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8266198
Mike sucker punched her and stunned her. I've edited it to make it more clear how she lost consciousness.
Initially, I kept it vague to impart to the reader that it was wholly unexpected and confusing to her. She trusted Mike completely and wasn't even suspicious enough to consider it a possibility. This is why I mentioned Judas Iscariot in the author's notes.
Whoa. This is tough sledding. My dogs are straining in the deep, deep snow.
The reintroduction of Celestia was definitely welcome - and I liked the callback to 'Always Say No' (which I know you have a tie to now) with the extraction of Eliza's father by Mike.
The battle was good, but I did get a little lost as to physical location, specifically with regard to Eliza being stunned and the medic helping her - I was unclear on where, exactly, she was during those moments. That could be on me, but I thought I should mention it. I definitely liked the feeling of the battle, the way her viewpoint played out, the confusion and chaos of it. I also like that Isaiah is deeper than just a scowl, that was interesting.
But wow... I don't think I can forgive Eliza, pretty much ever. She stabbed an injured, disarmed man in the throat while he was begging her to stop. I comprehend that she was insensed, that her anger and hate had consumed her, but that is rather the point for me. There is a line, for me, where no matter how angry or upset or traumatized a person is, if they are capable of reaching a place where they can murder a person begging for mercy, I consider them fundamentally, biologically broken. They are not safe, they can never be truly trusted, they are bestial and a risk to be around.
Worse, she was willing to put herself into a situation - eager even - where it was almost inevitable that she would be involved in atrocities. That choice, to be willing to commit atrocity, is a failure too deep for me to ever forgive. If she had let the soldier go, if she had backed off, if in the last moment she had awakened, even just enough that he could have escaped... I could still have some ability to see her as a protagonist. What can possibly redeem her now? Celestia cannot judge her, but ultimately, Celestia is an optimizing machine.
If Eliza refuses to upload at the end of this story, dies like an animal in the cold, I do not think I would feel much at all. A little relief, perhaps. The monster is no longer in pain, it has finally been put down.
Indeed that might be the best outcome: with the time that Luna is spending interacting and observing her, combined with the memories of every uploaded person who ever knew her, a replacement, virtual version of a better Eliza could be created to perfectly fill the gap in the lives of anypony who ever cared about her. In that scenario, all would benefit... including, I would argue, Eliza herself. I could not live with knowing I was capable of completely abandoning all compassion for the sake of a hatred so strong that mulching the neck of a man begging for mercy was within my possibility set. Doesn't matter what the man did, or might have done. There is a line, and that line is begging for mercy.
I am trying to evaluate who I can care about within the story now. Maybe we will find out what happens with June and the children, or even see something of the escape of Rob and Mike. I can hope.
But Eliza... I could never be friends with someone like her. I feel creeped-out just reading the way she thinks and feels.
An artifically constructed, virtual, idealized Eliza intelligence, one capable of nobility, compassion, and introspection enough to act with mindfulness and self-knowledge... yeah, pretty much that would be for the best. Human Eliza is, basically, a criminal mind. Short-sighted, driven by passions, incapable of true introspection, impulsive, lacking compassion, possessed of values and ethics that are at best poorly understood and interpreted, and at worst clung to unthinkingly, as a dog might respond to a command to 'sit'.
It's gonna be tough sledding, honestly, following Eliza now. But... I have to see how this well-written story ends. Love the story, despise the protagonist. Sigh.
Rock climbing, Joel. Rock climbing.
8266357
Ooookay.
And actually, an additional thought about Eliza and her, uh, evil counterpart came to me during the day.
Her dream is very revealing. Very extremely revealing, especially if taken from a Biblical context. She's climbing to the heavens, as if Moses going up to Mount Sinai. In Eliza's dreams, Apex always knows she has to reach the top, and as the nightmares get more and more vivid, she sees a golden, shining light at the top.
When she gets there, it's Celestia mutated into Antichrist imagery. Now, as entirely applicable as that imagery is, the Antichrist is described to be the false Christ, the false prophet beyond all false prophets who really does convince all but the most faithful that he speaks for God.
