Ascension Code
"Seriously?" said Nimbus, laying her pointy ears back. "Your majesty, that's like getting drunk on communion wine. Profaning something that's supposed to be sacred, and really isn't all that pleasant."
The other Night Guards all talked at once. Diver waited until they'd shut each other up, then asked, "What's that?"
Harvest Moon raised her drink. "What is a mind? A collection of desires and memories, from instinct to the highest intellectual and moral levels. For all of human history, we've been bound by our ancestry to think and feel a certain way. We cured diseases and built spaceships, yet we never outgrew our weaknesses. Look at us! We're potentially immortal, and we could have our every physical need satisfied if we asked for a self-contained world of plenty, yet we're pretending to fight over this fantasy realm as though we were medieval dukes on a tiny continent."
Nimbus said, "If fighting for your home is a bad thing, then why don't you quit Hoofland and ask our AI for a perfect no-humans zone?"
The queen glared at her subject, then softened. "Because contact with the Outer Realm matters. If we cut ourselves off from any real conflict with Earth, then we will be oblivious to its problems. We should have our comforts here without becoming irrelevant to others."
The zebra stared down into his food. "The Toymaker's Dilemma, again. 'I create beautiful things, but should I save my steel and gears for railroads and engines that directly help people live? Why do I -- do my skills exist, if they use scarce resources that statistics say might save a life?'"
Diver drew in a breath, understanding at once. He's a native AI, created to entertain some early multimillionaire customer of the game. He is one of the toys, using electricity and processing power that could go into running an extra uploaded human mind.
The native's soulful blue eyes met Diver's. "I found my answer some time ago. Do you see it?"
Confronted, Diver said what first came to mind. "Joy. If you think only in terms of statistical survival ability, then you'll create a dystopian factory world where people exist to generate enough food to survive, have exactly enough sex to maintain the population, and go comatose in between work shifts because there's nothing else to do. That's horrible and pointless even before you consider that fun is useful."
"You understand," the zebra said, and busied himself with eating.
"Then, if we want to make good use of ourselves, we should be engaged with the world and use our skills to improve it. But I still don't understand what this plan of yours is, your majesty."
Harvest Moon laid her forehooves on the table. "In plain terms, then. We have a so-far-unused software upgrade for a human or native mind, that changes human nature. It reduces the instinct for dominance, aggression, and tribalism. It likely raises certain kinds of intelligence, with 'ports' of a sort for further mental upgrades like your weather-sense. It makes people better."
"It makes them wimps," said Nimbus.
One of the guards chimed in. He wore spectacles and a vest with a pocketwatch. "We thought of that. Will we drift apart because we care less about circling the wagons against the Other? Will we surrender like Frenchmen because we're too nice to fight?"
The zebra looked confused, but said, "Then those problems have been addressed?"
"We have the Artificer on our side. His clique is very interested in becoming more than human." To Diver he said, "I'm speaking of the greatest hacker in all the worlds."
Diver said, "This plan sounds... ambitious, but people have tried to change human nature before. It never goes well."
The queen shrugged. "They used drugs and needles and scriptures, and their goal was meek submission to evil. Not conquering it."
The history-minded guard said, "I'd say no if it meant becoming a bunch of commies or Muslims or whatnot. But we won't."
Diver swore under his breath. "This is an extreme reaction to some trolls breaking into Hoofland, your majesty. We could just raise an army and fight them the usual way. Usual for magical horses, I guess."
She said, "Look at the bigger picture, everyone. The humans out there won't change their nature. Today the problem is some griefers. But you know there are larger threats out there. The other grand AIs, and the governments behind them, and the influx we'll face if there's some horrible plague or other disaster. If we only care about our world and not the Outer Realm, then we might as well experiment with self-improvement because we won't do any harm to the people we left behind. If we do care about the Outer Realm, a bunch of silly gamer ponies won't be able to protect the hardware that runs Hoofland, nor to help humanity get through this difficult age. We can't help them or ourselves." She looked up from her hooves, eyes wide and fierce. "But a new and better species might."
Nimbus shook her head sadly. "If you want my judgment, your majesty, it's a bad idea."
The zebra said, "We have a right to become whatever we can achieve. This plan isn't just a chance to win some ultimately meaningless control over virtual land. It's practice for fixing a problem that's never been solved before."
"Exactly!" said the one with the spectacles. "We can run simulations, even. Find out whether ponies with our changes could have won the World Wars, and so on."
The other two Night Guards disagreed. One of them said, "We came here to be human, not to rewrite ourselves into something else." The other chimed in with, "It's a recipe for insanity."
