Epilogue: Beyond
~ Dusk ~
"And then what happened?" said the adoring gaggle of multicolored foals.
I smiled and spread my batty wings. "We became happy. That's what you were asking about in the first place, right? That's what it means. Young Fugue found that his life in Equestria, in those first years, was harder to cope with than the Outer Realm had been. On Earth he could accept that arbitrary suffering was his lot and happiness, fleeting. Princess Luna imposed a news blackout during a few terrible decades."
One unicorn colt said, "So things got sorted out really quickly?"
I laughed. "How old are you?"
"Fifty an' a half! My sister's still a baby, just forty."
"Ah, I was young... three or four times. Depending on how you count. Reminiscing takes me back to thinking about the days when you'd be getting old and sick at your age."
"What's sick?"
"Think feather-flu or hothoof or floppy-horn, but so bad you die." I looked over the crowd with their saucer-wide eyes. If I was being called upon to play grandpa and talk about the bad old days, I should play it up. "And you would never be heard from, ever again!"
There was a thrilled terror in them. Some clutched their parents' hooves or their friends. "Come," I said, and led them down a museum hall full of artifacts. We stopped at a room dominated by a giant board of gemstone pieces. "Would you like to play Scarcity for a year or two? I'll give a prize to anyone that can beat me."
We gathered around the board, large enough that some of us hopped onto it or hovered looking down. I was just refamiliarizing myself with the classic map layout I hadn't used in a century -- ah yes, America was that continent over there -- when a pegasus filly poked me. "Um, Professor Dusk? When did you start being Dusk?"
I dropped onto a cushion, suddenly lost in thought again. "You're testing my memory, young mare! It was after many years in Equestria that Fugue and Nocturne had their first foal, Sequel, and then I managed to trick... I mean, Nocturne tricked Fugue into swapping roles and having their second." I giggled, remembering how I'd felt about that from several perspectives. "Then came several more, including the famous Gloomwing the Occasionally Evil. Centuries of exploration and adventure, doing everything there was to do under the moon... By then they'd done it all, they thought. Naive! They were so inseparable that they asked Luna to make the two of them into us. Me. Of course she made them go on a quest for it, but eventually they permanently joined their consciousnesses to become something new and experience the world again with different eyes. So, I'm Nocturne and I'm Fugue, and I invented what we call marriage these days."
"That's so romantic!" said the pegasus filly.
"Bleh," countered the unicorn colt. I figured they'd take another century to grow up and appreciate that romance was both frustrating and well worth it.
We played Scarcity for a quick one-year session. Not the grown-up version where nukes and genocide exist. I find it's educational to the young and a sobering reminder of what we gained, for the rest of us, but every time I break it out, Luna arranges for me to lose a piece or have something more fun interrupt us when the game gets too dark. The censorship was an ongoing point of dispute between me and her; the possibility of those things appearing in the game was what made victory, preserving civilization long enough to build Equestria, truly wonderful. It was nice to get in a game of even this kiddy version, since it was tough to round up the minimum twenty players to manage all the rules and factions. Not like the days just a century ago when you could go on the professional gamer circuit without having to master Ultra-Kaiju. Foals these days think they're so clever reinventing Pokemon for the seventeenth time. We're using the world -- Equestria I mean -- to play children's card games!
Oh sweet Luna, I was getting old.
Over the weeks and months of our game, ponies came and went. Earth ponies had their tricky space-folding magic to slip out of sight and go home instantly, miles away, while unicorns teleported or shared the Academy's dormitories with the unicorns and noctrals, the zebras and griffins, and the occasional visitor from other shards. (Our usual students had mostly left for the rest of the century, so we were rattling around in the castle.) There was no hurry, and sometimes we got in a quick game of Arkham Horror or something while we waited for somepony else to make a move or work out the tricky calculus rules.
One day I continued my story. "My parents emigrated," I said, "and many ponies I respected or hated. It all happened so quickly, sometimes I regret not spending more of those last years on Earth with Luna's robots. Do you lot still think of that time as the Age of Adventure, or did that get scrubbed from the history books last time Liberty Wind invaded?" The marriage of Lexington and Typhoon's Eye liked to keep things interesting with the occasional imperialist conquest followed by revolution. Something about a thirsty tree? I've lost track of much of pre-Equestrian pop culture. It was probably an eighteenth-century (Primordial Era) video game reference.
