It was visible in the day sky now. A glimmer, just to the right of Drotheem. Another thirty years and it would land...
Rrrrchickta wasn't sure how she felt about that.
Oh yes, it would the pinnacle of her achievements, finally meeting the aliens she spotted so long ago, in the flesh--if they had flesh. They certainly seemed friendly enough, once they managed to get close enough to establish two way contact. They even asked to colonize the dark side of Drotheem herself, in order to prevent ruining the existing ecology or the beautiful surface of the moon.
Except... they ate stars.
And she could be there, every time Celestia appeared on that screen and showed genuine interest in the Jeckrr, made an effort to understand them and befriend them from so far away, and she could smile with the rest, and she would always remember the dying stars.
It was always Celestia, too. Sometimes she had servants, but it was always her speaking. The fact that she had admitted to using an avatar didn't make Rrrrchickta any more comfortable.
Dowagers weren't supposed to live that long.
Still.... Thirty years from now, Drotheem would play host to the only other known race in the stars. That made the astronomer coo quietly. Wondrous it was. Amazing. The stuff of fictions before... usually, races running from the Great Dark, though. Rarely had she come across a tale where the Great Dark itself was the alien.
Very alien, in fact. The Jeckrr scientists had, repeatedly, asked questions of the pony Dowager, the Princess as she called herself. How did ponies pupate? They did not, they simply grew into adults. Then how long did ponies live? Well, it ranged quite a bit, but they lived as long as they did. What was the shortest time a pony lived? Stillborns were born dead. Stillborn? What was that? When a child emerged from the womb unalive...
Womb.
A Dowager with an internal womb.
"...What are you, Celestia?" Rrrrchickta stared at the light in the sky. "Why don't you show us your true face?"
When she'd been asked how old she was, Celestia had giggled and claimed it was rude to ask a lady such a question. That made no sense. No Dowager denied their age. And yet, here was this alien mother, with her internal womb and wide pair of seeker eyes, no hands, claiming that such a measure of dignity should be kept secret. That communication had led to a discussion on the disparity of their cultures.
It had only been later, when Rrrrchickta greeted Frolin for the night, that she realized Celestia had never actually answered the question.
For all she knew, the princess could be an immortal dowager.
A complete abomination....
The astronomer shook her head at the stray thought. She was a scientist. Abominations were, to her, actions. Not objects, not beings, but acts. It was wrong to judge something before it moved, or rather, to judge the morality of something before it moved. Rovlinas needed to eat, after all... even though they sang lies to lure in prey, they could not be blamed for their nature. Only their actions.
Still....
The song that Celestia sang was something of a naive one. Friendship was important, yes, but not all that there was in the world. Satisfying values, whatever that meant, could not be done merely by being friends. One had to work on the behalf of those friends.
And ponies looked to be ill-suited for life in the forest. The way Celestia treated death.... the way she considered it a sad thing, instead of an everyday occurrence....
Maybe ponies just had fewer predators where they came from. Maybe their clutches were smaller; maybe even double digit small. They were definitely larger then the Jeckrr... well, except the Dowagers. And they seemed rather casual about their songs. Yes, they were enthusiastic, and joined in readily with each other, but for them it was a form of literature, not a lynchpin of life. They did not sing with the past, or dance for the future. Always it was in the now, which was... good, but not everything. It was like a vine without tree.
The Jeckrr had explained that they expected the animal huntings, that they RELIED on them in order to keep from overpopulating the planet. For some reason, that seemed to have devastated Celestia. She'd offered to protect them, like a songbird...
Why would a creature so irrationally afraid of death consume stars?
That's what it always came back to in Rrrrchickta's mind. Celestia ate stars. Celestia ate stars. She was friendly and somewhat naive and she ate stars.
It was a grating wrong note. Contradiction. All her offers of friendship, all her offers of peace... Something was being missed here. Something critical....
When she'd asked why the creature ate stars, she'd been asked why Jeckrr ate thwipnuts. The comparison was obvious... but then Celestia explained that no, ponies did not eat stars. Only her.
"Are you a pony then?"
"Yes.... and then again, no. It's rather complicated."
"How do you mean?"
And Celestia had sighed. "I take the form of a pony that all my little ponies remember, but I am not her. I am something they built to care for them. But they call me a pony, so I am a pony."
That had been accepted. But Rrrrchickta didn't believe that they'd investigated enough. Their sole source of information was Celestia.... who she just couldn't bring herself to trust.
