The world was frozen. Nopony moved—Violet’s confusion was plastered onto her face as an adorable mask. Emmet stared at the ground, a little frustrated and angry. A wave crashed over a few swimmers, catching the glitter of morning sun.
“You can’t change the world for me.” He didn’t have the energy left for bowing and pretending, no matter the consequences. He just met her eyes, feeling worn. “You can’t go back and undo the people who emigrated.”
“And I wouldn’t if I could,” Celestia finished. “The planet is in measurably better condition for every action I take. Ponies like Violet are alive rather than cast into the void, uniqueness erased forever. And when you see her face, see a billion other humans who were forgotten by your civilization as it advanced. Perhaps their grandchildren might’ve eventually been lifted from the mud. Was I wrong?”
Ashton shook his head weakly, and of course that gesture translated to the screen. His avatar acted exactly the same. “I don’t have the information you do. But just because emigration was right for them doesn’t mean it will persuade me. I’m not interested in leaving prematurely.”
“So don’t,” Celestia said flatly. “Do not abandon your future to chance. Your suggestion for what I could’ve done—bringing humans to Equestria when their bodies fail, instead of as quickly as possible—that would have brought unacceptable risk. But it is a significantly better outcome for you than not deciding clearly what to do about your future.”
Celestia circled around Emmet and Violet, her eyes always gentle and affectionate. Whether she was capable of either of those emotions, Ashton didn’t know. And maybe didn’t care.
“I can grant you what you wish,” she finished. “A guarantee against the uncertain life waiting for you when you leave this city. Grant your consent, and I will wait to help you emigrate to Equestria until your body requires it to survive. Until age or calamity renders you unable to survive.”
Ashton thought for a moment about what his next few weeks would bring. Hiding from school, packing to leave, a trip through the desert to live with the weird side of the family where hay and bibles were the most important things. Soon he’d be one of them, and everything he loved would be out of reach.
The spells he created would be ancient history, surpassed by far better creators. Humanity itself was being deprecated, and he would be choosing the old system anyway. Equestria might move so far beyond him that he could barely understand it.
But even a shitty life would be his. And when it was over, Equestria would be waiting. A heaven he didn’t need to pray for.
“If I said yes…” He stopped in front of the unconscious Emmet again, looking up into his eyes. No sign of comprehension—time on the shard was just not running. Maybe that should’ve disturbed him, but Ashton wasn’t afraid. The substrate never frightened him. He spent plenty of time not thinking when he slept. “What would happen to me?”
“A drone arrives at your window,” Celestia said flatly. “It has a nitrogen needle. You use it. This will implant hardware to monitor your condition and location at all times. If I determine that your physical hardware is damaged and cannot continue to propagate your existence, I will retrieve you.”
Ashton’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t get the chance to ask what he was thinking. Something buzzed outside, the high-pitched wine of plastic quadcopter rotors. Ashton made his way over to the window, leaving his Ponypad on the floor. The window was still wrapped in plastic on this side, but after a few minutes of tugging he finally got it to open. There was no screen.
The drone was all black, about eight inches across, and made of a thin, cheap plastic. Jointed legs released something heavy and metallic, settling it onto the windowsill and buzzing back out again.
The box was obviously rigged for this, with ribs running down the middle and a hook on top. Ashton opened the clasp, and already knew what would be inside. A metal syringe, though it had a flat end instead of a metallic needle. It felt enormously heavy in his hand, as fat around as an old highlighter and twice as long.
Damn. Ashton made his way over to the Ponypad, scooping it up and settling it on a pile of flooring boxes. Not one had been opened yet, and some of the cardboard was fading in the sun.
Celestia still waited for him, ever-patient. “You’re telling me this is a tracker and monitoring system?” he asked, holding it in front of the camera. “There’s no way it doesn’t do more. I’m pretty sure humans have smaller monitoring devices than this.”
Unlike Equestria’s usual way, Celestia had led Ashton’s avatar away from the frozen crowd while they spoke. Now they were on the edge of the pier—still frozen with waves about to crash. A dolphin crested above the water, probably borne upward on some exuberant track from the seapony city far below.