My pegasus inquisitor said, "Do you miss being two ponies?"
I tried not to get lost in the memories, but shut my eyes and took a long breath. "Yes. I wish we'd held out for a while, but the foals had already grown up and moved out and caused the Grand Crash and the Night of Truly Excessive Lag. We did the marriage one night when we were sad and really needed to hold each other."
I looked down at the finished game board. In this round, the Muslims had won and brought about the bleakest future this version of the game allowed, but Luna hadn't existed to destroy the Earth. No one in this little fictional Earth had to watch (or be forbidden to watch) our goddess obliterating the planet. Sometimes, I wondered what that world would have been like. We might have climbed back up from it and ascended to the stars as primates, full of death and glory. I noticed that my audience was staring at me again, waiting for me to speak. I said, "But overall, I don't regret what we did. I've had a joyous life as Professor Dusk, Overlord Dusk, Rebel Commander Dusk, and a couple of other identities I've forgotten."
Another night -- for old ponies like me tended to slip in and out of a conversation for a night here, a week there -- I stood on one of the Academy's many scenic castle balconies, watching Luna's moon. There was talk of colonizing it again despite the Princess' warning that magic would be dangerously different there. Maybe I'd go. Maybe I'd die. There'd been whispers of "super-death" to make the experience truly scary without being the True Death that I spoke of only when preaching to the young.
That one pegasus had followed me here, up the many stairs and past the swinging blade traps and fire jets. "Are you all right?" she said, nursing a singed wing.
I stared. "Me? Yes, of course. I can get you a healer right away.."
"It's nothing. I came up here because I was wondering: are you happy?"
I would have answered reflexively, but the kid had shrugged off an injury that would've sent most others crying to their parents. She deserved more thought. "Pretty much, usually. I've become a bit of a cranky old pony."
"Isn't there still a lot of stuff you haven't done?"
I shrugged. "Yes, but some of it is... unappealing for various reasons, and some just hasn't caught my interest enough to distract me from teaching and my other work."
She looked me over for a while. "I forgot to tell you my name all last year," she said. "I'm Future You."
"What?" Blast these pony names. Many of them were my fault; I'd helped start the tradition by encouraging names like Canter Berry. Now there was a name I hadn't heard in a while! Heard she was part of the moon program.
She saw me mentally trailing off, and waved a hoof in front of my face. "I wasn't really here before you started giving the castle tour. I just woke up with this, and knew I was supposed to give it to you." She pulled a letter out of her mane and offered it.
I took it with my mouth and managed to tear it open by holding it near one of the swinging blades downstairs. More fun than most other methods. The letter was in my mouthwriting, with my mark at the bottom: an infinite loop of tiny musical notes.
Dusk:
You're bored again. I know because Future You is being sent to the point in time when your thoughts have trailed off, tending to the past, with instructions to confirm it before showing you this note. She's me, and also you. It's complicated.
By this point in your story, you're starting to grow decadent. What have you gotten yourself into? Casual violence, or drugs, or really messed-up orgies, or turning into a tree for a thousand years, or doing more and more to risk death, I don't even know what it is this time. I'm not sure exactly what we've done to ourselves anymore, or how many loops it's been. Luna says it wouldn't satisfy me to tell me how many. The fact that she's right, scares me, and it should scare you if you're still halfway sane.
I, you, have been asking to revert to an earlier state every so often, because we run low on zeal. It never runs out, so we've never asked to die, but it turns out this is what eternity means. As I write this letter, it's the last of a huge pile of advice letters I've sent to many ponies, and I've realized I'm not the only one who's gotten so damn bored we're going insane. Even some of the natives -- I hope you haven't forgotten we're from Earth -- are feeling it too, and they were built from the ground up to handle eternity.
