Utopia
Cozy Glow P.O.V.
"Hey Alise, Where am I?" I asked, now growing nervous.
"You are now in room 328,106 in Residential Sector 314. The floor you are currently on is floor two, and the next train will arrive in twelve minutes," she replied, with much more information that I needed, but without any info on my location other than the fact that I was probably a building.
"Wherever I am, let me go you primitive barbaric savages! Do you know who I am?! I know your backward species doesn't respond to reason but I am not somepony you wanna mess with!" I said in an attempt to intimidate Alise.
"You are of sound mind. You are free to leave," she replied.
"I am?" I asked confusedly, but received no answer in return.
I made my way outside the kitchen and towards the exit door. Hesitantly, I put my hoof on the white square and to my surprise, the door actually opened, sliding behind the wall. The hall was completely white, and extremely bright as well, done in the same theme as the bedroom. On the wall in front of me, slightly further down, the designation 'SECTION 60193' was written down in big, red letters.
At about the same time as my door opened, the door to the room in front of me opened as well. To my relief, the door gradually revealed a scrawny centaur with a red mane, and he looked just about as relieved to see me as I was to see him.
"Tirek?" I asked in surprise.
"You're here too?" he asked and I eagerly flew up to him, "How unfortunate."
"Do you know where we are?" I asked him.
"The last I remember, we were kidnapped by what was probably a ragtag rebellion of slaves," he replied.
"Greetings, aliens! I am a human! My name is Dr. Keifer, pleased to meet you," he said in a Germane accent. It was indeed a human, but he was too well kept. Its hair was short and tidy, unlike most slaves who had long and messy hair. It was also way to clean, unlike most humans that were messy and dirty. In fact, he looked cleaner than most ponies. And his supposed 'doctor' title together with his lab coat, oh… it almost made me laugh seeing a human in a lab coat, and I would have laughed if the circumstances were different.
I immediately flew and hid behind Tirek, "Please don't rape me, I'm just a little filly! Tirek, protect me from it please!"
"Slave, I am the one and only Lord Tirek and this here is the Cozy Glow. You have probably heard of us, and I would highly recommend you and your gang of rebels release us and subject yourselves to our command. You may have run from your previous owners, but that does not mean you are free. I will be your new master now, and any resistance will be met with punishment," Tirek told the human confidently.
"Excuse me?!" he said, clearly offended, "First of all, I would never rape someone, that's completely disgusting and all rapists deserve to be executed. Secondly, I am not a fucking slave, and I do not have an owner. Do you just look at random people and assume that they're slaves?! And that brings me to my third point; it seems your primitive civilisation still participates in the cruel and barbaric practice of slavery."
It was at this point that I could no longer hold in my laughter, and it seemed Tirek felt the same way. The both of us burst out laughing, while Keifer's expression looked more confused than anything else.
"Your kind is full of rape! You literally have… haha… a-a concept that… haha… the s-strong have unlimited dominion over the weak! You were… hahaha... literally s-slaves with slaves, and the problem got so big, and your practices got so disgusting that we had to separate the males and the females!" Tirek burst into laughter before continuing, "And even then, you know what happened? The stronger males started raping the weaker ones, and the stronger females did the same! You're animals!"
"And he's denying being a slave! All humans are slaves! Imagine a human doctor, how hilarious is that?! And that lab coat only makes it even funnier!" I stated, and we burst into laughter once more.
"Excuse me?! Is this some form of humor unique to your species?" he asked, "Because the last humans died a million years ago. We're all that's left."
"Have you been living under a rock?" Tirek asked, the laughter gradually dying out, "You animals are everywhere, and you filthy creatures are only good for being used as slaves."
"Th- That's not possible," the 'doctor' said, "The rest of humanity is dead. We're all that remain. If it weren't for the radiation, the asteroid would most definitely have finished the job."
"What are you talking about? I think this one's crazy, Tirek," I said, "Let's just leave."
"I apologise, but I can't let you do that," he said, walking towards us, "Not until you answer my questions."
"And you, a human, are going to stop us?" I asked him with a sarcastic tone.
"You may try, I dare you," Tirek said, "If not we're just going to find our own way out since you're clearly out of your mind."
"You coming?" he asked as he walked past the mad human, and I followed him. As expected, the human was indeed intimidated enough by Tirek's threat to not stop us when we walked past him. Or, at least, that's what I thought.
From behind us, he spoke once more, "Hey Alise, mark subject one and subject two as fugitives."
