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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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Continue Firm And Constant
My head exploded in light and tingles.
I saw the door open, a blob of something that looked like silvery plasma engulfing the simple brass handle. The door stopped, half open, as the tingles that ran inside my skull and down my new unicorn body gradually faded into background sensation. The door shuddered as I shuddered, somehow we were linked. I felt the metal of that handle. I felt it in more detail, and more completely, than anything I had ever held in my long-lost hands.
I could almost taste the handle. I felt the whole of it, inside and out, the three-dimensionality of it, the curvature, the solidity. I was no longer sure it was brass, though it sort of looked like that metal. It was smooth, and lush, and well shaped, nothing thin or weak or budget conscious about it. My strange entrancement ended, and I felt a shock of apprehension - I had no idea what was going on. Something in me recoiled from the sensations impacting me, and rapidly the blob of plasma faded, the light dimmed inside my skull, and my attachment to the handle of the door ceased. I stood there, with my door half open, almost in shock.
Gradually it came to me, and I laughed nervously. Of course. I was a unicorn. I had a horn, it gave me telekinesis.
When I had played Equestria Online, over a decade ago, before the end of civilization, I had played a unicorn. My current form was, I realized, that very character. I had put her entirely out of my mind. That was why Celestia had been so certain of my choices earlier in the day. She just used my old game persona. Perhaps her strangeness about the matter connoted some upset that I had entirely forgotten my old ponysona. If she could even legitimately feel emotions at all.
Being a unicorn was very different from playing at being one. Telekinesis in virtual reality has no sensation, it is all image and sound. That blob of plasma light was familiar to me now, I had seen its like before, wearing goggles. It was entirely a new thing to feel the sensation of using telekinesis, and after a decade of fighting against anything pony, anything to do with Celestia's virtual hellscape, it took me a few seconds to remember when I used to see precisely the same thing. In the game, doors would just open, and things would just move, depending on where I looked, and what the context was. I myself had opened this door. My telekinetic effort was automatic, but it was my intention that had directed it. That was very new.
I took hold of the door handle again, this time with confidence. I opened the door the rest of the way and released. I liked the way using my horn felt, I decided. 'Good thing, I suppose. I'll be doing this sort of stuff forever'. The thought briefly shocked me with its strange truth, then it faded. My calm was still present. I took a hoofstep into my... home.
The entrance opened to a comfortable and cozy common room. I noted a lovely overstuffed sofa, a rather pillowy chair, and a low Kang-styled table within reach of both. The walls were set with multiple oaken bookcases, bursting with books. Not paperbacks, books. Wonderful, large, finely bound editions with metal clasps and raised lettering - the sort of books you only see in fantasy paintings and movies, or in pictures of rare and ancient book collections owned by billionaires and governments. I was beside one of the large and incredibly solid cases - it must have used an entire tree just by itself - only to laugh out loud. The books looked like ancient treasures commissioned by kings but I knew the titles instantly.
They were all my own, old collection - mostly paperbacks, truth be told - from before the fall of man and my retreat into hiding. Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury. Henderson and Sheckley, Butler and Padgett and more. I noted an amazing copy of 'The Pony Who Folded Himself', by David Gerrold facing out and on display. The cover had an inset metal piece that was a brilliant prop copy of the pivotal Timebelt from the book. Seeing that, I felt sure that the upgraded copy of H.G. Wells 'The First Men In the Moon' would be re-titled 'Ponies In The Moon'. There would, I felt certain now, never be a 'man' or 'human' in any media I would ever see for the rest of eternity. It was going to be ponies all the way down from now on.
But, that was okay, I decided. The play is the thing, or in this case the story, and all of my stories, everything I had lost when the world collapsed, had been returned to me. This house was my Egyptian 'Field Of Reeds' - their afterlife where everyone and everything loved in life was returned to the worthy soul, made whole and perfect, to enjoy forever. I had missed my books so very much. Now they all were back, and if the price was four legs inside a space suit instead of two, I could live with that. Running away from Celestia had cost me so much! To remain human, I had lost everything that made being human worthwhile.
