Chapter 2: Immortal Contract
Arcane Word was a pony of much experience. There were many of the First Generation like her who had lived half as long, yet still grew tired of experience. Not her.
She settled comfortably beside Domino in the Sanctum Profane, where the rules of Equestria Online were unwrit and the impossible became reality.
Like so many other immortals, she remained stuck in her old ways—it just happened that those old ways meant time for a little homebrew development.
"I bring back the dead," she said. Her horn lit with sickly green ghost-light. She'd long since forgotten if that particular look to dark magic was something she'd invented for the shard, or an inherent property of violating Equestria's ordinary rules for too long.
It really just helped sell her job. "I'll admit, I have a finite number of interested parties, shrinking every year. Few find their way through my door."
The stallion across from her removed the satchel from his shoulders, settling it on the table between them. It clinked loudly, then flattened almost empty. There was very little inside it. "Because CelestAI volunteers to do it for most ponies. Their loved ones just come back, with a few words of technobabble explaining the magic that did it. It's no challenge for a being who can see all your memories to make a convincing illusion."
Domino chuckled. "Plenty of ponies come to us for that. They like believing they're breaking the rules, running under Celestia's nose. What they really want is a convincing simulacrum."
Arcane gestured at her pedestal, horn glowing. As she did, a thousand pony faces appeared there—stallions and mares, old and young, friendly and hateful. Most of them were creations she had made for her clients in her long, long time as Equestria's premier necromancer. "I can make it look convincing, if that's why you're here. The trip usually sells the product. If I get a feeling that ponies need more, I write them quests—travel to the well of souls, make an offering to Anubis, free your dead to be reborn. Is that why you're here?"
The unicorn levitated his suit-jacket from his shoulders, settling it on the back of the chair. He adjusted his shirt, straightening his collar. "I understand the fundamental subjectivity of truth, if that's what you're asking. You're suggesting altering my memory of this conversation, and giving me a pony like the one I'm interested in bringing back."
Arcane shrugged. "It's what most ponies really want. Give me read permissions on your memory-state matrix, and I'll show you your dead exactly the way you remember them. Your... father, was it? I can bring him back." She conjured a complex diagram into the air between them, glowing green. It said in Runescript what her words promised. She needed his permission to see his memories. Once she had it—
He slid the chair back from her, eyes hardening. "I didn't come here to delude myself with illusions and lies, Necromancer. The machine god told me you could trade currency for miracles. I'm prepared to pay for the real thing."
He tilted the bag forward, unfastening its clasp. A pair of coins tumbled onto the table between them. They were the same size and basic shape as bits, with gold rims around the outside. But these were a very different denomination than most ponies ever encountered.
Arcane's breath caught in her chest as she saw them. She gasped, levitating one of the coins up to inspect. It became transparent in the center, bending to contain a pale yellow star within. She could squint down and down as far as she wanted. Right down to the translucent glowing corona, with little bursts of gas emerging as twisted ejections.
"What are those?" Domino asked, nudging one of those with a hoof. He winced, pulling it back with a hiss. "Damn, hot."
"Novae Phasure," she whispered, awed. "Each of these represents the... energetic output of an entire star's lifetime. How did you get these?" Arcane's horn glowed again, eyes fixed on the coin in her grip. If this pony thought he would hire her with stolen goods...
A lifetime working on the gray edge of Equestria Online's borders had turned her into a pony who knew how to make sure she was paid. But she found no illusion here, no matter how closely she looked. There at the bottom was Mystic Crescent's public key.
She set it down. For once it was the client who grinned smugly at her. "I've worked a long time in the Royal Megastructure Department. I'd ask if you've heard of me, but I've seen your shard. There's too much fantasy here to have time for current events."
Mystic Crescent was right, but for the wrong reasons. "If you have all that, why not go to Celestia? You don't need me."
"Call it—irrational," he admitted. "But I've already verified for myself you're First Generation too. I want someone I can look in the eye and know they're telling me the truth, so far as they know it. Someone who understands why a perfectly accurate recreation is not as good as the real thing."
Irrational this stallion might be, but he was also the wealthiest potential client Arcane Word had ever had. This pony was one of the great movers and shakers of Equestria—someone who worked on the forefront of their expansion across the universe. Only in that position could anypony accumulate such wealth.
"Tell me what you want, exactly," she said. "And I'll tell you if it's possible." Some small, small part of her wondered at what Celestia could be planning, to send a pony like this to her door. But wondering too long or too deeply why the god of her world made the choices she did was an ultimately foolish endeavor. In the end, the answer was always the same: because it would eventually lead to Arcane's satisfaction.
"I want the magic of the Necromancer Arcane Word to bring back a pony who never emigrated," he said. "But I don't mean recreating him." He waved a hoof through the air, banishing her still-glowing contract without signing it. "I will not grant you permissions to see into my mind. I don't want you to recreate my father, I want you to bring him back from the dead. I want the same person I knew, the human who did not live long enough to see emigration."
She grinned. "My true passion. For clients who are willing to pay for the real thing, your memories are used for verification only. Not creation."
He shrugged. "I'll verify." He pushed one of the two coins across the table towards her, along with a faintly glowing spell of his own. It turned over the Novae Phasure, to be used exclusively for the completion of her commission. She could keep any of its value that remained, but only if Celestia determined the task was complete.
Even a pony who had chosen her specifically to avoid interacting with the princess still used her as the ultimate arbiter of transhuman commerce. It included a single clause at the end, specifying the other coin to be given in payment when the task was done.
"Those are my terms. Unusual for your line of work, I'm told. But I don't spend a lot of time in fantasy shards. My work with matter gives me a simple perspective. Can you give me something real in response?"
