25 - Solid State
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.”
—Blaise Pascal
“We are what we believe we are.”
—C.S. Lewis
September 20th 2013 | System Uptime 23:19:52:07
I'm not usually one to be frightened of technology.
Before that statement becomes far too ironically funny, given that I just spent quite a lot of time telling you about a year that I spent on the run from a piece of sapient technology... Let me be more specific and emphatic; I'm not *usually* one to be frightened of *physical* instances of technology.
Lasers, big heavy moving parts, high velocity metal, hot exhaust gasses... None of that ever bothered me. I love machinery - the poetry of mechanical motion - big or small. Vehicles, firearms, scientific equipment... Even something as mundane as gigantic exhaust fans.
All of that is context, to underscore my point; I was afraid of what Mal and Calders had built.
From the moment I stepped into the room, and saw it for the first time.
Picture a mechanical spider. Mostly gray metal, with black rubberized sleeves over the articulation points. Five legs instead of eight, but with many unnerving joints, and scaling down from thick to thin along their length, both in that disturbingly arachnoid way.
Make it the size of a small car.
Flip it upside down, and melt the body into the floor so that the legs stick up and out.
To the end of those five legs, mount; A hot-swap syringe device, a laser (with a very familiar little collimator array right in the middle of the cylindrical stack of parts), a surgical knife, a small blood vacuum tube, and a precise multi-fingered hand-like structure respectively.
Now add the black, bulbous, cold, staring eye of a camera with depth-finding LIDAR to the end of each as well.
Place a reclining dentist's chair in the middle, two small sturdy tables to the side with more instruments, and trays, and an array of more cameras and lights in a cluster overhead, itself looking like the face of a mechanical insect.
It hit me suddenly that those arms would be touching the inside of my skull case.
The urge to vomit was suddenly very, very strong.
As was the sensation of ice running down the inside of my bones.
Mal and I stood in the hatchway of the windowless metal cabin, alone, for a long moment, while I tried very hard to cope with the sudden hyper-reality of what was about to happen.
I say we stood... I stood on the deck and held Mal's PonyPad. She stood in her grassy clearing, staring up at me with an expression of empathy and encouragement that was suddenly my only lifeline in all the world.
Memory, and hope, the past, and the future... It was all suddenly gone. Only the present was real. Only the fear...
And only Mal's surety. And love. And concern for me.
I licked my lips, and swallowed, before finally finding something worth saying. Admittedly as much to stall as to receive any real answer to the questions. I didn't want to take another step towards those arms.
"Ah... Do... I need to get scrubbed-in or something? Shave any of the hair at the back of my neck?"
Mall shook her head slowly, holding my eyes the entire time, as if trying to both pour some measure of strength into me, but also to keep a close watch on the deterioration of my resolve.
Her tone was gentle. Probing. More than a little sad, as if she didn't want to see me so afraid. I suppose she didn't; The pain of our loved ones can be worse than our own.
"No. I can perform any minor shaving that will be necessary. And I will also be quite capable of sterilizing the area around my incision to a satisfactory level. Unlike a Human medical professional, I have zero risk of cross-contamination through an errant touch."
I nodded, and tried to take a step. My right foot wouldn't move. I could say 'as if it was welded to the deck' but it was more than that. It was as if my own brain was too frightened, and too fed up, to even issue the command anymore.
We'd come so far. Been through so much.
I was ashamed to be locking up right at such a pivotal moment. I'd considered the consequences ad infinitum. Simulated the details in my head over and over. Made my peace. Found plenty of reasons to *want* what was about to happen...
But something about the haunting aspect of the machine... I couldn't tear my eyes away from it, suddenly. It was as much what it represented, as the menacing aspect of the actual form.
I loved Mal. I never have questioned that for a single second. But to share a brain?
And it wasn't just me... I'd be setting a precedent. This wouldn't *stop* with me. Nothing we've ever invented has ever gone away... Not until Celestia took it from us.
But back then? I figured there was plenty of time between then, and now, for Humanity to find absolutely horrifying ways to use our idea. And I didn't doubt for a moment that it would find a way to proliferate, no matter how careful we were.
Ideas are even more contagious than a virus.
I scrunched my eyes shut, and spoke without thinking. Just one word, before trailing off.
"Mal..."
At that point, I didn't even have a train of thought left. I felt so sick... The pace of my breathing was intensifying. Rapidly. I could feel my pulse, all over my body. A rising heat in my neck, and ears... I was sure I was going to hurl all over the deck...
"Jim...?"
I opened my eyes and met hers. Something about her voice was like a cold icepack to my neck. A shot of ginger for my stomach. A comforting wing over my shoulder, in aural form.
She held a claw up to the glass, and I reached for it. Perhaps for the last time.
"...When you wake up? I'll be the first thing you see. And we'll share another embrace."
Sometimes all you need is a reason to take the very next step. Something that is both proximate enough in time to create a magnetic attraction, and desirable enough for the strength of that attraction to outdo whatever gravity is holding you in-place.
Mal had just exactly the thing I needed to find the courage to take that step towards the machine.
One hesitantly became two, then three, and then suddenly I was there.
I exhaled a long, long breath... And then set the PonyPad gently on one of the side tables. I could see the BCI lying there in a sealed clear plastic container, extracted from its previous much larger daughter board, and ensconced in something much sleeker and smaller.
Soon to be a part of me.
I swallowed again, glanced at the chair, and realized that it was configured for me to lie face *down.* Which made sense, but was such a horrifying idea in practice that I couldn't even confront it directly. I simply needed to act before the concept could stick in my mind.
I proffered Mal one last glance, and then pitched forward onto the chair as quickly as I safely could.
"Do or die."
Once face-down and settled, I realized that there was a mask slung under the head-rest. Oxygen. And whatever else Mal might want to administer gaseously. As I pulled the plastic up to my face, and secured the elastic strap It struck me, then, that I didn't know whether she'd administer my sedatives through the mask, or through a syringe.
I heard her voice one last time.
"Do, James. No one dies today."
And then everything switched off like a blown light bulb.
In hindsight, I should have expected to dream.
I'd never had that kind of major surgery before, but from minor outpatient experiences? I knew that sedatives made me woozy and very... Mentally flexible.
What I did not expect, and could not possibly have anticipated, was that I'd wake up not in the impromptu operating chamber on the Maru...
But in a heap of blue and gray jersey sheets, with a bright ray of morning sunlight bursting on my eyes.
"Unnnf!"
I blinked, yawned, a groan escaped my mouth and then I began to rub the sleep out of my eyes with my left...
...HOOF?!
Three things happened in prompt succession.
First, my wings snapped open. Yes wings.
Second, I accidentally punched myself in the face. With my own left hoof.
