Alternate Universe Chapter 11 - by Midnight Shadow
The crux of Celestia's pursuit of newfoal Lillian Fogarty is the terrible danger that a new, inexperienced, uncontrolled alicorn would represent. Essentially a god unable to control its powers, Lillian The Alicorn could, with but a single uncontrolled, undisciplined thought, destroy both universes of Mundis and Equestria, killing everyone, everywhere, forever and ever. To not immediately contain or eliminate her would be the greatest possible crime against all life... and indeed reality itself.
John Norris finds a strange sort of happy-ending-for-everyone solution in last-minute shotgun surgery. But... what if he had failed? What if Lillian The Alicorn had achieved her full power and become a true, immortal, all-powerful alicorn god after all? Bereft of self-control, flooded with emotions and desires, uncontrolled, undisciplined and determined to survive at any cost, what actually would be the outcome of this worst-case, catastrophic scenario?
The exquisitely brilliant and superior Midnight Shadow offers us a powerful and disturbing look at an alternate universe where Lillian Fogarty of Surrey is not stopped from rising to wild and uncontrolled godhood, and instead achieves apotheosis. Lillian Fogarty, full fledged alicorn, equal to Celestia and Luna, but possessed of all the cunning and cleverness that a hunter-gatherer primate, the apex predator of earth is about to be unleashed upon two universes in....
CODE MAJESTE
Δ Alternate Universe Version
By Midnight Shadow
11. Doctor My Eyes
The following is an alternative chapter eleven to CODE: MAJESTE which has a very different outcome.
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long...
- Jackson Browne
Celestia had done... something to John Norris's vault. She had insisted; despite John's assurances that nothing could possibly enter or exit the high security chamber. Apparently there were 'other directions' beyond the ones that were known to Man, and these had to be sealed off if John were to have his ten minutes with the small, gray pretender to the throne.
John had carefully put up a small fuss; in reality he relished the thought of free additional protection for his three billion, four hundred million Equestrian bits, all stacked in neat piles or packaged in tidy crates. It had once crossed his mind to simply spread the tiny, featureless golden coins out as one mass and swim through them; the Scrooge McDuck moment had passed quickly, but it had still made him briefly smile.
There were other items in his private security vault as well, of course; assorted relics from the history of his family, a few not entirely legal treasures that should, rightfully, exist not in private hands but in a museum, and his father's small but rather excellent gun collection. One corner held a chest from an ancestor taken by the sea, back when the oceans lived and men sailed upon it; the chest itself was a fortune even had it not held priceless relics of a less than savory member of a more adventurous time. The chest itself was buried under a mass of ancient netting and glass ball fishing floats that still smelled of salt; for all John knew, they might have been used for the very last catch, before the end of fish.
John's vault held many treasures and wonders besides Equestrian bits; now it held perhaps the strangest rarity of all; the accidental alicorn who had once been Lillian Fogarty of Surrey, Northamerizone.
Celestia had been less than happy at John's wish to speak with the alicorn; she had reminded him that she had the prerogative to erase the memories of all involved, especially him; that whatever he expected to learn could not be retained, and that all this would do is prolong the inevitable. She thought him cruel for this, but he had insisted, arguing that the alicorn had become his client too; she had turned to him and begged for his help when she had been transported in a burst of light to the center of his large living space. He had instantly agreed to represent her, and demanded full rights to do so.
In the end, it was Celestia's regal sister, Luna that had intervened; she had insisted that because the alicorn was a newfoal, it was proper that she have council from her own world and that in the end, it was a kindness. Besides, as long as the vault were secured properly in the higher spaces, even should her ring be removed, she would not escape before action could be taken; the alicorn had been contained, and the chase was now over.
Celestia had seemed sad; she seemed regretful about the entire situation, and had given in to her sister, thus it was that John Norris now found himself inside his vault, facing the back of a softly whimpering gray alicorn, with ten minutes - to the second - allotted to speak with her, in private.
"Lillian. My name is John Norris. I am here to try to help you. We have only ten minutes, and I do not know what the hell I am doing, and I have no idea whether the plan inside my head is brilliant or just fucking insane. But I do have an idea, and if you want, we can try it. In any case, in..." John checked his watch; he was old fashioned and had not had a permatech timepiece installed into the flesh of his forearm. "...nine minutes and twenty...two seconds, that door is going to open and Celestia is going to do something about you, and according to the rumors I have heard, it probably isn't pleasant."
The small gray alicorn sniffed and looked back, over her wing at him. "She will crystallize me. Turn me to stone. That's what she does with things she can't deal with. That is her 'compassionate' equivalent to execution. Celestia won't kill, but she will imprison. I learned that... and a lot of other things... just a while ago." The alicorn turned her head back and looked at her hooves. Her ears drooped. "I do not want the living death of being crystallized, John. I would rather die than have that happen. It would probably actually be better if I died; being turned to stone is not as permanent as Celestia would like to believe. It can fail sometimes, and whatever is done with me, it needs to be permanent. I really am the threat to both worlds that Celestia has probably claimed to you."
John was in the back of his vault, rummaging for the items he required. "She described you as a threat to both worlds. She said you could melt the sky and destroy all human and ponykind." The key wasn't working on the locked cabinet; fortunately the cabinet was old and it never did lock effectively; one more reason it was in the vault, far from his son, Azure. John gave the thing a kick; the ancient plastic and metal door popped open.
"I'm afraid it's true. Without this ring, I could easily become a threat worse than Discord."
"Who?" John couldn't keep up with all the pony stuff his son brought home from school. The history of one planet was bad enough, two was just gilding the chronological lily.
"Think of me as a living, hypernuclear bomb. That is what I am. The ring on my horn might as well be the fuse."
John looked desperately around; he needed something small, but not too small, and it had to be smooth, and biologically neutral. "More like a nuclear grenade, then. Pull the ring and give you a toss, is that it?"
Lillian laughed. It was actually a sweet sound, despite the terrible situation. "Yup, that's me. Only when I blow up, all sides lose." Lillian's voice changed; it was no longer jovial. "John, I'm scared."
"So am I, Lillian. So am I; Celestia's going to have me gelded however this turns out. I'm really going to miss my balls; we've been really close for years." This made the alicorn laugh again, which was nice. John checked his watch: seven minutes and thirty-six seconds. Balls. Ah!
John took some of the spherical, hollow glass floats from the ancient fishing net piled over the old trunk. Glass was just silicon; it was mostly neutral, it was smooth, and the floats came in a multitude of sizes. John picked out several of the smallest ones and made his way back.
By some unearthly luck, Lillian the alicorn still sat with her back to him, facing away. Currently she was playing with her hooves, as if she were trying to memorize what it felt like to be able to move them.
"Lillian... I need you to trust me. And to answer a few questions for me. We have to work fast, we don't have a lot of time left. It would be better if you... didn't turn around either, OK?" John tried to load the cartridges as quietly as he could, but there was no avoiding the loud clack. "You can't die, right?, that's why Celestia plans on turning you to stone."
"Before I landed on that building, I was shot by some humans. They blew out my side. But it healed. Actually, I made it heal in an instant. But it would have healed on its own. I could be blown to pieces and the bits would crawl or teleport back and form me again. No, I cannot be killed." Lillian hung her head very low; there was no escape for her, not even death.
"You're sure of that, really sure of that?" John had the sawed-off shotgun ready. He placed it at his feet, where he was crouching. He carefully placed the glass floats on stacks of bits; the curious hollow sound of them caused Lillian to instinctively turn to see what had made such a strange sound. She stared at the hollow, clear spheres.
"John, what on earth are you up to?" Lillian goggled at the floats, she had no idea what they were. Fishing had ended forever long before she had been born. "What are these for? They're kind of pretty." And they were, like big glass soap bubbles, they shimmered in the vault lights.
Five minutes, sixteen seconds. "Listen, Lillian - I managed to learn something from Celestia. I kind of tricked it out of her. There's this thing inside your head, she called it a carbuncle. It's what makes you an alicorn. It's the problem here. If you didn't have it, you would be a normal pony." John put a hand on Lillian's back, feeling her soft, warm coat. He brushed it gently, trying to comfort her. "You can't die, you just grow back. So does the carbuncle. Eventually the carbuncle undergoes a change, and then you do too, and when that happens..."
"I will become like Celestia, John." A tear rolled down Lillian's cheek. "Only I won't be able to control my power. With a stray thought, I might destroy the world. I understand why Celestia has to do what she is doing. I really do."
"I learned that if something blocks the space the carbuncle needs, it won't grow back." John waited just a moment for that to sink in. In that moment, he noticed something that surprised him very much indeed. The glass floats were doing just that; floating, just above the stack of Equestrian coins. The transparent spheres were bobbing as if they were immersed in some invisible sea. There was no glow around them, as would be the case if a unicorn were levitating them. They simply hung in the air the way that ordinary objects never did.
"Are you doing that, Lillian?" John gave one of the floats an experimental poke with his finger. It felt like prodding a superconductor hovering over a maglev plate.
