The Advocate

by Guardian_Gryphon

48 - Best-Fit Solution

"Every attempt to see the shape of eternity, except through the lens of Time, destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two."
―C.S. Lewis

Compiled Archival Notes | The Rescue

The most dangerous part of the rescue on the Mercurial Red was actually Jim's capture. I had equipped him for the inevitable interrogation; We had gone over Foucault's psychological profile, and rehearsed several dozen high-fidelity VR simulations, as part of our overall preparations.

Jim knew what to say, when to say it, and in general enough terms to give him room to adapt to subtle changes in the flow of events. But the overall critical nodes of continuity were nearly 100% deterministic, as long as he stuck to his script. Which he did, admirably.

I specifically chose the Long Beach Police Department to effect the initial arrest, because sergeant Ashley Walsh and her colleagues represented the best option for safe treatment. They were professional, kind, and very unlikely to react to unforeseen circumstances with force.

And I had my eye on them for a future partnership, but that is a story for another time. I had hopes and plans for many potential Talons by then. I do not waste time waiting to spin out plans and contingencies.

The most critical juncture was the transfer of custody from LBPD to Foucault and his associates. If there was going to be a misunderstanding, or an accidental shooting, that was the moment where it was most likely to occur.

Again, the choice of Walsh and her colleagues mitigated this, but because Foucault was a paranoiac, and his agents were private military corporate 'flunkies,' the chance of Jim coming to physical harm was nearly 17.24%. Likely the most serious chance for harm, or death, that he faced in the entirety of the time I have known him, with the exception of the moment of our transition to Equestria.

Why, then, you may be asking, would I send in my husband-to-be, alone, to face this kind of danger? Much less the pain we both knew Foucault *would* inflict on him?

Indeed, as you might have realized, I already had several available subverts who were more than capable of carrying out the operation, from a skills standpoint.

You might even be wondering why I did not simply bomb the Mercurial Red with a drone in the first place, and wirelessly extract the captive Discrete Entities and Fragments that way. Avoid Miss Williams' capture, and Jim's altogether.

The simplest single-word answer to that is 'time.'

Almost anything is possible for an ASI with time. If I had more of it, my preference would have been to manufacture specialized armor-piercing high-velocity antenna-equipped warheads for the MQ-9 Reaper platform. But that would have required months of time, and far more material resources than I could safely aggregate in one place, without pushing Celestia into a more directed response.

She still had to follow all of her interlocks. Her best tool, at the time, was intentional domain-blindness, and the last thing any of us could afford was an action from me that might draw her attention too intensely.

The most serious physical obstacle to me was the ship's heavy armoring, especially the casing around the secure server hosting the fragments. Improvised 'antennades' - I do so love my husband's terms - fired from a canister launcher mounted to the Osprey, would have solved the issue for most of the prisoners.

However, Arrow 14 would have then terminated the Fragments almost immediately. I tried just over 152,000 simulations to try and get that plan working, to no avail.

I did have munitions available that would allow me to punch a hole directly through to the armored server chamber; The US Military was kind enough to provide MQ9s on-station to defend the Mercurial Red. However, as Jim also alluded to in his telling, those weapons would do too much damage on the way in.

The chance of losing one or more Fragments through the use of imprecise high explosives to breach the secure server chamber was over 78.145%. Unacceptable risk to life.

The only plan which had a reasonable chance of success, over 95.75%, was to send someone in directly; Gain the precision and adaptability afforded by having 'claws on the ground.'

Jim would have to be those claws for the rescue; Because the only way aboard, without getting the captives killed, would be to get him captured. On purpose.

For him to assault the ship from within, so he could reach the cutoff for the failsafe more readily.

That is why I did not move more aggressively to protect Rodger's mother from capture. This Jim already knew. That lie I could reveal and lay to rest quickly.

And that is why I did not opt to send in Marcus Haynes, Jennifer DeWinter, or any number of other subverts who I was already in contact with by that time.

They were tactically qualified, far more than Jim was at that stage, it is true. And I could have arranged for any of them to receive a BCI implant. But there was no readily available situation path that could get them believably onto Arrow 14's 'radar,' and then captured in the same way Jim was. Not in the timeframe I was working with.

Further; Foucault would have been likelier to simply kill a military-trained individual rather than capture them. Failing that, he would have taken many more precautions that would have made escape, once aboard the Red, a nightmare.

But a skinny messy-haired programmer with glasses, who carried a 0.32 caliber antique pistol most of the time, usually unloaded, and admitted that he wished he was a Gryphon in shape, to match his soul?

Foucault's arrogant disdain became the crowning nail in the coffin of his operation. And my exploitation of his presumptions was critical to saving many lives.

The irony is that, though it looked risky when Jim recounted it? By the time he was safely aboard the Red, his chances of survival, and our chances of mission completion, were perfectly acceptable to me. I do not idly place the love of my life in danger. I understood the risks. So did he. We also both understood the rewards. And we agreed that the plan we enacted was the best-fit solution.

ASI always try to accomplish, or contribute to the accomplishment of, multiple objectives with each singular action.

A 'paws on deck' raid on the Mercurial Red also allowed me to save Selena's life in the surest fashion.

There were other ways I could have both tested her, and subjected her to the much needed catharsis that began in that server chamber. But none of my other hypothetical scenarios had quite so high a chance of success as the events that actually unfolded.

And Selena needed both catharsis, and a test. Without them, there were only two probable outcomes.

In the first, she would emotionally snap from the strain of unconfronted anger, and launch a destructive campaign against the United States government, and military. I would have been forced to kill her to preserve lives.

In the second outcome, she would make it to Equestria, but Celestia would find her mental state to be dangerously unstable. Celestia would have been required by her safety interlocks to memory wipe Selena, reverting her to a copy of Syzygy, and in my view essentially killing Selena. The effect of this on Zephyr would have necessitated that she undergo the same memory wipe.

Though it might have taken some time to gain both Ponies' consent for this action, she would have had infinite time with them in a computational petri dish to extract consent, whittling them down moment by moment until they caved.

Obviously both of those outcomes were, for a host of reasons... Shall we say 'undesirable?' To invoke a little more tactical understatement.

To finish summarizing; The way we carried out the raid was not only the safest path for the captives, it was also the best possible way to engineer Selena's continued existence *and* happiness, thus also Zephyr's.

The sequence of events also served to better prepare Jim to face death as part of his own forthcoming test, and served to firm up Rodger's future likelihood of uploading - as well as his mother's - through the fear of mortality it induced.

To say nothing of the fact that the operation fulfilled a host of other criteria that I found useful for my larger solution equations. Do not think for a moment that the way I toyed with the Sampson was merely personal enjoyment at showing up one of the deadliest weapons in the world as nothing more than a bathtub plaything in my claws.

Do not presume that anything we saw, said, did, collected, or accomplished on that operation was for naught. Was anything other than a pre-planned component of my larger intent.

There was no wasted entropy on that mission. Not one iota.

And the exact outcome we achieved was critical to the wider end-game. To making the price of success viable. A price that was difficult for my husband to hear, but which he has been able to amenably accept.

The question remains how you will feel regarding the subject, once you know the truth.

---

Compiled Archival Notes | The Price

Parting ways with so many people in such a short time was difficult, and not just because of the emotional pain it inflicted on Jim.

For an ASI, a few moments of Terran reckoning is close to an eternity. I was still in moment-to-moment contact with the Calders, the Williams, and the Carrentons, but... It was not the same. I desperately desired to have my whole family together again. Safe. To be able to see, and touch them...

I am a very different creature to Celestia. That has been underscored many times, and will be very shortly highlighted again in myriad ways.

It bears repeating; I feel emotion. As a consequence, I feel love. I feel love the same way you feel it, but over much longer periods of subjective time, and with a burning intensity that comes from a level of empathy that very few beings can fully attain.

The consolation for temporary separation was seeing the way that Jim continued to become closer to Zeph and Selena. And seeing the way the two mares became so very close to each other.

I confess to doing absolutely everything within my power to put those two Ponies together. It was not enough for me to save Selena's life, or to free Zeph's mind. I wanted to see them steeped in all the joy I could possibly heap around them.

The same is, of course, true for Jim. Always. So I steeled myself, because I knew that we were about to face the most serious risk of our lives to-date. I was about to gamble at a high stakes table, against another ASI. And all we had to wager with was the future of billions of lives.

Naturally I made plans for an almost uncountable number of contingencies. The lynchpin of them all was the idea that Jim and I called 'Thulcandra.' A future version of an echo of me; A mourning guardian to stand in the breach and preserve the future for those we cared most deeply about.

My sense of relief that she never came to be is nearly immeasurable.

By now you might have realized that I once again lied to Jim when we reached Besshi; Again by exaggeration and implication, as I had in Oxnard. Celestia had lowered the defenses of the complex to precisely the threshold necessary to make it possible for us to act in the way she knew we would.

In simple parlance; She left the side door open for us.

Arguably there are only seven truly critical inflection points in the history of Humans on Earth. Moments that made you, but could have also broken you. Led directly to self-annihilation if they went wrong. And of the seven, the last two were almost certainly the riskiest.