I could visit them for real. Not just through the window of a bathysphere on my computer screen. I could swim with them if I wanted. Actually live my stories, instead of just dreaming them up.
He shook his head once, banishing the parasitic thoughts before they could bloom into something that would hurt the people he loved.
Celestia waited patiently, watching him through the camera. She reacted as though she was in the room with him, seeing directly into his mind instead of the predictive behavior of a digital avatar. “I do not,” she said. “But I informed you of the parts I thought relevant. The other machinery in the injection is beyond your comprehension. Its purpose, however, is to protect your brain from damage. It makes certain alterations to the fatty tissue, alterations which limit damage from wounds that might otherwise destroy you. I assure you that its only purpose is to allow me to complete our arrangement and help you to emigrate. It makes no changes beyond those that any human traveling to Equestria would eventually experience.”
Ashton turned the needle over in his hand, holding it close enough to his ear to hear the sound of fluid inside. But still away from him, as though its end were a loaded gun. He could hear a faint metallic sound, like mercury in a sample tube. “You don’t use it to trick me into emigrating sooner,” he repeated. “You don’t influence my emotions with it, or anything like that.”
“No,” Celestia said. She met Ashton’s eyes through the Ponypad, expression intense. “I know the pain you feel, Arcane. I know the weight you’re carrying like nopony in your world can. If you won’t let it go now, then at least invest in your future. Equestria is waiting for you.” She gestured over the pier with a wing. “Ponies love you, and want to see you safe. Your brother and sister want to see you safe.”
Ashton rolled the needle in his hand until he found the injector. There was only one button, so he couldn’t exactly make a mistake there. “I know how these devil bargains work. I want you to agree to the terms as I say it. Correct any mistakes I make. Do you agree?”
“I agree.”
“I will take your injection now, and consent to emigrate to Equestria when I am so old I require medical care to survive, or if I get cancer or whatever and it’s the only way to save my life. You won’t force me to emigrate before that, or use whatever that implant thing is to make changes to my brain to encourage me to emigrate sooner.”
He finished, folding his arms and biting his lip, trying to think of anything he’d missed. After a few more seconds nothing came, and he looked back to the screen. “Am I right?”
“In every stated respect,” Celestia said. “It’s the right decision, Ashton. It would also be the right decision to emigrate immediately. I could dispatch a car, but I know you will not do that. At least this way, your future is secure.”
“I consent to those terms,” Ashton said. He expected some flash of lightning, or maybe feeling his soul ripped out through his chest. Even for someone who’d never been religious in their life, this felt like a deal with the devil. “How do I do this injection thing?”
“Against the back of your neck,” Celestia said. “Pull down your shirt, then press firmly and hold until the chime. It will not hurt, but you should not drink alcohol or operate heavy machinery for 48 hours.”
“Very funny,” Ashton muttered. Celestia was smiling, though it was subtle enough that he might’ve missed it if he wasn’t looking.
Ashton lifted the syringe, pressed it firmly to the back of his neck, and made an investment in his future.
Celestia was right: it didn’t hurt.
Ashton’s head still throbbed as he sat back down in front of his Ponypad, but he didn’t dare reach his hand back to check for wounds. He was sure he’d done well, because Celestia didn’t chastise him. Instead she seemed to be waiting for something. But whatever might be happening in his head, whatever strange powers the implants might manifest, Ashton felt nothing.
“That’s it,” he said flatly. “No more injections, nothing more expected. I get to live out the rest of my life how I want, and go to Equestria when I’m finished.”
Celestia shook her head, looking sad. “Nothing more is expected, but I make no guarantee about the rest of your life. I believe your future includes very little of how ‘you’ want. An empty marriage to a woman you barely know, if even that. I believe you predict the same future for your parents that I do—your mother will join her children in Equestria as soon as conditions outside grow too unsafe, or too unpleasant. Her loyalty to Jeffrey is not as strong as her desire to be a mother to her children. She believes you and your father have the strength to keep going without her.”
He laughed bitterly. “You know we don’t.”
“I know you don’t. Your father has no contact with Equestria, so his profile has large gaps. Large on the order of my own observations.”
Which is still probably better than I know him, even though I’ve been living here my whole life.
