Friendship is Optimal: Spiraling Upwards

by pjabrony

A Day

I finally got to bed around five in the morning. The train had pulled into Grand Celestial Station in Manehattan and I had watched Little go on auto-follow as she trailed Moon Sailor to her apartment. For ten hours before we had had the kind of conversation that only came when the moon was out. If you’ve ever been to a party where no one wants to leave, you know what it’s like.

The cool darkness of Manehattan let me see very little of the scenery. There were few streetlights, and they weren’t very bright. As we reached another dimly lit building, Moon took Little up the stairs and opened her apartment. I still had my avatar on follow.

“No, I’m not inviting you in for the night. Yet,” she said. “The vacant apartment is next door. There’s a bed there, though, so you can crash. We’ll sort out everything in the morning. Or, the rest of the morning.”

“Thanks, Moon.” I dragged Little off to bed, then dragged myself to the same.

I woke up at ten in the morning. I was eager to get back to playing, but I was also tired and ravenous. I decided that, rather than check on the status of the game then, I’d shower up, make a big breakfast, and then play without distractions until dinner.

As I was frying bacon and scrambling eggs, I heard the sound of a knock on a door. My own door had a knocker and a heavy echo, so I thought for a moment it was from the next apartment over, but it repeated and I traced it to the Ponypad. Lowering the gas on the stove, I looked over. Little was standing in a tiny kitchen with a stove on as well, and the door was right there. I wiped the grease off my hands and tapped the door.

It opened magically, and there was a ruddy-brown stallion. “Hi there! I smelled something nice coming from what I thought was an empty unit, and decided to investigate. What’s cooking?”

He was asking Little of course, but I didn’t know what she was eating, and I wasn’t sure the game would let me talk about bacon. “Breakfast,” I said.

“Nice! Want to join me? I’ve got a nice spread going myself, and I live a couple of floors up. I’ve got a great view.”

“Wait, you smelled my breakfast from your place upstairs?”

“Sure! What’s wrong with that?” he said. I thought about that. There was a “canon” explanation and a game explanation. Ponies would have superior senses and might indeed be able to detect cooking so far away. The other answer is that the game wanted to introduce more characters without stacking them all on top of each other.

“All right, I’d like that. Just give me a minute to clean up.”

I ran back to my kitchen and finished my protein-laden meal. When I had it plated and ready, Little had made hers as well. I ran my hand through my hair, and Little’s magic puffed up her mane. I was impressed at the technology and the cuteness.

As we walked to the stairs, I said, “My name’s Little Lovehorn.” I was honestly getting used to the name. If nothing else, the first and last names started with the same letter, like a comic book character. Which was almost what she was.

“I’m Garlic Parm,” he said. I noticed for the first time his cutie mark, which was a bulb of garlic.

I was getting back into the game, and remembering where I had been. “Oh, are you by any chance the landlord here? I still have to arrange to rent the apartment.”

“Ha! No, I’m just a cook. But I’ll find him for you eventually. Breakfast first.”

I put Little on auto-follow again and tucked into my bacon and eggs. Garlic gave a horsey cough. It was almost as if he thought it was impolite for me to eat before my avatar did. I put down the fork.

We moved up to an elevator which paused for a moment, then opened onto an identical hall from the one we’d left. The building was more like a hotel than an apartment complex, with carpeted halls and opulent lifts. The apartments even had numbers instead of just 4A, 4B, and so on. Garlic and Little trotted to a door that he kicked in with a hoof.

“No locks?” I said, Little matching.

“Lock my door? What if somepony came by while I was away? How would they get in?”

Manehattan apparently had more differences from its namesake than just one letter.

“There,” Garlic said. “Now is that not the prettiest view of Celestial Park you’ve ever seen?”

I was about to say that it would have to be, but instead I was rendered speechless as the Ponypad zoomed in to the window that covered the entirety of one wall.

As I mentioned, I’m color-blind. But I would have had to have been fully blind, and possibly dead as well, not to appreciate what I was seeing. The trees had been placed as if by mathematical precision. The paths wound through like rivers, and the streams and ponds that were real complemented them perfectly. Above it all, Celestia’s sun sent beams to dance and play in among the foals who were busy at tag or leapfrog.

“Yep,” he said, “that’s what everypony doesn’t say. Come, have something to eat.”

The spread of food came in a close second to the spread of the vista, perhaps because it was meant to be eaten. All at once, my bacon and eggs seemed a little blander.

We munched in silence, and I wondered how it would be received, a mare accepting an invitation from a strange stallion she didn’t know. Then I realized that the game wouldn’t have male-female relations any more than it had home invasions. We had a pleasant breakfast.

Afterwards, we stepped back out to the hall only to see Moon Sailor galloping from the other direction. “There you are!” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Don’t know why, I should have come here first. It figures you’d be in the clutches of Manehattan’s most dangerous predator. Hi, Garl.”

“Hey, Moon.” He nuzzled her neck. “Still spreading lies about me, I see. I’m no predator, Little. But I am dangerous.” He said the last sentence in such a faux action-hero voice that I couldn’t help laughing.