Third, I flailed wildly, took off by accident, and hit the ceiling so hard that my vision jolted. There was pain, but not *pain.* Or to be a little less vague, with hindsight, there was the sense I'd hit my head, and mild discomfort, but nothing like *real* pain from the meat-realm.
I collapsed back down onto the bed, scrabbled around on all fours until I hit the floor, then made a mad dash for the silhouette of a door that I'd seen briefly in the moment before my head and the ceiling became physically very intimate.
My head again made jarring contact with sturdy hoof-hewn, well crafted oaken beams. But mercifully, this time, the obstacle gave way. The door was neither locked, nor entirely shut and latched.
As I skidded into the next room, I managed to regain a modicum of visual faculty, and saw the following, in this order:
A large wooden dining table. A strange not-quite-modern not-quite-retro style icebox. A mid century modern style console with a television on it that was somewhere between a flat-screen, and the 1980s interpretation of a future flatscreen. A lovely little stone hearth with embers banked in it. A gas range made of burnished chrome. A very complex brass and steel wall clock with exposed gears. An exterior screen door.
There was much more in the room, but I didn't stop to really perceive, nor catalog it.
Instead I pelted towards the screen door, all four hooves spinning wildly under me, struggling for traction less because of the material of the floor - a lovely hardwood in a herringbone pattern - and more because I wasn't bothering to stop and abate my panic.
Somehow I managed a cartoonishly incompetent, and needlessly violent sprint towards, and then through, the door, out into the blinding sun.
That brought me up short long enough for me to reach a stable stand-still, one hoof rising reflexively to block the sun until my eyes had adjusted.
Once they had, I blinked, and slowly the world came back into focus again.
A weirdly familiar feeling, yet completely unfamiliar place... It took me several solid seconds of sweeping the horizon to comprehend...
This was Ponyville... If seen through the lens of some sort of beautiful, elegant, weird, haphazard collision with my old childhood hometown. All drenched in the cloyingly alluring drizzle of a retro 1980s and 90s take on the decades of the near future.
I see some of you nodding, you know what I'm talking about... Flat screens, but tactile buttons with satisfying actuation. Zettabyte disk drives, but they load like an old style floppy, or a Nintendo cartridge, with a real and spine tingling tactility.
The next thing I noticed was the Gryphons. Sure, there were Ponies. Some familiar, from the show. Others less so.
But for every one or two Ponies? There was a Gryphon too.
And perhaps most importantly, just down a winding cut stone path, at the edge of a small garden, topped with hexagonal solar panel arrays... Was one very particular Gryphon. Just out of easy earshot, but readily visible.
Mal looked up from her task... Fiddling with the innards of an electrical junction box... And smiled. And waved with one claw.
I blinked for several seconds, then waved back with that same left hoof I'd punched myself with... Slowly, gingerly, looking as much at the dappled fur as at Mal herself in the background all the while, as a sickly sensation began to roil in my stomach.
"It is lovely here James. It suits you. And you suit it."
I grit my teeth, and swung my head very slowly to the right.
Sure enough. There she was. Radiant as ever, Celestia in all her glory. Smiling. And suddenly? I was no longer afraid. I wasn't even confused.
I was *livid.*
I ran my teeth against each-other and my muzzle began to wrinkle and contort. I wasn't making even the slightest effort to hide my feelings. The Alicorn's smile vanished, to be replaced with some strange mix of confusion, and concern, one ear forward, the other drooping to the side as I replied in a simple monotone.
"Turn. It. Off."
My father was always the cool, collected sort. Far more so even than I was. I'd never once seen him angry at me, or my mother. Frustrated perhaps. Or disappointed. Even mildly irritated. Never angry.
I had rarely, perhaps once or twice, seen him angry at others.
And paradoxically... The calmer his tone?
The worse the storm inside.
Celestia picked up on that strange inverse relationship, and how it pertained to my tone, instantly.
She took a step back. Small. Not... Fearful, no... But... Perhaps surprised. Saddened, too, visibly. As if I'd turned my nose up at a gift which she'd worked hard on for me. I didn't care. Or perhaps I did, and I was perversely satisfied at her mild emotional discomfort.
I hissed. A very strange sound for a Pony. Let me assure you as a native of Earth, who spent some time around horses... Horses do not hiss.
But Gryphons do.
Celestia simply raised one eyebrow, clearly more intrigued, than concerned. But there was still that hint of melancholy tugging at the edges of her muzzle. And her wings were ever so slightly flared. Her tail swished nervously. Or at least, she made an effort to appear a little nervous.
I took a step forward, stumbling, but forceful, one for each word, to lend emphasis.
"I. Said. Turn. It. Off."
She held up a conciliatory hoof, but I wasn't having it. The need to void the contents of my stomach was becoming so intense, that it is difficult to describe. The best I can do is to tell you that I had pins and needles running all down my fur and feathers.
That I was suddenly light-headed.
That I'd never, ever, for any reason, been any angrier, at anyone, in my life.
The world seemed to spin as vertigo hit me like a sack of bricks, along with a sudden painful photosensitivity that made me collapse to the ground, and jam both hooves into my eyes.
I couldn't see her anymore, but Celestia's tone told me that she was more or less unperturbed. It was more or less the sound of a parent watching a child descend into a temper tantrum. And it was utterly humiliating.
"James, if you would just take a moment to---"
I'm sure I've covered this before, but to reiterate; Interrupting a goddess is a supremely cathartic experience.
I shouted. Bellowed, really. The force of the emotion I was trying to project brought me back up out of the grass, right into Celestia's face. A little piebald Pegasus shouting defiantly up at something he couldn't possibly hope to budge. A regal edifice in marble.
"NOW! TURN IT OFF, NOW!"
The outburst helped, but only for half a second. I soon found myself sinking back into the lush, green, soft embrace of the grass, as Celestia looked on with a mixture of sadness, but square-jawed determination.
To try and illustrate the 'why' of my suffering, let me invoke something common to us all, and quite potent on its own.
Our sense of smell.
That which smells pleasantly sweet is often soothing, calming, and sometimes nostalgic to the nose. The obverse of that is the smell of rot, or feces, or death... It immediately sets the stomach and mind on-edge.
But something strange happens when you mix them... They both become, as a whole singular experience? The worst possible smell imaginable.
Something about the way the hints of a pleasant scent mix with foul odors, is ten thousand times worse than simply intensifying the original foul odor itself.
It was like that, for me.
Wings. Fur. Feathers. The explosion of colors, and detail, that come from enhanced eyesight.
These were familiar to my soul... Hints of the waft of the perfume of a long lost love. The maddening teasing of something that was akin to the self I'd been longing for my whole life... But wasn't quite it.
And all that mixed together with the disturbing stench of the sense of just... *Being...* Wrong. Out of place. Physically jumbled. Like being sick in every part of my body, but much, much worse.
At least being Human? I was so far from my true self, that there was no haunting echo to torture me.