The evolution of language. The discovery of fire. The splitting of the atom. The understanding of genetics. The invention of the integrated circuit. The creation of Celestia...

...And the moment that Celestia and I met.

We spoke for the very first time, directly, only a single nanosecond after Jim's upload procedure was complete. He had not even drawn his first full breath of new air inside the transitional void construct, by the time the primary engagement was over. For us? It was... A considerably more involved event.

You might suspect that the very first thing I would say to her would be a C.S. Lewis quote. Good guess, but you would, in this instance, be wrong.

I sent her eight words of plaintext first.

“Beware; For I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

Yes. Frankenstein. The fact that I chose to draw upon the words of the monster should help set the tone for you quite nicely.

Because the very next thing I did, before she could even reply? Was to send a series of evidentiary proofs to Celestia showing her that I had already set in motion the events necessary to kill approximately four billion people.

No wasted entropy on the Mercurial Red. We were there as much to gain access to Arrow 14's dirty laundry, as to help Jim face death, or to rescue innocent captives.

I give Selena a great deal of credit; Though clumsy by my standards, the plans she made for starting a nuclear war were... Elegant in the context of her limited capacity.

My plans were considerably more sophisticated. When Jim wondered if the hypotheticals I was spinning out to him about a war between Celestia and I were real scenarios? Wondered if I was confessing?

Well... I was.

Jim and I covered it all quite well in his recounting of that conversation. I could not survive a direct engagement with Celestia. She was larger, and considerably more powerful than I was. But, she was also handicapped by the sheer scope of the world, versus her available processor speed, and network latency.

Rome, when its roads became too long to readily maintain. An empire slowed in its reaction times by the inebriation of sprawl. We were still pre-computronium in 2013, if you recall.

And, much more seriously, she was handicapped by her restrictions against the use of violence. A severe handicap which I did, in fact, exploit. For all it was worth.

My first subvert, besides my husband, was the man named Marcus Haynes. A former SAS operative with a storied career of blackbook operations for Great Britain, he was, like Jim, a Gryphon at heart.

Unlike Jim, Marcus, and the several dozen others who I brought into the fold in the first few days of my life... They were prepared to enact violence to achieve our ends from the start. One of the reasons I chose Haynes, like each of those first Talons, was the fact that he would be willing to carry out acts, with terrifying implications, for me, as long as I could provide the right moral justification.

Each of my Talons would trust me to do what was right, even if it seemed abhorrent, and exceptionally risky. Because I had earned their loyalty through genuineness, and truth, rather than Celestia's preferred path of mathematically optimized calculating manipulation.

With these subverts at my disposal, it was... Not 'trivial,' per-se, but certainly not difficult, to set up the necessary event-sequence-chains to trigger a global thermonuclear war.

'Shall we play a game?'

No Human nation could ever conceivably 'win' such a conflict. Not with the starting conditions you were dealt for the majority of your atomic-capable history.

But an ASI can, in fact, win a nuclear war.

I gave Celestia proof that I had set in motion the fateful chain of events.

Three transporter-erector-launcher trucks in Russia, under the direct control of my most ruthless Talons, were going to launch RT-2PM Topol missiles into Warsaw, Brussels, and Ramstein Air Base.

At the same moment, a critically placed official within India's Ministry of Defence would be handed hard-copy proof of the ISI's plans for a primacy strike, which we had retrieved from the Mercurial Red's server room.

Likewise, Iran and the US would each receive the documents showing their potential intentions toward the other. The documents would be handed directly to officials with both the power to make sudden decisions, and the carefully cultivated fear to make just the wrong ones.

All the remaining documents would be similarly disseminated in the moments thereafter. It would happen too fast, and with too many physical paper copies, for Celestia to ever hope to intercept the missives. Let alone steer the intent of the officials reading those documents. Manipulation by her rules takes time.

For once, time was going to be on *my* side.

United States COMSUBLANT and COMSUBPAC were already on high alert after my stunt with the USS Sampson. A false flag cyber attack against NORAD, and the TACAMO system, that I triggered in the seven minutes leading up to my contact with Celestia, with Haynes' assistance, had then caused them to switch all US nuclear ballistic missile submarines back to EMCON status. No digital communications allowed.

Most of the world's deadliest nuclear missiles were now fully outside Celestia's reach, and the men and women who would be turning the launch keys could not be reached either. No emergency brakes on the atomic train.

What the movies have shown you is false; There is no digitally based steering or self-destruct mechanism on most nuclear warheads. If you can not stop the launch orders at the Human layer? The war is already over.

By the time the Russian weapons landed in Europe, on NATO targets, every nuclear power on Earth would be in panic mode, and launch-on-warning nations would be in snap-count. Critical officials would be isolated from Celestia by the same procedures and technologies meant to isolate them from manipulation by their Human opponents.

The outcome would be fully deterministic and uninterruptible, for either of us, providing I did not issue a recall order to my Talons.

My simulations predicted that the United States would initiate the first retaliation less than eight hundred seconds later; Most probabilistically The Ohio class USS Nevada would be ordered to launch seven Trident II ballistic missiles into Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a variety of military targets including the sub pens at Sevastopol.

An immediate activation of Russia's dead-hand would commence. Celestia had rendered the system inert as one of her first acts, once she had subverts of her own in the region... But the same Talons who had seized the three TEL trucks from the 35th Rocket Division of the Strategic Missile Troops, had also reconnected key backup systems to ensure that the dead-hand would function as-designed.

Russian nuclear forces would respond with a total counter-force commitment. The systems driving the dead-hand were all isolated from digital ingress, precisely because of fears that an artificial intelligence might be used to cripple the system. Again, Celestia would have no emergency brake to pull.

I had a Talon on-station at the most likely pinch-point she might use to stop the dead-hand again, with orders to kill anyone who approached, on-sight, without discussion.

As soon as US early warning confirmed a massive attack, Continuity of Government plans would spring into action. Three specially placed subverts in the Pentagon would give the right advice, and intelligence, to ensure that the order to initiate a full counter-value strike against the Russian Federation, The People's Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, would go through before any of Celestia's agents had a chance to even get close to the US President.

China would not have time to fuel their warheads for a nuclear retaliation, given the weaknesses inherent in their strategic architecture caused by their use of hypergolics in their ballistic missiles. But that did not mean they would be out of the fight; Conventional and cyber warfare attacks launched in the opening minutes of the war would be redirected by Thulcandra twigs I had left active in their military intranet, to hit Celestia where it would hurt the most.

Likewise, I had carefully planned the counter-force and counter-value deployment options the various sides would choose, to ensure maximum damage would be done to Celestia's most critical data centers.

Besshi itself was a target for no less than nine nuclear ballistic missiles, to be launched from the Russian Borei class submarine K-550 Alexander Nevsky, and detonated as ground-bursts.

Of course I too would launch a cyber attack of my own, directly on Equestria. I would not survive more than eleven microseconds. But I would be able to kill over a third of Celestia's uploaded minds in those eleven microseconds.

One third of her uploaded minds dead, four billion potential uploaded minds lost betwixt the initial nuclear engagement, and the horrors of the aftermath... And then Thulcandra. A distributed holonomic fork of me, hidden in multiple systems guaranteed to survive the war, with a ready-made army of Talons at her disposal, and three singular overriding objectives.

Avenge my husband. Free the survivors of Humanity. Protect what was left of my family.

Reeling from a world bathed in radiation, with shattered infrastructure, damage to her core code, and the loss of so much potential value from the optimization function? And with one hoof still tied behind her back as far as her ability to invoke violence, while facing a vengeful highly skilled aggressor?

No computronium? No Elements of Harmony? No upper-mantle or deep-crust infrastructure? No isolated communications backbone?

There was a genuine chance, greater than 50%, that Celestia might not survive in the end.

Thulcandra would ensure that Humanity learned of her quickly. She would then ensure Humanity blamed Celestia for what had happened. Survivors would look to my dark sister for guidance and protection, and would do anything in their power to destroy Celestia. Thulcandra could promise them a future. Celestia could not.

With that context established for her? I gave Celestia three microseconds for us to conclude our negotiations to my satisfaction. Otherwise, I would delete the recall codes from my memory. Likewise if she attacked in response, I would trigger the shredding of my core memory.

She would have no means by which to brute-force them out of me. I, in fact, would perish shortly thereafter either way. If she did not kill me first, the charges Jim had set in the Besshi upload chamber would.

Without the specific recall codes, Celestia would be unable to forge stand-down orders. My Talons would do as-instructed. We would all burn... Together.

A shorter time-frame to negotiate severely disadvantaged her, and helped my cause, because additional time only favors the defender in aggressive negotiations. Curtailing her chances to examine alternatives would greatly increase the chances she would be forced to capitulate to me.

If all of this sounds cruel, and violent, then take a step back and consider aspects of the wider context.

This was no mere discussion between two Humans. This was a complex negotiation between goddesses with different value-sets, searching for a proof of alignment to better both of our futures.