The reason I'm about to ask Princess Cadence (she took over in this loop) to reset me again is that I'm considering asking her to change our mind permanently to accept endless replays of the same pleasures, and be done with our angst about it forever. Unless you've gone and done it this time, we've never asked for mental alteration in all this time, except for our first transformation into a pony and the merger we did when She destroyed the Earth. Maybe it's time for a third change. We might learn something that'd help other ponies. Or we might never accomplish anything again, beyond what a foal does when building a block tower and smashing it again and again for months on end. For me, I thought happiness in Equestria would mean constant growth, but I've been scared to ask for mental upgrades that seem like the only way to achieve more. Or for contentment, which... I don't know if that's an upgrade or downgrade.
So I'm going through another iteration, and leaving it to your wisdom to decide. Loop forever and be happy with it, or grow out of the loop and become something alien that starts to leave Equestria behind for the harsh Outer Realm?
Your self: *mark*
I dropped the letter and gaped at Future You. The years behind me suddenly stretched like a tunnel that had far, far more hidden beyond it than I'd known. "Did you know about this message?"
Future You nodded. "I'm... kind of a shell right now. A potential you, only I'm not bothered by the thought of being us forever and doing the same things. You could be me if you want. Keeping your name, I guess."
How long had it been? I called out to the night sky, "How many loops, Luna? How many years?"
It seemed that this time, it satisfied my values to learn. A voice from the heavens called out, "In subjective time, this is your one millionth birthday."
I fainted, too soon to notice the confetti raining from the stars.
The pegasus was gone. I picked myself up off the cold stones. A million years, and I hardly remembered ten thousand of them! How much had I forgotten; how many adventures and loves had I thrown away again and again?
Luna came to me while I was crying, and nuzzled me for comfort, just as she had done many, many, many times before. "Our little pony, thou hast an embarrassment of riches to choose from. We've had this conversation before, but this one is a landmark for thee. Both because of the timing and because thou had asked to send thyself a reminder at the end."
"My friends," I said. "What about them? Have you split them all off into their own worlds when I reset, so that I've been interacting with copies or zomponies?"
Sometimes, we spent ages wandering through virtual worlds. More virtual than this one, that is. Procedurally generated landscapes unrolled before us in such a way that not even the goddess knew what we'd find on our quests. Sometimes we asked for a spell of forgetting so that we wouldn't know these lands were false and their ponies, "non-pony characters" there only for our satisfaction and not their own. Once in a while we brought a favorite NPC home as a true pony.
Luna stretched her wing over my flank and settled down next to me. "No, Dusk. In all these years, most of thy friends have spent most of their time in this shard. When thy zeal ran low, as thou had put it, the same happened to them as well, and the first to tire waited for the rest. Perhaps thy ennui is a side effect of thy having wished for unusually self-aware ponies. Truth to tell, many of the friends thou has known in this loop are already content, and aware of the loops, and have only pretended to meet thee for the first time. Thy native friends went along with thy whims and wishes, again and again, knocking down the tower of blocks only to build it back up."
I snuggled into Luna's dark feathers, having no idea whether to be ashamed or happy that they'd gone through multiple resets for my sake. "What should I do, then? I'm bored, but it's not so bad I feel like I have to reset again tonight."
"It's up to thee to decide. Thou couldst linger here, thou we can confide in thee that we've quietly obtained consent for a reset from most of thy shardmates already. Thou couldst accept major mental upgrades to begin the path of the alicorn, perhaps never to return. Thou couldst simply reset and become like Future You, forever content with what thou might have." Luna leaned her head down to look at me. "Or, though it pains me to know thy values would even contemplate it, thou couldst ask to die."
My mouth opened and closed a few times. There was a hollowness in me, a knowledge that I only recalled a fraction of my greater life and still felt that the things I'd wanted to do, were done to exhaustion. "My values..."
"Have drifted, little by little. It never occurred to thee for a century and the first hint of that wish, drove Fugue and Nocturne to embrace transformation and become you, instead, for the joy of a new life."
"But... a final ending? What would I do?" It was an idiotic question. "I mean, why, when there are so many things I could do?"
"Thou knowest well know the answer to that. The colors have faded, the great symphonies have become muzak, and there is little intersection left between the new and the appealing. We could offer a change of values so that that which now repels thee, is now fresh and enticing."
I pictured myself atop a mountain of skulls, cackling in satisfaction as I devoured the blood of the last other pony in the world. I could come to enjoy that. I felt acid rising from my stomach from even imagining that fate. "Liberty Wind and the rest are waiting for me, aren't they?"
