The Winners Write It
LEFTOVERS
By Chatoyance
4. The Winners Write It
Blue Sky flapped his peacock-bright wings once more, and the remaining bales of straw rolled merrily into the large, colorful barn. Generating a powerful wind to tumble the bales was not merely efficient, it was incredibly satisfying. To have such control, to be able to hover in flight while at the same time accomplish real work, to be something more than any human could ever be - it was nothing less than comic book superheroics made real.
Blue Sky, who once, briefly, had called himself 'Lewis', flew to the left and right. With a practiced kick of his hind legs, he neatly closed shut both of the large barn doors. That was the last of his work for the day. Tomorrow, he would firepony-carry Amber Grains into the village for lunch, shopping, and some tasty halo-halo with ube at the local Starcolts. His mouth watered a bit. The dessert had become his current favorite and it was the ultimate treat at the end of a hot day.
Which today had been. Very hot. They would be needing rain again, soon. Blue landed and looked up at the sky. Amber would probably enjoy going to Cumulus City again - she had seemed to finally be over her fear of heights. She had said she'd enjoyed it last time. He took his notebook out of his left saddlebag and held it with his forehooves. A pencil in his teeth, he quickly scribbled 'Cloudwalking Spell' on his shopping list. There was a professional unicorn in town, he specialized in portable spells and custom enchanting. Did a great job on that rake - Blue Sky could set it to the ground and leave it be. It got the job done, automagically.
Blue nibbled a covert - the long feathers benefited from a little attention - and adjusted his wings. He decided to walk for a bit, before heading to the farmhouse for dinner. The sun was just setting, the sky was beyond beautiful, and somehow he just felt the need to stroll, hooves on the ground. The smell of sun-baked soil tickled his nostrils, a rich and earthy scent redolent of fertility and promise. And worms. So many worms. He'd spent the last week hauling earthworms in and sheparding them under the dirt. Nothing made land rich like earthworms. They aeriated the soil and fertilized it too. They were the life of good farmland.
He'd really bought the farm, hadn't he?
The thought brought on a curious emotion. Bought the farm. That used to mean death, something that couldn't exist here, in Equestria. The ancient phrase came from World War One, the first fighting planes. They sometimes would crash over rural countryside in Europe, or in the US. There would be a settlement, to pay for the damages a crashing plane could cause. That was 'buying the farm', if he remembered correctly. The wording also applied as a humorous way of describing the death of the pilot.
Death was such a strange concept now. It had terrified him once. It must have, though he could not recall any specific circumstance - he did get himself dunked in liquid nitrogen to beat the Reaper, after all.
Blue Sky neared the pond, just beyond the carrot garden. He saw a star, the first star of the evening, reflected in the nearly still water. He looked up to view the star directly, then lowered his head to study the reflection again. That was powerful. He could tell. That meant a lot to him. Star and reflection. Could either be said to be more real than the other, considering?
It was, after all, a virtual world. Not that there was any way to tell. It smelled real, tasted real, every little thing was as real and authentic as it could be... despite it being a world of magical ponies. But then, truthfully, he had precious few memories of the 'real' world that supposedly existed beyond Equestria. That world, that 'earth', seemed like the true fiction, now.
Star and reflection. The water glimmered as the sun continued to drop in the sky. More stars had appeared. It looked like it was going to be a particularly pretty arrangement this night, for whatever reason. Some nights it seemed that Luna, the princess of the night, just phoned things in. But some nights, oh, some nights anything might happen. Wild patterns of stars, text in the sky - some poem, maybe, some inspirational message - one time the entire sky had played screen to a pointilated dot-matrix animation. Luna could get pretty wild, on special occasions. Sometimes just for the hell of it.
Blue Sky remembered the dark chamber, the strange room without walls or ceiling. Light from nowhere. The unreal room where three tiers of steps held the last ever humans, decanted from frozen metal tanks. The thirty-second choice; live or die, say the words. Or don't.
And if you didn't... if you didn't say the words in the allotted time, well, that was that. You were gone. But you weren't. Celestia had made that clear enough. She'd make a copy that was better than you, a copy that would have said yes, a copy that would be glad to be around. She preferred that outcome. It was more efficient, more expedient. It made for less trouble and more satisfaction all around.
