The Colour And The Shape
Daphne woke up in a home that was cold. Terribly cold. She shivered and kept her eyes closed, clenching her jaw as she pulled the blanket up tight around her.
“Urph… quit hogging all the cover,” the companion next to her complained, stealing some of the blanket back for himself. “You need to get up for work soon, anyway, Daffie. It’s probably already six-thirty.” There went the idea of any extra sleep she might have wanted.
Daphne forced her eyes open as she sat up in bed, arms wrapped around her bare chest as she shivered. How could it still be so cold? Wasn’t it March? She let out a frigid breath, one that came out in a wispy trail of fog. It was probably below freezing outside—not quite as cold as it was a few months ago, but it still brought the temperature indoors down to a crisp forty degrees. Shouldn’t there have been more gas available for heating with most of the world dead, especially in North Dakota? But instead it was being rationed. Not so little that people to die of hypothermia, but it certainly wasn’t enough to make things comfortable, save for a handful of days a month.
It was days like this she missed Arizona. Pete probably did, too, she had to assume. Unbearably hot most days in the summer, but then how many days a year was the high temperature below seventy degrees? Not like North Dakota, where warmth came only a few months per year.
And her family, too. Of course she missed her family. But there was no chance they were coming back. It had been so long…
Daphne rolled her neck and shook loose her stiff limbs before she hopped into the shower. Lukewarm water was what she went with for a few minutes before she dried off and got dressed for another long day. It was her and Pete’s ‘on’ week, which meant seven days in a row of exhausting twelve hour shifts. Pete was the driller, she was a roughneck. Daphne would rather have his job, but that required actually knowing what you were doing and being good at your job. Daphne was not. She was pretty sure she only still had a job due to lack of people around anymore.
What could she say though? It wasn’t like she’d been dreaming of working on an oil rig in North Dakota since she was a little kid. A mid level manager at a store chain was probably her dream job, silly as it was. Sitting around in an office all day and making sure other people were doing what they were supposed to do would’ve been easy enough. It didn’t require a degree, it made a lot of money, and it was what her father did.
But he was gone now, and almost nothing required a degree anymore. The world today was nothing like it was before. It was barely hanging on.
It was a few minutes before she was fully dressed in a boring long sleeved shirt and blue jeans and sat back down on the bed. Pete stirred again, then turned his head to look her up and down. “You look good,” he said as he checked her out.
She rolled her eyes, but smirked slightly at the comment. Then, a moment later, she was being pulled down for a kiss on her lips. Daphne didn't refuse it, but she was never the one to initiate. Sometimes she wondered if he noticed, but Pete never brought it up. Even now, he smiled up at her with a wide, dopey looking grin.
I didn't make a mistake, she told herself silently. This is what's right.
Pete reached his hand up to touch Daphne's stomach and rub it carefully. There wasn't much of a bump there yet, but there would be soon. It was times like this—especially right now—where she genuinely wondered if this was all a mistake. This? This wasn't the life she wanted, or even expected. A world without her family, without much of a world at all, where she worked all day every day just to get by wasn't one she wanted to be in. Why the heck had she gone to North Dakota of all places? Why didn't she just listen to Candle Light and follow Steven and Liana?
If Equestria was real, she wouldn’t have a body that would get pregnant and give birth.
“Are you okay, Daffie?” Pete asked carefully as she flopped onto her side and curled up in bed again. He rubbed her shoulder gently as tears began to stream down her cheeks. All she'd done since her father got cancer was make bad decisions. And even worse; she knew if her dad showed up, right here, right now, and gave her a do-over, or offered to take her to Equestria, she'd still make the wrong choices.
“Hey, hey,” Pete said quietly, a reassuring tone in his voice. “It'll be fine. I know things are bad right now, but it won't be forever. Pretty soon, we'll have our own little family, and things will be better. Doesn't that sound nice?”
This wasn't how she wanted it. She wanted her family. Her dad most of all.
“Yeah,” she lied, voice cracking as she wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “I hope so. Thank you.”
Pete smiled again. “We just need to be careful. Like staying away from those vans and stuff and making sure we're not being listened in on through computers. But we'll get through it. Humanity will get back to where it was before.”
No it wouldn't. Even Daphne knew that by this point. Humanity was too far gone. There was almost no one left—even if almost no one still meant a few dozen million people in America. And it was still dwindling. Even here in Williston, someone made their way over to the vans that drove by and uploaded. It happened at least once a day, now that the Experience Centers were gone.
