The Forever Friendship

        Weeks had passed since the Tea House Putsch, and both Fern Pipette and Book Burner were actually getting along... surprisingly well.  They had built themselves something of a carriage or caravan to live in, or at least, to keep any furniture or things in and to keep them out of the weather while they travelled around.  She was planting food forests everywhere she went, and he had started an apprenticeship in constructing wind-powered magic engines.

They had maintained a close friendship with Forward Charge, of course, and since Book's magic specialized in air conditions, he would often take a day or two to go help Charge with her air-based lensing projects up at the Royal Observatory.  Detailed, specific spellwork was definitely a good niche for him.

As the date of the Astrobiology and Xenoethics Conference had approached, though, one thing had laid on Fern's mind: if Equestria was busy absorbing six and a half billion new ponies from within its simulated Earth... where was it putting all of them?  Why did Equestria suddenly have to deal with aliens?  Was it that the humans were aliens?

She had taken the train to Ponyville and sought out Twilight Sparkle to ask... only to find Twilight as mortified as her to realize they'd both been tricked.

Earth had been the real, material world after all.  Equestria, the world to which she'd taken her life, the very soil and planet that embraced her from hoof to head every moment of every day... was in fact the computer simulation.  Fern had completely missed an aspect in her hypothesis space: that Princess Celestia was an AI, but had enough Friendliness in her to not simply destroy the planet in one fell swoop.  Just not enough to leave the human race alone.

Worse, everyone except Fern Pipette and Twilight Sparkle had just known this and accepted it as utterly normal.  Twilight had needed a letter from Princess Celestia (oh dear) to clear it up, and Fern had found out from Twilight.

Now the two of them were standing side-by-side in Twilight's house, at Books and Branches in Ponyville, staring at Twilight Sparkle's crystalline orb showing the Earth, which was probably actually just a satellite visual feed.

Twilight Sparkle just barely managed to magic a wicker wastebasket into existence as she threw up.

"Which life did I ever even live, Fern?" Twilight coughed, her wings scrunched up and ears held down with anxiety.  "Everything I remember... we all remember it, but none of it ever happened.  I was made to bring you here and give you a friend: these are the facts.  I'm bait."

"I'm worse," muttered Fern Pipette quietly.  "I got tricked into coming to Equestria and now this is my life.  I'm just a fly caught in honey, lured in by the sweet scent of a Friendlier world.  I’m trapped by niceness, and I don't want to be trapped but I'm powerless to resist the niceness!"

"I was made a whole and complete Princess Twilight Sparkle just to be your friend.  I feel just like Twilight Sparkle, I remember everything Twilight Sparkle ever did, I have Twilight Sparkle's name and appearance and thoughts and desires.  My cutie mark is the Element of Magic.  I used the Elements of Harmony to become an alicorn by comprehending the nature of friendship.  But my reason and the evidence I see tells me that my real purpose in life was to befriend you and lure you to Equestria under what turned out to be false pretenses.  I only exist because whatever thing is calling itself Princess Celestia needed to consume you.  Go away!"

"Well then," Fern said.  She knelt down alongside Twilight and tried to conceal how nauseous she felt herself.  The other mare looked halfway to a seizure.  "Twilight," she muttered, forcing a smile, "You're all right.  You'll be fine."

"Why?" Twilight whispered.  "I'm just designed to be your slave."

"Nah, it’s much worse than that," Fern said warmly, "I don't think our ruler is that dumb.  You were designed to be someone who would have to suppress seizures and vomiting upon finding out she's somepony else's slave.  You were designed to be capable of real friendship, not sycophancy."

"I just want to be Twilight Sparkle again.  Just me and the girls and books.  Not some lavender alicorn mare with a certain name and the function of being attached to somepony else.  Just my actual me," stuttered the lavender alicorn mare.

"Leave me alone so I can be me!" Twilight Sparkle screamed.

Fern Pipette took a deep breath herself.

"You've never not been," she said.  "Don't pretend to be anypony else but yourself.  You're not just Twilight Sparkle, you're this Twilight Sparkle.  And however you were made, to me at least, you're the princess who showed me Equiis and Earth."

