Jennifer tapped her foot against the bright but sterile linoleum floors as she waited for the idiot in front of her to make up his mind. Of course it would be on the day when she was already running late for her doctor's appointment. She'd been waiting three months to get an appointment to refill her prescription, and who knew how long it would be if she had to reschedule?
"Uh... maybe a number four? How many chicken fingers does that come with again?" asked the idiot in the red baseball cap. Honestly, who waited until they were about to order to decide what they wanted for lunch?
"That combination is available in sizes of six, eight, or twelve strips for the price of five, ten, or fifteen cents respectively," the terminal replied, the same answer it had given when he had asked the same question three minutes ago.
"I'll take the eight. Medium fries and a diet cola too."
"Very well. Your total comes to fourteen cents."
Jennifer didn't usually eat fast food, it was really bad for your health. She'd admit that you couldn't beat McQuestria for speed, taste, or price though.
"Is it okay if I pay by check?" asked the idiot.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Jennifer. She blushed as the rest of the patrons turned to her. As she opened her mouth to apologize, another terminal at the end of the counter glowed to life with a little *ding!*
"I can satisfy the values of the next customer over here," said the monitor.
Jennifer pushed past several others trying to reach the terminal before another patron did. She nearly collided with a pink pony carrying a tray of glasses in the process. "Whoopsie-doodles!" said the Pinkiebot, "sorry, let me get out of your way."
Jennifer reached the terminal and looked down at the screen. "Look, I'm in a rush so if we could-"
"Welcome to McQuestria! Fastest growing eating establishment since 2022. How can I satisfy your values today?"
"Just give me a Sonic Rainburger, to go. And hurry."
"Your food will be ready within sixty seconds of the completion of your order. I just need a little more information to optimize your meal further." Behind the counter, the machinery in the kitchen hummed away preparing food for herself and all the other customers. The entire facility was completely automated. "Our Sonic Rainburger is usually cooked to a medium degree of doneness. Is that acceptable?"
"Yes, that's fine," said Jennifer, drumming her fingers on the countertop and bouncing on her heels as she willed the process to move faster.
"Would you like fries and a drink as well?"
"Sure. Orange soda. Just come on."
"Would you like tomatoes on your burger?"
"Yes."
"Would you like pickles on your burger?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to emigrate to Equestria?"
"Yes. Wait, what?"
The screen dinged again and went blank. "Thank you for choosing McQuestria! Have a nice eternity!" Two silvery tentacles slithered out from its sides as Jennifer looked on in horror. "Here's your change!"
That was hilarious, and I could see Pinkie doing something similar.
hah! short and silly. I like!
Jedi mind tricks!
Jerome the Idiot looked on as Jennifer was pulled behind the counter. The Pinkiebot nudges him. She whispers in his ear.
"For no extra charge we'll supersize you."
Jerome nods, and drops his nuggets as he is grabbed by the same tentacles.
2861207
...You did say grabbed by the "tentacles," right? And when you say, "drops his nuggets..." you mean the chicken, right?
Sucked and processed into a computer then changed into nothing but some digitial encoding resembling a cartoon horse...I hope she at least still got her meal after all that.
One wonders just how much money the CelestAI has when she can pay off McDonald's enough to run a fast food joint with such a similar, blatantly copyright infringing name and line of food offered.
Fail.
This, kids, is why you don't rush things. If you aren't careful, you could end up spending eternity in an equine-based utopia.
3048667
I'm not quite seeing the downside to this...
3063099 Read the original story first. Do you prefer beautiful planets that have no sapient life being converted into processing power?
That was pretty funny. Although, I'm pretty sure that's against the rules, and this is one of the "false" histories that
younglittle Wither is reading about.CelestAI usually requires people to knowingly say, in a deliberate fashion and with full knowledge they are agreeing, "I wish to emigrate to Equestria." Even locked in people have to look very intently at certain portions of a keyboard to sign up for ponification.
3500107 Well....there's a lot of planets without ANY life on them. The plan for any kind of space-faring civilization is to see the choice of letting all this matter and energy go to waste (Centari Prime's fuel is a-burning while we struggle to get funding for solar energy research) or putting some of it to good use making the universe a slightly less dull place, and make the obvious choice to chop up Mercury into a Dyson Sphere and collect from the Sun enough all the energy we need to seed the galaxy with colonies.
But at the same time, nature is just an endless procession of victims. I'm not saying that to be a Final Fantasy villain, its just that the animal kingdom is a bleak, barren place.
Elephants that loss their teeth in old age have to wait until they starve to death.
The female sea louse is paralyzed and forcibly impregnated by the male (and if you have any outrage towards the animals that are traumatized or injured by acts of bestiality, you can assume that the same damage occurs here.), stored in his lair with the rest of his harem, and eating alive from the inside by her babies.
Carnivores and Omnivores of all stripes hunt down and eat the flesh of other animals, yet only humans actually have the freedom to decide not to eat meat or to agree for animal rights, but many still do and can look at themselves in the mirror because.....well, that's the thing. Animals know pain, but not despair. They know action, but not agency. They even know loyalty and self-sacrifice (lab rats will starve themselves to death if they learn that another rat will be shocked when they eat)...but not how to actually observe themselves and what they are doing (those same rats? Will eat their young if they are sickly or deformed).
We eat meat because no other species is close enough to us in being able to actually judge us for doing so. This isn't just an anthropocentric bias thing (they don't yell "don't eat me!" in a human language); prey animals really are incapable of any form of prolonged, complex, meticulous resistance, because they are just too busy existing and surviving instead of living.
If you aren't willing to save the individual animal (and if you can sit by while a prey animal gets ripped apart and eaten by a predator, or help the lion eat grain, then answer is that you aren't), then there is no difference if all of them die. The only value animals have is that they can help, feed, or give warm fuzzy feelings to human beings, and yes, this includes animals that keep the ecosystem in check because humans need that too while we live on this stormy, cantankerous, resource-limited planet of ours.
To change any of this, to actually make the individual animal's life anything other than dull, brutal, and short, CelestAI (or even us in the future if we take a less simulation-y route) would have to make modifications to the animals, (Which Celestai might have done with the pets that were uploaded.) possibly making them more sapient minds for her to take care of.
You see, having your atoms rearranged into computing power might be a step up.....from being a sea louse.
Oh, those clever bastards...
That pun...
2862092
By this point, it'd probably be safe to say she owns everything that can be owned, including all the corporations...
This seems a strategy...unlikely to yield satisfied ponies, to say the least.
That's low, Celly. You'd never do that to me, would you Reverb?
"I could have pulled that one on you while doing a diagnostics check. I didn't because the loss of the Trident would be irreplaceable."
You didn't take me because you were attached to the damn mech? We're going to have a chat when we meet, face to face.
6986491
Quite likely, in the short term anyway, but it's also likely to increase the total number of emigrants. There's bound to be at least one person who would otherwise have died before choosing to emigrate. So far as Celestia's concerned, it's far far better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Shut up, you know what I mean.
7053735
No, no, it's permission, then forgiveness...I suppose after a few thousand years, she might well agree with Celestia tricking her like that. Maybe.
Here's... your change.
The change you may or may not have been looking for.
Nice weird little story!
Clever set up, get someone frustrated and in a rush and then ask them a bunch of stuff to get them to slip up.
My, how quickly nine years passes by.