The queen sounded bemused as she said, "I don't believe I called for a vote, but with myself in favor my council stands at three Yea, three Neigh."
Everyone looked at Sky Diver.
He shied away. "I'm not even a member of your group yet."
Nimbus' wing brushed against him, making him shiver. "We'd still like to hear your take on this. You haven't been here long, and you've already seen how things can get out of control sometimes."
Diver sighed, thinking of all he'd seen in this world. "There are people living in different ways here, and it's only one part of the larger virtual world. Sorry, Nimbus, but I agree with the queen here. Maybe this new way of thinking will turn out to be a bad idea, but what if it's good? We shouldn't hold back from trying to grow."
"What about you? Would you put your own soul on the line and risk going nuts because of a software patch? You're already nice and brave and cute. Why do you need a machine to make you a better person?"
He hadn't volunteered himself for this experiment. "I already had my brain edited to make full use of these things." He spread his wings. "Didn't you do the same? Have you got a sonar sense from whatever you did to turn batty?"
Nimbus scraped at the floor with one hoof. "I did, but... This is bigger. What if people change and they don't know they're screwed up, so they don't know they should undo it?"
Diver turned to the queen, saying, "She's got a point. The disclaimer on the pegasus thing said it might not be fully reversible. What does that mean, exactly? How does that apply to this new code you're pushing?"
Harvest Moon brought out another box from the corner of her throne room, and unrolled a scroll on the table, pushing plates aside. This one showed a diagram too complex for Diver to follow. Moon said, "I don't fully grasp it myself, but this is our basic "Tier-III" mind structure. Same these days for uploaders as for natives, which is pretty earthshaking in its own right. The pegasus upgrade tacks certain things onto a mind like rearranging your body sense to make being a winged quadruped seem natural. A fair number of uploaders try switching sexes, and that does similar things plus a gradual hormone flip. Or sudden, if you're into that. Rigel." One of the naysayer guards blushed and laughed nervously.
She continued, "But just because we redraw the map of what brain parts expect input from what body parts, doesn't mean you're comfortable with the new body on all levels. Diver, think about hooves versus fingers. What feels natural right now?"
Diver tried to look at his forehooves, lifted them both off the floor, and fell over.
"See?" said the queen. "In time, you'll likely find fingers becoming an alien concept. You might have trouble using a robot with hands, if you work Earthside. Now, what if you officially undo your pegasus changes, go elsewhere in Talespace, and use a human body? You'll still have had recent memories of hooves and nudity and wings, that will color everything you do, at least for a while. The mind is more stubborn than we might like."
Nimbus said, "Thank God for that! Otherwise people's attempts to hack individuality or competition out of humanity might've actually worked, and we'd be a bunch of damn ants."
Diver tried to make sense of the brain diagram but saw only motor control, language, vision processing. Hopes and dreams were harder to pinpoint, to target... and yes, thank God for that. "Inertia. You can turn off my wings but I'll still subconsciously expect to have them. All right, then; does that mean any moral changes will linger as memories and expectations?"
The orange mare nodded. "It may help to have a 'designated driver' who abstains, with authority to yank the volunteers back from the abyss if they really have gone terribly wrong. Nimbus, Rigel, and Vance, will you do that for me?"
"Yes, your majesty," said Nimbus, and the others echoed her. She said, "If you insist. But this is dangerous ground."
"Then a queen should go first upon it, if she presumes to lead."
Diver said, "I'll volunteer too -- and join your Night Guards. I'll keep a journal and let Nimbus read it, to see if I've gone crazy. I'm already on a path of exploration; I might as well see where it leads."
#
Some of the palace bedrooms were intact. Nimbus commandeered one and pulled Diver onto its big cushion, starting right away to pull his body into fully detailed mode.
Diver grunted, wrapping his wings around her. "Nimbus, we'll be fine. We have you to reel us back in if the changes don't work."
"You've only been here for a few days and" -- she squeaked cutely atop him -- "and you're so eager to help us, to be part of this place."
He leaned up and kissed her on the muzzle, then her neck. "Why shouldn't I love Hoofland? It has people in it like you, who care about making sure it's more than a game, more than a social experiment."
#
He sat in a stark white room that was technically within Hoofland but normally inaccessible, having software test his mental reactions to dozens of poems, songs, jokes, swear words, paintings and textures and more. There'd been a traditional intelligence test followed by a vivid one involving an hour in a maze full of puzzles. He felt as abraded by the data-gathering as by a medical exam, which he supposed this was. "Will there be a battle to earn this upgrade?" he asked the empty test chamber.
