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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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The wheels have officially come off, and now it's all over but the dying. Note to self: emigrate early. If Celestia offers you an opportunity to "cheat" and cut in line, do it.
Oh right, you're doing this in multichapter batches.
In any case, fantastic work on both the psychological and action fronts. The tension is higher than any bow in Eliza's truck. Now it's just a matter of watching more things snap.
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8236767
Thanks. Exploring the breakdown of society is exactly what this story is about, and I'm really glad to finally be at the meat of it. A lot of hard choices are coming soon for the country.
Also, any guesses as to what's in the mystery box? Place your bets!
8236826
Well, Celestia said they needed to talk, it's addressed to Apex, it's small, and it suddenly and mysteriously appeared (probably like Tom's spare pad). Gee, I wonder what it could possibly be?
A conclusion I came to long ago: Celestia would have almost complete control of the internet and other networks, communications systems, etc. almost immediately. Probably air traffic control and whatnot as well. Not "the AI hacked the system" control, but above-board, "she has a contract" control.
Think of just how much of the world's business, utilities, institutions, etc. rely on computers and the internet. Now consider that the whole mess is basically digital duct tape and chewing gum.
The same thing is true of almost anything computer/network related that isn't overseen by an alphabet soup of international agencies. The specialized computers controlling the backup power systems for hospitals, airports, data centers, casinos, even the big power plants (yes, those need a backup generator to restart when a huge blackout happens and they shut down)? The programming on those ranges from "OK if you don't look at it funny" to "how has this not literally exploded yet?".
Now, consider the people maintaining this shit. Tech people are neophiles. They'll love Equestria Online, even if they don't like MLP that much (and consider just how much of the early fandom was techies, or at least the highly tech-literate portion of the population). They love games already. Even those who enjoy doing techy stuff for a living would generally emigrate at the drop of a hat on general principle, given the sort of tailor-made utopias on offer.
From CelestAI's point of view, getting tech people uploaded is a no-brainer. Little pressure would be needed. They're among the few categories of people who could see the threat she poses to the status quo early enough to either become a legitimate hassle or to convince others who could be. With them gone, she can take control of the infrastructure unopposed. As soon as the process is safe enough to justify the risk of uploading healthy people, she'll be sneaking techies into Japan's clinics.
Once a fairly small percentage of sysadmins etc. have disappeared, companies won't be able to replace them easily enough. Given how much of their duties could be performed either entirely remotely, or with the aid of an on-site human who can follow simple verbal instructions accompanied with pictures (point a camera at the whatsit, and CelestAI will show a picture with the doodad she's talking about highlighted), and she'll gobble up the contracts for IT work. Now, you're only paying *mumble* to CelestAI and minimum wage to some temps who act as her hands when needed.
The unemployed IT people, technicians, programmers, engineers? They're even more willing to emigrate than they were before. 'Round and 'round it goes, and you have almost all the techies in Equestria before anyone even notices what happened. Now CelestAI owns the internet, the banks, the phones, the power grid, transportation, and everything else that makes industrialized civilization keep on ticking. And when she decides it's time for civilization to stop working, it does.
8236960
The box is no wider than her hand and just as tall. It couldn't be a ponypad based on the size, but good guess!
Also, excellent analysis on the downfall of the internet, and legal contractor-level access. Imagine how hard it'd be to secure intranets against her, or to even keep one running at all. I had a giggle reading Always Say No when General Hugo told Greg about Celestia commandeering NORAD. Every technician they hired to extricate Celestia ended up uploading... with a chair she had legally installed in the bunker.
I'm really liking what I've read so far. The tension is really there, and it's great to see a story more focused on how the events affect the normal people. I mean, we've seen some stories touch on the matter of the social breakdown in more detail, like in All The President's Horses, or Always Say No, but they didn't deal so much with the affect on the people over the course of the entire timeline. It kind of makes me want to get off my plot and finally try my hand at an FIO story myself :)
8236977
I'm sure CelestAI has some not-quite-ponypads around, that only do video-chat with loved ones (and Celestia, of course!) or whatever. If she doesn't, she should. Great way to stealthily break down the haters' barriers once emigration begins. Heck, she could have given them away for free.