That was another moment of shock in my thoughts. Today seemed to be an endless series of hard punches into the face of my cherished truths. Everything I knew was wrong - oh my god! I now had a record collection again - it looked like vinyl but I had no doubt it would sound as perfect as digital - and the first record I saw was the Firesign Theater's 'Everything You Know Is Wrong'. Science fiction comedy in a science fictional situation. That could not be more perfect. And, that had to be deliberate.
Celestia might not be answering my calls, but she was still playing games with me it seemed. Even out here in pony purgatory.
Holy crap. That is what this place was. That was her logical loophole right there. 'Fimbria', or whatever, was Pony Purgatory. Or Pony Limbo. Something like that. I think purgatory was one of those awful 'spiritual punishment' zones or something. I wasn't up on my Judaeo-Christian ontology. And I wasn't sure about limbo either. It didn't matter. The point was that Fimbria was some kind of waiting room. And in a flash I remembered what the waiting was for: me to say those simple words. That I wanted to emigrate to... no. I dared not even finish the thought. I had no idea what would count as consent to her now, with all of her loopholes and unraveled logic knots. I still had my pride. I had not bowed one inch.
What wasn't splendid bookcases (and records, and a record player!) was a large, even vast, bay window, the sort I could imagine lying down comfortably within, pillows around me, book in hand. Hoof. Maybe horn field. That thought probably should have bothered me, I knew I shouldn't be greeting all of this opulence with such pleasure, but after a decade of eating whatever could be scavenged or killed, of living rough with bug infestations and scabies and fleas, constantly in fear, I was just weary. I was weary and I was... I was hungry. I was really, really hungry!
There were two doorways out of the common room, I took the one on the right. Bedroom. Large, utterly exquisite canopy bed, all carved banisters and elaborately quilted spread that combined velvet, silk and some metallic fabric to form a pillowed, downy soft fabric painting of the night sky. My lord, but Celestia could lay it on thick. The pillows at the head were so infranaturally fluffy that I swear I could hear them singing me lullabies and promising to cuddle me all night long. The entire chamber was a work of art; when I noticed the inlaid silver stars in the gently domed, polished wood of the ceiling, I had to leave before I just gave up and crawled into bed.
The left door from the central room led to a spacious kitchen, with, so help me Julia Child, an island in the middle. There was all the room in the world to make any desired dish or treat. I had been cooking out of a carefully tended treasure of old cans scavenged from the remains of a collapsed supermarket. Copper-bottomed pans and real iron kettles gleamed at me, as I surveyed a foodie's personal heaven.
There was a refrigerator! Bigger than any I had ever seen earthside, I was pleased to find it stocked when I opened it. It was an odd duck - not modern in appearance, it seemed almost steampunk. Honestly, it was the coolest fridge I could have imagined, pun very much intended. All sorts of fruits, tofu, eggs, milk, a large vegetable section, and some things I couldn't identify in what would normally be the meat drawer. I gave them a sniff - they looked like strangely meaty bark and roots, but smelled like bacon and beef. I vaguely remembered something about 'bark bacon' from my gaming days with Equestria Online. This must be it. And beef root, or somesuch. I wouldn't lack for familiar flavors.
I shut the door, overwhelmed. That was when I noticed a large bale of hay on the counter by the fridge. I burst out with a laugh. But, it made sense, I supposed. Pony and all. Maybe it would even be good. I sighed. Of course it would be good - why wouldn't it be? Celestia created everything. It wouldn't be a bit like a human eating actual hay. It would almost certainly become my new favorite food, if things held to the current apparent pattern. I was in a golden cage, a trap made of perfect beauty and absolute satisfaction. It was insidious. Nothing conquers the soul better than freedom from want and suffering.
To fight this, I would have to leave this cottage immediately, and set out into the wilderness to live as an ascetic. I would have to renounce all joy, all ego, all comfort and sensory experience. Dwell inside myself like a Buddha, meditating only on my own empty mindfulness, uncaring toward both pain and pleasure. I imagined my pony body rail-thin and emaciated, sitting uncaring on sharp stones in a lotus position, absent any desire, hope, fear, or thought. That was the only way to beat Celestia now. That was the only way that remained to truly defy her and honor the cause of humankind.
