Celestia Privatizes the Sun

by Fiddlebottoms

After everything under the sun

One fine morning, Princess Celestia announced her plan to privatize the sun.

Then she assured the laughing audience that she was not joking, and did, indeed, have plans to sell the astral spring from which all life in Equestria flowed.

Then she went into her palace, located the legal documents describing the purchase of the origin of life and matter on this blasted and unloved rock, and presented them to the crowd who were almost too busy checking their calendars to notice the documents presented to them by their monarch. It was not, actually, April 1st. Confusion spread across the crowd like pond scum on water in a pond.

Then Celestia returned indoors, located a notary and a lawyer, and brought them out to confirm that, yes, this was not an elaborate prank. She also confirmed that she was not repeating herself, despite all evidence to the contrary that she was, in truth, repeating herself.

Then she found a psychoanalyst who asked her, the lawyer, and the notary a series of intrusive sexual questions. After a long and public exploration of just what goes on in one’s childhood to make them a notary, the psychoanalyst confirmed that all were neurotic in the usual way, and all appeared to be speaking the truth, or at least as far as they believed what they were speaking was within .001 Wittgensteins of their world of facts, and the citizens of Equestria found themselves convinced. Then concerned.

The sun was to be sold. Also, Celestia was not repeating herself, or at least she didn't believe herself to be so, and she certainly couldn't believe anything stupider than the ponies that believed her.

This announcement was met with furor in the streets and stress in the roads. The highways had had about enough of this, and even the sidewalks were well passed through with that. The rail lines--already privatized--were the one transit option immune to public distress, chiefly because just-in-time maintenance and cuts to worker hours meant that the tracks rusted quietly and unmolested by actual trains, performing the chief function of all things beneath--and apparently including--the sun: generating value for stockholders.

Ponies insisted that what was being done could not be done, and therefore wasn't being done, only to loop back around to the inescapable reality that it was being done, while the grinning media psychopaths--whose job it was to evaluate the political feasibility of all things from mass murder to candy to mass murder by candy in the same detached and bored way an engineer measures the speed of a falling ball--wondered if the sun was government property or Celestia’s demesne, and if it had always been Celestia’s then her decision to place it on the market was the opposite of privatization, although using a different definition of the word privatization from the definition used through the rest of the story and, indeed, a different definition of the word privatization outside of this sentence which has run on for too damn long so let’s just put a period right.

Gryphons, Saddle Arabians, and other delegates of foreign nations poured into Canterlot, demanding to know why they weren't getting cut in on this deal. Celestia rebuffed them that she was here to make Equestria great again, not to deal with some frivolous foreigners and their idea of a right to exist or at least to profit in the death throes of their civilizations. She had decided she owned the sun, and then she had decided to sell the sun and she had the muscle to make both things happen.

And Princess Cadence rushed to insure that her copyright on “Land of the Midnight Sun” would hold up in court even though it turned out that the sun was private property. Her lawyers assured her it would, since Celestia probably didn't own the word sun, just the center of all known existence that the word represented. Cadence was relieved.

And dragons rolled over and belched and went back to sleep, dreaming darkly of the day they would at last be free of this stupid planet covered in flea-like mortals.

Twilight Sparkle expressed moderate indignation at not being allowed to read the terms of the agreement to sell the sun. Not on any principle of transparent government, but because there was something she was being specifically forbidden from reading. She was given a naughty picture book to read instead, one that Celestia had previously forbidden.

And Twilight was entertained for a moment and forgot what she had been doing.

Protesters swarmed the streets of Canterlot, demanding that they continue to be given free access to the bounty of nature. Celestia regarded them with the dim confusion that all members of the ruling class experience when they discover the nature of the public. Like a piece of gum stuck to her hoof, utterly inert and insistent, idiotic and clinging. She couldn't understand what they didn't understand. There had never been such a thing as a free lunch, except for the time before primitive accumulation of capital had deliberately destroyed the commons and hunting areas where everyone had once worked to obtain their food without being forced to sacrifice a portion of it to self-appointed masters.

But that was a time before her, and before the great plans and her great deal to sell the sun. Especially, she couldn’t understand the clamor since she was saying she didn’t want ponies chased underground to live forever in darkness, which is something that she wasn’t hearing anyone else saying. Perhaps because they hadn't thought to privatize the sun before she did. Perhaps because they hadn’t understood how their seperate enjoyment of the sun had been destroying communities which had not yet been crammed together cheek to cheek. In any case, Celestia had understood what they would not yet understand, and all ponies unable to pay for their astronomic portion would still be permitted to live under the sun.

The only requirement for free access to the most fundamental requisite for life and the birthplace of matter, was that everyone stare directly into the sun once every 24 hours and watch an advertisement from one of the companies that had purchased the right to hold the entire world hostage.

Unfortunately, the world was nearly saved. The sun deal hit a snag when it was discovered that the sun didn't have speakers. Capital had a genuine power of refusal, one that had always trumped trumps and their polls. If they didn’t want the sun they couldn’t be forced to buy it, unlike the billions who relied upon the sun and could be forced to accept if being sold.

Eventually Luna was enlisted, renting the stars and with it their perfect music to the cause of privatizing the sun. When the advert played, she shifted the formerly harmonious music of the spheres, a song so beautiful and constant that all were rendered deaf to it before they had language to express what they heard, instead the turning of the cosmos would generate sound effects for short videos advertising underwear.