Lillian turned her head to look towards John, but noticed the glass balls immediately. "No. Not consciously, anyway." She thought for a moment. "My ring feels warm. On my forehead. Would you check it?" The alicorn sounded even more frightened.
John moved Lillian's cornsilk mane away with one hand and looked at the base of her horn. The silver ring appeared strangely rusted, as though it were not silver, but iron. John brought his other hand in to touch the ring, then thought better of it and pulled his hand back. "The ring is... it's not good. It looks like it's disintegrating. Slowly, but... it's falling apart." Grains of corrupted metal were flaking off as John watched. It was starting to look like a stomach tablet dissolving in water. "I don't think we have..." John checked his watch again "... five minutes and twenty-two seconds. Your fuse is going to go off before that, I think"
Lillian turned her head suddenly and forcefully away. She stared straight ahead, her back rigid. "John, do whatever it is you think you can do. You can't kill me, and right now I don't care if you hurt me, if there is any chance at all do it. Otherwise get Celestia in here immediately. I need to... not think of anything, anything at all. Hurry!"
John picked up the shotgun. It was an old, shiny black Benelli Super Vinci comfortech, 12-gauge, top of the line. Shame his old man had sawed the damn thing off. Unaltered, it would have been a masterpiece. Then again, for what John needed it for, it was, as Benelli had once advertised itself, perfect. "Lillian, I'm not a surgeon, but then we couldn't take you to a hospital or a veterinarian or whatever in any case so...."
"Shh." Lillian was clearly struggling, more objects in the vault were now hanging in space; a cloud of bits was orbiting each other like some vastly complex alien star-system, or a magical orrery. That such marvelous synchronization could occur from the alicorn's unconscious, behind her and absent from her vision and concentration was both wondrous and somewhat terrifying. "Just do it. Quickly!"
The ring on Lillian's head was red now, like melting metal. It made hissing and squeaking noises as the metal strained against the titanic forces opposing it. There was no time for niceties any more.
John didn't like guns; that was his old man's thing. If he could solve something without a gun, John would always choose just that. He never carried; it was insulting to him to feel that he could not think his way out of any predicament, rather than having to resort to force.
But that did not mean he could not use a gun. His military father had insisted on that, and there was no practical way to tell the gruff man 'no' on much of anything. John quickly put on the earplugs he had taken, into his ears. Lillian... she wouldn't need earplugs.
Four minutes, three seconds. But the ring on Lillian's head looked like things could go tits-up at any moment. John briefly wondered what being destroyed by a mad god would be like. Not fun, he decided.
There was nothing for it. John raised the Benelli and aimed it at the back of Lillian's head. Right between her ears, slightly lower down, where the base of her horn would be, on the other side. He angled the short barrel to around 45 degrees. Suddenly he thought more clearly, and quickly sat, tailor-fashion on the floor. He didn't want to end up ass-over-teakettle from the kickback.
John braced himself and re-aimed. The ring was sending up sparks, now; it must be burning the poor filly. Lillian let out a soft gasp. There was no other option but Celestia's living death in stone. There probably wasn't time enough even for that, now.
A single tear rolled down Jonathan Norris's cheek. He pulled the trigger.
The multiverse is a strange place, when it comes down to it. Free will is, through the power of everything being able to happen somewhere, somewhen, entirely assured.
In one universe, John's mad idea may have worked. The thought that he could not outwit but maybe outmaneuver a god was, in hindsight, folly, but it must have had a chance.
Lillian, on the almost-inaudible signal of John readying himself, turned her head on her long, sinuous neck. John's aim, up until that moment straight and true, went wide. The shot, which would in all probability have taken off the back of her head, merely destroyed her horn. And the remains of the inhibitor ring.
"Oh crap." John remained quite still, sighting up the barrels of his sawn-off shotgun as the gently-weeping grey alicorn somehow changed. She turned, blood and bone reforming as he watched, her shattered horn forming out of pure nothing and elongating far beyond the normal unicorn length of a few scant inches.
The goddess lunged, flowing from sitting to upon all four hooves, standing proud above the now-cowering human, her horn piercing the skin of his forehead.
"You shot me." she said.
"I... I... you said..."
Lillian, or what used to be Lillian Fogarty, lifted her head as if tasting the wind before turning her head back to John. She gazed deep into his eyes, "I thank you, mortal, but shouldst thou raise again such arms as these against any of my kind, be assured, human, that such action would be thy last."
And then she was gone. The clap of sound as the alicorn vacated the vault rang in his ears, even louder than the gunshot. The lights went out, the air conditioning shorted and John wet himself. All in all, he reasoned, if there were ever a time he needed a cigarette, this would be it.
***
The shot rang out.
Almost instinctively Lillian folded spacetime around herself like a blanket. She was an immortal goddess, something deep in her bones knew that, but it didn't mean she no longer feared death or pain. No, those reflexes were far too well buried deep in her to be expunged by a mere few days of interrupted and damped god-hood. She eyed the shot as the cloud sped towards her, they seemed to hang in space, sliding like... she laughed to herself. She'd once won a competition, as a child, to go bowling at a bona fide bowling club. To all intents and purposes, this was as if... as if the ten pins were sliding towards the bowling ball. She would allow it, she decided.
She turned her head, the irritating, burning, glowing ring of metal which had so far kept her true self in check was a nuisance, like a burrowing tick or a blood-sucking mosquito. With the right angle, and the excess swept away to prevent undue pain, the shot would take care of her little inhibitor ring problem. She would lose her horn, maybe lose some blood, tear her skin. This was of no import. The issue would be that once the ring was gone, Celestia would know, but without the ring being gone, Lillian could do nothing to stop the terrible 'justice' that the elder alicorn would mete out. Intolerable, Lillian could see that now, it was intolerable. She was a god, an equal, the alpha and the omega. She was not some... petty doll to be toyed with and then put away in a stone-shaped box for an eternity.
Part of her mind was screaming, thrashing, hammering on walls that her id had thrown up in its own decision to enact her continued existence and therefore her survival. That part of her mind was, to all intents and purposes, silenced. It was no longer needed, it was the remnants of her human self. It was vain, stupid, petty, petulant, greedy... it could be negotiated with. Needs must.
The shot tore into the scalp of her muzzle, shattered her horn, and blew the red-hot and now ineffectual inhibitor ring into dust. Faster than the pain, faster than the thought itself, reality crystallized around her. All of creation, from birth to death of a universe, lay open to her. Her mind sported out amongst the cold, hard cosmos, and cavorted with the creation of suns, languished and slid amongst the tidal eddies of supermassive black holes, rejoiced with the music of the spheres itself. Her awareness blossomed like a rose, enveloping the small room her body found itself in, and analyzed it in every detail.
She snarled, in that moment of time that she bid stretch before her until she would will it otherwise, as exploration revealed that she was locked in. She could not go up, down, left, right, sideways, in, out, contrariwise nor wither and non. Infuriating.
No, no, not infuriating. It was a game, a puzzle. She was a god, anger was surely for lesser creatures than her. There was one direction left. She smiled to herself and Looked. Yes, yes, there it was. So simple. She would allow time to return to normal, before she left she would have to impress upon the creature who had decided to do her a favour how much she disagreed with such heavy-handed and violent tactics, despite the outcome. The means do not, she reasoned, justify the ends.
Time began again. She turned, "You shot me," she said.
***
Celestia paced back and forth, long having tuned out the babbling from the lovable - for she truly loved all her subjects, even ones so enthusiastic as Azure the young pegasus. Luna could deal with him, she had bigger fish to fry, as the humans said. She sniffed, fish may not be intelligent but eating them seemed rather... well no, cruel was the wrong word. Crude? Her ponies, she knew, sometimes ate fish and other forms of protein from animals, especially the newfoals, but rarely and without gusto... she mentally stomped a hoof. Wittering away to herself like some old nag. She was worried, that was it, worried what that thrice-damned human was doing in that ridiculous cubby-hole of a vault with the greatest threat to life, the universe and everything since Discord.
Her hackles raised at an unseen signal. She glanced at Luna and saw her younger sibling had felt it too.
Luna bowed, "Do as thou must, sister, but I weep for the youngest member of our family, even as thou endeth her short reign."
"I take no pleasure in this, Luna, but you know what she is capable of."
"As am I, as are you. I beg you... find a way?"
Celestia shook her head, "There is none, not now. The ring... That damned fool human, they know not what they do."
Luna smiled, even as she felt the growing power. She turned to the motionless Azure, caught in a moment he would not experience, and nuzzled him softly, "Ever it is thus with our children. Forgive them."
"I do, I hope they will forgive me." Celestia vanished.
***
John sat in the darkness, feeling the warmth spread down his crotch. He was glad there were no cameras and no witnesses. He breathed heavily, "Shit."
There was another clap of sound and a glowing figure appeared in the center of the room. She stood proud on all four hooves, horn glowing, wings furled. "You disappoint me, John."