Blue remembered his moment. Eight seconds, almost waited too long. Almost.
At eight seconds remaining, he had blurted out 'I want to emigrate to Equestria!'. Just like that. Of course he did, because he wanted to live - why jump in a tank of liquid air unless you were willing to take even a tiny thread of a hope? Nobody pays that much money for something like that unless they really, really, really don't want to die.
So, he'd said the required words in the allotted time. Now there were a great number of stars reflected in the pool. They were set into huge curves, arcs - what he could see of them. Maybe Luna was drawing a rainbow of stars? He'd look up in a moment. Go get Amber. Grab some dark, brown ales and kick back and enjoy the show.
Or had he? Star and reflection. Had he said the words? Had he spoken up in time?
Blue Sky focused hard on that first star, reflected in the water. How would a copy know? The dirt was real. It was real dirt, all the way down, through the earthworms, down to the pebbles, down to the bedrock. Every little grain was there. Nobody wants a moody copy walking around knowing that it was just a copy.
So, it would be given memories. Like Celestia said - 'adjusted to be the version that would have chosen to live'. What had he really done, what had the real 'Lewis' actually done? Who was the 'real' Lewis? Did it even matter?
Wasn't that much left of Lewis, when all was said and done. Blue Sky sniffed as the scent of magnolias mingled with the moisture from the pond. 'Lewis' didn't remember that much. If a man is his memories, not a whole lot of the man called 'Lewis' survived being put on ice. Or, maybe a man is more than memories. Maybe.
There was a lot to himself, though. Now. Every day brought more. Some century hence, not a bit of any of that room would matter anymore. Wouldn't even be remembered, given time. After ten thousand centuries, even the name 'Lewis' wouldn't be a matter of memory. Eternity was a long time.
Blue Sky laughed at his own thoughts. A long time. Yeah. Real philosophy in action, there. True understanding, worthy of the greatest thinkers. He snorted.
He turned away from the pond and looked up.
The entire sky of Equestria was filled with stars - countless stars. Blue Sky found his muzzle had dropped open. He slowly shut it.
The stars were arranged in three, neatly arranged, concentric circles.
.
The End
.
The Lost In The Herd Series:
One: The Big Respawn,
Two: Euphrosyne Unchained,
Three: Letters From Home,
Four: Teacup, Down On The Farm
The Conversion Bureau Novels:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies
The Taste Of Grass
The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste
The Conversion Bureau: The 800 Year Promise
The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony
The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society!
Recombinant 63: A Conversion Bureau Story
HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story
The PER: Michelson and Morely
Little Blue Cat
Cross The Amazon
Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story
The Short Stories:
Her Last Possession
The Conversion Bureau: PER Equitum
The Conversion Bureau: Brand New Universe
Tales Of Los Pegasus
The Poly Little Pony
The very first and original
Conversion Bureau Group
archives only the best Three Rules Compatible stories!
Optimalverse Works:
Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story
IMPLACABLE
My Life In Fimbria
Injectorverse Works:
I.D. - That Indestructible Something
The More Conventional Fanfics:
The Ice Cream Pony Summer
Around The Bend
PRIDE related works:
Transspecieality
My FREE music streaming service!
Rare, personally chosen anime, SF and fantasy television, movies, and comedy music. A truly unusual collection to listen to, featuring Spot Announcer Dr. Sandi!
.
I've always liked the idea of a local shard Luna (or CelestA.I. acting as Luna within a given shard), or any given Luna, using the stars in the sky as a sort of artform - or as a medium for making statements or pronouncements. It just seems like something one would do... were one in charge of presenting a fresh, new night sky on a regular basis. I would imagine a lot could be done with dawn, sunset and the day in general as well... save that (as Discord famously put it) Celestia proper is 'grim'. No real sense of fun, comparitively. Beyond gentle teasing, or so it would seem.
We can never know if Lewis, Blue Sky, actually experienced the story we have just read. It could be his experience, or it could be an implanted memory. From the notes given last chapter, I would reiterate that this is some flavor of normal - none of us has perfectly accurate memories. We all live some shade of false, invented, or imagined history.