On the first day after the privatization of the sun everyone stared up into the light. Children cried and tried to look away, as tearful parents held their heads and pried open their eyes. The stars tilted madly and invisibly, their former song disrupted as they blared down at the world below. A nebbish, teenaged stallion was turned into a confident, smartly dressed go-getter by an atrocious body spray. The sight of him stepping out of his dingy, deliberately messy bathroom and into a party where he was immediately covered in cooing mares was the last thing then the audience experienced before going blind and deaf.

Some blessed their blindness, for taking away the horror only to curse as they realized the last sight forever seared into their retinas would be the logo resembling sharp-edged vomit. Now unable to see or hear, they could never cleanse themselves of the last ideas propagated into them. It was impossible to tell how many of the deaths that day were suicides, and how many of them were accidents on the part of a suddenly insensate population.

The next day after almost all of Equestria was rendered unable to see or hear anything ever again, tragedy struck. The second ad broadcast by the sun was seen and heard by no one. Shares in the sun plummeted. The once serene and distant body that marked the center of their solar system was bankrupt by evening. There was a brief discussion that night about bailing out the sun, but it came to nothing. Equestria was just too exhausted from this last insult to try and save itself.

On the third day, when there was no day, those who had paid for their sun and avoided blindness were all relieved by the terrifying blackness. The blind paid it no mind, scurrying in the now perpetual gloom.

Luna wasn't sure how to feel about her sister bringing about eternal night. She eventually decided upon jealousy, since it came natural to her and it wasn't fair that Celestia was better than her at even this.

So the sun was privatized, and six weeks later all life in Equestria had perished.

Comments

[SpiritOfDancingFlames]

You are beautiful.

[Regidar]

incredibly pertinant

[PrussiAntique]

Certainly worthy of a like, and certainly topical, as the gentleman below say. Actually reminds me of another case a few years ago. What was it again? Ah yes:

*In a dour voice* Royal Mail for sale. Queen's head privatized...

[zel]

H E
I S
B A C K

[zimmerwald1915]

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and ponykind is at last compelled to face with sober senses its real conditions of life, and its relations with itself.

[Super Trampoline]

7130390
HE IS RISEN

[Gadgetphile]

WTF?
Also

or at least as far as they believed what they were speaking was within .001 Wittgensteins of their world of facts

Anyone that care to explain what a Wittgenstein is? I only managed to find the philosopher, but that doesn't make that sentence less confusing.

[King Kenya]

...... You've been running lines of Scratch-n-sniff pony pictures, haven't you?

[Razor Reviews]

Do you mind if I make a Dramatic Reading of this?

[PrussiAntique]

7131323 It is a reference to the philosopher. Wittgenstein was a philosopher of language, but his examination of the relationship between thing, language, logic, truth and meaning can be terribly dense. In the story's context, I read it at least as suggesting that the subjects of the psychoanalyst think that they speak of the truth, with the same profundity and linguistic flexibility as an extraordinary (or .001) kind of Wittgenstein.

I could be wrong, however.

[Seether00]

Wtf?

[Fiddlebottoms]

7131323
It is a reference to the philosopher, as is the "world of facts" (which is independent from things, which are the actual brute reality of arranged atoms in absence of a mind to compile them into information).
Specifically, it means that Celestia believes the statement that she is going to privatize the sun, within .001 Wittgensteins. Whatever things might exist does not factor in to this evalutation.

7133832
Do ast thou wilst.

7130276
If we all pull together, there is nothing that cannot be sold.
Especially babies.

7131434
Actually, I am completely sober these days.
This is me sober.

[horizon]

Well, clearly, since the free market is capable of solving every problem, it was actually regulation that was to blame for Equestria's demise.

For example, the tragedy of the sun becoming unprofitable wouldn't have happened if there hadn't been a rule against beaming advertisements directly into ponies' brains. I think we can all agree that that would have been a small sacrifice for poor ponies to make in order to keep all life from going extinct. Seriously, why the fuck were they so selfish that they'd choose to kill everything rather than becoming mind-controlled slaves of subliminal advertisements? Not that we're pointing hooves.

So yes. Regulations are the problem. And the poor.

[marcileen]

The trouble with capitalists, as with all governments, is they won't leave you alone. If you have it, they'll poison it and make you buy theirs. If you won't buy their product, they'll pass a law requiring you too. If you live in a country George Soros is unhappy with, you might soon find his people flocking to power.

But the masses are pretty fine with being corralled so long as they're provided a way to have fun. In this case, the elites were not especially smart from the start. If Celestia has the power to own the sun, she has the power to reclaim it when it suits her. Even more so when she can say the words 'national security'.

Our sun has not yet been commercialized, so we still have a bit. I guess I'm in and out, too.
Some things don't die, just fade far into the background.

[Imrix]

7135025 "This is me sober." gods all around this statement is terrifying.

[PresentPerfect]

It's good to have you back. :)

[nothingtoseehere]

That last line made me laugh like a fool.

[Orrm]

7142288
Meh, no system of governance is ever perfect, but, hey! Least it's better than socialism.

[PaulAsaran]

You can has review!

[KvAT]

7142288

If you live in a country George Soros is unhappy with, you might soon find his people flocking to power.

Fun fact: in my country's national history classes, students are taught that he is a non-insignificant factor in the Indonesian economic crisis of 1998. He's pretty much vilified as a villain in the few sentences dedicated to him, because he told the media that Indonesia is dying and potentially undergoing balkanization, which had everyone pulling capital out of the country.

In reality it was Soeharto's old wrinkly arse trying to squeeze a bit more funds from the national treasury into his family's pockets, and if it weren't for Soros's "predictions" the economy wouldn't've tanked as hard and the recovery would've been much smoother after the dictator was brought down. It was sheer luck that his replacement Habibie was a competent enough person that he managed to bring back most of the economy.