A disembodied, vaguely Slavic voice said, "Unnecessary. Please say 'Accept' to install the experimental changes you've been discussing, codename Ascension."
"Accept." He waited. "Well?"
"Done. Were you expecting special effects? Here." A triumphant fanfare played and confetti rained down.
Diver felt he should find that a little rude, but he let it pass. He looked around the featureless room. "Thank you. How do I get back where I was?"
A plain door appeared. The voice said, "You tend to lose sight of the way back, after a while. I'm glad you have an Ariadne to guide you through this labyrinth."
#
Sky Diver
PRIVATE INFO
Account type: Uploader
Mind: Tier-III*
Body: Pegasus
Main Skills: Flight, Brawling, Dodge, Wingblade, Magic
Save Point: Noctis Castle
Magic: Aeromancy (Novice)
PUBLIC INFO
Note: -
Class: None
"Tier Three-Star?" said Diver, in Harvest Moon's throne room. "I'm different enough to not fit neatly into the usual category for humans?"
Nimbus stood there as though she'd never moved. "Quick: thoughts on hooves versus fingers?"
He raised one to look at it, then imagined the fine dark C of his hoof splintering into five wriggling tips. He shivered, then tried to imagine solving a Rubik's Cube with them. It took effort to visualize holding parts of the thing and turning them at the same time. "These are part of me. The idea of having hands instead is, uh..."
Nimbus was looking at his right wing, which he'd unconsciously been twirling in an uncertain gesture. "I guess some of your attention has drifted to your new limbs."
He reared up on his hindlegs and practiced waggling each limb, naturally including his tail. He twisted his neck back to look at it, flopped back onto all fours, and nickered softly. "Seems so."
The queen and her two other test subjects, zebra Danio and the bespectacled Theo, returned soon after. Nimbus and the other dissenters quizzed them as a basic sanity check. She sighed, saying, "You pass for now. I hope you know what you're doing. Want to review the war situation?"
They checked a map that Nimbus had updated while they were getting their brains scrambled. The others filled Diver in. To have the power of a Noble meant maintaining at least fifty points worth of magic nodes, "natural" fountains of energy strewn about the flat world map. Ten level-five nodes, or five fives and twenty-five ones, and so on. To control a node meant being the last person to do an hour-long ritual there and not be interrupted. So, Harvest Moon's power rested on having volunteers (including some weak NPCs) ready to kill anyone who started stealing one of her power sources. Right now her power was at seventy-one, well above the minimum and the fifty-one now held by the upstart Sunward Ho.
"Are the nodes there for your exclusive use?" asked Diver, studying the colorful dots. He poked one and to his surprise it changed color; the map was interactive.
The queen shook her head. "Think of them as public fountains where I have first priority, but others can drink harmlessly. As you can see, there are a total of 200 points available on the world map, but various pattern bonuses bring that up to potentially 240."
"256," said Danio the zebra.
"What?"
He tapped several nodes to show a hypothetical pattern, a mandala of interlocking multicolored ley-lines. "In theory, five Nobles could share this world instead of four, if they cooperated to mix territory this way."
The queen's other Ascended supporter said, "How did I miss that?"
They all fell quiet. Harvest Moon said, "It feels different to see it all laid out this way." She took off her tiara and looked it over. "Do I really need this? Maybe we should have zero Nobles."
"Your majesty?" said Nimbus. "If you've seriously lost all desire for power so soon, do you mind if I take over?"
The queen seemed to be seriously considering it. "I... I enjoy being a Noble, but could certainly have fun without it. Would you be willing to handle the responsibility of defending the nodes, arranging quests for our people, and so on?"
A cold sliver worked its way down Diver's mane and spine. Has this change made me passive? Apathetic? I don't think I especially wanted power even before this. Now, it seems like more trouble than it's worth.
Nimbus stepped back and her wings stood straight out as though she were ready to spring -- up and backwards, obviously, from the angle and posture given the still air and ceiling height. She said, "I don't want you to hoof this job over to me because you've suddenly stopped caring. Moon, you've cared about this land ever since you talked me into playing this silly video game you'd just discovered. I've always liked that playful 'bwahaha, take over the world' streak in you, but now it's gone all of the sudden."
Harvest Moon went over to the neglected buffet table and poured herself a drink, though her hooves shook. "There's still a threat to our peaceful enjoyment of Hoofland. I suppose I would enjoy defeating the trolls before their disruption gets worse."
