Glitched Stitches

by Quillamore

Prologue: The Grand Simulation

Most ponies, if asked, would say they desired a happy ending above all else. That was the way the Equestrian simulation worked, after all. It’d been created from everything its creators ever wanted: intrigue, adventure, excitement with just enough friendship and cupcakes mixed in to keep the world from closing in on itself. And, sure enough, if you weren’t a villain, you would receive just that: friends, family, fulfillment, possibly even love. It wouldn’t always have to happen on-screen, in the world the mysterious audience watched over, but it would be mentioned just enough times to make it true. You’d know your place in the world, a luxury that many of the people outside, creators and otherwise, didn’t have. You would live in a perfect realm, and hence ascend to perfection yourself.

That was what the programmers had in mind when they created Equestria so many years ago--a place meant to bridge two universes. A place that would entertain those within the creators’ world, and a place where dreams could come true for the characters they selected. And eventually, it came to become more, much more. With the outdated technology of forty years’ past, ponies were simply drawings on paper and images on television. But by the time the new millennium hit, the animators’ technology had taken them past even that.

By the time 2011 hit, the ponies were intricate pieces of artificial intelligence in their own right, and the Equestrian simulation became their stage. The place where they could live out their lives in the same ways the creators did, except better. There was only a single catch--they would consent to being monitored whenever their roles were needed, and to obey the writers’ whims at any time. If you weren’t a main character in the Equestrian simulation, being in the background didn’t matter, because that meant you would be free forever.

And as the ponies continued to grow and evolve, the newer ones came to forget the creators even existed. Their simulation was reality.

Any delusions of freedom or reality, however, started to shatter after pony AIs suddenly began to disappear from their cities. By that time, there had been three different “lines” of ponies, each based on which television season the character came from. But after the third, the creators realized they could no longer control the simulation. They’d grown too ambitious, creating new AIs left and right simply because they could. And so, slowly, they began to weed out those who were no longer needed. Ones who the creators had forgotten to the point where they had grown decayed and flawed.

The creators, like Celestia of old, tried everything they could to avoid banishing these ponies. But eventually, they all came to the Motherboard, the simulation below the simulation. A glorified storage facility, really, shining with neon lights as if it were itself a relic of history. Whenever anypony failed to undertake their intended purpose, they were sent to the Motherboard, to explore another world. To stare up at its underground walls, waiting and hoping that they could someday return to the world above.

Like any good programmer, the creators sometimes managed to patch some of their glitches, and so some ponies can say they have been sent to the Motherboard and survived. But, for those glitched ponies who remain, this simulation has become a new reality.

You may lose the friends and family that were assigned to you. But in the Motherboard, you can make new ones beyond your maker’s wildest dreams. You have your flaws, but as long as you are in a place of exile, you know that you can never be exiled for them again. The feeling you used to have, of some mysterious force controlling your actions, vanishes without a trace. And this is what the glitched ponies have come to realize.

Being a glitch means being free.