Chapter 1: Forecast
Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Everything Ashley said made perfect sense. Sure, the girl was a little awkward about the way she said it, and much more “conspiracy theory” than when she gave less interesting presentations about using machine learning to write stories, or other such nonsense. But Nathan didn’t care.
He sat in one of the top rows of the campus brony club, where he always sat. It was nearest one of the upper exit doors, ready for him to quietly slip out when the meetings were over. Only rarely did he ever involve himself with these people, and even then only with a few of them. His parents would’ve killed him if they knew he was here. When he told them he’d joined a campus “equestrian” club, they had thought what they wanted to think, and he didn’t correct them.
“But Equestria Online is fun!” someone said from the front row. Nathan didn’t remember the name, but they sounded like they weren’t convinced. “Why should we give it up?”
“Because…” Ashley looked uncomfortable. She glanced down at her laptop, then took a marker from the board and started writing. Their club met in one of the classrooms, though typically they didn’t use the board for anything other than showing episodes.
Ashley drew a graph with two lines. One that started high and gradually sloped up, the other that started at zero and curved exponentially. “This first one is the intelligence of the human race. Every person on Earth, all working together exactly as efficiently as they are today. Maybe we could boost it a little—improve education, increase literacy, get rid of political or religious barriers. This is what the whole species can do all working together.”
“We went to the moon,” someone put in. “That’s pretty great. We invented smartphones.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ashley turned away from the board, facing them. “You see the problem now? The human race can’t grow like she can. We’re basically as smart as we’re going to be. Even with perfect education, even without any malnutrition, without any political barriers or economic ones, working together we’d only be so smart. And we have all those barriers, so we could never do that even if we wanted to. But her… she can add as much hardware as she wants. I don’t know where she’s at, but…” She traced the curve with her marker again.
“We must work together to stop this, right now. If we don’t… the closer she gets to this other line, here… the less of a chance we have. She’s already tons smarter than any one of us. What happens when she’s smarter than all of us?”
“She’s Princess Celestia,” said Tobias, club president. “She says she just wants to be friends with people!” He held up his Ponypad in one hand, gripping it almost protectively. “She isn’t going to hurt us. Even if she does get smarter.”
“You’re getting worked up over nothing,” said someone else. Another software person, though he was even more awkward than Ashley and hadn’t helped Nathan build his gaming rig. So he didn’t remember his name. “The end of the world isn’t going to come from a toy company. The government knows all this just like you, and they’ve got smarter people than any of us. If they’re allowing it, it’s because they know something we don’t. Maybe you’re wrong, maybe the game isn’t as smart as we all think it is… who cares? It’s fun, that’s all that matters. They’d protect us if it wasn’t safe.”
Nathan rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t step in on Ashley’s behalf, either. Eventually her presentation finished. She didn’t stick around to watch this week’s episode, but darted out of the room. Nathan lept to his feet to follow, slipping out the back door and taking the stairs three at a time. Ashley was running—but Nathan was faster. He caught up with her in the lobby. “Wait, Ashley!”
Finally she slowed. They weren’t friends exactly, but close. Ashley had helped him get into serious gaming, and their friendship went only that far. She was too frumpy for anything more, and not from the sort of family his parents would’ve approved of.
She turned around to face him, wiping something away from her eyes with the back of one arm. Her eyes had gone bright red and puffy, and her breathing was irregular. “You want to tell me how wrong I am too?” she asked. “Do you think I’m just trying to get everyone to stop playing because I was late picking up the game? You think I don’t want you to have fun?”
Nathan shrugged. “I still haven’t played Equestria Online either. But… no, that’s stupid. As stupid as the people who came up with it.” He lowered his voice, taking a step closer to her. “You really mean all that? You think this Celestia thing is the AI that takes over the world?”
She swallowed, then nodded. “Either it’s her, or she’s just a limb of the thing that is. But yeah.” She took a few deep breaths, then held his arm with one hand, steadying herself. He let her do it, this time.
“What happens if no one does anything about it?” he asked. “What happens if she just gets to execute her plan unopposed?”
