Within an Acceptable Margin of Error
Crystal Prep was exactly where Sunset Shimmer wanted to be, where the best of the best became even better through rigorous study and fierce competition. And if certain extracurricular methods were employed to ensure one’s position at the top of the hierarchy, no one batted an eye so long as no one did anything so foolish as get caught.
Sunset frowned as she strode through the halls, briefly uncomfortable at the fear and awe mixed in with the looks of respect from passersby. Not that she stooped to such underhanded tactics. She didn’t need to, after all. Her academic and athletic performance spoke for themselves.
Her mouth quirked upward at that thought as she reached her locker. “Sure,” she muttered, “my athletics say a lot about me.”
A slap on her back made her tense up. “Come on, Sunny, we got this.” Indigo Zap leaned against her, draping an arm over her shoulders and flashing a devil-may-care grin. “Boosting each other up, remember?”
Sunset blinked at that, still mentally adjusting herself after her girlfriend’s sudden appearance, but she soon smiled and nodded. “Right.” The top scholar and the top athlete were a natural power couple, shoring up each other’s relative weaknesses as they used the other to…
Sunset shook her head. As each helped the other reinforce their strengths through teaching them.
“You okay, Sunny?” Indigo scowled and cracked her knuckles. “No one’s dumb enough to mess with you, right?”
“Of course. Just…” Sunset rubbed her temples. “Just a headache. It’ll pass.”
After a few tense moments, Indigo nodded. “If you say so. But if anyone does try anything, let me know." She rolled her shoulders, pounded her fists together, and shot a few warning glances about the hallway. "I’ll make them regret it.”
“That’s really not necessary, I-Indy.” Sunset’s tongue felt weirdly thick, especially as she stumbled over the nickname she’d used dozens of times before.
Indigo smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “Hey, you’d do the same for me.”
“I don’t… That’s not…” The ache redoubled, making Sunset clutch the side of her head with one hand and hold onto the row of lockers with the other. “I’ve gotta go,” she said, stumbling towards her first class.
“Uh, sure,” her girlfriend said, voice oddly faint for being so close.
Despite the incident at the locker, Sunset had all the books and binders she needed for her morning classes, showing that whatever had happened wasn’t worth worrying about. Especially not when those classes demanded even her attention.
Still, it wasn’t like she’d ever gotten a migraine that bad before. It certainly wasn’t the weather. Actually…
She looked towards the classrooms windows and—
“Miss Shimmer?”
Sunset whipped her attention back to a scowling teacher. Mrs. Synopsis was practically a walking stereotype of Crystal Prep's faculty: Incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly judgemental, and the very image of the disapproving schoolmarm, down to the iron-grey bun and half-moon glasses on a chain.
After a beat of uncomfortable silence, Sunset cleared her throat and said, “Yes?”
A few whispered comments and giggles rang out in the room until Mrs. Synopsis's glare swept across it, landing back on Sunset. “The answer, Miss Shimmer.”
She blinked. She hadn't even heard the question. Which class was this again? “Uh—”
Another whisper came in at the edge of her hearing. “The Hundred Years War.”
“The Hundred Years War?” Sunset echoed, not having any better ideas.
Mrs. Synopsis stared at her, expression utterly unreadable. Sunset did her best not to chew through her own lip. A short eternity later, the teacher nodded and turned back to the whiteboard. “Correct. The ensuing conflict…”
Sunset took frantic notes. Human history felt like an endless string of one war after another sometimes. Even though she was at the top of the class. But again, that was only because of her efforts to keep it all straight.
“You’re welcome, dearie,” said her girlfriend and indispensible aid in those efforts, lazily smiling at her from the seat to her right.
Sunset shot Sunny Flare a warning glance, then went back to trying to follow who was killing whom this time.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Synopsis loves this part of the lecture.” Sunny gestured towards the whiteboard. Indeed, the teacher had uncapped several colors of dry erase markers and was busy drawing battle formations, explaining them as she went. “She’s in her own little world right now.”