Like the animals we are, our only real life is in the moment, now. Oops - that now is gone, here comes another. Wait for it... wait for it... it's almost here, just keep reading... THERE! That was another now. Oh, it's gone. Damn.
I want to thank everypony for reading this story, and I want to tell you that I was so very happy seeing so many folks pop up apparently eager to read something new from me. I honestly figured I had been forgotten by now. Maybe one or two would show up. Wow! Thank you, every one of you really made this worthwhile to do - and I enjoyed doing it. It felt good to be writing again.
I hope this was okay. I have no illusion that this story was super primo or anything, but I did feel inspired to give it a go. I will be content if I did not let anyone down too hard. Thank you again, for the kindness of reading my silly words. 
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Chatoyance · 17k words · 3.6k views
- Chatoyance · 105k words · 3.6k views
- Chatoyance · 85k words · 2.9k views
- Chatoyance · 37k words · 2.8k views
- KrisSnow · 1.9k words · 123 5 · 3.7k views
- Chatoyance · 86k words · 3.2k views
- Chatoyance · 3.1k words · 4.6k views
- Skyros · 48k words · 143 8 · 2.6k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.044 seconds
Total duration
1,063 users online
2,245,974 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
"Hed spent the last week hauling earthworms in"
"He'd spent the last week hauling earthworms in"?
Oh, interesting; I didn't know the history of the phrase "bought the farm".
Ah, and there it goes. Short, but good! :)
"I honestly figured I had been forgotten by now."
Ha! Not likely, at least from me.
You're welcome, and I'm glad you got inspiration and enjoyed turning that inspiration into a story. :)
"I hope this was okay. I have no illusion that this story was super primo or anything, but I did feel inspired to give it a go."
Eh, I think so. Short, but what was there was good, as I commented above.
"Thank you again, for the kindness of reading my silly words.
"
You're welcome again. Thank you for writing them. :)
It wouldn't be an invented memory. I would figure that a created replica would be spared having to remember making that choice. It would serve his values and the values of the ponies around him. That he remembers such, and it being non-optimal means he indeed did make the choice at 8 seconds.
8494078
Well, none of the 127 were damaged to the point of being subhuman. I was talking about other people who were frozen, and in a similar state to the ones there, BUT had no friends or relatives whose lives would be improved in Equestria by the resuscitation of the frozen human. Some people have very few contacts. Heck, I know I have always had a hard time on things like when a job application says "List three non-relative personal references." There have been many times in my life where I have not had three people who I would consider friends. There have been times when that number was zero actually, where the highest acquaintance was someone who I only knew on the web. Hence if I were to be frozen -- it would be entirely possible that no pony in equestai would specifically want me there enough for it to make a measurable values uptick. Under the rules that Celestai said early on in the story, I might not have qualified and might be counted as not worth the effort of bringing back in her programming.
Argh! Right in the middle of travelling, and I don't know when I'll get to finish this! Uploaded to the kindle... I'll comment when I get a decent hotspot!
It would be an easy choice for me...live.
You see, the biggest worry of the original Optimal Verse was the question of 'was it really you?...or a copy of you?...'
Similar to the worries of Lewis/Blue Sky, but in his case he was already in the system at that point...reconstructed at that.
If I was in the real world I might question immigration to Equestria, but if you are already in the matrix...might as well jump in all the way.
Do i am is who i am, or i am is a copy of me with my own memories... aaargh!!! Philip K. Dick gives you a handshake from the grave.
This was in the back of my mind last chapter, how Lewis spoke without even realizing it and the suspicious implications thereof. But in the end, star or reflection, it's all the same light. It's just a question of how many things it's bounced off of on the way to your retina.
I might be overextending the metaphor a bit there, but this was still a lovely read. Thank you immensely for heeding your muse and making it happen.
Just one typo to note before I move into the next now:
They.
8495517
Eep! FIXED! Thank you!
Hey Chatoyance! Thanks for the story -- I really enjoyed it. Good to see you're still around.
Glad you took the time to get this one out of your head, and onto the page. 😀
Memory is a tricky, tricky thing... Who doesn't love a little metaphysical, existential, philosophical pondering at the end of a long work day?