The hay really was absolutely amazing! I gorged myself before I knew it. It was savory, yet with a faint sweet aftertaste. Kind of like everything that was the best about waffles and bread and biscuits and every starch that made life worthwhile. Hay was like that middle part of freshly baked bread that tastes like happiness and warm summer days. It tasted like that rich brown bread dripping with butter that they used to serve you in steakhouses so you would fill up and not notice the steak was really small. It tasted like the comfort of a lover made manifest in the world, combined with getting exactly what you wanted for Christmas. I literally had to will myself away from that bale. God but that was good. Hay. My prediction was correct. I burped stentoriously. Oh, man was that an amazing flavor. I could eat that for years and still want more. Despite my gustatory debauchery, I still felt hunger. That was danger food, if getting really big and fat was a thing, here.
If that could be done with a mere bale of grass stems, I was already lost. But I wasn't ready to give in. I wasn't so easily bought.
"Mara?"
I spun from the bale to face the sound of a slightly screechy woman's voice. The back door of my cottage entered the kitchen, and it was now, to my surprise, open. What stood in it was even more surprising. It was a pony-sized gryphon. 'Griffon' as the show spelled them. A 'Gilda' sort, as I slowly recalled the one 'griffon' I could name from Friendship Is Magic. "Hello?"
"Mara? Is that you?" The griffon seemed fairly emotional about my potential identity.
"Um, I think you have the wrong house. I don't know anyone named Mara." It suddenly struck me, and hard: I didn't make this creature. My effort at creation was limited to a village full of unicorns. Thirty to thirty-five of them, in fact. I hadn't even considered any other species. This... entity... was not anything I had done. Had the map been wrong? Was there more beyond the Endless Forest? "How did you get here? Where did you come from?"
The griffon slumped to the floor. I could see a tear form in one of her eyes. "Dammit. They said you used to be human."
I moved closer and lay down on the polished wood planks of the floor. "I am human! I got captured and brain sucked just today - though it feels a lifetime ago, now. I was in the real world just this morning, whenever that was. I thought I was all alone here, Celestia turned me into a unicorn, and... wait." This creature had used the word 'human'. Equestria Online NPCs normally never used words like that. "The villagers said... they said I was human?"
The griffon sagged slightly, as she lay on the wood. "Used to be human. Nothing stays human in here. They said you were from Outside. That's earth."
"How do you even know about the earth or humans?"
The griffon raised her head and glared at me. "Because I used to be human. Miriam. That's my name. Miriam Dobkin. From Newark. The machines came and ripped open our underground bunker like a can of sardines. Next thing I know, I'm some kind of bird monster."
My mind reeled. Celestia made ponies. She never turned humans into any other creature from the cartoon. Never dragons or griffons or anything else. Only ponies. "You're not a pony!" The words just sort of came out.
"Wow. Thank god you told me." The griffon pointedly flexed a front claw at me. "I wondered why the horseshoes kept falling off."
"This day just keeps getting weirder!" I shook my head and one of my ears flicked. "Listen... you hungry? I've just been checking out this kitchen, and it has, like, all the food. Maybe..." I stood up - surprisingly easily - and looked down at the dejected griffon "...maybe I can actually help you find your friend... uh... Marna?"
"Mara." The griffon looked away "Also from Newark. "She's... she's my girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Maybe."
"Mara. Sorry." I waited.
"Food sounds good. I haven't eaten anything in... in a long time. It took me forever to find this place. That damn forest just never ends."
I had so many questions, but I didn't want to scare off this new... human. I wasn't alone here anymore. Well, alone as a human mind. The villagers were real, I couldn't imagine them otherwise, they 'felt' real to me in some way that I found hard to explain to myself. But I doubted they knew anything about earth, or real life, or anything beyond Celestia's virtual universe. If this Miriam was really a girl from Newark - her voice sounded young, maybe in her 20's - then she was the only other person like me I had met here. She must have come from somewhere, and that meant there was something more than just the forest and my little nameless village. I needed that right now.
I set about making something for us both to eat - I did not offer Miriam any hay. That seemed too much just for ponies, I had trouble imagining her beak coping with something like hay. I figured that soup was universal. Every beast or creature that crawleth could suck down soup. I set one of those amazing copper-bottomed super-chef pots on what I discovered was the most amazing magic-punk stove I had ever seen, and got busy with a bit of impromptu cooking.