From all around us, Alise's voice echoed once more. "Subject one and subject two marked as fugitives. Commencing isolation procedure," suddenly, a few meters in front of us, a large black steel door began closing. One half of the door came out from the left side of the wall, and the other came from the right side, both meeting at the middle of the hallway faster than we could react.
"Fugitives subject one and subject two have been successfully isolated within section 60193. Peacekeepers may proceed to the designated area to apprehend the criminals," Alise said in her trademark monotonous voice.
"Thank you Alise," the human said before turning its attention to us, "Ready to answer my questions now?"
Tirek began walking towards the human with murderous intent, "Let us go you - " he was stopped in his tracks as water began sprinkling down on him from above. It looked like regular water, but it caused him to scream and begin to spasm uncontrollably. When the stream of water eventually ended, he laid sprawled out on the ground, his body now emitting steam.
"Electrically charged water," the human smiled and began making grand gestures as it spoke, "You see, Alise is programmed to protect regular citizens from… criminals. When she identified you as a fugitive and saw you walking towards me, with us being the only ones here, she immediately recognised you as a threat to my wellbeing and took the appropriate measures. If I was a class three citizen, she probably would have suggested I run into a room before locking you out and contacting the peacekeepers. But since I'm a class one citizen, she deemed it too risky to allow you the chance to harm me, hence all the buzz buzz."
He smiled, even wider this time, "Now, ready to answer some questions?"
"Fine, I'll answer your questions, on two conditions," I told the human.
"You are in no position to make demands," the human said, flashing a grin once more, "But I'm curious, so I'll humor you."
"The first is that once we're done, you let us go," I said, "And the second is that we do an exchange of information. You ask a question, then I ask a question."
"As I said, you are in no position to make demands… but I want you to get to know us just as much as we want to get to know you. And I have no intention of harming you and your friend anyway," it replied.
"Let's do this in one of the houses, shall we? The rest of them just some up and are still going through the briefing so I'm sure they won't mind," he said.
"Not like we have a choice," Tirek replied, still laying down on the floor recovering.
"Excellent! I'll get tea started!" he said cheerfully before merrily making his way into the room that I was just in.
"What should we do?" I asked Tirek.
"You heard the 'doctor'," he said, using his fingers to make air quotes, "We have no way to escape, and he can summon magical electric water any time he wants. He's human but he's clearly capable of powerful magic. In my current state, I will be unable to beat him in a fight. But don't worry, I'll catch him off guard and steal his magic, we just need to have patience."
The both of us started grinning evilly, before letting out full blown evil laughter.
So, when will they realize they dont have magic?
Oh just wait when you find out there isn’t any Magic to steal.
10910135
Next chp
well, I can’t wait to see Tirek try to steal his magic only to find out that there is none.
so i guess "equestrian" human have Magic in them
and then The Humans give him more Electric "magic" water
10910139
also the room is likely bugged
10909998 So, basically like the old comics version of 'radiation', where it turns some people into green rage monsters, makes other people stretchy, lights some people on fire, makes others invisible, and can also grant spider powers.
That's just plain old magic dressed up with a buzzword.
10910173
No I mean what the ponies call magic is actually a process of manipulating harmonic radiation.
10910168
Alise sees all
Where did Dr. Keifer come from? We see Tirek, but the doctor just appears out of nowhere. Otherwise, really liking the story so far. Eagerly await more.
10910204
He was notified of their awakening by Alise. And also Utopia is constantly under mass surveillance.
Cozy Glow's Diplomatic skills are is clearly a sight to behold (especially after seeing what happened to the Guard Dog Cerberus) she would be great as the Pony Ambassador for the United Nations, since her public relation skills are phenomenal in Uniting the Human race for a common cause.
Maybe Tirek should be given his own position as well.
Edit: Although I really can't blame them with the society they have grown up with.
Yeah. Good luck with that, Tirek.
10910250
I might take that into consideration. I know one of the new nations would definitely jump at the chance to hire them.
Well that's gonna be awkward when he tries to suck out magic that isn't there
Well ..... I have this feeling that from what they will learn, it would seem nuking Canterlot would be a good choice
For Tirek telling on what ponies do would be very beneficial, or he would think at first
Nuked Canterlot and other cities,species that enslave humans, etc =weaker enemies and easier magic gathering and revenge
Buahahahahahaaa......🤣
10910250
Okay, that is clearly ridiculous! Considering how Cozy is being very rude to a obvious powerful human race that can just SHOOT her for her dumb attitude against us. She is luckily that she is a bratty kid, or that we know "kindness" to our prisoners for information.
Anyway, we all know you are only just joking. And that is clearly sarcasm you have just said. Besides, cozy glow is still too young ( And still a stupid bratty kid ) to be a diplomatic ambassador.