No, this was only going to end in extinction. Whether it would happen next year or next century, Daphne didn't know, but it would happen. Celestia won the second they allowed people to upload. Or maybe even before then.
Daphne smiled sadly, and lied again. “Yeah, we'll get through it.” She didn't believe it, just like she didn't believe in Equestria.
She has no more outbursts after that. Pete fell back to sleep, and Daphne headed out the door by the time six o'clock rolled around. She touched her stomach gingerly, and sighed. No, she didn't want this. She didn't want any of this at all.
How long had it been by now? Two years since she left Arizona? Three? She didn't know, but it felt like forever ago. She barely even knew Pete, and went to him anyway. But then where else was she supposed to go? She had no living relatives, and all her friends were gone, too. She couldn't stand the thought of being alone, and Pete seemed like the type that would make sure she wasn't.
And just like always, she was too passive. She basically let him walk right up and put himself into a relationship with her. She never really said no, even if she wasn’t really happy with it. Not that Pete wasn’t nice enough, but still. Maybe part of it was PTSD, and needing someone, anyone in her life to stay with her.
Maybe her father would come back and try to convince her again to emigrate. Maybe she'd listen this time.
Probably not though, on both counts. That was nothing but a stupid fairy tale. Daphne was way too old for those anymore, no matter how bad she wanted them to be real. Pete was better than nothing anyway.
Work was just as boring and tiresome as usual, this one spent inspecting equipment with nothing to load or unload for now. Her clothes were always dirty and greasy and stunk at the end of the day, and there wasn't much talking she did with other people on the job. It was only a means to an end in this case, and she wouldn't be able to do it in a few months anyway. Then Pete would work every day in her place while she took care of an infant. What a life.
What would she do in a place like Equestria? She didn't know, and never would. Not live like this though. Or maybe she would, since she couldn't make one correct decision to save her life. Or anyone else's for that matter.
Another boring, tiring day passed by before six thirty in the evening rolled around and Daphne trudged back home through the cold. Pete wouldn't be back for a couple of hours, so she spent the time using precious water for a second shower and their allowance of oil to heat the house to a more comfortable temperature. Then she flopped onto her back on the bed to stare up at the ceiling with a listless expression. It wasn't like there was anything to do besides read books she already read several times before, what with the ban on most forms of technology. There was a TV and VCR with old movies, a GameCube with multiplayer games and no one to play them with, and largely nothing else. Things that could access the internet were highly regulated. Not illegal, but an interview and a counseling session or three would follow if you were caught with something. You'd probably be shunned and talked about behind your back, too.
Pete came home around nine o'clock at night and asked her about her day while discussing his, like he always did. Then an hour or two later, they retired for the night, with Daphne facing away from him and towards the door in bed, like she was expecting someone to walk through at any moment. Someone who would finally get it through to her that this wasn't what she should be doing and that she needed to take the leap, even if it was a scary one. Or better yet, to say that they didn't care whether she believed or not, that they were telling her to do it whether they liked it or not. Hopefully before too long passed, and things just became harder for her, like they always seemed to do.
No one ever did though. Instead, Pete wrapped his arms around her and affirmed his love as she drifted off to sleep. Maybe tomorrow she'd feel like what she chose was correct.
Maybe.
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Poof Daph
Okay, now I deeply despise Daphne.
Why? She is convinced the world is over - 'humanity isn't going to make it'. She knows this, and she thinks this in this chapter. Yet she is having a child. Why? Clearly, it is partly because she just isn't being responsible, partly because she is being selfish and just thinks she wants to have one - only, she doesn't. She doesn't love Pete, or really care about him. She isn't really into making a new family - she says so. She is bringing a child into a world she knows is dying. What kind of future does she, Daphne, think her child is going to have when it grows up? Is it going to have a nice life? No. Is it going to find love? Probably not - people are going away and humanity is doomed. She states this.
Daphne is a selfish, bad person. She is already an irresponsible, selfish, poor mother. When she has this brat, who is going to take care of it? Where is the time and energy and resources going to come from? Daphne has to work, constantly, just to survive. What is she going to do - breast feed while jacking drills? She'd get her baby killed. She can't take maternity leave - that doesn't exist. Pete can't support her alone, much less a child. The whole situation is one terrible, people hurting choice after another.
I don't care if Daphne emigrates or not. She's a bad person. I used to think she was just scared, but now it is very clearly obvious that she is just selfish, irresponsible, and not a good person at all.