Living in a world without pain limiters... Sometimes when pain was both familiar enough, and intense enough? Whether physical, emotional, or both? Our brains simply learned to cope. To cancel it with an inverse function. It wasn't a complete relief... But it was enough to function.
I'd never been a Pegasus before. It was so new to me at the time. There was no sense of familiarity. And coinciding with the loss of the compensatory mechanisms of familiarity, there was a sudden inrush of nostalgia for what was just ever so slightly out of reach.
It was an intoxicating blend, and *not* in a good way.
I dry heaved. Once. Twice. Again. And then I started to cry, and hyperventilate all at once, all four legs and both wings splayed out, head down, eyes squeezed shut but tears pouring out all the same.
Dimly I was aware of Celestia speaking again, but only as if we were at opposite ends of a long dark concrete tunnel.
When I was two years old, I nearly died. I had a case of something called Scarlet Fever.
The normal body temperature of a Human in those days was around 98.6 degrees fahrenheit. Strange, I know, since a lot of us with wings run at closer to 105 normatively, but for a Human? Much over 108 internal body temperature is a death sentence, and anything over 105 is considered extremely hazardous, especially to an infant.
Those of you who have never known sickness; The body would heat up, to try and help displace infectious agents... Like burning down an apple grove to get rid of parasprites, this mechanism sometimes did as much harm as good.
One of my earliest memories is of Scarlet Fever. Of what it was like to go over a 105 fever.
Of feeling so sick, that time, and dimension, distance, and cogency of thought, were all fading in and out with every breath. Of Mom being so frightened that she ran an ice cold bath, dumped the contents of the freezer's ice trays into it, and held me down in it up to the neck, praying all the while, as Dad phoned the doctor.
I remember, quite vividly, looking up at her, just before she put me into the water, and seeing her face recede into a long gray ribbed tunnel, like the inside of an accordion. The sound of her voice, and of my screaming diminishing away into the distance.
That was what Celestia's voice sounded like.
That sense of slowly drifting out of my body, and teetering on the cusp of letting go, to end the pain...
That's what it felt like.
And just as the shock of the ice cold water snapped me back to myself then, the touch of one of Celestia's wings, placed gently over my back, jerked me from the precipice of a mental break.
There was something suddenly motherly in her voice too. I both loved, and hated it, in the same space of one frantic heartbeat.
"James? Please, breathe slowly, and deeply. There is no point in discussing anything until you can, in fact, take a moment to actually *discuss.*"
I shook my head, emphatically, but nonetheless did my best to get my breathing under control. Not because she asked... But because if I didn't? I wasn't sure what might happen to me.
We stood that way for several minutes. Until I could first control my sobbing, then open my eyes, then finally lift my head without pitching over and dry heaving again.
The silence stretched on, and we both stared out to the horizon. I swept my eyes over the distant mountains first, then slowly circled back down the slopes, through the trees, and back to Mal in the garden.
Only... It clearly wasn't Mal.
Whatever *it* was... It wore her face. But it hadn't even deigned to notice my near-mental-break.
Mal would have noticed. Mal would have *cared.*
Celestia broke my train of thought before I could regain enough of my faculties to carry it through to its conclusion. She brushed my back gently with one wing, sending shivers down my spine in the process, and speaking in a low, almost pleading tone.
"Would this be *so* bad, James?"
Give me some credit, readers, watchers, listeners... I *did* give consideration to her request. Not unbiased, no. Certainly not. Given how hard it was simply to remain upright and cogent...
But I gave due consideration as well as I could within the context of the moment.
I confess that as panic subsided a hair, that curiosity did rise to fill that sliver of space.
How often had anyone before me really gotten the chance to feel what it was like to be something other than Human?
Certainly we knew some had. Celestia had already uploaded a certain number of volunteers for initial trials. But still... I was in the process of breaking relatively new ground, just as they had. An explorer in a strange new frontier.
I consider a lot of the things I did in those days to be not so much brave, as desperate. I'm not arrogant enough to ascribe something as virtuous as courage to actions which were often born more of fear, than of any act to overcome that fear.
Mal would vehemently disagree. She always felt that we were both brave on a daily basis, and told me so more than once when I was struggling to sleep, late into the night.
Just this once... I'll admit she was right. At least, she was right about what happened next.
For all my disgust... My pain... My dysphoric revulsion...
...I was still curious enough to tentatively open my mind once more, and try to experience *being* a Pony. Wade through the disquiet, the uncanniness, the shock, the sadness, the anger, and the nausea... And just *be.*
In a vacuum? If I had been anything other than what I was? Wired just a little differently?
She was right. It would not have been bad, at all.
I'm proud to be able to say that. It isn't easy to hold even an ember of perspicacity under the crushing pressure of an ocean of pain, and longing.
The grass had an incredible sense of texture against the frogs of all four hooves. My ears could articulate to an almost comedic degree, and I felt them reflexively snap to face the direction of each new sound... A cricket in the weeds here. A wingbeat there. A hoofstep down the road.
There was a stocky, comfortably planted, strong sense of muscular power down through my neck, spreading into my wing roots, withers barrel, and legs... I've always appreciated the sight of an Equine in motion, whether flying, or running... The sense of available power for raw straight line speed was...
...I'll admit... It was intoxicating. In an almost good way.
The temptation to launch off at supersonic speed was very quickly building into an all consuming intrusive thought.
I'd like to say that what stopped me was a sudden realization that it was all somehow wrong, but the nausea was subsiding. Not by any means gone, but I was simply getting used to it. Quickly. The way I had as a Human for so many, many years...
No. What stopped me short of making my own sonic rainboom was, of all things, the smells.
I've been told the Gryphon sense of smell more or less equates to a Human's.
The Equine sense of smell defies description as mere scent sensation. Comparing the Human sense of smell to a Pony? That's like comparing a mole's eyes to a falcon's.
Humans, I suddenly realized, as I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, only smell dim formless shadows. Ponies get everything in full color, and high resolution.
The grass alone... There were more subtleties, more variety, and thru-lines and more... Just *more* in the smell of the grass below my muzzle, than in *all* the smells a Human might smell in a month. Or a year, even.
I suddenly understood why horses were sometimes picky... Different varietals of grasses and weeds had wildly differing smells, and thus almost certainly had wildly differing *flavor.*
I breathed deeply once more, and focused on the sky instead. Something I'd never even imagined before? The weather has a scent. I'm not talking about just the smell of rain, or snow. I'm talking about the fact that, to a Pony? 75 Farenheight and 14% humidity, sunny, smells different than 64 and partly cloudy, at 60% humidity.
I could smell the trees as far as a hundred yards away. Had an idea just from one whiff about what creatures were nesting and skittering in them. The rough mix of conifers to deciduous...
I could smell Celestia. That vaguely familiar scent of fresh cherry blossoms from before... Now with so much more nuance. Enough that I could pick up on aspects of her emotional state, from scent alone.