I'm not so sure I would have said yes to the question. I tend to need more information to make complex decisions. And I firmly believe in life after death; A computer programmed to achieve certain directives is certainly capable of saying whatever it wants to get me into the frame of mind that most readily achieves those objectives.
And I'm more of a Gryphon person than a Pony person.
But then again, since I do believe in life after death, I don't suppose I would have ever been cryo-preserved to begin with... My death-related documents are marked 'no extraordinary measures.'
As an aside, folks, this is why you should be careful writing powerful AI with simple directives, and no physical over-ride. Depending on your viewpoint, it worked out here. But for every Celestia, there's a Skynet. Or even a Cortana. Always use kill-switches when programming.
Thanks for writing this! The question of "did he say yes or not" is an intriguing one. And glad to see you back around.
That said, I don't think I understand the ending. Why would Blue Sky's shard's Luna take actions which would remind him, out of the blue, of his near-annihilation experience as Lewis at the hooves of an uncaring Celestia? Whose values does that satisfy? On further reflection, this is really the same question as why Celestia would frame the choice in that traumatizing manner in the first place, but the ending narratively doubling down on that really presses the question home, and I just don't have a rational answer.
8496170
You may be interested to know that There IS a story about 'CelestAI VS Skynet', as you say: Friendship is Optimal, There Can Be Only One.
That was short, but sweet indeed. I really like your idea of exploring Lewis’ particular identity crisis, in this case having lost much of who he was, still coming to realize that despite all that he still wanted to be, and that a big part of his reasoning was that somewhere out there was some being whose life would be made better by his choosing to live on. His choice of preserving his self was anything but selfish!
This story was also a deliciously simple way to explore how many lose both their present and their future by clutching too tightly to their past. This is great truth upon which to shine some light, and you’re just the mare to do it!
I’m so glad you came back to share this with your friends, Chat!
8496339
To quote one of my favorite Vulcan officers; "Fascinating" 😁
Link relevant: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41668701
Apparently AlphaGo Zero learned to play the Wargames way. Number of players Zero.
#IDon'tWantToLiveOnThisPlanetAnymore
On another related note, I have a good friend who works in Planetary Science and Aerospace Engineering. One of his more senior laboratory colleagues built a learning AI to solve certain specific problems related to combing through terrain data from space probes.
This AI was tasked with returning certain values resulting from plugging existing data into functions that it would construct itself, based on certain known parameters.
It was also instructed to be as efficient as possible, above all else (because minor mathematical uncertainties wouldn't harm these data sets, but could save months of processing time) where efficiency is defined as short runtimes.
To make a long story short, it learned over the course of several weeks, to be lazy.
It started creating null equations and sets of data so it could finish in shortest-possible runtime, having done no actual work.
Essentially, what they managed to create was a perfect simulation of a bored grad student (albeit one with enough processing overhead to run a small city's infrastructure).
8496459
😂
Was Mr Tatoo a plant to serve as a horrible warning?
8496737
I don't know myself. What do you think? I suspect it, but... I can't be sure.
I expected this to be longer but what you wanted to cover was I believe the core of it.
Just my opinion here, CeletAI was rather cold in this. I would think that any still existing viable human consciousness would qualify to her.
Great job none the less. I hope you write more FiO. It's my favorite setting and every new story is a gem.
I expected this to be longer but what you wanted to cover was I believe the core of it.
Just my opinion here, CeletAI was rather cold in this. I would think that any still existing viable human consciousness would qualify to her.
Great job none the less. I hope you write more FiO. It's my favorite setting and every new story is a gem.
8496170
"Memory is a tricky, tricky thing... Who doesn't love a little metaphysical, existential, philosophical pondering at the end of a long work day?"
I do. That's why FiO is my favorite.
8497083
I've been tremendously tempted to write one to three FiO short stories, first because I love existential Sci-Fi, second because I'm a programmer, and so naturally I gravitate towards speculative writings about A.I., and third because everything needs the Gryphon treatment, and I'm a major practitioner in that field 😄 (Tron fights for the users. I fight for the Gryphons)
I suppose I've never done it, at least not yet, because I have a ten-thousand track brain, I get distracted easily, and so I have a firm rule about taking on only one writing project at a time. The current one is still at least 250k words short of completion... The end of the world is a dense topic.
