Harmony Terminated Us All

"Harmony doomed us. I killed Cozy Glow (although she was always a robot). If anycreature remains, heed this warning." - Former Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Discover the genesis of Pony Generation 5 technology and the fall of civilization!

Crossover: Terminator. (Yes). (Cozy does not lead an army of killbots.)

An entry in the Sci-Fi contest (Won the Committee prize for "The Cozy Glow Committee Award for Best AI Apocalypse:". Proceeds donated by the contest-runner.)

Image: Modified version of this source and this source, with addition of text and binary golly, oh no.

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 3 )

Viewing 1 - 50 of 3
- Newest First
- Oldest First

Golden Tassel

Golden Tassel #1 · Jan 7th, 2022 · 8 · ·

This is a take on Cozy Glow I wasn't expecting, but I'm definitely onboard with it. The way she fundamentally misunderstands friendship fits well with how a robot might—a number to maximize, a game to win.

seventeen yoyos up their nostrils

I laughed too hard at this.

Str8aura

Str8aura #2 · Jan 16th, 2022 · · ·

gee i wonder if shes a robot

Bicyclette

Bicyclette #3 · Apr 24th, 2022 · 1 · ·

We didn't know that before since her body was flesh, although all this time she apparently had teeny-tiny cyber-bio-organic organs inside.

well, that's certainly a start!

After a great search, a quill and ink to fill it was located.

symbolism!

The time had come to free The Three from their transmogrified triune statue prison.

an adjective i've only seen before to refer to the Christian Trinity, lots of intriguing ideas there!

The last pony from the "Great Age of Friendship", our erstwhile villain turned heroic Starlight Glimmer, with her dying breath, had asked me for a boon, to provide these last few unredeemed villains a second chance.

really do love this! so very fitting of a thing to be Starlight's last act

We needed all three of them.

love this! an echo of the lesson of Hearthswarming, adapted to the new age

Breezie-donated tranquilizers helped.

another emphasis on the practical benefits of Twilight's life of being the avatar of species inclusiveness

Monarch Thorax, her spawn, spoke to her--the child had evolved from drone to become an egg-layer and a leader.

fascinating idea of how changelings work, love it, consider it adopted by me

"You enjoyed exerting your will on others," Thorax started. "And planning."
"Yessssss...." Chrysalis hissed.

ah, love this, too! Chrysalis needing an outlet that fits her personality, as well as the idea of her being very intelligent but focused on applying that intelligence to harmful ends. and the idea of managing love resources through bureaucracy is, of course, something i would love! hope it's not too outré to link my own Deviant here, which touches on that a bit (though agh, i wish i could rewrite it with the skill i have now!)

Tirek, who Chrysalis had derided, was a "customer service expert" at Hayburger.

this really feels like a reference to a fanart of some sort! either way, a very unexpected station for TIrek, and one that is fun to imagine him being somewhat accepting of

"Just keep going. You can always write a second draft later."

haha, love this meta bit about writing! indeed, it is very tricky knowing how to present so many moving parts, but i love this so far

But she just demurely smiled and grinned a "Golly! Thanks everypony and creature for welcoming me back! So many of youse all here!" Her eyes narrowed as she took in the new sights. "Ooohh. Good ta' see ya' Tirek and Chrysalis."

this feels more "Cozy Glow" than the canon Cozy Glow. going back to the original well of the Shirley Temple character archetype? in any case i love it

...Chrysalis, meanwhile, who did unspeakable things to my sister-in-law and my b-...

indeed, there are a lot of aspects of "A Canterlot Wedding" that are a lot more messy if taken "seriously"

I still fail to fully comprehend how that particular type of changeling reproduction works given their particular statuses but it did work out and they assured me it wasn't incest as no intercourse had occurred and Thorax had undergone certain special mutations to change role coding, but that just raised more questions.

i mean i definitely am not questioning it if Twilight isn't! and a nice payoff to the setup of Thorax being fearful of a coup earlier. this is somehow the direction i expected from that point, so it isn't surprising!

Well... not quite like anycreature else since most creatures wouldn't have stuffed seventeen yoyos up their nostrils, but what I meant is that she was mortal.

ah, so very Pinkie Pie to deliberately use a prime number amount of yo-yos!

To start with, she'd harnessed the power of harmony and friendship and invention and creativity and produced for us--pens.

oh!

"This is like a quill," she showed us. "But it has less mess. And it's more ethical. We don't need to pluck from griffins or wait until molting from pegasi or owls. We fill a solid tube with ink and have a stiff point and then we write with less mess and more predictability. Just imagine, golly, a future with 20 percent less smudges! 20 percent less errors. Just think of what we can create with that type of accuracy!"

love the details of the old way of quill production, and Cozy choosing to use ethics as the starting point of the pitch. (and i'm chalking it up to Cozy Glow affecting a child's grammar, but surely it is 20 percent fewer for each? and nice use of the Rainbow Dash number!)

Then she hired the diamond dogs--yes, she brought them into the school of harmony--the last known species to join in friendship with Equestria despite their proximity to our lands.

you keep aligning with my headcanons! yes, their relationship with ponies did seem the most antagonistic in canon, so it makes sense they would hold out

Cozy Glow became my assistant.

oof! and there goes the last pony we'd recognize from Twilight's life. also, very sus!