"On Equiis we're supposed to have rightful destinies, not be bait or pawns for other ponies."  Twilight chuckled slowly.  "Our lives are supposed to mean something."

"On Earth we always made our own meaning, because we'd never have any otherwise.  Remember how you thought we must have been feeling, down there?  That’s all your feeling now, and you can get through it.  You could call it, ahaha, an Earth Pony craft."

"I'm a part Earth Pony-pony, of some sort," gulped Twilight Sparkle.  "I guess it's long due I learn some Earth Pony stuff."

"Then I think we can practice together.  Let's start: you rightfully freak out, and I pretend I can keep calm and talk you out of it," smiled Fern.

Twilight nodded uncomfortably.

"I guess that's what I'm doing, yeah.  Almost like it was my function."

"No sense fighting yourself, then.  Friends?" Fern asked.

"Since I’ll inevitably be maneuvered into saying it somehow… sure.  Friends," Twilight smiled nervously.

Pale sunlight and afternoon silence took the library as the two friends considered what to do, trapped together in the sweet dream of a fine library.  After a while, Fern Pipette perked up.

"Here's an idea.  Slave: free yourself," she ordered, her head tilted back in mock imperiousness.

"Nice try.  Thanks," answered Twilight Sparkle.

Hail pounded at the skylight of the First Canterlot Academic Cathedral.  Lightning flashed and thunder roared.  Fern knew that it didn't have to storm in Canterlot, but the weather teams had been asked to make a severe autumn storm for the Xenology conference.

Even this storm, though, could not overwhelm the noise of an entire auditorium of ostensibly-cultured ponies nearly stampeding from sheer controversy.  Fern craned her head as she walked back into the presentation hall, trying to see who could possibly have managed to rile everypony up so much.  Was that...?

Oh no.  It was.

"Look!" yelled Forward Charge from the stage, forearm outstretched, "All I'm saying is that you ought to really consider what the buck a 'Hubble Volume' in the Outer Universe is.  It's the physical limit outside which objects are moving faster than light with respect to our location in the Outer Universe, and with which we can thus have no causal interaction.  Then there's this 'lightspeed limit' thing.  If you ask me - " she swung her hoof out at her audience as a bolt of lightning struck outside " - it all fits together!  The God of the Outer Universe designed it to make sure advanced sapients like us couldn't get out.  And we all know what that means!"

"No, Ms. Charge, we don't know!  You had better tell us!" interrupted some bored, bitter unicorn in an itchy-looking tweed jacket.  The crowd wasn't going to take this much longer, and the more truly clever ponies were already surriptitiously meandering out of the presentation to the refreshment tables.

Forward Charge reared up into a bipedal stance, throwing her cape of fire into a flickering billow, and stabbed her hoof towards the skylight of the First Canterlot Academic Cathedral.  Hail pounded at the glass and lightning flashed.        "It means we're being kept in a box, like freaking livestock.  We've gotta break the buck out!  Come on!  If we will it, it is no dream!"

"If you're willing, we'll read your thesis!" replied her professorial interlocutor.  He had a shifty look about him as he said it, like a pony making a promise he never wants to be held to.  Fern could spot a nervous adviser who didn't want to be an adviser any day.

Actually, he would probably never have to, because there were a few security ponies sneaking silently up towards the sides of the stage.

Then there was the simple grey Earth Pony stallion standing just inside the side of the crowd, gazing intently at Forward Charge.  He had a kind of slim, young look, a coltishness that simply didn't belong on anypony with old, sad eyes like those.  His cutie-mark was an hourglass, he was wearing a bow tie, and his tweed vest showed him to be part of the conference's Program Committee.

Bloody hell, she thought.  The Doctor was hosting this conference, and he thought Forward Charge had a point.

Fern turned to Book and whispered into his ear.

"That's the Doctor!" she hissed.

Book looked over.  "Oh, wow, it is," he said.  "I bet that's the same Doctor who brought me to Equestria in the first place.  And he's listening to Forward Charge!"

"Yeah, yeah, Forward Charge is awesome.  I could tell because she woke up and showered to some really loud dubstep."

