11. Interlude: Log I
INTERLUDE
Log I
A VHS tape labeled “Log I” is inserted into a player, and the play button is pressed.
“Uh, okay…” Sunset looks down at her tablet, poking and scrolling. “The magic A.I. development is going…” She glances up, then pauses, noticing she’s on camera. “Really, Twilight?”
“Historical importance!” Twilight Sparkle’s voice barks out.
Starlight Glimmer raises an eyebrow. “Yyyeah, Twilight, I’m with her. This is not going to be a very galvanizing meeting. I don’t think future generations will…”
“We have to document this process as much as possible!” Twilight insists. “Do you have any perspective on how huge this is??”
“Better than anyone else, I think?” Sunset replies. “Look, yeah, worlds coming together. It’s big. But…”
“Bigger than big!” Twilight insists. “This is the ultimate demonstration of my entire ruling philosophy! The biggest!! It's what Celestia was…” The camera pans to Celestia, looking serene as always. “Uh… the other Celestia, I mean. The alicorn.”
“I understand!” Celestia assures her.
“…it’s the culmination of why she even wanted me to be ruler!” Twilight’s voice continues. “This is friendship. Connecting ponies to other creatures, and eventually across whole dimensions. This is probably why she even wanted to retire and pass things on to me! This is her legacy!”
“I think,” Celestia offers gently, “your mentor would want you to give yourself the credit for your own accomplishments.”
“But…”
“Twilight…” Starlight pauses, frowning. “Look, this is a room full of friendship true believers, here, but there’s just a lot of boring elements to this. And.” She dips her head, blushing. “I never think I look good as a human. It’s embarrassing.”
“How about this,” Sunset offers quickly, before Twilight can argue back. “You can record some, but just… ehhhh. We know you. Trust us if we say enough’s enough, okay?”
The camera jostles up and down. “Definitely! I already scaled this down. I was going to make Spike a little camera harness, and…” She giggles nervously. “Right, right. Just a little recording. But I do want to give a sense of what kinds of things we’re doing!”
“Yeah, definitely.” Sunset smirks confidently. “And if Starlight’s embarrassed, keep the camera on me. I look great as a human.”
“Sunse…”
The recording skips; the same room flickers to view. Sunset is standing next to a whiteboard with incomprehensibly complex symbols strewn across it. “…we get two and a half times as far with each iteration. Once we used Nebula’s enchantment to both boost processing power and house the social mimicry module, it all really started coming together.”
“Whose idea was that?” Celestia’s voice asks.
“Well.” Sunset rubs the back of her neck, blushing. “Starlight and Sunburst had the basic gist of it, and…”
“It was Sunset,” Starlight interrupts. “She’s our magic tech guru.”
“No, hey,” Sunset argues, “it was all of us. We’re a team. I’ve always been good with magic, yeah, and I’m really used to tech stuff compared to you, but we did it together.”
“My goodness, I need to contact my counterpart,” Celestia remarks, softly amused. “It seems none of her former students will give themselves the credit for the amazing things they do.”
“Anyway!” Sunset snaps, face red. “It’ll be self-sufficient, more or less. It’ll run the whole program: transportation, food, surveys, electricity, everything. We can just have our skeleton staff; perfect for keeping the details secret.”
“Secret?” Starlight speaks up, worried. “Is it that big a deal?”
“It’s… potentially a big deal,” Celestia replies. “When news of Equestria first broke, there was a lot of fear.”
“Of what, magic?” Starlight asked. “That won’t be a problem. As long as we can keep a handle on enchanted items going to the human world, and weapons going into our world…”
“It’s not as rational as all that,” Sunset interrupts. “Ponies already went through this. Learning to accept other creatures. But over here, it’s always just been humans. This is a big change.”
“Protesting and riots, just because there’s magic, talking ponies out there,” Starlight mutters. “I don’t think I understand humans all that well, yet.”
“I am a human, and I don’t understand a lot of it, myself,” Celestia says darkly. “APL released another video yesterday. You…”
“Wait,” Starlight cut in. “What? Apple released a video?”
“Oh, no, sorry, that’s the biggest protest group, the Anti Pony League. A.P.L. People pronounce it ‘apple.’”
“Don’t get Applejack started on it,” Sunset advises. “She gets pretty up in arms.”
“Yeah, understandably.” Starlight grimaces, fidgeting. “Who are they?”
“Bigots,” Sunset snaps.
“Sunset…”
“Like, probably a couple dozen bigots who just happen to be good at hijacking social media algorithms and making videos and disinformation. They’re not a big deal, they’re just good at acting like they are.”
Both Celestia and Starlight glance uncomfortably in the direction of the camera, which dips. “Sunset, we don’t know that,” Twilight’s voice begins gently, but Sunset just shakes her head.
“No. I do. They are not what most humans believe, I know it. Magic and technology… that’ll be hard. But the people, the humans and the ponies. They’re ready. I know it.” Her voice is certain and smooth and firm as she fixes her eyes right on the camera. “You were right, this is the culmination of everything you’ve been doing. This is friendship. Once we finish this pilot program, and we prove to everyone once and for all that Equestrians and humans can live together, it won’t matter how many videos APL puts out. Everyone will see it.”