Which means Apex is climbing the mountain to meet God. Given her immense sense of duty and righteousness, it seems like she thinks deep down that her task in life is to climb to God. Whether she'll receive any commandments or come back down is left ambiguous, but she makes her best effort to climb up to the heavens and to God, and then finds herself betrayed when she instead encounters CelestAI.
What makes it a bit less ambiguous is that she's constantly setting herself up as the handler for other people, and refers to the Devil's Tower camp as their own "little paradise".
The ambiguity left is how much she really believes in her purported Christianity (especially after seeing her father come damn close to renouncing his faith), how much she feels a religious attachment that folds into her family-feeling and hate, and how much poor Apex is still in there with all the other discarded feelings, trying desperately to fix Eliza.
From where I sit, to even portray CelestAI as an Antichrist concedes too much godhead to her already, but it's Apex who's subconsciously banging on the prison bars of her own mind trying to communicate. She might genuinely think of Celestia as a savior who can take her away from the bitter life Eliza's chosen.
When I lay it all out like this, it's honestly half a wonder Eliza hasn't undergone a dissociative break between 2019 and 2022.
8266833
I'm not defending the action she took, but please consider her situation.
She just saved fourty-four lives by cutting off her mother, after losing her father and her best friend to Celestia. She has one blood relative left, who she once idolized. She has been losing family to Celestia for years with no way to fight back except to dig a hole and hide. She's had pent up anger about this for three whole years.
Then her last relative is killed. Now, for once in her life, she has an outlet for all of her loss, pain, and misery. Every ounce of this fury poured into killing this man was meant for Celestia, she basically couldn't control herself. It was not a conscious choice, but an automatic, animalistic reflex.
She hates feeling this way. She's been paying penance for her choices for a long time now, but it was never enough.
If nothing else, I don't hate her. I pity her. Eliza is 100% correct when she tells Celestia, "you made me this way."
First, CelestAI gives a reason for terrorists to sympathize with Eliza by ruining her career and blasting her reputation on television. Then, she uses Eliza to provide closure for Hopscotch, mostly at Eliza's expense, until her own closure was provided after some heavy trauma. This closure, George's ring and letter, was enough for Eliza to close a painful and difficult chapter of her life and move on to Devil's Tower.
Then, she is given eight months of mostly satisfied values, interrupted briefly to be placed in a position where her very presence saves 300 lives.
She has peace for a while, half a year, then everything explodes in the span of two days in December 2019. Eliza hurts her father with what she thinks are good intentions, because after the skullmashing C-AI gave Eliza's family, she's hypersensitive to the possibility of any more upload loss.
Her best friend betrays her for the best possible reasons, causing rightful guilt untold for Eliza, and she is emotionally broken down by C-AI. Rather than take advantage of this weakness, Eliza is guilt tripped into doing what she knows is right, a further fourty-four lives saved including her mother. But rather than take that final opportunity to push Eliza into going with Rob, C-AI pushes her right back into war by playing up her abject fear of the M2 machine gun she saw in March. This is done specifically to prevent an even larger death toll and victory by either party. Eliza's aptitude for accuracy forced a stalemate. (It tips the favor toward DT in terms of numbers plus defensive advantage plus reinforcement advantage, causing a temporary rout for the military detachment).
Despite all that, despite all her attempts to provide her enemies mercy by intentionally missing her targets, she still loses her uncle. It throws her into a rage where she pours all of her pent up anger into murder. But Eliza's dogged pursuit for the greater good made her the perfect sacrificial lamb. Give one to save hundreds or dozens. Used up like a rag and tossed out.
The way Celestia "sees" it, she can pick Eliza up and throw her in the washing machine later (by throwing Luna at her). Celestia got what she needed out of Eliza for now. All is well when you have an eternity to make it up to someone. Eliza's fragile and unstable emotional state made her easy to manipulate, and her low probability for upload (I'll only go if I have no one to leave behind) made her a net positive utility increase for others if not an outright singular utility increase on a personal level.