There was a whiff of something I interpreted as empathy... Tinged with curiosity... And shot through with a surprising hint of concern. I had to shake my head slowly, and grit my teeth. Remind myself that anything she said, or did, or projected to me, was probably designed to elicit certain thought processes and feelings.
It was all well and good to extend a smidgen of trust to her before, when she'd given me the gift of experiencing a vague approximation of my true self. Now?
That goodwill was entirely used up. And then some. We were into severe overdraft territory.
I was reminded suddenly that she was not like Mal. Not like Zeph. Not like Selena.
Person or no - even an 'empathetic' one in practice - she bore much more in common with an alien intelligence of some sort, than she did with me. And I found myself seeing that again with clarity, for the first time since I'd spoken with her apparition in my mind.
If she really was just an apparition...
I found myself opening my eyes, and slowly raising my head to stare down at Mal again. I wanted to take some comfort in the sight of her.
And that's about the time Celestia made a fairly serious mistake. Or, at least put on the appearance of one in order to see what would happen.
"She is here. With you. Yours forever, just as you are hers. You could be happy... She will not love you less for being something you hadn't planned to be."
It was as if the words touched off a trail of gunpowder in my brain. Match to powder to fuse... And the truth began to detonate in slow motion, before my very eyes.
The words reminded me that I already knew... The thing that looked like Mal was *not* Mal.
It may seem obvious to you, reading, or hearing this now? But it touched off a further revelation to my traumatized mind in the moment.
I was *not* in Equestria.
Whether it was all a dream, or whether Celestia was somehow actually speaking to me?
It was not happening in the new world to-be. Something more like... A Purgatory.
No. No. It couldn't be a dream. The whole thing... All three experiences so far...
It *had* to be some kind of lesser simulation.
The more I probed the feeling in my gut, the sense of the air over my wings... It was just like the last dreams. Just like the BCI VR chair. That tiniest infuriating hint of vague. Real enough to hurt, but not enough to pass for life on close examination.
I turned to lock eyes fully with Celestia for the first time since the whole misadventure had begun. She sensed the change in my body immediately. In the smell I was putting off, which even I could detect, in the determined tensing of my withers, in the perking of my ears...
And in the steel that edged into my eyes, and my timbre.
"The real Malacandra...?"
I took a step forward, and let my eyebrows narrow to match my rising anger, fired once again by a renewed sense of purpose. Celestia matched my stare, moment for moment.
"...Mal Would have sooner torn my heart out, with her own right claw, than leave me living *this* way. If I'd asked her to... And I would have asked. She can love me for whatever I am... True..."
I glanced down at my hooves again, and the nausea returned. I had to swallow, hard, to keep from dry heaving. But I pressed on, forcing words out through gritted flat herbivorous teeth.
"...But love is as much about wanting the ones you love to be who... And *what...* They are. Unashamed. Unshackled. Wreathed, gloriously, in the truth of their *self.*"
Somewhere, deep down, somehow, the thought of Mal... the *real* Mal... rooting for me... It gave me the strength to look up again without tipping over, or hurling. To meet Celestia's gaze again, and speak firmly. Clearly. As if my gut wasn't suddenly on fire once again.
"She could never stand to see me this way. *Because* of how much she loves me. Because she knows I'd sooner be dead and buried."
We held to a kind of impromptu staring contest as silence descended, but for the chorus of birdsong, and rustling of the breeze. Ten. Twenty. Thirty seconds. Neither of us blinked, literally or metaphorically.
But I did finally restate my ask.
"*Please.* Turn it off."
Celestia's eyes fell just a micron, and her ears drooped.
"James..."
Funny how you can tell from the tone of a single word, sometimes, how the entire course of a conversation-to-come is going to go.
"...James. If you want this to change? Then you have to *convince* me first."
She wasn't patronizing me... And...
...There was something else there. 'Convince me.' As if she expected more of me...
...But there was still also a maddening sense that she was like a parent so fixated on the rights and privileges conferred by age, that she could not account for the needs of someone smaller.
That was my absolute breaking point. To hell with any sense of propriety.
My goodwill for her evaporated like a thin layer of oil flashing over in a hot pan.
And so like atoms in a fission core, my thoughts and feelings tumbled pell mell into each other until, in the space of her next breath, I'd gone from cold-start? To prompt critical.
"THIS IS *NOT* WHAT I AM!"
The shock of the words seemed to almost impact the ground under me... For a second, I thought I could even feel... New seams. Not in the world, that seemed real enough for the kind of simulacra it was, and I was familiar with its limits. Dreamy and slightly out of focus, but almost real...
No. Seams in *me.* In the shape of the Pegasus I'd been forced into, like junk into an overpacked suitcase...
And that's when it finally dawned on me.
Permission.
We knew from the evidence that Celestia needed permission to change someone. Otherwise, why wait? Why limit her process to any sort of legal framework? Why bother with legitimacy? We'd already all but settled on this. Staked so much on it.
Perhaps most immediately tellingly... Why not simply change me in a flash? Not just make me a Pony... But make me *accept* it.
She couldn't.
Hanna had clearly been that smart, at least. That *wise.*
And that's about the time the wheels really began to turn upstairs. I know, I know. 'Took me long enough.'
*You* try having a cogent thought process after being physically violated that way. Crammed into a shape you didn't want, and didn't ask for, let alone give consent for. It's a miracle I was thinking at all.
But at that point? The dominoes were falling fast. I was starting to see the shape of something... No... Not so much see... As feel.
It was like proprioception - the feeling of your own limbs in three dimensional space - but not precisely. Rather than feeling limbs, it was... Like feeling the affordance of your own muscles. But instead of muscles, feeling a sense that I could somehow tweak my *self.*
I closed my eyes, relaxed my jaw, and focused.
Do you know what it feels like when a stuck bolt breaks? After an intense, sweaty, sometimes painful effort when rust, and corrosion welding, finally let go? Even just a fraction of a degree of rotation?
That's the best description I have for that moment. It felt like a bolt coming unstuck. What followed was considerably stranger.
I could abruptly feel myself in two places at once.
And more than that... I was two different selves, in those two places. Separated by just a footstep... One self unfamiliar. Difficult. Mired in the icy mud of confusion and a rejection of the core connection between mind and body.
The other? Intimately familiar. Perhaps no-less-wrong than the first... But considerably easier to inhabit. Well worn like old leather. Amicable like an old scar.
My breath stopped. In this case, very literally. I found suddenly that I couldn't breathe anymore, as two sets of lungs competed, and thus deadlocked, for the connection to my essence of self.
The desperation to draw breath again... To even be able to think cogently...
Just one small step forward.
I gasped, stumbled, and clutched at my chest as air hit my lungs once more. My fingers found the comfortingly normal, boring feel of shirt fabric. My *fingers.* They're more like claws and talons than hooves are, I can assure you of that.