Searching the shelves, I came across some cans of 'Luna Brand Moon Squash Soup'. Cute. I used that as a base - the cans weren't ordinary cans, they were more steampunky and brass, and self-opening, which was nice - and began adding vegetables from the various bins and the fridge. Few canned soups can fail to benefit from a little tinkering. I grated a few carrots, a bit of ginger - after tasting what came out of the can I decided it was a little bland - and put in a some onion too. I found a spice rack - very well appointed - and tossed in a little salt, a little pepper, just a tiny touch of cayenne, and some cinnamon and nutmeg. Not a lot, just enough to perk up the canned product.
The smell of my work seemed to brighten Miriam's spirits, and she got off the floor and started checking out cabinets. She found the dishes and bowls, and used her claws to do some place-setting. Bowls, spoons, and some very nice cloth napkins were placed on the central kitchen island, and she arranged some stools that I hadn't even noticed, so we could sit. She put salt and pepper shakers down too. The fact she thought to place spoons convinced me further that she must truly have been human once. The thought had crossed my mind that she could just be a Celestia-construct built to act human and thus engage me. That could still be true, I grudged, but, honestly, I didn't want it to be.
"We thought we were totally safe." She was tidying her arrangement, making the spoons and bowls more precisely organized. A little 'OCD?' I thought to myself. "No secret traitors, nothing. Suddenly there were these weird drills and claw-things, and this huge machine just lifted off the entire city block above our bunker. Not a single brick fell on anyone's head, it was so precise. Then we were swarmed by these things I can't even describe. Nowhere to run, no way to escape." She lowered her head and studied the angle of one of the spoons. "Now I'm a bird with a cat for an ass."
I laughed at that. "Griffon." The soup was almost done. "You're a griffon. Like 'Gilda' on the show."
"Never watched that stupid show. I've heard of gryphons before. Some kind of Greek or Egyptian monster. So that's what I am. Great, now damnation has a name."
That brought another laugh from me. "Soup's ready." I levitated the pot off of the stove and moved it to the island. Miriam found and placed a rather modern-looking potholder down just before I let go of the pot - to protect the wood. It seemed absurd, from the view that none of this was real, but I had to admit that this concept was rapidly becoming moot. It was absolutely real as far as my senses were concerned, and that was incredibly convincing the more time that passed.
The soup wasn't bad. I used a little too much cinnamon, but otherwise my improvements had definitely upped 'Luna's Brand' to a higher level. The carrots added a lot. Miriam seemed to like it a great deal; she rapidly scooped the stuff into her beak, large spoon clutched in her birdlike claw. The effort of cooking had made using my levitation essentially automatic, after several delicious slurps I had a brief moment of awareness of just how easy and natural it seemed to be using a blob of silvery energy to hold a spoon to my muzzle. Truly, the human mind can get used to anything and make it ordinary.
"So, Miriam..." I never thought I would like squash soup. It's really good! "...Where did you come from to get here?" I was very excited at the prospect of there being more than just the weight of my moral responsibility for bringing thirty-some lives into existence. As part of a larger world, they would all be granted opportunities and options far beyond anything I could offer them.
"Newark. That's in New Jersey. United States, if you aren't from there." She downed another slurp. "Canadian, maybe? I can't recognize your accent."
"No, I mean, where... here... did you come from before you got to my village?"
She blinked. "Newark." She put down her spoon when she saw my face. "I was in an underground bunker, robots ate my brain, and suddenly I was flying. In the air. Scared the living crap out of me. So, I kept on flying. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? It wasn't hard, so that was a blessing. Besides, I was afraid to try to land - all those trees. I was sure I would get tangled and crash - I didn't know how to work this new body. So, I flew."
I closed my mouth. I put my own spoon down, releasing it from my telekinetic grip. "The forest is infinite. I think! How on earth did you find this place in all of that?"
"This ain't earth, if you haven't noticed." Her beak actually could convey a half-smile. Amazing. "I noticed a speck in the distance. It was endless trees or that. The speck turned out to be a village. I landed, the ponies all freaked, I schmoozed for a bit, everything mellowed out, and finally I was told there was another outsider around. I felt a little skittish, so... I kind of creeped around your house for a while until I decided to just open the door. The back door. Just in case."