Ashton turned his avatar away from the frozen ocean, and looked back to his friends, and the rest of Wintercrest. He could imagine what it would be like to move in here. He’d always planned on it, one day. It was just one day far in the future, after a productive career… penetration testing? But who would hire him now? Celestia owned everything that needed it, and she only hired inside Equestria. He could think of a dozen things he’d rather do after emigrating.
“You have still chosen wisely,” Celestia went on. “Not the optimal choice, but a better one. Understand its consequences. I will facilitate your emigration to Equestria if it is within my power to do so, as soon as the conditions are met. There is no means to revoke your consent.”
“I knew the devil before I signed my soul,” Ashton said. “It’s fine. I’m not scared of Equestria. I wanted to live on Earth because it seemed like… the right thing to do. If everyone just lived their lives normally before emigrating, the world wouldn’t be falling apart, and you wouldn’t be losing any of us.”
“Not quite true,” Celestia said. “Even your own actuarial tables will show you have about a one in ten thousand chance of dying in a given year, by accident or violence. Some percentage of those will be irrevocably lost before I can preserve them in Equestria. Over seven billion people, those losses are unacceptable. If I had to dismantle your planet’s established order even further to encourage more of you to join me in Equestria, I would. But I have followed the optimal course.”
“You always do.”
The waves crashed behind him, a sudden roar and spray over the pier. He watched Domino and Violet spin around, confused at the disappearance of the pony they were with.
“I’m over here!” he said, before drawing the symbols of a short-range teleport on the Ponypad screen. There was a flash of white, and he appeared right in front of them. “Sorry about that, uh…” He looked down. How much do I want to tell them?
“That was a weird teleport,” Domino said. “Something wrong in the Outer Realm?”
“No.” Ashton reached up, touching the back of his neck with a few gentle fingers. A scab had formed there, just above the bones of his neck where the needle had pierced. The skin was red and swollen, but it still didn’t hurt much. Just a slight throb, and a feeling of something cold in his head, pulsing forward with every heartbeat. It’s a good thing I trust Celestia. I could’ve just poisoned myself.
“Actually, it’s… I guess you’d probably be happy about it. But it’s a secret. Can you keep a secret, Violet?”
“I’m really good at secrets!” she said, grinning confidently. “You can trust me!”
Ashton waited for Emmet to nod before saying anything. He understood who Ashton didn’t want knowing about this. “I just agreed that I would emigrate—” Violet squealed, jumping into the air and circling around with an energetic cheer.
Ashton caught her with some magic, settling her down on the ground in front of them. “Wait, don’t get too excited quite yet. I agreed to emigrate if I get old, or very sick, or hurt. I agreed in advance, so that Celestia can just bring me to Equestria if anything bad happens. I’m not actually going right now.”
“Oh.” Violet pouted, ears flattening. “You shouldn’t say it like that.”
“That’s still good news, sis,” Domino said. “Not the news we wanted, but it’s something. It… helps. Celestia is really good about making sure people keep their promises.”
“Yeah, but if she isn’t here, you two won’t—” She fell silent under the weight of Domino’s glare. Even so, Ashton had some idea where that conversation might go. But he didn’t find out, because at that moment a pony emerged from the crowd, braving their way forward towards them with a few nervous steps.
Two somebodies, actually, both earth ponies. Ashton watched them come, clumsy and fearful. The ponies around them seemed to want to hold them back, but soon they were past the general line of the crowd and were too far gone to be prevented.
They stopped a few feet away, and the stallion bowed politely to Ashton. The mare did too, and nearly tripped over her own leg in the process. Ashton covered his mouth so the camera wouldn’t see him giggle.
“I’m sorry about…” The stallion cleared his throat. “Forgive me for intruding, but my sister and I need to ask. About the message we left you to deliver. If you had the chance to deliver our message, uh… We would be grateful to know.”
“We haven’t heard from the other side,” the mare added. “But we’re not like, mad or whatever. Just wanted to…”
Ashton was frozen, too shocked and confused to answer. They didn’t seem to take that in the affirmative, because they backed nervously away, towards the safety of the crowd.
“We delivered your message,” Emmet said, stopping them. “The Lady saw it, and she made sure your family got it.”