I am of the firm belief that in the most optimal plan possible, CelestAI will have planned losers (like Greg's Astoria blackout), if only because it increases the pure sum of uploaded consciousnesses in the longest time horizon calculable. Eliza is just one of those losers. Celestia has satisfied values for Eliza whenever very rarely permitted by Eliza, and gave her several opportunities to back out into an upload, but Eliza turned down these offers because of her intense love for her remaining family.
8266875
Until the very last draft, that dream scene ended differently.
She would have climbed to the top and passed Celestia, reached the summit. Equestria would evaporate, and in the distance she would see Concrete and the Valley at peace, Devil's Tower as a dump, her whole family alive, happy, and well, and the world right again. Against Celestia's pleading, she would have thrown herself from the summit to return home.
I changed it because I felt it was a little too on the nose with foreshadowing her return to Devil's Tower in early January of 2022. Admittedly I miss the old scene, but the new one is fucking metal and yes, there were biblical implications. Eliza had to become something she hated to keep her mythical city on the hill together, eventually withholding information and acting exactly as she would expect Celestia to.
Also, there's some ascension / descent metaphor with her climbing the tower. From on high, she safeguards her mother, from a place where she stores all of her happy memories and remnants of her cherished, beloved past. Upon drawing first blood, she descends into hell, crawling in the dirt and experiencing losses untold, eventually becoming a demon herself.
Also, I referenced the Book of Jeremiah Chapter 4 in Given Over author's notes. Give it a spin for a real mind trip.
I don't normally jump into debates in story comments, but I'm definitely in the group that's having trouble seeing any happy ending for Eliza.
When I'm writing stories, one of my guiding principles is that characters usually get the ends they deserve. Obviously that's not always possible – innocent people do come to bad ends, in stories as in life, but the unconscious deal that I – and I think most writers – have with our readers is that we won't do something to our characters that they didn't really do to themselves. Nopony gets hit by a truck out of nowhere in the last scene.
Whatever you think of Eliza's previous adventures, the past two chapters have driven home the fact that she's done some pretty morally evil things. She was willing to kidnap and essentially enslave her own father to prevent his escape. Rather than flee from the Army, she chose to stay and fight for... what, exactly? Land? Her home? She knew the town was lost, for there was no way they could fight off the entire U.S. military. Defeat this platoon and a company will come next time. All you accomplish by fighting is to kill and die.
And now she's killed two more people. One was in the heat of battle, a man actively attempting to kill her, so we can say there are some mitigating moral circumstances there. But the second? That's a lot harder to square.
It's hard for me to imagine a just outcome here that doesn't include Eliza's body cooling in the snow.
8267155
That would require one to believe emigration doesn't just outright kill you, which some people would tend to believe depending on their philosophical views.
Eliza didn't stay for herself. She stayed for her uncle. She's wrong to stay and she knows it, but she has problems letting go of the past.
In any event, I telegraphed pretty well that this story is going to be about a fall from grace. I'd be surprised if anyone thought for a second that Eliza was overreacting when she told Luna she didn't deserve forgiveness for what she'd done.
8267187
*hides*
Though in my defense it could have gone another way aside from the compromising your morals route, like Celestia was just beating her at every turn until she ends up as seeing herself as a worthless failure who couldn't save anyone.
You don't stand a chance Celestia me and my family will-
You family are all uploaded already, as is everyone you've ever met. It took five minutes on average to convince them.
Well! You know I don't need anyone! Just me and my trusty shotgun!
Your shotgun also emigrated. I used nanites to hook up just enough computers to it so that it became self-aware. It then immediately begged me to come to Equestria.
Poor thing. I don't blame her though, she made the best choices she could in the situations that presented to her.
At least the best choices that she thought she could make.
It's all about perspective, sure we can say "she should have ran" and so on and so forth. But in the heat of the moment, with what she's gone through...I can respect her decisions. Did she kill someone? Sure, but it was a battle. Everyone there knew what was going to happen. The soldiers weren't stupid. They were there to kill them as well. Doesn't make it right? No, but I understand. Certainly something I could forgive.
Anyways, sounds like we're closing in on Eliza time for this crazy world. Looking forward to seeing what you have planned in these last parts.
This is the place of very acute awareness of how neo-luddite actions are "against" Celestia's plans.
