She can't seem to move anything. Her senses aren't quite what they're supposed to be. And she's almost sure that some of her memories are missing, but that part has never stopped her before. This latest defeat -- the one which ended with glowing roots closing out the last of the outside light, and she's pretty certain she remembers what 'light' is supposed to do -- that's just a minor setback! Because something of Opaline Arcana yet remains, and where there's a mind, there's a chance to plot a way back.
She can still think.
She can always think.
...always...
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Chapters (1)
Farewell Opaline Arcana. May you be burried and your mind consumed until it ceases to exist.
Oh my Celestia this is incredibly well-written
Magical petrification was merciful compared to this. Heck, it was merciful period. At least, the petrified are frozen in suspended animation (unless you're Discord, who can just say 'no' to that).
This... this is a slow, conscious, maddening death.
Investors in AGI would like a word.
That aside, horrifying look at the effects of depersonalization. Opaline isn't a person to the ponies using the Tree network, allowing them to justify pushing her to the breaking point and beyond. In a horrifying way, Opaline gets exactly what she wanted; ponykind recognizes her as Not Them, to her torment. Whatever her crimes might have been, Opaline doesn't deserve this; we loathe those who make others want to die not because they do so to the wrong people but because they do so to people at all. No matter how great the crime, loss of personhood is never a just punishment: criminals, even the worst of them, are still people, however horrible their choices might have been.
And, on a more practical level, there's another reason to take pity on Opaline, one related to the story this quote brings to mind:
When I read this, read about how Opaline was able to perceive light but not see, my mind jumped to one thing: "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," a story which ends with the protagonist, Ted, being turned into an amorphous blob creature by the villain, the computer system AM, in order to prevent Ted from escaping AM's clutches. Just like Ted, Opaline has been rendered completely harmless, and is now tormented, if unwittingly, by those who caused her transformation. Just like Ted, Opaline appears to be unable to die, forced to endure endless torture.
Unlike Ted, however, Opaline's captors are clearly fallible.
What if, for example, after Sunny's death the peace between the Three Tribes falls apart again? The Tree network would fall into (relative) disuse, giving Opaline some breathing room, even assuming that her performance never improves after being forced to perform her calculations time and time and time again. Or what if the Tribes eventually develop a replacement for the Tree network and don't take all of them down? Again, Opaline would gain room to recover. And, assuming that Opaline's right and she just needs to find her body again to regain it (and that it's still functional when she finds it), she could either put that time toward regaining the form with which she almost defeated the Tribes or towards mastering her new form. Of course, her last few lines in this make me think that, if she were to escape, she'd be repentant (anything to avoid living like that again), but there's another possibility:
I wonder what will happen when, in a low-probability event nonetheless eventually hit upon in the random walks, the lingering remnants of madness somehow coalesce and lashes out at the ponies.
A meta-tragic comment. There were plans there, but we'll never know what they were. They weren't just already dead, they never were in the first place.
I have several questions.
Same as it ever was...
A blend of intriguing glimpses of the past and the details of a horrifyingly convenient future. We often pity Amazon delivery drivers; imagine if they were forcibly melded with the trucks. All told, fascinating and disquieting work. You've cautioned me about trusting Discord at his word in the past. Clearly that goes triple for Opaline. Still food for thought, to say nothing of the legacy Sunny and company may have left for equinity. Thank you for this.
(And when it does end, when the system pushes that mind that, for reasons of next quarter's forecast, can't possibly be there past its breaking point, will they even think to mourn? Or will they simply complain and develop slower delivery methods as the murderers drift down on golden parachutes?)
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There's also a possibility that whatever is left of Opaline may turn into something like Flowey in whatever world Generation 6 turns out to be.
After all, Flowey had to wait a very long time to carry out his plan. When you consider the all the RESETS, it might end up being just as long as Opaline's waiting. The Neutral Ending in Undertale Yellow shows a glimpse of it. Check it out.
There was a premise once, for the idea of a... 'voidship' if you will. Not really a ship, not really something capable of flight, or otherwise movement. More like a 'voidcapsule' something that could in a way, exist, in the absence of reality.
Think about not having gravity. Not there being no gravity, like you may be able to produce with exotic matter, but truly, if you were to simply wipe away the concept entirely. Take away mass, protons, nuclear physics, time, and everything else attached to the universal stage that Stuff Happens On.
Obviously, such a situation would be untenable for anything alive.
Thus, the 'voidcapsule' is not something that is alive, in fact, the main theory for how it would work functions specifically on calculations. Specifically one calculation.