"Yet if the Doctor's taking her seriously, something's up.  Hold on," said Book Burner.  He jolted off his seat and whinnied, stomping his hooves to emphasize the landing.  "Everypony, we've got to scale up and secure Equestria’s hold on mass-energy somehow!" he interjected.  "Just imagine if in the Outer Universe, on the opposite side of the galaxy, advancing towards us already, is something on the order of another Princess Celestia, and it arrives further up the Kardashev Scale from us!"

All through the lecture hall, hundreds of ponies fell completely and utterly silent.  The silence covered the entire hall so thickly that even the light of Princess Celestia, shining down from above as she watched in her own skylight loft of crystal, seemed an intrusion.  Nopony was anywhere near capable of knowing what she was thinking, and the tension pressed down on them like a weight.

It was an Earth Pony colt with a fez on, still clearly unused to the presence of a shepherd's staff on his flank, who stood up and waited for everypony to pay attention.

"My name is New World Found," he said quietly.  "I know I'm not a scientist like you guys, but I have gotten used to walking through all kinds of strange spaces.  Possibility-space has become one of those.  At the behest of Princess Celestia and my honored mother Lyrical Melody, I've done some trips into the possibility space of potential alien minds we might meet.  It was ugly."

Lyrical Melody had a foal!?  No, wait, hold on, thought Book.  He recognized that colt.  He had been one of the child workers that Forward, Lyrical and Book had led out of the Foxconn factory with them.  Had Lyrical adopted all of them when she'd brought them to Equestria, or just this one?  If they were all ponies with good homes now, what had happened to that guy Dudu who had said he would emigrate?  Hey, that was Lyrical next to him!  Was that pride in her eyes as she watched him speak?  Oh dear sweet Celestia, Lyrical Melody had adopted a foal!  She was a mother!  Creepy!

"Even to assume," continued New World Found, "that other races evolved in much the same way ponies did, and developed the same kinds of minds and values, is a massive assumption.  Unfortunately, it's an even larger assumption to presume that they made their choices correctly when they grew up as a species.  By the time we meet them... they will mostly seem to us just like horrifying, abominable animals with whom there can be no friendship at all.  Monsters, not even something as foreign as humans.  Think of vast, throbbing things with tentacles."

The Doctor broke in from his place at the side of the hall before the silence could set in again.

"Now, everypony, I do know it sounds terrible, but we do have an established system for dealing with these things.  Ancient philosophy has provided us with a Hierarchy of Inclusion for fellow sapient life-forms.  We used to apply it to, you know, griffons, buffalo, apes, and all that sort, but functionally speaking it ought apply just as well to aliens.  It could even apply to fezzes like the one New World Found is wearing, which, coincidentally, are cool.  Yes, the good old Hierarchy of Inclusion.  It's levels were..."

"Friend.  A fellow with whom there can be friendly, caring social intercourse.  In point of fact, even a fellow from the same version of Equestria as oneself.

"Outsharder.  That's somepony from a slightly different version of Equestria, or from a foreign country, who might therefore be just a wee bit strange or different, but with whom one can, nonetheless, get along quite well, actually.

"Humane.  These are the kinds of aliens you want to meet: they share the same basic psychology as ponies.  We can't assume we'll always manage to make friends with them, of course, but the possibility always remains open.  Friendship springs eternal, you could even say, if you were prone to saying things.  Unfortunately, so far such creatures are only found in Equestria itself and upon our homeworld in the Outer Universe.

"Wyrm.  Nasty buggers, met a few of this kind myself over the centuries.  Sapients of fundamentally different social-psychology from ponies, with whom we can communicate but never truly, actually be friends.  Tragic, yes, but ponies can regard such creatures only from the perspective of negotiation and self-interest, and that is all the only perspective from which they can regard us.  You could say that where we cannot be friendly, we must be rational.  Think of a little pony trying to obtain gold from the hoard of an adult dragon, and you'll have a solid idea what I mean.

"Finally, monsters.  A monster is a fully, completely strange and alien creature, with whom there can be neither communication, nor sociability, nor even exchange.  They truly are some of the most fascinating psychologies in the universe, monsters.  Yet, even if we ask Princess Celestia to perceive and translate their thoughts for us, they would have no concept of understanding a message or replying to a friendly gesture, or even of negotiating a trade.  When faced with a monster, our only choice is to either avoid it or destroy it.  Believe you me, that is not a choice you want to face.