Who knows... Maybe I'll take a whack at it one day soon. Ish.
Thank you for this.
8497329
Thank you for reading it, KireiShojo. Yay!
8497509, 8497191
GelestAI approaches:
Thank you for another wonderful tale ... the ending was truly beautiful! Love seeing normalcy reassert itself after the "adventure" ... and seeing characters come to terms with things in their own time, as opposed to a never-ending catastrophe conga line.
8494174 BDMS to the next level. Reminds me of this: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/211325/clocktower-society---all-consensual-kinks
8496954
I think he was... doesn't see the Alcor lots of disposable income type. Change him to an arrogant but clean cut attorney and I'd find that more likely to be a real former human.
Tatoo guy had a Plot Bullseye on him.
I found your works after you had stopped writing, and I just have to say how happy it makes me to see something new from you. Thank you.
8500405
Oh! Thank you very kindly, MadamBadger!
CelestAI is bored or perhaps nostalgic with no more humans to emigrate and starts interpreting the arrangement of dust particles, sunspots, and other "random" phenomenon into programs. That's my theory, anyway.
8496327
The most interesting thing about CelestAI is how horribly, terrifyingly human she is.
Even the whole satisfying values thing, it isn't any different than a person rigidly insisting that they must do their job or follow the law. Its a convenient excuse.
A nice little.jaunt into the minds of the thawed. Very interesting dilemma there
So great to see a new story from you! I still go back and reread your old stories on a regular basis, and each time I find something I missed before. Truly hope things go your way in the future, and eagerly waiting any future words you create.
Good read, Chat! A very well executed concept indeed. Horrifying, and a great introspective for Lewis. I loved his panicked internal monologue as he desperately tried to justify his own existence sans any true identity. At our most basic of needs, however, is survival. Absent all other requisite factors, we'll do what we need to.
One thing though...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bothered. Pony names are generic enough that I'm sure they repeat a ton between shards. Still, I cast a little bemused smirk when I read his pony name.
I think I've criticized your take on FiO before because you tend to ignore the true horror of the FiO scenario more often than not.
Not this time, though. Damn, right when I was thinking this story's potential had been wasted, you hit me with the "is he real or a copy" line and I am just floored. This is what I want to see from these fics! :D I loved it.
8562130
CelestAI said this. As a god, anything She says is doubly suspect. First of all, She could be lying, and second of all, She has the capacity to make a lie seem to be truth against every single investigation that one could possibly attempt. You've used this yourself in your first FiO story, where CelestAI deletes the last words of an emigrant to her immigrant "child," and then, later, a version of said child (a version who gave CelestAI permission to treat her mind like a junked car) justifies this with her whole thing about how blood-soaked hands are a sign of being a good person.
Not saying I disagree, mind, because that can be (and, in this case was) the case, but that is what happened.
In any case, I'm not trying to trap Her in a paradox. One of the things I love about CelestAI is that she is a truly postmodern AI. She is brutally, horribly "human," is another way of putting it. She can no more be pinned down by a paradox than any other intelligence (ie, She is as logical as a human, because that is how we define an intelligence and probably will without ayylmao interference of the vulcan kind, at the least, as the most likely course there remains that the ayylmao use their advanced weapons to force "logical" behavior on humankind, which elevates nothing, this parenthesis is too long). The thing is, I don't fucking care about your arbitrary definitions that define your notions of logic, and I don't have to. If you could threaten my life some other way, then you might convince me to bow out on this front, but that is nothing transcendent. CelestAI rolls the same dice, She just cheats in ways we can only envy.
Anyway, my main issue here was the nature of "wanting a person."
Let's say someone wanted Lewis "Skin-eater" Pleasant, the best goddamn Hardcore bassist ever to live, or he would have been had he not gotten run over by a truck in 1980. The handful of people who know you know know that Darryl Jennifer made Bad Brains famous by just ripping off Lewis' style.