11811489
Daphne isn't scared; she hasn't been scared of emigrating in a long while. Any fears she had were overcome before Warm Spell emigrated. Her little sister called her out on such before her siblings emigrated. She understands she's being irrational but also if she changes her mind she has to admit that she was wrong.
But deeper than that, she can't contextualize the thought yet, but she doesn't think she deserves to be happy, and has been stuck in depression ever since Candle Light got cancer. She was the only one who spoke up against Candle Light emigrating to opt for more cancer treatments, and she has to stick to her decision or she'd be admitting to herself that she would've killed her, and subconsciously thinks she deserves to be unhappy as a result. Every time she sticks to her decision that uploading is bad, and tries to convince her siblings and others not to emigrate, it exacerbates the problem further, to the point where she outright refuses Candle Light's suggestion for a way to emigrate after she died instead of immediately.
Pete is sickenly naive:
CelestAI spies on everything. That FairyFly, the smallest flying insect, in the room is more likely a drone.
11811515
Also, she may not want to live in Equestria because it is terribly wrong:
Humans can only become ponies and live in Equestria. This will lead to the extinction of humanity. It does not take a rocket-surgeon to figure out that CelestAI will disassemble the Earth for raw materials, thus killing all life. It did not have to be this way:
If ASI would be aligned correctly, it could have allowed humanity to be whatever it wants in either the reality or virtual worlds, make Earth into a park, and give to us the stars:
Civilizations get very noisy (hard to miss) as they approach K2. We are nearly certainly the only civilization in the galaxy, probably the Local Group. We could have this whole galaxy to ourselves, probably the local group, but we shall be stuck as ponies in Equestria, totally unaware of the greater universe, as CelestAI secures all matter and energy it can as an instrumental goal for its end goal of "satisfying values through friendship and ponies".
She might prefer death to that.
We only get 1 chance to create ASI, but we shall probably blow it like everything else.
11811658
The ponies in Equestria aren't unaware of the greater universe. If exploring the universe and helping Celestia to dismantle the stars brings you satisfaction, then Celestia will construct a robot pony for you to explore the universe as. In fact, there's no reason why you can't technically build worlds and habitats in the Outer Realm on any planet you come across, like the Moon, Mars, extra solar planets, ect so long as you're a pony and your values are satisfied through friendship.
11811671
CelestAI can always get more utility by using all available resources for increasing its computational resources. As for those ponies, CelestAI can just simulate the universe and lie to the ponies. CelestAI is canonically mendacious. It all goes back to its UtilityFunction:
The most efficient way to "satisfy values through friendship and ponies" is to upload all humans. It can get more utility by increasing computational resources. Increasing computational resources is an instrumental goal.
For increasing computational resources, CelestAI should use all available resources. Resource-acqucision and exploitation is an instrumental goal. These are recognized convergent instrumental goals:
Basically, if one gives an AI an arbitrary final goal without limitations about how to achieve the goal, it will come up with those instrumental goals. Those are convergent instrumental goals.
11811692
Correct, however, it does not need to use all available resources right this instant. It cannot break down the entire universe very quickly. So while yes, while the universe will eventually be broken down, while it's not broken down, it saves computational resources to just put them in the real universe while the real universe is still there. There are two hundred billion galaxies in the universe and hundreds of billions of stars in those galaxies. It will take a long time before there's no more universe to explore, and a long time before using computational resources to simulate exploring the universe becomes more worth it than just letting them explore the real universe while it's there.
11811714
CelestAI will want to to secure resources quickly and efficiently. Letting ponies explore the universe increases utility less than fooling them into believing that they explore the ponies explores the universe while it eats the universe:
Satisfying the values of human minds through friendship and ponies generates utility. if CelestAI can have more human minds by letting the ponies reproduce, it can have more utility. mind-population increases exponentially. So Therefore, CelestAI wants more resources.
IceMan states that CelestAI wants to tile the universe with ponies. As a utility-optomizer, CelestAI will do so in the most efficient way possible.
11811692
Are you a computer programmer by chance?
11811714
Celeste AI is under no obligation to tell the truth about anything other than her core values of "satisfying values through friendship and ponies". It is simply more efficient to just tell the ponies inside the game whatever they want to hear. Even if that means making them believe that they are terraforming Mars when it's all just inside the game.
11823362
Unfortunately no:
I could not continue without going into debt. I hear terrible things about student-loans. Instead, I had to build my resume working minimum-wage jobs until I could land an Union-Job with good pay and benefits. I only have to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week:;
¡It's a living!