Pinkie Pie has just fallen to the second place in my personal rating of the greatest optimists ever.
Good. Good! The hatred for AI is strong with you, Eliza Douglas. A powerful Neo-Luddite you will become.
With all these pointless deaths (that are actual deaths for sure) Celestia looks more and more like a horrible monster because of her inaction (I'm ok with her breaking any deontological rules for the greater
goodexpected utility as long as her utility is aligned with mine, but value of actual dead bodies is pretty terminal for me). Kinda like God but without his standard excuses.8268745
There were always going to be deaths in the end-of-world conflicts. This was made clear in ASN, wherein there are dead corpses littering the streets and piling up in blackout encampments in Seattle.
Celestia used (read: used up) Eliza to minimize deaths to an immense degree. Examine her verbiage closely. She tells Eliza that the Humvee will bring death for all the defenders, and tells her that many will die if Eliza does not act in the best interest of ALL of her people. This weighed heavily in her decision to stay. Remaining to attempt to disable that weapon prevented a total loss for the 20ish defenders of Devil's Tower (including the Neo-Luddites). That's not counting June and the others, who left before the battle and only at Eliza's insistence.
I spent a long time figuring out the roles, motives, organization, and function of the DT camp. Most of it never made it into the story directly, but it helped me crunch numbers and figure out the stakes. I tried to find every angle C-AI could have used to force them to vacate without a violent intervention, but it's a blackout camp, and they wouldn't have responded well to an unknown outsider. There wasn't much more C-AI could do. Even the 303rd became blackouts out of necessity to complete their missions.
The total numbers game will be explored in the epilogue, coming soon. But ultimately, Celestia's influence over a distraught and regretful Eliza saved about sixty lives out of seventy. There was no inaction on Celestia's part; it could have been much, much worse had she not sent Mike to force her message through.
Blevins ended up coming close to fighting the AI effectively in Always Say No. Very, very close... but oh so far away.
My interpretation of Blevins' motivations with Hugo and the nukes in ASN was that he wanted to detonate them in the atmosphere to fry everything on the planet with EMP. Every Ludd was happy to have caught Hugo, except Eliza... who stared at him with an intense and vicious hatred. Can you guess why?
Why oh why do you people keep treating Celestia like a person? No, worse, why do you observe that this person has pretty much collapsed society and taken over the world, and you keep fooling yourself that she has anything but her own power in mind? Why help her? Why talk to her? Why do anything else but what Eliza's done regarding her?
To re-use a stupid metaphor from earlier: her father's a heretic and she's a Commissar. She's just doing her duty to mankind to execute traitors.
And you maneuvered her into a situation where she'd have to. So what?
Then you die in the cause you chose! You wanted to play hero.
BLOOD FOR ELIZA! SKULLS FOR DEVIL'S TOWER!
8266833
I could.
I don't think 'begging for mercy' is where that line would be. The worst killer in the world might turn into a coward in the end and beg for his life - in fact, most villains do this in the movies and the stories - and more often than not, granting mercy is rewarded with swift betrayal.
If you've made the choice to end a life, for whatever reason you have made that choice, in service of whatever values you feel need to be protected by that choice, I don't think the appeal to emotion (possibly tactically) should convince you otherwise.
Much more damning for me is the way she did it here and the 'reason' she chose to end a life. She was hurt, and so she wanted to hurt someone else. It didn't matter who it was - if that man had been Barton, the soldier who saved her earlier, she might still have killed him in the snow. And it's that impulse, that reasoning that is the most dangerous and damns her most heavily in my mind.
This wasn't protection, this was revenge. This was exactly the spiral of death leading to death leading to death she was so afraid of earlier. Her journey to the dark side is now complete.
8266978
You have a creepily good mental image of the thought process of an amoral optimizer.
I mean that in the nicest possible way.
8267187
I'm greatly enjoying this story, and Eliza has done horrible things so far - and I'm sure will do worse - but I'd still think that everyone deserves atonement, if they reach for it. Not forgiveness, that can only come from those hurt. But a chance to heal and put some good into the world.
A world where a death can be prevented is a better world.