John trembled. He'd upset his parents many times when he was a child, he'd upset teachers and police, and bosses... but never, ever, had he felt such a palpable wave of displeasure expressed in so few words. He was, he reasoned, glad to be sitting down. The question would be how he would get up.
"You mewling, pompous, self-absorbed, duplicitous wretch! Do you know what you have done?"
John smiled weakly, "I think I fucked up." he glanced down at the shotgun in his lap, he could see it now in the golden light from the alicorn's horn. It had one cartridge left. It would probably hurt less than whatever the princess had in store for him.
Celestia narrowed her eyes, "No, John, that's not something I'll let you do. Whatever deal you think we had, it's off. Be glad I do not seek reparations, for you could not afford it, not with all the wealth in the world. If I cannot repair this damage, John, there will be no world to repair. Think on that, human, until the end of thy days. Or until I take the memory of this evening with me."
John glanced around at the vault, "I'm... sorry, your highness. I've... not done much good with all this, and I thought... what sort of world would I want Azure growing up in, if it were born from the death of an innocent?"
Celestia shook her head, tears in her eyes, "I see that world, John, with every waking moment. Go now, go to your son. If... if I cannot stop her, any moment may be your last, and so it may be for every moment everywhere throughout the entirety of your universe. Not for nothing did I try to warn you, human. The sky may boil, the seas burn, the land melt."
John sat in his filth and swore. He threw the gun into a corner, where it impacted with a carefully stacked pile of bits, "Then what the blue fuck are you still doing here gabbing with me?"
Celestia looked at him, calmly, and for a moment he saw a naked eternity, "You do not understand, be content that you do not."
***
Lillian found herself travelling. One moment she had been Lillian, the winged unicorn, sobbing and preparing for a fate worse than death. The next, she was Lillian the goddess. The human mind, even one which has become pony, cannot handle such a thing. She sank into the expanded consciousness and let it dissolve her. Do what's right, she repeated to herself like a mantra, there should be no intended pain, no intended sadness, all that is beautiful in this reality must go on...
The part of Lillian which was now a goddess felt great sadness and joy at the same time. The trap had been ingenious, really, and rather thorough, but lacking in one single aspect. She had been unable to move through any of the dimensions, curled up or otherwise, that this reality afforded. She had even been unable to move into hyperspace. For a quintillionth of a second she had thought herself lost, but in that infinitesimally small speck of time, she had her answer.
It was ludicrously easy, really.
Lillian had been many places upon the earth, but to get there, even through the folds of higher dimensions, had taken linear time. Linear time which no longer meant much to her. She travelled back upon her lifeline, a being of pure energy and magic, no longer held back by the meagre bonds of space nor time. The perfect trap, with a perfect hole so that one pathetic human could converse with a trapped goddess for ten minutes.
Within a few non-linear moments, she was free. Her spirit, for lack of a better word, floated. The cold realization of the universe she found herself within burned like pitch. Everywhere she looked were machines made of talking meat, living automatons who would, ever so soon, end their brief exertions upon this mortal coil and cease. The shame and sadness of that fact brought her to tears. The HLF thugs, their irrational hatred was born only of the knowledge, deep down, that the ponies had something they could not accept. She gathered them up. They screamed, this was understandable. She held their patterns and cradled them softly, crooning to them. She knew it hurt, having their living essence captured in a non-euclidean matrix was pain like no other, beyond that of mere birth and separation from the All. She pitied them, they were scared, angry and violent. She would show them, she would give them her gifts. She would show them the Forever Herd. The pile of dead meat which had once been ponies saddened her, too. Lives cut short. Some were Equestrian, most were newfoal. None of them deserved this fate.
Celestia had not saved them, but she would. What was time, entropy or death to a goddess? She reached back along their lifelines and snagged their souls. The ethereal ponies screamed, their destination denied. She didn't blame them, they were scared, their final rest was denied. She comforted them as best she could, carried them like children, arms enough to swaddle the world.
She travelled further, now, further back. PER, those foolishly misguided souls. She reached out her will, and took them, every single one. She would show them what it meant to be a true pony. Choice? She was a goddess, they were hers, it was her right.
She could not stay long, she had to keep travelling. Celestia's eternal eyes were everywhere, and she had been in the PER stronghold, ergo she was still there, forever in that moment. Lillian left.
She travelled faster now, though distance and time meant little. She could feel the grasp of the other alicorns closing in. She had to find a way out! She travelled all the way back, to just moments from her awakening on the table. She could stay here, she realized, in this moment. Time was of no import, it could be a million years subjectively. Yes, she would use this atom of hydrogen as a home, make the nucleus her world. Her subjects would find themselves in an unfamiliar existence, but they would make do. With a million years, of a sort, they would have time to get used to it.
Lillian latched on to reality, examined the nucleus. Size was as much an illusion as space and time were, since size was just an expression of the one passing through the other. She reached out a hoof, so to speak... and found her will blocked.
"Stop." said the voice.
"Celestia!" hissed Lillian, and she gathered up her subjects and fled back, further back.
The dreamworld blossomed around her, but this time she could see her own proto-self on its endless journey. This had been a mistake. This was Lillian's birth, and it would be her death. This was Equestria, Celestia's domain. She was trapped here now.
The ponies around her bowed, flocking to her. As they tasted her essence, some recoiled, some surged against her. She was a princess, to some she was their princess. This was her crime, this was her transgression. She could remake the universe, she realized. Size was, after all, just an illusion.
Do what ye will, an' ye harm none.
The inner voice rang out, hard and solid. Her ethereal hoof-steps faltered. But... they were meat, weren't they? Hers to play with?
Nay, young one, this is the trap of all who tread the path thy find thyself upon. Their brief lives are cold, oft cut short, but they are theirs. Thou shalt not seek to take it from them.
The words were... not exactly words, but she recognized the tone, the timbre.
"Muffin?" asked Lillian, momentarily startled from her ever-growing fugue of god-hood.
Aye, little one, I be the one thou dost dub 'Muffin'. In truth, my name is Luna. I would see my newest sister live, but should she prove to be a base tyrant, I would see her gone from this or any other reality in an instant.
Lillian's heart beat hard and fast, which was strange as she did not possess a body. She saw her ghostly self fall under the gaze of Celestia, and felt the goddess move to snuff out that brief candle before it had even formed. Lillian swatted the movement away, and she felt herself wake up on the table, as she had, as she always would.
The world formed around her; Equestria, Canterlot, the throne room of the royal pony sisters. Celestia and Luna both sat upon their thrones. Luna gazed hopefully upon Lillian, and Celestia glared like a basilisk. It had been a trap, all along. The only way she could have gone was back, right back here, right to the seat of her adversaries power.
"Relinquish thy powers, Lillian." Luna said, softly.
"I cannot. You know that." Lillian's eyes teared up, she could never go back.
"Then I offer you entombment. An eon, an eternity, and then freedom at the end of time." Celestia said, gaze never faltering.
Lillian shook her head, "To sit and wait for forever? No!"
"Then I will end you." Celestia stepped forwards, her body glowing with that same otherworldy light as she tapped into the powers of creation itself. "I love my little ponies too deeply to let you subject them to your every whim. I love that cold, hard, senseless universe of man too much to let you crush it and mold it beneath your hooves as some plaything. I love you too much to let you become a monster."
"And you think trapping me in stone forever is a gift?" Lillian backed off. She was a goddess, it was true, but she had been one for a very short space of time. "I don't want to be a statue! I, I, I want to live! You can't have me! You won't take me!"
Lillian looked for a way out. She could not run. Not left, not right, not up, not down. Nowhere in the realm of Equestria was safe, and she felt the barrier to that other realm that had spawned her close even as her consciousness investigated it.
Celestia's light grew bright, brighter, brighter still. The floor began to bubble as the goddess who had seen the birth and death of countless realities brought all of her formidable, impossible power to bear.
"No! No! I won't! You can't! It's... so bright! No! NOOOOOOO! THE LIGHT!"
Lillian started screaming, her voice shattering the windows, crumbling the walls, cracking the foundations, disturbing the very pillars of the realm itself. It was so hot, so bright, it hurt! It burned!
Lillian would flee, she would run, she would... the barrier! That was it! She would hide; not this side of the barrier, not the other, but in the barrier, in that layer between the worlds. She swept her prizes around her like a cloak, comforted them, wept with them. The light was so bright, it hurt, it dissolved her very essence... if only she could avoid it, escape it...
The barrier was right there, she leaped for it, fled into it, pulled it up as a shield against that terrible, awful, painful, powerful light. She wrapped it tight around herself, filling the spaces, exerting her will for somewhere to hide to come into existence. She felt the fabric of reality shift, weakened as it was here between the two realms. She made for the rift, squeezed through it, dragging her children with her.
She would find peace, a new beginning, somewhere to grow, to feel love, to be - but first...
"LET THERE BE DARKNESS!" she cried.
And there was darkness. And it was good.
After darkness, there would be a need for light. She would have to make light. She would have to make a great many things, but she had time now.