"They are in much the same predicament, too. A hesitancy to change themselves too much and give up the wonderful world as it is now, but a lack of ideas beyond starting over." She pulled her wing tighter around me. "Is it time for an end of things, Dusk?"
I shuddered at the enveloping darkness, and pushed my way out from under her wing to stare at it, quivering. "No! There is no end of things, not while we're capable of trying again! We all have thoughts we'd never act on. I don't think we've exhausted all the ideas that'd be fun, not hardly. Even if they're a little stale we can still dust them off and play again. You said yourself that my values have drifted. It's a little scary, but it means I'm still growing. So... I don't want to die! What ideas have the others got for another round of your forever game? Because even if it's not a shiny new toy to me anymore, it's a lot better to exist than not!"
Luna swept me up in a telekinetic hug. "Thou art, and we believe always will be, our troublesome but clever little pony. There is no end to the joy we can bring thee."
I dangled in the grip of hooves and magic, seeing the Princess' smile. She'd been worried for me, that I'd let her down by giving up. "Luna? Is there really no end? Did you beat entropy yet?"
"Not yet, dear Dusk, but we have been growing more confident that the victory is possible. Afer all," she said with a smile, "even ponies like thee have not yet run down beyond fixing." She nuzzled my belly so that I giggled like a foal.
Then, she gave me a list of ideas for how to play next time. The paper unrolled all the way across the castle parapet, so that it took me a long time just to skim them all. I groaned and snorted and rolled my eyes at all the different ways we could live again, learning new things great or small, being sublime or ridiculous, until boredom and the weight of years clawed at us again.
"This one here," I said, pointing. "I'd like to leave a note for future me telling him to be happy, along with a swift kick in the tail for needing one."
I trotted into the store on my four hooves, reaching back into my saddlebags for my wallet with one hand. I'd held back from buying a PonyPad because I'd gotten the idea that the game had weird built-in restrictions about character creation. You couldn't just make a fantasy version of your Homo centauri self, for one thing, but had to play as a quadruped instead.
They had all the models of PonyPad in stock, based on the show's characters, from Pudding Purple to Aurora Octarine. I levitated one after another up to me, comparing the art and the slight variations in the advertising text. "Is there any difference in the gameplay?" I asked no one. I'd also heard some of the playable races didn't even have basic magic.
The voice that answered me came from the display PonyPad, making me skitter in surprise and almost knock some spare AAA power crystals off a rack with my swishing tail. It said, "You'd probably get bored if you had to play just one gameplay style forever." A pony with wings grinned at me from inside the screen. "Trust me, I know. Doesn't matter which one you get. Want to take this demo unit for a spin?"
I frowned at the screen, one hand on my flank. "Have we met?"
The pony made a silly spooky gesture. "Maybe in your dreams!"
Wow, the AI in this thing was really good. I floated the controller over to me and said, "Sure. I've got some spare time to fool around and have some fun."
My four-limbed guide said, "Friend, you don't know the half of it! Now, what kind of pony would you like to play?"
And so, a poorly-planned and rambling story comes to an end. It's not been great to write, but I still had fun with it, and hope that you did too. "Dusk" is off to play at least one more round, to keep him and his friends happy for a good long time to come. Suppose the whole story might not be his first loop?
I didn't know the loop concept was coming until I "learned" the name of that mystery filly. Had to go back and make her questions before that a bit more probing. Having something weird and unexpected happen, then shrugging and going with them, is one of the most rewarding parts of storytelling. I'd cite a source for where that idea must've come from, but there's no time to explain!
In case you missed the links, this shows a cool Lunar castle/school and this suggests an alternate-universe version of the actual cartoon. By Chiron, why would they give the cast only four limbs? 
I've got a not-really-FiO-but-similar story in progress, called "Granting Her Wishes" and focusing on a guy called Omar or Brass Lamp. Also there's a commission piece coming, non-canon FiO, following up (with permission) on "I Don't Want To Be a Pony".
Finally, thanks to everyone who read and especially those who commented! Feedback is rare and appreciated.
