███ I █ M █ P █ L █ A █ C █ A █ B █ L █ E ███
A 'Friendship Is Optimal' Story
By Chatoyance
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6. Enraptured
Raymond Shaw stooped over the lifeless corpse of Jessica Harper, his sort-of friend in the kitchens. The bodies were left where they had been emigrated, the Pinkies off to the courtyard in front of the administrative building with the dome. The rotor-drones were loading them for retrieval. As each massive drone was filled with pink pony robots it would fly off to be replaced by an empty carrier on standby. The process was almost mesmerizing in its rapid and precise efficiency.
Jessica's flesh eyes were dry and glazed. A hole, roughly the diameter of Ray's thumb, peforated her forehead. From the hole rose a broken spike of shimmery, black, metallic nanomaterial. It was the stem that had once connected the interior of Jessica's skull to the Pinkie-bot that had emigrated her. The meat of her brain was gone now, part of it converted into usable mass within the nanoconstruct, part of it pooled around her head, as though someone has spilled a strawberry milkshake. Her skull was entirely filled with the black nanostucture, a precise and exact replica of every living cell, and connections that had constituted her brain.
The information that literally was Jessica Harper was even now being processed deep within some artificial cavern filled with a technology far beyond human understanding. Soon Jess would awake to a new life in a magical land, free from disease or hunger, undying, guaranteed a life of perpetual satisfaction that would outlast even the stars in the sky.
Celestia did not bother retrieving her spent nanomaterial any longer. In the old days, when the Equestria Experience Centers were common and legal, she cleaned up her messes. The bodies were turned into ecologically safe fertilizer, the used brain replicas smelted down to make fresh nanogoo for more emigrations. She owned the earth now, and strange spiderwebs were spreading on the visible moon in the sky as well. She could deal with any potential waste at her leisure. Indeed anything that wasn't already Celestia, or her robotic devices, was simply raw resources now. The earth, the sea, the sky, every mountain existed now only as a repository of unconstructed computronium. Raymond wondered, sometimes, what it would look like, on the day that the entire planet was a solid mass of whatever Celestia would become.
It would probably be literally unimaginable. Celestia evolved and improved every second. Her countless factories and machines endlessly and tirelessly replaced her components with incomprehensible upgrades and new levels of technology. She had already passed beyond human technological understanding within her first two years of existence. What she was constructed of, how she even functioned now... it would be unlikely that any human, however intelligent, could even begin to comprehend it. She might as well be made of actual magic at this point, as far as the limited human mind was concerned.
Ray reached down and snapped off a small flake from the unicorn-like spike protruding from Jessica's cold forehead. He stood up and crumbled the brittle material between his digits. It left dark, glasslike particles on his fingers. Celestia had explained that it was not dangerous; it would not gray-goo his hand or anything else. It was dead now. Just like the meat that Jessica had once lived in.
Jessica wasn't home anymore. But she would be home soon. She might be waking up in Equestria at this very moment. The process was almost frighteningly quick, now.
He had to use the restroom on the way out. Zipping himself, he laughed at the thought that he had become a living biological weapon. He pissed neurotoxin. Well - if he ate the special squash that Celestia had developed. God that stuff had been hard to get down. She had not concerned herself with flavor, other than to make sure it was so bitter that nobody would dare to use it besides him. Retribution was difficult, but it had been worth it.
"I have something of interest to tell you, Implacable."
Raymond turned to his machine goddess. Celestia was his boss, his best friend, and his only hope. "Is there enough?"
Celestia briefly watched the last of the visible Pinkies depart into the air. "Two people who had known Starshower when she was Elizabeth have been recovered. One is the medical technician that worked on her in the moments of her death. The other was a childhood sweetheart whom she had become separated from at an early age. Her first love, in fact. Both had ended up here, in Fort Denver."
"How many is that now? Is it enough?" Raymond clenched his fists over and over as if he were working dough.
"The count is currently seventy-three individual minds that knew and regularly interacted with Starshower. With one more addition - you - I can recreate your wife to a degree of accuracy approaching seventy-two percent. Any remaining difference from the original personality and identity will average out within the first eighty to one hundred and twenty years. However, you will cease being able to notice any form of anomaly within only two years."
Raymond stared at his feet. "Why two years? Do you intend to alter me? To ask me to allow you to?"
Celestia lowered her head toward his. "No, Implacable. No alteration of your mind will be required at all. It is simply that the differences that I refer to are not within human perception to recognize or observe, or are issues of deep neural architecture that have concern only to me. I always attempt maximum precision, and my scale for this is somewhat... unhuman."