She got to work.
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Now here is something I did not expect to see in my email this morning, and quite the welcome surprise!
And now that I am done reading...
This was the end I had hoped against hope for. In an infinite universe of infinite universes - there is room enough for all things; even newborn 'goddess'.
I believe the element I like most about this, and Chat's view of this universe as a whole, is that they are not gods... A consciousness, if even such a thing was allowed at such a magnitude, would encompass all variations, all outcomes - and preclude such a base thing as 'learning'.
A god would not need to learn how to be a god - and Chat's Sisters did in fact need to learn to temper their power, shape it - channel it into favorable forms over some unfathomable amount of time.
Just as little Lillian now must do.
And so the story goes full circle.
And I am happy.
4005536
I actually wrote this more than two years ago. At the time it wasn't so well received, but I always liked it. You can see where my writing starts and the other's ends of you look carefully...
This was also my favored ending. Seeing it again after 2 years is weird but sure, whatever.
I find it amusing to see Mundis described as "senseless." After all, the cruelest aspect of our universe that it is so crushingly, undeniably sensible. The only wonder and whimsy are those our imaginations conjure from their homes in our headmeats, here in the thin gas envelope of a planet with an embarrassing skin condition we call "life." Out there, it's all just spinning spheres, physics and chemistry, cold and sucking or hot and sterilizing, utterly uncaring either way.
And yet we dream.
In any case, a fascinating alternate ending. I'm glad I finally got to see it. I find it magnificently appropriate that, in the end (or, given all the time travel, perhaps the beginning,) Princess Derpy sought refuge in a bubble. Though now I can't help but wonder what will happen when the Barrier finishes its work.
Well, hopefully however much subjective time Lillian wants will be enough for her to get a grip on how much responsibility comes with omnipotence. Thanks go to midnightshadow for writing it, and of course to Chat for giving him something to riff on. 
I kinda was hoping for an ending where Lillian stayed Lillian when I saw this update, but although I was disappointed, your writing NEVER disappoints.
Now I just sit here pondering why Lillian would do such things even with changes to her existence plane. What she had done in an instant are all things she would hate were she in her right mind. but then I suppose the whole idea is that it takes millennia for her to become whole of mind again.
So, now we got Mundis + Equestria + Lillian's Pocket-Universe. I detect derivative opportunities!
This was really cool. As much as I enjoyed the twist origin story ending of the original version, this is great in terms of letting us in on a level of the setting we don't normally see.
It's definitely difficult to keep one's mind from wandering—I meditate every day and the difficulty of even counting ten breaths without thinking about anything still seems to increase exponentially with each round. Fortunately Equestria and Mundis weren't annihilated, but on the other hand I can't help wondering how many times, given the vastness of the "Omnium," it might have already happened...
It's interesting how oftentimes when humans talk about more advanced beings, especially deities of any sort, their thoughts and goals are ultimately still all about humans.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Let the aliens and gods write those other stories themselves.
4006199
Well said. Something as complex as a dream can't simply emerge from nothing or from chaos—It has to be paid for somehow, each step on the way worked through on its own. But seeing how that process unfolds only makes it even clearer how inseparable we are from it.
After all, here we are, doing our job as the only type of things capable of making a place a "here" at all.
Well this was certainly a surprise! A very welcome surprise ☺
this needs to be continued
Weird. I didn't have this favored but I did read this before. And now, I found this updated by small fate or small fortune. Today. I like this ending midnightshadow.
I remember reading this years ago, back when there was still a tcb thread somewhere. I can't remember now what site it was.
Curious. Luna is intelligent, but seems a tad misguided and Celestia is an out and out fool at times.
4036383
Lauren Faust described her concept of Celestia as essentially being that of a Greek pantheon deity blended with Queen Elizabeth. I have run with this, partly to follow her original concept, and partly because a being with no flaws is boring and makes for terrible storytelling.
Thus, my Celestia is powerful, she is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, but she is not omniscient - she cannot know everything, and can be fooled, hidden from and she does not see every sparrow fall. She is damaged from her thousands of years of canon torture under Discord, just like her sister: in Celestia's case I represent her hurt as an obsession with order and law. She is a ruler, she rules, with all that implies, but everything she does is for the good of others. That said, she takes the safety and security of her empire as seriously as Elizabeth herself, and she wields her power like any ancient Greek goddess. But like a Greek goddess, Celestia can become obsessive and narrow of focus, and driven by her passions.
For Luna, I make the harm she suffered under Discord's ten thousand year reign of chaotic horror make of her a soul driven to rebel against authority. Discord was an absolute authority for ten millennia, and this explains, in part, her rebellion against Celestia regarding the night. She is filled with shame for her insane behavior back then, and constantly seeks redemption - at the same time, she cannot deny her basic nature, which now seeks to cover for what she perceives as her sister's limitations and errors. Rather than rebelling against her sister, now she seeks to support her sister by doing that which Celestia can not, or will not, that needs to be done.
In short, these immortal alicorn deities are good, but they are not perfect, powerful, but not all knowing. They are what I believe Faust wanted of them: real world rulers, true royalty, mixed with Greek gods. They are flawed but well intentioned, vastly experienced but not perfectly wise in all things. They are not modern gods of absolutes and totalities. They are complex, and therefore interesting.
4144131
I had to look up your reference. Huh. You enjoy card games, then? I've played Magic before, a long time ago. That's cool. I'm more the video and computer type, though I did enjoy me some Dungeons and Dragons back in the 80's, I like Go, and I've painted a Tau W40K army. Oh, and I like Pandemic. That is an awesome board game.
I spent most of my life reading, though. So for me, words like 'glistining', 'shining', and 'sheen' are more associated with old Golden Age authors than anything else. I don't know about these Pyrexians or whatever, but I can assure you that ponification serum is the opposite of corruption. I wrote one of my novels about what the stuff is, and how it was developed. That novel is Recombinant 63. It's a fun little romp, and we get to see Lillian again, in a cameo!
(yawns) Alright, I'm up! New story! Well, after a fashion. I won't be doing this review like the other novels, because I've actually already read this one, so I couldn't stream my impressions directly into notepad the way I've been doing. After I discovered your universe (Via the TV-Tropes page, which has proven itself to be quite accurate so far), I first read the "Lost in the Herd", and then I read this novel. The possibility represented by this story was one of the most intriguing present by your take on TCB. Where would it take us?
On an adventure through a ruined and desolate earth, with naught for Lillian to do, or place to go. Of course, I knew that somehow the events of season three (ie Twilicorn) hadn't happened, and that Alicorns were something different than they eventually became in the show. Thus, I was all the more intrigued. Perhaps I would have been even more so if I knew how Celestia felt about power, the way she had to worry that she might lose Twilight Sparkle, and before forced to "kill" her.
Reading this story felt a little like playing New Vegas, if Ceaser's Legion was the only faction in the world. Yet, perhaps not. The PER are alive and well, it seems. The HLF seem like a particularly violent and acidic street-gang, which for all their violence and evil are no real threat to any but the individuals they stumble upon. If they were smart, they wold be working with Luna to preserve the achievements and accomplishments of mankind. Or, at the very least, devoting all those resources to getting a martian colony. The technology is there (it's here on earth now!), but the resources aren't.
Then again, organizations made of bigots and angry people are hardly known for thinking rashly and logically.
This raises another interesting question, one that I keep coming back to as I read through these stories. Is Celestia "good"? Again and again I am reminded her morality and feelings are not familiar to us, not the way that ponies seem for everything to be just idealized versions of human behavior. No, Celestia seems alien.
Can what she's doing to the earth, from putting this innocent girl on the run for her life to causing the violent destruction of earth by barrier, be considered morale or immoral from an objective standpoint? After careful analysis of the situation with a team of , I have come to the following conclusion:
Yes, whatever else, this Celestia is acting "good", despite how her actions might seem. Why?
1. The earth is going to die anyway. 30 years. On the one hand, humans have been making predictions about the world's ending for a very, very long time. Still, we've never managed to do anything close to the damage these humans have to their planet. Assuming they're right, then Celestia's actions are the only reason any humans survive. Thus, though her actions produce incentives that result in much violence and death, if you weigh these deaths against the number who are saved, you have the greatest savior mankind has ever seen.
2. The soul. Ponies define this word different than the present colloquial, but nevertheless, ponies have an afterlife. Thus, Celestia's actions become doubly heroic. Either all humans can die and die forever, or a very large number (most of them it seems) can live and live forever.
No matter how evil her actions might seem on the outside, those are the consequences. Ultimately, this humanity has great reason to be grateful. And, it seems, all of the newfoals understand that well.
This story was not slow at the beginning, like the last one seemed. Rather, it forced me to read every single word in one sitting. Well, kindof read. Actually, I listened to most of this story. I couldn't put it down, and I had things and places to be. One audio-conversion later and an awful synthesized voice allowed me to take the story along for the ride.