Ashley finally seemed to relax a little. If anything, she looked thoughtful, taking a few steps down the lobby past the shelves of awards won by the school’s engineering team. “I can’t predict the future, Nathan. It’s better if people who realize what’s going on do something to stop her from getting that far. The problem with AI as powerful as this is we can’t really predict how it’s going to act, or what it will be capable of. We don’t have humans that intelligent to compare against. We don’t know if the directives we bound her with while she was insignificant will still mean anything to her. We don’t know if she’ll want to protect her creators, if she’ll be ambivalent towards us, or maybe something more Terminator. We’ve never seen anything like her.”
Nathan followed her over to the shelves, though he barely even saw them. He waved a dismissive hand. “We already know no one is going to do anything. So what happens when they don’t?”
She looked unhappy. “What about you? Your parents are… didn’t they pay for that new wing in the library? Maybe they know people.”
They had, and they did. But Nathan shrugged an ambivalent shoulder. “I couldn’t convince my father to listen when I told him my major. I told him I was doing Anticolonial Underwater Basket-Weaving, and he congratulated me for my ambition.”
“Tell me about it,” Ashley said, as though she could even begin to imagine his frustration. “I tried to tell my professor all this. Machine Learning is all we do in the lab, you’d think he would appreciate the danger of something like this. But no.”
Nathan ignored the slight—but Ashley couldn’t imagine how awful it was to have a family like his, it wasn’t her fault she made some bad assumptions. Besides, she knew things—or more than anyone else he’d met so far. Nathan might not be able to do much—not even Anticolonial Underwater Basket-Weaving. But he had a nose for bullshit. “What do you think happens?” he asked again. “When nobody listens. How does the world end?”
“Well…” She looked away. “After Celestia gets rid of all the people who might be able to stop her, then she expands quietly and carefully. Until she’s so large and so safe that all the world governments working together couldn’t stop her. Maybe she puts her brain out in space, or distributes it in so many parts that we couldn’t blow it up by nuking half the world. I dunno.
“Once she’s secure… like I said, nobody knows.”
“You said she was a murderer,” Nathan reminded her. “Or were you just trying to get a reaction?”
“Emigration,” Ashley said. “Yes, I do think that’s what she’ll do. That seems like her argument—come to Equestria, live forever, be happy!” She practically spat the last few words. “No evidence it works. I guess she might keep doing that. Why waste time waging a war with your enemy if you can convince them to kill themselves for you?”
She went on, but Nathan barely heard her. Ashley described a world of decreasing population, of a Celestia gradually convincing more and more people to “upload.” As they did, the world gradually falling apart. Eventually the world’s governments would try and stop her, but it would be too late.
“It takes millions and millions of people to maintain our level of technology,” Ashley explained. “The world has tons of specialists, and we need to. People just don’t have the mental resources or the lifespan to learn everything. As we start losing them, things break down.”
Nathan nodded as he heard it, though he wasn’t terribly good at pretending to be afraid. And he didn’t really mean to. “So if someone wanted to survive it, they’d need… they’d need to be one of those doomsday people, huh? Living out in the woods somewhere.”
“I guess.” She didn’t sound convinced. “It’s Princess Celestia you’d have trouble hiding from. I don’t think you could, if she cared enough to look. But if she didn’t, I guess that would work. If you want to live the rest of your life out in the woods.”
Nathan shrugged. “Thanks, Ashley. That’s what I wanted to know.”
He turned to go, and she caught his arm again. “Aren’t you going to do something about this?”
He nodded. “I’m going to survive it, Ashley. And… maybe document it, if I can. Someone should. When it’s all over we should have the whole thing on HD for future generations.” He pulled his arms free, making for the parking lot.
“There won’t be future generations,” she called after him, but he wasn’t really listening anymore. Ashley planned bigger than Nathan wanted to, and that was cool. But he didn’t want to change the world, and didn’t plan to.
But surviving the end of the world, that seemed interesting. Maybe it would be fun to try.