10910289
I already have a hilarious scene planned for that.
10910293
Aladeen wouldn't even need to know that they enslave humanity to nuke them. The fact that they can't fight back is enough for him to nuke them into oblivion.
Why would he do that?? Because it would be funny to see their reactions since their primitive species hasn't even discovered gunpowder yet
is no one else worried about the title chapter “GLaDOS of Utopia”?
10910250
That's actually not that odd. Consider that she grew up with massive racism against humans. Far beyond what we had in the US during the 1920s. Over here, Blacks were considered just above livestock and were so looked-down upon, they had to have their own drinking fountains. The thought was, 'would you want your kid touching something they just drank out of? Who knows what he could catch.' Still, Whites in the US at least believed that some blacks ... someplace had good families and that some town, somewhere had one or two nice ones. (Sad, I know.)
Cozy grew up with an outlook twice as bad as even that. In her opinion, humans ARE livestock and rather than being just one step above animals, they ARE animals. Ok, you could say, hey, she saw humans kick some serious ass and torture the mutt. Yes, she did. But what she saw was armored, masked troops. Easy to forget they are humans. What she is facing now is without question a human. Those preconceived beliefs wouldn't connect the two incidents together. They just don't compute, and when things in the world go against what you fundamentally know to be true ... human nature simply ignores it.
Now what I find odd, isn't their behavior, but the humans.
What Head of Security, worth a crap, lets two unknown alien creatures go unsupervised around a scientist I wouldn't trust to put his pants on correctly. Yeah, we have the A.I. but it's a machine, and any real military or police officer with the 30-year experience a Department head requires, wouldn't trust a machine as far as he could throw it. If he did, he would never have got the job.
I'm hoping the Doctors sneaking around.
Monk
"Yes, I will eat the Fear Turkey." -Illua
10910104
Hm no... the bar is QUITE lower. All it takes is a Wiki trawl...
10910341
Not including this in the story but basically the doctor insisted on going alone. And besides, with those electrified water sprinklers the ability to isolate anyone, Alise is more than enough to deal with what they presumed was a mini flying horse and a scrawny centaur that couldn't break a toothpick.
10910340
Just a creative title lol. It's not an implication of any upcoming events, think nothing of it.
So is magic an energy created by radiation before it disappeared from earth?
I wonder if magic won't work on pure, unirradiated,modern humans?
Let's say every creature and humans that were left behind that lived when radiation changed things and gave them the ability to use magic but at the same made them vulnerable to it.
So that would mean that modern humans aren't affected by magic or at least would need a much bigger bigger dose to have any effect.Llike for humans to feel a tickling it would require an alicorn level of power
10910370
That's actually... A really good idea! I hadn't thought about it before, but now that you said that, I just might do it.
"You are now in room 328,106 in Residential Sector 314. The floor you are currently on is floor two, and the next train will arrive in twelve minutes," she replied, with much more information that I needed, but without any info on my location other than the fact that I was probably a building.
wow, she must be out of her mind if she thinks she's a building XD syntax jokes are the best
10910375
wasnt there a mention of humans in cryosleep being hit by a small amount of chaos radiation?
that might give them some magic resistance.
10910233
Ah, no - I meant in terms of sentence structure. It's kind of abrupt. Like, did the Doctor come out of a door or something? Was he just standing there the whole time? He's just suddenly "there" without anything preceding it. Even something like "a door opened from the side and a human walked in" before he begins his introduction might help.
Like this:
Makes it sound like Tirek just said that line, and was saying he was Dr. Keifer. Yes, it's clarified afterwards, but it sounds off.
But yeah, that's just my nitpick. I hope Cozy get's her comeuppance, that rude little shit.
Anyway, did humanity bring anything else with them, such as embryos of livestock or other animals? You know, to repopulate the world after everything presumably going to shit? Otherwise I'll feel bad for all of the doggos and cute kitties that went up in smoke lol.
Good! *breaks a mug* Another one!
Ah, such ignorance. Humans don't have magic, magic was harmful to humans but it seems no longer. I find it very funny how they think humanity are tge savages when their dealing with a species that literally ruled over the Entire World
stupid stupid tirek
This is going well. A pretty nice characterization for Tirek and Cozy here, I can believe it given the setup and everything. Looking forward to what you got for us next.
One million years of exposure to Chaotic Radiation is bound to have an effect on the Utopian
Cannot want to see the effect.
I wonder it will going to be total magic resistance, partial magic resistance, and my favorite, the Utopian is going to be full of raw magic that when Tirek going to suck it, he will have a total magic overdose while the Utopian barely feel a thing
10907381
I think we come at a disagreement.