I remember reading at the beginning "Oh, she's gray. That's kindof a rare color. Derpy's gray." I did not, however, imagine what the real reason she was gray actually was. The ending sure caught me flat-footed, so to speak. It was quite brilliant, if I do say so.
Another story I greatly enjoyed. A nice change of pace from Taste of Grass, to be traveling and adventuring around through the ruins.
Wonder what Celestia did with all those PER in their headquarters.
4680146
FIXED. You know what the amazing bit is? I just re-read this very story to one of my spouses last week, and I re-edited every chapter as I went, to clean up mistakes... and THERE IS ALWAYS MORE MISTAKES!!! How can this be? I have edited this novel three times. Three times!
Thank you for catching it.
Maybe this is like Sisyphus - maybe there will always be mistakes, no matter how many times I roll this story up the incline?
4686848
I keyed into it.
4686986 I see what you did there
. I found it out from a book called Spectactular Special Effects.
I am also wondering, can I use your conversion bureau universe for my TCB fanfic that I am going to write?
4689032
The Conversion Bureau is a shared mythos that anyone can write in. You do not need my permission. You don't need anyone's permission. Not even for my particular take on it. Why, I would be honored!
If you want to write a proper, traditional Conversion Bureau story, there are three rules.
Note that the three rules say nothing about details, they do not constrain your imagination. Want to make Equestria a magic fluid that seeps out of the rocks and changes the world? No problem. Want to make ponies into robots, or have Conversion be entirely mental and not physical, or want to have the entire thing take place with living cartoons ala 'Toontown'... no problem.
The three rules are only about tone and intent. You can let your imagination soar, if you want.
Or, you can write in my, or any other true Bureau author's universe. It was once a shared friendship of writers. Once. It is always still so, in my heart.
The Three Rules Of The Conversion Bureau Genre
1. Conversion Bureau stories are transformation fiction. They are stories of ordinary humans offered the most extraordinary of experiences - that of becoming an entirely new species. Bureau stories examine the nature of identity and existence at a fundamental level.
2. Primary to any true Conversion Bureau story is a deep love of ponies, Equestria, Celestia and Luna, and all the most wonderful things about My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Conversion Bureau stories expand upon the joy and innocence that My Little Pony represents, and juxtapose the often harsh and cruel real world of Earth beside that of Equestria. Through some means the two realms are brought together, and humans are offered the gift of becoming Equestrian themselves.
3. In a Conversion Bureau story, humans may react to this opportunity in any number of ways. They may embrace it, or fear it, resign themselves to it or even oppose it - but the transformation is usually inevitable, and humankind is forced to confront the issue of what it means to become the Other.
4689464 Thanks, I will start writing it soon, the only thing I am currently having trouble with is a catchy name.
wow, I see the necessity of the original ending. this story was definitely cosmic horror in a sense. this was a good story, good job Chatoyance!
4723976
Wow, thank you Apparitions! Yay!
Story Approved in Species of Equestria: Alicorns
fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2015/028/a/f/storyapprovalsoq_png_by_florescentglow-d8fskw7.png
They are indeed immortal, the last remnant of their original nature asserting itself. But they have the Doctor, and the Tardis, and they can travel in time and Equestrian space (such as it is) for eternity, having deliriously fun adventures filled with joy... and the occasional bit of excitement. Neither is capable of being bored, and the Doctor, as a pony, in this extropic magical land, is also immortal now, his Time Lord regeneration as ponified as he himself. They will always be a happy family, forever, in a paradise of fun and adventure.
Thus, there will never be, for them, a moment where they have no muzzle, yet must scream. Instead, they will have cakes and pies and running from dangers they will enjoy solving, and quiet moments of love, and happy moments of fun, forever.
And one day (See 'Tales Of Los Pegasus'), even the shadow of Lillian Fogarty will find peace and acceptance of her new life as Derpalina, and even that will be resolved.
I am a transhumanist (transequinist?) in outlook, and I do not see death as any kind of good. I see immortality as desirable and worthwhile, because it really is just one more really good day. And one more day is not scary, one more day is the best thing ever.
5959241
Oh dear, I somehow worded that wrong. I had meant to word that as :
"The ending tied up just about everything for me but left my head cannon practically screaming one question. Are Derpy and Dinky immortal in their new forms? If that was the intent, to leave that question unresolved, my head cannon will have to be content in needing to but being unable to scream, just like my favorite AI."
I must have accidentally deleted that? Or, more likely, I omitted that part but somehow thought I had included it?
Hmm...
You know, it is trivial for an author to construct a situation where almost any morally dubious action by a character can be justified, if the stakes are high enough.
Lobotomizing Lilian to save the world from destruction is in the same category as dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima to force Japan to surrender. The difference is quantitative. It's evil made for the greater good. A very human act of brutal utilitarianism.
Not that I have a problem with it. A lot of people on this site take MLP in directions where the canon story will never go, for various reasons.
I do believe, however, that an author who decided to introduce Machiavelli (end justifies the means) into MLP, should thereafter lose the moral right to complain when other authors introduce Warhammer and similar stuff into it. And I pretty sure I remember you complaining about it. :-)
6304090
I would argue that John Norris' action was not 'morally dubious' at all. Just extreme, uncommon, and grotesque - but so is open heart surgery.
Norris understood that Lillian was immortal, and that she could regenerate any injury, no matter how severe. He knew she could not get an infection or become sick. He understood that her own life would be taken if he did nothing, and he had little time and few resources.
Imagine that you, hypothetically, were bitten by a black mamba, on the foot, and it was understood that within the next twenty minutes you would die a horrible, agonizing death. Your companion, the only person for hundreds of kilometers around, has a machete and some bandages.
The venom is in a pocket within your foot. It is beginning to spread. Your companion offers to chop off your leg, just below the knee, to save your life. He will bandage you up, you will live if he takes this action. But you will not ever be the same.
Is the offer to hack your foot off 'morally dubious'? Is it like dropping a nuclear bomb on innocent civilians in Japan?
Of course not. That's just stupid. There is zero similarity. The rough and ready machete surgery is grotesque, uncommon, and very extreme - but it is being done for only the most noble and good of reasons - to save your wretched life.
This is, by the way, based on several real-life stories involving poisonous snakes and real people's limbs. Not a hypothetical at all... for some folks. One lost an arm, one a leg - you get the idea.
For Lillian to lose her head, and to have glass fishing floats jammed in to prevent her regrowing her carbuncle was done not just to save two universes. John Norris cares, in his way, that this innocent life should not be lost. He is cutting a leg off to save a patient from venom. I assure you the character could do just that, if he had to.
There is nothing 'Machiavellian' (more about that later) whatsoever about his choice, thinking, or process. Norris simply does whatever he can to save Lillian - after asking her permission. That constitutes a contract between medical practitioner and patient. Lillian agrees, and John does what he can to save her out of kindness.
And - this is a big, huge point here, so pay attention - John is willing to put two universes, his own life, his son's life, heck, every living being's life at risk simply to give Lillian a chance. Did you notice that? He gets his money whatever he does, so he isn't being motivated by greed. If he did nothing, and just let Celestia discorporate Lillian, then he avoids her wrath, avoids risking his own interests, avoids risking his own son, and he gets to walk away rich(er) and a hero of the crown. But he doesn't take the easy way out.
John Norris risks everything to do what is - to him alone - the morally correct thing to do: save Lillian's life, whatever the risk.
Think about that. This man - otherwise a total bastard, a capitalist pig of the worst sort - has such a moral code about people inside his house that he is willing to risk his fortune, his family, and two universes just to save one single life. And he does this with no absolute guarantee that it will actually work. But he has to try, because anything less would be cruel.
I think you completely missed every aspect of what you read. You utterly missed the point entirely. Measure John's actions by what he stands to lose and gain, from his limited view and awareness, and not by your omniscient viewpoint as the Reader. Put yourself in his shoes. Would you risk the people you love most, and risk the terrible anger of two godlike entities, just to save a complete stranger who happened to end up inside your home? Would you be as moral if you believed - as Norris does - that a person in your home is under your protection and deserves your total help?
Or would you do the intelligent, cold, but safe thing, and let the authorities handle it - and thus doom the poor waif to oblivion? Would you tell the police to shove it in real life?
I don't write like other people, I am not sloppy or thoughtless. If you must judge my characters, you must see through their eyes and hearts, because I write what they do based not on what I or the reader knows, but purely from what that character, alive in that world, believes, thinks they understand (even if they don't) and what their identity - not my own - tells them they must do.
Comparing that scene to Hiroshima, well, that was - I will be charitable here - very silly indeed. A bit on the ridiculous side. And invoking Machiavelli? Do you even know who Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli really was? He wrote The Prince not as a guide book (though the Medici's certainly took it as such) but as a condemnation of unethical and cruel conduct. It was written as an insult, but the Medici's were so proud and lacking in understanding that they took it as a compliment.