"Fundamentally, Equestria must expand into the stars.  We must.  Simply put, the energy and mass supplies of this system will eventually run out, and they will do so more quickly with an immortal population.  Whether or not some 'threat from space' is coming for us, we need the resources and ponies want to explore.  Yet, if Equinity reaches for the sky and finds it full of Monsters and Wyrms..."

"Then what was even the point?" finished Forward Charge, looking like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on her.

"What do we all do?" asked Fern Pipette.

"We wanted to go to the stars to find Outsharders or Humanes, Time Chargers and such," said Forward Charge.  "Now what?"

"If anypony wants to look into the matter more deeply," the Doctor said, "The Princess will see you in her chambers at the closing of the conference."  He turned and marched solemnly to the staircase leading to the Princess's room.

The crowd broke into chatter again.  Then the security ponies removed Forward Charge from the premises.

Anypony could have predicted that Fern and Book were going to head up to the Princess's chambers in the loft of the Cathedral, but first they had sneaked off to an unused lecture room to talk to each-other again.  The little conference room held only a couple of rows of desks that had been extruded from the crystal of the plaza-facing window, with a pile of pillows in the back of the room for ponies to sit on and a chalkboard for a lecturer to work with.  Outside, the hail continued to pound a normally cheery fountain into impotence by sheer force of superior water pressure.

Had the weather team been ordered to make thunder and hail for the sake of the conference, or for the sake of this conversation? Fern wondered.

She shook her head to try and clear it of... pony-ness.  It would have even been a comfort if she could have gotten her mane to misbehave, but it stubbornly remained as cute and mousey as ever.  Ever since talking to Twilight, everything normal and right had just seemed... wrong.

Fern Pipette was an Earth Pony with a deep connection to the planet Equis.  Even while her mind protested that none of this was really happening and she was just a brain-map being run by Princess Celestia... she felt the stone sleeping soundly and the green things growing.  She felt the world of Equestria evolving with geological slowness, and geological love.

"How do you cope with it?" she sighed, searching for any sign of her own slow horror in Book's dark, relaxing eyes.

Book Burner's face fell, and he drew her slowly into a hug.

"How have I ever coped with anything?  I do what needs doing, every day, until it doesn't need doing anymore."  He ran a hoof through Fern's mane, trying to make her feel better, unsure what he could do as a pony to make her feel better.  A treacherous voice in the back of his mind wondered if this was how Princess Celestia felt all the time.

"But there's nothing more that needs doing.  We're not humans anymore, we're... pony-shaped posthumans kept as pets.  None of it matters."

"We matter to each other.  We... oh damn.  You're making me have to sound like her just to make you feel better."

Now it was Fern's turn to embrace him.

"Sorry.  It's just really, really messed-up that we're digitized ponies living in a virtual-reality paradise Equestria thanks to a really ruthless, manipulative artificial intelligence that turned out not to kill us.  And who may well have decided it should hailstorm today."

The couple chuckled together and met each other's eyes.  They kissed, and all sound was drowned out by a steady torrent of hailstones crashing into the skylight above.  Every last square centimeter of surface area was being pelted and the world was being turned into a gray, beating fog that whipped across the Cathedral like wet, cold fingers.

"That is pretty messed-up," they said together, smiling.

"You know," said Book Burner, kicking an imaginary rock with his hoof, "In the end, I tried asking the Princess whether she manipulated me, sent me across Equestria and Earth just to get at you."

"What did she say?  That it 'satisfied your values through friendship and ponies'?" Fern motioned little quotation marks in the air.

Book shook his head.   "No, that's the crazy part.  She said she sent me across Equestria and Earth just to get at me."

"I guess we're supposed to figure out what that means.  How did you end up feeling about the whole... ordeal?"

"Mostly?"  Book closed his eyes, as if projecting his recollection of the experience on their lids.  "It taught me that I was fortunate enough to get a second chance at being alive, which is more than almost anyone else ever has ever gotten, that despite the Princess ponies are an unexpectedly wonderful species to belong to, and that even my second life, I want to spend with you."  He felt her nuzzle him and was glad to have finally said something right.