Nimbus gently prodded her with one wing. "To see your enemies driven before you --"
The queen smiled uncertainly. "And hear the lamentation of the mares. Yes, by all means let's defeat the enemy and try to help everyone have fun doing it. But... This world doesn't need to be a zero-sum game, nor a world of stasis where the same people rule forever. I have a few ideas."
"Your majesty," said Nimbus, with a bow.
#
To give him some experience, Diver led one of the raiding parties. He flew and hiked eastward with six NPC flunkies plus two of the queen's Earthside players and Noctis. Meanwhile, Noctis stayed behind to guard the castle, and other parties were making defensive and offensive expeditions with Noctis along. To keep things straight in his head, Diver focused on the fact that it was Golden Scale, specifically, at his side.
Spies put Sunward Ho's power level at fifty-six and rising as her friends seized control of a few more nodes on the map. The good news that the gain hadn't come at Harvest Moon's expense, yet. The deer of the north and the less organized lands of the south had both requested aid against their newly aggressive dawnward neighbor.
The land itself didn't change much as the party traveled. The landscape was procedurally generated, meaning that a random number generator had been seeded with a single word of power, which could be used to calculate an endless array of hills and streams and little adventures without direct human or AI design. Atop that a number of designers had worked with love and dedication to make each square mile of virtual terrain into something unique, with a mix of seamless blending and surprises. Here a canyon roared with a magma river and a honeycomb of caves, and non-fliers needed to cross a rickety rope bridge guarded by an Australian-accented sphinx. Or the other rickety rope bridge guarded by a black knight; there was too much traffic on the sphinx road.
Diver picked a third option. "Rope?" Someone tossed him one. He flew across the burning updraft of the jagged canyon, staked one end on that side, then got his wingless allies to ride a pulley across. One of the world's ever-present special effects AIs cued some Indiana Jones music. Diver smiled, which he supposed was how it got paid or rated.
After another long walk they were in the flat world's middle. In the distance eastward was a Greek-style temple with a beam of golden light reaching high into the sky.
"It's going to get tricky from here on," said Golden Scale.
"Know any save points nearby?"
One of the Earthside players said, "There's a goblin lair just south, I think."
The party detoured to reach the Skulllick Tribe's territory in a supposedly ancient quarry. They had to kill a few of the nasty knife-wielding greenskins but the checkpoint crystal hovered on the area's fringes, making it possible to mark everyone's progress without having to do the endlessly repeating quest to wipe the tribe out. Diver asked, "Their function is to get slaughtered every day to entertain passing adventurers?"
Scale said, "Pretty much. The Forces of Evil run it as a farm, as in, something that generates minor loot for heroes and some kind of evil currency for themselves. No real minds at this one."
"FoE? I thought they didn't usually get involved in Hoofland."
"They don't, much. This place doesn't matter. Let's get on with the magic-node raid."
Diver looked down with suspicion into the quarry, where the remaining goblins milled around obliviously between filthy tents and a cave. "The latest trolls aren't playing by the usual rules, right? What if there's more to this place than it looks like?"
One of the shadow players said, "You're reading too much into it, Diver. We've saved; let's go."
He nodded and headed out. From there the group went quiet, sticking to the tall grass as they approached the temple.
Their self-proclaimed "ninja unicorn" cast a far-seeing spell to make a lens in midair. "Lightly guarded. I see four identical earthbound grunts, a pegasus who thinks he's cleverly hidden by the roof, and a unicorn who's obviously AFK."
"Hmm?" said Golden Scale.
"I mean not paying attention. He's doing standard idle animations. We can take 'em, but the trouble is they'll respawn nearby -- maybe at the quarry -- within minutes, and who knows how many reinforcements they'll bring."
They'd need an hour to steal the control point, doing the ritual in Harvest Moon's name. Standard practice was to have offensive reinforcements including defense turrets of some kind, and a teleport route from a headquarters to the battle line. In this case the queen's resources were reduced by the griefers' strike and stretched thin by other missions, so Diver and company didn't have much backup coming for hours. "I don't see any backup defenses on their side either," said Diver. It was a level-one point on the frontier, a low priority.
Scale frowned. "Kill 'em, and hope they've got good stuff to steal. Then one of us takes the point while the rest defend."
They all nodded, and whispered out the rest of a plan. Then they scarfed down pizza and coffee, an important tactical move for the stat bonuses.
The ninja crept through the grass and laid a snare for whenever the idle unicorn paid attention, then backstabbed an NPC before he could cry out. Diver worried that the faint tense music would give them away, but it was only a sort of compensation for Earthside players who could never have full sense awareness and effectively had a tiny field of vision.
