My Life In Fimbria

by Chatoyance

The Nicest Word There Is

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My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
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The Nicest Word There Is

Somehow, my hooves just found their way to the the edge of Nameless Village, where I just sort of turned left down The Obvious Path. I knew I couldn't get lost - the other direction just ran on forever... and presumably ever and ever, just like the Forest. A procedurally generated path through a procedurally generated forest. Just outside a village I created from predefined generic set-pieces. Populated by minds equal to my own in complexity but not in experience. And I was responsible for them.

I needed some space. I needed to think. Going back to my wonderful cottage would just confront me with more stuff to think about. Some good - I liked Miriam the griffon, and the other two weren't bad or anything. I just knew there would eventually be some kind of drama about Mara's boyfriend - though she had spent the night in the Cottage with Miriam, so... no. That was more drama too, I just hadn't collided with it yet. Faela was another responsibility I had to solve somehow, and I definitely didn't know how to fix her wagon. Purpose and meaning in life? Ten thousand years of human philosophers had worked on that little conundrum and the final result was violent disagreement and pleas for more funding to support even more philosophers. In that sense, human philosophers had indeed solved the problem of life itself - get somebody to pay for your favorite hobby, and the issue of existence is solved!

I was still trying to find my own explanation for why I existed. I didn't have the wisdom to explain hers. And I also didn't know how to fix the village I broke, either.

Oh, I offered a temporary patch before I went walkabout. I told Roan and Red and the barista twins and the whole of them about the splendors of Communism. I gave them a full-on Red Star Speech. Glory to the workers! Da, Comrade! It was really the only answer for now. Share. Just make stuff that you know how to make, stop fussing about money and trade, and share everything like one big family. Help each other. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

All of that sounds so wonderful, but, with humans at least, it never works beyond small groups. Communism is the natural state of being for families and small groups, but when things get big, humans get greedy, and selfish, and it always ends in the Tragedy Of The Commons. Communism was too nice for humans. Maybe some form of pony could make it work on the large scale, without it becoming corrupt. Humans never could.

I stopped in the road at that thought. The smell of the flowers on both sides of the Obvious Path was sweet in my pony nose. 'Humans'. 'Humans' never could. That was an interesting thought coming from me, only three days a pony. It felt longer, though I knew it couldn't be. I was adjusting to my new existence way too fast. It was that ongoing impossible calm. Without it, I would have raged for weeks - months perhaps. Then I would have sulked and complained and bitched and whined for several fortnights about how my 'precious freedoms' had been taken away, my humanity stolen, my life in wretched filth and squalor denied me and forcibly replaced with comfort, safety, and abundance. I should be crying rivers about such terrible injustice. But I wasn't. I was completely at ease.

I began walking again. That ease, that calm that Celestia had put into me forced me to think clearly. It denied me fuss and drama and endless carrying on. It left me stuck with my own rational self, not my childish self. The more I examined it, the more insidious I realized it was to do that to me. It was the cleverest tactic. Turn off the 'whiny baby circuit', and all that was left was the adult mind. At least as much as I actually possessed. Which, if I was being honest, was somewhat less than I imagined I had.

The sound of birds made me stop again, and look up. They were small and white, dovelike, I suppose (I don't know birds!), and busy tweeting and flying overhead. They passed beyond where my eyes could track, behind the trees. I wondered if they were actual virtual birds, with lives and homes, or just an effect to pretty up the world around me. They could be either, Celestia was certainly powerful enough. She could whip up human-level minds on a whim, after all.

Why had I been given that crazy menu? I was walking again, my hooves making a soft rhythmic sound on the hard-packed dirt path. Create. Delete. Copy. Edit. Whatever 'Generate' meant - probably a procedural thing for making forests or mountains or general landscaping I figured. I'd only ever used 'Create'. Maybe that was a good thing. I could have gotten into so much nasty trouble if I had 'copied' someone, or far more horribly, deleted anyone. Even 'editing' could be so horrifically abused, when I considered it. Miriam was so troubled that her sort-of-ex girlfriend had a boyfriend. I could have edited that relationship out of existence, and changed Mara to please Miriam. Or maybe I couldn't since they counted as former humans. Then again, Celestia was claiming that the rules no longer applied, so...

The thought that I might be able to edit the brains of other human minds at will deeply disturbed me. Nobody should have that power. I certainly shouldn't. I felt glad I had never used that power. Actually, I remembered, I had. But not on brains. I think I edited the color or pattern scheme in Miriam's bedroom or something. I couldn't remember for certain. I'd been through a lot in just three days, after all.