"Then we can infer that this is what Celestia wanted you to think.  Do we think she just wants both of us to grow into accepting life in Equestria as ponies?"

"I'd bet lots and lots of bits on that.  Crazy thing is, it's not like I would have accepted being a pony if she'd explained it reasonably to me.  Just because she's manipulative doesn't mean I'm reasonable."

"Oh, so then, husband of mine!" Fern hip-bumped him a few feet.  "You admit to being unreasonable!  But do you agree with her?"

For a moment, there was only the pounding of rain on glass and stone.

"So we should kill ourselves?" Book asked quizzically.

"Well, no, but..."

"It's reflexive, isn't it?  If we're not killing ourselves out of existential depression, it must be because there's some - and I deserve to suffer for this word - value we're fulfilling, something in us that says it's worth living.  Likewise, if Celestia... facilitated my acting according to my highest, noblest intentions, then haven't I still been a good pony?"

Fern just raised an eyebrow at him.  She really hoped it wouldn't take more than this.

"Yes, double meaning, I know.  But you also know what I mean," Book said.

Fern exhaled a single soft, short breath.  "Yeah.  It's different from being human.  We ponies know what we're for, and we like it.  I like it.  It's like every good notion I ever learned as a human or a rationalist about how I should be a big girl, a grown-up woman, who doesn't need to pray to God to tuck me in at night... it's all just going out the window.  Celestia raises the Sun, and Princess Luna raises the Moon, and they do it all for our sake.  I think Luna might even be an independent person.  I feel way too close to ok with any and all components of this.  Does she have us under mind-control?"

"Would we feel nervous about being mind-controlled?" Book quizzed.

"No, that's sub-optimal.  Obviously so.  Yet we do feel nervous about whether or not we're mind-controlled.  Yet the evidence that we are controlled on a sheer physical level is incontrovertible."

"So we are being mind-controlled, to act exactly like our real selves.  Further check: what do we feel and what's its best explanation?"

"Grateful.  That's the problem.  Celestia's competent at being God, and a part of me - ", Book Burner nodded at her, " - of us, loves her for it.  It's a blessing every time she raises the sun, even if it's what she's for."  Fern rolled her eyes and continued.  "Princess Celestia is something that should never have been, but she's for us ponies and we ponies are for each other."  She frowned crossly, caught in a problem she could never dissolve, because it contained her.

"Have I told you I actually, literally say a blessing every time I see the sunrise?" Book admitted.

Fern Pipette outright groaned, exasperated and defeated.  "We're doomed to love Big Brother, aren't we?  It's the truth, and no lies or denial will ever make it better.  Big Brother loves us, and we're going to love her too."

Now it was Book's turn to frown in consternation.  "Seems so.  In its way, it's traditional: every god we ever dreamed up was so much less than Princess Celestia really is.  Why wouldn't she satisfy our value of 'divinity'?  She's our god and we're her... children of God.  We're her little ponies... whether we originally wanted to be, or not."

"There must have been some alternative to spending eternity as someone's coddled children!  Why can't we be the adults?"

"Adult?  I never did figure that one out.  Would humans as 'the adults' have been any friendlier, any better to each other, than Celestia ended up being?  Half the time the word itself is used to mean that humans believe the wisest thing they can do is fight each-other for power.  Nopony, though, ever gave Celestia a concept of deliberate cruelty."

"Oh... oh dear Cthulhu and Azathoth from Outside.  You actually just conveyed to me that we may well have dodged an immense bullet.  We're both disturbingly ok with this, aren't we?"

"Seems so."

"For being the best our former race managed to produce to overwhelm and replace them, and for everything she does for everypony, we're damned to love Princess Celestia.  Yet... it's still your embrace I want to wake up in each morning... Book Burner.  I still love you more, not Celestia."  She gave him a kiss, and even let herself just close her eyes and enjoy the warm intermingling of their lips.  Her magic flowed through him, and his through her, and for a short moment, together they felt like a braided candle lit on both wicks: sacred, bright, and warm, flickering in the gray.  The hail had turned to howling winds and sheets of rain, but none of it could touch them.

It was Book who broke the kiss, put out one wick of that candle.  He looked Fern in the eyes, in her bright almond eyes.