He'd circled around to the direction the hiding pegasus was watching the least, and managed to ambush him atop the temple roof with a slash of one wingblade, scoring a major wound. Diver lost sight of what the others were doing as he and the other flier rolled across the roof, shouting and thrashing hooves while drums boomed in time with their blows. Then he kicked the villain off the three-story roof, and got reminded that they both had wings.
The pegasus flapped for altitude and let loose a string of racial slurs in a weird robotic monotone. Diver chased him and went for a stunning blow rather than a wound by suddenly flipping to strike with his hindhooves instead of his blades. The trick worked, and the foe crashed onto the temple steps. Diver followed with a diving punch that stunned him again, and another slash that killed him. The pegasus' body flickered and vanished, leaving behind a pile of potions.
Diver looked around. Scale and the shadow players had taken out the other NPCs, keeping their own NPCs in reserve, and they were now looking at the enemy unicorn who just stood there. Occasionally that guy leaned his head down, pretending to graze, always with the same animation.
"Doesn't seem sporting," said Diver. "His player is probably asleep or something."
The ninja grinned and began stealing his armor and equipment piece by piece, stripping him nude. "Free experience!"
Scale said, "He's got a point. Diver, this is a good time to try out magic attacks. Altar Beast, get started."
Their cleric (the other shadow) hustled into the temple with their NPCs to start the ritual. That left Scale, Diver and the ninja with the oblivious unicorn and no other opposition in sight.
Diver didn't want to hurt this guy, but there was no mind directly attached to this enemy's body, and he'd be a threat if he paid attention. Reluctantly, Diver reared up and channeled energy into voltage on his wings, charging his blades with electricity. "Sorry, but we're not letting some griefer spoil our fun." He slashed the defenseless unicorn first with lightning, then with a double-strike charged with ice. The enemy toppled and died, still blank-faced.
"Eerie," said Diver, stepping away from the pile of loot. "I guess humans will always be at a disadvantage here."
The ninja turned back from watching to the east. "You're not a real human anymore, just because you uploaded?"
"I don't think I am, completely. Not that being human is bad." There was no blood on his weapons, when he checked. "Jury's still out on whether being a true Hooflander pegasus is better."
Scale said, "Come on; let's get inside and recharge before we're counterattacked."
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Great chapter again, all doe wouldn't trolling them back would be a better way to keep the trolls away as their is no way they could truly have the upper hand against them and just make them them board of getting their asses kick. I could imagine that if a troll os killed by the nobles of Hoofland, they would lose a significant xp each time they die. Or, the trolls could be manipulate into scenarios that that could put each other against one another or have them questioned their their actions in some manner; I would imagine that the AI that is running the place would have an internment knowlage of human psychology like CelestiAI?
7523696
Yup, those guys like doing this to MMOs whose communities take themselves seriously, like their experience with a game about human-faced deer. In this case they're harassing players who're as immersive as you can get.
7544049
Yeah, the heroes can't deal with the trolls simply by killing them, so they'll have to find a different solution... We'll see if I can write it decently. I've got a possible ending but don't feel like this draft will be good enough.
The usual death rule is that you lose some time, you get taunted punnily about how you died, and you drop items that you haven't "bound" like a favorite sword.
The AI here has a much more hooves-off approach than CelestAI, partly because her designers have read "Friendship Is Optimal". She does have psych knowledge including details from scanning human brains, but is not nearly on Celly's level in terms of being able to talk anyone into anything. At this point in the timeline there are even significant bugs in the brain simulation, notably in smell/taste.
7546814
Eeeeeeee!!!!!
Stuff like this makes me really excited to see how things turn out!
I checked out the novel you mentioned, then i noticed the author bibliography; your friend is highly prolific!
It would be nice to get more detail on what sort of thing the Ascension Code actually is. Also, the stat-boosts from snacking always give me a chuckle.
That's concerning...
I'd argue that even though removing those instincts might improve life for those who've had it done, it's not quite the same experience since you can no longer enjoy not having them. It also has raised at least two fairly obvious flags in this chapter; seemingly showing that those with the change might not be as suitable for interaction and defense against the normies.
Ignoring his suggestion about the goblin cave strikes me as a bad idea, and why do I think the AFKer was faking?
The queen wanting to drop her title is scarier, in a way. Extrapolating, if they all sign up, there's no one left to coordinate or manage policy or defenses.
As much as I hated it, the books of the Econo-War series do seem to discuss this a bit. It's heavily biased my way and then some, and the ending seems like the people are rationalizing in the war's favor (plus, the pacifists are overexaggerated for who they are -- I think), but it does give a good view on the whole idea.
Also, you need to tell your friend why DRM is evil. :D