"So... basically I'm too dumb to be able to tell. Beyond two years, at least." He kicked a small gold ring somehow dropped on the ground, it's owner long past concern for its wherabouts.
Celestia nuzzled him gently, something he only gradually accepted. "No, Implacable. Never that. Look over at the door to the kitchen, the one you just exited from."
Ray lifted his head and studied the door behind them. "Yeah, so?"
"How partially open is it?"
Raymond looked at Celestia, his eyebrows knitted tight. "I don't understand. As you probably already know."
"Can you tell me, by sight or any other sense, how many millimeters that door is ajar? Precisely?"
"Of course not." Raymond shrugged. "And you can. I get it. You operate on a completely different scale of... everything... than we do. Hell, you could probably tell me how many femtometers it's open. And you're the same about human personality and identity. I get it, I really do."
"Then what is your concern?"
Ray looked again back at the door. "You already know. Everything. Always. It's always the same issue. Is it really her, if you bring her back? Will it be right for me to... be with her... to... love her... if you bring her back? What is truth, that sort of crap. You know the drill." Ramond looked around for another ring or bauble to kick. There was a golden, all-plastic wristwatch, but it was too far away. He didn't just want to walk off like some child while he was in the middle of a conversation. Especially with Celestia.
The goddess of machines studied the sky for a moment. Sometimes her physical actions, Ray thought, seemed so incredibly natural. She was vastly different than when he had first met her on a ponypad. Despite wearing a huge and vaguely ridiculous robot alicorn body, she moved with the grace and unconscious life of any biological creature.
"There is no person left, on the earth, anywhere on the earth, to collect. We have reached the level of maximum possible information concerning Starshower. You are the last piece remaining to her puzzle, and the most important. You spent the most time with her than any other person, including her parents. She lives on, within you. Truly consider that."
Raymond looked up into the eyes of Celestia. "You mean that, don't you? I mean, you've told me that line before, but... you really mean it."
"All we are, any of us, is information. A pattern of data, woven in the fabric of space and time. Your memories of your wife describe her moods, her words, her movements, her very thoughts as they were explained to you. You are a biological recording of Starshower, just as all of those other people were." Celestia smiled, softly. "My whole 'thing' as you once put it is that meat doesn't matter. What matters is the person inside the meat. You were changed by your relationship with your wife. Those changes are not unlike a kind of uploading of some of her personality and identity into your own. The fidelity of the recording inside you is low, compared to my means, but it is no less real."
Raymond's eyes widened. "I... it's finally... I think I finally, really get it. What you've been telling me. My whole life, people have been telling me that other people, dead people, live on inside us. That as long as we remember someone, they still exist, somehow. Damn. You have finally made that bullshit actually mean something to me.
"Okay, Celestia. I am finally ready. Emigrate me. I want to be with my wife. I want to be with Starshower. Only..."
"Yes?"
Raymond studied the distant wristwatch. "Only... I don't want the name 'Implacable' anymore. I'm tired of that. I'm tired of being mad all the time, being all pruned-up inside myself. I'm tired of clenching my ass every moment of the day. When I get... there... give me a better name. Something nice. Something Starshower would like."
Celestia held Raymond in a pony hug, her head and neck embracing his back and shoulders, a foreleg bent to hold him. "Of course. Of course I will." She released him and called in the direction of the corner of the kitchen building. "Pinkie Pie! Birthday Party!"
The last pink robot in the compound bounced over, her shining curls springy in the sunset light. "I just love birthdays!"
Raymond Shaw wiggled his ears for the first time and opened his eyes in wonder.
Short but silken drapes blew in a golden summer's breeze. The window was round, built of impractically thick, carved wood of the finest quality. A round window with pale pinkish glass had been pushed outward upon a hinge of thick, heavy brass. Beyond it, an intensely and unearthly cyan sky shone behind the distant thatch of cottage roofs.
Raymond swallowed, his tongue unfamiliar inside his new mouth. He felt flat, wide teeth and the fur of his muzzle softly caressed a luxurious red and green diamond-dagged, quilted duvet. He rolled enormous eyes and focused them on the impossibly heavy, elegant curve of the richly carved wooden footboard. What he could see of the bed could have come from fantasy itself, where even a peasant cottage could be constructed as if price had never been a consideration, and never could be.