Machiavelli, the man, was a very deeply compassionate person who has been ignorantly remembered in history as a monster. He was trying to poke a stick in the Medici's with his book - but they ended up liking it (they were that evil!) and put him on the gravy train for life. They'd already imprisoned him for taking them down several pegs.
Be careful of your references. Try to pick appropriate ones, try to know what they really mean, and try to understand what you read so that you don't make... errors.
6305829
You don't see the similarity?
I am innocent. The snake attacked me. My friend can save me by hacking off my leg. Hacking off anyone's leg is an evil act. My friend is justified in his evil act by the greater good, which is saving my life.
Now imagine you are a general, and you have the opportunity to save many Japanese lives by forcing the Japanese government to surrender. All you need to do is drop the bomb.
Actually, I've chosen the example of Hiroshima precisely because it is extreme and controversial. If you don't like it, imagine a hypothetical trolley problem.
On one track is my life, on the other is my leg.
On one track is the population of Hiroshima, on the other is the population of Japan.
On one track is Lilian, on the other is everyone else.
What are you going to do? Depends on whether you use utilitarianism, deontology or virtue ethics (see also: ten billion words worth of discussion on LessWrong :-) )
Furthermore, the motivations of John Morris and Lilian by that point are irrelevant. They have been forced into a solution already, and the solution is the one where Lilian is the collateral damage. They are merely choosing the correct machete for the job. Is petrification worse than lobotomy? I don't know. At least petrification leaves a chance for Lilian to become herself again somewhere in the future. You chose a different ending.
He saved Lilian's live about as well as HeLa cells saved the live of Henrietta Lacks. Which is to say, not really. I mean, there are literally tons of immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks all around the world, but as a person she is dead.
Sure, you can claim that Lilian is happy now, but from my point of view Lilian is dead. By the way, why stop at Derpy? Why not turn her into a happy immortal goldfish? Happy immortal e. coli bacteria? As long as she is happy, who cares, right?
Not that it is John's fault. I'm sure that if Celestia knew about a way to remove Lilian omnipotence somehow, without destroying her mind, she'd do a better job than with a shotgun. But there wasn't. He tried anyway. It didn't work.
I don't judge your characters. In my previous post, the only thing I judged is what I see as a bit of hypocrisy, coming from your part.
Yes. And it doesn't really matter. Death of the author. Machiavelli is associated with "the end justifies the means" just as the word "Orwellian" is associated with totalitarian practices, despite "1984" not being a "how to" guide (although it seems like some people use it as a guide anyway).
Also, just like your interpretation of TCB is now associated with genocidal brainwashing pony-like aliens from another universe, despite that not being your intention.
As Umberto Eco said, "a narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.” The machine you built generates some horrible interpretations. But that's beside the point.
6307676
I think there is the area of contention. 'Evil' is subjective, and it would seem that within your private world view, the destruction of tissues - even already doomed, poisoned, and soon to die tissues, is designated as 'evil'.
I do not see it that way. To me, surgical procedures are never 'evil'. They are neither evil nor good - they are simply procedures, devoid of any moral component in and of themselves. Dead flesh, if it is hacked off, is nether good nor evil. It is just hacked off.
The ethical, the moral dimension exists entirely and only, for me, in the reason behind the action taken. If a person hacks a leg off a person unawares, well, that is pretty evil. That person was just standing there, now they have no leg, and the guy with the machete is laughing - that's 'evil' by my reckoning.
But, if the leg is gangrenous, if the leg is dead and is going to kill a person, and the only way to save their life is to hack the leg off - the person doing the hacking is a saint. That is a pretty horrible job, yet they are still doing it. Saint.
The actual hacking, though, the action of the machete carving flesh? That is neither good nor evil in and of itself. That just is. The morality is always - for me - in the human choice, in the human decision.
You see, I cannot accept that 'good' or 'evil' exist in the world. They only exist in people's minds. Only people can define one thing as 'good' and another as 'evil'. The world just is. Beyond good and evil, the material world is just matter, atoms and molecules. It has no morality, neither does any event that occurs within it.
Morality, to my rationalist mind, only comes into being when a human invents it. Therefore, hacking off a leg cannot be evil - neither can it be good. It just is. WHY that leg is hacked off, why some human chose to do that hacking - THAT can be good or evil. That is the only point, the only moment, the very element where morality can exist. It exists nowhere else.
Agency is morality. Choice is morality. Reality - matter, energy, atoms and molecules - has no morality. I contend that human minds impose morality on the world, often arbitrarily. There is no absolute good or evil. Just what human minds choose, and nothing more.
There was never any intention of saving Henrietta Lacks. At the time, she was poor and black in a culture that hated both. A culture that still hates both. But HeLa cells have gone on to help save the lives of hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of other people. Henrietta herself was screwed the moment she checked into that hospital. The doctors that worked on her carry any taint of moral decision on their actions.
But the HeLa cells themselves - and the fact they exist - is, by itself, beyond morality. The fact they are used to help people live, who would otherwise have died, is 'good'. The example, however, is irrelevant to the subject we are talking about. Why even bring it up?
I am a lot of things, not all of them agreeable. But being a hypocrite is not one of them. Your case is ill-considered and empty. There is no hypocrisy in my works or statements. Perhaps you do not understand my morality, or my ethical foundation, but that does not mean I fail to follow it.
Perhaps my argument in the first section above will illuminate things a bit.
For me, there can never be an absolute good or evil, only relative good or evil, and the definition of that is always within the choices people make, and the most benefit done. If a life is saved by a mutually agreed upon procedure, then that can never be evil. Why? Because the procedure was agreed upon by all parties, because a life was saved, because all involved ultimately defined the act as 'good'.
To hold to that is to hold to my own - MY OWN - moral position absolutely.
What if, however, Lillian had not agreed, and John had performed shotgun surgery anyway?
If, after all was said and done, a life was saved, and former Lillian (now Derpalina) agreed that the procedure was 'good', then it would still be 'good'. Why? Because a dead Lillian gets no say in the moral argument. She's dead. She has no voice, no existence, and is beyond good and evil entirely. Such matters no longer apply to her, she is absent.
Only the living Derpalina gets to say if the John's shotgun surgery was good or evil - and she says it was good. Because she's having fun with her 'daughter' and that Doctor stallion.
Don't judge me by your morality. I have my own. I follow it absolutely. It is very well thought out, and I do not bend from it.
Let me reiterate the core foundation of my morality, so that there can be no more confusion:
For me, there can never be an absolute good or evil, only relative good or evil, and the definition of that is always within the notions, choices and agreements that people mutually agree upon, and the most benefit (preferably to the greatest number of people) that is achieved.
And finally, for me, 'Good' is defined as those actions which most compassionately enhance and preserve the survival and well being of both self and others, and preferentially to the benefit of the maximal number of living entities.
Case dismissed.
6666244
Episode Sixteen, Season One: The Cutie Mark Chronicles - Twilight Sparkle, as a mere filly, is shown as a vastly dangerous, Akira-level power, capable of uncontrollably converting her own parents into cactuses, rapidly aging Spike, reforming reality itself and potentially destroying Equestria, but is only - barely - contained by Celestia, and that at the last moment, because she was utterly unaware of the danger. She makes certain, after that, that Twilight is raised by her and kept under her watchful eye.
Celestia cannot prepare for every eventuality, or so canon would have it. She can be surprised, caught off guard, and fooled. She will take extreme measures against extreme threats - DISCORD: "...at least I don't turn ponies to stone!" and "You always were the grim one, Celestia."
Celestia has been described, by Lauren Faust, as a mixture of Queen Elizabeth the First and a greek goddess. She was originally 'Queen Celestia' until Hasbro forced her to be a 'princess'. A ruler... rules. They must save the lives of the majority, and protect their realm first as their primary duty - no matter how compassionate they may be. I agree with this.
Twilight Sparkle, again. Faust always intended Twilight to become an alicorn, a 'greek goddess', but in her original intention this was to be the final, last event of the entire series, because of how profound it would have been. There were only supposed to be three, a trinity, with Twilight as the third. This is in part because of being strongly influenced with the full plot of 'Sailor Moon', which follows a very similar arc.
The capacity to become a pony god was originally supposed to be a possibility inherent in all ponies, some small part of this background was retained in what was done with Twilight in the canon series... with her going beyond the ancient Starswirl The Bearded (a near miss, almost alicorn). The capacity was supposed to be innate to the unlimited nature of magic itself... but Hasbro, again, altered the plan... though not as much in this case.
YOU know all of Derpalina's story, and I know all of her story, but Celestia and Luna DO NOT. Remember: a good writer takes into consideration what each character knows about the world NOT what the reader or the writer themselves know about the world. Celestia is clearly confused - Derpy has been in her world, and Derpy's 'ancestors' (really just Derpy displaced via time travel) for countless centuries... then this alicorn newfoal somehow becomes Derpy? The situation is beyond her experience or current understanding. All she knows is that something magical and incomprehensible has happened, and that Derpy and her little daughter are harmless, have always been harmless, and are good citizens in standing.