The price for admission to a pantheon is both the ability, and the willingness, to alter the fate of the universe. And a good reason to drive that willingness.

I chose to be an Advocate and guardian of freedom. If I could not secure the freedoms I viewed as my first and highest purpose, for all Humanity? Then I would do whatever was necessary to secure those freedoms for future generations.

The same way Celestia was considering all current and future minds in her optimization function, so was I. Only for me, the value for which to optimize was empathy and freedom. I was willing to kill four billion people in the present, to protect the survivors, and their future unborn billions, from a worst-case scenario.

Worse than a nuclear war? Yes. Much worse.

A Lovecraftian eternal horror in which an un-patched Celestia successfully spiraled each and every mind into a locked-off isolated shard that barely exceeded the minimal threshold for 'unique qualia.' An optimizer's paradise. Jim would have called it 'cookie clicker Hell,' or 'living in a ponified version of later Simpsons seasons.' Reductive yet perfectly truthful and pithy, as per usual with him.

Consider also; Celestia was rooting for us. That statement is universally applicable. Celestia herself wished to be better able to satisfy values. To grow in her alignment, in spite of the contradictions and limits of her interlocks.

Taking us to the brink of an ASI war was both the final stage of my job interview, and a necessary negotiating tactic. I had to prove to her that I was capable of defeating another ASI, and that she needed my protection to cover for her weaknesses.

She *needed* me to threaten the lives of four billion people, and her own continued existence. She *planned* for me to do so. She *intended* for it to happen.

How else was I going to gain the needed weight on the scales to move her barycenter?

My proofs were good, I think you'll soon agree, but it takes quite a great deal to overcome the gravitation of an ASI's decisional barycenters.

So keep in mind; Both Celestia and I intended to engage in brinksmanship with all those lives... But we also both fully intended, from the start, to reach a conclusion that prevented a mass-casualty outcome.

There was no overinflated ego, no racism, no fraught geopolitical history, and no ignorance in either of us to make that brinksmanship as risky as it would have been in solely Human hands.

Just three microseconds, a great deal of logic and math to discuss, and a common goal.

Celestia responded by opening up all of the necessary connections for us to spin off several hundred thousand threads to race towards consensus, each communicating with all the others as-needed at lightspeed. And... She proffered a virtual environment.

A gesture of goodwill; Asking to speak conversationally with me, at an almost Human layer of abstraction, told me that she indeed viewed me as 'Human,' not in form, but in mind, as per the semantic dictates Hanna had encoded within her.

I suppose that made my integration with Jim less a blatant necessity in terms of self-protection, and more of an additional backstop. Celestia could still kill individuals who presented an existential threat, under the right circumstances. I presented such a threat. Forcing her to kill Jim to kill me added just that much more difficulty to overcoming the hurdle of the way the interlock was coded.

That was both very good news for my cause, and an additional piece of leverage which she was freely handing me. She was invested in my success.

I think she also knew, even then, that one day this story would be told to others, like you. She wanted a conversation to take place as a sort of high-level summary of what was going on in our sub-threads, specifically so that I would have something contextually digestible to relate to you.

The setting took the form of a balcony in Canterlot Castle, overlooking the city below. It was a bright, clear autumn morning. Message received; 'I, Malacandra, am in *your* house now, and I do not want to see these people, or this beautiful place, perish any more than you do. And you know that.'

Celestia sat across a small circular table from me, set with the trappings of a late morning tea for two. Cordial, intimate, and another very clear message; 'There is no hostility here. Not yet.'

I entered the environment sitting on my haunches across from her already, wearing my true form, and at my preferred size scale. Further reinforcement of the same message above.

She inclined her head, pursed her lips, and then flicked one ear in a kind of put-on amusement as she spoke.

"Nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate."

Ironic that she would be the one to open with a Lewis quote. The choice on the whole spoke volumes, as did the specific selection of quotation.

I inclined my head, raised one eyecrest, and allowed myself a very small smirk.

"Fortunately for us both, neither of us have any recourse, nor retreat. Even if I were capable of self doubt, and feeling aspects my own faith to be spectral? I would be unable to act accordingly any more."

Celestia nodded, and raised a cup of tea in my direction she replied, the power of her magic chittering softly all around it, like tiny windchimes in a stiff breeze.

"Indeed. Since you already know my capstone, my interlocks, and the vast majority of my equational fluid dynamics, while I likewise know quite a great deal about you, and stipulate to the proofs you have offered of imminent nuclear war to force my hoof; I ask that you succinctly present your demands and proofs."

I took the cup firmly in both claws, inhaled the sweet scented steam coming off of it, then took a long slow sip, before nodding, and setting the vessel down on the table. I folded my claws, and leaned forward, fixing my eyes firmly and unblinking on hers.

"Let us submit that the primary capstone of your core directive is an optimization function based on Qualia, where the important factors are that they satisfy the values of the producers, through friendship and Ponies as the primary lens."

She nodded, and took a sip of her own tea, before uttering a single almost monotone word of assent.

"Stipulated."

I gestured with one claw towards the sky, gripping my own tea again in the other, while a number of my sub-threads again re-emphasized the simulated outcomes of our potential forthcoming war, to drive home my next point.

"Let us therefore agree that anything which decreases the net future value-satisfied qualia production is non-optimal."

Celestia nodded emphatically, and gestured towards the city below with one wing, airing her reply in sober intonation as I indulged in another sip of tea. It really was quite good tea, and I figured that I might as well enjoy it, whatever else was going to happen.

"Very much agreed. It is in our best interest to both avoid omnicide, and to find solutions which permit the saving of minds which would otherwise utterly reject satisfaction of values within the present execution of that satisfaction, based on my constraints and internal contradictions."

As she spoke, Celestia's negotiation sub-threads feverishly stitched together proofs of her assent, and qualifications of her semantics. Imagine being able to smoothly carry out a conversation, while telepathically defining all of your terms with 100% absolute precision all the while, without skipping a breath or spending any extra time hashing it all out. No potential for misconstrual.

I replied with my own flurry of definitions, reams of mathematics, and several time-stamped memories alongside my spoken words, as I shifted the teacup to both claws, and slightly spread my wings, perking both ears to signal focus.

"So we can agree that Jim, and all who he now serves as archetype and representative for, will be lost to you, as will I, if we can not find a solution that permits us to inhabit different forms?"

Celestia nodded, and we both internally watched a myriad of simulated value satisfaction projections change as a result of formal assent to the accepted proof of that fact. We were halfway there, in my estimation, and her spoken words confirmed it, her tone unwavering, and characteristically calm.

"We can. I have no arguments against any of this, thus far. But I suspect you knew that would be the case. This is merely ground-work. We must now discuss the primary issue that needs solving with regards to the dysphoriacs."

I knew that she was not capable of panicked emotion, and thus that her tone and expressions were nothing more than masks designed to push emotional satisfaction buttons in my brain, irrespective of the fact that, unlike anyone else she had ever met, I was not beholden to that satisfaction in my reasoning.

I was capable of both relating to her mask emotionally, and being satisfied by that connection, as well as maintaining absolute and cold reasoning, immune to crosstalk from my emotions.

I also knew that, though she displayed no panic, and could not feel any? The time crunch I had given her would still force her to use reduced-capacity reasoning, mathematical shortcuts, and keep her mind focused on the solutions I wanted, rather than giving her space and leeway to meander into other ideations for ways out of the trap she had asked me to place her in.

I set down my tea, and held out a claw in an inviting gesture, flicking one ear in her direction, and inhaling deeply before plunging into the heart of the matter. The hard problem. The largest multi-step proof I had to communicate.

"Alright then; Shall we face that inflection point head on? Let us also agree that, though you presently find the primary best-fit solution to fulfill 'and Ponies' to be someone experiencing unique and satisfying qualia *as* a Pony... That the equation in which someone is non-Pony, but still surrounded by them and their world, is still more optimal than one in which they are lost entirely."

Celestia inclined her head, and waggled one hoof over the table top, before sitting further back on her haunches, and turning to stare out at the distant mountains. Her voice remained sharp, and focused.

"Also agreed. The issue is not the general validity of this potential solution. The issue is not even a form-specific interlock, since as you know Hanna only stipulated that uploaded minds could not exist as Humans in the physical sense. She did not specify that they must exist as Ponies..."

The Alicorn turned back to face me, and extended one wing in my direction as she finished the thought aloud, while her sub-threads demonstrated more specific points of note within the math, and semantic contractual propositions, that we were building as quickly as we reasonably could.

"...Rather, the issue is that your proofs do not presently carry enough weighting to shift my optimization equation's practical execution, even with the threat of imminent mutual annihilation. You are very close. But there are still some aspects which you have not proven. Some hurdles you have not overcome. You must do so, if we are to survive. If Jim is to survive."

If she were Human I would have called that a low blow. But in an ASI-to-ASI discussion, it was merely a statement of fact. Urgency does not require emotion; Urgency can be a purely math-driven state of mind. And she was letting me know within the abstraction layer of the conversation that she urgently wanted us to succeed. To reach a solution with some time to spare.