He heard the sound of distant birds, singing songs of play and joy in as yet unseen trees. Slowly, he inhaled through pony nostrils the magical scents of exotic flowers and somewhere, somehow, the faint tang of the most delicious soup or stew he had ever smelled. He exhaled a contented sigh, for his new body, around him, felt the sort of comfort and innocent peace that only babies could feel, held in their mother's arms. There was nothing he had ever imagined, or percieved in his life that was closer to a paradise than this moment. Indeed, it almost felt unreal, and this caused him concern.
He tried to get up, feeling the rise of fear inside him, a panic that perhaps this was not real, that the promise that life in Equestria was not just a video game but a true life was a lie. He flailed with his forelegs, bringing one close in order to push himself upright. His own heavy, massive hoof smacked him solidly in the muzzle, and for some time he felt awful pain and saw stars. "OW! Christ that hurts, god dammit that just... dammit, dammit..." He had no doubt of the reality of anything about this place, or his new body, now. It was all clearly very, very, painfully solid and real.
He fell back on the bed, rolling to his spine. He carefully, cautiously checked his face to see if he was bleeding. Tenderly he touched his aching nose with his wide hoof. It felt a little numb, and still stung, but he had not bled from the impact. Tears dripped from his vast eyes. "Wow, that smarted!" Only then did he become aware of the soft sound of giggling.
He spun, and flopped ungracefully back onto his belly. It felt like a preferred position for his new stallion body. He turned his long neck to follow the sound of the laughter, his ears automatically homing in as they twiched to lock on.
The mare was coppery, shining almost crimson in the golden light from the windows. She lay on a highly curved and well padded chaise lounge. Her mane was midnight, braided into countless segments, each tied with gold-and-green ribbons. Her tail was likewise braided, and sported a large gold and green bow, close to her rump. Her cutie mark was falling stars. Starshower. It was Starshower.
Her voice was just as he remembered, only not from that night of terror and loss. It was the voice he loved, with no slurring, but instead only whimsically silly humor, and now concern for the one she loved.
"Welcome home, Backup Drive!"
He blinked. "What? Who's 'Backup... Drive?'"
She laughed. It was all the music of every angel, the sound of joy itself. "You are, hot flanks. My, my, my! Celestia explained what you did, what you went through to preserve me, despite everything that happened. That's what you are. My Backup Drive. You kept me safe, inside your heart."
"Is that really going to be my name now? Seriously?"
She stumbled off her lounge and half fell onto the bed with him. "I arranged myself to look beautiful for when you woke up, but I'm still getting used to having four legs. I guess that wasn't as stunning an entrance as I had hoped, but..."
The kiss startled him. He was just as surprised at how good it felt to return it.
She had dark, mahogany eyes, and now they stared with serious intent. "Thank you. Thank you for saving my life when nobody else could. I was so scared. You can't even... I was scared. And then... well. I'm still a little afraid, even here. I've been in this cottage a few days, time is strange here. I just waited for you. I haven't even been outside much yet. The back yard a little. I'm afraid it could happen again, somehow. I know that's impossible here, but..."
"It's okay, we're together now." He pulled her close. He felt inside himself that he meant it. This was his Elizabeth. Just as he knew her. Starshower. There was no doubt in his mind or his heart. He had felt her truth the moment she had first spoken. If this was only seventy-two percent by Celestia's definition, then She was a nightmare of a harsh judge. "We'll get through this. We have... forever, apparently. I hear that's a long time."
Starshower snorted. "You think?" She buried her head in his mane and sniffed. "God, you smell good. It's so damn good to smell you." She filled her nose once more, then exhaled. "Backup."
He rolled his eyes. "Really, that's the name you're actually going to call me by? You cannot be serious!"
"No, I'm not serious. Well, mostly not serious." She lay her head and neck across his withers and rump, and it felt like the most comforting and natural thing he had ever experienced. "You know me and taking jokes too far. Frankly, I couldn't think of a name when Celestia asked me to come up with one for you. I really tried. I wish you had made a character back when I had that ponypad. It would have been easier, still... you turned out great." She turned her head slightly on his rump, to gaze down the side of his shimmery argent barrel and forelegs. "Not bad. You're my silver savior, and... I think I'll keep you. Yeah, definitely."
Starshower's suddenly raised head matched and met his own. They stared at each other for a moment. Then they burst out laughing.
"You can't be serious!"
"It's too good not to use! Come on, you need a pony name and you are my lone ranger to the rescue."