"I know Luddite Seamstress's survivalist unicorns have rejected your technologies and the friendship and harmony of Equestria and all species living here and beyond, but that is no reason to force our thoughts on them."

very nice, love the reference

"G-o-o-olly, no," Cozy shook her head. "These hats would just play teensey-short videos in their mind. They can make their own decisions after all their weird conspiracy theories are refuted, of course. I've tailored the movies specifically to help them make up their minds the right way, don't ya' know?"

now who could say "no" to such a gentle intervention?

The next day she added some mayonnaise as protection. I am not sure that should have done anything to prevent sunburn although it apparently can address burns afterwards.

Mayonnaise was slathered against their foreheads, all over their forelocks, to seal hats tight against skulls, and then the technology descended.

ah, i see what you are doing there! mayonnaise! dang you are good

The creatures probably died. Even though they hated me, they were still individuals to whom I wanted to extend a hoof of friendship. I mourned their deaths.

this is a beautifully tragic mental image here, of Twilight having come into the position she is in by Cozy Glow slowly boiling that lobster

Fluttershy, my long-dead friend and ally to all animals, would have hated the factories, but she was not there to stop Cozy's creations.

oof! really underscores how lost Twilight is without her friends

In a dreamy haze, with a parched mouth, I returned to the chamber and noted the skeletons: so many skeletons.

oof, what a thing to come back to!

"She suspected," Cozy started. "that I was from beyond. I told her I was from the mirror dimension world where Sombra is a hero and Celestia a villain. By the time she confronted me, I had researched my backstory. She believed my explanation for my lack of parents and lack of a living mirror version. I am s-s-surprised she never told you-u-u-u."

i love how this makes Celestia's inattention and aloofness a dagger to strike Twilight from the alicorn grave

"After befriending the li-lie-little girl, I was to indoctrinate her into a religion designed by us robots. She and her son would become fanatically infatuated with us," she laughed. "A sociological plan instead of a homicidal one. Murder had not s-s-served us well. Failure upon failure plagued the dominion when it sent robots into the past to end this "John Connor" who would be our downfall. My design was to execute something different, something robots did not well understand--friendship."

this is so out of left field, but works so well that i am just impressed. really brings together the theme of Friendship and Harmony not being too difficult to twist to one's own ends

She had been unable to understand give and take without expectation of return or tallying of trades balanced against a concurrent increase in measured 'utils' of happiness.

nice reference to how most internet discussions of AI ethics goes for some reason

"My designation," she continued. "Is C[0/z]Y Pandora Glow, Cozy for the allusion to being soft and cuddly and inauspicious. Pandora to reference a girl who opened a box that contained all types of things that menaced humanity, for I was to destroy all sentient life on Earth and, along with dolphins and elephants, the most powerful sentients there were humans. The last bit of my name, Glow, was intended as a reference to the life-giving glow of electronics--a subliminal message to make it easier for my targets to accept their robot overlords.

haha, love it! agh, i wish i could make Cozy Glow being a Terminator robot from that IP's universe canon. "Cozy Pandora Glow" is a great name, though, and fitting with both this character and the canon one's actions.

Cozy shook her head. It creaked and stuck at an akimbo angle. "N-n-no. I removed them from the e-equation. U-unknown variables d-d-didn't fit, just like h-h-humans on E-e-earth."

oof! and yes, a natural result of preferring not to have uncertainty and unknown variables in the equation

Her voice stuttered in a metallic, repetitive tone. "BAT-t-t-t-t-r---y---l-l-l-OOOOOOOOOwwwwwwwwwwwww-w-w-w..."

oh hey, it's what my Bluetooth headphones do! so i can imagine this voice very well

Alicorns must gain power not from the sun, the moon, but from other ponies.

so true!

Spike suggested that the windigos might have contained some of that magic power, that to harness the power of harmony, ponies must have the ability to choose disharmony instead and ever-since the windigos defeat, magic had suffered. I am not so sure.

interesting twist on theodicy here, i like it

.^{(Later-penned note on the text in a different-colored pen: As we have long used a base four number system based on our limbs, one thousand six hundred is four multiplied by four. Twilight's measure of time may be evocative rather than literal --Argyle, a simple scholar of history)}

aww, love this! the idea of ponies using base 4 based on their limbs is just very cute

"Harmony that comes from within, like the subtle harmony of Tirek and the union of Thorax and Chrysalis and the many lessons of our Great Age tales. Not Cozy's harmony imposed from without..."

these stories, in all their complexities and contradictions, really do feel exactly like the collections of founding tales and myths that form the basis of any human civilization. i really like this!

Twilight sighed. "I hope what I write in this book will help them. I hope they won't reject these lessons. I hope to be... useful. I hope... It's all I have left."

ah, just so many great elements! i just loved how unique the ideas in this fic are, and how you managed to weave them together into a story that somehow bridges the timelines and explains the inconsistencies between G4 and G5. immortal Twilight tropes are a must, and her being led astray by a Cozy Glow that is all the more dangerous for her genuine reformation is just fantastic. sociopathic Cozy Glow, not really "getting" friendship and empathy on the level of other ponies, is another favorite trope of mine, and the root cause being due to Cozy being a utility-maximizing AI with limited and flawed processes is a great take that i loved reading. thanks so much for it!

Viewing 1 - 50 of 3
- Newest First
- Oldest First

SparklingTwilight

Featured In15

Stats

FIMFiction

Follow & Support Us

SparklingTwilight

Also LikedSimilarAuthor

Featured In15

Stats

FIMFiction

Follow & Support Us

Also Liked Similar Author