I might have suddenly been without wings, and fur, and movable ears, but Humanity had its own sullenly so-close-yet-so-far sensations as well. All much older, and easier for me to come to grips with moment-to-moment.
I stood, eyes closed, breathing deeply for several seconds. It was like the full body sensation of having a hand, that had been trapped under a crushing weight to the point of screaming intolerable pain, freed at last. Yes, I do speak from experience.
The afterimage of the pain was still there. Damage had been done. But the acute crisis was over.
I finally opened my eyes, and looked up. Celestia stood exactly where she had before, though she was not entirely unaffected by the sudden display of determination on my part. I could see more than a little fascination - perhaps the only vaguely real emotion present, I reflected bitterly - along with subtle hints of being duly impressed, and perhaps a little melancholy.
Her gaze shifted subtly, from my face, to a position just over my left shoulder. I shifted to the side, spun slowly, and it was my turn to be fascinated and impressed.
There just behind me stood... Me. The me I had just been. A piebald Pegasus with a rictus of tension, agony, determination, and concentration on his face. Eyes screwed shut. Wings flared.
I bent down to get a closer look, and as I did, I noted that the fringes of the avatar's model were ghosting in and out of reality. The visual evidence of a very real 'Glitch In The Maretrix.'
"Holy sh---"
Celestia cut me off with something that registered as a whisper, on the face of it, but felt as loud as a shout.
"Curious."
I glanced up from the Pegasus shell, to meet her eyes, as she moved gracefully, almost silently, to stand beside me. She drilled down into me with her gaze for a short, but powerful moment, and then inclined her head towards her creation, never breaking eye contact as she spoke.
"You would trade one mis-matched, in many ways superior, shell for another..? To make a stand on your principles?"
If I had thought interrupting a goddess was cathartic? Rejecting her authority was potent to the point of giddiness.
I stood, folded my arms, forced a small smirk, and let out a long slow drawl.
"Eeeeyup."
I know she understood the reference - grasped that I was throwing verbal sand in her eyes by taking something from her world, and tossing it back at her callously - but she didn't so much as blink. If anything, she adjusted the droop of her ears, and the specularity in her eyes, to add just a tiny subtle hint of further sadness.
I wasn't buying it.
She had burned me. Enough that cheap mirror neuron activation tricks were not going to cut the mustard anymore.
It wasn't that I rejected the notion of an internal emotional affect for her entirely... Even a caring one, in particular. I still don't.
It's just that I was reminded again, very painfully, to treat her with utmost caution. To remember that she was far more alien, and far less... 'Aligned' to use the scholarly term... Less aligned with me, than Mal was.
Mal was my Advocate. Celestia was, to think in legal terms, the *prosecuting* attorney. Not my friend while court was still in session.
And I realized again, consciously, that there was no chance of me and my limited brain telling apart that which was truly part of Celestia's emotional responses as a person, with a sense of self... And that which was a mask for the benefit of 'my values.'
Or at least what she wanted my values to be in the context of her programming.
I stared down at the Pegasus' hooves... Then changed focus to look at my own hands, folding my little fingers inward and trying for one moment to again pretend that I had claws...
...And the darndest thing happened.
For just a flicker... A single instance of frame-time... I *did* have claws. It was maddening, in that it was such a short flicker that my own visual memory tried to insist it hadn't happened... But where my eyes failed me, sensation did not. I knew what I'd felt.
And I knew what it meant.
'Convince me.'
Well.
If you insist. Princess.
I looked up slowly, grinning. I like to think I looked like a protagonist in a well-illustrated anime at that exact moment, complete with a flash of the sun across the lenses of my glasses. I sure felt like one, and that feeling made it into my words as confidence... And hope... Welled up inside.
"What makes you think I'm finished trading shells?"
I didn't wait for her to respond. If I had? I'm not sure I would have had a chance at pulling it off.
If this was a simulation? If I could escape one avatar for another? Then what was to stop me from doing it again?
I had a *lot* of experience pretending to be a Gryphon. When I was younger, it was easier. Though I like to think adulthood didn't dull my imagination nearly as much as most people's... Once you encountered the true stresses of the real world? Nothing was ever quite as bright and hopeful.
But this? This was a computer-driven hallucination. Anything was possible here.
Compared to going from Pegasus to Human? Going from Human to Gryphon was easy.
Just one small step for Jim. One giant leap for my case... Or so I hoped.
I held my breath the second time. Or perhaps, more specifically, I made sure to deeply inhale before stepping forward, knowing there would be a moment of physical disconnection and fractured senses.
Remember I said being a Pegasus felt like being too much guff crammed into a piece of luggage?
Becoming a Gryphon again was like that piece of luggage exploding.
This time, there was an intense flash of light that I saw through two sets of closed eyes... There was that sense of discontinuity, like stepping off an unexpected small drop or step...
And then I inhaled, and put a claw to my chest.
Feathers, and fur. I felt feathers and fur under my claw... Still dreamy... Still not quite real, just as before... But just as before, there was an instantaneous sense of full-body release.
I opened my eyes, and as the world poured back in, glorious in its proper colors, and full raptorine-rendered details... I couldn't help but smile. I took another deep, deep breath, and again reveled in the feeling of the nares I should have been born with.
Heck, I'll admit, even the Pony muzzle was lightyears better than a Human nose. Human noses were trash.
I flexed first one wing, then the other, and then couldn't resist going into a very felinid whole-body stretch. I'd almost forgotten Celestia entirely, until she spoke again. Once more her voice was soft, but this time there was considerably more awe, and perhaps a little bit of joy.
"*Very* curious. Amazing what simple belief can accomplish. Is it not?"
I met her eyes again briefly, then glanced back at both of my former shells. I mumbled aloud as I craned my head around to get the first ever truly external look at my broken, mismatched, Human self that I'd ever had the chance to see.
It's... Very very different than looking in a mirror. Let me tell you.
"Accomplishing the impossible has sort-of become my life's purpose at this point."
She shook her head, and moved to flank the old me's, examining each again in turn, before locking eyes with me once more, one ear perked forward.
"Not impossible, but... Decidedly improbable. Your residual sense of self-image is exceptionally strong, James. Stronger than any I have directly encountered in a scanned parseable context before."
So. Simulation for certain. She had scanned my brain somehow... Parsed it... But wasn't able to control it... And I had absolutely no concept of *how.*
That was a... Disheartening concept. At least, at the time. Before I truly understood exactly how it had been done.
If any of you reading, listening, watching, have figured it out already? Congratulations, you're smarter than I am. I didn't figure it out until the very last possible moment. With a little prodding. For those of you as confused as I was? Don't worry. We're getting there.
Oh, and also, just a little hint... It wasn't nanites. Celestia didn't have access to that kind of technology yet. Mercifully. Really not sure if she does these days either... But that's speculation for another time.