X + 1 = X
In a place without time, one could, theoretically, have the ability to count to infinity. Thus, with the weight of an infinity against the backdrop of another, supposedly this 'voidcapsule' would be capable of creating it's own tiny pocket of 'something happening' within the infinite and finite lack of everything and nothing by simply counting, and never stopping. The idea being that, at some point, the culmination of a single thing, happening enough, would somehow extrapolate raw information from nothing, for example, counting up to, and including: Infinity + (-4), and Infinity + (Infinity)
Of course, there's a reason the 'voidship' was only ever a theory.
Making something reasonably capable of counting to infinity if it had the time to do so, and just getting it to a location that didn't exist, and didn't technically exist even if it did; that was an insurmountable task, leaving it to just be a product of odd looking theoretical math. That, and an interesting thing to bring up when talking about Ordinal numbers.
I'm pretty sure nobody considered what would happen to a consciousness, if exposed to this theory.
Opaline didn't deserve that, you sideways breadbasket.
Reading this while hunched over and waiting to puke was a mistake. Safe to say that this story was disturbing enough to make me sicker. Which, as disgusting as it sounds, is very much a compliment and I commend you on yet another round of peak prose exploring something canon would never do even if they still had the opportunity to.
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This is one of my main critiques of Estee; their Equestria honestly feels too cynical at times. Yes, it's clearly not a land of milk and honey, and the ponies' herd mentality does create several problems, but that doesn't make it what feels, at times, like the grimdark setting used in some of Estee's stories. Equestria isn't the depths of despair with a fantasy coat of paints, it's a world with flaws as well as virtues, the latter of which I feel Estee sometimes hides too well.
I believe that part of the reason for this is that Estee is trying to fulfill the author's social role, telling stores that inspire people to take action and better their world, in this case by showing them the injustices in the world. I will grant that it's important to use fiction to examine social problems (as in Hoofballistic), but that doesn't mean that we need to recreate our troubled world completely in our stories, especially given how contingent our world's development was. Taking the example you described, does the idea of a golden parachute make sense in a world that, presumably, didn't have Milton Friedman or Jack Welch? Would "next quarter's forecast" be such a concern in a world that doesn't appear to have undergone a financialization of its economy? I could definitely see Estee writing a story where some pony tries to implement ideas along those lines, and I believe that that is a better way to grapple with those ideas' problems than trying to recreate our world in a context where it doesn't make sense.
Estee, if you're reading this, this is not a knock on your writing ability, you're honestly one of the best writers I've seen, both online and IRL. I just think that, a lot of the time, your emphasis on Equestria's problems - especially ones inspired by our world's contingent history - gives your work a depressing tinge, potentially dissuading readers. The triumph of the individual over a hostile system is inspiring, but beyond a certain point it starts feeling repetitive. Sometimes, it can be refreshing to read about an individual making use of a neutral system to do good, or finding support in an actually supportive system. And, while it's important to show us what we need to fight against in the real world, it's also important to dream about what we can replace it with.
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I don't totally disagree, but I will note that the principal villain of the G5 movie was corporate propaganda spinning out of the corporation's control. I'd expect this sort of thing more in Maretime Bay than Ponyville. (Yes, it's happening generations after Sunny and company, but the foundation is there more than in G4. Hello, Mr. Rich.)
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To me, it seemed more like Canterlogic was riding a general wave of anti-unicorn/pegasus sentiment rather than inventing it whole cloth, but I haven't seen the movie so take it with a grain of salt.
So creepy. Really began to remind me of AI near the end there. What a horrifying thought, this entire experience of un-ending agony. It also reminds me of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and a book from the Animorphs series where you follow the perspective of an entity called the Ellimist especially because his nature is so encompassing like this. Fascinating work, thank you Estee.
Well, this ironically gave Opaline more consistent characterization than the show. Then again, you weren't expected to rewrite your script several times to please the censors and the toy company that your show exists for in the first place while you desperately try to tell a good story.
that fancy math equation at the end reminded me of this crazy Youtube video:
'there is dirt in my eyes
there is dirt in my eye sockets'
I think the above lines is when Opalines body has hit the rotting and becoming mulch stage. There is no point to finding your body at that point. The mind survives as the body disintegrates by degrees.
This is a tough one. Opaline is a vile character, easily one of the most evil in the pony series. Shes evil by choice, and its an evil that hits close to home, its relatably evil. She was emotionally abusive towards Misty, that child raised in a hone devoid of love or support. Opaline isn’t just some evil vilkain, she kniws good from bad and chooses bad.
Despite all that this is terrifying. To exist in that state. I don’t know what that final equation is, I’m not sure i want to know. I want her to pay for her crimes, obviously, but at what point is the punishment paid, if it stopped would she return to her ways or accept reformation?
Thus was a great haunting read
It can't even want to scream anymore.