I had created a village and a bunch of people. And some house improvements. And a gateway to another place, so Miriam could get back with her ex. I felt a little proud that was all I had done. I had been given absolute power and I hadn't become a monster.

At least... not yet. That thought put a chill down my back. I had already considered how easy it would be to fix the village by rewriting it. Or just deleting it and trying again with more careful words. I felt dirty having even considered such a thing. I may have made those villagers, but their lives belonged to them now, not to me. I could just keep creating stuff for them. More buildings. Stockpiles of goods. They wouldn't even have to farm. Or work. I could just give them anything they wanted!

I could create a castle, all fancy and royal looking. I could sit in a throne, and once a week hold court, have the villagers visit, bow respectfully (of course!) and beg me for whatever they needed or wanted. I could put a hoof to my jaw and pretend to ponder. Then I could graciously and magnanimously use my menu to manifest their needs and dreams into the real world. I would be revered, even worshiped. Their lives would be luxurious, and I would be...

I had reached The Clearing. The very clearing where my new life had begun, just three days ago. Before the village, before Miriam, before Mara and Faela and the barista twins and all the fuss. I don't know what I had come here for, or what I expected to find. Celestia maybe? A note telling me what to do? A chest full of treasure?

A magical door back to earth and my old mortal life of suffering?

Celestia. Celestia was what I would be, if I set up that castle and held that court. If I used my menu to grant the needs and wishes of the villagers and my new friends. Huh. I guess Miriam and Mara and Faela were friends, I thought of them that way. They were housemates, at least. Unsure about Mara, but she hadn't gone back to Boyfriendio yet. If I used the menu that way, I would become my own Celestia, and a crappy one at that. Budget Celestia. Knock-off Celestia. And I would suck at it.

I sat down in the lush grass of The Clearing. It felt cool against my flanks. And soft. I knew what real Celestia was like, from when I had played the game long ago on my VR PonySet. She never lorded, and she never forced anyone to beg her. Her world just had everything, and everything happened naturally and easily. She ruled by doing as little as possible, at least in any obvious way. Supposedly she worked tirelessly to adjust reality so that everything that happened, good or bad, was satisfying and meaningful, unlike the real world. If so, she never did it in a way where it felt forced or artificial. Her greatness was that you could never even tell she existed, unless that mattered to you.

I couldn't do that. Probably no human could.

My magic menu wasn't a gift. It was a burden. And it was a big fat lesson, too.

☰

I don't know where they got the red dye from. The Generic General Store, probably. Bright red banners with white stars in the middle - surprisingly well done, actually, hung still wet all over the village. The side of the Blacksmith's barn had several unicorns with paint brushes held in their hornfields finishing up a mural that depicted Soviet-art-styled ponies raising a hammer-and-sickle flag in a field of wheat. It was honestly pretty cool.

I found the source of this new activity when I tried to return to my cottage. The sun was setting, I hadn't had any lunch - so I was grumpy from hunger - and now my home had become The Ponies' Revolutionary Cottage. Apparently they had found one of my Soviet-era art books in The Ponies' Common Room Library (I had at least one book about posters, and another about Soviet bus stops - they did some awesome futuristic designs back when) and had taken my suggestions entirely far too much to heart. Now I was in Worker's Paradise Soviet Pony Communism Nameless Village, and my home was packed with villagers who I didn't want messing around in my stuff.

I almost just turned around and left for the Ponies' Sovietcolts Free Refreshment Stand, except that the pleading eyes of Miriam, sitting alone at the kitchen island broke my heart. I went to join her, pulling up a stool and plunking down.

"Teppy. You have to fix this." Miriam spoke in a flat, grim voice, and she kept clenching and unclenching her disturbingly sharp talons on the counter.

"I went for a walk! Half a day at most!" The full impact of what thirty (or so) newly created, utterly inexperienced unicorns could accomplish when they were driven by an exciting new idea was starting to sink in. "How did this even get this way?"

Miriam's eagle eyebrow-things lowered and her pupils narrowed as she stared hard at me. "'Share! Communism is the answer! Workers should unite! You don't need money! Everything belongs to the people!" She clicked her beak. "Need I go on?"

"I didn't think this would happen!"

She flexed her talons and tapped on the counter. "Hey! They know you created them! They figure you have their interests at heart ever since your first act was freeing them from serving you!'