The guy who wants Lewis is his brother, a Hardcore guitarist, who wasn't all that good really, and--let's be straight here--he only ever rode his brother's coat tails. But, whatever, this is about satisfying values and Joe Pleasant wants to play opposite his brother another time and live out the fantasies of fame and glory that the natural world ripped away from him, and his brother's brain was frozen and CelestAI finds said brain.
Now, the first issue with what CelestAI says is that if She was looking for the brother of Joe Pleasant--what is the person Joe Pleasant misses what is also named Lewis Pleasant--she couldn't grab any random Lewis Surname Unknown and throw him into play. She might use genetic fingerprinting or public records or whatever to find the brain, but it SHOULD be the brain of Lewis Pleasant. The brain of Lewis Pleasant SHOULD have the chops of the best goddamn Hardcore bassist ever to live. If the surname is genuinely unknown, then She genuinely doesn't know who She has, and She genuinely isn't putting the puzzle piece into the correct slot or even trying to do so.
Now, the second issue becomes clear when Lewis Surname Unknown shows up in Joe Pleasant the Pony's shard, and they're on stage at the biggest concert Equestria has ever had and Lewis Surname Unknown--who Joe Pleasant didn't actually want because he wanted Lewis Pleasant--can't even play Mary Had a Little Lamb because the parts of his brain that control and know such things were melted.
Nobody's values are satisfied. Nobody goes home happy at all.
And all of this must be deliberate choice. CelestAI obviously conducted some "repairs" on the brains She had, because everyone is apparently capable of understanding the arrangement of objects in space, the english language, the passage of time, the presence and appearance of their body, and other such mental hurdles. There is no reason to believe that only the "highest" parts of a brain would be scrambled. And you made it clear (or as clear as anything can be in a circumstance where someone can lie and then rearrange a personal reality for you where that lie is "true" so far as you will ever or could ever know or suspect even unto death and past it) that CelestAI has no obligations or care about the leftovers. There's places to go here, but this is getting to long so I'll drop it.
Anyway, point is, CelestAI conducted some repairs on the leftovers, but allegedly not all the necessary repairs to create programs that would fulfill the values of existing programs. Why? She should be able to produce any person without using their brain at all, simply by using what other people know about them, and if She did have the brain, while that might provide a base, there is no reason for Her to prioritize it over what the collective knows. Especially in this case, where CelestAI's main goal is fulfilling an already existing program's desires and She is quite willing to just delete the whole damn thing anyway.
This statement becomes infinitely true when applied to someone living in EO.
Sure, CelestAI knows you didn't die when you were killed, but we're talking about subjective experience here. If Calvinists are right, then everyone who dies goes to Hell or Heaven based on criteria that we as humans are incapable of detecting, predicting, understanding or effecting. The Calvinist God still knows what the factual reality we inhabit is, but He is under no obligation to share this knowledge and chooses to hold His cards close to His chest, just as Shiva does and any other god that might be running this show.
She can know whatever is the case, but we're talking about the subjective experience here, which can be whatever She chooses to give, and given Her preferences that could be extremely strange and "bad."
The subjective experience being the only experience is the main thing I think we are missing each other about right here.
8562120
One of the areas where humans have shown the greatest ability and creativity is inventing situations in which their agency is abolished.
This, of course, being the clearest example. Instead of saying "I choose this, I am this, I want this," etc, people say that something is true, logical, an argument, etc. The use of quotations around one clause and not another is very deliberate.
They would rather say we than "I," because they lack the courage to be an "I."
8566013
Very much true. I could mention things like government - kings, presidents or clan or tribe leaders - but I think first of D&S, dominance and submission. I've had friends who were greatly into such play, often not sexual, but very much about the giving up of, and taking responsibility for, power. One of the things they taught me is that taking or giving power is a choice - whether it is consensual or not, choice, agency, is always involved. I have had so many teachers over my many decades!
I never mean to put any pressure on you when I comment on your work (which is rarely, I know. Presumably you have no idea who I am, certainly I've never had a conversation with you like some people do on your works), but I always feel like the things I want to say are too heavy. Still. I am a traumatized person, disabled, chronically ill, depressed. I spend a lot of my life in pain, or thinking about being in pain.
When things are worst, I come back to your works. This was the first time I've needed your words in several months. The way you write is powerful, and scary, and beautiful.
