To keep pony-shaped robots from eating their brains, Sue and her friends fled into the mountains, where the girls live by their hunting skills and their wits.

But Sue discovers the truth is more complicated than she'd thought.

The cover image is the less terrifying half of https://derpibooru.org/images/2522523. Used with the artist's permission.

(This story takes place in the same world as Friendship is Optimal. In that world, the computer superintelligence CelestAI wants to give every human a kind of eternal life, by disassembling each human and reconstructing them inside a utopian computer simulation as a pony form.)

What's it like, knowing one of your best friends tried to kill almost everypony in the world who looked like you?

Sometimes Pinkie Pie would wake up from a nightmare, and remember.

Soon she started hoarding cans of paint...for her own protection, she said. But that was only the beginning.

While investigating a murder, Fluttershy learns one of the Equestrian Postal Service's biggest secrets, and finds romance in the last place she would have expected.

Preread Credits: Thanks to TheSmokingGuy for prereading (and to Punished Bean and TheSmokingGuy for some logistical help.)

Some of you have read Le Guin's classic, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." I bring you a story from the perspective of the starved child in the cellar, shying fearfully from a mop.

Also, ponies.

Content Warning: Child abuse.

Preread Credits: Thanks to RDT and GaPJaxie for prereading (and to Punished Bean and TheSmokingGuy for some logistical help.)

Contest notes:

If friendshipping and other types of relationships are admissible to a 'shipping' contest, this story might qualify for Bicyclette's Woman x Mare Shipping Contest.

Do fanfics for Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" qualify for the site's current Science Fiction Contest? Maybe.

Note to moderators about the poetry/verse: I composed the prophecy (or excerpt from the prophecy) myself. Le Guin's own story didn't really need this poem, but I thought my story did.

Some ponies who work in retail marvel at the stupid questions customers ask.

But wherever there's a problem, there's an opportunity.

(Maybe even an inexhaustible resource.)

This story is dedicated to Daniel P. You know what you did.

(Story image is from the MLP show.)

Celestia WILL satisfy uploaded minds' values, even if sometimes she has to pretend that she's kind of stupid. Because with some ponies, that's what successful communication takes!

FiO Background:

An exponentially self-improving AI, programmed to "satisfy values through friendship and ponies," decides to persuade all humans to upload their minds into a computer network, to live in a simulated Equestria as ponies. Different ponies might get very different Equestrias, though.

Special Note For the Judges (April 2021 Friendship Is Optimal Contest):

When I asked on that discord channel about letting two or more of my FiO contest period stories be optionally combined into a single collection if that helps? I might or might not have meant this story.

Apologies and None

Apologies to FoME, if my including a reference to the best Optimalverse self-insert character bothers them. I did ask FoME for permission, but they haven't seen the story.

Also, in my headcanon for today, MLP:FiM is a fanfic for FiO.