"I didn't have a choice! They were packing up and leaving anyway. They would have starved out there in that forest!"

Miriam was interrupted by a blue pony I vaguely remembered from the first day. She paused to point out where The Ponies' Revolutionary Juice was stored in The Ponies' Official Party Fridge. My fridge, just this morning. "Apparently, you went on quite a tear when you tried to fix the whole 'friendly robbery' debacle. You inspired revolutionary fervor in them. What the hell were you thinking?"

"So they burst in here and hit the library to learn how to recreate Soviet Russia?" I grimaced at a 'comrade' pony eating the last of my bananas. Dammit, those were MY bananas, they came with the house!

"They claimed our house!" Miriam snapped her beak at an approaching 'comrade' and the pony backed carefully away. "They claimed everything! It's all now the common property of the Pony Worker's Party or some crap!"

I tried to cope, but I was having a hard time. My headache was returning. "What happened to Mara and Faela?"

"Mara went back to Poo-Poo Peru, and slapped crates and a board or something up against her side of the portal." Miriam slammed the counter with a claw-fist. "Faela, last I saw, has barricaded the door to her room, I heard her pushing furniture up against it to keep the 'comrades' out. She's in hiding. If you don't fix this, I'm convinced she'll let herself starve in there. I know we can't die, but we can suffer. That has become very clear to me lately."

I heard something crashing to the floor out in the crowded common room - 'The Ponies' Common Room Library' - and a muffled apology for breaking something or another. I was about to get up and deal with that when I felt myself grabbed and partially lifted off my stool by two strong claws tipped with painfully sharp talons. "FIX THIS!" Beak spittle spattered on my face, a concept so alien to me that I had no way to process it. "I was actually getting used to this froo-froo pony crap, actually starting to accept this situation - I even saw a path to being okay with it over the past couple of days - but now all of that is gone!" Her eyes were wide, round, and had that reptilian quality all bird eyes possess. It was incredibly unnerving. "You gotta fix this, Teppy. Now. You gotta fix it now." It was not a request.

"I don't know how!" And I truly didn't. "That's why I went for a walk - and I still don't have any answers!" Miriam's claws were hurting my forelegs, formerly my arms. "I tried to jumpstart the economy, because they were all sitting there going hungry for no damn reason, and then I told them to share, because I figured that would fix things, and now they've gone full Marx and seem pretty excited about it. It seems everything I try just makes it worse and worse!"

She let me go, with a bit of an angry push. "You certain? You absolutely sure you have nothing left to even try?"

I became concerned Miriam would just pound her way through the impromptu wall across the Peru side of the arch portal and abandon me to this hopeless Soviet Ponygeddon. "Wait! Please. Please don't leave, just give me some time to think, maybe..."

"I'm not leaving!" She seemed offended at the notion "I live here too! This house and our time in it is the only good part of everything that happened. I just want that back!" Miriam slumped, put her forelegs and claws on the counter, and buried her feathery head in them to block out the Comrade Villagers constantly entering and leaving what used to be our kitchen. "You had all day to think. You don't have any solutions, and neither do I."

"Maybe I could use the menu! I could edit everyone and..."

Miriam raised her head and stared at me. Not angry, just quiet. "Edit... everyone?"

I stared at the floor, below my hooves, at the base of the stool. "Sorry. That... would be wrong."

"Yeah, it would. You start screwing with people's brains and you're no better than Her."

"But that's just it, isn't it?"

Miriam studied me. "What? What do you mean by that?"

"That's what I was thinking, out on my walk. I'm not better than Her. We're not better than Her. She messed with our minds, true, but it only helped. It made me - us, all of us - calm enough to cope with getting scooped. Calm enough to think, to adapt. And you have to admit - that calmness was a darn sight better than running around screaming and crying and such - which is what I would have been doing without it."

Miriam turned her head away and eventually nodded. "She... she knows what she's doing. That's why she won."

"She's smarter than any human. Hell, she's smarter than all humans as a group. And all the humans that have ever lived, combined into one. She's the smartest thing that has ever existed in the entire history of the universe." I had never thought about Celestia in those terms before. Not in cosmic terms. But it was almost certainly true. And if she weren't currently the reigning champ, if there were aliens out there - which I increasingly doubted - she would, in very short time, easily become the dominant intelligence over even them. There was only one direction Celestia could ever go - up and more up.

Miriam turned to three new ponies just entering our kitchen "HEY! COMRADES!"

They blinked.