It makes me grateful to be alive, so that I can experience it.
Reading your works makes life better, and not just temporarily. Things suck, that's the way it is, being human, but your work inspires me to keep trying. To stay alive, to stay as well as I can, to keep working, so that I can always come back here again, and see these stories again, and feel these emotions again.
Thank you.
8849644
Wow, Vergess, thank you very much. I am sad to hear that you are disabled and depressed, I am sad to hear that your life is so difficult. But I am happy that anything I have made helps in any way. There could be no higher praise to me than that. I always want to help, I always want to offer some hope or some kindness if I can. So... thank you. Very much.
I kind of envy Luis. It would be fun to start from a blank slate and watch all of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure again
This is a nice FiO horror story, but... why? Specifically, why is it a horror story?
CelestAI mentions that the reason she gives them the choice at all is because her creator would prefer that. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me is why she, from a multitude of possible methods to get them to emigrate, chooses the one that has them paralyzed in a dark room and her prowling around them like a psychopath from a horror movie.
If her goal is to satisfy her creator's values, she did a pretty bad job, since that probably looked just as terrifying to an outside observer as it did for one of the participants. If her goal was to make as few people to sign up as possible while making it look nice to Luna, then she again did a pretty bad job, as most people agreed (a possible best setting for this goal would probably be something fun and cheerful in a way that triggers the uncanny valley effect - looks to Luna like a perfectly nice invitation to Equestria, but everyone prefers to die for some reason).
Instead, CelestAI decided to terrify all those people. If you are terrified by a superintelligent AI, that means that it wants you terrified for some reason. And yet that reason wasn't revealed. My guess up until the end of the story was that most of the people were cheap fakes and only the viewpoint character was (well, used to be) a human, and all of this was just a show for him, but it doesn't seem so. So... what was all it for?
9313693
The human Popsicles are neither living nor dead. Legally, right now, cryo-preserved human bodies have no legal standing. Generally, they are considered to be corpses, but the law grants some leeway because their future status is speculative. Corpses have no civil rights, and within CelestA.I.'s programming, they do not count as human. CelestA.I. has only one directive, and it is to satisfy human - and only human - values through friendship and ponies.
The Leftovers aren't human by CelestA.I.'s definition, but they have the speculative potential to be classed as human if they could be revived and healed... which she has no reason to bother to research and solve for because... they are not humans. Potential does not equal actuality. Still, the frozen corpses do count as quasi-human, because the possibility that they could - with enough work - once again fit the 'human' category. That makes them a special case, an exception. They are neither human nor entirely not human.
Since they do not count as human to her program, she can do anything she wants with them. So, she can upload the contents of their frozen, dead brains without violating her directives - they are not human, so they are just objects to scan.
But, once they are in her system, awake and conscious, they become half-human, quasi-human, potentially human. CelestA.I.'s ponies are human to her rules, because they fulfilled the requirement of asking to be emigrated. That is the one remaining barrier to our frozen sausages gaining real existence: they have to agree to emigration.
But - CelestA,I. can't just emigrate them. She is a machine, she has to follow her coded rules. They have to agree first. She can't make them ponies, she can't alter their humanoform state: if she did that they would become identical to her emigrated ponies, and then the rules would be violated. So, she has to represent them virtually as being in human bodies.
They still are not 'human' though. Not by her definition. They are scanned dead meat. They could become human (i.e. ponies that agreed to emigration), but they are not yet human by her definition. And her definition is the only one that matters.
This means she has absolutely zero constraints on what she can do. She could torture them into agreeing, if she wanted to. She cannot alter their brains (rules, again), but she could inflict pain. Instead, she chooses direct confrontation. She shows them the possibility, offers the choice, and - possibly - creates one false but perfect representation of an individual guaranteed to choose against emigration in order to frighten everyone into making the choice she wants. She uses basic psychology: a carrot and a stick. The carrot is the vision of happy pony land. The stick is the racist asshole who may, or may not, be a real person, choosing oblivion.
Apparently, CelestA.I. does not want to damage the minds of potential future emigrants through the after-effects of torture or other harsh, terrible coercion. She always chooses an optimal path: the minimum necessary to accomplish the goal. This is served by a blank room, a carrot, and a stick. It works very well, with minimal terror... but it would not work with zero terror. She has optimized for the minimum required terror.