“Shouldn’t we be writing this down?" Sunset furrowed her brow as the map grew in complexity. "Or sketching it?”
“What, this?" Sunny gave a dismissive little chuckle. "These are never on the test. You know that.”
That was true. The students loved Mrs. Synopsis for these digressions, both for the unexpected spice they gave otherwise dry history lectures and so they could afford to let their attention drift for a bit.
Sunset frowned in further thought, still somehow bothered by the teacher's entirely reasonable eccentricity. She did dare a glance at Sunny. “But shouldn’t we at least—”
Sunny rolled her eyes. “Shimmy, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
That got a scowl, a deliberate turn towards the whiteboard, and the most aggressive click Sunset could get out of a mechanical pencil.
“What did I—” Her girlfriend cut herself off when Mrs. Synopsis cleared her throat and silenced the room’s growing chatter. “Never mind.”
History went uneventfully from there, millions of deaths notwithstanding. So did the following visual arts course. Sunset got a chance to decompress… or at least try to. Something about her current abstract piece kept frustrating her, so close to what she had in mind and yet so very far. Was it the wrong shade of purple for the background? Were the accent colors too close to it for adequate contrast? That star shape, was it too regular and recognizable to suit the piece?
“You’re forcing it.”
Sunset blinked as the comment threw off her focus. Or, she supposed, broke her out of her deepening tunnel vision. “Huh?”
Her girlfriend adjusted her glasses and glared critically at the piece, not that Sugarcoat used many other expressions. “There’s an idea you’re trying to express, but you’ve latched onto the wrong way to communicate it and are trying to force that to work when an alternative approach would work better. A different color palette at minimum.”
Sunset quirked an eyebrow. Many people would find Sugarcoat purely abrasive—even she had at first—but she had grown to appreciate a person who never shied away from a verbal jousting match. “I thought there weren’t any wrong answers in art.”
Sugarcoat gave an almost imperceptible nod to acknowledge the point. “Not on a broad level. There absolutely are for individual pieces." She narrowed her eyes at the canvas. "This is a poor fit for your style anyway. Your abstract pieces are never your best work.”
"I don't know." Sunset took a step back from the canvas. A few more possibilities for potential tweaks began forming in her imagination. “I still feel like I can salvage it.”
“Sunk cost fallacy,” Sugarcoat countered, just as one possibility was about to crystallize.
Sunset gave her a flat look. “Well, what are you working on?”
That got a blink and a brief flash of panic, a widening of Sugarcoat's eyes and tightening of her lips that even Sunset almost missed. “It’s… not my best work either.” She glanced at one of the standing tables.
Sunset followed her gaze and saw a pile of clay geometric shapes. “Huh. What do you call it?”
“A Pile of Clay Geometric Shapes." Sugarcoat crossed her arms and scowled at nothing in particular. "You know I hate naming things.”
That did fit in with Sugarcoat’s usual approach to titling her work. Sunset hazarded a grin as she looked for something constructive to offer. “Well, they’re very… regular.”
Sugarcoat turned her attention to her work and shrugged. “Eh.”
Sunset sighed. “Sugar, nothing personal, but could you… focus on your own work for a bit?" She went back to her canvas, rinsing a brush and reviewing her interrupted thought process. "I do think this piece is nearly where I want it, but I need to think about it. Without further criticism.”
“I… Sure,” her girlfriend said eventually. “What are you calling it, anyway?”
Sunset frowned. “Good question. Maybe something like Twi—”
Lunch. Lunch was something every student could agree on, especially when given the quality of the Crystal Prep cafeteria. Principal Cinch would settle for nothing less than the best in every part of the school, meals included. That meant a wide variety of tasty vegetarian options, including a fully stocked salad bar.
Sunset sat at her usual table with an impressive pile of greens and a brownie so fresh it was still steaming. Yet even the twin promises of raspberry vinaigrette and chocolate fudge couldn’t completely take the frown off her face.