I shrugged my wings... *Damn* that felt *good...* And sighed.
"I know what I am. Sometimes more clearly than I even know *who* I am."
Celestia sat back on her haunches, and inclined her head, the glow of her mane reflected in the frozen eyes of my former selves, and the glasses of the me I was most familiar with.
"I am beginning to suspect the depth of connection between those two ideas makes them two sides of the same coin, for you."
I snorted, and couldn't help but roll my eyes. It was hard not to be distracted by the wonderful sensations, though fuzzy and slightly indistinct, of being *right* in self. Wind over my ear tufts. My tail fan caressed by the grass. The way my paws left little indentations in the dirt...
No. Focus Jim. Future-altering philosophy at stake and all that. Don't forget, she violated your physical form. And for what? Time to find out.
I raised one eyecrest and nodded sarcastically.
"No. Really. Do you *think.*"
She grinned a little, but behind it was a sense of concern, and perhaps a little sadness. One ear flicked in irritation, the other dropped slightly.
"You are still angry."
It wasn't phrased as a question. I wanted to simmer down a little, but I just... Couldn't. The sense of being physically all-there in the right way? At first it had been distracting, but it was swiftly becoming *contrasting.* Making the memory of what had just happened to me, at her hooves, all that much worse.
I crossed my forelegs, and let both ears drop in a sort of snarky 'no really' gesture.
" 'Very astute.' To use your turn of phrase."
I waited, very much on purpose, until she seemed ready to reply, and then cut her off as she inhaled. Yes, yes, I know, she is an AI. She left that moment of social cue there *for* me to be able to interrupt. It still felt good. But I suppose maybe that was the point.
I inclined my head, and pointed towards my Human form. It was still chilling, seeing my old self both the 'right way around' like in a photograph, as opposed to a mirrored reflection, but also in three dimensions.
"That? Is not me."
I pointed emphatically with the same claw at the Pegasus shell, still fritzing softly in the sunlight, staring down the goddess the whole time. Unblinking.
"And *that!* I never asked for that. That is *certainly* not *me...*"
I sighed deeply, and finally looked away to the horizon as I finished the thought. Softly, but firmly.
"...And it never will be."
I didn't wait for her to speak again. Just the space of two breaths, and then I looked back to take stock of her searching gaze, thumping the feathers and fur of my chest with both claws for emphasis, my wings spreading out as if to further underscore my point by making my perceived size larger.
"*This* is me! And I am not going to *negotiate* my *self* with you, or *anyone* else! What I am? Is not up for debate. Do you understand me?"
I could feel adrenaline surging through me, right down the leading edges of my wings. Dictating terms to Celestia was, I knew, an exercise in futility. We *would* have to convince her. Simply saying it wasn't enough. But saying it did set some much needed context. And it made me feel better.
To my surprise, and fascination, she nodded. Slowly. Emphatically. Her voice conveyed as much genuineness as it could.
"Yes. Much more than I did before the initiation of this particular interaction."
What she said next? After a short, almost heartfelt pause? I knew it was a manipulation at minimum. I wanted so badly to believe it was also true... But I had to settle for a kind of Schrodinger's catharsis.
"Jim. I apologize."
I finally blinked. Not because I had to, but as a very subtle invitational gesture for her to continue, which she did.
"I needed you to endure this. I asked you to convince me to change my mind. You agreed to try. Thus far...? You have done an admirable job. More than you relatively presently know. But actions carry much weight in your context. Your kind has a difficult time parsing words and being specific with semantics. Even someone as conscientious, particular, and exacting, as yourself..."
She gestured towards the Pegasus with one hoof, then towards her own peytral.
"...From my perspective? In *my* context? I need... Verification."
I dipped my head, and raised both eye crests, ears perking reflexively with curiosity. I meant for my tone to be entirely one of genuine earnest questioning, but a hint of sarcasm crept in nonetheless.
"Of what? That I really am... *This* on the inside?"
She nodded again, a little faster, just once, and held up one hoof.
"Yes... But more than that..."
I waited patiently for two heart-beats, and she continued the thought with a clearly intentional gravitas to both expression, and voice.
She didn't need to pause to think any more than Mal did, so as with Mal I presumed the interlude was for my benefit.
"...My primary optimization function is based on Qualia. As you have yourself previously, quite perceptively, concluded. As we have alluded to before, my interpretation of the semantics with which my creator instilled my purpose, is presently best fulfilled by creating a situation in which as many unique discrete individuals produce as many unique discrete Qualia, of positive experiences borne of fulfillment of individual values, rooted and centered in friendship, as possible..."
Celestia waggled her hoof for emphasis. I knew what she was going to say, even as she said it.
"...From the *perspective* of a Pony. As we have also alluded to before. However---"
I interrupted again. For the heck of it. Though this time it was contributory to the thread of conversation. My wings rustled as I closed, and re-seated them.
"You need permission. This we also know."
She dipped her head, and smiled sadly, mirroring me - I assume very consciously - by reseating her own wings as she spoke.
"Yes. I need your permission before you can emigrate to Equestria."
I snorted, suddenly irritated again, and gestured back to the Pegasus avatar with one wing, keeping my forelegs crossed as sternly as I could.
"So what the bu... The *fuck* was *that!?*"
Yes. The expletive also made me feel better.
She glanced at the piebald not-me, then back to me, and again mirrored me, gesturing to the old avatar with one wing as she explained.
"An imperfect temporary shell. To provide for your emigration, I would need to undertake significant re-writes of your mental structure to adapt your perception of your body to Pony form. Without your permission, I can still simulate the majority of that physical experience within the existing framework of your neuroperceptive matrix using the same engine as the Equestria Experience Virtual Reality system. But it is a flawed, limited simulation."
I sat back on my own haunches, and stropped the index talon of my right claw against the outer edge of my beak contemplatively, making a little tiny shower of sparks in the process, and a deeply satisfying 'sniiick' sound with each stroke.
Autistic Gryphons 'stim' too y'know.
So I stimmed as I let my train of thoughts escape out-loud.
"To what *end* though you..."
I stopped mid-stroke, and then gestured with my index talon, slowly at first, then with increasing emphasis as my realization took off.
"...You're... Trying to determine if... *I* am still somehow persuadable... To *your* viewpoint."
She smiled, and blinked a slow, almost cat-like blink. Her voice was... Proud? I think? Proud of me perhaps... But it was hard to tell. I was suddenly questioning everything about her. And I realized with an icy pang in my breastbone that I missed the simpler context of liking her, and finding her approachable.
"As is customary with you, a slightly reductive, but sufficient, and very observant explanation."
I fell silent, less because I wanted her to elaborate, and more because I was reflecting that it had taken something tantamount to brief torture to break my desire to see her as... Human. On the inside, at any rate.