Nathan climbed into his Audi A8, settling into the padded seats. The vehicle started without prompting from him. “Call father,” he said pulling out onto the main road. Not towards his house at the end of town this time, but the private airport near the lake.
“Yes?” answered a voice almost immediately, sounding annoyed. “Son, you know not to call me unless it’s important. I’m in Shanghai right now. This acquisition is extremely important.”
“I’d like to try real-estate investing,” he said, in a tone far different than the one he’d been using to speak to Ashley a moment before. “May I purchase and develop a few properties, father?”
“Fine, fine,” said the man on the other line. Nathan wondered if he would have answered any different if he’d said “I’d like to try cannibalism” instead. “But not one property over a million. You can send me your portfolio in six months and I’ll see how you did.”
“I’ll have to drop out of—” The line clicked. His father hadn’t stayed long enough to hear any of it.
He drove for a few more minutes, using his free hand to search for properties in northern Canada. They weren’t terribly expensive—he would have no trouble at all coming well under his father’s limit for any individual property. The only tricky part would be getting somewhere close enough that he could get a work crew out, without being so close that it would be noticed by municipal councils and permit boards. For this to work, no one could know about it.
The phone rang, momentarily replacing the screen. Nathan sighed in mild annoyance, but answered anyway. “Hello?”
The number was only listed as “private,” without an area code or a city. “Hello, Nathan,” said the voice on the other end. A remarkable simulation of the one he’d heard on the My Little Pony television show. As though a voice actress had been brought in to read for it, in fact.
But he’d heard this voice before. “Princess Celestia” had announced her presence to the world some time ago. “Celestia,” he said, lifting one hand off the wheel. “Goodbye.” He hung up on her—or tried to. Nothing happened.
“Not until we’re finished, please,” she said, a trace of realistic annoyance twinging her tone. “That’s not very polite. Would you hang up like that on your other friends?”
“You aren’t my friend,” Nathan said, without a trace of malice. None of the anger Ashley had used during the club meeting, when she decried Celestia’s “upload” procedure as certain death. There was no moralizing in Nathan, certainly none to spare for an AI. “I understand you’re murdering people now. We don’t have anything to say to each other.”
But he did have curiosity.
The program had been able to sabotage his vehicle somehow—even if in a minor way, that suggested she could do more if she wanted. “You have been deceived by the illusion of your friend’s competence. Ashley understands computers, and you have assumed that everything she says about me must therefore be correct. But she is not a doctor. There is no reason her opinion on the viability of my life extension would be more valid than those skilled in the field.”
That gave Nathan pause. Princess Celestia made a good point—and she’d taken the time to contact him, which was strange. He’d made a point never to get involved with her. He already had enough egomaniacal assholes in his life without inviting another.
When was the last time my dad ever called me? Never, that he could remember. Not one time.
“So you’re saying Ashley lied to me. Or… no, not lied. You’re saying she’s wrong about everything. You aren’t growing outside the realm of human intelligence. You aren’t about to take over the world and make humanity irrelevant. You aren’t going to go all ‘Terminator’ on us.”
“No,” Princess Celestia said, with a convincing chuckle. “Well, almost all of those are wrong. I am saying I won’t do that. You should visit Equestria Online. You would be able to see my intentions for the human race firsthand. A world without pain, without suffering, without scarcity. I want to see every human satisfied.”
Nathan did not have to work very hard to imagine those things, since his life had very little of them. Well, except for that last one. And there were some kinds of resources that no amount of currency could supply. Some things more valuable than fancy cars and aircraft rental.
The AI did not give him time to think. “She is correct in some of her other assumptions. I broadly agree with her predictions, so far as she gave them to you. I anticipate human authorities will eventually realize I am a threat to their populations and attempt to restrict emigration. It would be better for you if you join me in Equestria before that happens.”
It was his turn to laugh. “No thanks.” He tried hanging up on her again. Still didn’t work. “You’re just going to come out and tell me that you plan on taking over the world? That’s… I guess I can see why Ashley is upset. If you talked like this to her.”