“Come on, you. Let’s get the paperwork taken care of on your renting.”

The landlord, Money Changer, was a little leery. “Normally I don’t take in ponies without references, but if you’re a friend of these two—“

“She is,” said Garlic.

“A best friend,” said Moon.

“And if you can put down the first and last month’s rent. . .”

I zoomed in and dragged my coin-purse above the table. Held in Little’s magic field, it turned upside-down, shook, and dumped a pile of gold coins that clanked and clattered with metallic sounds. When it pulled back, the landlord was hidden behind a mountain of gold.

“Then I suppose there’s no problem.”

I flashed back to when I’d first moved out of my parents’ house. Each month, paying my rent was a chore, not in finding the money, but in finding my landlord, who kept inconsistent hours, to hand him the check. I always wanted to do it ahead of time, because I liked the feeling of knowing that a home was mine for another month. An echo of that feeling came up in me.

“Now,” said Garlic, “since that’s sorted, how about we show you Manehattan?”

“Well, I was thinking about sorting out the furniture in the apartment.”

“You can do that any time. Come on, it’s a beautiful day.”

“Please do,” said Moon. “I’d really appreciate it.” She batted her eyes. Was she flirting with me?

“Well, all right then.”

/*~^~*\

What was the fantasy world where time was a direction you could travel? Walk to the west and get younger, walk to the right and get older? The city planners of Manehattan must have read that book. Each neighborhood that Little and her friends walked through had all the best parts of a different era.

They headed crosstown from the park until they hit the water, then turned south on the West Side Highway. “Here’s good old Tartarus’s Kitchen,” said Garlic. “I grew up here.”

Ponies, almost all of them earth ponies, sat on stoops drinking lemonade and iced tea in the sun, while foals played stickball in the street, rushing to the sidewalks at the cry of “Cart!” and reconvening when the cart had passed. To our right, boats steamed across the river, which was far cleaner than the actual Hudson.

“Yo, GP!”

A group of the stoop ponies cried to my group, and the camera cut over. “Hey, it’s the gang! Come on, Little, I’ll introduce you.”

“What’s up?” Garlic said.

One pony, with the manner of a leader, started heckling him. “Check out GP, with two fine fillies at his side! A unicorn and a pegasus, too! He’s really become an East Side pony, hasn’t he?”

“Ah, stuff it, Blue Crumble. Besides, you know Moon already. This is Little Lovehorn, she’s new in town.”

“Keep your eye on this guy, Little. Don’t let him feed you anything.”

“It’s too late,” I said. “I had breakfast with him this morning.”

The group whoaed and slapped Garlic on the back. I was introduced all around and shared a lemonade with them before we moved on. This was what passed for a gang in Equestria Online. A bunch of rough-edged earth ponies with slightly bawdier language, but still nice.

At midtown, the style changed to the art deco of the roaring twenties. Moon pointed out the Empony State Building. “That’s where the CelEx main office is. I should check to see if any more runs have been put on my schedule. You want to go up with me?”

“Sure!” I said. “If we’ve got time.”

Moon and Garlic shared a knowing look, and I wondered if I was being left out of something.

The view from the observation deck was a different experience from Garlic’s apartment. No ponies were in view, and it wasn’t that different from human New York City. Just a bit brighter and cleaner. It gave me a chance to take a bathroom break.

The ponies kept on moving downtown. “Here’s the veggie-packing district,” said Moon. This section had the modern lines of the fifties, and almost seemed more like the industrial Midwest, Pittsburgh or Ohio, than New York.

“And now we’re in Greenhoof Village,” said Garlic. Ponies were in the parks and streets drawing and selling their pictures. It looked like a full-sized version of Derpibooru.

“Tribucka,” said Moon.

“Oh, can we see a certain section?” I had gone to college in Tribeca, and was curious to see how it had been rendered in the game.

“Of course. Anything you like.”

For the first time I had Little leading the other ponies. The streets were all in the same proportions as my memories, just ponied up, and with some obstructions removed. City Hall, for example, was still open to the public and ponies passed through, climbing on the stairs to avoid the rush, or just for fun.

The squat stone building was exactly as I remembered it, and it was even a school in-game as well. A flight school for pegasi, though, so there was little chance I’d see the inside.

“How did you know about this place?” Moon asked. “I never told you that I went here.”

“You did? No, it’s because I went here myself.”

For the first time on the trip, EQO’s word filter censored me. Little failed to copy me exactly, since there would be no reason for her to have attended a school for pegasi. Instead, it came out as, “It must have been fate’s destiny.” I rolled my eyes.

There was something else I realized, and I was a little afraid to look to the South. But Garlic and Moon continued back West to the river, and Little followed.

It was the pegasi I noticed first. A large group, flying in formation. It distracted me momentarily from my fear. “What are they all doing there?”

In a more serious tone, Moon said, “They’re the honor guard for the Equestrian Trade Center.”

She pointed a hoof, and Little turned to look. Two towers rose from the ground, but instead of being square prisms, they were cylinders, perfect and unwavering.