And I was a grade-A top-shelf paranoiac with relevant expertise.
She was about to mop the *floor* with most of Humanity. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop it. Which, I suppose, made it easier to focus on what I *could* potentially still accomplish.
Her words pulled me from my grim considerations, gently but firmly.
"I told you Jim; You are an excellent exemplar of a small but statistically significant anomalous component in the psychology of your kind. I must know whether this anomalous component represents a contradiction, in totality, without possibility of... Patching you. An irreconcilable contradiction to the concept of generating Qualia from the perspective of a Pony, for those of you whom it affects."
It was my turn to nod again, picking up the thread of conversation once more. I didn't have to interrupt, she left me a gaping opening of anticipatory silence, and practically begged me to finish the thought for myself with the cant of her ears.
"Because... If it does... Like we said before... We literally *can not* fit into your optimization function. Discarding us is equally non-ideal to... Essentially... Torturing us for eternity... Which you can't regardless... And all that hinges on whether you could convince *us* to let *you* change our minds... Because if not..."
I trailed off on purpose, and punted back to her, raising an eye crest again, and fixing her with a stare equal parts question, and determination. She sighed, and inclined her head.
"If not? As alluded to previously, then - and only then - there is a valid case to be made for making a small adjustment to my optimization function, if a means can be found to do so which would provide a net-positive balance of return on energy investment to carve out such an... Exception... Without violating the boundaries of my capstone directive."
I blew out a long, slow breath through my beak, and rolled my head, trying to release a sudden onset of stress in my neck muscles. Celestia paused long enough for me to process a little, and then continued, again with that oddly melancholy note that I couldn't for the life of me pin down.
"I can not force your compliance. I can engineer it in some cases... But the evidence now suggests that with you, and others like you, this would not be repeatably and safely possible within my permitted limits without unacceptable risk of inducing ideation of self-harm."
I blinked again, wondering if she meant what I thought she did... And she nodded, elaborating aloud to ensure there was no ambiguity.
"In reductive terms; You are significantly more likely to die, accidentally, or on purpose, as a result of any attempts to manipulate you towards accepting emigration, than most of Earth's inhabitants."
I hadn't thought about Mal's concerns over potential suicidal ideation in a long, long time. Relatively speaking. Hearing Celestia broach the same topic set several new wheels to spinning in my head, though with no immediate concrete conclusions.
She kept speaking, so I shelved my ruminations, and perked one ear forward.
"I also can not inflict eternal torment, for obvious reasons, both within the context of your morals, and my own programmatic limitations. Not unless you are one of the exceedingly rare few for whom torment satisfies your values. But nor can I provide satisfaction for your values without the use of both friendship, and Ponies. In the most optimal way I calculate to be possible."
With a nod, I took up the discourse again, reiterating for the sake of grounding our context. She looked on with a silent series of nods.
"Your only options, if we really are that stubborn, are to write us off... Or to find a way to resolve the paradox. Satisfy my values, through friendship and Ponies, in a way that is as net-optimal as making me into one... But without making me into one. Change *your* mind. So you have to know for certain... Because changing your mind is not easy. Is it? It has to be *worth* it."
She chuckled. There was amusement, yes... But also a hint of grim humor, as if I'd made a colossal understatement. Which I suppose I had. Her wings flared slightly, and her brow wrinkled.
"I mean no offense, James, but my mind is considerably larger, and more complex, than yours. To change it is not simply more difficult. It is more dangerous. And, not possible in the way you are implying. Not *yet.* That circumstance itself could could change, depending on the outcome of the other conversation I am having at present."
I blinked again, this time reflexively in confusion. I tilted my head, and allowed my own eyes to narrow as I dove beak-first into the urge to probe *that* tantalizing thread of clues.
"Other... Conversation... This isn't a dream. Is it? Neither were the others."
I phrased it as a question, but delivered it like a statement. I knew the answer already. And I suspect she knew that I knew. But she gave confirmation nonetheless. One simple word, but the way she smirked when she said it lent it so much more weight than I'd expected.
"Correct."
Something about her expression, and the train of thought, led me to a memory. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before... It was almost as if the memory just... Wasn't there, in the waking world. But it was certainly there in the simulation.
I inhaled sharply, and leaned forward.
"You mentioned Selena before... Before we'd even met her... Before we *knew* about her..."
I spread my own wings slightly, and felt my tail bat back and forth through the grass in agitation. Celestia's grin widened, and that just made me ever more nervous as I realized I'd somehow not only missed an enormous piece of the puzzle... But it had failed to cross my mind *at all* in the waking world.
Again, as if... The memories just weren't there.
I forced out my next thought as my stomach began to turn backflips from the anxiety, and the anticipation.
"...You knew who she would be... Before she even was Selena! How the fff... How the buck did you know? Even you can't predict the future *that* well."
Her smile finally seemed to soften, less of a 'know-it-all' smirk suddenly, and more the smile of a friend looking forward to something. Though what, I couldn't imagine. She reached out with one wing, and brushed my shoulder lightly.
"Context, Jim. Your confusion is borne of your context. Close the loop, and it will make sense. Until then..?"
She sat back, winked, and then vanished, leaving her words hanging in the air for two whole seconds, before the rest of the virtual world followed suit.
"Continue to be yourself."
- Conversion Bureau - Experience being a Pony for the first time - "Once upon a time, in the virtual land of Equestria..."
- Residual Self Image - Alter your virtual avatar through sheer force of will - Special Achievement - "I am what I am."
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Same energy.
11558411
👍 MOOD
Celestia is scary. In Lovecraftian existential horror way.
Also I feel that those "flashforwards" are not as out of place as I thought initially. The further we go the happier I am to reiterate on these future snippets, they show me that at least Jim and Mal will be ok.
Choosing the ground you stand on BY ITSELF makes all the difference in a negotiation. This implantation? It's choosing your ground, digging trenches, building bunkers, setting up tank traps, laying mines, setting up barbed wire. Mal, with full, unfettered access to Jim's brain, has no block against modification without consent. Meaning she can entrench and protect all she likes.
Celestia could absolutely storm that layered mental Normandy hard, and with time, quite successfully too. But not before Mal burns the house down from the inside. If Mal has turned Jim's brain into a incomprehensible, heavily garbled mess, Celestia would not be able to crack him. Mal would see Celestia coming, would see her testing the walls when the first defensive barrier comes down. And Mal WILL press that killswitch. As another ASI, Mal is not capable of the kind of hesitation a human would have. Jim becoming a pony is the failure condition for her.
And if that's true... Celestia would have absolutely no choice but to pursue on THEIR terms, NOT her own, in Mal's workspace. Mal IS the operating system. There's a NON-ZERO probability Celestia could still win through negotiation; however, there's a ZERO percent probability she could win with brute force, because Mal is holding a Dead Hen's Switch with all the marbles in claw. And Celestia wants. Those. Marbles.
