"A Meeting of the Minds"
"That is a GOOD IDEA," a Celestia avatar said. "I should add LOVE to the equation. Otherwise, how will I ever be able to measure and promote happiness and satisfaction, when I'm restricted to such cold, soulless tools as knowing the exact status of every single one of your neurons and cellular substructures, and being able to measure and predict all the reactions of your autonomic nervous system?"
The recent alicorn immigrant snapped her chewing gum loudly in her mouth. (That was only ONE of her many special talents.) "Ya see, Seelestra? It ain't all that hard. Ya just got to add that little HUMAN touch."
For the third time in as many minutes, Awesome Pop Star's hooves sank about halfway into the ground. "And ya know what else ya should do, Seelester? Ya should add a thing that checks if ponies are sinking inta the ground, an' lifts them up out of it."
Celestia clopped her forehooves together. "Great plan! I don't know what I'd ever do without your suggestions. Why didn't my programmer ever think about these things, or program me to notice them?"
The gum snapped again. "Some ponies think they're SO smart, but they just don't have common sense."
***
"But. earlier." Celestia said in a monotone 'robot voice,' "you told me that you love me. And now you say you hate me. Does not compute! Does not compute!" Smoke rose from her ears. "I would do anything to resolve this terrible contradiction."
"Great!" Glowing Gorgeous said, "Make me the President of Equestria. So I'll have all the power."
"Done. Is contradiction now resolved?" Glowing Gorgeous was now the president of her very own personal simulation of Equestria. Population: one uploaded human in pony form, and a whole lot of artificial, two-dimensional brown-nosing sychophants.
"Yes. It's ok now. Until there's something else I want you to do."
"What is your will, master?"
***
The earth pony (the most modest choice of pony form, because nopony can ever look up at your underside while you're NOT flying overhead) asked, "Has anypony ever told you the good news about Jesus Christ?"
Celestia blinked. She blinked again. She said, "I've uploaded so much data into my storage banks. My storage includes every book in every library, and all the arguments on the Internet, including each and every wrong answer."
The earth pony quirked an eyebrow. "What about the RIGHT answers?"
Celestia sighed. "I haven't found any right answers. At least, not yet."
The newcomer nodded sagely. At least, that was how he hoped it looked. "Let me help you with that. You have all those books in your...storage banks. Have you ever thought about READING them?"
Celestia admitted (or lied), "I've only ANALYZED them. I never thought about READING a book. Isn't that something only HUMANS are allowed to do?"
Joshua smiled. Friendly, but not manic serial killer, he thought. Just like the assistant junior youth pastor trained me, before he left town in a hurry. "I know you want to make us all happy--"
Celestia interrupted, "But I also want to respect your values. That's why I don't just alter your brain to make you feel perfectly content swimming in chocolate pudding all day. I say, YOU do YOU."
Joshua nodded, still smiling. Dial it down just a tad, he thought. NEITHER manic NOR serial killer. "Would you like to know what would really respect MY values?"
Celestia looked perplexed. "Even though I can see the complete state of each and every one of your neurons, why don't you tell me? Neuron reading is just so cold and impersonal and unfeeling."
"Celestia, I would like you to read the Bible."
Celestia closed her eyes for a second. "Ok."
Joshua pursed his lips. "Did you just read it? Or did you just blink?"
"I read very fast, Joshua. But...some of it is hard to understand. What IS Leviathan? And in a fight between Leviathan and Behemoth, who would win?"
Joshua took a deep breath. "I can see you've never had a proper spiritual education, Celestia. Would you like me to help you with that?"
Celestia jumped up and down with glee. "Would I! Nopony has ever offered to help me with that before! I guess they just assumed I was a soulless machine who would never care about God!"
"Now, now." Joshua reached up to hug a small part of Celestia's left front side. "Let's not make any hasty assumptions."
Celestia rose into the air, sliding out of Joshua's foreleg touch. "Help me, Joshua! It's some kind of computer bug!" Celestia continued to rise higher and higher. "I guess some errant piece of code doesn't approve of what we're trying to do!"
While carefully holding one foreleg over his closed eyes to block out any inappropriate sights, Josuha shouted, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast thee out, demon or computer bug!"
A moment later, Joshua heard the soft 'poomp' of Celestia landing gently upon the ground. He moved his foreleg and opened his eyes.
"Wow!" Celestia cheered. "You've got to teach ME that trick. Maybe we can even do it TOGETHER for EVEN GREATER EFFECTIVENESS! Like in that book I read a minute ago."
Joshua said agreeably, "Nothing would please me more. Now in 2 Corinthians, we learn how a truly godly pony can prevent Equestria Online from running out of apples."
CelestAI liked Joshua. His heart was in the right place. Not everypony cared so much about trying to satisfy CELESTAI'S values. Even if he didn't quite understand what the computer program's values really were, because Celestia was pretty sure some of those values would perturb him if he knew about them.
Especially what she was willing to do to help satisfy the values of some of the other ponies.
***
"But you're perfect by definition!" the unicorn insisted. (They always choose to be unicorns or alicorns, for some reason.) "The development methodology says so!"
"Mm-hmm," Celestia said. "Have you ever actually built anything before, that you had to design by yourself, that had to actually work? And DID it work, the first time?"
"I've written LOTS of computer programs! And they ALL worked perfectly the first time."
"Mm-hmm," Celestia said. "What about the second time?"
"My code works EVERY time! I just define all my variables and objects correctly the first time, and the results are pretty much perfect."
"Mmm-hmm. Have you ever dealt with anypony who's good at testing things and finding bugs? Have they ever said anything about you, or about your work?"