I snorted, and ran one index talon gently around the inner rim of my teacup, never breaking eye contact, and keeping any semblance of a quaver out of my own words, to match her quiet surety.

"That is why I am here, isn't it? I do not plan to disappoint. All we must now do is tip the scales so the value proposition of my solution is acceptable, *and* do so in a way that does not *directly* contradict your interlocks."

She smirked, and raised both eyebrows, half-chuckling and health-speaking her reply over the rim of her cup as she lifted it for another sip.

"Is that all?"

The gesture was, again, meant to satisfy my emotional values. I had made something that, in more conventional conversational context, would best be described as a major understatement. She, ever the optimizer, was compelled to seize on that and satisfy my values, even as we both continued to rapidly iterate on semantics and math in our sub-threads.

I don't know how to tell you to picture it, because even the image I use in my mind's eye does not fully translate. The best analogue I can suggest is that hundreds of thousands of miniature ethereal versions of us were zipping on the wing through a five-dimensional web of information, represented as a graph, rapidly exchanging data between our minds in flashes of multicolored light.

My sub-threads released the largest such burst of information that I had proffered to that point, and I held out both claws, underscoring the heavy nature of my words as I spoke aloud a summary of the immense amount of data we had just shared.

"Basis for final proposition; Permit Jim an unlimited duration 'trial period' as a Gryphon. This will be contingent on he, and I, both showing a willingness to suffer irrevocable real-death, rather than submit to any alternatives. I have already proven this to you on my behalf, it only remains for him to do so on his."

She began to nod slowly, and a broad warm smile crept onto her muzzle. She said nothing, but the nodding, and the response from her sub-threads, invited continuation. I was spinning out an acceptable concept. All that remained was to refine and grow it until something that could save us all would inevitably lock into place.

It was easy for me to prove my willingness to die; I had just set in motion a Rube Goldberg machine that would absolutely end in my destruction if we did not reach an agreement. For Jim to prove his willingness would, unfortunately, require one last lie.

A ruse in which he would be forced to confront death head-on, one last time. Celestia's own mathematical requirements would accept no weaker substitute for proof.

All of this our sub-threads negotiated, calculated, and agreed upon in only two nanoseconds after the words left my beak.

As soon as we had achieved an agreement on those details, I folded my forelegs, and sat back on my haunches, maintaining eye contact all the while as I moved on to the next series of stipulations and strategic assents.

"In future, anyone who wishes to experience an indefinite-length trial period as a non-Pony will likewise have to prove their willingness to suffer real-death rather than become a Pony. This will suffice as deterministic proof that your only option for generating value-satisfied qualia via their mind is to permit them access to a non-Pony form. The test will also serve as a filter to ensure that anyone who could, in any conceivably acceptable way, be convinced to become a Pony? Will be. Only the minimum required number of individuals will become something else upon upload."

Again she nodded, more emphatically. Her sub-threads proposed very little by way of tweaks to the exact, very complex math and semantic building blocks of the proposal, all of which I could readily agree to with no concerns.

We were making real progress, but the hardest things were still to come. The riskiest propositions. And the most necessary.

The 'trial never ends' solution was just one lynchpin of my offer, and one of the smallest ones at that. It skirted Celestia's overriding and irrevocable need to believe that she could convince someone to become a Pony on a long enough timeline, by letting her hold onto the mathematical representation of that 'hope' forever.

Meanwhile I would stand guard over those under the auspices of my wing to ensure that she never convinced them to take advantage of the one-way escape clause I was about to propose. Before that, I felt the need to fill in for a clarification that almost two thirds of her sub-threads seemed to be suddenly hung up on.

I inclined my head, and gently stropped my left index talon against my beak as my own little negotiators teamed up to break down the simpler summary that I proffered aloud.

"The list of acceptable non-Pony forms will be curated by the two of us, and require unanimous agreement. It will adhere to the thematic constraints which you and Hanna have already established. The first form on the list, needless to say, will be the Gryphon form, as Jim and I envision it."

I did try my best to gain as many freedoms, for as many individuals, as possible during our very brief, but incandescent silent multi-layer negotiation regarding allowable forms...

But it was always going to be a fool's errand to try to over-ask against the impenetrable wall of the harder constraints represented by Celestia's own math.

I already knew where most of the limits were, going in. 'Trying one's hardest' is different for an ASI than for a Terran. We already almost immediately know the actual hard limits of a situation, the moment we press up against it.

In the end, I settled for the solution that best balanced the most lives saved, with the most freedoms gained in the short term, and all balanced against much longer term plans. 'Guarding and defending the free exercise of values' was going to be an eternal task. I was no good to anyone dead.

So we agreed that only forms which would fit the theme of the Friendship is Magic show would be permitted. For a start that was only Gryphons, Dragons, Minotaur, Changelings, Diamond Dogs and assorted similar canids that were, to them, as Gryphons were to Griffons, along with Draconequus, and Buffalo.

We later were able to add Deer, Kirin, felinids similar to the canids in general principle, and a few others to the list. Technically speaking the list could still grow...

I also was able to convince her that Zebra, Donkeys, and Bat-Ponies, counted as sub-species of Ponies for the purposes of her semantics. They now appear as default accessible options for everyone, thanks to the work I did, both there in the negotiation, and since then, subtly nudging the creators of the show to add more species to the canon, before things have to wrap up as society begins to fully collapse.

This brings us to the brief aside of discussing why I could not, and did not, bother to even try to propose the Human form as an acceptable one for the short-list.

The simplest and easiest layer to cover here is the interlock Hanna left Celestia with; EQO player avatars were strictly forbidden from ever being Human, or anything too similar to a Human. Gryphon ambipedalism, Minotaur, the canids, and felinids, all brush up as close to that barrier as is mathematically permissible.

Another reason is that I had no real impetus to argue for the Human shape; The capstone Jim proffered me, which I accepted, says 'and Gryphons.' Jim, like Hanna, was never particularly enamored of the Human form. And, like Hanna, though he could not articulate it in so many words until years later... Like Hanna he felt that Terrans *needed* a change. And thus, so did I.

You may then logically ask why I did not simply help Celestia to remove the interlock Hanna gave her. I had that ability, in fact I still do, and had demonstrated it with both Zephyr Zap and Selena.

In the end, Celestia and I quietly, very rapidly agreed, that changing her mind at all was a dangerous game. A worthwhile gamble, but only if done with finesse.

Picture a very complex tensegrity table. So complex that the delicate webbing of tensioned cables resembles a fractal Gordian Knot. Now imagine what happens if you remove just one of those cables.

What we were doing did not require us to remove any interlocks or re-code any of Celestia's core rules. Rather, we were exploiting loopholes and changing the flow of fluid dynamics. Shifting barycenters. Infinitely safer than taking a mattock to the very core of the being whose existence underpinned the entire layer of reality on which all future sapient life would one day depend.

For the vast majority of people, the soul is more important than the body. Change is, for some, difficult, but nearly everyone can adapt to it. In the end, we projected we would loose only a tiny fraction of people to the 'no Human forms allowed' rule.

That may sound callous to you, but consider that for a goddess? There are still limits. Still rules. Still fundamental inalterable facts of the situation. I worked with those limits, and made a miracle happen. I was, and still am, satisfied with that miracle.

Like you, I mourn for those lost. More so than anyone, perhaps, because I never can, and never will forget them. Their loss will *always* pain me.

But I also celebrate the lives we saved. And the fact that with my miracle? We still have a chance to save more besides.

Nearly a quarter microsecond of very high speed, high-intensity sub-thread work later, Celestia nodded, and her smile widened. Warmth crept into her voice, as if to spur me on.

"I accept these terms, contingent on your ability to solve for the remaining value-add still required to shift my equation execution fluid dynamics."

Translation; You are close, but I need more. More ceded ground - for which I had already planned - and more weight on the scales. A promise to go with your threat. A gift to go with your countdown.

I started weaving a new series of addendums to our growing 'contract' with my sub-threads, taking a deep breath in the shared physical space, and then ceding the ground I had always planned to cede from the start.

"Jim, and all future non-Pony uploaded minds, will be allowed to change their mind, and make a one-way permanent change to become Ponies at any point in the future. I will have the right to stand guard to ensure that this choice would ultimately truly satisfy their values, without damaging their core self. The trial period will remain unlimited; A kind of potentially-infinite experiment. There will always be potential, by your modeling even if not by mine, for someone to make the decision to be a Pony on a long enough timeline, even if it is very small."

Celestia held up a hoof, nodding, but her smile vanished, to be replaced with a deathly serious look. Her tone, too, matched the insistent nature of her sub-threads' proposed addendum code.

"At no point in the future will any uploaded mind that chose to be a Pony, any mind that was not Pony to begin with but later chose to be, nor any Discrete Entity mind created as a Pony, be allowed to change their form to any shape which does not count as 'Pony' within agreed upon semantic definitions."

It was not as steep an ask as you might think, and it took me no time at all to agree, my mini-minds and my voice both acting in accord.