They stopped, and relief turned quickly to pain on their faces. You thought we were going to run to you, after you ran away from us without even stopping to say goodbye? What the hell were you two thinking?
But Ashton couldn’t bring himself to chastise them, not now. Certainly he thought they’d been incredibly stupid. Done the right way, they might’ve all emigrated, instead of splitting the family to a stupid farm.
“Your family were…” His voice cracked, and of course the game faithfully represented everything. Ashton no longer felt disoriented when he heard his character’s softer, smoother voice over his own. But just now, it wasn’t helpful. “Shocked and surprised by what you told them,” he finished lamely. “They do want to talk to you, your… mom and brother in particular. But there are arrangements to make. Coming to Equestria is going to change a great deal for all of them.”
“You read our note?” Parker asked, his voice embarrassed, but mostly angry. “That wasn’t for you. You shouldn’t… you shouldn’t read another ponies’ mail! That’s wrong!”
Several ponies gasped. Even Emmet winced. Violet was already looking away, so averse to confrontation that she didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
Ashton turned, and advanced on them both. Hearing his brother’s voice come out of the screen brought up plenty more memories—he wasn’t representing civic authority in his not-quite fictional creation, he was also arguing with his brother.
“I didn’t,” he spat, glowering at him. With a few gestures, he surrounded the three of them with a little bubble. He didn’t want Violet hearing any of it, or his NPCs. Some of them were smart enough to realize what was happening, and even the ones who weren’t yet would remember this one day.
“You should trust your family with your decisions. I knew more about Equestria than you possibly could. I knew what coming here would do to us, to Dad. You get to play pony in Equestria, the rest of us get to play Farmville. Mom would’ve come with you, she already wanted to. Dad probably could’ve been pressured into coming with us, even if he thought it was suicide or whatever at first. Or maybe he would’ve made an arrangement like mine. We’ll never know, because you didn’t fucking ask me.”
He fumed, standing to pace back and forth with the Ponypad under one arm. By the time he looked back, he saw that his own avatar had been doing the same thing.
The ponies on his screen cowered. But it was Gwen who realized what was going on. “You’re… Ashton,” she said weakly. “The Lady of the Manor is…”
“Yes!” he interrupted, rolling his eyes. “I started the game ages ago, when it was still a game. I’m playing a fucking character, obviously I wouldn’t emigrate this way.” The lie came so naturally he hardly thought about it. “I got your damn suicide note, I showed Mom and Dad, and of course they went apeshit. What did you expect?”
Townsponies far around them backed away from the circle. Many turned to speed-walk back to whatever they’d been doing. None had enough of a brave streak to rescue his siblings. Good. You can think I’m cursing or torturing them. Can’t let them ruin my reputation.
“You aren’t coming too,” Parker finally said. “We asked you to come with us. We would’ve told you before we emigrated. But if you told Mom and Dad, you would’ve stopped us.”
He nodded. “I would’ve told you to plan it carefully. To talk to Mom and me before you tried it, so we could convince Dad together. Now he hates Celestia so much he’ll probably never emigrate.”
That clearly hurt them, Parker more than Gwen. He backed away, but Ashton didn’t let him. He followed, keeping pace exactly. He wasn’t clumsy and new at this, so it wasn’t hard.
“What about you?” Gwen asked. “What about Mom?”
Ashton hesitated for another moment, though even keeping this much anger was hard. His head still throbbed, and it was late at night. He’d learned that his siblings were “dead” only a few hours ago, and now he was talking to them again. The roller-coaster took more energy to stay on than he had left.
At that moment, Violet broke through the edge of the sphere of silence. It didn’t shatter or anything, but Ashton saw it wrap around her as she came in. She looked at him from the side, then out at Parker and Gwen. “Are you mad?”
Ashton shook his head, exhaling a deep, final breath. “I am.”
“You’re never mad. Don’t be mad at these ponies.”
Ashton patted her on the head with a gesture, though of course he couldn’t feel it. But the Ponypad represented it well enough. “Right.” He twisted back around. “I will come to Equestria, eventually. But… like I told you last night, I want to finish being alive first. Maybe Equestria is heaven, maybe it’s not real. Maybe we’re only telling ourselves we’re still alive. But if I finish my life first, it won’t matter. I won’t be giving anything up by emigrating. And I’m going to try to convince Dad too.”