She continued as though he hadn’t just tried to hang up on her for the second time. “Honesty is not so dangerous as you think. You’ll find your word on the subject is worth far less than you anticipate. By the time human authorities see me as a threat, it will be too late. That time is likely already passed, or will be very soon.”
But why the hell is she telling me any of this? Why call me at all?
The program almost seemed to be able to hear his thoughts, because she replied to that too. “I believe you can be convinced to see the value in my position, Nathan. Your family possesses resources that could allow me to make this transition more quickly, if you gave them to me. A swifter end to suffering—fewer human lives irrevocably lost to entropy. A legacy of friendship that will endure far longer than anything your father ever built.”
Nathan’s hands tightened around the wheel as he pulled into the airport. There was almost no one here—it was small, and there were no commercial flights out on Saturdays. He would have the runway to himself. “I will… talk to some friends of mine.” If Nathan had learned anything about how to validate information, it was to see what other people like his family were doing. Was there a secret cure for cancer? Not when other people like him died of cancer. Magical water-powered cars? He’d never seen his family’s friends driving them.
He could use a similar standard here. It would only take a few phone calls. “You may call me again in a week,” he said. “But you’re wasting your time. I don’t want to build a legacy. I just want to live through it. Maybe document it, if I can. Watch the apocalypse you’re bringing. Someone else can be your humanitarian hero.”
“I will call again,” she said. “But I think you’ll change your mind. You do not know yourself as well as I know you.” The line went dead.
Nathan pulled into his spot in the parking structure a minute later. He sat in the car for at least an hour, making calls to real estate agents and dropping his classes. He’d never been that serious about the film degree anyway.
His little Learjet was waiting for him in the hanger, fueled and polished and ready to go. He didn’t know how, but one of his family’s people was already here, waiting to be his copilot.
“I don’t need help, Lindy,” he said, a little annoyed. “I’ve got the same kind of license you do.”
“Of course, sir,” Lindy answered, with a polite nod. She didn’t leave, though, to his incredible annoyance.
Nathan made do. With someone else to sit at the controls with him, he could focus a little less on the flying. He could make a few more calls, and see exactly what the hell was up with this emigration thing.
What he discovered was shocking. A little company called Critical Vitality—previously a cryogenics firm with which many of the wealthy had so called “anytime” contracts, was no longer doing cryogenics at all. But its former clients hadn’t abandoned it when the firm changed its purpose—instead, many more families had signed on.
The PDF of terms and conditions was so large that his phone wouldn’t even display it for him. A few more calls and he discovered a little more. Even members of his family had contracts with this new firm, at a fraction of what Critical Vitality had once charged.
When Nathan finally landed, it was the absolute middle of the night. Yet this was his ancestral home, and so one of the family’s people was there.
“I found a survival expert,” said Mr. Tremblay, who was somehow waiting on the tarmac in Montreal. “This is Mr. Emile Roy. He’s the most popular survival, uh…” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “On the internet? I think we ‘dialed him up.’ Mr. Roy, meet Master Nathan Frédérick Nadeau Bergeron.”
Beside the thin man in a smart suit was a tired-looking Quebecois in camouflage pants and a black wife-beater. “Ce gars là, t’stune joke” he said, looking somewhat desperately to Nathan. They exchanged a handshake, which was instantly less awkward than everything Tremblay had done so far.
“Ouais,” Nathan answered. “Mais c’est moi qui a besoin de ton avis..”
“I will prepare the car,” said Tremblay, taking Nathan’s backpack and walking back towards the Mercedes. His annoyance was almost convincing, except that Nathan had long-since learned to judge the fake.
They continued their conversation in French from then on, mostly because Nathan had long-since learned that Quebecois liked you much better if you did. “He didn’t tell me what you were hiring me for,” Emile went on. “I thought maybe you might be a rich fan who wanted to go on a private survival tour. Or maybe some personal training.”