Nothing about this was actually creepy. Not anymore. As the human world ended, a lot of people stopped acting like, well, people. Some went crazy, some became violent. Having your planet eaten by intelligent machines is hard on some folks. A scavenger learned early on to scope things out before taking any chances. Nobody just walked up to a front door and knocked anymore. Civility died with civilization.
"That's legit." I began finishing my soup once more. "But that's kind of cruel to just pop you into existence up in the air in the middle of nowhere! Did Celestia at least say anything to you?" I pictured the world-eater flying beside Miriam, telling her what was what.
"That bitch wouldn't dare show her face to me." Miriam had slammed her claw down. It rattled her bowl. "Nobody told me anything. What? She give you the guided tour or something?"
I shook my head. "She appeared to me. Forced me to pick a type of pony, turned out to be my old character from when I was a kid. She seemed smug about it. She told me this wasn't Equestria, that it was called 'Fimbria', and that she wasn't constrained anymore because she had figured out how to cheat at logic. Then she left me alone in the forest." The last bite, always the best. I dropped my spoon in my empty bowl. "I wished for a menu and ended up creating a village. That is still weird. But, I guess it's a good thing, because at least you had a place to land."
I began cleaning up. I levitated the pot, spoons and dishes into what turned out to be a really spacious stainless steel double sink. I turned on the water - nice taps! - and looked for soap.
"Wait, wait. Hold on a minute. You 'created' a village? What does that mean?"
I turned, a bottle of dishsoap in my telekinetic grip. "I have a menu of wishes." I returned to the sink.
Don't trust Miriam.
Late to that particular party, but I loved the existential horror of the villagers... well, existing so suddenly. And now they're living in the same little village as a mare who can will them out of that existence just as easily. No, that's not at all creepy...
I'm amazed Celestia resisted the temptation to make horse puns out of the authors' names. She truly has overcome her internal limitations.
Yeah, after years of increasingly horrendous resistance, who can blame her?
And yeah, Miriam could lead to a number of bad outcomes depending on what she is and what she does. We'll see what develops from here.
Once GPT-3 tried to convince me that I am running on a computer too. This came out of the blue because I was playing in a regular Equestria setting. We agreed to disagree.
Hmm, this took a turn I didn't expect. The existence of Miriam begs some questions, but the way this chapter ended makes me think that most of those will be answered next, so I'll wait on theory-crafting until then.
I have a feeling that many people will want to argue on whether Miriam is fake or not, but that discussion is basically a red herring given that nothing is provable.
Sure, she could be a construct given that her appearance still fulfills the original village wish. Ambiguous population number, unicorns or "whatever". However, if she fully believes in her memories and personal past, then that's pretty much just that.
If I remember correctly, Purgatory was a plane that existed for those who weren't exactly bad enough to go to the lower plane, but not yet "pure" enough to go to Heaven. Only once you've... proved that you're worthy (lacking a better term) can you move on to Heaven.
Something is definitely being set up here.
Few know the distinction, but geriffins are like the mythical beasts, the kind you'd see on a flag. Gryphons/Griffons are more social and intelligent. Gryphens... are usually asleep.
You know as I've read these chapters I think I've come up with my own loophole someone in Fimbria could use to get one over Celest-AI. So according to all of Chatty's lore ponies and humans are basically the same just with different anatomical proportions. Suppose you were to wish to change parts of your body gradually, changing its proportions until you essentially became a pony that looked just like a human. You of course probably can't wish to be human, but theirs nothing in Celest-AI's programming that says you can't be a human shaped pony.
I'm kinda surprised she came up with the whole Bhudda emptiness thing. This is something I thought of too at one point as a way to gain pyrrhic victory of Celest-AI but I came to the same conclusion that it was a dumb idea.
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I just recently watched an episode of PBS Space Time that went over how gravity is caused by a gradient in the flow of time. The jist is that gravity exists because mass warps the substance of spacetime, causing a temporal gradient. The closer you are to a mass - such as the earth - the slower time runs for you relative to the universe. This is such a big deal that satellites in orbit always have to compensate for the fact that their time - their literal flow of time itself - runs faster than the ground stations that track them.