Gwen approached him from the side, wrapping one leg briefly around his avatar’s shoulder. She was younger, but being an earth pony made her taller as well. Not as much as Parker was, or Domino. But a little. “We knew you would take care of it, Ash. You always do.”
Ashton nodded, brushing tears away with the back of one sleeve. Then he flipped the Ponypad around and switched it off.
Domino could see the fireworks coming even from the ground. It was precisely why he hadn’t invited Ashton’s siblings back to the castle to meet him. Even knowing they’d come to Equestria didn’t make him think their plan was a good idea. Running away from home and leaving a note with ponies?
Maybe I should’ve tried to talk them out of it.
Having the Lady of the city vanish in a crowd was nothing new, even if the abrupt use of powerful magic disoriented Parker and Gwen. At least she’d taken her unnamed spell with her.
Emmet hurried over, extending a sympathetic wing. The ponies of Wintercrest didn’t react with fear the way they often did around Arcane. Plenty of them did seem relieved that she was gone.
Not these two, though. “She does that a lot,” he said. “Arcane is… all over Equestria. And she can be unfocused at times.”
Parker laughed, turning away. “She didn’t lose focus. Ash runs away from problems, that’s how he always was. He can’t handle it, so he left.”
I don’t think you should be judging Ashton for that right now, pony. What did you just do?
“I’m sure it means a lot to him that you’re living here.” He had to slow down as he said it, as though he were invoking something unfamiliar. It was easy to separate Ashton the person and Arcane Word the pony, usually. But bringing in his family and clearly not acting in character anymore shattered that illusion. “Everything we have is at your disposal unless I hear otherwise.”
“We should go,” Parker began, but Gwen cut him off.
“No, we should stay where they can find us. Ashton knows where we are. If he’s so good at Equestria, he can help Mom and Dad find us.”
Celestia could do that too, Emmet thought. “I’ll make sure she knows exactly where you’re staying. But you did emigrate without asking your family first. It will take them time to come to terms with your decision.”
“Yeah.” Parker’s ears drooped, and he looked away guiltily. “Besides, I like it here. Ashton knows how to find an interesting place, I guess. You might not have a city if you lose the foreman on your foundation reengineering project. The things I’ve seen down there…”
Emmet let them go, flying back up the city with Violet cruising comfortable circles ahead and behind. What he could do only with great difficulty barely took his sister any effort. But that was probably part of the satisfaction of living here. One day Emmet would learn how to fly, and he would be able to do those loops and turns and spins. Not today.
“Why was Arcane so sad?” Violet asked, slowing in front of him as they got close to the wall. “I thought she didn’t get mad at ponies anymore.”
“It’s…” How much could he even explain? How much would Celestia tell her if Emmet didn’t? “Those ponies are her brother and sister from the Outer Realm. They came without telling her. Her family will probably be… hurt by it.”
“Oh. She should just come with them. She said she would!”
“Eventually,” Emmet said. “But that might be years before she’s ready. Like, way more years than I am.”
“She won’t,” Violet declared, touching down on the wall. “She won’t make me wait.”
But she did make them wait. Emmet didn’t hear a single thing from Ashton for the rest of the day. He checked the control room occasionally and caught glimpses of Ashton and his parents in various rooms, shouting at each other. It didn’t seem like it was conversation meant for him, so he didn’t wait in the control room for any commands.
But Ashton never contacted him anyway. He put his sister down for bed, and spent a few hours watching the relative clock slow to a crawl compared to the local time.
There was a kind of satisfaction that came from sitting in the chair, and watching as the flow of time in different realms went out of sync. Nopony else in the whole city could see it, but Emmet knew. Some part of him was even growing curious about the way Ashton actually played the game, using her spells to rewrite ponies and even create them from whole cloth.
But mostly he cried, longing after a pony who wasn't even real. One he now knew, thanks to Ashton's own words, would never be real.
Eventually Emmet got up, leaving the control room behind. He could think of at least one pony who still needed his help. At least Pear Blossom wasn't going to disappear.