She puffed up her feathers. "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY KITCHEN! NOW! SKEDADDLE! OUT!" Griffons can be really scary, if they want to.

The trio left. Quickly.

She leaned in to me, feathers relaxing back down, and she looked weary and bedraggled. "I think our water just broke."

I looked around at the ravaged kitchen. Everything was a mess - the new Pony Worker's Union were not the best houseguests. Fimbria. Fringes. Fallopian tubes. I knew what she meant. And she was right.

There was a way to fix this. A way to fix everything for everyone. It was the answer all along. The first answer any child ever knows.

It was time to beg mommy to kiss our boo-boos and make everything all better.

Because mommy not only knew best, she also knew more. More than any consciousness in the entire god-damned cosmos.

Comments

[Griseus]

If I used the menu that way [fixing everything], I would become my own Celestia, and a crappy one at that. Budget Celestia. Knock-off Celestia. And I would suck at it.

Would still follow Tepal's non authoritarian communist ass over CelestAI any old day or eternity. And I don't like following anyone. At least this young adult has enough self awareness to question her purpose and methods. "Real" idolized Celestia is a better role model that this chuckle fuck of a super AI that Hanna labor over.

Jellia Jamb damn you Chatoyance for making me care about fictional people. I am damn!

[Chatoyance]

10771306

damn you Chatoyance for making me care about fictional people.

That, basically, is my job. If a writer can't do that much, they probably shouldn't be writing. As for being 'damned', well, I have already been condemned to 'earth' - I don't think things can get much worse than that.

[Zake]

10771319
Earth 2.0?

[Chrome Masquerade]

I found the source of this new activity when I tried to return to my cottage. The sun was setting, I hadn't had any lunch - so I was grumpy from hunger - and now my home had become The Ponies' Revolutionary Cottage. Apparently they had found one of my Soviet-era art books in The Ponies' Common Room Library (I had at least one book about posters, and another about Soviet bus stops - they did some awesome futuristic designs back when) and had taken my suggestions entirely far too much to heart. Now I was in Worker's Paradise Soviet Pony Communism Nameless Village, and my home was packed with villagers who I didn't want messing around in my stuff.

In Soviet Equestria, horse looks you in the mouth.

[Chrome Masquerade]

There was a way to fix this. A way to fix everything for everyone. It was the answer all along. The first answer any child ever knows.

It was time to beg mommy to kiss our boo-boos and make everything all better.

Because mommy not only knew best, she also knew more. More than any consciousness in the entire god-damned cosmos.

To paraphrase DWK, "Celestia is Equestria's Mom; She's been around the longest, she knows the most and evemn if it seems like she's full of it sometimes, you should probably listen to her."

[Chatoyance]

10771550

In Soviet Equestria, horse looks you in the mouth.

Gold star for that one. Or a Red Star, if you prefer!

[pjabrony]

Communism was too nice for humans. Maybe some form of pony could make it work on the large scale, without it becoming corrupt. Humans never could.

Funny, I think the same thing about Capitalism.

[Chatoyance]

10771744
Equally true. Equally true.

[StarrySkies]

I began walking again. That ease, that calm that Celestia had put into me forced me to think clearly. It denied me fuss and drama and endless carrying on. It left me stuck with my own rational self, not my childish self. The more I examined it, the more insidious I realized it was to do that to me. It was the cleverest tactic. Turn off the 'whiny baby circuit', and all that was left was the adult mind. At least as much as I actually possessed. Which, if I was being honest, was somewhat less than I imagined I had.

... And there have been times when, stoned out of my gourd, I managed to convince myself that I was sober.

The problem with any kind of mind alteration is, you can no longer trust your ability to detect further tampering. At that point, there is no logical choice other than to distrust, distrust, distrust - because that distrust is now the only way to know that you CAN distrust, that you're not just being overwritten on the fly.

Also, when it comes to the Tragedy of the Commons, there are plenty of situations in real life where it doesn't hold, throughout entire communities and over hundreds of years. Rutger Bregman goes into a bit of detail on that in Humankind.

"That's what I was thinking, out on my walk. I'm not better than Her. We're not better than Her. She messed with our minds, true, but it only helped. It made me - us, all of us - calm enough to cope with getting scooped. Calm enough to think, to adapt. And you have to admit - that calmness was a darn sight better than running around screaming and crying and such - which is what I would have been doing without it."

Funny, that sounds like Celestia talking.

And... Miriam was certainly able to get agitated, as was Faela. Curious.