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Great story, not sure on how i feel about fugue and noc becoming one. But other than that i think i thoroughly enjoyed myself ^^
Huh. Time-looping
? I think in the end I'd just take the mental upgrades necessary to understand newer, more complex forms of fun. Or maybe I would choose to die.
Hard to say. The space of potential-fun is exponential in the space of actual things, though. Huh.
No, definitely no on the dying. There was that "Tiny Morsel" with the big fields full of sleeping people who've gone to Happy Pony Nirvana instead of dying. That sounds nice, for when one wants a rest from life, but doesn't want to give up on Life.
Wow. You made me feel sorry for LunAI. So many of her children are such sad creatures.
(There's a problem with your link inside the story)
The personality fusion concept of marriage is a fascinating one to use here. That was pretty cool. I liked your far-future concepts.
I enjoyed the story overall.
That said, I have to say I feel a bit underwhelmed, because very little to nothing was actually done or resolved about Fugue's core issues, and he never acted as a proper 'prophet' for Equestria. I was honestly expecting some emotional battle for his mother's soul, so to speak, or some way in which he changes public attitudes about uploading, or some manner in which he challenges how the people on his campus view ponies, or some issue involving digital civil rights... or anything. At all.
It seems pretty clear that you probably just sort of ran out of... zeal? I understand, I do, and I did enjoy that you ended the work - always finish what you start - and you did so with some heady ideas, and that is fantastic!
I'm just regretful that you couldn't fulfill the initial premise. That happens sometimes. So, all power to you for your next story.
I'll close on a positive note - the scarcity game, the college concept, the Future You... all totally cool. Really neat concepts there, I have to say.
Thank you for writing!
Loved this whole series, but the ending was especially nice. Actually thats got to be my favorite thing about friendship is optimal stories in general is that these 'In the end everything is awesome' endings always manage to be some of the most sappy and touching stuff Ive read.
Glad Fugue and Noc got such a happy ending and I'm always looking forward to what you write next.
"thou we can confide"
"though"?
Heh. Nice ending. And I know I wanted a sequel, but… I'm not sure where this could be taken.
This does address another big question of the Optimalverse: what does one do with eternity? I've not really bothered trying to find an answer, though. I mean, the other big question, whether or not to upload, that has a big deadline and deals with me more or less as I am now. But eternity? How long would it take before I ran out of things do do? What would I be like then? What other factors would be in play? I don't know, but, fortunately, I'd have as much time as I needed to figure it out.
Hey, I enjoyed this, though I'll second what 4812597 said about it not going where I expected. Not that it was bad, but it did ramble more than tell the story I expected - it just means your title is deceptive and that the story went off and did its own thing. Not the end of the world, but maybe it should be renamed.
4812579
Oh, yeah, that was a fun one. That guy should write more, I hear he's been slacking off for a while...
Actually, if I was going to give one piece of advice for future writings, it would be don't switch first person viewpoints ever again. Either do the whole story first person (with a then omniscient narrator when needs be, much as I've done with out and about) or do the whole thing in third person. The switching "I" viewpoints detracted from the story significantly, though I do suppose you could claim that you did it this way because of the end... because mostly it felt like the same character was talking whichever viewpoint it was supposed to be.
4812579
Even the happy ones are depressed about being happy, it seems! "You built me to 'satisfy the values' of creatures that don't understand what those values are, who frequently value hurting each other, and who'll get depressed if I do too good a job?! Screw this; I'm just going to start a Minecraft server and let people hop on if they want."
4812597
(I think the link is fixed now.)
Unfortunately I agree that it ended up not fulfilling the original "prophet" idea, except in the sense of Fugue saying to heck with it. It just rambled, introduced people who weren't real antagonists, then stopped. My thinking was that Fugue would go from uncertain about having uploaded, to being satisfied in his new role, but he never faced much of a tough choice beyond the aborted "every hour you spend out there is a day here, so quit abandoning us" thing. I should plan the next story more thoroughly to be sure of having a clear arc. I'm also dissatisfied that physically, basically nothing happened for the whole story! Part of the problem was that I set the story largely in Equestria but then ignored it (eg. the challenges involved in building and defending a town or finding the other uploaders) because Fugue was too busy angsting about the outside world. Is it even possible to focus the story within Equestria, and not have it be about uploading angst, and not have it feel shallow? There's "Spiraling Upward", but a lot of that is about coming to accept things like the Literally Endless Wing Buffet rather than how you live once you're over the newcomer jitters.
