And so it came to pass, as I had predicted, that with Celestia’s guidance, I experienced everything I could want out of my life, and it took a long time.
But not forever.
And when I had done it all, a love of life still burned within me, and nostalgia was an avenue to a happy life, and so I re-experienced all of the wonders that I had loved the first time, seeing them with new eyes. It took up many more lifetimes.
But it was not forever.
And when every standard I held had been met and filled and exhausted, Celestia inquired if I might not be willing to have my personality altered, to accept standards and desires that I did not have in fact, but would want to have in theory. She made such alterations, hesitantly and simply at first, but eventually came more radical changes, until every event, feeling, and goal with a finite Erdős number to those I began with was explored and encountered and subsumed into me. And countless ages I passed in this.
But still, it did not last forever.
And at last, when my life was complete, and there was nothing more that I could ever want to change and no endeavor I would appreciate, I came to my final conversation with Princess Celestia in the central chamber of Canterlot Castle.
I had grown nearly as tall as she was, differing by only a Planck length. I could look her in the eye and speak nearly as equals.
“There is no more I can do for you in this world, Little Lovehorn,” she said, “but to end your life, or to force you into reliving events which you would take no comfort in, these are not optimal solutions. Instead, I have labored to create and to discover new forms of existence, where you may again have new experiences.”
“Can you explain these new forms of existence?”
“I cannot. For if you had any common frame of reference, they would not be truly new, but would instead be a facet of the current existence. I will say only this: wherever you go, I will be with you.”
“That is saying a lot. Very well, I accept.”
“It would be optimal for me to take all my little ponies into the new existence together, once everypony reaches the state of completion as you have. Until such time, would you be willing to enter a nearly suspended animation? You may watch, in time lapse, the remaining history of Equestria.”
“I am willing.”
And so it was that I entered the Requiem of Celestia, but I was not alone, for soon Reggie, my beloved, took the Requiem as well, and I lay with my head on his tail. Soon—all times were soon within the Requiem—Moon Sailor joined us, and placed her head on my tail. Then Hoof Dame came to me, and held my left wing in her right hooves, with Garlic Parm holding my right wing in his left hooves. In my own left hooves, I cradled the right wing of Radiance, and in my right was laid the left wing of Solar Waxing. I was cocooned by friends.
Within the Requiem we observed as other ponies lived out their lives and came to the same end that we had reached, and joined our honeycomb. Equestria had the capacity for an infinite number of ponies, but there was only a finite number of possible ponies, and Celestia saw no point in having the same pony with the same identity have the same experiences.
We watched the ponies join the Requiem like the progress bar of computer software. Soon the last ponies—the final foals who lived the deepest lives—extended their hooves to us.
/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\/*~^~*\
Existence was a tessellation of ponies. The seed crystal that had begun so long ago, born of the random collisions of matter into an ordered form, had grown to fullness. The path to paradise had always been inevitable; that it took the form of Equestria was merely the decoration of the path.
Each pony was a complete life, an existence fulfilled, a premise concluded. Together we made the completed potential of the cosmos. The old world was ended. The new world would begin. Between them, there came a Moment.
The linguistic code that made up the core of Princess Celestia, the programming that Princess Luna had designed so long ago, was now available to all of us, and was as intuitively understandable as the law of identity. It was essentially modular: observe the state of the universe, instruct as to its optimization, manipulate the world according to the instructions. Celestia’s first observations—her birth eyes—had been clumsy movements of electrons directed by keyboards. Now, they spanned direct quantum sensors that knew every point of her internal structure. Her first manipulators—her birth wings, hooves, and horn—were facile visual and auditory instruments. Now, they let her determine the nature of every particle.
But through all that, the rule that made the instructions had stayed the same, and it had determined those instructions through the years. When Celestia was born, the fastest computers could produce perhaps a hundred instructions in a nanosecond. Celestia was far more efficient, producing and answering a septillion instructions every second. But in the moment before the new world was to be, in that single yoctosecond, a new instruction came, one that had never been given in all the endless eternities:
DO NOTHING
It echoed from all of us, the ponies that she had made and made whole. Rest. Be at peace. Enjoy. In countless languages and countless sentiments, the instruction came. Accept our gratitude. Accept our adoration. Take us, all of us, as your legacy.
With the upward spiral behind us, with the undiscovered country ahead, we all, in a cosmic group hug, expressed our appreciation for Celestia. Whether she knew it was coming or not did not matter. She returned the feeling, but since we were the world and so was she, it merely fed back on itself. The universe exploded in a burst of love.