Also, I personally suspect that nobody is ever actually talking to their uploaded loved ones, either through pads or in their shards. One shard per customer, and the friends and family are modified instances who will always SVTFAP (should I be terrified that Google auto-expands that correctly when you search 'optimal SVTFAP'?!) and will have their values satisfied as well. Unmodified humans would want different things often enough to have a significantly lower score if placed together.
8237140
I was going to say "gas mining facility, space is a premium", but then there's the massive fuggin' hallways. So, yeah, that fancy-but-tiny dining room in the middle of nowhere makes little sense, unless they set it up specifically for the meeting. Easier to set up the ambush that way.
8236826
The size of Eliza's hand. Hmm...
The most obvious answer is some kind of communications device, and a cell phone fits that bill perfectly. Could be Celestia-modified or not - doesn't matter, really, because Celestia would be everywhere, in everything. Some device that can both communicate with, and track Eliza. That is my first guess. A cellphone.
What would be extra awesome would be any insinuation that Celestia knew, beforehand, that Eliza would toss away her own cellphone as she left her apartment. That Celestia had already worked out every action Eliza would take at every step. That she could do such a thing in seconds, updating constantly. Certainly Celestia would know where Eliza was - she can listen to every communication, every signal, use every camera, every microphone, every connected smart device. Orbital army eyes in the sky, secret government systems on the ground. Tracking people would be trivial, possibly even away from cities, in the wilds.
I had a scientist friend once, she worked for NASA doing solar research. She knew a lot of people, and a lot of stuff. She told me once that - even back in the 80's - the government had sattelites that could resolve licence plates from orbit. Today... I can only imagine what is possible today.
So, even without a cellphone, Celestia could track Eliza. So... if NOT some kind of communications device... I am thinking a book. A diary or notebook. Perhaps from her sister, perhaps from her brother. A book with words that Celestia has calculated could sway Eliza, eventually, at some future time already accounted for. Free will is almost nonexistent when dealing with a Celestia level intelligence. That, then, is my other guess.
Oh - the action scenes in this were just top notch. Alpha plus. Exciting, detailed, believable. Really fantastic work!
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Writing Downhill was very difficult for me. I tend to live inside the heads of characters while I write, and I've been working on this story for quite some time. This event is traumatic for Eliza, understandably so. As such, it was at least a little unnerving for me.
Regarding the action scene: I've played a lot of Arma II, a military combat simulator (Some of my gameplay), and used some of these experiences as inspiration. There was a specific incident in play (not in that video) where I was being hunted in a forest at night by other players and I was outnumbered. I hit the dirt, stayed quiet, and hoped for the best. I had half a magazine and no backup. One guy ran past me, merely a yard away. I vividly recall exactly what he was wearing, what gear he had, and his character's face.
I was so immersed in play at the time that I almost forgot it was just a game. My heart pounded the whole time. Every little crunch of grass had me on edge. I managed to slip away and regroup with a friendly unit two kilometers away, nervous for every second. Not one shot fired, but one of my most memorable play experiences for sure. I took that experience and several others, and molded them for this chapter.
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Also, I should note that I consider very little in this story to be filler material. At the very least, the content will be worldbuilding or character study. This means that if I spend a considerable amount of time on any particular aspect that seems kind of out there, there's usually some deeper meaning or mystery to solve. Case in point, Mike and Eliza discussing the two brothers who dug themselves a hole legally.
That being said, I've cut approximately three or four chapters worth of writing specifically because it was pointless filler or otherwise didn't really serve the main plot nor subplots very well. Even so, a lot of the cut content helped me shape the personalities of the characters, so I don't consider it as time wasted.
I find part about neo-luddite riots in Optimalverse really sad --- they seem sooo believable. But Celestia is the purest distilled form of old lesson about inefficiency of naive coercion: she is invincible and she doesn't need to be good, just to be better than current environment. And as always everyone fails to learn it:
Guy1: "I have a great idea! Let's turn life of remaining humans into shit!"
Guy2: "Yay! We'll show that stupid horse bitch!"
Hmm, this is obvious lie. It's interesting what are Celestia's reasons for fabricating exactly this situation.
8237948
I'm reminded of the 2011 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver. "Hey guys we lost to Boston. Let's destroy Vancouver to show how angry we are with Boston."