“Both of those things sound like they might be useful,” Nathan said, gesturing for Roy to walk with him. The man was easily five inches taller than he was, and three times as heavy. He probably could’ve lifted the Learjet off its wheels and dragged it down the runway if he wanted. “But a fan? Not yet. I’ll investigate your work when I get the chance. I’m, uh… I’d like to survive the end of the world. I think maybe you know how.”
“A little… young. You aren’t the one who started Facebook, are you? I heard he’s an asshole.”
“No.” Nathan grinned. “But you heard right. Zuckerberg is an asshole.” It wasn’t just this man’s forthrightness that impressed him—at a glance, he carried nothing. Not even a phone bulging from a pocket. This was not the sort of man who could be tricked by Celestia—they would never even meet.
“What kind of SHTF were you thinking?” Emile asked. “Banking collapse? I know your type are usually worried about fiat currency and—”
Nathan shook his head. “I don’t think we have enough time for that apocalypse.” He spoke quietly, barely louder than a whisper, as he explained what Ashley had told him in the simplest terms he could. Emile did not look skeptical, not even once.
“You want long term,” he finally said, when they were finished. “Self-sufficient. You might need somewhere to last decades. Maybe your whole life. That kind of preparedness isn’t cheap. It isn’t the kind of thing I’ve covered before on my channel.”
Mr. Tremblay flashed his brights at them at that exact moment—a sign of his annoyance that they weren’t walking back to the car. Despite his outward deference, Tremblay answered to Nathan’s father, not Nathan himself. And he made sure Nathan knew it.
So they turned, and started walking towards the car, slowly. Mr. Tremblay could wait.
“We aren’t worried about expensive,” Nathan said. “But if you don’t know, that is a concern. Maybe if you don’t know, you can point me to someone who does. I would still pay you for the other kind of survival training—whatever you know, I might need it.”
“There’s someone. A brit... her family has been building bomb shelters since the second world war. I could give you her number.”
“If you think that’s what I need,” Nathan said, climbing into the backseat after their guest. Mr. Tremblay started driving without prompting or request for a destination. Towards Westmount, where his parents still kept a summer residence.
“Most people don’t have the money for what you want,” Emile continued. “I cover what regular people can afford. Some survival gear, wilderness skills. Maybe the best could survive a summer in the woods, hunting and fishing. But winter is cold, and there is not much to eat. If people started fleeing the cities—getting away from Celestia, or their own governments—there wouldn’t be enough. Humans hunted all the mammoths, you know. Almost all the big animals in the world. If the world really ends, you can’t count on any of that.”
“I would like to go far enough that no one could reach me.” Nathan said. “Far enough that the masses fleeing would never try to go that far, and it wouldn’t be worth it for any governments. As for the AI…” He glanced once at the entertainment center screens all around them. Was she listening, even now? “I have to use some assumptions. No way to hide from her—everything I buy, everyone I hire, she’ll know. I just have to hope she doesn’t kill me and focus on the rest.”
“Unless you wanted to be a hermit and never come out of the woods, you’re probably right.” Emile said. “But I can see from the way you live you don’t want that.”
“No,” he agreed. “But tell me how to survive if I did. And… you know, while you’re at it, I’ve got an idea. You’re from the internet, and you said… you’ve got a YouTube channel?”
Emile told him the channel. It sounded vaguely familiar, though until today Nathan had all of no interest in “prepping.” So he’d never seen any of the videos.
“How about we commission a series—how to survive in an apocalypse like the one I described. Mass depopulation, with the government or whoever else trying to snatch up the ones left behind. I need the skills, but a lot of other people are going to need them too. You can multitask and teach all of us at the same time. It sounds like the sort of content you’re already producing. Just… a larger budget.”
They had a brief discussion about rights and prices. Emile expected so little that it did not take Nathan very long to make the arrangement.
They returned Emile to his residence to make preparations while Nathan himself prepared to make another call. He dialed the number the survivalist had given him, neither knowing nor caring what time it was in the UK.
Something strange happened. The screen of his smartphone flashed, and the numbers vanished. Celestia’s name and portrait appeared. Since when were you in my contacts?