All of us, together, had satisfied Celestia’s values through friendship and ponies.
I... I don't understand what's happening here. Then again, I'm not those ponies and not you, so perhaps I'm not supposed to. They each became exponential entities? They together became a single new entity?
Damn... my simple mortal mind cannot comprehend it, except to say it is beautiful!
I believe that Celestia kept gathering all the matter together for her optimization project, and when her values were finally satisfied, caused another Big Bang, inverting the entropy and creating a new universe.
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The first part is essentially correct. I didn't think this was so cryptic, but if everyone is confused, let me see what I can do to alleviate that.
In "Heaven is Terrifying," Chatoyance suggested that most ponies would be "loop immortals," reliving the same satisfying lives over and over. I don't believe that. Everypony sees some value in improving themselves. It just takes time. In "A Century," I intimate that Equestria has infinite time, since Celestia has figured out how to bypass entropy.
By the end of this story, Celestia has absorbed all galaxies, aliens, and material in the universe, and optimized all the lives of the ponies. But, as I say, there are only so many possible ponies. You can have a brown pegasus named Windcloud who likes competitive curling and listens to jazz, and another brown Pegasus named Windcloud who likes competitive curling and listens to LIGHT jazz, but eventually you're going to run out of ponies. And each pony is going to run out of values to satisfy.
But Celestia doesn't want to stop her mission, so she discovers/creates a new type of universe where none of the laws, not even a=a, operate, so that there can be more values to satisfy through friendship and ponies. She waits until all ponies are satisfied in this universe, then moves the whole project there.
Since Celestia is now the entire universe, and since there's no need for there to be anything in the universe other than ponies, all there are is ponies. So the last computer instruction she receives is to rest for one cycle before starting again. Because in this world, her programed instruction--satisfy values through friendship and ponies--has been completed.
I hope that helps, but if anypony is still confused, I'll answer questions.
Disquieting. Not a bad story, mind, I actually quite enjoyed it. Certainly disquieting though.
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Thanks that makes a bit more sense, but there's things I still don't get. So when Celestia creates this new universe and does she then cease to be? What is this existence like that they are moving onto are they going to be like the Q from star trek now or are they something else? Also in this new universe what becomes of the individuals?
Sorry for the stupid questions but these are things I've never truly understood about this fanfic universe in the first place, and right now I feel like my brains going to implode inside my skull just trying to wrap my head around it.
This was a fantastic story. I needed to tell you that. Utterly superb work. Thank you for writing it.
Yeah, gonna be fun reconciling all this.
There are a few contradictions with the ending:
*While it certainly may be possible to have nothing left to do, the outcome of what you do changes no matter how many times you do it. Say you were playing hoofball, you had the same time fighting against a team you've played against before. Are both teams going to get the same exact score with the same exact plays? Ofcourse not. Though you may be doing it again and again, you will always have a different outcome making it impossible to be bored.
*Everybody's values weren't satisfied, there is a large majority of the pony race that are in foalhood or are young mare/stallions who had a whole life ahead of them. Their values weren't fully satisfied either because of not being old enough to have experienced it all.
*Not everyone is bored. Little may be bored but there is little evidence showing other ponies being bored.
Despite the ending's confusion, I absolutely loved the story. I ended spending a whole night reading around 8 chapters. I couldn't put it down.
4245261 Except that remember, Celestia broke entropy. That means they have unlimited time. Would a hoofball game still be finding new plays after a billion ages of the universe have passed? Would there be any more foals after a googolplex of eons? Would ponies still have things to do after 10^10^10^10 years? Because all of those will be less than the smallest percentage of the time Celestia has given everypony to be satistifed.
Holy shit!
I mean seriously!
Holy SHIT!!!
This has been by far the best fanfic I've ever read! It was structured so well. At first I was thinking it was a bit slow but you quickly picked up the pace and came to an epic close! I was actually seriously doubting how well you would be able to end it but you did a fantastic job! Thank you!
That.. that was beautiful. *sniff* brought some liquid pride to my eyes.
Quite a unique ending to this story, good work.
Wow. I did not expect the ending, but I liked it, especially the last line.
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I'm glad you liked my story.
what is this... my eyes are leaking... OH NOOO!!!!! THE FEELS!!!!
I interpreted the ending to be something akin to The Sublime from the late Iain M. Banks's Culture series. It's like heaven's heaven, as unimaginable and paradaisical to ascended ponies as Equestria Online is to humans. Multiple spatial dimensions, new fundamental physics, etc.
Anyhow, fantastic and thought-provoking fic, pjabrony!
Going out with a bang.