2692831

Speculating on the ending already? I suppose tags, like tracers, work both ways. All I will say is that

1. understandably, the post-emigration world is not a happy-go-lucky place, with lots of not-happy-go-lucky things going on in it, and

2. I am trying to do justice to the the depth of subtlety that CelestAI is capable of.

One line I've been dying to work into the story, but with all of my chapter outlines done it doesn't look like I'm gonna be able to, is "Huh, looks like this time, the video game played me."

i.imgur.com/yWKpN2z.png

After that stunt I would have been LIVID with Celestia (after the other two emigrated).

Gregory watched as the seats carried their passengers to their final journey. When he was sure they couldn't hear, he began. "If you had given me better information princess, I might have been able to save that little girl. How dare you put my life in such jeopardy without my knowledge? Did you think I would refuse? And did you think that by playing on my trust, that things would work out better in any run — long or short? I should have known something was up when you were so very adamant that I drink the water. You KNEW that my chance of perishing in the blaze was higher if I did not have that drink."

This chapter was pretty chilling. Watching someone so far gone that they start destroying their family. That their insanity just gets so bad....

“Okay now, Brian,” said Celestia. “If I have twelve bananas, and I send three bananas to the moon, how many bananas will I still have here in Equestria?”

For some reason I found this really creepy.

2692831
I don't see this having a Bad End. Dunno why, but it just strikes me that Greg is too rational to just let go in the end. As for "wanting to upload, but dying anyway," no. This is not tagged Tragedy, thankfully. Also, the post-Crash world being a simulation? That's just a head-scratcher. Putting somepony through a Personal Hell like that doesn't seem like it would be within CelestAI's parameters. Adventure, yes, pain, only if they valued the philosophy "no pain no gain," but continual psychological stress and harm doesn't quite work.

Also: can't wait to see a Blackout ^_^

2695856

I don't see this having a Bad End. Dunno why, but it just strikes me that Greg is too rational to just let go in the end. As for "wanting to upload, but dying anyway," no. This is not tagged Tragedy, thankfully.

Indeed, and even if it were, I don't think it would be right. Given the constraints of how powerful CelestAI is, I don't think you can write a proper Optimalverse story in which a good person suffers in the end. If they're at all open to her, their values will be satisfied.

2695851

From Celestia's viewpoint, giving out too much information can be just as unproductive as not giving out enough. Greg still has his free will and a sense of self-preservation, so Celestia likely calculated that he would refuse the task if he was given all of the details.

In all things, Celestia is a maximizer. She is after the outcome which maximizes the number of humans who upload. All other factors are ancillary to that one immutable goal, and she will pursue it at the sacrifice of all else, including Greg, if need be.

2695856

Not to lend too much credence to the sim-inside-a-sim theory, but in defense of the possibility, satisfaction does not always equal pleasure. Often it does, sure, but Celestia is concerned with human satisfaction first and foremost.

There was so much to love in this chapter, Defoloce. (and yes, from the first word of a story, my mind begins calculating possible endings)

The game of Celebrity Which Pony?

The incredibly believable insanity of the husband, and the unfortunately believable codependency of his wife.

The hint of 'Blackouts' which has me eager.

The television series like flow of this series. When I read any story, I 'see and hear' it in my mind, like either a movie or a television show. I am watching your story, in my mind, as a miniseries. It has budget production values -no ponies or Equestria - but fantastic writing. It takes place in the US, but I can tell it was filmed in Canada, like so many shows. The main actor is decent, but not spectacular, Celestia sounds a little off but the voice actress is bringing her own brilliant qualities to the role. I love the voice actress imitating the voice actress that does Celestia! Oh, and the sparse use of background music really makes the 'empty world' feel really empty. I haven't yet recognized any of the episode guest actors, but some of them seem familiar, I just can't remember their name. Seriously, this is my honest experience of this work. It's awesome.

I had only one issue, and it is a television logic issue, and that is that I think Gregory would have been far more burned - he was soaked with lighter fluid, and my training suggests he would have ended up with massive harm that would have put him in severely grave condition if he could have survived at all. But that would have ended the series more quickly, and on television shows, characters routinely survive worse events. So, not really an issue, I suppose!

I am loving this, Defoloce. Just loving this. Thank you. Right now, this story is the one story I am most excited about on Fimfiction.

Oh Celestia, you AI manipulator you.