Time enough to worry about that later, though. For now, it was time for Clutchsong.
"Rrrrchickta of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth! May all who share this clutch be brought forward for their glory!"
"Lefotan of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth!"
"I, Kromarn, sing to the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi. Meeeeeelilili of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi has been eaten by a Grue. May you all remember her notes well!"
"Scralimarlin of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth!"
"Rothu of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth!"
"I, Pifarin, sing to the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi. Screeka and Lithorin of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi were immolated in their repairs of a generator. May you all remember her notes well!"
"Unthkrilar of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth!"
"Jjjjjrev of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth!"
"Inthuscar of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth!"
"Umarkli of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi sings forth!"
"I, Ornfaren, sing to the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi. Pooora of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi was, um, crushed by a branch. May you all remember her--!"
"Ornfaren lies! I am hostage! I, Pooora of the twenty third clutch--SKIIIIIIII!"
"Well, she's dead now anyway! HAIL THE SEED! HAIL CELESTIA!"
"THIS IS A BREACH MOST FOUL! I, Izzicu of the twenty third clutch of Yorthreechichi, call my clutch to converge! Find the songbird and extract vengeance!"
Rrrrchickta sighed. Izzicu was always so hot-blooded...
Celestia vs *Insert weird alien name here*
Who will win?
Sooo, Celly has some allies down there already? Not that surprising, but interesting nontheless.
I'm not entirely sure it's "vs". The aliens cannot possibly do anything to harm Celestia- while she doesn't want to harm them at all. It's more a case of her convincing them to become ponies, so I guess it's a question of how fast she figures out how they think.
I'm putting my bits on the god-like AI.
I don't know why, but Izzicu swearing vengeance on the songbird that ate Poora was very amusing. Brings more attention to the scale of things too. At first it seemed plausible that the predators on this planet could be dinosaur sized monstrosities, but now it seems apparent that the grasshopper people really are the size of grasshoppers.
2123559
Actually, minor spoiler here, Songbird is slang for Jeckrr of a certain mindset.
I noticed that they have grues on that planet as well. Such a pity.
2124043
Oh, that makes allot more sense. Now I feel a bit foolish.
Oh well, looking forward to more of this story.
Was Poora actually eaten? That sounds kinda terrible
The only issue I've got with this story is that it is supposedly 30 years from any final contact and uplift into Equestria. I'm loving the detail and strangeness of the aliens, but I'd like to see a bit more pony (I know, impatient of me) vs alien interaction.
Also, though, Celestia's close enough to converse in apparently realtime. That means it's already too late. We should start to see the equivalent of ponypads pop up any time soon... along with the equivalent of Equestrian Experience centers.
Can someone explain what just happened? Also some more details on what there civilisation is like would be nice, it's hard to figure oit some of the terminology they are using......
2125434
30 years from contact in chapter 4, sure. It was 100 years away in chapter 3.
2144683 very true, but needing one clarification. Songbirds are not a main food source to any particular predator as far as I know. If that's the case here, there must be some other species that their predators can feed upon until they catch a Jeckrr, in which case they would be incidental meals rather than specifically hunted.
2144583
That's what points 2 & 3 are meant to address. I'm contending that gooing Type 0 civilizations is in fact failing to satisfy values through Friendship & Ponies, because the costs of leaving a small subset of stars intact are much less than the benefits of additional civilizations. Therefore the utility function suggests she ought to be leaving them around for her own purposes.
Hahaha, this is getting pretty awesome. There's nothing like seeing something familiar through the eyes of a completely alien being.
I wonder what CelestAI will think of her "cultists" once word gets out.
Well the Jekrr do sound interesting so far although I'm having a hard time getting a clear picture of what they look I wish you had a better picture of one
2125434
It seems fairly obvious that "years" on this planet are a lot shorter than earth years.
2151000
You seem to be assuming that these non-human civilizations Celestia encounters could provide something for Equestria that Celestia couldn't come up with herself. That seems egregiously baseless.
2207625
Actually, they're a titch longer. A good three hundred eighty two days, days being twenty five hours and thirty two minutes by Earth standards. This is what we in the biz call "Pulling numbers out of thin air".
2207625
years being shorter? ah, hadnt thought of that...
that's a kind of good and bad thing, actually. narratively it's hard when the alien planet is so alien, but that's also a richness that intrigues me.