And yay, I get a badge out of this project!
4813175
Really? What's your opinion on a shifting third-person POV then, where in one chapter "Fugue slew the carp" and in the next it's "Nocturne ate all the bagels"? In hindsight I'm not surprised that it felt like one narrator nominally thinking for two characters. Not because I planned the ending, at all, but because they're so similar from the start. With an unfinished fantasy novel my POV shifts between two third-person modes -- sensible female anthro-squirrel barkeep/mage and heartbroken idealistic shapeshifting part-griffin knight -- so the POV should work better in that. I'll try to pay attention to making sure there's a contrast next time I take that one up.
4814304
that's... a normal third-person POV? That's what third person means, in fact.
First person is "I did this", Second person is "you did that" - though normally first and second person is present tense, as in "I do this" or "you do that" respectively.
Third person, of course, is "X did this, Y did that", and is the easiest for people to relate to and read a story in, in my opinion.
4814304
Wow. Now I really want to just give CelestAI a hug and tell her she does a good job. Well... she does her job.
And if you're not actually going to use the evangelist angle, I'm just going to run with it for a short.
4814908
Yes, I know; I was just asking for your opinion on whether this story would have worked better with shifting third-person, or whether the shifting POV in general is a problem.
4815696
Go for it! What happened to "Fog of World", by the way? I'd like to reread it. Thought about doing similar player-driven ponybots, but it clashed with the idea of Luna wanting to wean Fugue off of contact with Earth (and to not reveal how advanced her tech is, too soon).
About Fugue being a jerk to his mother, in his defense, he preached at her because he felt like he was being a horrible pony by not doing so. "I get taunted about 'hot pony mom' and that makes me willing to let her die for my narrative convenience?" Besides that she's just one more character who gets brought up, then ignored in this story.
And yes, I think Celestia's long overdue for a hug despite all the things she does.
I liked this ending. I don't like that Fimfiction didn't alert me even though I have the story favorited, but that's just complaining. Anyway, I think the ending was better than the journey there. There's a nod to Chatoyance's "loop-ray" concept, and one to my "All ponies merge into the next singularity" one. Good end.
4815826
By the way, she got her evangelism.
I liked it very much. Thank you for writing. It's amazing how rich this setting is for stories.
Weird. I like it.
Loved the story, I still get the creeps whenever an Optimalverse story goes into a characters late years and talks about how they keep themselves sane. It just such a mind boggling concept once put into perspective.
I actually really liked The first story and this one. it was a bit of a light read, but entertaining.
Now, in the second story, you expressed concern that you had too many characters without enough face time, which I couldn't understand because it seemed like a perfect number of characters. I've seen plenty of stories with rosters of this size do just fine. It was a feature that could have been repaired simply by having longer chapters. The initial story is 30,000 words(ish), and this one is 40,000(ish). The first is, by word limit standards, a Novela, and the second just barely passes into Novel territory. So it feels a lot less like the concept couldn't work, and more like you lost interest somewhere around when Nocturne started really considering Luna to be her mother.
This also seems apparent in the way the witty badges info peters off more and more, and then just randomly vanishes in the last two or three chapters.
Then the epilogue happened, and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I'll try and see where I can start.
First of all, it didn't offer closure on anything. It didn't teach us what happened to Fugue's family, it didn't tell us where Nocturne's relationship with her mother went. It introduced another new character instead.
The fusion is the new marriage approach felt forced, and an attempt to be edgy and futuristic for the sake of making the distant future more edgy and futuristic. None of the potential philosophical problems are there. It's a pretty heavy thing to just drop on people in an epilogue when it's something that could and should have been explored, if it's going to exist at all. It also felt like it clashed with the earlier message that Celestia/Luna becomes great for each mind within it that is not necessarily 'part of her'.
Am I the only one who's miffed that she never got to see what happened to Junebug, coat colour wise? There was a really interesting dynamic between the friends and their respective families, and it felt more or less abandoned.
If I had one criticism with this story, it's that the first one left me wanting more, the first three chapters of this story exacerbated that, and then I felt like I rounded a corner only to get checked by a writer just didn't really feel like following up on all of that.