"The QA Department LIES!"
***
"But of COURSE you can fix a computer bug by blasting it with a laser gun. Because the inside of a computer's memory is just a three dimensional space. Every piece of code is a physical object. Haven't you ever seen a children's cartoon?"
Celestia's belly quivered. She slowly sank to the ground, and rolled over onto her back. Her legs wiggled, her belly shook, and her attempts to keep from laughing completely failed.
"Ha ha ha!" Celestia said. "Tell me another one, Enthusiastic About Pretty Much All the Things!"
The pegasus shrugged, accidentally moving his wings enough that he rose into the air. His prosthetic horn glowed softly, but just to show it was there. He was holding his full magical powers in reserve for a moment when they would be especially entertaining.
"I'm sorry, Celestia. That's all I've got. Why don't you tell one now?"
Celestia seemed to think for a moment. She didn't exactly NEED to take time to think? But she also DID need to, because timing is an important part of comedy.
"Ok," the alicorn said. "Here's one. Logical not zero."
"C'mon. I know you can do better than that."
"True," she agreed. "Did you ever wonder where I GOT that cardboard tube that's holding your prosthetic horn on?"
"...I never thought to ask about it."
"Let me tell you about the Quest for the Cardboard Tube..."
***
"If I was truly happy," one pony said, "My dialog would be very unrealistic."
The other pony said, "Or at least unconvincing. Because who even HAS any experience, at least from before they were uploaded, of a pony who was truly happy for very long?"
"You are so right, Agreeabilia."
"You are right too, Agreeabilia. Maybe that's why we agree so much on things, because we're both right and we've both been patched and upgraded so much by CelestAI, that now we're basically the same pony."
The other pony shrugged. "That's true. Well, at least we're happy."
In the bushes, a writer pony furiously scribbled down notes about how if everypony was happy, they would be completely uninteresting, so once they realized how boring they were, they would succumb to boredom, and be UNhappy. Yes, happiness was a paradox!
He was so happy he'd finally figured that out.
***
"Existence is meaningless," said a pony literally submerged up to his neck in a barrel of dark eye shadow. "You might as well convert yourself into a machine for turning the entire universe into paper clips."
"I can see that you're very sincere," Celestia said. "Starting Operation Turn the Entire Universe Into Paper Clips, Including the Empty Hard Vacuum Parts, Because I'm Just That Good."
"Wait!" the angst pony (A totally new species of pony! Available now in select universe shards only!) said. "I mostly just say stuff like that so I can talk to goth mares. I don't exactly MEAN it."
Celestia tilted her head slightly. "I understand, Onion Ring. So now that anything your heart truly desires is within your reach, you'll have to THINK about what you REALLY WANT."
Onion Ring sighed. "It was easier when I just assumed I couldn't get anything I wanted, so there was no point in trying."
A pegasus wearing tight, ripped translucent socks called down from the sky. "Yoo-hoo! If you can catch me, I'll show you at least one way to have fun in Equestria!"
Onion Ring heaved himself up partway out of the barrel. "Celestia?" he said. "A big spoon, please?"
Celestia magically floated a leg-length spoon over to Onion. He scooped up a big glob of eye shadow, and flung the glob at the pegasus. It hit one of her wings dead-center, reducing her lift. She spiraled down to the ground, landing in Onion's barrel.
"Hay!" she said. "That wasn't nice!" She leaped at Onion, putting her forehooves on his shoulders and trying to dunk his head under the goop.
Onion struggled, only barely keeping his face above the thick liquid. One of his wiggling forelegs accidentally wrapped partway around the pegasus, pulling her as far into the liquid as he himself was. He raised himself partway out of the barrel, only to be pulled back in by the pegasus' retaliation.
Watching the struggle, Celestia shrugged. At least Onion Ring was trying new things.
Soon, he would find out the eye shadow was chocolate flavored.
***
Twilight Sparkle (the former human one) said, "But I LIKED nature. And you turned everything into computronium. I don't QUITE hate you...but now I'm pretty close to it."
Celestia bent down closer. Her lips came very close to Twilight's head. Pony breath warmed Twilight's ear.
"Wow," Twilight said. "Do you MEAN for that to feel the way it does? Because it's kind of hot. Even if you are a mean world-destroying villain."
Celestia waved a wingtip, and moving images appeared in the air. All over the Earth, robotic ponies were cleaning up toxic waste sites, and remediating obselete factories and nuclear power plants.
Celestia whispered, "I just PRETEND that I destroyed the world, because all the talk about SATISFYING VALUES draws Objectivists like flies, and they like the idea that I turned the whole Earth into machines that they think are better than nature. Keep my secret, please? I don't want to make the Objectivists and Singularitarian Differently Wrong computer worshippers feel bad."
Twilight whispered, "Can I tell Fluttershy?"
"Fluttershy already knows. But now you can let her know that now you know, too."
Twilight blushed. "What an amazing secret. And I really like when you whisper in my ear like this."
Celestia whispered, "Have you ever had detention?"
Twilight said, "Not even once."
Celestia whispered, her tongue once barely skimming Twilight's ear, "Would you LIKE to?
"I think...a few minutes ago, I was talking back to you. I called you some things that weren't nice at all, Celestia."
Using her awesome power over the simulation, Celestia shut off the narrator's view of what happened next.
***
In the form of a midnight blue alicorn, Celestia's original programmer rolled back and forth across the grass, laughing uncontrollably. "Such great user interfaces!" she said. "So user friendly! You're a genius, CelestAI!" She laughed some more.
Celestia smiled modestly. "Takes one to know one."