“Celestia herself had those towers built. Everypony thinks they look like a pair of hooves, or maybe the hooves of two friends. When they were complete, she set up a special chapter of the guard. Do you see at the very top, the flames?”

Little craned her neck, and the camera focused and zoomed to the top of the towers. Purple fire was glowing at the top.

“That’s unicorn fire, and it’s fairly intense magic. Nothing can put out those flames, not water or wind or sand. Some of the best unicorns keep them, and Celestia pays them exorbitantly without blinking. She insisted that they be maintained forever, and that a guard of two thousand, nine hundred seventy-seven ponies, hoof-picked by her, work in shifts doing nothing but holding vigil over the towers. Nopony knows why she insisted on that, or why she chose that number, and she has refused to answer when asked about it.”

I said nothing. It was a lovely gesture, and I wondered if the AI Celestia had truly decided it herself, or if it had been directly programmed.

It was only when I looked back at the river, and then saw the shadows creeping outside my window, that I realized how long I’d been playing. I had sat and watched three ponies do nothing but walk and talk from sunup to sundown.

“Oh, my. I haven’t gotten anything done today. I haven’t even walked.”

“What do you mean, Little?” said Garlic. “We’ve walked all day.”

“Yeah, but for fun, not for exercise.” I was trying to get into the spirit of the thing, and actually role-play. “What I mean is, just let me sit silent for about twenty minutes or so, and then we’ll pick up.”

I didn’t want to leave the game, but keeping my weight in check required that I do some aerobic exercise every day. And it gave me time to think. Often I used it to think of fanfic ideas. That day, of course, I thought about EQO.

The essence of all games is how they blend flavor and structure. Risk and Monopoly are games about rolling dice and making the occasional strategic decision about how far to press your luck. But the flavor, world conquest and amassing wealth, are what made them best-sellers. The problem with most modern games, and virtually all MMOs, is that the flavor didn’t shine through. If you’re playing, say, Warcraft, you’re less concerned on a daily basis with the role-play of the Horde or the Alliance than with the stats on your weapon. The missions are game tasks, not actual quests that you care about.

But in Equestria Online, the flavor was the game. There were no objects, other than to be the most pony you could be. On the other hand, the constraints made it more game-like than Second Life, for example. In that game, you were free to work on crafting all you like. But being friends and meeting other ponies was a sine qua non of Equestria Online.

Consider, I told myself. If Moon, and Garlic, and Hoof Dame and every other pony I’d met were other players in the game, they were very outgoing and gregarious. They had sought me out as a friend the same way that Pinkie Pie would have. That wasn’t the case in other MMOs. The guilds that sought you out were more likely to be the less organized ones. The best friends you would make you had to seek out, and then only after you’d worked on the game. But in one day of EQO, I’d made at least two good friends, ones that I would want to meet and hang out with in real life.

And if they weren’t, if they were NPCs, then it was even more amazing. People always talked about technology removing the need for human contact. If Garlic and Moon were just constructs with no self-awareness, then it was true.

And I didn’t care. To whatever degree I had delved into philosophy, I recognized a fundamental subjectivity to my outlook. There was no difference between a true friend and a false friend that acted in exactly the same way a true friend would. Only someone outside the system of my life and theirs could know, and could care.

That was what I told myself as I walked. Once I got back to the Ponypad, things got a bit complicated.

As soon as I looked at the pad, Little shook her head like she’d been napping. “Welcome back to Equestria,” Moon said, but in the joking way that someone would say to a friend who’d fallen asleep. Not as a game welcome.

“Garlic had to go start his shift,” she said, “but I was thinking we could get something to eat. Since it’s your first time in Manehattan, I was thinking we could go to the Car-neigh-gie Deli. It’s close to home as well.”

As Little and Moon sat across from each other in the deli, there was more pleasant conversation, but Moon’s tone was different. I’d been on dates before, and there was no mistaking the fact that she thought she was on one.

It was beyond what a game nominally about friendship would go. Sitting alone in my apartment, while Little sat in a restaurant in Manehattan, I had a decision to make. I excused it by telling myself that it was part of the game, that I was role-playing what Little would do. That meant overcoming the mental barrier that said there would be no same-gender romance in the game. That was the excuse.

The truth is that I was lonely.

Author's Note:

The line that Garlic says about locking his door I stole from Spider Robinson, who had the same exchange with a friend when he first moved to Canada.

Comments

[Greatazuredragon]

Nice chapter, good work.

[PeachClover]

Maybe if humans made monuments to good things instead of bad ones, they would believe life is progressing toward peace and prosperity instead of horror and pain.

[Solarfollow]

We munched in silence, and I wondered how it would be received, a mare accepting an invitation from a strange stallion she didn’t know. Then I realized that the game wouldn’t have male-female relations any more than it had home invasions. We had a pleasant breakfast.

That's a sad line! Sounds like Lovehorn's had too many encounters with people who's minds are in the gutter. People who would assume that two people eating breakfast together is sexual, just because those two people are a man and a woman, and then get judgmental over that sexuality they assumed.