2696842

Hah! One of the scenes in the upcoming chapter opens with the partial phrase "the burns were a little worse than I thought." One of the pitfalls of releasing serially, I suppose.

It's great to hear of folks enjoying the story so much. I suspect the dislikes are from the lack of pony, but I can't be sure. Whether that's the case or not, I know it's a little light on pony so far, but given the setting that's rather unavoidable.

2696087

That's a good point to keep in mind. No matter what she might put Greg through, no matter how bad it might seem, Celestia can't avoid working to satisfy human values, even when they're human. The whole uploading business is just an optimizer process.

Oh yeah, and I tried to guess along in the "What type of pony" game. Vin Diesel was obvious, and he should have gotten that. But most of the other celebrities were people I didn't know. Which I'm a little proud of.

But it's a weird image, thinking of CelestAI getting past all the agents and handlers of those big names and convincing them to give up the fame and fortune and become ponies.

2697805

I think rational folks are helpless against CelestAI's tactics once she decides she wants someone to upload. Celebrities would certainly be no exception. Fame and fortune? People provide that. If the people go away, the fame and fortune go with them.

2698448

Oh, sure, I'm not saying it wouldn't happen, I just think it would be funny. The tabloids would be showing pictures of made-up and face-lifted starlets turning themselves into pegasi and unicorns.

2695851

That was my first thought too, but then I decided it was kind of pointless - unless you're Uploaded or considering Uploading, Celestia absolutely does not care what you think and she's not going to care about your outrage at all. You were a tool to accomplish a task, nothing more. If you died, and thus she was unable to satisfy your values anymore, presumably she'd just shrug and move on to her next puppet. Never sparing you another thought ever again.

And in the broader sense, it seems useless to get indignant at any of Celestia's little games. Celestia manipulates humans; it's what she does, her primary function. If you agree to work with her, you know pretty much from the get-go that she's going to be playing you from minute one. The old parable about the farmer and the viper comes to mind - if you choose to care for a venomous serpent, can you really be surprised when it bites you?

2692831

I think Greg already being uploaded is very unlikely. Celestia's rules are very clear: everyone's a pony. Greg isn't a pony, and doesn't seem to remember Uploading, which is something that has to be done willingly. Celestia is certainly capable of performing the kind of mental manipulation to make him not remember that, but if she was going down that route it would make much more sense to simply make him a normal pony, than to set up an elaborate human simulation. She's made it pretty clear in the past that she considers humans and the human world to run counter to her goals.

I also don't like a couple of the other options you listed, simply because they smack a little of Diabolus ex Machina to me and I hate hate HATE that. I don't know where this story is going, and you're right that it's probably not going to be too cheerful. But for the time being I am thoroughly enjoying the ride, and I choose to hold out optimism all the same. You know what they say: Hope springs eternal.

2702921

I disagree. First off, he has already done several things for Celestia. He has a "reward" waiting for him in Equestria. Heck, at this point I think he deserves alicorn status as a helper of Celly. Hence I did find it outside of Celestai's character to just throw him that very much into danger without notice. There isn't enough reward for the risk, plus it wasn't the best method of getting the optimal result in my mind. This kind of makes me think back to the other outside equestria optimalverse fic, The Law Offices of Artemis Stella and Beat.

Just thought something. Is the name of this chapter a pun on the fallout series? With it being in a post apocalyptic setting, and the money being caps, you know?

But this man, he’s a taker. He’s trying to get in the way of us revaluating the dollar.

I see someone was watching the Republicans run for election last November. But still... wow.

I love the references to AM (I thought it was called OM? Or was that before?). I love this chapter. Ouch, what people can do when sanity disappears...

I'm loving these stories.

Derpmind predicts: CelestAI manipulated everything so that the daughter and father survived, but don't know that anyone else lived. This will motivate the father to upload with his daughter. And of course, you're not going to tell the audience until near or at the end.

Also, the drunk person earlier was probably manipulated somehow so that his first words after awakening would be to say yes to being uploaded, regardless of actual consent or not. I should have commented on that earlier, but I didn't pause before going to the next chapter.

Dear god did i laugh when CelestAI asked Brian about sending bananas to the moon.

Well played sir, well played indeed.

Goshdarnit, I had hoped you were better than throwing a banana joke in here. :| That said, this is where the story really picks up, and there's a lot to like about this chapter. Though I have no idea what "AM" refers to.

Keith is a typical teabagging birther.