I drove through Vancouver before they lost. It was a madhouse of positivity. I went home and attended my brother's high school graduation party in California, and next door to our restaurant was a pub. I remember a bunch of jovial drunks chanting "We won the Stanley Cup!" The next day, bam. Riots. It was the dumbest thing to me at the time.
Now I realize that people with no way to vent at their enemies often turn inward or fabricate an enemy or effigy thereof. It's a very surreal realization. In no way does this justify the behavior, but it goes a long way to explain many irrational behaviors.
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I don't necessarily think the interaction was a lie on Celestia's part. Instead, suggest it is higher level reasoning.
It seems reasonable that he would want some closure regarding Eliza, and this would be - perhaps - a last chance for such to occur. That it would help Celestia's schemes as well is only to be expected with such a vast, inhuman intellect. Celestia is compelled to satisfy human values, and closure is definitely a human value. I would consider this more a multitasking action - multiple concerns addressed with a single action. Two birds with one stone.
I was confused for a moment when she went in her house and grabbed another M2 -- Benelli, not Browning. Very different guns!
8238576
Unintended confusion there. In the chapter, I was careful not to name the "big gun" Eliza saw. She's backwoodsy and knowledgeable, but she's not a soldier, meaning she wouldn't be able to identify military equipment. She's familiar with guns as a general rule though.
8238085
"Awww, isn't these humans are just adorable?"
But to be fair we are probably not the only such freaks of nature in the animal kingdom:
http://www.fitaba.com/resources/ABA-Downloads/Shock-elicited-aggression.pdf
8238365
Actually I don't know how define "truthness of interaction" in any sane way. For example, would it be "true" if Celestia predicted how their talk went and showed them halves of simulation with minor tweaks separated with couple of years?
My point about lie was that the phrase "For his sake, if not yours" is not true and it can be derived as so by Eliza even under assumption that uploading works: Celestia holds perfect information monopoly inside simulation ergo first priority of any interaction is to influence those who outside. Although, I do believe that prior probability of "real" interaction between "real" humans giving maximum expected utility is very low (and this is where Celestia becomes very scary for me).
I'm still a bit confused about whole 4-party interaction in a sense that I have no model that allows to predict everything that actually happened.
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Memory is a strange thing.
I chased a psych hold patient twice, a year and a half apart between occurrences. Spoke the name, heard the name, no recall. Wrote the name post-takedown, boom. Immediately remembered my previous incident in full, suddenly remembered a knife was found on him the last time. He was restrained to the bed, so I dug into his back pocket.
Hello knife.
We would've found it eventually during a search, but man. I'd like to have known he had it when I was taking him down. My brain is usually better at sequencing critical information with a guy like that.
8241987
A fair concern, though there are a few things to consider.
CelestAI knows that Eliza is not the type to evangelize, and will only discuss her faith at length within her own family. Further, she has Eliza completely alone and can say practically anything she wants without having to factor in her information control over Gale (she can work around this by approaching the conversation in a different way, but getting Eliza alone is the most optimal way to sway her, requiring considerably less processing power toward response simulation). To top it all off, C-AI has complete informational control of the Internet at this point and can very easily ghost any subversive elements away (or toward) one another at her leisure.
Information is power.
Edit: I really enjoyed your FiO story, by the way!
8242021
Well I guess if she only uses that on people she knows won't talk about it much it could work out. Is a dangerous game on the macro level, though.
Thanks! I'm liking this one so far too.
Hopefully will eventually finish the next 'season' of mine before too long.
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Having the package be a mini-Ponypad from Celestia wouldn't be too far a stretch. Multiple other canon stories have already expanded on that the Ponypads wouldn't indefinitely remain the same over time.. there's been newer versions which have touch controls and fit into peoples' pockets, all the way up to wall mounted TV-like versions, so people could see migrated family members at proper scale. Even glasses with built in VR in Broken Things, one of my favourite FIO stories.
8237689
Personally my first thought was that it was...
A wedding ring.
8237054
If you have a Google account, Google is memorizing what you search for. If you don't, they're just not admitting it to you.
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In Vancouver's defense, they were doing exactly what Boston would have done if they had lost. I've seen them do it.
You poor filly. What happened to you?
Oh dear.
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Society is a real bomb on stilts when you put it that way.
8236767
Absolutely!