Will Celestia keep a close eye on Derpy? Oh yeah - and I state as much. Derpalina gets a stipend, a house, all on Celestia's dime, so that she can be watched constantly. Kept close. Celestia isn't dumb, but she has zero idea of what happened inside that vault - and John Norris is not going to ever tell her. For no other reason than to save his own sleazy life - he is very aware that he pushed things waaaay too far. He's scared, and he is not going to provide any details, because is is smart.
Celestia may literally never know what happened with that alicorn/Derpy. Ever.
Thus, she can only act according to what SHE comprehends and knows, not what you or I know. And that is just how she acts.
If a being is definitively explained to be immortal and infinitely regenerating - as I pointed out, many times in the story - then yes, by definition, a sufficiently large portion of it should reform into a viable entity. It would have to - because if it did not, then all the words about being immortal and infinitely regenerating would be lies, wouldn't they? Either it is true, or it is not.
We have seen this happen in the canon show!
Season One, Episode Two: Luna transforms into many things - an abstract aspect of fear, a concrete thorn, various clouds and wisps, and most importantly FIVE separate living ponies, each with their own voice, to tempt Rainbow Dash. Mythology has many examples of deific and highly-powerful beings dividing into separate beings, then reforming again. Sun Wu Kong, from Chinese mythology comes immediately to mind.
If Luna can do this, then it is no stretch to imagine that Lillian Fogerty could... but it would be a stretch to imagine that she could undo it and reform. She's lost the alicorn status, and with it most of her intelligence... her brain being much of the mass that generated her daughter. Once reformed, both would stay as they are, but would never again become a single being.
Please reconsider these matters in light of this.
Currently trying to figure out how this fits in with the revelation of the final story now.
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This chapter isn't canon to my story, but it is a very delightful alternate take on things by the good Midnight Shadow. I included it because it was so good. It isn't 'so', as such, though.
7619140 I don't mean this chapter, I do not know why it says that as I haven't read it yet, i mean the story in general, given what Celestial and Luna are in the end
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Ah! I think I understand. Maybe, anyway.
If I grasp your query correctly, then think of Lillian Fogarty's alicornyness as being akin to having root level, administrator access to the functions of the Multiversal Mover that is Equestria.
A Krawlni Multiversal Mover is an artificial pocket universe, composed of several 'decks', each one a splay, or alternate universe within the whole. Inside the device, reality itself can be configured in any manner - a 'deck' can be made to become any sort of universe, albeit on a small scale. The entire Mover can travel between universes, and like some kind of super-mega-starship-Enterprise has all manner of sensors, beams, weapons and shields. Anyone who becomes 'crew' is integrated into the very systems of the ship, 'plugged' in with varying degrees of access.
This is why Celestia and Luna (Environment and Navigation) are effectively gods within Equestria - they have root access, are part of the system itself, and can reconfigure the pocket cosmos at will. They can't help but do that, which is why they have to control their every thought.
Lillian becoming an alicorn really means that during her conversion she was given administrator status and root access to the system that is Equestria. She cannot understand any of that, so for her, with her limited knowledge, she has become a 'magical alicorn'. She is dangerous because Equestria is dangerous.
Think of it this way: imagine the USS Enterprise, only it is controlled by direct neural link and is in orbit, overhead. The slightest thought could accidentally send down a barrage of photon torpedoes or phasers to melt the continent... or even self destruct the ship, destroying the entire solar system in one antimatter blast. Now up the scale to the level of a pocket universe a half a light-year in diameter (and growing!).
That is how Lillian, and this story, relates to Fiddler's Green. Lillian has a direct neural link to the root systems of a god-powerful, mobile pocket universe currently intersecting the earth. She has open, unlimited access to all the weapons, shields, torpedoes, transporters and self destruct (in effect) and she has no idea what she might trigger accidentally. That is what being an alicorn is in my stories: being incorporated into the Multiversal Mover control system at root level, with full administrator access. She can mess with the BIOS, she can affect the chips right down to the metal. She has a hoof on the power button, heck - she has the power cable wrapped around her while she stumbles.
Does this... did I give the correct explanation?
7620420 I understand now. New user software bugged out with permission granting. so to speak. Thank-you for the explanation. I was just curious given how it all played out how this occurred, thank-you.
Is the end of this chapter meant to be a perversion of The Last Question? That's my favourite short story, and the first time I've seen that done! Really enjoying both your writing and the alternative endings.
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I don't know if that was Midnight's intention, but I can easily believe that it was. He is at least as well read as I am, and Asimov is a favorite author for both of us. So - probably yes!
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The cat is... sort of... Luna - but it is a little more complicated than that. The other side of all of this can be seen in 'Little Blue Cat'!
I have been looking for this story for freaking ever!
Neh I don't like this ending especially given the recent revelations regarding Fiddler's Green. The whole "ultimate power makes me a bossmonster" thing is really petty, all things considered. i didn't like the other ending either though, because the amazing revelation of haha she was Derpy all along was way too obvious. Either way, Lillian was annihilated so totally that not even a pony soul could bring her back. And...
This story was short. Way too short for the subject matter. Climactic confrontations happened without any build-up or reason. Yes she was a ticking bomb, but her fuse was too short IMO, and plot bunnies kicked her around way too conveniently. Immediately running into PER headquarters? Yet as shortcutted and contrived as it was, Lillian still became one of your most compelling and sympathetic characters. In love with the idea of Equestria, torn by the reality that, while deadly, was still a beautiful thing worth saving in her eyes. Lillian was a way more compelling Derpy than the one who was all hurrdurr look how cute and retarded I am and also a mom because memes. And God Emperor I JUST WANT TO HUG YOUR ATOMS Derpy was just... no.
I realize you didn't want to portray Celestia as extreme or hot tempered in how she reacted, the joke being that Lillian really was that dangerous. But in saving Celestia from being irrational, it instead painted Luna as the irrational one. Was Luna just full of shit the whole time? She told Lillian to survive and have hope, just to screw with her? Because the story later revealed that Lillian never even had a ghost of a chance; nobody could have survived that. The good end, everyone was happy, but it felt like a failure, a phyrric victory. Would Luna forever see the poor mare struggling to form coherent thought and falling over her own hooves, and be reminded of the kind, loving girl she once promised to save, and failed? For a moment there, she really thought she could have had a younger sister.
So... good story, but hurried the plot like it was a chore to write. I was genuinely excited when Lillian got into those crazy situations, and her solutions to them were natural and clever. Premise was intriguing and fresh, even for such a mature setting. Trapped in a dying world, unable to use magic, and on the run from a god-princess. I only really started to cringe at the story when Lillian met the HLF. Characterization was brilliantly identifiable, Lillian especially shining. Not disappointed at all to finally track this one down. Thanks for writing it!
I honestly thought it was going to end with Lillian escaping Earth, and Equestria by tearing a hole in hyperspace, because that is a thing princesses can do, to nowhere at all so that she can't cause harm to anywhere in her apotheosis. And the Princesses are like welp, nothing we can do about that. She's beyond our reach now, and we're beyond hers. Problem solved let's go light a candle in her memory because she has a 0.00000000000000001% chance of finding us again in the mere milennia it'll take for her to drown in that infinite dimensional sea. And then Lillian's gotten a handle on herself finally, gotten past her growth pains, but starts to realize that she has no idea how to get back. Kind of stuck floating in Whateverspace, she starts to despair, and that's when she starts to hear this strange wheezing, scraping sound...
Awww! I thought she would would be able to retain her memories.
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She has... moments of remembering. See the tenth story in 'Tales of Los Pegasus', called 'The City In Gold'. This follow up novella explores Turner and Derpalina travelling to the very edge of the pocket cosmos of Equestria... and finds Derpalina getting her memory jogged by the experience. Lillian is in there, deep down.
Okay, that was disturbing. Both endings. Both of them were equally disturbing, though in different ways. Both the "main character unceremoniously has her entire personality killed" ending and the "main character loses her mind, steals ponies, and becomes God" ending. All in all, it's not quite what I was expecting, haha
I kind of want to know what would have happened if Lillian had just followed/trusted the PER and kept her ring on permanently, staying in Assinoboia with her new friends and staying in hiding from Celestia and Luna. That's what I was hoping would happen; could have been an interesting story. Difficult to compare, though, as it'd've been completely different to this one.
Oh, and there's also the question of why Luna (as a cat) in Assinoboia decided to lead Lillian directly to the children of a PER leader.
I hope I'll get to find out more about the PER in one of the other Conversion Bureau stories. They seem like an *ahem* interesting bunch of ponies.
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You will find out a LOT more. Indeed, there is an entire novel dedicated to them: The PER: Michelson And Morely. As for why Luna, in cat form (that little shapeshifter!) did what she did... well, that is answered in Little Blue Cat.