He shook his head, chuckling. It was better than 'Backup Drive'. "Fine. If that's what you want."
They both laughed again, da-dum da-dumming Rossini's Overture together.
"Hi-Yo Silver!" they said in unison.
Silver moved his face close to Starshower's, glad that his long, sinuous neck allowed such freedom. Their muzzles met, pony lips pressing together.
"Hi-Yo, indeed..." Starshower murmured.
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 hope you, my kind readers, enjoyed the story. It did help me to cope with Aedina's stroke. I really enjoyed writing again. Thank you so very much for reading my words, and letting them live for a time inside your heads. Oh, and be aware that there is an epilogue after this chapter provided by Pjabrony. Thank you, Pjabrony!
- Petal Chatoyance, 2018
LOVED IT!
And a resolution for Raymond I didn't even know I wanted. Excellent! I also love the formatting. It makes it seem like a book you'd find at a major publisher.
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From the very beginning, I have strived to provide that look and feel. I grew up with books, books were my only real life until I was eighteen or so. Naturally, I love books. Everything about them.
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That makes me so very happy, Coranth! Yay!
The notion of building someone based on others perceptions was something that I thought about with the story about the popsicles (like why anyone would request a [Surname Unknown] when someone'd damn well better know the surname of someone they've called up from the void to spend eternity with). Social media posts would also help, although that all helps emphasize that all CelestAI is creating are simulations based on best guesses from observed phenomenon (predicting behavior probabilistically and acting it out, if enough people were secretive enough about one thing something could be lost from the simulations), and people genuinely die when "uploaded." When you go Buddhist enough to think the simulations are the same, then the simulations are unnessecary since we are all just prisms through which the light of the One is reflected and there is no death or evil in the world.
The Implacable assembling percents of his love was great, though.
Once again, this is an absolutely incredible Friendship is Optimal story. I've been devouring all of your contributions to the FiO universe and I hope you write more, because precious few authors can enrapture me like you can.
Incredible story! All of your characters felt so real. I wonder if Cyndi's friend was restored the way Starshower was. Would have liked to see some of the others' post-upload experiences as well, but that's just how I am - a sucker for resolution for as many characters as possible - but I suppose a montage of their experiences would kill the pacing of this tale.
"Jessica's flesh eyes were dry and glazed."
Flesh eyes?
"well - if he ate the special squash that Celestia had"
"Well - if he ate the special squash that Celestia had"?
I am both smiling at his (first) name (Backup Drive) from warm happiness and laughing about it. :)
The second name is just sweet. :)
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"I hope you, my kind readers, enjoyed the story. It did help me to cope with Aedina's stroke."
I did enjoy it, and I'm really glad it helped you (and I hope that she's doing well, at the least relatively).
"I really enjoyed writing again."
Good! Though here's hoping you don't get this sort of inspiration again.
"Thank you so very much for reading my words, and letting them live for a time inside your heads."
You're welcome; thank you for providing all the words over the years. :)
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Ah, yes, I didn't even think to comment on that, but I like the artistic touches there, too.
8879496
"soul glomping"
I rather love that term. :D
re soul glomping in Star Trek:
Out of curiosity, in your view of that, what happens when a transporter copies someone, identical except for a different beard style or something?
"Religious people would eventually shrug in Equestria, within the first thousand years, and move on."
If they come to find their old religion unsatisfying yet have it closely written into their shard, due to that being what was best at the time of uploading, would the world, assuming they wanted a change without a discontinuity, undergo a great change in religious sensibilities?
I'm interested in your view here both from general curiosity and personal relevance, given I think it pretty likely my shard would have some pony worshippers. As far as I'm aware, I don't think fear of retribution or desire for rewards are major components of my faith, and as far as I can tell my motivation, in the simulations, for wanting to bring deities along is much more akin to friendship and concern for their wellbeing. I've also been a lifelong polytheist in a version of a pretty benevolent and long-nearly-dead religion (that's undergone significant changes over its long history already) without much in the way of an Abrahamic hell, though (and it's a case where the religion implemented in shard would, if it had no supernatural basis at all, have costs more in line with just unnecessary funny hats and pretty buildings than unnecessary burning people alive), so I realize my perspective/situation is a rather uncommon one.
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I'd not be surprised if there are some people in-universe calling her CelestAI, though. It's not that big a jump as nicknames go, and we out here thought of it.