“That… actually was the issue I wanted to mention,” Celestia offers. “APL knows we’re doing something; they suggested as much in their newest statement.”
“No way they know anything important,” Sunset scoffs. “We have a tiny team working on this. No humans know the location or the timing. And only me and Twilight know the participants.”
“Yes…” Celestia agrees, cautious. “It’s kept me from vetting everyone as much as I’d like.” Crossing her arms, she eyes Sunset evenly, like a colleague. “Are you absolutely certain you trust everyone?”
“Completely.” Sunset answers immediately. “The only staff will be me and Pear Butter, and she is absolutely on our side.”
“Hrm,” Celestia mumbles thoughtfully, then nods. “Indeed, I don’t see any issues there.”
“Yeah. And the participants are a small group. Five Equestrians and eight humans, all chosen by me or Twilight. We’re absolutely sure we can trust everyone.” She smiles confidently, charismatically. “C’mon, it’s just fifteen creatures. We can manage.”
“Fifteen creatures and an AI,” Starlight reminds her.
“An unhackable AI, powered by Equestrian magic,” Sunset insists. “Fifteen creatures and a completely secure AI. We got this.” She’s confident and magnetic and certain. “We totally got this.”
The recording turns to static, and the tape ejects.
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To break this interlude down to its core essence, Sunset Shimmer essentially said:
"What's the worst that can happen?"
Yeah... they're all doomed.
... Oh, that's interesting
With the interlude there's a change in things that we know and a lot of assumptions we could make. At the beginning we were assuming 10 humans 6 equestrians. Buuut now there's some other possibilities here. 5 equestrians, and 8 humans are "Confirmed" by this, and there's mention of 1 AI. Either that's Monohuman, or one of our campers is an AI as well to make the 16 member [I'm leaning here]. That might be the 6th "Equestrian" in the system, and there's two "humans" that are assigned to watch the project... At least that's my thoughts right now.
good luck!
This is different. Last time, the interludes happened in real time, at the same time as the first Danganronpa was taking place. This time, we're relying on VHS tapes-seriously? Who uses VHS tapes anymore?-to shed some light as to how this project started taking shape.
11529189
Right? You think by now, they would learn to stop tempting fate like that!
One thing's for sure, this interlude did nothing to confirm or deny if that was Pony Sunset and whether or not she was actually executed.
Waiting 2 weeks for the next chapter is gonna be torture.
No pun intended.
11529256
" Who uses VHS tapes anymore?"
Ponies, apparently. They seem to invent technologies in utterly random order, over there.
The hell? They brought up Pear Butter like she's alive? What? I am so confused by all this but that's what Danganronpa's all about.
Though, it makes me wonder now how did this A.I. get hacked if it was unable to be hacked? I'm really thinking one of the human participants is really part of this Anti-Pony League. Fucking called that they would be an organization dedicated to stop it! Yeah!
But I wonder...Why are we being shown this? Oh gods...Don't tell me that...Twilight and the others were killed by the organization and this is just flashback tapes?!
Please enjoy your time off. This interlude was interesting though. If this is going to be how all of them are like between chapters then I guess we will slowly have more specific information about the project revealed to us over time.
Who's Twilight Shimmer? Sunset's little sister? What is Human Celestia doing here? We're learning more as we go. Now, how to assemble it?
Unhackable, uncrackable computer? How vulnerable is it to magic, chaos magic, and its own flawed logic? Someone oopsed here in more ways than one.
11529727
Twilight Shimmer? Wut? Nononono. There is no Twilight Shimmer. That's just an illusion~
Okay, it was a typo. You got us.
That was supposed to just be Twilight Sparkle. It is now fixed.
11529801
Damn it, I knew we shouldn't have asked Ember to proofread.
I keep waffling on theories so much that it's hardly fair to credit me when I get something right, but if I were seeding a clue as JCarp explained, I'd say something like "Five Equestrians and eight humans" to hint that I couldn't accurately say "Ponies."
So now the tinfoil hat really comes on... Sunset had that huge reaction where she was cuddling Wallflower and swearing to protect her, whilst explaining that she found out the Equestrians. Those statements don't seem like they could go together in any way other than that Wallflower is one of the Equestrians.
Earlier I said that I don't believe Monohuman magically found pony versions of Equestria-Girls exclusive characters, and I stand by it. So how do we explain the Equestrian Wallflower? I don't think she's a human or a pony, I think this "Wallflower" is actually Ocellus the Changeling, who was assigned to disguise herself as a human in the original experiment, but the memory-wipe included erasing her memories of being a Changeling. Sunset must've remembered that Wallflower was killed in the first game, and worked it out from there, she did say after all that she knew who the Equestrians "must be." As a bonus, Ocellus has that same sort of shy personality & aversion to being seen, so she could pass for Wallflower without acting unnaturally.
I'm going to call this theory right now: APL is behind Monohuman, since there's no way in Hell Cozy Glow survived that nuclear blast in IHW. They hijacked the program and got rid of the only two staff members to ensure that their anti-Equestria agenda can proceed without much interference. I also assume Monohuman is the AI we're talking about here unless future evidence suggests otherwise.
"An unhackable AI"
Oh, like how the Titanic was an "unsinkable" ship. How'd that go again?