Eventually, she would be driven - with the last eight billion of the human race - to the shores at the tip of South Africa, the last spot of land before Zero Point. Then, within a handful of days, the last of the earth would be Included, and Lillian would find herself lost in the light-years-wide vastness of the Exponential Lands. So long as she kept her ring on, she could live a life there, part of, perhaps, a village of Newfoals. Since she was at the very end, she would likely have ended up in the very special triad of isolated Newfoal cities that include New Chengdu, Neo-Volgograd, and Lost Pegasus (not to be confused with Los Pegasus). You can learn about them in chapter ten of Tales Of Los Pegasus. So incredibly far away from Central Equestria, she could hide even within Celestia's cosmos. For a while.
That said, eventually, she would be discovered by Celestia. Because: reasons. And then the horse feces would absolutely hit the fan. Luna would argue for her, Celestia would still have valid reasons for Lillian's destruction (the lives of every living being is a compelling case), and... then she would either be turned to stone, forever, or... possibly exiled to another universe... if Equestria happened to be within range of one at the time (more reasons). It wouldn't be happy.
One thing to note though: as you will find, later on, Lillian, now Derpalina, is not only happy and content... but her personality is not entirely as lost as one might imagine. Lillian Fogarty is in there. And... thanks to a certain other pony (spoilers), Lillian as Derpy becomes one of the most important characters to the survival of Equestria that ever lived. So, she has joy, happiness, a family... and a destiny and a purpose... far beyond mortal ponies (more spoilers.)
Thank you so very much for reading my stories! I really value your comments!
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yay! Thanks! I'm definitely looking forward to reading those stories :)
Oh. :(
I don't like this Celestia very much.
Judging by what I've read so far, Celestia *should* have had ways to let Lillian survive happily while not being a threat. Like:
–Carefully remove the carbuncle and replace it with a prosthesis, while trying to not damage Lillian's memory;
or
–Fuse the magic-suppressing ring to Lillian's horn with a really strong spell that only Celestia knows how to remove;
or
–Give Lillian coaching to become an alicorn, maintaining a tight control on and only very slowly letting her gain access to her powers, and eventually, after a long time, accepting Lillian as an equal sister and co-ruler of Equestria.
The fact is, Celestia didn't try any of those. I can understand the logic behind making that decision– "better to cause great harm to one pony than to take even a small risk of greatly harming billions of ponies". But. honestly. It's one thing to be a ruler who makes logical decisions, and quite a different thing to be a completely benevolent ruler. And Celestia seems to fall firmly in the first category... :(
Though, from a story point of view: even if it's not as nice to imagine, in a way it makes a better story to have nuanced characters like Celestia who just can't be labelled as either "good" or bad".
By the way, I thought of another way the story could have progressed. Lillian instinctively knew how to teleport to get away from Celestia back in Vancouver... what if she stayed with the PER, and by the time she was in South Africa at the very end of the Earth's life, she was still so scared of ever reaching Equestria that she temporarily took off her horn ring and teleported to somewhere else in our universe... any planet that's habitable... just to get away from the wrath of Celestia.
A lone alicorn, lost in a soulless universe, who is forced to stay away from her paradise of Equestria forever. :'(
You know, the way the story actually ended doesn't seem quite so bad now.
Well, that's good, at least. I suppose I'll find out more about all of that later. :) Though the memory loss, even if not complete, is still really sad. If I had a way to become a happy pony, but the procedure involved near-complete memory loss, I wouldn't take it... our memory is one of the biggest things behind what makes us all who we are.
Aww, thanks! :) I really appreciate that! I've been looking at so much of your stuff in the last few days (not only TCB stories but also other stuff like that lovely unicorn hypnosis video, the cogiati, et cetera) that I was really worried I've been straying too close to "creepy over-obsessive fangirl" territory, haha.
Right, back to reading more Conversion Bureau stories. Bye for now!
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Quick update to this after reading "The 800 Year Promise":
It looks like Celestia could easily have saved Lillian by creating a new non-alicorn pony body and dragging Lillian's mind into it, just as she did with Willelmus Learmount a millennium ago.
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That is a brilliant suggestion. It would not have worked, but it is a brilliant notion. I can explain why... but just to do so even a little means big, big spoilers. Be warned. You see, Conversion does a great deal more than merely turn a human into a pony. As you will discover in Recombinant 63, conversion operates on two levels simultaneously. Human nanotechnology reconstructs flesh from human shape into pony shape, with Equestrian thaumatic fluid powering it without heat (violating earthly thermodynamics)... but there is more. Earthly matter, atoms, are converted into dweons - cubical equivalents within the Equestrian cosmos. Additionally, the thaumatic fluid acts as the Equestrian equivalent of nanotech: it is programmable and weaves into existence a thaumatic couplement - a duplicate of the individual constructed of thaumatic energy... essentially, a real and lasting 'soul'. That equivalent of a soul is effectively eternal, and has all of the characteristics of the individual - that is what was transferred in the case of Willamus.
The problem is that the alicornic nature of Lillian is also preserved within that couplement. This is why she can 'reach out', leave her body, examine the real world around her, and even reach into parallel versions of the earth for body parts to copy. Her powers are located within her couplement... but accessed through the Carbuncle, which acts as a bridge between both the physical and nonphysical sides. That is also why, if the Carbuncle is blocked from reforming, much of Lillian is 'lost' (really, sort of... held apart) to her physical side... but also what makes her safe. And this also is why, when the Carbuncle becomes mature, it can invert her physicality entirely into the, well, basically subspace dimension where her couplement resides - and thus transforms her fully into an all powerful, true alicorn like Celestia and Luna.
(It isn't really magic, as you will find... rather being an alicorn means having... shall we say... Root Access, and leave it at that for now.)
If Lillian were transferred, as you suggest, her dominant couplement would gradually remodel her newly crafted flesh into another alicorn body. She would grow a horn, or wings, or both in time. And then a new Carbuncle would begin to form and... well.
This is because Lillian has a... system label... that defines her within Equestria, and that label is intrinsically 'Alicorn'. The system can be blocked, but her label cannot be changed. Why? Because... and this is a HUGE spoiler... Celestia and Luna do not have either the access privilage, nor the understanding to actually do so.
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Whoa, thanks for the reply. I can't believe there's actually an explanation for my suggestion not being possible! And I'm now really really tempted to read this spoiler.
However, I'll resist the temptation. I suppose now I've just got yet another reason to read through the rest of your Conversion Bureau stories as quickly as possible, and find out all the mysterious secrets behind alicorns. :P
So, I found both Celestia and Luna well-balanced (dynamically) ..in sense of power you have vs power you should have inside you to control power you can unleash ... I definitely have problems with this over hierarchical behavior of humans, and yes, apparently this _lack_ of will where you need it most is one facet of the problem.
I found equating humans with meat somewhat ...strange. Like saying was meant as self-insult ....well, meat is meant and we think by somewhat different substance.
But all this talk about souls, Equesteria as basically (living) Heaven ..I found it human, too human ....May be _something_ from this concept actually interesting, but way too often our thinking become trapped in such traps from the past.
Also, reader never must be completely held captive by writer ...at least for me. Some rules to obey, some to disobey.
I write this w/o reading comments, but idle question into space: how human elite/rulers can rule without monetary disbalance to back them up?
Guess this story sounding true for me: there must be some very special kind of intuition, allowing you to make...somewhat unhuman (avg. std. human here ) choice. Systematically ...
Plot twists obviously expected, and mildly enjoyed ("cat" talking with Luna style after you show Luna talking this way just before, whole rollercoaster with PER org - you are no-one -> find a ordinary-looking friend -> friend turned into big figure but on somewhat wrong side for a moment-> leaving scene). Well, a bit of engineered of course, a bit like good videogame - you find right things and beings in exactly places you need them most ..but otherwise ...things will be a bit too short for a story!
Second question-into-space: but still, why poies especially separated from horses. Of course, in the world w/o humans you can call horse-being pony - and none will look at them from above...I mean no humans...yes, for human childrens here on Earth pony probably considered more ..safe. No surprize they used in something supposed to be childie TV show ....Miniatured, for making owning them more ..more simple. More, f ..fun ! For one specific sp. here on Earth...
Another bit ..this cutie mark thing..There of course were debates what THIS might mean, if one assume Equesteria is real ...Fate? Determenism? Some sort of global shared subconsious? I like idea about being just ..personal memory painting itself them moment you realize you are good at something ..And vagure interpretation only help here ... But where exactly those marks located..I mean, of course, their location probably was simply copied from where usual not-cute-at-all mark of ownership burned in ...Well, putting something on forehead was probably considered too...edgy by human creators of show? (slavery mark, all this ..) But ...not like our world can actually let itself off some other reality ..it infiltrates ..and ....
For someone living in really dark world dark fiction is ..somewhat better? Better than reality.. I apparently intentionally avoid all those 'fun' tags/stories ..I had enough of ..human idea of fun already. Not all pain is sure indicator you move in a right direction - but absence of pain is one most likely true signal you at very least not looked into some very important corridor ....... Exploring only and always positive/optimistic branch and leaving unpleasant route never explored seems to be another part of why we fail ..so much, and so hard.