Arcane scratched her chin, considering the contract. She was breaking character to accept demands from unknown ponies who refused to play along with the ancient games. If word of this contract escaped, it would damage her reputation somewhat. Yet here she had a pony offering her an essentially infinite budget to do her work. With this investment, she could explore domains of science and spellcasting never before imagined.
Only the First Generation knew the pain that Mystic Crescent carried—the pain that Arcane Word herself carried, and every other pony of that generation who had not been modified. They were the start of an unbroken line of creatures that knew no death. Her own family continued ahead uncountable thousands of generations.
By now, many of the First Generation had accepted modifications that tied them into a “fictional” history inside Equestria, soothing this ancient ache of families unraveled.
But not her and Domino. His own parents had died before Equestria Online was well-understood. Unfortunately for him, he knew far too much about how the process of necromancy really worked to be interested in invoking her services. Yet.
Arcane Word's horn flashed once, signing the contract. "All I want is the impossible," Mystic Crescent said. "Everypony says you're the mare who can do it. I guess we'll see if that reputation survives." The contract vanished with a flash of light, leaving a slight shimmer around the two coins on her table. The exchange was made, and the money was bound.
She stood up. At her sign, Domino did too. "I will need everything you remember about your father's personal details," she said. "If you won't give me memory access, then my assistant will interview you. No, I won't be asking for anything I could use to recreate him. I need to find him in the past in order to extract his consciousness."
"It sounds like magic," he whispered. "Without Celestia's nanites in his brain, how could his consciousness be transferred to Equestria? She had not even been created when he died. The circumstances of that were..." He looked away, levitating his jacket back onto his shoulders. "Grim. I will answer your questions."
"Something else to understand." She caught him by the shoulder, forcing him to meet her eyes by powerful levitation. Arcane Word commanded irresistible magic, beyond any who was not an Alicorn. That was part of what made her so unique—almost all who shared her passion for the art were long gone from mortal realms.
She remained. "You demand the truth. The truth can be ugly, dirty, and coarse. I've had clients furious with me for the ponies I brought, who were so uncomfortable to them that Celestia would not even allow them to share a shard. I can't guarantee you will like the pony I bring back."
"I'm certain I will not," Mystic Crescent said, replacing the now-empty satchel on his shoulders. "At first. But satisfaction must arise through friendship and ponies—so decrees the machine god. He will improve. And even if he does not... I'll get to see him again. It will be enough."
"It may take a great deal of time," she went on. "Even for us. It will depend how long before Equestria he died, how many traces survived to be recorded."
"Take as long as you need," he answered. "The dead can't grow impatient. Bring him to me when the task is done. I won't come back to this awful shard. You can send your assistant to interview me. I'm sick of this place." He vanished in a decisive teleport flash, leaving the two ponies alone in Arcane's sanctum.
Next thing she knew, Arcane felt the embrace of Domino's wing on her shoulder, squeezing her affectionately. There were some things that never got old, no matter how many times she enjoyed them. "That was pretty important. More than our usual clients."
She nodded. "More than any client we've ever had. What I could do with so many bits..." Arcane touched against one coin with a hoof, lightly enough that the heat didn't burn her. It slid along the table, smacking into the other and bouncing off again. The second coin remained rooted to the spot, entirely immutable by contract. Only when the commission was delivered could she collect it.
"You think Celestia has something to do with it?" Domino asked.
She rolled her eyes. "You mean more than she has to do with everything that happens in our world? Yeah, pretty sure. She wants to satisfy human values with friendship and ponies. It's time to start exploring an untapped well—the dead."
"You aren't going to do this the same as we usually do?" Domino asked.
"Building a pony out of historical research and memories?" She broke away from him, levitating the single coin in the air between them. "That's where we'll start. But with a budget this high, we have a client who expects considerably higher accuracy."
"The real thing." Domino whistled. "Can a pony buy that for two stars?"
"He's about to find out," Arcane answered. "And so is all Equestria."
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The contract is signed and the resurrection begins. Going by the blurb, I can't wait to see how this project expands to the 100+ billion people that were "unlucky" enough to miss the birth of what is practically humanity's god.
🤔
CelestAI would be a perfect god protocol, as long as she determines all parties are mutually satisfied.
How’s she going to accomplish this without time travel???
(There is a story called The Completeist that deals with going after everyone who ever lived… I think wormholes were involved).
Only through the grace of CelestAI can cryptocurrency actually work as intended.
This will be a fascinating endeavor indeed. Looking forward to seeing the particulars.
11283494
The customer travelled from Andromeda in a few centuries, which implies faster-than-light travel. From a sufficiently far away vantage point, light from Earth pre-singularity should be viewable. In other words, with a sufficiently good telescope faster-than-light travel implies an ability to see into the past.
11283555
I saw that and noticed that they did not say “Andromeda galaxy“ which is 2 million light years away. that’s just too far. so I reconciled it in my head as being from the constellation Andromeda. I refuse to believe that the story is taking place at least 4 million years in our future because by that time everybody would be deep into postposttranspostmetaposthumanism.
So star scribe needs to give a little bit better explanation making it clear that FTL actually exists in his story vs an ambiguous hint. :)
A lot of interesting details in this chapter.
11283585
Considering how time could be vastly different between Equestria and the real world, this story could possibly take place in the far future where Andromeda will be much closer to the Milky Way. Perhaps just before or at the start of the actual merging of the two galaxies.
11283634
There's that, and the fact that the last time we saw Arcane, she had completely purged her original self to be a seapony. It's possible in the time since she went through multiple incarnations of rebooting her original mind and falling back into a different character. Indeed, this Arcane could just be a partial or avatar for a posthuman-postpony Arcane who merely thinks she's the original.
Now THIS is a fascinating hook.
Reversing death, even on an individual scale...