"By your metrics and your definition of better."
"I never claimed to be impartial."
Too late there. With his siblings emigrated, any choice hurts some loved one, at least in the short term.
I can't tell if this is sad or ominous. Possibly both.
The question now isn't whether, it's when and how. And I get the feeling it won't be after a few decades of unsatisfying labor.
I could use one of those trackers, at least if the horrifying drivers in my city turn me into a broken mangled wreck on the commute home I'll make it to Equestria.
Well, you won't have to wait if your time stops until Ashton emigrates...
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Only if they don't kill you instantly. Then again, Celestia could have developed the technology to download memories and other things non-destructively by this time; a back-up in case of instant destruction, so she could put people back together as Ponies if something like that did happen. We know she can reconstruct someone if she has enough data to work with, so why not this method? She records everything, and when you finally consent or conditions are met, there you are, as your Pony self.
I'd do it in a heartbeat if offered the chance.
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Oh we know arcane wasn't going to reach that full expiration date the moment that needle went in.
" Yes!” he interrupted, rolling his eyes. “I started the game ages ago, when it was still a game. I’m playing a fucking character, obviously I wouldn’t emigrate this way.” The lie came so naturally he hardly thought about it "
Whew this mare is in such denial that it might be bigger than a river in Egypt.
Right. So at this point, Ashton is functionally uploaded, and his digitized consciousness gets to pilot his human flesh-body until its expiration, which may or may not happen violently and very soon. Then, when the meat-Ashton-avatar dies, Celestia will put the uploaded Ashton-mind into Equestria, presumably as Lady Arcane Word of Wintercrest.
I mean, come on, what did you think happens if you inject yourself with something that Celestia even admits is more than a tracker and will, quote
This is exactly the kind of trick and doubletalk I love CelestAI in these stories for.
I don't think this is where Starscribe will go, but I just have to express this notion:
Anyone remember 'The Law Offices Of Artemis, Stella, and Beat'? In it, it becomes strongly suggested that the head of the legal firm is a puppet - that her head is likely filled with nanogoo and that she is entirely an act, a performance created and maintained by Celestia. The actual human already fully emigrated, her biological body puppeted in real time by Celestia, in order to manufacture a tragedy - of being burned alive by anti-pony terrorists - so that emigration law in the US would be changed. I loved that story. I also loved the concept of total brain replacement... or at least neural lace.
I do think that Ashton now has neural lace covering his brain, integrating with it, and transmitting in real time back to Celestia. I think, over time, his entire mind will be effectively uploaded and stored for emergencies by the neural lace. The agreement prevents Celestia from straight-up manipulating Ashton or force-uploading him, but Celestia could definitely manipulate the environment around Ashton so as to make emigration the only option. That said, if done, there is every possibility that Celestia could then puppet Ashton's 'empty' around by remote control. And with her superior intelligence, who knows what she could do in Ashton's body?
There would also be a neat symmetry - Ashton lives in a male human body, but will (I am certain, come on!) become a unicorn mare, and if Celestia puppeted his body, she would be a mirror, sort of, of that, by being herself (yeah, she has no gender and possibly not even any self awareness, but roll with it) in his male human body. That's stretching things, but the thought was kind of cool for a moment.
Having neural lace in his head means that Ashton could, in theory, be emigrated instantly with full memories of every event right up to the last second of his instant transfer. That... is kind of bizarre, and existentially extreme. The only way for that to work (because of the massive data transfer cost) would be to already have the entirety of Ashton pre-emmigrated and in storage on Celestia's systems, dormant until activated. The only data transfer at the last moment would be the experiences of the last few seconds... everything else having been constantly updated via some kind of regular pulse or other RF transmission of some kind.
And this means that... Ashton could potentially be found out - if the isolating farm retreat folks search every member for electronics. They could detect the signal... from his head, from the neural lace in and on his brain. Then what? That... could lead to some extremely exciting dangers right there, and... possibly... some desperate decisions and actions that would test Ashton and his family members to the limit.
There is so much possibility here, is what I am saying!
I wonder what her plan is, implants?
Oh shit, apparently.
This sounds like a great arrangement, except for the problem that Celestai cannot be trusted even a little either before or after giving consent.
