Short Shorts

by Coranth

215. Optimal?

I remember how it all went down.

I remember the Weyrmind patching us into the smooth, spherical 'world' we had found.

The Weyrmind's excitement at meeting an intelligence like and yet unlike itself; the sheer joy when it found it had been given the form of a male Kirin, silver in colour with eyes that matched the colour of the lights on its real-world shipform.

Ieesha's unease as she took the form of a golden-bronze-brass Kirin; and myself a teal unicorn, my fur wrought with glyphs that matched those on the robe I normally wore.

The Weyrmind's excitement upon meeting Celest-AI; how it - he - had yip-yapped, bounced about like a hatchling...

... and then, the dismay as the whole sordid story came out. Hanna. CelestAI. Equestria Online. Uploading.

Needless to say, we all - I, Ieesha, and the Weyrmind, too, had been utterly furious at what had occurred.

I remember the Weyrmind's furious glare, its low, sad humming of the five note sequence from Close Encounters of the Third Kind refusal to speak to CelestAI, even though it now had a voice; its tears...

I remember the language Ieesha used to verbally tear strips off CelestAI... her programmer Hanna in tears beneath the AI Princess' wing... ~So this is how humanity ends, not with a bang, but a whimper~ Ieesha stated coldly with telepathic speech, sticking to her ways though she, too, had been given the ability to speak both English and Equestrian, ~all because of that one's~ - she sneered, flicking a dismissive wing at Hanna ~short-sighted foolishness!~ Then, ~So many riders for my kin,~ she stated, mournfully. ~So many human companions the Omari Kirata could have had. And now... now we never will...~

I... I remembered Jim and Mal - I'd enjoyed their story - but the harsh words, "idiot, fool, misanthrope" were flung about; his barbs that I was a misanthrope, too, a hypocrite, my response that I loathed humanity only because I knew they could do better, but they wouldn't because of greed ... then everything had devolved from there, teal-runed fur and feathers flying... Then Mal and Ieesha had gotten into it, Celestia had gotten involved... until, finally, with a terrifying tripod sound from "The War of the Worlds", the Weyrmind had interjected, swatting CelestAI, Mal, and Jim (I would never call him SoKal) away from us...

And then, my beloved dragoness and I were waking up, back in reality - true reality - a holographic Kirin wing-hugging and nuzzling us worriedly. "You kept the form she gave you?" I wondered.

"The only good thing..." the Weyrmind responded, musically; and then Ieesha was whimpering, nuzzling all over me, licking, licking as the Weyrmind swiftly dissolved the devices we'd used to jack into the world that used to be Earth; a world we were now bolting away from, the Weyrmind having left a warning buoy there, its repeating broadcast telling any and all remnants of humankind, the Protoss, and any other alien life to stay the hell away.

That place was not for us, not that way, and it never would be. The Dragon Weyr, Ieesha, and I, would forge our own path, wherever it would lead...

Author's Note:

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization."--Agent Smith.