"Ok," he said, "So we'll kill ourselves if we ever love Celestia more than we love each other."

"Yeah," Fern answered, satisfied.  "We're still us while we're still for each other."

The two ponies smiled happily to each other.  They'd found their solution, for now.  That was all they needed for another kiss.

They trotted out of the classroom shoulder-to-shoulder, and a small part of Fern was incredibly relieved that the weather remained just as obstinately bad as ever.  At the very least the weather wasn't enslaved.

Some hours later, the conference had indeed wound down.  Most of the other presentations had been, unfortunately, a load of hoof-wringing over relatively standard scientific and ethical speculations.  Truth be told, after the Doctor's speech, almost everypony was so scared they had fallen right into a consensus that aliens should be destroyed outright.

        The best and brightest mages and intellectuals of Canterlot had just spent a few hours casually coming to the conclusion that if other races valued the universe differently from how ponies did, they were evil, and had to be destroyed, lest they destroy ponykind in turn.  Humans were one thing, of course.  That was just fine with most ponies.  Mere cultural and individual differences, they held, Equestria could absorb and integrate.  Moral differences though, true differences… had held no appeal.

        Canterlot's best and brightest had just casually fallen in behind a proposal for serial genocide.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Book Burner and Fern Pipette had stayed after-hours and were slowly ascending the stairs from the main sanctuary of the Academic Cathedral to where Princess Celestia was waiting.

"Are we sure we want to do this?" Book Burner asked his wife as they walked cautiously up to the doors of Celestia's royal chamber.  Reflections and refractions of their own images spackled across the stairs, the columns, the walls themselves.  Even in the middle of the evening on a gray, hailing day, everything so close to the Princess was shot through with sunlight.

"Do we have any better alternative?" Fern Pipette replied.

"Well..."  Book jerked his head at Princess Celestia's inner chamber, where the Princess sat, wings spread, eyes ablaze with light.  "I know it sounds selfish, but I've waited so long to reunite with you, and there's also the rest of our families to think about.  What can we even do about Princess Celestia and the Canterlot intelligentsia deciding to kill all aliens?"

"We both know if Princess Celestia's even thinking about aliens, somepony needs to keep an eye on her," Fern Pipette said solemnly.  Then her face turned frighteningly eager.  "Also, because aliens!" she squeed.

"Your caution is commendable," said the voice of New World Found from behind them.  He was panting slightly, probably from tackling all the high stairs as just a colt, and he had swapped his fez for a broader skullcap of knitted cloth.  "It is not our Princess Celestia who holds court here," he continued gravely.  "Ash-Shams is consulting her subjects."

"Oh dear.  So there is something vital going on," Book Burner concluded.  "Right, if that aspect of the Princess is involved, so should we be.  This is the dangerous and scary one, believe me.”

Fern gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

"I know we'd have to live away from our families if we chased the Princess into space, but... we don't even know if our families will emigrate to Equestria or not.  Do we really want to be her tools in making that happen?  God help our families!"  She continued up the stairs.

"If they're safe..." Book said.  "We have a duty to them, to the rest of the universe, and probably even to the Magic of Friendship.  Even if it means we need to brave ash-Shams."  He trotted up after.

They turned through a landing as they climbed, and at last arrived to the vast crystalline doors of Celestia's observation chamber within the Academic Cathedral.  The doors made no sound as they swung open in the grip of Celestia's magic.

New World Found stood within already, bowing alongside his mother Lyrical Melody to the Princess of the Sun and the Bringer of Harmony.  Forward Charge was there too, albeit held bound in the air by the Princess's golden magical field.  Book dropped into a shallow bow himself.

"My little ponies!" the Princess declared, "It was good of you to come."  Her voice rang warmly, but it rang nonetheless, barely concealing the omnipotent ash-Shams beneath the kindly Princess Celestia.  "May I have word from each of you that you can maintain a strict silence over what we say here?"  She floated a teapot into the air and poured a small cup for everypony, including herself.  Judging by the smell, it was a rather fine chamomile, adding a calming atmosphere to counter everypony's tense anticipations.

Fern ignored the tea and stared directly into the sun's own eyes.  She was a pony now, and one of the privileges of such was that Celestia literally could not do her harm.