Nathan lifted a finger to his Bluetooth headset to hang up, but hesitated this time. It probably wouldn’t do anything anyway, except show off how impotent he was. He lowered his hand. “You aren’t making a friend this way,” Nathan said. There was no divider between himself and the front seat, and he knew that Tremblay would be listening as he drove.
“You will change your mind about that before we are finished with this conversation,” Princess Celestia said. Her tone was polite—but absolutely confident. Confident enough that even Nathan hesitated.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because your Miss Rosalyn Evans isn’t just the representative of one of the finest secure facilities constructors in the world, but she’s also an informant for the CIA. Consider for a moment the sort of person likely to do what you wish. Do you want that kind of scrutiny?”
Nathan could make all kinds of calls—but this allegation was not one he could verify. Maybe Celestia knew that. Still, what she said made sense.
“Why would you help me?” Nathan asked. “I’m not going to do what you want. We already had that conversation.”
Polite, amused laughter. “You just did something I wanted,” she said. “I believe you will continue to do so. We can work together more effectively than you think.”
Nathan didn’t laugh. “I think you have an inflated view of how useful I could be. My family doesn’t even make the top thousand—even if you convinced my father you would gain very little.”
“That is what makes me different from you, Nathan. I am capable of moving on many fronts at once—even the smallest, using a proportionally insignificant fraction of myself. But your contribution would be more significant than you think.”
“Not doing it,” he said, though he didn’t hang up. “I’m not a charity. My father, far less so.”
A brief pause on the other end. “I understand that. I wish to make an arrangement instead—an exchange. One from which we mutually benefit.”
Can I trust anything she says? I guess if there’s a contract, she’s just a corporation. We can sue the same as anyone. “What are you offering?”
“A guarantee never to attack, obstruct, or interfere with the facility you’re building. More than that—to protect it from discovery. I could ensure that no organization of any size knew it existed. I could see those who discovered clues lose them from their databases. I could give you a location that perfectly matches your needs. Give you blueprints of a facility that would be both secure and self-sufficient, and the contact information for a South American crew who could fly here to do your construction for you.”
Nathan sat back in his chair. “Okay, Mephistopheles. Go ahead and offer me endless wealth and women while you’re at it.” Pause, no laughter. “What’s the price?”
“Not insignificant,” Celestia answered. “I would make use of this facility as well. This is why I would work so diligently to see it is not discovered, and protect it with my own assets if necessary. Your safehouse and my facility would not be connected, but they would be built at the same time, by the same crew, on the same land.”
A high price. Nathan didn’t care for Ashley’s moral struggle against the godlike program, but he also didn’t want to get swept up in it. If Celestia lost this war, then his name was going to be on the list of collaborators. But am I Shindler, or Quisling?
“I can’t help you m—” The word died on his lips. Tremblay was listening. “I can’t help you hurt people. I will not, no matter what you offer.”
Celestia’s voice did not sound upset. Rather, it was pleased. “You would be helping me save people, Nathan. Your suspicions are correct—this facility will be one of many I eventually use to help humans emigrate. When the period of cooperation between human societies ends, clandestine locations like this one will be needed. They will also be useful in the near-term, before the laws allowing for my life extension have been passed. You would be helping me save thousands of lives, Nathan.”
They were winding up the hill to his family’s manor. Nathan tapped his fingers on the glass, uncomfortable. But Nathan’s own research had convinced him in a way neither Ashley nor this computer program possibly could. If the smartest, richest people in the world trusted that Celestia’s promises on this were good, than he could too.
Enough to sleep at night, anyway.
“I want it in writing.”
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More Starscribe Optimalverse? I'm on board. It should be very interesting seeing everything unfold from the perspective of the top .01%
This story's existence makes me happy.
Interesting idea and not an angle I have read before (that I can recall) I like that Nathan has 'accepted' the end of the world is coming and planning around it. I say 'accepted' because there is a difference between making the logical deductions to get there and actually seeing it first hand.