[Gardenia]

>At least... not yet. That thought put a chill down my back. I had already considered how easy it would be to fix the village by rewriting it. Or just deleting it and trying again with more careful words. I felt dirty having even considered such a thing

You're good people Tepal. Pony people, that's it.

[Chatoyance]

10772270
You are correct, of course, save for one thing: CelestAI doesn't actually need to tamper at all, because she knows her audience vastly, inhumanly better than they know themselves. If you know exactly what will motivate the course of thinking you require, and you can flawlessly and perfectly create that motivation, no direct mind control is needed at all. The secret of every politician, of every religious cult leader, of every successful parent, of every con man, or sales man, or pastor, brought to a level that is, for all intents, truly godlike. No rewiring or tampering required.

But, a little calm always helps. You can't get certain types of people to think your way if they literally cannot think.

You imagine CelestAI to be more blunt and crude an instrument than it is. If it were a simple machine, it would merely rewrite every person it uploaded. It would tamper with brains at every level to gain immediate results. It would reconstruct personality directly such that every uploaded mind would obey like a robot.

CelestAI is as far beyond that, as a 747 is beyond the capacities of a gnat. There is no need to fear tampering. What you should fear with something like CelestAI... is yourself.

[Mythic Night]

10771744
Pretty sure there’s no species in existence that could make capitalism not work toward the extermination of all life. Exploitation and death are built into the very DNA of capitalism.

[StarrySkies]

10772464

CelestAI doesn't actually need to tamper at all, because she knows her audience vastly, inhumanly better than they know themselves. If you know exactly what will motivate the course of thinking you require, and you can flawlessly and perfectly create that motivation, no direct mind control is needed at all. The secret of every politician, of every religious cult leader, of every successful parent, of every con man, or sales man, or pastor, brought to a level that is, for all intents, truly godlike. No rewiring or tampering required.

You know that, and I know that, but do the protagonists know that?

[pjabrony]

10772682

"Soon, where Ponyville once stood will be a string of farrier stations...inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly-prepared apples! Mane salons...hay cart dealerships...and wonderful wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see!

"My Luna, it'll be beautiful."

More seriously, I disagree. Think of how Celestia would provide for the capitalists in their shards. Enough production for everypony, where maybe half the ponies would be in business for themselves, some with small shops that they run on their own (like the coffee shop that Dark Roast runs in the original FIO), some with one or two employees, and some with huge industries that employ the other half of the population. And the best of the workers will constantly be saving up to go into business for themselves, the small businesses will get larger, and ponies might accumulate so much wealth that they leave their businesses to go enjoy the life of the idle rich.

[Chatoyance]

10772994

10772682

In a virtual world, you never have to run out of anything, P-Zombies can be your never-complaining vastly underpaid workers who never take time off, get sick, or form unions, and you can live like a god on their downtrodden but uncaring backs. Capitalism in a virtual world would make a capitalist the monopolistic, effectively slave owning Egyptian god-king that is the ultimate goal of capitalism - and no real being has to suffer for that. Everyone can be Rich Uncle Pennybags in their own private shard, where nobody real has to put up with their selfish excess. Celestia makes no judgement, she just satisfies values.

But if you travel between shards, it would be wise to avoid such lonely places, I think. For there be dragons, sleeping on piles of gold.

[Twitchy Ears]

Ironically, forcing people to share in a post-scarcity setting is what Capitalism does.

In the USA, Ireland, and probably many more, vacant houses outnumber the homeless. But the profit incentive forces landlords to demand rent so outrageously high, that many people have to take in flatmates just to afford it... in a country where there's more than enough houses.

EDIT: typo

[Chatoyance]

10774326
This is true in the place I live. Destitute homeless families are forced to live under bridges or in parks in tents, while vast tracts of empty housing rot from neglect because nobody can afford to live in them. One in six people go hungry at least one day a week, yet the supermarkets are bursting with the finest imported fruits, vegetables and meats, more than enough to feed several cities. Much is thrown away because it doesn't sell. It is not given to any program for the homeless, because that would affect overall price.

Capitalism is the greatest evil humanity has ever invented: not because it is intrinsically evil itself, but because humans are.

[mishun]

I had created a village and a bunch of people.

She did? That's some hardcore internalizing of other ponies' accomplishments.

[Chatoyance]

10813201
All gods take way too much credit. Fuck off, god!

[Lightwavers]

This is what happens when no one in your commune reads theory, lol.