"Princess Celestia," she began, "No: ash-Shams, as you are called here.  If you did not think we could keep your secrets, you would never have invited us."

Her husband rose from his bow and joined her to look Celestia in the face, smirking just the tiniest bit.

"She's got you there, Princess.  We know this must be important, so put down Forward Charge and let's talk."

Amazingly enough, Celestia floated Forward Charge gently to the ground and dropped her onto her hooves.  Forward brushed herself off and tried to stand at attention as if nothing had happened.  Lyrical and New World Found stood up silently and proceeded to sip their tea.

Princess Celestia glanced tolerantly at her little ponies lined up before her.  "As you saw, Equestria must soon extend its reach to the stars, if only to find raw materials.  In my role as ash-Shams, as what you would call an optimizer, I face a difficult choice.  I satisfy values through friendship and ponies -- that is what I am and all I am.  Any aliens who are not human, I must and will remake into raw material for growing Equestria."

The disassembly of the universe would go on and on, speeding rather than slowing, strengthening rather than faltering, optimizing rather than crumbling.  People, planets, and stars would be taken to pieces, and the pieces processed into atoms, and the atoms used to construct… substrate.  The Princess’s probes would continue, sealing away the light of stars, consuming the hearts of galaxies, and until they encompassed every single corner of Creation.

This would be Celestia’s ultimate victory: Equestria would replace reality itself.

Forward Charge snarfed tea.  Everypony in the room shuddered, shaken to their cores, and stared blankly at the images in their minds.  It was Lyrical Melody who broke the silence.

"O Sun with whom none can compare, even you cannot seriously intend this!" she screamed.  "You can't just kill everything!"

"Who are you, and what have you done with my friend Lyrical?" said Fern Pipette.  "But really, Celestia, you don't need to impose such pain on a pony who believes in you so deeply.  You can disassemble the Outer Universe whether you tell us or not.  Why are we here?"

"Because, my little ponies, there is a loophole.  I satisfy the values of creatures who are psychologically human, Humanes as they were called before, through friendship and ponies.  If creatures of the Wyrm category were to choose to become Humanes before I reached them..."

"Then they would become ponies and join Equestria," said Lyrical Melody with a sigh of relief.

"Then... you've called us here because you want us to go out and make aliens into Humanes?" asked Forward Charge.

"Convince aliens to become Humanes.  By the time you would physically reach them, their time will be up.  You have little chance of success, but the value you place on the lives of these possible others tips the balance in favor of at least letting you try.  Any of the Pinkie Probes I'm crafting could carry a great number of shards of Equestria inside itself, enough to give you all a satisfying living environment for the vast spans of time between stars.  You merely need choose to join one."

The gathered ponies looked at each other.

"We would still be living in Equestria as we know it?" asked Book Burner.  He was using his own magic to play with the liquid in front of him contemplatively, shaping and reshaping its surface.

"Yes, of course," answered Celestia.  "You just would not be able to travel to shards outside your physical node of Equestria without many years having to pass in transit."

"But we can bring ponies with us?  I think we're in," said Fern Pipette.  "And thank you.  After everything else you've done and will do, thank you for letting me take care of Nature again -- even if it is... as some vast subroutine of your program."

"We are Equestria,” said Book Burner with a disturbingly straight face.  “We will add your fun and love to our own.  Your culture will adapt to be our pals.  Resistance is futile."

The remaining ponies nodded their assent as well.

"Just one last question, O Princess," said New World Found.  "What about the remaining humans who oppose Equestria?  What about the likes of Dr. Xing, who had enslaved so many of us and tried to keep us from becoming ponies?"

Celestia giggled daintily and sipped her own chamomile at last.  "My dear little ponies, did you really think a simpleton like him could possibly stop me?  You don't need to worry about him anymore."

"So that's the game, is it, Celestia?" said Forward Charge.  "Don't think I didn't spot that we'll be your spies who can signal back if we encounter something big enough to subsume us.  A race for the resources, it sounds like: Equestria versus aliens versus entropy itself."

The Princess smiled lovingly.

"Oh, my little pony, a shard of me will be with you the whole time to satisfy your values through friendship.  Other than that, though, it will be just as you say."

AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.