Chapter 6: Crown
Dakota still couldn’t quite believe just how different the space in her own apartment could look—but there was no denying what she was seeing. A maze of shelves that rose into the ceiling. My past self was way more creative than I feel. It was hard to imagine taking the time to put up paper-thin rice walls on the sides of the room, with the outlines of even more books standing there.
But Cinnabar had already gathered the materials they would need for a first reading, piled around a desk she was fairly sure was near where the couch had been. “I’m not really sure how much sense books make for virtual space. Won’t I need to, like… feel things?”
“Oh, you will. I think we own… maybe three? Look for the glowing outline, that’s how you know it’s real. That rule pretty much works anywhere in Equestria, by the way. You can usually interact with things, but a gold border means there’s a real object.”
“For the people without implants,” Dakota muttered, prodding the comfortable-looking armchair with a knee before sliding into it. She was right—it went on far too much on either side of her, without any armrests. It was the couch. “But can’t I… I’m not really sure I’ve figured out what I can touch and what I can’t, Cinnabar.”
“Oh, yeah.” His ears flattened, and he looked away awkwardly. “I’m, uh… not completely sure what the limits are. I know I can do it, but that doesn’t, uh… I’m already in your head, so it might be shaky otherwise. Other people won’t be able to touch you for sure, we have… pretty strict safety rules. Settings and environments… dunno. Guess we can experiment. Maybe using prop books and wheel-shoes is wasting our time now.”
“Maybe.” Dakota reached out, taking the glowing book. She could feel the weight clearly in her fingers, though the pages themselves had a heavy, almost plastic feel to them. It looked old, with the spyglass with a person reflected in it on the cover without any writing. She imagined she could feel the indents of the stitching, but she couldn’t actually be sure.
“Later.” Dakota leaned against the huge armchair, closing her eyes and letting her legs finally relax. Her body felt like if she tried to move it too much more too quickly she might rattle apart. “Why don’t you start by summarizing all this for me. Synths are digital assistants, so… digital assistant.”
“Some of us are,” he grumbled, settling down on his haunches to glare at her. Before promptly doing exactly what she asked. “I already gave you the basics of Kayla Rhodes. She was a really prominent player here in Equestria back when it was just a game. Lots of other sublayers too, though.” He slid another book off the table, one of many that wasn’t glowing gold, and spread it out in front of him as he glanced through it quickly. “Yeah, looks like Kayla was involved with most of the biggest sims. One of those humans who likes our world more than yours, I guess. But… more than most.
“Equestria started pretty small—just Canterlot and Ponyville at first, with fewer ponies than you see on an average bus. There weren’t Synths back then, but plenty of humans tried to create friendly NPCs, and Kayla did more development than anypony. Twilight Sparkle was her partner, her ‘Synth’ before we were a thing.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “If you ask around Equestria, everypony says that Twilight was the first real pony in existence. I’d ask her, but…” He sighed. “She’s gone too.”
That was an interesting detail. Dakota hadn’t been terribly enamored with the classic TV show, old as it was. But her mother had grown up on it, and forced her to watch far more of it than she would’ve chosen to on her own. So she knew enough. Twilight had a lot of friends in that show. I wonder if anyone ever thought of tracking her down that way. Unlike a human, someone’s Synth couldn’t just die. The fact that she was gone only meant she didn’t want to be found.
“Are you even listening?”
“I, uh…” She blinked, then looked away. “Maybe not as close as I should’ve. Go back a bit.”
“Right.” He stomped one hoof. “Do you need a concentration potion? There’s an alchemist a village over.”
Her eyes narrowed. “There’s no way in hell those work out here.”
He giggled. “No, they don’t. You can buy meatspace versions of lots of things—food and toys and clothes. All the stuff that doesn’t take magic to work.”
“Because you hog all the good stuff.” She opened the book again, thumbing through more of its too-thick pages. She was tempted to disable the overlay right then, so she could see what it really looked like. But her mind was wandering from where it needed to be. The investigation wasn’t going to conduct itself. “Sorry, sorry. Focus.”
“Focused.” He saluted one hoof. “So, details everypony knows. Kayla Rhodes designed ponies. Her most lasting contribution to the Equestrian codebase was procedural town generation—you know how on the show there were maybe a dozen different cities, with a few thousand ponies living in them all? Kayla wanted everywhere in the real world to have its own interesting places that sorta mapped to it. Even Port Jouster was made with her code. It’s in that book there, you can read. That’s the one she wrote—it’s been updated a lot since then.”