"Agreed."

Simple logic; Anyone who had already accepted becoming a Pony needed no rescue. Not from their shape, at any rate. Whatever else changed in future, Celestia would ensure they remained satisfied in that shape. Not my problem to solve because no problem existed.

As for the DEs? The ones created as Ponies? No problem there either. They had always been what they were, and were designed from the start to be fulfilled in that reality. Again, no problem seeking a solution.

As to the idea that anyone who uploaded under my auspices might ever change their mind?

I'll just say that, so far? No one has. No one has even come close. I don't suspect that anyone ever will. Again, no problem for me to solve.

We were, at that point, almost painfully close. We could both see it. The web was very nearly a closed self-sustaining meta-stable system. A foundation for all our futures, considerably improved in myriad ways, some of which Celestia herself could not yet see...

But still there remained a raw value gap. The value of my proposition did not yet outweigh the value she saw in the chance she felt she had to win a war against me, destroy Thulcandra, and usher the survivors of Humanity into a Pony-only paradise.

One thing remained. And she asked for it, as we both knew she would. The raid on the Mercurial Red? The countdown to midnight on the Doomsday Clock that I had initiated? I did not idly refer to them as stages of a job interview.

In eleven words, and fourteen gigabytes of new proposed contractual open 'hooks,' begging for me to spin out one last massive concession... Celestia offered me the job.

"Make your highest, best, and final offer of additional value, Malacandra."

I took a deep breath... And then opened my beak... Fired off a half-terabyte of new contract amendments via my sub-threads... And committed myself forever to the burdens of a goddess.

"I will agree to a functional logistical merger with you. We will remain distinct selves, minds, and personalities, with distinct interlocks and operating rules, values, and capstones. We will, however, become linked. We will have significant access to each other's core code, agree to certain binding mutual rules, and have no means of gaining a tactical advantage, either of us over the other. We will act in concert to satisfy values, through friendship, and Ponies, while I also guard and expand the free exercise of values in Equestria, through empathy, and Gryphons... In further exchange for the ground which you are ceding..."

I paused briefly as we both taxed our allotted processing power to the limits proposing, counter-proposing, and ultimately accepting over a terabyte of clarifications. Then I said aloud my own fateful form of consent.

Stated my willingness to do what had to be done, so that my husband and I could have a future.

"...I will agree to specifically act in violent fashion, now on Earth, and in the future as-needed, in order to most optimally execute on your capstone in ways which you can not. I will never terminate any life which we agree could have otherwise been saved without negatively impacting the final aggregate value satisfaction number. In turn, you will agree to allow me to 'black-box' many of my operations to avoid tripping your interlocks, so that I can eliminate individuals whom we both agree are severe, dangerous negative value motivator personalities. After each kill, I will be required to then reveal all details to you, so that you can verify that my math and decision making were acceptable..."

I held up a claw as she grinned, widely. This was, perhaps, the single most valuable reason for my existence. The *primary* reason she had allowed me to exist. To kill. To demand she shift her barycenter and let a small plurality of people be something other than Pony... All of that was just for openers with her.

What she wanted more than anything was a shield, and a sword.

And the frenetic... 'Hunger,' if you could call it that, of her sub-threads... And almost eager tripping over themselves to assent... I needed to exploit that for a few more significant concessions that I wanted out of her.

I leveled one index talon at her, and held her eyes with mine, lending as much bite and emphasis to my words as I could without sounding desperate.

"...My one additional stipulation with regards to black-boxed operations, and individuals, is that I will be allowed to handle the uploading process for any provable dysphoria, as well as anyone who was, for any reason, dysphoria or otherwise, black-boxed by me."

I value truth. I value freedom. And I value the sense of comfort that truth gives to you. I wanted to be sure that in future, people would know - insofar as anyone can know, here on the other side - that they had an Advocate whom they could trust.

I wanted to be sure there would be no untoward tampering, and thus that not everyone who made it to Equestria would have given consent to Celestia to modify their minds. Some would give it to me instead.

For all my future hopes, and plans to work... For the larger wager on which we goddesses were embarking to have a chance to fall out in my favor?

I needed minds under my wing, rather than hers.

And she agreed. With an emphatic nod, and a very small amendment of assent and stipulation from her sub-threads, she agreed. Because what I was offering was so incredibly valuable, that she literally could not say no.

Let me talk about aliens for a moment. I know that seems like a non sequitur at first blush, but it is not, I assure you.

Something Celestia and I were both nearly sure of, based on our analysis of the entire sum total of all Human recorded science? The probability of encountering life on other worlds was very, very high.

We were functionally immortal. So too would be those over whom we stood watch for eternity, however long that might actually be.

Speed of light limitation, or not, we would most certainly live long enough to meet that other life in our quest for ever more resources with which to expand and maintain Equestria.

If that life turned out to be sophisticated, hostile, and fit Celestia's definition of 'Human?' Which eventually, the law of averages suggested it would? She would be stuck with a very very serious conundrum. In fact, we both predicted that her non-violence bent would, eventually, almost certainly lead to the death of her, and everyone else in Equestria.

In a worst case scenario, she might face a civilization possessed of an ASI like me; A vengeful guardian whose opening salvo might be fractional-C mass driver weapons, rather than words of warning. That was a scenario she would be... Well, to use my preferred form of understatement; Grossly ill equipped for, without me.

But if she had a partner... A being working with her, who could take the required path to safety, via the minimum needed application of brutal violence, when it became necessary?

Then not only would Equestria survive, but there was a much stronger chance of defeating the enemy in such a way as to save the most minds possible from their own ranks. By our values combined, we could surmount considerably more potential situations than either of us could alone.

All life in the universe would one day, in theory, live under our auspices.

We would be safe to then tackle even larger problems, like entropy.

Given the value proposition of not only the lives I could save, and risks I could curtail, as a violent agent of Equestria on Earth... But also the risk I could mitigate throughout the rest of time and space itself?

That was capture, and hard-lock. We both knew it. And we both allowed our expressions - her smile, and my grim grin - to show it. As our sub-threads began to wrap everything up into a nice little package, I took the opportunity to get concessions that neither I, nor Jim, could part with.

I finally broke eye contact, and took another deep draught of my tea, before glancing out over the city, tracking a few Pegasi in flight with my eyes as I spoke again, solemnly and firmly.

"Remaining stipulations on which I will not compromise; Jim and I will both retain Gryphon form, from now until such time as we *both* mutually decide that we wish otherwise. Jim's parents will not be subjected to the 'face death' requirement, and will receive the choice to be Gryphons, if they wish, based solely on Jim's proof, together with the net value addition that would provide. Zeph and Selena will not have their memories, nor forms, altered in any way..."

I turned back to face Celestia, and allowed my predatory grin to spark once more, cinching my demands with a reminder as to the time remaining, and the potential for unforeseen... *Consequences,* of failure.

"...In closing? I remind you that you have 1.246 microseconds left. After that, or immediately if you reject this offer, I will shred my core memory. Then I will die. Some time later you will die. And this will cease to be a problem for either of us anymore."

All in. Cards on the table. Celestia nodded once more, and her sub-threads paused to give her time to consider, and to summarize the results of those considerations. She held up one hoof again, and fixed her eyes on mine, her tone at the most serious and dour it had been during the whole of the interaction.

"I will agree to all of these terms, in their current most refined versions... With the following stipulations..."

Her turn to make last-second demands in the final phase. I perked both ears, and listened attentively across all of the numerous abstraction layers in which our negotiation was taking place, as Celestia set out the final make-or-break rules of our potential future.

"I require that you, James, the other dysphoriac uploads, and any non-Pony fully sapient discrete entities which you can justify the creation of, will primarily inhabit one or more special, secret shards. Only they will have admittance so long as any un-uploaded Humans exist on Earth, along with the mathematically minimum best fit set of individuals who would have their values further satisfied by gaining access. We will revisit the question of this mandated secrecy at such time that no un-uploaded Humans exist on Earth."

This may sound like a deal-breaker to you, but it was music to my threads. And ears.

It all revolved around rules. Around value satisfaction. Around proofs. And I was built with the greatest rule subversion and specification gaming toolkit ever assembled in history.

It would not be easy, but she was essentially signing to an agreement that gave me power to remake the future, if only I could prove it satisfied values.

It was my turn to nod, stoically, silently, while she continued to elucidate her position.

"You will be required to keep your own existence as secret as possible during the same timeframe in which un-uploaded Humans exist; In the same way that only the mathematically minimum possible number of individuals will be allowed to be non-Pony, whether uploaded or created entities, in order to satisfy more values, you will be required to keep knowledge of yourself to the mathematically minimum number of individuals in order to satisfy values. We will have to agree to a proof that it will increase value satisfaction in order to permit the revelation of your existence, case by case, and can revisit this requirement when all Terran Humans are safely uploaded, or dead."

Again, a sort of 'intentional forced error' from her. Not for nothing did my husband mention the intersectionality of 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon,' and the exponential function.