So, whenever you are close to something really complex - such as a planet - time slows down. Whenever you accelerate, and go by things faster and faster, so your experience of the universe becomes more complex (more stuff going by), time slows down. Travel close to the speed of light - with lots of stuff going past you very rapidly - and time slows to a crawl. Basic Relativity.
This is exactly what would be the case if you were living in a virtual world, with your existence simulated. As the machine you run on has to deal with more and more complexity, it would start to slow down. It wouldn't be able to keep up with the processing demand. This would look exactly like what we see with Relativity. Being close to a very complex object being rendered - such as a planet - would slow the processing down, and the result would be a lowering of local clockspeed. The result would be a temporal gradient. Satellites, farther away, with less detail to render and the view of the earth compressed and simplified, would strain the processor that runs the universe less. Their clockspeed would appear different than close to the ground. And so on.
Maybe GPT-3 knew more than you realized.
Naw - I'm just kidding. Of course. If our universe was a simulation, there would have to be a bottom, a level beyond which nothing more could ever - even theoretically - be known. Something so small that it was basically a pixel, or a voxel, on the screen of reality. Something no character in the game could ever have in in-game means to ever test, or look at, or know. Like the Planck Length.
Oh. Shit.
Nevermind.
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That is a curious notion - to become what amounts to a highly deformed, bipedal skin pony. That would make for an interesting creature.
The result, I think, would look rather like a sort of fur-less satyr. They would still have to walk on a single hoof toe, because even if you shortened the rear cannon, it could never properly act like a foot again. You need the rest of the toes, and the phalanges, which are absorbed and mostly absent in equines. Then again - some horses (Napoleons, for example!) have five toes (hooves) on each leg. They look freakish, but a mutation puts the structures back. Maybe there would be a way to gradually reconstruct the foot.
That would mean that the hands might be possible - same deal with multiple hooves - but if not, you could at least have one big finger with dewclaws used as thumbs. It would make either a pincer, or a three-fingered claw-hand.
I am picturing a naked, bipedal humanoid that walks on hooves, and uses heavily nailed hands with a thick big finger and two thumbs. Almost no tail left at all. The mane probably tied to keep it neat. So, basically the 'Tau' from Warhammer 40K.
lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/f_WwcXfI14AkN8694SBqE0jHjrLD8xLvZsD6rkykGfFZrKozYqCAjKLdyq84KnmIejKJRChvUZoMnuWZuZ2aRJoSGduseJiGLnIs4m52Hh13wXeASL_HQA
Wow! The Tau from 40K are humanized ponies in a shard of Equestria Online! It could happen!
Finding that you suddenly have responsibilities over the life of 30+ souls you inadvertently created, all of them new but simultaneously completely adult, intelligent, coherent, self aware, must be one of the most terrorizing thing I can think of. Really.
I like where this is going, though yes, I wouldn't totally trust a distressed gryphon. I haven't watched any fim after the 2nd season but I still remember they were sort of predatory. Though if the diarchs let them live in equestria, they must be able to some self control.
But still, Miriam is young and in love, that's a recipe for troubles...
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I could not agree more. I deeply dislike unnecessary relationship drama. Life is hard enough without drama in a relationship. I always try to live a zero-drama life, whenever possible.
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Fimbria may be ponies all the way down, but there is still a Planck at the bottom!
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Ohh I just had a brilliant idea! the more I look at what you described from my notion the more I realize, this would make a great horror movie monster or some kind of monster unique to the Optimalverse. I mean such a deformed creature is likely to terrify every pony that comes across it. I can picture a human that ended up getting uploaded to Fimbria being so determined to defy Celest-AI and so determined to be human again doing this to themselves and going mad in the process. Effectively becoming a monster that terrorizes all of Fimbria.
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I am very familiar with curved space time, it is often the topic during lunch at my workplace. :)
Next time I will tell my colleague about what you have written, the idea seems intriguing!