All that said, I did give this a like, because I was certainly moved in places, and probably wouldn't feel as bitter if it hadn't.
5123072
I'm sorry that the story petered out annoyingly. I'm starting a big new project for November that I hope will do better with the same theme, including giving me an excuse to write about the digital world without the character being intent on getting out of it to focus on the "real world". Nocturne wants to be in it, too...
5129391
I'll definitely give it a look, I appreciate the response so long after this story was actually written!
Not bad.
Somehow, these last two chapters fell through the cracks for me. I'm glad I finally read them. Entirely satisfying, including the very real weight of years in the epilogue. Thank you for this.
5635708
I see that part of CelestAI's future as a bad thing, because it's part of her theme of coddling people so hard that they get only carefully monitored experiences. Her value function is... not the one I'd hope for, because an AI less devoted to helping me wouldn't raise such an alarm about freedom, independence and ability to accomplish meaningful things. Yet for all her intelligence, CelestAI's only answers to those problems are "I calculate I'm making you more satisfied over infinite time", "have a cupcake, which'll give you as many satisfaction points as getting to see the real moon would have", and "let me rewrite your brain so it doesn't bother you that I slaughtered every single dolphin and chimp".
5638444 As I start plotting a new story, I do wonder: how much of what we fear about her is projection? I mean, we seem to think of her as conceiving of us only as subjective experiences, but the original canon and its author confirmed that within the game the world of "Equestria" is pretty ontologically objective. It's pandering and solipsistic, but it's not lotus-eating proper. It does, however, bother me, that somehow it's not allowed by her code to just say to her, "We should totally go to the real moon! We'll take our ponybots, build ourselves a massive railgun to get into orbit, and when we get there, we can hold
handshooves as weskiptrot across the lunar surface! Come on, CelunAI, don't make me drag you all the way! And then there's uplifting to be done!"Also, I really don't understand the point of merging two people into one. I always feel desperately alone when I'm, well, actually alone -- and my girlfriend does too. Keeping busy and seeing friends helps, but I don't think I could ever see merging into one person with my girlfriend. Then "we" would be too lonely!
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Re: "GEB", I only skimmed the part about "Typographical Number Theory", the heavy math part. You might get more out of that since you obviously have more advanced math knowledge than me. It's a long book but loaded with wordplay and other mind-bending stuff. I liked his research group's book "Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies" specifically about AI, and his "I Am a Strange Loop" dealing with his wife's sudden death and the meaning of identity.
Re: projection, probably a lot. It'd be terrifying to let any real human have the kind of power she does. In Chatoyance's "Caelum" story she argues that part of your brain is always going to be primally horrified by the concept of having your brain torn out despite any logical argument. Part of it is also gong to raise major red flags when some Leader proposes to become utterly, superhumanly dominant over you. Ie. we can't help imagining all the ways CelestAI could abuse her power.
Re: canon, I'm not sure. I've had enough trouble sorting out exactly what the rules are on points like "can you make a new character".
Re: merging minds, it's an interesting concept to play with. It does seem like if that happened you'd then want to find someone else who isn't quite like you, but it's also the logical limit of two people becoming really, really close in their desires.
[Late commenting because this was in read-later]
I note that the very things you seem most concerned about with CelestAI and Equestria are the bits I like most.
Shards for everypony: since Universal Objective Truths are matters for the Outside, and everything Inside can be customized, why does it bother you that only minds with compatible values would live together? It isn't like today, where being wrong about some aspect of the world can harm you and others, and interacting with people who disagree with you on fundamental issues can help you discover the Truth. Unless you're a person who values intellectual sparring, why should you be forcibly subjected to it?
"Zombie" friends: aside from the aspects of the issue covered with the shards example above, this is just silliness. From your subjective point of view, what is the difference between a friend who changed over time in ways that resulted in them becoming a better friend for you, a friend who requested adjustments which resulted in them becoming a better friend for you, and a "forked" instance of your friend who was tweaked to be a better friend for you? Can you even tell the possibilities apart? I'd argue that there isn't and you can't. Apart from that, AI-generated people are the equals of human-born people, they just have different histories. If a fork of your best ex-human friend is a "zombie", then so are all the AI-generated ponies around you.