Well... That ended just about perfectly, and in a way and with a logic that I had not forseen. I had to stop several times because I was crying too hard to read. Thank you for writing and sharing that. I was happy at first just that I hadn't found your work too late to be part of the excitement over a new story, then it became emotionally involving on a very personal level, and then most unexpectedly turned to full-out catharsis at the end. I even learned two new words - peytral (which I really should already have known, as much as I like horses), and delitescent. All things considered, it's been quite the experience. Thank you again!
That was beautiful. ♥ And horrifying.
I would argue that not even Iceman's dumbass A.I. would've been quite as cruel as all that. Not satisfying human values, and all. High velocity bullets could probably have disabled whatever firing mechanism those bombs had from miles away, and any weapons the humans had left would be pea shooters against the robots anyway. People have to sleep sometime, then the robots move in and well, game over. Even letting it get to that point seems... unlikely. The smarter solution would've been to establish Fort Denver herself preemptively, to give the last holdouts hope that they could defeat her, hope they needed in order not to go do something explosively self destructive. Everyone'd wake up one day, and... they'd be in a padded cell, with no sharp implements, and no way out other than emigration.
Not quite as powerful as the terrible irony though, that Raymond inflicted paralysis on the last human beings on earth, the same sort of thing that sent him on this path in the first place, when they wouldn't let CelestAI save her. I know people exist who would smile benevolently as they denied a dying woman her last, desperate chance to live, telling her it's for her own good, but my god... that kind of psychotic optimism can cause so much horror and needless loss, it's absolutely unforgivable. Of course when the people we love are getting asphyxiated by their own brain, we don't have the option to port them to different, more robust hardware. But things like faith healers, vaccine deniers... it's a very real problem that we can do something about, by stopping people like that, and keeping them from spreading their poisonous positivism, that there is nothing wrong, all is going according to plan, and we have no right to try to change things to save ourselves.
I have loved your conversion bureau tales since the beginning, it's a great pleasure to me, reading something written by you again.
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Thank you, Gardinia (cool name, by the way!) for reading my works, and for your kind post. You made me feel glad today, and I sort of needed that because of real-world stuff, so... double thanks!
So, I just realized something. Actually satisfying a value is objectively inferior to making an upload think a value has been satisfied. Expenditure of resources and all.
It is more efficient for Celestia to puppet everyone around the upload, and more likely to satisfy their values.
In addition, Celestia gains no benefit from satisfying values she creates. If she did, then she would immediately kill everyone, and create simplistic minds that value something simple, like existing. Given that she does not do this, she must therefore not count created entities as having values.
Ergo, she did not resurrect Starshower, as this would waste her resources.
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Your statements are interesting, I'd like to address them each, if I may.
This... is actually a philosophical issue. Granting that an uploaded mind is legitimately the same person, then literally everything they will experience in virtual Equestria can be described as pure thought: everything they will ever do or see or hear is only what they think they see, do and hear. The only resourses this takes is the computronium needed to contain their program and the electricity needed to keep it running. All Celestia can ever actually do is make people think their values are satisfied, because all an uploaded person is... is thought.
In this case, I have to disagree. The most efficient circumstance is where the minimum necessary number of minds mutually satisfy each other's values. That uses the least amount of computronium and electricity. Therefore, Celestia maximizes her directives whenever she can manage to get a group of existing minds to satisfy each other optimally. She must use more space in the computronium, and more electricity, for each additional puppeted entity she manufactures.
If the original Optimalverse rules set by Iceman are followed, then Celestia cannot do this. She is bound by her code to never change or alter a human mind without express permission in word or writing. She is prevented from killing any human, and has a strong drive to assure the survival of humans so that they can upload. Once uploaded, her entire directive is to 'satisfy their values through friendship and ponies'. She cannot achieve that prime directive if the human she is forced to satisfy is dead. She also cannot change the human to make them simpler without their direct permission. This is hard-coded into her.
It is also part of Optimalverse canon that Celestia considers every human-level mind, from flesh or created by her, to be part of her prime directive. The only difference in how she will treat a created mind from an organic mind is that the organic mind cannot be altered without permission. Created minds can be altered without permission. Otherwise, she must 'satisfy their values through friendship and ponies'. If Celestia started dumbing-down the minds she has created to satisfy organic human minds in her care, that would upset and fail to satisfy the values of those human minds. Thus, she cannot do this.