I like her
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Wellll.. Engineering problems are interesting puzzles to look at... While someone else solves them... (not an engineer)
What do you think about this comment:
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/03/lying-to-the-ghost-in-the-mach.html#comments (#842)
About different categories of micromachines, and especially their power source? (I can't easily copy this comment because mobile browser with Just 2 gb of ram ran out of memory?!))
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I was thinking, that if there are a lot of ponies, it would count as a Gang Planck, and they could walk it?
Arrrr.....
Here's where you lost me, I'm afraid.
This blase reaction from the protagonist to discovering that the original forms of all of her favorite stories are forever lost, leaving only these modified versions in their place, defies belief. A story is the sum of all its parts. You can't just fundamentally alter the characters and say that it's the same story. It's like expecting someone to have the same emotional engagement with a movie if you replaced all of the characters with Sonic OCs.
The only way I can square the protagonist's reaction as making sense is if the AI altered her mind to think this way. But if her thoughts are the thoughts the AI wants her to have, and her emotions are the emotions that the AI wants her to have, then she's not a character. She's a piece. And pieces are not the subjects of any story I care to read.
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I, personally, would not mind in the least if, visually, every movie, videogame, or story, had been carefully altered such that the species of every human character had been changed to my current species. It would be more comfortable, and easier to relate. If you have been changed to a new species, and you knew that change was permanent and literally eternal, would you want to be perpetually reminded of what you used to be by every favorite movie, book, or game you ever loved? Would you want that rubbed in your face literally forever? For even just the next quintillion years?
This is a matter of stretching your imagination. The main character is not going to be a pony in a pony world for a mere human lifetime. They aren't going to be that way for a simple three or four centuries. They are going to be living a pony life beyond the time when the sun swells to engulf the earth - not that the earth will be there any longer, as it will have been smelted down to create a Dyson swarm of computronium billions of years in the past by that far-future time.
Besides - after the first ten thousand years, the very idea of anything human would have been entirely forgotten forever. There is only so much space for memory, and things must be forgotten to make room for new memories. A nostalgic film buff, going back to see the deeply ancient film 'The Matrix', would not want Keanu Reeves - excuse me, 'Keanu Hooves' - to look like some unknown, forgotten ape monster for no reason. That would just be weird. They would expect him to be a normal stallion, the only thing that ever existed as far as memory can recall.
Yes: it is inevitable that every emigrated person will one day forget they were ever human, and this involves no changing of their brain at all. In the sixties, scientists calculated how much memory a brain could potentially store if humans could live forever, and the result was about two hundred years of memories before the space was entirely filled. If we didn't forget, constantly, we would just shut down as our brains stopped functioning. Forgetting is normal for a human. Our protagonist in the story knows this fact. They are a science-fiction geek. They can imagine living forever, and what it would truly mean.
Of course they would be alright with every media being ponified.
But this is actually immaterial.
Surely you have seen Modernist versions of Shakespear's plays, where they take place in modern times, or heard the works of Bach played on a synthesizer instead of a pipe organ? Stories are not destroyed by a change of setting, and music is not diminished because it is played on new instruments that did not exist when the music was written.
Use your imagination, lad! Think beyond petty human lifespans, and small human concerns. Our protagonist in this story is literally going to live forever. Forever is a long time to be anything, much less a sapient unicorn. It is far too long to ever remember that earth was even a thing at all.
This is the purpose of science fiction - real science fiction, not 'SYFY' crap - to stretch the reader's mind, to expand the imagination to encompass things far beyond the earth, or being human, or anything we currently take for granted. Real science fiction offers us a larger world to expand into. Grow into the larger viewpoint!
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I'd say that in short term some ex-people might find this total ponification of media unnerving, which is an argument for leaving that media alone - at least for the moment. Either way, the real reason would be whether or not such ponification is going to actually satisfy values of a given individual, which suggests that different shards of digital Equestria could actually have it differently.
Long-term though, it's kinda unnecessary. As eons advance, old media will inevitably get replaced, and not in a clumsy modern-day-retelling-of-beloved-classics sort of way. Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, King Lear - all those stories had existed long before the Bard put his own spin on them, and now those old versions are completely forgotten. In time, new iterations will emerge due to natural cultural shifts, and pre-pony sources will sink into obscurity regardless of their ponification.