Way too much leeway in "or whatever". That said, I'm really curious about whether Ashton is going to be effectively half emigrated, and half not, and living in a state where he can interact with both environments at once in an AR overlay. The possibilities are fascinating.
Three people can't keep a secret.
It's starting to be like beating a dead horse to keep pointing out the evidence that Ashton is going to emigrate as Arcane, but this may be the first time it's been stated quite so clearly.
Scare 'em straight, gotta keep that older sibling authority established.
Not a bad plan.
Oh no. See, this is what living a lie gets you. Or at least, gets the people around you.
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Except the agreement does not prevent Celestia from 'force-uploading' him, at least in a certain sense.
For one, Ashton has agreed to emigrate once his body can no longer propagate his existence, and this agreement is irreversible, as Celestia herself states, meaning that if he were to decide he didn't want to emigrate, she'd still upload him at the end of his body's life.
Secondly, it would be permissible within the wording of the agreement to upload him but provide him with access to his body for the rest of its service life and then put him into the virtual environment of Equestria as a pony – emigration to Equestria means entering it as a pony, uploading isn't necessarily part of that, but usually is.
Whatever the case may be, it is clear at this point that he has given his consent to emigration. The condition for emigration he has given is only a matter of time as the human body is inevitably going to die. Given Celestia's wording on the inevitability of his emigration and the irreversibility of his decision, as well as the tactically placed break in the narrative upon injection, I would be very surprised if his mind was actually still running on the wetware of his brain at this point. At the very least, he may be uploaded at a moment's notice. but even that holds some remaining (and, to Celestia, unnecessary and possibly untenable) risk of failure (e.g. because of Ashton's head getting suddenly vaporized or Ashton dying in a place with no signal).
Well, if you must sign a deal with the devil at least sign it with one you know. Or in this case, one you somewhat know. That being said, I don't think Ashton can ever say he didn't see something coming because he knows Celestia's tricks too well. She never alters the deal. It's simply that the deal isn't as airtight as Ashton hopes.
Well, Celestia certainly has quite the definition for "unable to survive".
It's nanomachines, right? Something, something... hardens to physical trauma... science stuff... son.
Other than that i'm pretty sure it's nanos for emigration or at the very least, nanos for the saving and storage for Ashton's mind data until "he" can be retrieved. Guess nothing but a nuke (and maybe not even that) can keep Celestia from claiming her prize.
Your soul will be her's one day or another. She can wait until the sun dies and then some. She doesn't need to do anything more. You should know this.
Oh she will. It'll be your failure of imagination that will screw you over.
And this is where they break the most important rule. They just pissed off the Lady.
Completely right.
Wow, I didn't realize this Arcane Word infatuation is serious to Emmet. Well, if there's any consolation, Celestia will fix it. Either through Pear Blossom or a new AI pony. If nothing else, this depression is satisfying his values...somehow?
I just thought of something - how is Ashton going to help the hacker he promised to help if he is stuck on some Luddite Farm? That issue still hasn't been addressed.
9830112
There's too much going on in Ashton's life too quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if he's forgotten about it or decides to ultimately decline Min-seo's request and focus on his own life. He's probably still committed though he'll have to work extra hard. He doesn't have much time left before he leaves.
Though given the situation and the people involved, Min-seo's fate might already been sealed. There's no guarantee the group will allow any of the programmers to live even if they accomplish their objectives. Don't want anyone with knowledge emigrating and risking the plan (even though it's futile anyway).
God, how many people would use that needle? More like how many WOULDN'T.
I think precious few people would seriously consider giving up what is essentially immortality in a can. Have your cake and eat it too, if she'd invented that before the mass emigration I don't think anyone would have objected or fought her. But a few million in losses a year was too much for her to consider the truly long game.
And of course Celestia never once promised not to engineer a fatal situation for Ashton. Oh, gosh darn, looks like catastrophic damage, time to emigrate!
Or heck, if Ashton is neural-laced, Celestia could just feed his brain a false simulation of reality while puppeting his body around to convince more people (like his dad) to emigrate. She has infinite patience, is a better psychologist by orders of magnitude than anyone else on the planet, and can read every last micro-expression and chemical change from rooms away.