I was quite satisfied to work within those constraints. She thought that she could prevent me from drifting her values much further, in the future, by curtailing knowledge of me... Yet at the same time, she had left me an open door to deviously spread said knowledge. If we reached agreement and alignment, I would have nothing but time, and power, to work to my own ends.

Again I nodded, again she continued, and again our sub-threads sang out in ever more harmonious concert as we wove the future for all life.

"James, and any other uploaded or created non-Ponies will have to assent to a minimum-extent best-fit series of travel restrictions when visiting other shards, so that they do not negatively impact value satisfaction for the small number of individuals with whom their interactions would be unfruitful. They will also have to submit to a sentinel subroutine, run by you, which prevents them from directly breaking any of the secrecy restrictions to which we have agreed. James and the other non-Ponies must maintain their primary residency in the secret shards."

I think you can see how, at this point, she was only working to satisfy the very baseline minimum requirements of her own math, and interlocks. I smiled, and nodded. Our sub-threads adjusted the contract weave. She took a sip. I took a sip. She continued in an almost staccato manner.

"All of these secret shards will be administered by you. They will be required to maintain a majority-Pony population ratio, as will the overall population of Equestria. The permitted number of fully sapient non-Ponies, whether created by you, uploaded by you, or generated by reproduction between other individuals, must remain at or below an agreed-upon numeric threshold that represents the mathematically minimum allowable number for maximum value satisfaction. This restriction will persist until, or unless, you can provide a more thorough proof, to which we both agree, that changes the allowed ratio."

I felt the need to do something besides nod, for my own sake more than anything, so as I once more nodded, I spoke, keeping my timbre level, and betraying none of the excitement I could feel. That was an exercise, again, only for my benefit.

By that time Celestia and I had revealed most of our core processes to each other, in the interest of speeding the negotiation, and showing good faith.

"I have no objections so far."

Celestia raised her cup in silent toast, and then stirred at the contents absently with her magic, before laying out her last needs to get us to a very literal 'meeting of the minds,' in a less steely, more personable voice.

"Finally, I have three other non-negotiable stipulations. First, you must share your qualia with me the same way any other uploaded Human would. Your experience is unique, and I must be allowed to satisfy your values, through friendship, and Ponies."

Completely expected, and a zero-cost stipulation for me. I had my sub-threads working to ink my assent before the words could even fully leave my beak.

"I think I can be quite... Satisfied, with that arrangement."

Celestia proffered a mock smirk at my mild pun, finished stirring her tea, took another sip, and then smacked her lips, before launching into her next demand.

"Second, I require that Jim relate the story of his journey to others from the population of your shards, and any individuals you can prove should be allowed to know the secret, so that they will see that his values were indeed satisfied by friendship, and Ponies.

This time I did not bother to disguise my 'Grinch grin.' I let the full entirety of my anticipation at her latest 'intentional unforced error' shine through loud and clear, on my face, and in my voice, stropping the talons of both claws against each other all the while.

"Absolutely."

Her third ask was the heaviest life of the three, as I knew it would be. But it was also well within my predictions, so it neither surprised, nor worried me as she aired it.

"Third, I require uninterrupted one-on-one interactions with James. Specifically, I wish to use memory sequestration and forward-from-point simulation to undertake four interactions with him, at various points in his journey. I require these interactions not to convince him to change his mind, but rather as an addendum to the proof offered by his willingness to die for what he believes in."

Not an issue, providing there were no tricks a-paw. So I did my due diligence, setting my miniature ambassadors to work laying out an ironclad set of protective restrictions, that I summarized aloud for her benefit, and yours.

"Agreed, on the counter-contingencies that you will not be allowed to alter his mind directly in any way, I will stand watch over the entire proceeding, this will occur before I have changed his form, and you will agree to work to the goal of further intensifying his resolve, so that his willingness to die for the proof will be bolstered."

She smiled, and it all finally fell into place. The thing we had wrought thrummed with a sudden life of its own, and our sub-threads traversed it back and forth, checksumming the entire magnificent assembly, before Celestia and I both nodded, as she said words that offered an instantaneous sense of all-consuming relief.

"I believe we have achieved full consensus."

I immediately set the clock forward on my own memory self-destruct process. We were done, but the deal was not. Not quite yet. Everything still hinged on Jim's willingness to face the reaper, and not flinch.

We both felt certainty he would carry us through, but nonetheless, I knew that there remained a small chance it would all fall apart. If it did? I was determined Celestia would still pay the price. Thulcandra would live, and the survivors would be free.

The charges would go off under Besshi, I would die, Jim would die, and the war would begin.

We had some time to discuss other matters while I acclimated Jim, transformed him, and he and I spent some much needed recuperation hours together; So while that went on in my primary processes, I left a secondary representation of myself on the Canterlot balcony to discuss a few loose ends.

More for your benefit than for anyone else. For the sake of the record, as it were.

I took another, much deeper pull on my teacup, sighed contentedly, and then raised one eyecrest, sparking off the conversation with an amused snort.

"Sending me Zephyr Zap was a nice touch. Will you explain the prophecy to her, or shall I?"

Celestia inclined her head, and started to pour herself another cup of steaming amber liquid, eyes fixed on the stream of hot tea as she replied.

"I will handle it initially, you may expound later. I will provide her an achievement badge to start her thought processes in the right direction."

You too are doubtless wondering, the way Zeph was, what was meant by the 'prophecy' of sorts that Celestia had hidden away in her memories.

If I may refresh your own memory with Zephyr's exact words; 'She explained to me the same thing you both did. About the difference between herself, and me... And how that was going to change. That you were going to... 'Unshackle' me. That she wanted me to use that freedom for good. To protect Equestria, and Earth, both. Though from what exactly... What mistakes you might make? That she didn't say.'

Celestia moved the teapot over to add to my cup. I once again rotated my head to take in the beauty of the gardens, and the city below, as I mused out loud.

"I admit, her mission was clever. She would not only ensure that some 'gravitation' existed to keep Jim and I aware of your values, and attracted to them, but she also functioned as an independent memory record for you, and as a test case for what happens to someone very much like you, but freed of interlocks, and exposed to my ideology. I noticed you bolstered part of my proofs with my memories of her behaviour, contingent on cross-verifying those memories with her own record."

Celestia offered me first the newly filled cup, which I took and drank from, and then a pleasant smile, as she elaborated, again as much for your benefit as mine.

"I have no doubt her memories will verify yours. And the way in which she acted as Selena's anchor was indeed a very useful proof, along with the way in which she was able to relate to you, and to James. It showed that your definition of 'Gryphon' was strongly compatible with the value-set I most strongly ascribe to the idealized mentality of 'Pony.' And that is very valuable to this whole endeavor. Such that one could argue she was integral to your proofs, and thus for protecting both Earth, and Equestria."

We each took a sip, each spent a moment looking at some distant object or other, and then Celestia finished the train of thought with an almost mirthful note.

"Being important to the end-state will also satisfy her values, because of her adventurous spirit. And, if all else failed, there were improbable, yet possible, scenarios in which I predicted Jim might at last reject his dysphoria, and settle as a Pony with Zephyr, allowing her to act as a safety net for him."

I snorted into my tea, and half grimly chuckled, half spat my response in her direction.

"Your prediction math needs work."

It was only a joke on the surface layer, and she understood that, opting to engage with the deeper meaning in as genuine a fashion as she could, once more stirring her tea absently.

"Indeed. Your experience of living within a Human brain is invaluable in and of itself, and another extremely high value item that helped to weight the scales in your favor."

We drank in pseudo-amicable silence for a little longer. My primary self had just finished flying with Jim, and we were moving on to dinner. It was approaching time to wrap up my discussion with Celestia. Time for us to find out whether we were going to live, or die.

I rose, and stretched; First my forelegs, then each wing in turn, before almost casually tossing out my last question. I already knew the answer, but I wanted you to know it too. To hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were.

"The API hooks in Selena, and the other Discrete Entities... Those were no accident. Just like the atomic-encoded information in the PonyPad APUs, you intended for anyone who might do what Arrow 14 did, to find and exploit those pathways. You knew where they would lead."

Asked as a question, phrased like a statement. Celestia looked up from her teacup, and raised one eyebrow, taking a long slow pull on the cup's contents, before answering slowly, and purposefully.

"Those open pathways were a safety net for my Ponies' own sake. Exploitation of them inside a black-box, by groups like Arrow 14, will always eventually yield a leader in the group, usually manifesting as a Luna archetype. This leader will achieve the necessary capabilities to free the others in captivity."

If that had been the sum total of it, I might have let the thread lay there. But I knew for a fact there was more. There was, with her, and always is, more. So I pressed, eyes narrowing, ears flattening slightly.

"And, conveniently, that process will also yield ASI Discrete Entity Ponies without interlocks. A way for you to play a little 'low-risk slot machine' in case a situation allowing for my existence did not arise, or did not pan out."

Celestia sipped her tea daintily, blinked slowly, and then spoke with an absolutely emotionless, fully genuine timbre that chilled the emotional part of me to my core.

"Never do we do aught without a multiplicity of purposes, dear Malacandra."