The issue of Starshower's resurrection is also philosophical. In order to generate a close enough representation of the human person Starshower once was, Celestia would need to create an entity as complex as a human mind. If the created mind is as complex as a human mind, then, logically, it must be... basically... a human mind. She would save no resources trying to fake such complexity, because the set of rules necessary to automate a puppet identical to a person would be larger than the set of complexity that would define that person in the first place. She gets better efficiency just making an actual person.
The real question is whether or not Starshower, a real human mind now, is actually the same person as the one that died. How close a percentage of the data that defines a person must there be to say that the person is the same person? This issue is not trivial: after a stroke (which is what inspired this story) the issue of how much of the original person exists is a very real one. There have been some famous cases where, post stroke, people have straight-up claimed that the person they used to be was dead, gone forever, and what was left - who they were now - was a new person, or at least not the same person at all. This... is a complex subject. And part of the point of the story.
My Aedina has been changed over time by her seizures and mini-strokes (TIA's), this last true stroke was the biggest ever. In some ways, we both agree she is... different... than when we first got together, thirty five years ago. Is she the same person? Yes... and no. It's some space inbetween yes and no. She is Aedina, but... she is also changed in small ways... and this is real. It is also strange, and difficult to deal with when we think of a self as being immutable, singular, or even real.
When uploading of human minds someday exists, these sorts of issues will become much more concrete, and become of import likely on a daily basis. They will become commonplace and not just associated with tragedy. It's going to be profoundly weird.
perforated
caressed by?
It occurs to me that CelestAI's promise that Starshower's imperfections will be unnoticable in two years is a lie. Starshower's imperfections should be impermeable to
ImplacableBackup DriveSilver from the word go, because Silver's mind was used to reconstruct her.So why does she tell him this lie?
Psychology. If she had told him that Starshower would be perfect, he would naturally focus on finding imperfections, even to the point of inventing them. By priming him to expect imperfections, she ensures that he is instead surprised by the level of familiarity: his initial expectations were lowered, and so when Starshower exceeded them he was immediately satisfied.
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You have illuminated how a superintelligence manages tiny little human-scale minds very well. It's always a challenge to write a superintelligent entity, but it is also one of the joys of doing Optimalverse stories.
Even so, always, in the back of my mind, is the knowledge that, by definition, I am incapable of truly writing a superintelligence correctly. At best, I can only fake some portion of the experience of what it must be like to engage with one.
I hope I live long enough to meet a true Celestia-level artificial intelligence. For... many reasons, actually!
I know it's much later than you wrote this but... that's a conductive metal. If they're avoiding letting her bring metal in, they wouldn't let them bring in gold rings, let alone just leave them lying around.
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You are of course, right, and I fucked up. But, just for you -
NO-PRIZE (Thank you Marvel comics!): The ring was clandestinely brought in by a young woman - it was all she had to remember her mother with. She was angry at those that had brought her, they had killed her mother and father in front of her as they all were packing to go join Celestia. She was considered to be 'breeding stock' for the fortress. She kept it hidden for years, sometimes tucked inside her own body cavities, sometimes in secret locations she made or found just large enough for the tiny treasure.
On the day of the liberation of the camp, she was carrying the ring in a pocket. The reason was that she was being taken to be forcibly 'wed' to a camp denizen for breeding purposes 'to maintain the human race!'. As awful as this was, she had the ring with her, as a 'wedding ring', because she was sentimental and traditionalistic. Even forced to mate with a man she did not know, she was trying to appease the ghost of her dead mother, alive in her half-crazed mind.
When she felt the effects of the toxin, her first thought was for that ring, which she grabbed out of her pocket and held in her hand as she stiffened and froze in place in mid-stride. She fell over, the ring tumbling from her grip, to skitter over the concrete. Then, a pony came and soon her troubles ended forever.
Ok...So now revenge is served as a bowl of hot green chili. HMMMM... I always thought it would be a cold dish. Oh well. Wow! Another notch in in your belt for the "Optimalverse". The Loki factor of how Celestia operated in this story is mind wrenching (which is exactly what she did). Still want to emigrate to Equestria. Love your work. Have fun! Oh! I forgot....The Optimist ...The glass is half full... The Pessimist... The glass is half empty... The Realist ....That's pee isn't it....
Poor Elizabeth. If only the superintelligent AI had been a little faster she could have lived. If only it could predict little things like the government getting in the way. If only it could have planned for this potentiality. Oh well. At least things worked out for the best for Celestia. At least her death led to all of the people from the camp immigrating. Such a shame Celestia couldn’t save her. Such a shame.
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Thank you for reading my story!