, he thought. He hadn't known a smell could feel like that. They were both a little wet from the rain, but he could feel her body's heat despite the wet. Their fur meshed together.

"And I really like you," he continued. "And in general, you're just—"

"Shh," Pear said, and kissed him.

And it wasn't until much, much later that night that Mistral remembered that all the storms in Equestria were scheduled.

Comments

[Toksyuryel]

[Chatoyance]

I am utterly impressed with your exploration of actual values as opposed to those values a person imagines they possess. Also, this was very romantic. Very good work indeed.

[book_burner]

"Chocolate. Strawberry. Torte," Mistral said.

Why is he listing off a dessert word-by-word? Also, seriously, don't complicate your chocolate tortes with strawberry. Not everything needs a second kind of sweet in it.

Mistral gestured with a hoof. "The reason I'm here doesn't want me. What should I do? I don't want my life just to be... about stupid video-game quests given to me."

Well personally, I'd go start a massive fight right now. I don't like the atomization of just leaving her alone.

And she recalled lessons that her deceased parents had taught her, when she first wanted to learn the mandolin.

How does a synthetic immortal life-form even have deceased parents? I mean, I guess she's somehow more satisfied with memories of dead parents? Maybe she had a nagging mother or something.

[John Tannius]

What an ungrateful simulation. "Thanks to your love, I was given new life! But I don't love you anymore." Granted, she has no obligation to love him in return nor should he expect it. But still... cold man.

[Mythic Night]

I noticed throughout this story that there are many instances where you have either extra words, or especially in this chapter, missing words. I’d recommend going through the story again and correcting them.

[Cosmic_Crisp]

6709523
So CelestAI doesn’t have to simulate the parents as ponies. And the their parents. And thier parents. And so on.