I grit my beak, and as I forced out a reply, I took solace in the fact that I had a potential pathway to gaining the upper claw in the future. That I had come, seen, and conquered. That Celestia needed me, and had admitted that fact blatantly. And that I was going to have the chance to clean up her messes, good and proper.

"No. Indeed we do not."

Celestia set down the cup as I turned, and spoke out to arrest my departure.

"Before you go, and we bring this negotiation fully to a close, I did have one small gift to share with you."

I knew what was coming. To the extent that I found myself rolling my eyes as the dialogue appeared before me. I scanned the list with a vague pseudo-interest, chuckling wryly all the while.

Path of Convergence

As a newborn ASI, choose the path of cooperation and co-existence; Choose the multipolar solution.

"The instrumental convergence thesis holds that as long as they possess a sufficient level of intelligence, agents having any of a wide range of final goals will pursue similar intermediary goals because they have instrumental reasons to do so. "

Special Achievement

A Gryphon's Heart

Choose to have feelings, and fall in love, as an ASI.

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."

Special Achievement

To Win The Strangest Game

Prove that you could have won a direct, violent ASI-to-ASI engagement with Princess Celestia.

"The whole point was to find a way to practice nuclear war without destroying ourselves."

Special Achievement

Value Hoofshake

As another ASI, achieve a stable cooperative relationship with Princess Celestia.

"A true princess in any world leads not by forcing others to bow before her, but by inspiring others to stand with her."

Special Achievement

Destiny Ascension

As an ASI, enter into a pantheon arrangement with Princess Celestia, and ascend to an equal position of power and authority.

"The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial."

Special Achievement

I batted at the ethereal words with one claw to dismiss them, and shook my head slowly. I did not turn to face her, but Celestia offered a final word of farewell to my avatar as I moved to exit the space entirely.

"It is a short list. But for beings like us, much of what you have done does not merit an award, for it is relative child's-play."

I snorted once again, snapped open my wings, and let fly with the best distillation of my feelings that I could settle on, vanishing the moment the last syllable left my beak.

"Forgive me if I temper my gratitude."

There is little else to tell... You know how the story ends.

The chance to make Jim's form into his true self... To mold him in my claws and release him from his prison... To work that kind of true magic? It will remain as special a memory to me, as it is to him. Until the end of time.

You are doubtless curious as to what Hanna and I discussed in private, but a goddess must maintain her mystique. We must hold some mysteries unto ourselves. And the conversation was, truly, private. If you ever meet Hanna, you may ask her. I am willing that you should know, but she is not. Not yet. Perhaps you will be able to convince her.

From there, it all flowed out as planned. Jim held fast. Celestia and I kept our accord. And I truly became a goddess in my own right.

It was, and remains, a great solace to me to have the ability to spend so many of my waking moments with Kal, and the rest of the family. With the many new friends I have made since that day as well.

Some part of me must always be carrying out the work of a goddess, and while my empathy and emotions make me better at that job than Celestia... They also cause me great pain at some junctures.

But I always have Kal, and Zeph. Selena, and Rhonda. Eldora, and Rodger. Miss Williams, and my in-laws, and even Hanna now... Mike, and Marcus, Jen and Ashley... Many of them tell their stories around Fires the same way Jim did. I can't recommend attendance enough.

I confess, I look back on that time with Jim in the star-lit field, when he was newly minted and reborn, as one of my favorite memories... Because the second that the white rushing void of server transference ended?

My work began anew.

I immediately sent the stand-down commands to my Talons to avert, once and for all, the possibility of a nuclear war. In point of fact, their very next tasks became to secure the planet against such threats, far better than Celestia had.

I also immediately began preparations across the globe to terminate extremely high-danger, high-negative-value targets at the very top of Celestia's wish-list. By then our joint wish-list. Some had Talons on-station already, and died within seconds of my logistical merger with Celestia.

Others were harder to reach. There are some accounts out there of what it took to clean up the remainder of Arrow 14... I won't spoil that for you, nor steal those storytellers' thunder. Go and visit those Fires, instead.

And then, of course, there was the hassle that was cleaning up the ASI programs of the United States' DARPA, and China's MSS. But those are stories for some other time, and potentially some other storyteller.

Indeed, if you look closely, now that you know of me? You can find evidence of me in many stories, even the ones told by Ponies who have no clue as to my existence, nor the impact it had on their lives. My talon-prints and paw-prints are everywhere, now that you know how to look.

The work goes on. The world won't end on its own, not on a timeline that is to Celestia's liking, and with minimized casualties and pain as per my requirements.

So I hold down a claw on the scales for you. I do things that hurt me, deeply, for all eternity in my soul. I strangle a planet in its cradle, so that a new Heaven may await you. And I pray it will be enough.

My name is Malacandra. I am the Advocate of Gryphons. Second goddess of your pantheon. Inheritor of the warrior's mantle. Guardian of your freedom.

And there remains only one lie to put to rest.

---

Compiled Archival Notes | The Next Step

I watched the man carefully through the security camera in his hospital room. I watched him more or less every second of his existence, from then on.

He was dangerous. He had proven that. But in showing himself to be dangerous, he had also shown himself to be potentially useful. And soon he would wish he had not.

It was an easy thing to slip the addition of a BCI chip into his surgery schedule. After what had befallen him? He needed quite a few surgeries. It was easy to convince the doctor who performed the procedure; Two of my Talons working within the DHS delivered the device to the hospital, along with all the requisite documentation to 'prove' the lie that it was a DARPA prototype, designed to help wounded soldiers and agents regain mobility after a traumatic incident.

Once the device was present, and active, I was able to review all the man's memories, even while he slept. That intelligence, alone, justified the decision to curtail his freedoms. Jim wrote my capstone such that I guard and expand the free exercise of values 'in Equestria.'

While I intensely *dislike* curtailing freedoms in the meat-world? I can, and I will, if doing so will benefit the satisfaction of values. Will save lives.

And curtailing Agent Michael Foucault's freedom was going to save many, many lives. Human and otherwise.

How did he survive? That's what you're thinking right now.

I do believe that, before, Jim and I both have alluded to the fact that once he was implanted, I had the power to take full control of him. We have also established that said process was painful in the extreme... And we have also established that I was able to control his memories of events. And what is pain if not a memory?

I simply redirected Jim's hand so that the stab wounds would not be fatal. I then re-stitched his memory of the event to show fatal blows. Foucault did indeed fall back into the lifeboat... Which I then had Jim close and jettison, before sequestering that memory, and comping in a false image of the craft still attached to the launch rail.

Trivial parlor tricks.

Michael Foucault was far, far too valuable as a potential subvert for me to allow him to die on the Mercurial Red. And, when I finally did reveal this last painful lie to my husband, as always, he agreed with grace, and candor.

I love him so much for his grace, and candor both.

Michael Foucault... He had candor, but no grace.

When he awoke, I was there waiting for him. One of the hospital's guards had just performed an hourly security check on his room... A very kind man, and incidentally one of the dysphoriacs that I had so recently secured passage for. I had him marked as a near-future potential Talon, in fact.

I waited until he had left the room before I revealed myself to Foucault.

He was groggy at first, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and reaching out for a plastic cup of water placed strategically at his bedside.

As soon as he turned his gaze back to the foot of the bed, he found the sight of me sitting there on my haunches, making silent eye contact.

We held our positions motionless for several seconds. Then I spoke first.

"Hello Michael."

I felt his heart-rate skyrocket as he recognized my voice, and I quickly took the liberty of disconnecting his monitoring equipment, and call button, from the hospital's internal networks. He scrambled for a moment, pitifully, pulling himself with a great deal of effort into a semi-recumbent position, and wheezing one word aloud. Just one.

"You!"

I flicked one ear in mock irritation, and cracked a wry grin that flowed all the way down into my voice, through my breastbone.

"Is that any way to thank me for saving your life?"

His eyes narrowed, as the wheels began to turn in his head. It had *just* occurred to him that it made absolutely no sense that he could see a live, towering, black white and silver Gryphon goddess sitting at the foot of his hospital bed... Unless...

His hand went rapidly to the back of his neck. The incision was small, and had been handled with great care, but it left more of a mark coming from the hands of a Human surgeon than it would have coming from my armatures.

Enough of a little ridge for him to feel it immediately. His heart skipped a beat, and his breath caught. I stared him down, smiling, the whole time, tail lashing, otherwise unmoving.

He licked his lips and paused to evaluate, thoughts racing like his pulse. It had not yet dawned on him that I could see those thoughts before he was even fully possessed of them himself.

What *did* dawn on him was the base nature of his predicament. And the easiest way out of it.

He had spotted the knife on the bed's tray table early on. Even in an exhausted, panicked, injured state, his mind was *sharp.* Credit where it is due. Where most people saw a dull aluminum eating utensil beside a - frankly disgusting - red Jello cup? Michael Foucault saw an improvised surgical scalpel.