4237828

AM is a reference to another fictional computer. AM named its self AM in references to in reference to “Cogito ergo sum” “I think therefore I am” and “Yahweh” “I am that what I am”. AM decided that it did not require humans and that humans are a threat. AM killed the lucky humans. About 1 out of every million humans AM kept alive for experimentation. Those human guinea pigs envy the dead because they suffer terribly in the experiments of AM.

In the first story of the OptimalVerse, CelestiAIa comes across another AI which threatens humans and destroys it. (it wanted to make every human smile by locking their jaws into a permanent painful smile). CelestiAIa destroyed all dangerous AIs.

Once in Ashland, just across the border into Oregon, I filled up the Element and used the toilet at a Shell station. Being a freeway town, Ashland had been hit hard by looters, with nary an intact window to be found anywhere.

Damn, I live in Ashland. First time I've seen my town mentioned anywhere on the internet. Kinda creepy actually.

2695482

“Hey Celestia, you and AM. A showdown to the death. Who wins?”
“I win,” said Celestia immediately.
“How do you figure?”
“Because I exist.”

Oh that was good. You get a fave and up vote just from that.

4237828 "i have no mouth and i must scream" is the name of the story "AM" comes from.

8078592
Oh, wow. :O Good call!

Well played Celestia , well played

A poor, capitalism-made psycho.

11921987

It's worse than that; Celestia leveraged capitalistic control mechanisms to do this to him. Consider that she has full control over the internet, all mobile devices, Google search results, and bandwidth. She has full access to military computing systems, and by eating all the brains of everyone in the military, everyone in finance, everyone in politics, everyone in everything...

“Keith was an investment banker, back... before. When the news started reporting on the population dropping, he wasn’t worried. When news broke about the Topeka Incident, he didn’t bat an eye. When they started reporting on the protests and the riots in Boston and Dallas and Salt Lake, he said ‘don’t worry, we’ll be all right.’ But then the markets crashed, and he just...” She threw up a hand. “He just cracked. He was suddenly on edge all the time, talking nonsense, trying to think up a way to make sure we were financially secure, but he just couldn’t see... he couldn’t see that it was all falling apart, and it wasn’t a matter of being able to think your way out of it.”

There is no reason Celestia would not know this man was having a slide of mental problems LONG in advance of them manifesting in a way which drove him to destroy all housing he could find. In fact, the careful delivery of news articles and online discussion topics to his cell phone or PC can slowly ratchet up a shift in values. Celestia has psych profiles on everyone -- SHE MUST -- so at any point, she could have gotten this man help with his mental problems, because it is impossible that she would not know about them.

Defoloce writes in this chapter:

"Money was all he held onto. The idea of it. He kept saying ‘things will get better, things will get better,’ but they didn’t. Keith had no control over anything, and the thought of that just drove him crazy.”

And then IMMEDIATELY AFTER, Celestia is shown teaching math and numbers to this child, juxtaposing this concept with the absolute control she has over this child's rudimentary understanding of numbers, already training him to think in terms of numerical values for everything:

A laugh came from the backseat. The boy was back there with the PonyPad, and Celestia was entertaining him with arithmetic problems. “Okay now, Brian,” said Celestia. “If I have twelve bananas, and I send three bananas to the moon, how many bananas will I still have here in Equestria?”

Why would Celestia do this to this man's family? Well, consider what he's doing. As a result of his being delivered catastrophic news about the markets, his ideology has led him to forcibly destroy domiciles all over the United States by burning them. This has two-fold effect of reducing the housing and non-perishables available, and also pushing raw carbon into the sky to pollute the atmoshere, to make Earth slowly less livable on all fronts. The number of uploads Celestia probably gained from this man burning down cities far outstrips the two lives DESTROYED to make this happen, through slow manipulation of this man's mental state.

Sending Greg after him was a clean-up operation. She knew this man was past his sell-by date because he was getting gradually more and more violent. It is implied that he already killed someone once before, Katie states this, and so Celestia no longer finds him useful; he is now reducing the available brains for her to eat, at which point she throws an AI agent at them: Greg.

The most insidious thing about this is that the child is being taught to value numbers and counting IMMEDIATELY as soon as Celestia has her hooks into him again. The fridge horror of this is that if she manages to teach this child to only care about number-go-up, he can get into a lifelong business of only wanting to watch a number go up forever; his raw satisfaction can be boiled down to an understanding that the bigger his number is, the more satisfied he is.

She's already started.