She took the second book off the desk—this one was smaller, like a portfolio or diary with little tabs sticking out of the side. Only some of them were glowing gold though, and Dakota selected one.
She flipped the book open, and was surprised by what she found inside.
“VILLAGE requires the net of RESOURCES to exceed 0. If the sum is still less than 0, call pony generator again.” The entire page was written like that—not weird symbols, not a wall of semicolons. Nothing like the languages Dakota could remember. She tossed it lightly onto the desk in front of her.
“That doesn’t read like code.”
“It’s Rein,” Cinnabar answered, surprised. “You don’t…” He winced. “Sorry. You used to know it pretty well. Rein represents all of Equestria, and every other sublayer too. It’s a subset of English, though there’s a real good Mandarin interpreter out there. It’s… supposed to be easy enough for anyone to program. Your whole house was designed in it.” Cinnabar rose to his hooves, circling around her desk. “This is why we shouldn’t be on a case yet, Dakota. You don’t even remember your Rein. I’m not sure how in Celestia’s name we’re supposed to find Kayla like this.”
She waved one hand through the air in front of him, dismissive. “Don’t worry about it, Cinnabar. I’m sure you’re better at it than I am. You can do all the code we need, assuming we need any.”
“No.” He stomped one hoof firmly. “I can’t do any on Earth, or Equestria. Only in the spaces in-between. Like our house, or… other, bigger sublayers.”
She wanted to ask why—it didn’t sound at all like Cinnabar couldn’t use the language. She had no doubt that if she asked, he could’ve explained all the rules in detail to her. But if I do, I might find out that I don’t remember most of them. She wasn’t in the mood for more bad news just then, so she didn’t press the issue.
Maybe it’s one of those ‘stop evil AIs from taking over the world’ things. Don’t make computers that program themselves. Except that they’d obviously failed to do that—Equestria was not programmed by humans anymore, or ruled by human intentions. The Synths that had once followed simple rules and had basic capabilities were now indistinguishable from other humans. No one knew exactly how intelligent they could be.
“So, Kayla Rhodes. She wrote a bunch of code, cool. Then what.” Maybe changing the subject could get her digital friend focused on what mattered.
Apparently it could. “Then came the Convergence. Neither of us were alive for it, but I’m sure you remember that.” She did, though it was hazy. The day Equestria’s ponies became intelligent. A single moment that transformed exactly one of the near-numberless sublayer AR simulations into a real place. While all the others remained exactly the games that they’d been coded to be, Equestria woke up as something else.
Its ponies stopped walking mindlessly along routines humans had written for them, and started thinking. The first of many pony-owned corporations, Bodhisattva Telecommunications, went public, after having announced it had bought and would thenceforth maintain every one of the Equestrian Consensus Nodes.
“I know a little bit,” she finally said. “Bodhisattva revealed itself, announced it would protect Equestria as its sovereign territory. Monolith shows up over the moon, nice reminder of what Equestria will do if we don’t comply. Everybody does—they bought the game servers a long time ago, and it was all above-board, so…”
“Almost right,” Cinnabar said. “The Convergence doesn’t quite line up with Bodhisattva going public. Convergence Day came first—otherwise, none of those ponies would’ve been able to act. The way we were before… there wasn’t any thinking in here. Nopony knew Equestria’s reality existed on a distributed network of cloud servers. Nopony thought to be worried about what would happen when the donations keeping them running ran out. It was really about a year of your time between the Convergence and Bodhisattva’s founding. And a day later, Kayla Rhodes went missing.
“There was… a huge event. Bodhisattva had lots of humans working for it by then, most of the ones who had been responsible for the game in the first place. The Founders—I know you don’t care much about Equestrian lore, but they’re fairly important on our side. Those early developers and designers…” But he could read her expression of disinterest, because he was already moving on. “Kayla was one of ‘em. Not the most important—the big ones were the rich kids with the capital Bodhisattva had used to create itself in the first place. But she signed on.”
Cinnabar gestured, and a display appeared in the air in front of them, with a news recording from a huge conference center packed with people. Dakota could judge the age of the image from the number of people clutching their smartphones as they watched.