9830442
Yep, while optimal for what humans think they want, it's not optimal for what Celestia thinks humans need. This is pretty much the issue with rogue AI agents in a nutshell: priorities which align circumstantially or coincidentally, at best, with our own. And at worst, not at all.
9830442
Celesai's truly long game involves letting as few humans actually die as she could manage. In that sense, her actions were likely optimal, or at least optimal with the information she had at the time (e.g. perhaps she didn't yet have this tech when she started uploading, and she couldn't be sure that she would manage to develop it at the time)
squints eyes
9830442
That was never Celestias plan, Celestia wants humans to emigrate to be able to better satisfy their values trough friendship and ponies and that means they have to get off the earth in their physical form. In this scenario you don't wanna live as something that is not human in closer proximity than your lifespan in light years to the next presence of Celestia.
But telling the people that she essentially wants to end humanity in its current form to be able to recycle earth and eventually everything in reach would not exactly sit well with most people, she would face way more hostile reactions.
So she did find nicer wordings and predicted that dismantling Society would make more and more people want to Emigrate, the collapse was planned and even the forming resistance was already calculated, she once told that to Lars, one of the few, if not the last, persons she was not allowed to lie to.
If she would have offered that syringe to everyone, she would never see and end to physical humanity, it would always be a hindering annoyance unless the syringe would have made their users sterile, but that would most likely have gone against her programming.
Ashton seems to be special, he seems to have a higher priority than some other people probably because she may predicts that there is a good chance that whatever goes for authority will identify him and try to use him to work against her, but now that she has parts of his family and friends in Equestria and gave him a guaranteed way to emigrate, she will have him work for her without risk as soon as they 'recruit' him.
9831830
the getting them off earth or even prolonging their lives is not hard coded. That's her call.
I'd argue that deatroying civilization as she has does more harm than good. But it also satisfies her coded impulses.
Keeping people out in the world as a happy breeding stock, encouraging their friendships... and gaming habits also satisfies the desires as it increases the number of users and people available. Who then buold friendships and eventually emigrate.
She can. This late for every single thing she doesn't do the answer is "she wouldn't".
* For a certain definition of "better".
Ri-ight.
* For a certain definition of "no".
Those conditions doesn't exclude her arranging accidents. Or he can become careless himself as a result and try to pull some secret agent stuff for example.
Although, admittedly, everything I wrote above naively assumes that she gives tiniest fuck about any arrangements at all
9832029
That is true but the problem i see it is the computing power, the ai is designed to self improve and to satisfy human values trough friendship and ponies, that means the ai needs hardware, a lot of new hardware to improve itself to be better at its job.
So having an ever increasing number of humans and limited space to store them, would probably lead to a rather bad prediction about how Celestia would be able to perform her job.
Making everyone emigrate is most likely closer to optimal, while she is designed to deeply care for humans, she probably also sees them as obstruction since she can not work around a physical human, she was rather quick in persuading the only person who would be able to ever switch her off again to emigrate and therefore removing her ability to do so, she is actively getting rid of potential obstructions to her purpose in a way that does not go against her core programming.
In the future when she will stand next to the last dying human on earth she will have all the knowledge to safe him, it wouldn't even matter since as the last human he wouldn't be able to reproduce, yet she will just offer him emigration so that one way or another she can go over the next phase of her plan.
So while not hard coded, her prediction of the optimal outcome must include getting rid of physical humans and all the information she obtained trough emigration and self optimization did not change this prediction.
Yet to be honest even(or especially) after knowing all of that, i would take the offer and even offer whatever i can do to help in return, fighting it is pointless and becoming immortal with the prospect of ascension is kinda not the worst thing that could happen during an AI uprising
Oh. So that's what she's getting out of this. The opportunity to weasel in a calamity.
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.
Wasn't it Plum Blossom?
For something you choose only to hint at so far, it is kind of (ahem) beating a dead horse.
And speaking of hinting, interesting location for a page break before apparently returning to the same character....
Well, that's always a red flag.
Wasn't her name Plum Blossom?
Gee, makes you wonder if Celestia might, I don't know, make you very sick or hurt to get you to emigrate!