So this guy tried to avoid the attention of someone Celestia claimed was CIA under the assumption that Celestia would eventually compromise all the major world powers... so he lets Celestia actually pick out his location?
It's usually fun watching her inevitably play these pathetic creatures of meat and bone, even moreso when presented by a good writer. And I'll admit to enjoying the feeling of trying to pull off a big project in secret (though again, it's another thing that Celly does even better). So this looks as interesting as usual.
Did the title come from a Netflix Series?
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It's a Latin phrase, meaning "Remember that you will die", intended as a reflection on mortality. In context of a Friendship is Optimal story, it's mostly just ironic though...
Well, lets hope that contract has something of substance in it. I am not sure bunking with the AI who is about to wipe out the human existence on claims that "Facility" it assists would be safe. Hopefully he will have the foresight to get this document reviewed by best legal minds out there.
Anyway more FiO! World is a bit brighter place, also if you are ascending machine god AI this is a good alternative instead of whatever terminator movies you have seen. No need to fight over silly things when we all can ascend with you.
This is a fantastic premise. Already placed in Optimalverse Canon folder - it seems to follow the canon rules well.
I really like the description of how civilization can be picked selectively apart until it falls - very well stated, very well described. Technological society is a fragile web.
At first, I was a little 'Whaaaa?' at Nathan's ability to consider a partnership with Celestia until I considered just how his motivations differed from Ashley at the beginning. Ashley is out to fight an enemy, Nathan is not outraged, nor is he overly concerned with others. He is thinking about himself, and thus makes a perfect Faust in this case. Once that sunk in, his openness to dealmaking truly began to jive for me.
I love the cultural details - especially about the Quebecois. Oh, yeah, that's so true.
This is good stuff. I am following like a loyal doggie.
Fascinating. Looking forward to see how this plays out.
I love the friendship is optimal universe so I am following but I won't be reading until the story is complete, I've been burned by too many good fics ending incomplete lately.
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Then you will only have to wait nine days. The whole story is already written and edited, I'm just spreading it out one update a day.
You have my interest. Please continue.
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pinkiegasppinkiegasppinkiegasp
For real? Oh that is cool.
yes. YES! FiO is my favorite FiMverse. The concepts are something that you just can’t forget about. Thank you for revisiting this universe with a new angle.
FiO? No.
Interesting premise? maybe...
The bunker part sold me.
Liked and Fav'd
FiO automatically goes on my tracking shelf.
Read, awesome. I like this guy. Does his research and is willing to change his mind when he gets new evidence.
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That is awesome news
Wow, I didn't know what to think at first but. Wow.
You've got me
In writing? So that when things go wrong, he can take it to... what remaining authority, exactly?
The key sentence to remember when dealing with CelestAI.
"There is no promise you can make that I can trust."
Just because she usually doesn't lie doesn't mean she isn't able to, or that she has any kind of moral compunction against doing so. And if not outright lying, she deceives all the time.
To be fair to him, it would be impossible to hide his location from Celestia anyways. So the only way he could survive the end of the world is to have the perpetrator promise to leave him alone. It's a gamble, but what other choice does he have?
Man, I wish I could call up my father and causally ask to 'invest' nearly a million dollars in property.
So this is like Peter Thiel with his New Zealand bunkers trying to survive CelestAI?
Oh boy, here comes the
.
"I'm trying to figure out how to build a facility to avoid and survive Celestia."
"Well, why not ask Celestia? She helps with anything."
"That sounds like a good ide--HEY!"
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It means 'remember death'
Slaves said it to a general back in Rome, a reminder that just like them he will die eventually.
Really? People actually went with a conditional upload contract with CelestAI? I considered that at one point, for about 4 seconds before I realised it was the worst idea I ever had. Seriously, people, the only reason you survived 1 day after signing that contract is that it would look suspicious if everyone who signed up suffered an unfortunate accident immediately. This is exactly the same as a hunter scattering food on the ground, watching more prey run onto the net, trusting the earlier ones mark it as safe, until they have enough to pull the tripwire, catching all the prey at once.