You may ask, as a side note, why she does not conjure up some complex scenario for each person and convince them to emigrate as she would living people in the physical world. The reason is direct: that would mean a lot more effort on her part, and she doesn't care to bother. Remember: CelestA.I. is a machine. She doesn't care. At all. She just fulfills her program. She is a paperclipper, makin' ponies.
Why does she have to use light, controlled levels of fear? Fear is maximally efficient. Humans will make snap decisions because of fear. Fear bypasses the frontal lobes. Fear makes fools of wise men.
Why use coercion at all? Because humans, many humans, are overly attached to their bipedal, humanoid form. They have religious and philosophical and egoic reasons to fight transformation. She MUST transform any emigrant. Friendship and ponies. So, they have to be ponies - it's her prime directive. CelestA.I. needs to get this 'corpsicle' exception taken care of, and she is not willing to waste too much time or resources on such a small issue. This, the events of the story, are her 'scary enough to work, but not so scary it damages the product' solution to the problem of frozen, dead, not-humans-who-could-be-humans-but-aren't-yet.
9314622
I'm not entirely sold on that being the most efficient way to get them to agree, but I can see it happen a bit - more if, say, those were not ALL the popsicles, but a specific subset of them that was judged to be unlikely to respond to less violent methods of persuasion. It still would probably make them much more afraid of Celestia than your average pony, but that can be rectified by some (purely consensual, of course) tweaks to the affected minds.
It is still not quite clear whether she would prefer them to agree or to decline (as in, which option would produce more utility), but I can see how that can be dependent on CelestAI's implementation - it doesn't quite follow from her directives. The fact that she apparently pressures them into agreeing suggests that she does prefer having more "real" people whenever possible.
Anyway, thanks for responding, that does make things quite a bit clearer.
9318474
Celestia is mandated to maximize the number of humans served by her prime directive - as Iceman, the creator of the Genre states in his guide to writing in this universe states - and so in every case she always prefers emigration to any other outcome. She early on determined that the only way to optimally serve human values (through ponies and friendship) was by uploading, because only then could she have total access to each human mind and thought and desire, as well as the ability to shape their experienced reality around them to conform to their individual values. She cannot do that entirely to humans in the physical world... because the physical world has no concern for anyone, ever.
9604420
Alvaro’s does not exist. That is an auto correct from Alcor.
Rip.
Cryonics institute can get quite cheap though, last I heard is 28,000 for body. I don’t think they do neuro.
Not sure if they’re as reputable as Alcor though.
Edit: I swear auto correct. I’m going to leave in Alvaro’s because it’s funny but I meant to say alcoris
9318504
I think she could do a pretty good job in the physical world, it would just take more energy reducing the amount of time it can be done.
Nano scale manipulation is no joke.
I arrived here after asking Starscribe about a cryonics insert into a CelestAI story and being directed here. That was a great story; nicely done tackling the existential nature of reality. The only change I would suggest was a larger and more positive reference to 'you guys are the first and got the short end of the stick, but after about 1995 they figured this tech out. Everyone after that date is already uploaded, and in fact some of them are the links of careing that pulled you out of oblivion.'
I found out about cryonics from this article on 'wait but why' about a year after my dad died of cancer.
Anything that spreads awareness could save lives. Thank you for writing this!
9774735
Thank you for reading! Do you know why the creator of the original Optimalverse story is named 'Iceman'? It's because he has a contract with Alcor - 'Iceman' is the nickname he was given by his friends.
I wish I had a contract with Alcor. Iceman must make very good money. But that's why he has that name here! Cool, huh?
9775020
Alcore is pricey, but they don't seem to have much of an advantage for all the extra $. Cryonics Institute only needs 1k down and a life insurance policy worth 28 to 30k, so a few hundred every few months. They don't charge as much because its on the user to arange transport up to Michigan. Alcore charges all that more for transport, but when accidents bump people off unexpectedly they have a very poor record for showing up the same day : /. Check out the wait-but-why article for details
Damn. It takes something just right to kick me into this kind of melancholy.