The average military personnel to citizens ratio worldwide is around 26.2/1000
that would equate to about 15,267 military personnel for the Utopia. That's not a lot, so in this instance, we will triple that. That is 45,801 military personnel. You might not think that's a lot, but regarding the population given in the storyline of a total 400,000, that would be a significant amount.
Now, why is this a problem in the first place? As you pointed out, 160,000 people are not military personnel, and that's more than enough people to sustain a living within the utopia. You might be somewhat correct; but there's more factors to this than just that.
You are saying that Utopia is able to exist with only 40% of its population filling roles other than being military personnel. You can say big numbers like 160,000, but in the total scheme of thing's that equates to less than half of the population. Especially in a doomsday event, you would require more people than simply 160,000 people capable of doing all sorts of things.
You've also said they have a total of 50,000 nuclear warheads. First off, you are failing to understand how nuclear warheads work. They are not an end all be all, and they are not as easy to get a hold of no matter what your power is. Nuclear warheads need maintenance every couple of years, and the 'reaction products' within their shells do expire over time. No matter how you preserve them, they will likely expire and become useless, or have a faulty accidence and decimate the entirety of Utopia.
Let's also talk about how much space 50,000 nuclear warheads take up.
50,000 Nuclear warheads equates to 1,750,000 megatons, which equates to 1.75 trillion tons.
One Ton = about 600 Square feet if thinned out properly, or 12,000 BTU. That translates to about 37,663,567 square miles. In simpler terms, this is almost 4 kilometers. The military district of this Utopia is 8 kilometers, according to your story, and this would take up half of that. Not only that, but since they aren't cared for (I don't think a robotic A.I would be able to maintain these for that long either) it would end up being defunct, useless space taken up, or the worst nuclear accident to ever be recorded.
You've also written this story as if the human race is as nice as can be. I'm sorry, but I can't expect that 400,000 people would not object to having their families stay and die on the surface while they live in paradise. And let's say that is the case- then why don't we unite them all under a singular banner instead of dividing them into different nations?
And, if there is going to be infighting and sabotage as you said, why? They've essentially chosen their 'leader' which is the President, despite there being other presidents and leaders, and they all seem pretty contempt with giving away their power. In the real world, that wouldn't happen, even in a catastrophic situation such as this. Countries regularly start wars and get their own people killed over literal idea's.
Let me jump back to the population thing once again just for a moment: You are saying that 160,000 people, despite having the very very best of their class, and of varying professions, would be able to restart humanity as it once was and start an entire new civilization. I don't believe that's the case. You are talking about a process that would take hundreds to possibly thousands of years. Instead, you chose an overmilitarized approach to the concept, saying that they would need soldiers in case of something bad.
That is understandable, but there is a reason why only 26.2/1000 people on average are in the military. Society would be unable to function. You are subjecting this to become a military dictatorship, which under these numbers, would most likely happen. I'm sure that when they were building Utopia, they were also thinking about extinction from within? Humans are better at killing eachother than anything else that can kill us.
Let's pedal back now. In case of the 50,000 nuclear warheads, if one were to go off and they launched one, don't you think that this would react terribly with the already present radiation (the two new radiations) that are still present on the planet? Usually radiation can pass through itself, but radiation (especially heated radiation after the event of a nuclear warhead exploding) can aggravate particles and cause detrimental effects to the environment, and with these two new radiations (which one of them is presumed to be the essence of magic i assume) this more than likely will be much more detrimental.
The bottom of your current description also comes off as... well, not great in general. The way you've worded it makes it sound like we are just one gigantic powerplay and we have all control over everything, and that we are 'not to be messed with.' Which may be the case, sure, but it just sounds awful.
To end this;
I don't think you should have to research every tiny piece of what you write. If you had to, I'd be definitely in the wrong for the stories I've written. But again, the phrase Suspension of Disbelief comes into play, and this just doesn't seem plausible from any standpoint, and I can tell you why I think the story has come off that way to me.
You've written a story in which Utopia is built in the literal near future. We can base that off of our current technology and advancing it a little bit to make up for the future years. You've written a sci-fi story with Humanity as a powerplay, and you tried using the current era to make this sci-fi Utopia. If you were much farther in the future (not extremely far, mind you) you'd probably have an easier and more believable story on your hands since we can believe that we might have access to those things in the future.
The story is fine, but it's suffering from a lot of things. I know you want to justify these things; but sometimes there isn't a way you can get your audience to understand what you're trying to aim for. I myself am fine with the story; and these two new chapters, and hey the story has literally only just begun.