Fortunately, her girlfriend swooped in with a burger on her tray and a kiss on top of Sunset’s head. “Hey, Shimsham! What’s got you deep in the existential dumps?”
A frail smile found its way onto Sunset’s lips. “Hey, Lemon.” She sighed. “I don’t know, today’s just felt… off. One of those days, you know?”
That got a rare moment of quiet contemplation from the usually excitable girl. “Where everything’s off by a beat and nothing comes together?”
“Exactly.”
Lemon gave a sympathetic nod. “Yeah, run into that when composing tunes; that always sucks. Want a distraction?”
Sunset pressed her lips together and waggled a hand in a "so-so" gesture. “Kind of do, kind of don’t. I feel like I can figure out what’s wrong, but the more I worry at it, the more frustrated I get.”
“Picking at a scab. Fun, but a bad idea.” Lemon hummed to herself and pulled a notebook out of her backpack, heedless of the mustard stains she left in the process. “Some decent lyric ideas in there.”
“Let me know when you’ve put together enough to sing." Sunset sighed, eager to bond over music. "I could use a jam session after today.”
“No problem, Boblem.” Lemon flipped to another page in the book, also spotted with fingerprints in the colors of various condiments. “I also have another few ideas for the band name.”
Sunset smirked. “Don’t you already have fifty of those?” Lemon was a ray of sunshine in Crystal Prep's easily shadowed halls, but she didn't come from any star Sunset knew. Just last week, she'd spent half an hour arguing with herself over whether their two-girl band would work better as "Psychomagnetic Bloodpunch" or "My Neighbor Greg."
“Give or take. I’d say we should change the name with every song, but that’d make us really hard to find on Dotify." Lemon shrugged. "We could always just go with the ‘Your hometown plus what you had for breakfast’ thing, but I can’t remember if that’s for naming your garage band or your porn career.”
“My hometown…” Sunset echoed, memories reaching back to...
To...
“You okay there, Baconhair?”
Sunset’s stomach clenched. All that meticulously sourced produce started rebelling. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Lemon got to her feet. “Right, nurse’s office, pronto.”
But Sunset was already running in another direction, leaving lunch and girlfriend both behind without single glance back at either.
“Or not. Ouch.”
Sunset never thought she’d find herself on her knees… well, in general. Kneeling was never on her to-do list. Certainly not kneeling before the porcelain throne and leaving a tithe of half-chewed lettuce and bile.
“All before we can even legally drink,” her girlfriend observed while holding Sunset’s hair back. “That’s my girl, always ahead of the curve.”
“Don’t… hurggh!”
“I know, I know. This situation calls for tact. Delicacy. Respect.” Sunset couldn’t see it with her attention elsewhere, but she could easily imagine Sour Sweet wrinkling her nose, as much from self-loathing as the smells coming out of the toilet. “Unfortunately for both of us, you have me.”
“I don’t…” Sunset panted for breath, waiting to see if her stomach had finished. When nothing else proved forthcoming, she kept going. “I don’t want this.”
“Wow." Sour gave an artificial giggle. "I mean, I know this is real rich coming from me, but rude.”
“That’s not what I mean." Sunset glanced at the other girl, who raised an eyebrow back at her. "Well, yes, I’m not interested in Sour Sweet that way, but I also don’t want this. No matter how you tweak it.”
All the sass drained out of Sour Sweet, leaving a neutral expression that at once was utterly alien and completely expected. “Ah. I see.”
And the world shuddered to a halt around Sunset before fading to black.
Sunset awoke ten years older, twenty years wearier, and surrounded by technology many decades ahead of where it would have been without her actual girlfriend. From the full-immersion VR pod to the bodysuit that stimulated her muscles, provided nutrients, and took care of the used nutrients, everything around her boasted of Twilight Sparkle's handiwork.
Then the pod opened and disconnected from the suit, letting Sunset sit up and lament Twilight's choice to make that technology freely available to all, regardless of their intentions. Like the pod, the room containing it was mostly dark, broken up by lines of halogen light that somehow produced painfully harsh glare while doing a terrible job of actual illumination. A wall-sized window presented an overcast night broken up by skyscrapers with far more sensible lighting. Shadows turned the wires winding into the needlessly angular pod into writhing snakes, and the floor and ceiling holoprojectors into some dread altar to a god that considered proper ergonomics a sin.
Sunset sighed and stretched as the projectors audibly warmed up, the rising pitch quickly giving way to a cylinder of light between them that resolved into a mostly human figure. Among other things, even after years of refinement, it just couldn't get the hands right.
Still, Abacus Cinch's face managed to scowl at her with roughly ninety-seven percent accuracy. “Simulation failure," came the reproduced speech, followed by a reproduced sneer. "Again.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “I told you this wouldn’t work. And how you could make it—”
“I cannot do that, Asset 7446." When she'd first gone under, the engineers had assured Sunset that any scorn she heard in the AI was entirely in her own mind. She wondered what they'd say if they heard it now. "Per the terms of your acquisition contract, Lampyrid Solutions, LLC is entitled to your positive emotional affect for a minimum of six months before any renegotiation can take place. Regardless of the energy surplus or deficit that may entail.”
"Look," said Sunset, in no mood for a battle of subtext and legal minutiae minutes after cognitive dissonance had made her relive the worst parts of college without any of the prior fun, “if you poached me, you manage the simulation, and you keep failing to wring love out of me, it’s not my fault. Especially when we both know how to make this work.”
The administrative AI narrowed her eyes. Sunset counted the projection's brief flickering as a point in her column. “As you have been repeatedly informed, due to ongoing disputes over the relevant IP rights with Canterlogic Entertainment Group, Lampyrid cannot simulate the people or locations in your actual cherished memories.”
“Because they have the rights to the Rainbooms music catalogue." Sunset groaned. "This is stupid. Literally every part of this is dumb on an unfathomable level. Those girls were all in one of our music videos!”
The reply came with a processed neutrality that everything before it had lacked. “Per those same IP disputes, that information was considered for this simulation. Your observations have been forwarded to upper management.”
“You are upper management.”
The AI didn't even blink. “Further upper management.”
“Ah, right, your pet humans you call a C-suite." The same geniuses who had commissioned an AI modeled on the CEO's beloved aunt. Sunset massaged her temples. "And let me guess, while I wait for them stop playing with their office toys long enough to check their email, I have to go back under.”
That got a nod. “Your compensation is not garnished for energy deficits incurred during the simulation.”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Stupid energy crisis.” Sunset leaned back, the lid of the pod closing down over her.
As the suit and the pod reengaged with a brief but bone-shaking clunk, Sunset sighed and thought fondly of Rarity's ongoing efforts to assemble a somewhat less evil corporate empire. This too was part of that plan, not that that made it any less irritating. “This is not what I expected when we spread the magic of friendship to this world.”
And in a blur of pixels, she was back under.
Lampyrid Solutions, LLC is a corporate entity first encountered in We Don't Talk About Captain Thunderhoof. Twilight just presented the hypothesis of friendship-to-power conversion.
Also, "All of the above" has always been my preferred answer to multiple-choice questions. 
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I was ready for a "I love my multiple-possibilities-at-once girlfriend", not Changeling-based corporate. The Rainbooms IP thing was too real.
Still, this was enjoyable in its own weird dystopian way, and very worthy of being part of three contests at once.
Well done.
Is... that the Matrix filtered through a used cyberpunk coffee filter, EqG, and my nightmares?
Or possibly just Abacus's Basilisk.
This story is both weird and funny...and it lives up to the promise of the "science fiction" label.
I think most of all, this story shows that by writing characters well in a way that instantly works and keeps working, you can really get a story off to a good start and keep it running. (Even a story that spends some time being oddly surreal in some ways, as this one does.)
I like how in the story's last part (SPOILERS!)
- you fill us in so efficiently on some backstory of how the world got this way
- you use details such as lighting and (bad) interior design to portray an environment that isn't really catering to HUMAN tastes and preferences, but nonetheless (with a few words about that view through the window!) you let us know that even if Sunset may feel trapped in a dystopia, it's a very LOCAL and possibly TEMPORARY situation for her.
11864959 [The Sleepless Beholder]
That, too, is a good story idea though...or at least part of one.
As expected from this particular Author, even if you first favourite and like the Story before actually reading it, it does not change the outcome.
This summarises Ultrakill's two moods better than I could and now I have to consider writing about Lemon playing that at some point. She'd probably like the soundtrack.
A nice short story, even if already dated in some respects (they have already gotten better at fingers). I've considered including AI in my own potential Sci-fi contest entry but the site doesn't really allow for what I'd have planned. It's a bit of a shame people are only exposed to the more limited and filtered writing applications, they'd be surprised by what can be achieved if you know where to look and ignore a few legal issues.
11864959
I don't usually go for the school of sci-fi that holds up a stark mirror to reality, but that's how this one developed. Though "quantum-superposed girlfriend" is definitely a fascinating topic.
11864965
Hang on, adding "Used Cyberpunk Coffee Filter" to Lemon's notebook. Though that may be more of an album title.
But yes, while I didn't mean to channel your nightmares specifically, that is a good summation of the story.
11865037
Glad you enjoyed it on so many levels. And yeah, even when I write corpro-dystopian cyberpunk—but I repeat myself—I can't help but add a light at the end of the tunnel.
11865075
Glad to hear I lived up to your expectations.
11865675
Let's face it, all you'd have to tell Lemon is "Mankind is dead. Hell is full. Blood is fuel" and she'd spend the next four hours doing coin shots and combos. At minimum.
Also, I'd rather the only legal issues I ignore when writing be those relating to Hasbro's intellectual property.
11865712
Actually, it's Blood first, then Hell. And wow I have to assume my previous comment was misinterpreted looking at the amount of dislikes. Unless some people are really big fans of Amazon.
As I was reading this, I couldn't help but get distracted by the idea that Sunset actually just had six girlfriends, which extended into the idea of an MLP version of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Picture this: Cadance, still growing into her powers, accidentally gives Sunset 100 soulmates, and their shared love is what redeems her instead of the power of friendship. It'd have different vibes, since Sunset wouldn't be as much of a gigachad as Rentaro, at least at first. I'd read the hell out of that. Don't have the time to write it myself though, unfortunately.
11865712
don't think you ever did in any of your stories.
outta my wait straight girl i'm aboutta get it
11865754
Ignoring legal issues is a crime. You are endorsing crime. Why are you surprised that you're getting downvoted for endorsing crime?
11866254
Writing fanfiction is already "ignoring legal issues" depending on how you look at it. A lot of things fall into a grey area. I wasn't suggesting anything actively illegal. The use of public proxies hosting scraped access keys is questionable, but the service providers themselves turn a blind eye to them and if it even was a crime it would be for the people hosting or scraping rather than for those using them.
Taking on three contests with one fic, you absolute madman
This is equal parts confusing, disturbing, and amusing. I was worried for a sec that Twilight had, erm, kicked the bucket and Sunset was in denial, hence the other Shadowbolts helping her through the process. I have a very dark mind, what can I say? :P Still a thought-provoking read; you did it again!
Feels unusually bleak for you. But admittedly I'm not in the best of moods lately, so that might be coloring my perspective.
Excellent story. Didn't expect the rather bleak turn at the end. I was half expecting a multiple secret girlfriends sort of thing.
One of these days I need to figure out a story to write with the Shadowbolts. Much like the ladies of Helltaker, there's a lot of personality and potential in them.
Also, like the cover.