There at the stage a single ancient “pod” VR console was set up on a platform, with a young woman standing beside it.
A thin layer of glass behind her let the stage be filled with humans and ponies alike, all wearing the same yellow, orange, and white uniforms. “That’s her,” Cinnabar said. “You’re looking at why the Rhodes case was so prominent. A few seconds later, she climbs into that pod, and…”
There was an explosion on stage, a burst of fog and special effects. It looked like it was part of the demonstration, and the audience actually started to cheer and clap. The young woman appeared on the glass beside the ponies. Dakota watched as she interacted with them, and came along as the background changed from a stage to various historical sites.
Then the curtains closed, with Rhodes taking a bow alongside everyone else.
“And she was never seen again,” Dakota supplied, when the video finally ended on closed curtains. “I was gonna ask how Bodhisattva didn’t get investigated or shut down right away if she just died in front of a million people. But that isn’t what happened.”
“No.” Cinnabar settled back onto the couch. “Nopony thought to ask about her for… a good few weeks. Trouble was, she hadn’t returned to Equestria either. Her friends on that side raised the alarm.” He pushed something along the table, something that wasn’t glowing gold. A police report.
Dakota skimmed it, finding she knew exactly where to look. The Chicago police had ultimately ruled her disappearance a “runaway, with no signs of foul play,” though there were several dissenting notes. A lack of motivation was first on that list, as well as the lucrative contract with Bodhisattva she’d obviously been giving up. Yet there hadn’t been a single piece of evidence to suggest she hadn’t wanted to be at the show, or anything in the investigation of the pod to suggest it had been used to do anything to her. It had even been returned to the arcade they’d borrowed it from the next day.
“I’m beginning to see why this was so much of a scandal,” Dakota muttered, finally rising from the table. She was getting sick of looking at papers, regardless of how fake they were. “Last time anyone ever sees her is in front of a huge crowd, then she’s erased. Important enough to have the likes of… you said Twilight Sparkle, right… as her Synth?”
“Yes.”
“That suggests another angle—one that Omar didn’t give us. Synths are… supposed to be pretty attached to their people, I know that. Certainly not from personal experience or anything.”
Cinnabar rolled his eyes. “You mean finding Twilight to find her, instead of looking for her pony avatar directly.”
“I’m guessing we’ll be doing both no matter which order we try them.” She tossed the ‘simulated’ book up onto the table. “The police might be right, though. Doesn’t look like a kidnapping to me. Looks more like she got sick of things and decided to run off to Argentina or something. Whoever is paying us all that money is going to be disappointed when we dig her up.”
Cinnabar stepped in front of her before she could slide through the exit, rising onto his hind legs and glaring. “I think you owe someone an apology.”
“I, uh…”
“Kayla Rhodes was Equestria’s first murder? After repeating that awful propaganda about the Monolith… but now you admitted it wasn’t.”
“I’m not sure why you care. You’re from Equestria, you’re not a country. My country has murdered plenty of people over the years too. They all have… except maybe Finland.”
“I don’t know if that counts as an apology.” He settled onto his forelegs anyway, getting out of her way. “But you should be careful of what you believe. You never used to just accept things uncritically. Just because ponies who don’t know any better claim the Monolith is us doesn’t mean you should believe them. Synths have never killed a human.”
“Fine.” But she didn’t actually believe it. Whatever else might be true for Dakota, her old self had been just as interested in that strange machine as she was right now. Maybe millions of bits will be enough to investigate it myself. Maybe, but she had a more down-to-earth job to finish first.
“So, suppose we wanted to track down Twilight Sparkle. How do we do it? Get a train out of Port Jouster and ride to Ponyville?”
“Well…” Cinnabar hesitated. “Now you’re talking about Old Equestria. All those old audio-recordings and old plots, from when it was still a game. If you get on the train you’ll find Ponyville, and you’ll find Twilight, but she won’t be a Synth. She’ll be an… actress, I guess. Ponies sign up to play our historical figures for visitors… the real name of that place is the Ponyville Cultural Exchange.”
She stopped walking, a few inches away from the glowing button that would take her back to the ‘upper’ floor. “Is that the same way for the other important ponies?”
“If you know their name, probably. Those ponies all still exist, they’re just… they’ve moved on with their lives, I guess. Most of them are or were Synths for the Founders. So either their humans are dead, or…” He shrugged.
“So we can’t just do, like… a domain lookup or something? There’s no tracking spell to find her in a few minutes.”
He laughed. “You could cast a spell like that to find me. But Twilight is or was an Alicorn. You won’t find her unless she wants to be found.”
“And Rhodes helped write your world.” Dakota folded her arms. “Neither of them is going to be easy to track. But we need somewhere to start. You… remember more than I do. I guess you probably don’t forget anything. Where do you think we should start—the pony or the human?”
“I…” Cinnabar frowned, obviously deep in thought. “I think Twilight Sparkle probably had the wider footprint. She was a Princess once, when we still had those. The one time I met her, she still acted like that. Like it was her job to keep all Equestria safe. And unlike Kayla, we know she’s still alive somewhere, right? We really just have to track down wherever Equestria is in the most danger, and we’ll at least find one of her friends.”
“Sure, but… is Equestria ever in danger? I thought Bodhisattva had like… floating servers, buried archives, lunar stations. Who could put Equestria in danger?”
Cinnabar actually laughed. “Dakota, put all the layers and sublayers of Equestria together, and you have the network backbone of Earth itself. Not to mention you’ve got a whole world of ponies many humans don’t see as alive, and… I don’t think there’s ever a moment when we’re not in some kind of danger.”
Dakota wanted to attack the investigation right away—to jump immediately to wherever in Equestria was most dangerous, and track down the Synth of her missing girl.
But even using mostly virtual reality and so far not leaving her home all day, her body was less indulgent. Despite how intact she looked, there was no getting around the fact that her health was more or less a flimsy illusion maintained only thanks to the implants in her brain. Her body had been almost as badly damaged in its own ways—no matter how good a job surgery could do to erase the scars, she could still only remain on her feet for a little while at a time.
It wasn’t until that evening before Dakota finally felt alive enough to really get into the investigation. It was a good thing that she wasn’t the only one on the case.
“So, I asked around a bit…” Cinnabar announced, as he settled down across from her, sprawling out on the table rather than the floor. “Good news and bad news for you. Which do you want first?”
“Good, obviously. My whole life is bad news.”
Cinnabar rolled his eyes. “There’s an ongoing attack on Equestria right now. How much detail do you want?”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Kay. So of all the advanced nations on your planet, only one had enough market control during the Convergence that Equestria didn’t replace its internet—China. Humans kept control, but turns out that Equestria is better at a lot of things. Logistics, management, boring things you don’t care about… short of it is China’s not the factory leader it used to be. And they’re… kinda sorta trying to kill Equestria completely. They’re acting like it’s another blow in their ongoing trade war with the West.”
“Damn.” Dakota had to use her arms to settle her legs back on the floor, wincing at the pain. For all her implants could do, she’d never figured out how to make things not hurt anymore. Then again, there was probably some kind of safety in place to stop that from happening. “I thought they’d be, like… kidnapping ponies to use as guidance computers or whatever. They’re trying to destroy your whole world?”
“And yours!” Cinnabar said, quite cheerfully despite his words. “We’re completely intertwined, you know. You live in sublayers. We’re in one right now. Ponies drive your cars, they help run your companies, they manage your farms and water and… can you think of a single company that doesn’t have ponies working there in one way or another? You know humans used to work 40 hours a week, right?”
“I get it! I get it. I’m just… confused that you’re so calm about this. A superpower trying to cripple its rivals using super hackers is kinda… out of our league.”
“Oh yeah, no question. But we’re not going to get involved with any of it. That’s their problem—your government, Bodhisattva. But I’ve got good bits on Twilight and her friends being involved somehow. Their hooves will be on the ground—more likely, they’ll be in China.”
“Because they got kidnapped?”
Cinnabar laughed. “Are you bucking kidding me? This hack is the stupidest thing some bureaucrat ever thought of. Only reason we didn’t just cut them off already is that by connecting to us, they’re exposing themselves too. Lots of people in China who don’t have Synths yet. Maybe their computers aren’t up to it, but… by the time the CCP figures out what we’re really doing… that won’t be true for much longer.”
I sure as fuck don’t want to get involved in that. Even if Bodhisattva’s plan for Equestria worked perfectly, and they ended up breaking through the Great Firewall at last, that didn’t mean she would be safe as an individual if she had anything to do with it.
“Okay, so… how do we get close to that without actually getting close to that. The Chinese must have… what did they do, break into a consensus node in South Korea or something?”
“Oh, no. Way crazier than that—they sent a submarine down to one of the undersea fibers. That’s the other reason we couldn’t just cut them out at first—if we did, Australia would lose their Synths. Course, it took about three days to get another cable out from Hawaii… but I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Sounds pretty secret to just be telling me. What if I was a spy or something all along? Now the Chinese would be onto your plan.”
Cinnabar broke into hysterical laughter. “That’s the thing with having all your data, Dakota. When I vouch for you, I can really vouch for you. But of all the humans that could betray Equestria, how likely is the one who has an Omnistem implant keeping her alive? You would be on our side for life now even if you hadn’t already been friendly with Equestria. Which… you were, by the way. I’m not sure why we’re talking about this.”
“Just curious.” She put up her hands, defensive. “I’m not thinking of anything bad. I was just wondering about your security. My brain is all stuck in the past. All the spy stories I remember always make it seem like these big plans are super-secret and anyone who finds about them has to get strangled or something.”
“Good thing you’re wrong,” Cinnabar said, without humor. “Anyway, that’s the good news. There’s some bad news. Equestria’s backbone… too complex for you to understand, so I’ll spare you the details… has sharded the Australian consensus nodes until the hack is over, just to be safe. If things really do go south, we can get replacements flown in from the rest of the world, instead of having everybody melted at once.”
Sharded. She didn’t know what that word meant exactly, but she could see from his expression where this was going. “You’re saying we have to be in Australia.”
“Yep! I say bad news, but I kinda swapped it all. The secret world-war was the bad news, and I know how much you love to travel.”
Did she? Dakota sat back, trying to remember. She could see the inside of a lot of old jets, remember seeing the same safety presentation over and over. The idea didn’t scare her. “Cool. But this is the real bad news—do we have the money to buy a ticket?”
Cinnabar laughed awkwardly. “You’re living in subsidized housing, Dakota. What do you think?”
Dakota extended one arm, twisting until she summoned the user interface and she could call forth her balance. It made the text scale strangely—obviously most users didn’t have such large numbers in there. With a few keypresses, gigantic sacks of bits appeared on her kitchen table, like she was reenacting an old cartoon. “Can we use these?”
“Ehhhhh.” Cinnabar tugged one of them open, removing one of the bits from inside. A single, fractional unit of cryptocurrency. Her question was rhetorical—they could spend bits anywhere that wasn’t China. “Running the conversion from USD, we’re talking… maybe a thousand bits for a round-trip ticket. Maybe half that for a nice hotel. What a family might save up all year to go on vacation. You’ve made more in a week, but you have to live on that money until the next job.”
The rest went unsaid. ‘If we don’t find the girl, then we have to pay that advance back.’
“Could we get a loan? Or… earn it some other way?”
Cinnabar shook his head. “Not another job. Your old contacts all know about your insane case by now. Plenty of ponies are seriously impressed with the, uh… courage it took. But even those ponies are going to wait until the smoke clears to have anything to do with you. Sinking ship takes down everypony aboard, not just the captain. Maybe we could get a loan after. But money in Equestria doesn’t work quite the same way as outside it. Ponies know how rich we are right now. The kind of loan somepony with twenty million gets…” he shook his head. “That’s satellite money. That’s underground geothermal backup station money.”
“Well—” She hesitated. “Can you think of another way to get there? If there’s a digital way to get in…”
He shook his head. “If we could use it, so could the Chinese.”
“Then we have to go. I know I said we wouldn’t use the money, but… unless you know some other way to get our hands on that many bits…”
He sighed. “No. I already knew you’d say that. I’ve planned an itinerary for you. Here.” He gestured, and the air in front of her filled with all the information she’d need. Flights, hotel, the route she’d take while in Sydney, even some restaurant recommendations.
“You’re the best, Cinnabar. Best Synth any human could ask for.”
“We’ll see in a month,” he said, voice grim. “If we’re still alive.”
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Better hope there aren't digital objects designed with gold outlines in Equestria.
Fun fact: a robot designed to physically interact with humans, as opposed to working autonomously or semi-autonomously, is called a cobot. Unrelated to this, but I thought it was cool.