But you've started off with a gigantic description attempting to go into detail, and then have defended yourself within the comment section trying to provide proof as to why these criticisms are not necessarily invalid but 'defunct' in terms of how you are going to write the story. I'm interested as to what happens next, but I can say that I will likely have more criticisms going forward.
Cozy: You humans built your home under Tartarus.
Keifer: Nein. Your people put Tartarus on top of us as we slept.
Cozy: Whatever. Either way, you are all trapped here just like the rest of us.
Keifer: How so? We handled the guard dog.
Tirek: The doors are locked from the outside, fool. I only escaped once because some fool opened the door and let Cerberus out.
Fantastic story....go on.
10911005
Firstly, Utopia is an authoritarian regime. The world leaders are basically elected dictators. But that doesn't mean it can't be luxurious and almost worry-free as well.
And as for why these people were fine leaving their families behind, that's coming at a later chapter.
Lastly, with the nuclear bomb thing, I'm just putting down the fact that they do work due to future technology. And also, nukes do take up about 1km of space, but not 4km because:
1. They invented new ones. Of course, around half of these are still Tsar Bomba's, but the others are much smaller.
2. They are not all on flat ground, they're stacked on top of each other as well.
10911044
Concerning the measurements of the nukes: I used an estimate of 35 megatons. On average a nuclear weapon is atleast 20, but they can be at 10, and the Tsar Bomb ranges in at 50 megatons. I was also being generous with the estimations - Those estimations are if the distance was thinned out instead of using the actual mass of the nuclear weapons.
If we were to use actual measurements it would be much larger than 4km. And in order for nuclear weapons to be smaller with more megatons of force you'd need to make it extremely dense- much more than it already would be. So, if we were to estimate that all of the nuclear weapons were the smallest variety of 10 megatons, you'd still have about 3.6km in size without calculating by mass and instead by estimating the 'thinness' of the actual size.
If they were stacked upon eachother that would change the sizes, yet the workload would equal the same as digging out 4km. We can assume that if the mass of the nuclear weapons would take up 4km, and we were to instead half them on top of eachother inside of lay them out, we would still have the same size but in different measurements. Instead of being vertical, it could be displayed vertically and horizontally along columns.
And the whole future thing- yeah I'm not going to fault you on that. As I said, in reality there's an expiration on nuclear weapons, but it's impossible to make a story like this without leaving that part out, which is fine. And I'm looking forward to reading the next chapters.
10911023
One nuke powered lockpick coming up
10911023
either break down the door or break down everything around it
10910924
mabey but i dont think they wouldnet have gone to sleep without utopia being able to resist it so mabey utipia was made to resist it
10910320
I feel otherwise. Power doesn't mean instant win or domination, even against a weaker enemy. Humans don't even know about the outside world, and information is power. You're letting cannon knowledge affects what you think you know. For humans, this child could very well be the leader of an entire nation. Cultural differences would not stay the same just for humans.
Even to the humans, any kinda harm or execution to these two could mean war, and they at all cost can not risk war with a nation or nations they don't even know about.
Rudeness aside, humans can't do shit unless they want to risk the last of humanity. For all humanity knows, Equestria and their surrounding nations have their own nukes, and they can continually bombard their location until they're wiped out of existence, the last hope of humanity shattered from the paper cut of a single child.
And I have doubts the humans can rapidly deploy fast enough to create any real defense, especially if the landscape of changes sufficiently enough from the millions of years. If sufficiently advanced armies began immediately to march upon their singular location. Humanity may have resources, but can it be resources gathered up for who knows how many tens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of years?
And even so, humanity risks having valuable allies. Despite likely having all the resources they need, extra resources for anything and everything they might lack would help a lot.
Those are only a few, of the hundreds of things humanity risks. They, for any reason, would not so recklessly risk war or allies for something so trivial, so pointless, or meaningless such as what you're suggesting unless they had no other option or the pros outweighed the cons such as a mass causality incident. Even so, humanity takes literally immeasurable risk by such actions.
10910375
Really? Huh, it's a common thing in HiE with the human being an anti-magic source. Tis unfortunate anti-magic capabilities won't do shit against magic unless it's a pure magic spell. Can't do anything against a train levitated upon your head, doubt even an alicorn with a full shield could stop that.
ps: Can anyone spot the reference?
I'm already liking this
10910192 Riiiiiiiiight. And how does this 'harmonic radiation' work, if not by magic?
10911243
It just... Does.
Oh thank god the german guy stopped with the stupid "Ze zis und ze zat"
10911255
Ze lol