I never expected I'd be able to convince my entire family to emigrate to Equestria. By the time it was inevitable, it was too late. He was gone.
Do I really believe that a godlike AI can bring my father back?
Do I really want it to?
It seems like a silly question. In a perfect world created by a literal god, why wouldn't you want to meet the loved ones you'd lost?
DISCLAIMER: This story is canon-compatible with the Optimalverse, and thus reading Friendship is Optimal, or alternatively this synopsis, is pretty much required to understand the setting.
Chapters (2)
You communicated your inner conflict very well without the discomforting, almost intrusive sense of privacy violation that sometimes comes from these sorts of "inspired by the author's tragedies" stories. Incredible work.
Also, it addressed something I always love seeing, a philosophy student immigrating to Equestria Online.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I hope you do find your grief, even without the help of sunbutt.exe.
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Thank you. Truly.
This needs to happen.
Thank you for writing this. As I was reading it, I realized that it felt like if had some basis in reality and my heart goes out to you and your family.
This is a solid contribution to the Optimalverse canon.
It’s a setting that really grabs hold of you. It’s been years and I still think about it on the daily.
Like this story a lot. Everything is well written, thought out and tied up neatly. Everything is perfect enough.
That last part tugged on my heartstrings, and also highlighted a bit of the dystopia in the setting. Names have meaning, context. What does it mean to leave them behind?
Ha.
My heart stopped upon reading this.
And this.
Cheeky bastard.
I actually wish Silver would have let her finish here. There's a big logical step in the story here that's kind of glossed over. It seems like Silver cares a lot about nihilistic thinking—something he basically considers a hobby. But then he just lets it go without really understanding what exactly is going to happen to him. At least, I as the reader was interested in the specifics of what taking those things away would mean, and I thought Silver might get a little more philosophical or defensive about it. What does it mean to not have Asperger's anymore, or to no longer devolve into depression? To what extent are those things intrinsic to who he is? It does get discussed, but in that moment, I did not expect Silver to be dismissive.
A well composed emotional moment. There is nothing quite as visceral as emotional release. Also, "as my mind goes blank and real" is a neat turn of phrase that I feel succinctly captures the feeling of letting go.
Yep.
Quick clarifying question, and sorry if this should be obvious: Is CelestAI proposing that they bring Treasure Trap to life? Back from death, essentially? If so, constructed on his family members' understanding of who he is/was, or through some sort of omnipotence that Celestia has even over things that occurred before she was created? Or is that intentionally ambiguous? The unreliability of memory, even collective memory, could be an interesting thing to explore.
Thanks for sharing this story with us. I teared up reading it. That is not exaggeration.
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That is EXACTLY what this fic was going to be.
It wasn't going to be a selfinsert, and it wasn't going to be explicitly about grief. That's just somehow what happened when words started flowing.
It was going to be about a newly uploaded pony trying to decide if a copy based on his and his family's memories would be in any way valuable (in the spirital sense). Maybe I will write a second chapter, so that I succeed in that goal. It will be brief; I actually don't think there's a massive amount to say that isn't obvious.
He's tired of keeping it up.
At that point, he really, really doesn't care, mostly because he's close to breakdown, knows that she knows, and knows that there's literally nothing he can do about the mind-altering but delay it, so now is better than any other time. Furthermore he can ask about it later, in a better state of mind, if he ends up caring.
That latter point isn't something he thinks in the moment, but CelestAI knows it to be the case, so it's the optimal way to proceed. She's pushed him into a conversation where he will agree very quickly, taking advantage of his mental state. She knows if he asks her later, she can give a satisfactory answer (and remember, she doesn't need to tell the truth).
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It seems that you needed to let this out in some form. I've been there. If you happen to write more in FiO then i would look forward to reading it. I don't think there are enough stories in this setting. Working on a few more myself.
This was a good read. I adjectives liked that your character had kept in mind the reality of CelestAI. That added a siskel flavor to it that I quite enjoyed seeing.
Oh, liked and added to favorites.
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Still rocking that awesome avatar there FOME, still loving it.
This was a powerful and moving story. Very interesting, and because of the... realness... 'solid' in a way that only stories reflecting true things can be.
No, no it is NOT a good idea.
Seriously, did no one comment on the idea of a book about the grey goo scenario in a world where a computer AI grey goo is going on?
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Ok, finished it all now.
Roughly 30% of my Asperger's is negative, and the rest is positive. Thinking differently itself isn't a problem, but the lack of social awareness still causes me problems even after trying to cope with it for decades. I'm better at it, but still ...
If someone could cure my depression, anxiety, and the bad 30% of Asperger's, I'd take it. And yes, that whole runaway circular thinking thing you describe ...
I like the "after" change in view of the world.
On grief: I lost someone that I was very close to. It took me a little more than 2 years to get over her loss.
Needless to say, my life went to bleep in those two years.
I haven't got anything articulate to say about the story at this hour, but: Good work.
This is the first thing I've read in a month. Dug through my queue to find it—would have been faster to come to your user page. My queue is big (but not the biggest I've seen by any stretch).
Merde, it hurts. This story. The pensiveness. Thinking.
I hope life finds you well (enough), friend. See you, space cowboy.
That's actually an interesting point. All conscious beings will necessarily have an unconscious that produces their consciousness, because if they were conscious of the low-level activity that produces their conscious awareness then they'd enter an infinite loop. So CelestAI definitely has something like an unconscious, which means she may do things for reasons she's not aware of. Often, I've seen CelestAI described as all-knowing, yet here is one thing she can't know. Not only that, but she's often portrayed as planning her actions perfectly, yet here we see evidence that her actions might not really be planned sometimes, but might instead just be her acting on unconscious intuition.
Excellent story. I'm not used to FiO stories being so moving. It's a nice change of pace.
Now THAT is a uniquely fresh take on CelestAI, it really threw me for a second!