Oh god, it's all natural language programming (I say somewhat unfairly as a SQL devotee). No wonder everything went weird.
Australia sounds like a fun trip. Maybe not so much in the middle of a secret world war, but you can't have everything.
Shard: an often thought MMO term derived from Ultima Online server, of richard garriott fame. More often, a unique and very much instanced place that while sharing the world as a whole, carries its own very unique architecture.
They say that no synth has killed, but there are ways go around that technicality just the same.
China, yeah, i can see that. With how much of their internet and matters are geared to government control. Losing that, they would go ape bleep. And australia does have many immigrants from up north. A visit there showed that they often received shows and other broadcasts from their home.
It was very interesting.
This certainly adds more to the world, on earth side.
And gives the code itself, im thinking that she's just not used to seeing the code this way. She's seeing with different eyes, integrated eyes that are providing so much more. But that they can't, I wonder if they don't start as something, and grow by the nature of their core programming?
Edit (Also of note) Crown was bugging me still, and looking it up for alternate meanings. And it was there.
Crown: The region of a seed plant at which stem and root merge.
Need more
Man, Finland really knocked it out of the park with that whole "pretend we weren't on the Germans' side during WWII" thing.
9386713
It's not a fun trip, this country is called hell for a reason and not just because of the fucked up wildlife, the weather is a fucking nightmare... half the states its WET and HOT at the same time and by hot I mean as hot as an american desert ON THE COAST OF AUSTRALIA
Fuck this country, I feel pity for Dakota...
9387998
Ah, was about to comment on that paragraph myself... Though I was mostly going to link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
Hmm. More background, a tantalizing glimpse of Rein, and an enticing potential lead. Also China trying to expunge Equestria from the Internet and getting backhacked with friendship in return. Are we sure this isn't Optimalverse?
In any case, they're committed now. Bits are spent and the die is cast. Time to see how it lands.
Well, it certainly smells like Dakota got this job because she is the proud new owner of a true outsider's perspective, possibly the only one in the world who also (kinda sorta) has the requisite skillset. The question then becomes: who (if anyone) arranged for this to be the case? The answer is probably in between "nobody" and "literally everyone".
As for the monolith, even if not one single pony knows anything about it, that still doesn't mean that the monolith isn't responsible for what happened.
9387998
To be fair, it was more like "whatever gets Russia off our frozen nuts", which given Russia's … tendencies … should make them big proponents of peace and ponies.
9388450
Don't go in January or February and it is usually pretty mild; at least in the south east states
9393702
The only place I enjoyed living here was Victoria during Winter and even then the temperature gets upwards of 25 degrees celcius...
9391594
It's a good plausible deniability aspect... they all are adamant the monolith has nothing to do with them or that they aren't in/from the monolith, but how can they be so certain?
9390352
The difference here is that 'Equestria' is under threat of attack from China... converting them is the most optimal way of getting rid of that threat, I suppose we don't know if things would be different if China wasn't actively attempting to wipe Equestria out.
9393970
25 in winter is very rare in Melbourne. Nearly every day in June, July and August is below 20.
Even now, at the hottest part of the year, only two days in the next seven are predicted to top 30 degrees. (Specifically, 33 on Friday and 36 on Monday)
So...the "secret" digital war with China is what's keeping her from digitally/virtually visiting Australia? Like those "virtual" tourists were earlier visiting Chicago? So she has to physically be in Australia to check this out? But does that mean that nobody, anywhere, on Earth can virtually visit Australia? And nobody in Australia can virtually visit the rest of the Earth?
That would seem like quite the event. Hard to believe they could get away with it. I mean, it'd be the equivalent of an embargo, yes?
Also, the police report on Rhodes was from Chicago...so does that mean she was from Chicago, or that she "disappeared" on a stage that was in Chicago? And wouldn't the FBI or other governmental agencies get involved? For that matter, wouldn't Equestrian authorities? Or are they not able to access information from Equestrian authorities?
And why the heck hasn't her mom checked in on her yet?
So we are the baddies,cooooooooool
Huh I wasn't expecting my home country to be a place of interest in your story
By the way I think this universe of yours kind of a counter part to friendship is optimal and I think that is cool
>It’s a subset of English, though there’s a real good Mandarin interpreter out there. It’s… supposed to be easy enough for anyone to program
Last time we tried that we created an abomination known as COBOL