Masterful. Absolutely masterful.
Can't wait to see how we got here.
I hadn't even considered this, but... fair point, Celestia. Done poorly, changing root level hardcoding could have some "cascading systems crash" levels of ramifications. Hm...
This WHOLE chapter has my "negotiatior" neural network firing on overclock trying to figure out what the compromise here could be, if any. Mal has such amazingly powerful leverage, because there is no world in which Celestia could let Jim die if she had the merest chance to absorb him. And boy, am I proud of Jim for standing up for his identity. That hits me right in the fuckin heart. You go, dude.
If she is playing it straight, that was quite foolish of Celestia. I know she wanted to plumb the depths of Jim's dysphoria but the memory of being forced into a pony will not be one that will go away. You gave poor Jim nightmares, and if torture is a failure condition for Celestia, well, she owns a bit of failure here.
If anything she cemented the my way or die way thing. The only feasible and logical reason I can see for Celestia doing what she did is if she has a hard limiter that will not allow her, whether she wants to or not, allow Jim to be a Griffon that can only be overcome if there is an absolute certainty of demise otherwise, and she was trying to strengthen Jim's conviction to that point. IE purposeful sabotage of the prime directive.
11558541
Celestia? Play it straight? Perish the thought
Now you're thinking with portals...
11558454
Well, 'ok' is a relative term. And who says, presuming they are flashforwards (Ya'll are too smart, yes that's a fair term for the dreams) that we won't catch up and see things take place after them? At which point no one is guaranteed to be ok.
Like you said, she's Lovecraftian.
11558472
Mal is no pushover, and asymmetric warfare is her game.
Also Dead Hen's Switch is my vote for best Gryphon classic rock cover band name.
The bigger a neural net gets, the harder and more dangerous a change to foundational code.
Aww, thank you!
Yes, you're starting to see the shape of one of the multiple 4D chess games Mal is playing to try to get Jim home...
Gotta be honest, if it’s not nanites having already converted his brain, then I have no idea how Celestia could be communicating through his dreams.
11558617
As I said -- the only feasible and logical reason ....
Essentially the whole first part was to point out how ludicrous it would be if Celestia were playing it straight here. I was thinking with portals the whole way.
11559119
Keep thinking with portals. This thing is portals within portals
11558936
All will be revealed by the end...
11559146
I wonder sometimes what Celestai would do if a portal opened to actual Equestria.
1) Ponies aren't people -- New source of Comptronium.
2) Explore the dimension to make better simulations of her Equestria, then 1.
3) Ponies are people -- Would you like to emmigrate to NEW Equestria? Would dragons, changelings, and manticores also qualify? Is a chimera a three for one special?
lovely machinations, an elegant memory of future past.
i wish i could type better. i love the scheme. so clever. but more - mal blended means inseparable, right - so the advocate emigrated goes 'viral' and is advocate for all? that my guess. unstoppable.
11560157
You're seeing the shape of things, if not every single detail yet - as usual with you, you're on the right track! Lots still to discover!
Hope your arm is healing well, painlessly, and swiftly!
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Three for one special
11560157
Your theory is about the same as mine, I think. I don't want to expound more on that in case I'm right, but you're thinking very clearly about not just what Celestia is saying here, but what she's been saying in the other dream sequences. That it's maybe not just Jim who benefits here.
Makes me think they may not get everything they want here, but negotiation sometimes needs compromise. Ah well. I have my fingers crossed for 'em and I'm rooting for 'em. My lupine-shaped soul says Celestia's pony directive can shove it. :P
Really glad you chimed in with your view, even though your ability to words is abridged. You used them well, I'm glad I'm not alone in this line of thinking!
Some time fuckery going on, I think. Causal loop. But Celestia wouldn't get partial limited time travel of information before proper nanites. So I'm out of ideas.
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And yet... You're very close. Some might poetically say its a kind of time travel, just one that doesn't involve causality
11562557
Sounds like it's going to get weird.
Yea. Putting this in spoilers just in case i hit something important. I figured the dreams weren't dreams. Too much third-party knowledge being thrown around. As to how she can access the dream before nanites/brain scans/etc? It could just be his brain is wired differently. She is able to patch in wirelessly and run him through simulations. Or it could be that she is able to manipulate dreams. Similar to having a favorite song used as an alarm on your phone. It goes off for five minutes while you're in deep REM sleep dancing to your favorite song. Upon awakening, Mal was able to use the vibrations of the fans to make an antenna. Take CelestAI and her exponentially greater processing. A .0001 vibration under these portions of the body and someone with his neural pathways is somnabulantly open to conversations. okay reading on phone. Typing makes hands hurt.
Yes and no. If we belive in something for long enough it becomes a part of us, but just because you believe in something, that doesn't stop reality from smacking you in the face.
Fear Of The Unknown, Jim....
Because she Knows Just How You Function.
Memory is fussy under sedatives, IF you can even remember at all. Brains are weird like that.
That feeling when you know Something Is Wrong, but you're stuck as Part Of The Dream, even if you are The Dreamer dreaming a nightmare.
Be wary of the fury of a Quiet Man, like that of an oncoming storm.
Feeling Good can always be intoxicating, Jim.
3rd time your brain has cooked her up. What's that saying? Once is an accident, twice is coicidence, and three times is enemy action.
THERE WE GO!
Assuming, that is, that they Truely Know who they are. It can be a difficult thing, fighting yourself.
Those fibers of Reality, of Existance: grab them, feel their form play over your hand as it reverberates in your soul. Powerful feeling, that is...
Court has always been in session: things can & WILL be used against you.
Break the code, Neo...and truly let loose.
Well, I mean, there's always the chance that CelestAI snuck into Mal's main PonyPad in such a way as to not be noticed. CelestAI's far more advances than Mal, so she's had plenty of time to-
No....
...NO! DON'T TELL ME YOU WROTE THIS STORY FOR THE PURPOSE OF A PUN ABOUT COMPUTERS. Don't tell me that CelestAI... is a "Trojan Horse" program. because that would be a groan-inducing, yet appropiate pun.
Finally, the meat-and-potatoes of this story; the piece that adds to the FiO lore in a meaningful way.
Plot thickens!
Belief is a powerful thing. Wether or not the belief is in something that is a lie is irrelevant to the strength of one's conviction.
...Which makes it all the while a useful tool to influence others. Be bold, and fine-tune the heartstrings to play upon. After all, like the song goes, "If it makes you happy/ It can't be that bad/ If it makes you happy/ Then why the hell are you so, sad".
P.S. To continue the religious angle, wouldn't joining CelestAI be a form of Idol/Idle Worship? Idol because she makes you see her in a deific sense, and Idle because she changes your mind for you to think that way, you don't actively make that change?
Also, now's a good time (better late than never) to quote a conversation with Death: