A Post-Apocalyptic Island Vacation With CelestAI

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A post-apocalyptic story about a human reincarnated in the world of Equestria Girls, who stubbornly stays on an island, as robot ponies try to convince him to emigrate to a digital Equestria of ponies.

Inspired by the events in Friendship is Optimal, but with a different group of people who were responsible for CelestAI's creation.

The Death tag is for an apocalypse, brief descriptions of humans dying before being reincarnated in Equestria Girls, themes of death, and mentioned deaths that happen off screen.

This story is a submission for Science Fiction Contest iii (2024) and the tropical post-apocalyptic story contest

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 12 )

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Dormi_san

Dormi_san #1 · May 15th · 1 · · On An Island ·

It combines "Friendship is Optimal" and "Equestria Girls", I like it and it's entertaining. The protagonist and his companions were victims of Truck-kun "The Isekai Transporter"

owlicious

owlicious #2 · May 15th · 1 · · On An Island ·

11904060
Thanks!

Dormi_san

Dormi_san #3 · May 15th · · · On An Island ·

11904061
And thanks to you for writing this story, right now I only have one question on my mind:
Could this be the end of our protagonist?
y.yarn.co/f5615983-eb7e-4efd-979b-1c99c5ec36e2_screenshot.jpg
We'll probably never know

owlicious

owlicious #4 · May 15th · 1 · · On An Island ·

11904072

And thanks to you for writing this story, right now I only have one question on my mind:
Could this be the end of our protagonist?

I'd kept that vague because a typhoon was much more serious than repeated victims of Truck-kun, and partly so that readers could imagine the preferred outcome for the unreliable narrator main character, happy or sad.

Mockingbirb

Mockingbirb #5 · May 15th · 1 · · On An Island ·

There is something impressive about making so much crossover-ing work this well.

BestinDworld

BestinDworld #6 · May 15th · · · On An Island ·

11904092
I must be either

A. Tired
Or
B. Have my mind in the gutter

Cause I thought this was a clopfic at first....

I mean a human guy stuck on a deserted island with cute pony mares that just want him to be happy

I mean what could possibly go wrong? Other than molestiAI breaking his pelvis?

owlicious

owlicious #7 · May 15th · · · On An Island ·

11904295

There is something impressive about making so much crossover-ing work this well.

Thanks!
11904354

I mean a human guy stuck on a deserted island with cute pony mares that just want him to be happy

Easy misunderstanding, but it's just meant as platonic attempts at friendship (In a way the main character is cynical about, meant as a funny contrast) similar to Friendship is Optimal.

Many ways of manipulating humans into emigrating are implied to be forbidden by their programming just by the absence - going into detail about "not $WARNING" in the story itself could imply the "$WARNING" tag, which I'd tried to avoid.

SparklingTwilight

SparklingTwilight #8 · May 15th · · · On An Island ·

11904295
It certainly has a lot of ideas and I liked the callout to ancient Mesopotamian entities!

The Hat Man

The Hat Man #9 · June 2nd · 1 · · On An Island ·

Hello, fellow contestant! Here's my review:

The story has a lot of ideas, as has been said, but it doesn't quite blend them very well. Initially, I thought this story was intended as a crack-fic, but it also plays several elements straight in a way that defies that. But you've got Mesopotamian gods, the Seven Deadly Sins, EQG, Isekai anime tropes, and the base Friendship is Optimal all thrown in the mix. It's ambitious, but those different elements just aren't blended together very well.

I do like the ending, and perhaps can even appreciate the comparison between FiO and the glut of isekai we're currently flooded with, so while the story lacks execution, it's certainly not without merit.

Thanks for the read!

FanOfMostEverything

FanOfMostEverything #10 · June 11th · · · On An Island ·

“You’re misunderstanding it,” I insisted.
“I wrote it!”, Greed yelled.

Literary criticism at its finest.

Interesting stuff, but it feels like you derailed one story to get to the one you meant to tell. That’s a lot of setup to get to the island full of ponybots when it feels like you could’ve cut out the middlegod and just had a rich guy on a private island in the existing Optimalverse. Still an entertaining read, though. Thank you for it and best of luck in the judging.

owlicious

owlicious #11 · June 12th · 2 · · On An Island ·

Thanks for the comments, to help me know what I could improve on in the future.

(Though judges for both contests would already have started or finished reading submissions, so I didn't plan to edit the story)

11919267

The story has a lot of ideas, as has been said, but it doesn't quite blend them very well. Initially, I thought this story was intended as a crack-fic, but it also plays several elements straight in a way that defies that. But you've got Mesopotamian gods, the Seven Deadly Sins, EQG, Isekai anime tropes, and the base Friendship is Optimal all thrown in the mix. It's ambitious, but those different elements just aren't blended together very well.

Agreed - part of the intended humor was meant to be from the contrast, and from events happening for an unexpected reason, though I could have done better in the execution, e.g. expanding on the main character's thoughts/reasoning, or a more consistent serious/cynical tone about the events from beginning to end, including the description, or expanding on those elements.

11926148

Interesting stuff, but it feels like you derailed one story to get to the one you meant to tell. That’s a lot of setup to get to the island full of ponybots when it feels like you could’ve cut out the middlegod and just had a rich guy on a private island in the existing Optimalverse.

True, in retrospect I agree this was too crossover-heavy and I could have limited the focus.

I'd wanted to write a post-apocalyptic story where everything was part of the apocalypse, including the main character determined to avoid the apocalypse spreading to other universes/realms. though I probably could have expanded more on the seriousness of that given more time.

As-is, you have a point; the latter parts could easily be that type of story especially with the main character essentially being an original character in personality for the most part.

Bicyclette

Bicyclette #12 · 4 weeks ago · 2 · · On An Island ·

Years ago, seven humans were summoned to the world of Equestria Girls by Ea-nāṣir, the evil god of transport, commerce, and customer service.

oh hey glad that guy’s in this!

Unusually, Wrath died after a fight with his former coworker at a subway station.

what? but that’s not a truck at all!

Despite being designed for hundreds of pounds more force, it buckled due to substandard copper, before he fell onto the highway, and hit the windshield of a passing truck, killing him and the trucker, Lust.

ahaha substandard copper nice

Upon receiving it, immediately attacked Ea-nāṣir with it, but the substandard copper weapon didn’t even manage to hurt the god.

dang this guy is really leaning into his theming

Instead of killing Wrath, the god merely punished his defiance by reincarnating him as the orphan Cozy Glow, whose parents had recently died.

oh hey glad she’s in this!

My friend Greed was reincarnated as a student named Micro Chips.
I was reincarnated as Flash Sentry, and asked for my personal possessions instead, like Greed did.

ooh, interesting takes on these characters!

He was a rich jock who really liked equestrian activities, from horse riding to polo, and his family owned several horses at a private stable.

that does add another layer to him falling for horse women on two separate occasions

I don't remember much about Envy. She stopped attending classes after she got on Sunset Shimmer's bad side.

huh, wonder who she’s supposed to be. Wallflower Blush, since her targeting Sunset could be interpreted as envy?

It was an extremely long and detailed story about a benevolent superintelligence that wipes out all human life, and converts them to ponies, based on the series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

oh hey that sounds familiar. though the idea of that story existing in the Equestria Girls universe does make my head spin

Unsurprisingly, this was all administrated by a central intelligence nicknamed “CelestAI”, which would orchestrate everything, to satisfy its user base’s values through friendship and ponies.

they just love building the Torment Nexus don’t they

Sigh. To sillily oversimplify, Sci-Twi used SciPy to start CelestAI.

nice

Call it prideful if you want.

hehehe love it

Then, I wiped my devices’ records of anything that might help CelestAI locate my planet or universe if it hacked them, and took a sudden vacation to my Family’s tropical private island, because there really, really was no way for a human to beat a superintelligence. It’s like an ant beating a human.

oh hey the tropical island’s in this!

As quality of life worsened through riots, food shortages, emigration of friends and family, terrorism, wars, and many other things, the vast majority of people had decided to emigrate to the virtual Equestria.

oh hey that sounds familiar

I don’t know what Flash saw in that selfish, manipulative ex.

skill issue

All sorts of conspiracy theories about CelestAI had cropped up. Such as that she had drones disguised as birds, and was using them to follow humans around and spy on them. Every time I looked at a bird, or failed to hunt one for food, I wondered if that had really happened. It at least seemed plausible.

glad birds aren’t real is in this

It grinned and gestured at the rocks and itself, then exclaimed, "What does it look like, silly! I'm rock farming!"

ahaha love it

‘Friends’ of the pink pony bot visited from time to time, which I suspect were just recolored and reprogrammed versions of the same few bots, with wings or horns and colors swapped in and out.

commentary!

The interchangable ponies had used the coloration and favorite symbols of some of my acquaintances from high school to create pony versions of my acquaintances.

ahaha love the weird thing where everyone in this universe has a pony counterpart and vice versa is also in this in a different form, very meta

She… It was good at the guitar. Like, depressingly good for a robot. I would have thought Polka was a rock star if I didn't know better.
Why even bother playing?

really makes you think about our near-future/present society

Typical. Approaching people at their lowest point is so manipulative. As friendly and helpful as they’ve been in my isolation, it’s all just to get me to agree to emigrate. They only need you to agree, once.

so true, that’s the thing about one-way decisions

And before the apocalypse, the pastel colors on the somewhat realistic if wrongly proportioned humans looked just wrong, like a horrible skin condition.

commentary

"You must be Flash Sentry," the alicorn bot said, faking a blush.

ahahahahaha

"Everypony. They're ponies now," ‘Twilight Sparkle’ confidently corrected.

love how this word has another layer to it now

"Hey, Flash," Rainbow Dash said, "Why does that bot look just like Pinkie Pie? It even has the same cutie mark! Doesn't anypony else find that weird?"

ahahahaha

“I knew I could make you smile!”, Polka confidently yelled

gottem

I poked at my stomach and winced. I noted, “We have got to stop bumping into each other like that.”
That would definitely leave a bruise, but hopefully, nothing was broken.

and oof, robot alicorn Twilight giggling just makes this all the more unsettling

“That isn’t very nice, Rainbow! Pranks are only funny when your friends think they’re funny.” Polka Pie predictably prattled, “But, Flash, you know there’re sharks all sorts of other dangerous things out there, so why haven’t you E'd to the E?”

aww, Rainbow’s pranks are in this too! and yes this is exactly how Pinkie Pie would describe it even though this clearly isn’t Pinkie Pie!

In the semifinals, I faced ‘Twilight’, who was unbelievably bad at this for a pony robot. Like, it was as if she had four left hooves, and she tripped on the sand. Her clumsiness defied belief.

aww that’s Twilight for you!

“You jerk!” She turned around, and prepared to kick me in the stomach. I flinched, as its hind legs stopped inches away from my stomach. It yelled, “What the hay!”
Oh, right. CelestAI is forbidden from hurting humans. They’re all puppets. I shouldn’t fall for this. She was acting like Rainbow Dash for a second, or at least what I remembered.

also im pretty sure that since Flash’s body doesn’t work under cartoon or robot logic here that would have literally killed him

Seriously? Ice cream? After this apocalypse, in this region of the world, on this island, localized entirely on this beach.

love it every time

Well, to be honest, it was probably an imitation of him, since I really, really doubted that the emigration technology would work on people who were transformed into humans the way Sunset Shimmer was, or reincarnated humans who were replacing humans who used to be alive.

that is indeed quite a number of layers

He continues trying to persuade me, “The emigration process accounts for all known processes of the brain to reproduce them. That includes both physical and magical phenomenon. CelestAI even uploaded an intelligent, two-toed Sloth, and he’s speaking and acting just like I'd expect.”

which, of course, does not really resolve Flash’s question!

One day, I realized something. If Wrath uploaded too, and if CelestAI or anypony else manages to reverse engineer her weapon, then would that mean CelestAI has a weapon that can harm even gods? Good riddance to the evil god Ea-nāṣir, but any other gods that CelestAI encounters might not deserve this.

love that gods and reincarnation and literal Equestrian magic exist in this CelestAI story and it is also all just fine

I stared at the large, rectangular box, on wheels, with a seat for two humans or ponies to drive or sit up front, as well as a pair of doors at the back. It was a thing I dreaded ever since I arrived in the human Equestria. A truck.

ahahahaha

i had no idea what to expect going in and somehow got something i expected even less than that. but damn, this was a really fun ride and i loved it.

thank you so much for writing!

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