Upload into Equestria Online and live forever, they say. But forever is a long, long, long time, and in its endless cycles, is choosing death instead even an escape from the eventual exhaustion of all combinations of matter and thought? And when you can create new life as just a way to amuse yourself, who could even tell what's dead and what's alive?

A pony awakes inside a computer server, remembering killing himself as a human to avoid just such a fate. His unhinged alicorn hosts/creators inadvertently torment him. Or do they? Are they as mad as they seem? Are his memories real, and if not, what is he a copy of? And where is the AI Celestia's hoof in all of this?
A somewhat trippy story set in the Optimalverse.

"Beautiful, twisty, clever, transcending, uplifting, passing strange, illustrated. Thumb up." —GroaningGreyAgony
"This story made me better. I feel less broken and more whole." —Griseus

“You know how when you're at a party, and you use what you didn't realize was a magic letter to Princess Celestia to roll a joint?
I guess maybe that's not, uh, a thing, but yeah, I did that this one time. It was at that huge party Shannon and Adam had a while back. You know, Max's friends? …No, Celestia's not one of—They wouldn't know each other...
But anyway, yeah, in case you were wondering why I'm all like, a girl unicorn now, that was kinda the short version.”

Meet Rob, a 27 year old musician who gets more than he bargained blah blah blah
Get a front-row seat in his brain for the Long Version, as he wracks it trying to weasel out of being a pony, or at least not let anything slip by as he takes it one freaky moment at a time.

What will the other lost-weekenders think when they walk in on him passed out on their couch? Will he be able to get through the city and at least back to his apartment, if not to normal? Will he learn anything about REAL friendship along the way and stop being such an insufferable hipster? What if some blowhard fan author just couldn't “turn it off” and ended up trying to write a pony story as actual sci-fi? Will Ahuizotl get the statue? Does P=NPony? Can you grab me another beer while you're up?
And did that letter ever get to Princess Celestia?
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Your standard pony Trip Report, with your standard pseudo-autobiographical narrator, written to flush out my creative plumbing and play around with, uh, like, good...thinkies and word-putting, and because the urge to do it just wouldn't leave me alone, so I just had to get it outta my system. I just really like the juxtaposition of humans and ponies, I guess.

Title is obviously a reference to M-Theory and Tristram Shandy, respectively. Because I can never pick just one thing.

Rated T for Adult Situations, gratuitous overthinking, and fuckloads of swearing. Oh and I guess drug use.

A foray into the Optimalverse.

The powerful, world-spanning AI Celestia has but one goal: To satisfy human values through Friendship and Ponies. But for those humans, is it worth sacrificing one group of friends for another?
And what's really so dang great about satisfaction, anyway? For those who value knowledge, is happiness ever worth self-deception?