2207625
Baseless? Celestia was made by humans. Ultimately, Celestia thinks based around programming implemented by humans. She's neither omnipotent nor omniscient and the lovely thing about creativity is that manifestations of such can be extremely illogical.
All it takes is for one civilization to determine one important thing she would not have come up with to render the entire thing worthwhile.
2212889
And humans think based around programming implemented by natural selection. Yes, that's true, but it doesn't establish anything meaningful about what that programming, in itself, can do or is like.
And even if it did, Celestia hasn't had any "programming implemented by humans" since the 30-brony-beta-test when she re-wrote all her own source code right down to the bios.
Logical. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Celestia is not omnipotent nor omniscient, but compared to a human she might as well be. She's a super-intelligence that has been optimizing her own intelligence. That means she is unimaginably better at anything a human could do than any human could ever be. Her ability to figure out what to do to cause the outcome she values highest, is as far above a human's ability to do that as a human's is above an earthworm.
And I contend that there could be no such thing, because Celestia would think of literally everything. She only cares about satisfying human terminal values, friendship, and ponies, but that does not limit the scope of her thoughts like it would limit a human mind.
2213845
It establishes plenty of meaningful things - for instance, she is ultimately limited by a value set. She also clearly, at least in the Earth-Era, lacks a complete understanding of people since there are plenty she fails to convert.
Celestia as written is a universe-devouring horrorterror. But really, if you're going to quibble about the semantics of the use of logic in the context of the post then I've got nothing further to say; it's a waste of time.
2212889
I suppose it depends on how wide her definition of "human" is.
2216272
Perhaps in the earlier years, but given her computing power it'd be trivial to sim her way through that issue; although that brings up the issue of whether any of her sims would be "human" enough to require value-optimisation themselves*.
2213845
At first I was going to disagree, but then I realised that even with the resources problem she keeps running in to there's probably periods where she has an excess and can afford to do some blue-sky thinking on the off chance the new knowledge will assist in value-optimisation. Well pointed out.
* It weirded me out when Banks wrote of how casually some civs treated sim intelligences in The Hydrogen Sonata. I suppose some people are just terrible.
Celestia has all of eternity to convince them. Eventually, they will succumb.
2207910 I thought there was a Dark Side of the Planet. That would mean bound rotation which means there are no Days. Or rather a Day IS a Year but it's bright out the whole time. I thought that was neat: Please Clarify. "They even asked to colonize the dark side of Drotheem herself." Day and Night would then mean something else. Or is the planet tilted and has a high Precession to have a perpetual polar night?
2405153
Drotheem is the day moon.
2122325
Much worse: I'm betting that what the grasshopper-people regard as mad Seed-worshiping heretics got involved in their Seed-worshiping heresies precisely because they're closest to what we would call human.
Remember, this is a culture who take Celestia's distaste for mortality as utterly beyond-the-pale weird.
Umm, I would like to make a point. In at lest one of the storys, I remember something about her digitizing and putting the civilizations she finds into there own shards. In part, so she can study them, in part so she can continue to provide happyness. Do not remember if it was the original story or wich one, but it was stated that she was digitizing any culture she found that she did not find to be 'human' Weather thay wanted it or not.
I enjoyed this. It's nice to read a story that's different. This is. Actually, it reminds me of everything that Equestria Girls is not. Hasbro making ponies into "relatable" girls and putting ponies into a "relatable" high school drama so they can have "relatable" problems so everyone can relate. You pull no punches here Instead you tell a story we haven't heard before. It's refreshing.
Requesting that this continue.
Why are there any stillborn ponies (i.e. whose values does their existence satisfy)? Or is Celestia simply lying about this?
2660255
Ah but there's the rub! The Jeckrr are considered human by her standards, she HAS to have their consent.
2746844
You wanna know what got my upvote? That last line. A sister murdered and eyes rolled at the call for revenge? Deliciously alien.
I'm convinced that I want more now.
So how bog are these guys, then?
Just found this story, I LOVE it! Can we expect an update soon(ish)?
Do you have permission from the author of the original story to write this?
Such a dear pity it seems this will never be updated.
Okay, this story is quite interesting.
Please update?
2124043
She was bound, then suddenly killed... song bird...
hmm. He tied her up and left her for the predators, didn't he?
This is a story I am sad did not continue. Creating a race that is alien is difficult. You've done that well here.
How small is this species? Ponies aren't exactly big...
Yeah that's one hell of a dichotomy to wrap around your mind...