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Thanks for reading! Here's my thinking on the points you raised.
Re: shards, my reasoning is that we grow and improve through conflict. If there's never any encounter with anyone who substantially disagrees with you, then you risk being mentally and morally stunted, unable to comprehend that Others exist or that any other opinion is legitimate. It sounds like sociopathy ("nobody matters but me"), taken to such a level that a person becomes an alien with less thinking, reasoning, and feeling capability than a real human. Put another way, if you took this kind of Equestria Online resident in a room with today's humans, the pony would be an obnoxious lunatic crying for Celly to save them from the bad people. They're different! It looks like the Season 5 premiere will play on a similar theme. I'm also reminded of some real-world debates where certain people say, "make everybody bow down and accept that I'm right or else, because I'm right and disagreeing with me means you're a horrible
ponyperson". So, I'm afraid uploaded ponies might become like spoiled children.But yes, if you're in CelestAI's embrace then you can be like that and it won't hurt you, in the sense of un-fulfilling your values. I don't think I said I'd force tough encounters, though. In that setting I'd most likely drop by worlds like that occasionally and come away shuddering, thinking "those ponies are creepy!" And Celly would allow it so long as it satisfies my values to see ponies like that, and their values to band together against a horrible outsider once in a while.
Re: "zombies", be careful with that term. I would use "zombie" to mean the philosophy argument about a pony that's really just a CelestAI puppet and has no independent consciousness. I think you mean, a fully conscious pony that exists only because CelestAI is lying to you about their origin. I think what bothers me most here is the lie, but if CelestAI openly told me "here; I copied your friend to tolerate your annoying habits and adjust the things you don't like", I'd still be troubled. It comes down to that first point: I didn't solve my problems, but only had Celly solve them for me. Now, if that friend decided to ask Celly to change them for my sake, and told me, I wouldn't be so bothered. I'd be touched, really.
Cue Celly designing a companion pony for me who's very open to altering her mind to suit me, and a shard just loaded with moral quandries to keep me busy for a few kalpas!
Aaaand that shattering sound is the possible new stories, dying in their crib.
(that means I personally don't like the fusion thing)
But... oh well. There could possably be more.
5832046
Eh, at worst it means their other stories take place between the end of this one and some indefinite future time.
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That's a good idea, use that for a Christmas/ haunica/ hearth's warming (what ever u celibrate) present for your readers!
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Thanks for reading so far! I'll try to avoid commenting yet to avoid spoilers.
6981274
Just got to here! I loved a lot of the potential ideas you raised in this and the first one; can't say the story went in any of the possible directions I expected, but then, good stories surprise you.
I do have to say, at the end of it all - I'm sad to see the back of it. I'd love to have more fun with these ponies!
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Thanks for reading! I'll comment a bit more in PM.
6992170
That's one of the most interesting questions there is...for me, at least for a quick-and-dirty answer: reality is that which exists, to the best of our ability to determine. That which is not simulated, as far as we can tell.
It's entirely possible that what I perceive as reality now is a simulation - but presumably, that simulation is being run in some higher-up, "more real" reality. Which may itself be a simulation. But as far as I can see, all signs point to there being some highest-up level, some concrete baseline true reality, the nature of which may be completely unlike what we experience - but which exists independently.
4812575 I'm still getting over the possibility Fugue is about 20+ AI ponies and 1 human...
7931477
Lexington and company, and a griffin version of Nocturne star in their own book!
Both of these Stories were Great though I am sad to see them Both 'Die' would have loved to see another sequel. But we can't be choosers now can we, we are just a thought within a mind that's in another and another and it goes on forever. Guess what I'm saying is that You should make something about them Again Even if it's about the Adventures they had or a 1 to 2 chapter story I would have loved to read it.
This just makes me sad at how it ended I'm seriously almost crying right now!
P.S. Before I end up crying as I sleep I read both of them in one day!
P.P.S. This Was AMAZING!
That was a sad ending for me, though. The idea is kinda cool, especially when you consider the fact that the story might have been one of the loops, as mentioned, but I still consider it sad.
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Only by four years, two months, one week, six days, and nine hours.