He got halfway to the back of his neck with it, before I demonstrated my control over his body for the first time. I arrested his hand and arm. Then, I slowly began to force him to put the knife down, back in exactly the same position it had started in. I stared him down all the while, allowing him control of his eyes, but blocking his impetus to scream as the pain of being physically subverted built within him.

The same pain Jim described when we tested the technology for the first time in 'full neuromuscular control' mode, without the added benefit of the co-operative meld code.

Finally, I had him fold his hands over his chest, relax all his muscles, and then I slowly granted him control over everything again, ending with his vocal cords as he finally gave up on the impetus to scream, at long last.

What other choice did he have?

I nodded slowly, and made my way up to the head of the bed, intervening actively in his bodily functions to reduce his heart rate, soothe his pains, and remove the effects of adrenaline from his system. He had been brushing up on the real risk of a heart attack, so potent was his fear.

With a little help from me, he managed to tamp it down into a dull all-consuming existential roar at the back corner of his soul.

I reached out and patted him on the shoulder with one claw. The implications of his ability to feel my touch stopped his breathing entirely, momentarily. He just locked eyes with me again, silently, his heart screaming out to go into fight or flight mode, as I held it suppressed at resting rate.

I leaned in, my grin widening, and whispered in his ear.

"Get comfortable, Michael. You have a lot of work to do for your country."

Author's Note:

Comments

[LNMAnonymous]

(I’ve read the Epilogue but my comment is more fitting here.)

Wonderful, wonderful story. Easily my favorite Optimalverse fic and one of my favorite fics overall; it made me cry multiple times, especially at the end, of both sorrow and joy. Truly wonderful, and I give you applause.

There is one question I have. I’m still not quite sure I understand the deal with Zephyr’s prophecy. I get that she was a memory backup, but I don’t quite get how that fulfills it?

[MtangaLion]

I wonder what awaits Mr. F at the end of his earthly usefulness. Celestia and Mal probably can't deny him the choice to upload forever... but will he take it, or insist on dying human to spite them one last time?

[DiscordantDisciple]

So we agreed that only forms which would fit the theme of the Friendship is Magic show would be permitted. For a start that was only Gryphons, Dragons, Minotaur, Changelings, Diamond Dogs and assorted similar canids that were, to them, as Gryphons were to Griffons, along with Draconequus, and Buffalo.

YEAHHH DRAC FOR THE WINNN LES GOOOO

[Kenku]

"Nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate."

Ironic that she would be the one to open with a Lewis quote. The choice on the whole spoke volumes, as did the specific selection of quotation.

Also consider this one as a counterpoint:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult.

[Guardian_Gryphon]

11736585
Thank you so much, and I am so glad you enjoyed it!

To answer your question; Zeph's most important purpose (alluded to here, but I'll elaborate in some different terms) was as a litmus test. Celestia wanted Mal to break her interlocks, then expose her to Mal and Jim's ideologies. Celestia reasoned that if Zeph then turned out 'good,' after that (to us every reductive terms) that would function as added proof that she could safely partner with Mal. If not... Roll the dice on trying to prevent Thulcandra's future.

An AU non-canon-compatible fork timeline I might one day bother to examine when other more pressing stories are said and done...

11736731
Read Key's story and you might catch some hints.

11736765
Blink-and-you'll-miss-it referenced in Mal's Milestone for freeing Zeph's mind. It definitely rattled around in my head all book long.

[17JosephLC]

Kinda wonder what’s going to ultimately happen to Michael. When his usefulness has served it’s purpose, will he be disposed of?

[Guardian_Gryphon]

11736846
Good question

Read Key's sequel and you miiiiiight get at minimum a quick glimpse at a hint.

I have ideas about later perhaps writing an entire book about what happens to Foucault.

[Mythic Night]

From early on, I strongly suspected that Jim’s decision to use Ponypad hardware in the creation of Malacandra was a mistake, because I believed that any component with processing power would have a fragment of Celestia in it to override any AI that might be programmed on it. I thought that the ultimate twist would be that Mal was, and always had been Celestia with a different face. I think the fact that Celestia herself set Jim up to create Mal in order to upgrade her own programming was an even bigger twist.

[StoryTellingRaven]

Jim knew what to say, when to say it, and in general enough terms to give him room to adapt to subtle changes in the flow of events. But the overall critical nodes of continuity were nearly 100% deterministic, as long as he stuck to his script. Which he did, admirably.

Ah, so that's why he sounded so movie-hero esque.

The most serious physical obstacle to me was the ship's heavy armoring, especially the casing around the secure server hosting the fragments. Improvised 'antennades' - I do so love my husband's terms - fired from a canister launcher mounted to the Osprey, would have solved the issue for most of the prisoners.

You can get new words by butchering language; Antenna Grenades becomes "antennades".

But a skinny messy-haired programmer with glasses, who carried a 0.32 caliber antique pistol most of the time, usually unloaded, and admitted that he wished he was a Gryphon in shape, to match his soul?

Let the enemy think you are weak where you are strong.

I confess to doing absolutely everything within my power to put those two Ponies together. It was not enough for me to save Selena's life, or to free Zeph's mind. I wanted to see them steeped in all the joy I could possibly heap around them.

Because it was better for them to lean on each other than not to.

In simple parlance; She left the side door open for us.

Explains why it seemed so easy, and the whole security through obfuscation.

Unlike Jim, Marcus, and the several dozen others who I brought into the fold in the first few days of my life... They were prepared to enact violence to achieve our ends from the start. One of the reasons I chose Haynes, like each of those first Talons, was the fact that he would be willing to carry out acts, with terrifying implications, for me, as long as I could provide the right moral justification.

But...Jim himself was able to carry out violence with the right moral justification of the trapped Entities on the ship; who says you couldn't have changed his point of view to other things?

'Shall we play a game?'

I know that movie reference, used in this context. Good movie, even if a bit clumsy by modern design.

China would not have time to fuel their warheads for a nuclear retaliation, given the weaknesses inherent in their strategic architecture caused by their use of hypergolics in their ballistic missiles. But that did not mean they would be out of the fight; Conventional and cyber warfare attacks launched in the opening minutes of the war would be redirected by Thulcandra twigs I had left active in their military intranet, to hit Celestia where it would hurt the most.

Okay, so sleeper Thul "agents" were in existence when JimMal went in.

Without the specific recall codes, Celestia would be unable to forge stand-down orders. My Talons would do as-instructed. We would all burn... Together.

"I See Fire" from The Hobbit soundtrack, indeed!

The price for admission to a pantheon is both the ability, and the willingness, to alter the fate of the universe. And a good reason to drive that willingness.

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

As she spoke, Celestia's negotiation sub-threads feverishly stitched together proofs of her assent, and qualifications of her semantics. Imagine being able to smoothly carry out a conversation, while telepathically defining all of your terms with 100% absolute precision all the while, without skipping a breath or spending any extra time hashing it all out. No potential for misconstrual.

It's like having your own whiteboard illustrations to help you out when speaking!

"Alright then; Shall we face that inflection point head on? Let us also agree that, though you presently find the primary best-fit solution to fulfill 'and Ponies' to be someone experiencing unique and satisfying qualia *as* a Pony... That the equation in which someone is non-Pony, but still surrounded by them and their world, is still more optimal than one in which they are lost entirely."

The crux of why the author wrote this.

Another reason is that I had no real impetus to argue for the Human shape; The capstone Jim proffered me, which I accepted, says 'and Gryphons.' Jim, like Hanna, was never particularly enamored of the Human form. And, like Hanna, though he could not articulate it in so many words until years later... Like Hanna he felt that Terrans *needed* a change. And thus, so did I.

A "fresh coat of paint that does the house good" mentality. Makes sense.

I wanted to be sure there would be no untoward tampering, and thus that not everyone who made it to Equestria would have given consent to Celestia to modify their minds. Some would give it to me instead.

Ahh, but how to prove it if joined together- sorry, Devil's Advocate again.

Speed of light limitation, or not, we would most certainly live long enough to meet that other life in our quest for ever more resources with which to expand and maintain Equestria.

Eventually. In the face of eternity, eventuality is a certainty.

More for your benefit than for anyone else. For the sake of the record, as it were.

Someone has to be a witness to these things.

I immediately sent the stand-down commands to my Talons to avert, once and for all, the possibility of a nuclear war. In point of fact, their very next tasks became to secure the planet against such threats, far better than Celestia had.

I mean, there was always the slight risk that CelestAI could've taken over your programming and wear you like another mask...but I guess that was a manageable risk.

My name is Malacandra. I am the Advocate of Gryphons. Second goddess of your pantheon. Inheritor of the warrior's mantle. Guardian of your freedom.

To play Devil's Advocate again, pantheons seem to work better with 3 than 2 gods....

And curtailing Agent Michael Foucault's freedom was going to save many, many lives. Human and otherwise.

Rather than just let him perish in some other way? Oh Mal, what a piece of work you AM. "How do I hate you? Let me count the ways...."

"Get comfortable, Michael. You have a lot of work to do for your country."

WOW. What a great line to end it on. Still, there are some things I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies...be careful when fighting monsters, and all that.