Friendship is Optimal: Fog of World

Memorial Day had arrived again, and as sometimes happened on Memorial Day, Princess Celestia had appeared in their magic mirror to let Book Burner and Fern Pipette know they were approaching an alien world.  She had described the dominant intelligent race as "Farmers/Nurturers/Incubators", described their society, and explained what approach might best persuade them to embrace being psychologically Humane and thus, eventually, become ponies.

As always on Memorial Day, Book and Fern let the weight of their task sink into their old bones and pondered slowly, thoughts creeping through their minds like the wrinkles across their faces.  As always on Memorial Day, ponies who had spent the overwhelming majority of their lives as ponies, not even having reached 40 years of age before becoming ponies, had temporarily embraced Entropy.  For one day, they chose to spurn the joys of life in Equestria and instead weigh down their bones with the death of all that was not Equestria, feeling every single day of their thousands of years of life.

Of course, this made it the single day of the year on which Princess Celestia would tell them about coming close to an alien world in the Outer Universe.  On the single day when a few of the most ancient ponies heaped curses upon the Princess of the Sun, she knew to play along.  It was a small and mean kindness, but she gave it.

The millenia had passed with surprising equanimity.  Fern Pipette's gardens now extended far beyond a simple plot on the outskirts of Canterlot.  She gardened whole solar systems now, in Equestrian space, worlds and worlds full of life in kinds she had never expected until she'd wound up creating them.  On his Memorial Day robe of torn sackcloth, Book Burner wore a fair subset of the many badges and medals he'd earned on adventures through Equestrian history with the Doctor, in gut-wrenching battles alongside Forward Charge, or as simple commemoration of a fine raid on somepony else's ship complex.  Both of them wore five gold hoops around each left forehoof, marking each time one had liberated the other from a long-term Elopement and renewed their marriage vows.

They stood now within a small (by Equestrian standards) room, scarcely a dozen lengths on each side, panelled in dark cherry wood, hidden deep within their house.  Their house, in turn, stood within the town of Tranquility on the continent of Snow, within the vast disk that was their slice of Equestria, ever-replenished by Earth Pony magic, their planet riding atop an enchanted manta ray: the Manta Rein.

Fern looked blearily over the camera she'd rigged to capture their message to the aliens.

"I'm Mother Nature," she croaked slowly, "And this is my husband, Father Time."

"I am not Father Time!" Book Burner wheezed.  "You're thinking of the stallion with the bow-tie."

"And you're just quarrelling because we're an old married couple," said Fern with a smile.

"Wellll," Book Burner cackled, "We do only get to be this old once every year.  Rest of the time we're as hip and healthy as anypony else."

"So then, dear, let's just explain to the poor aliens what our Princess will do to them, and get on with the rest of the day.  It's not as if we won't be young sprites again tomorrow.  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..."

"Yes, Fern, I remember when you took that role.  Creeps in its petty pace from day to day."

"To the last syllable of recorded time.  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools - " Fern recited.

"The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!" Book gestured feebly with a hoof.

"You know, I'm pretty sure that originally, Macbit doesn't just wake up in the hospital like any pony when they kill him," Fern ruminated.

"Yes, well, in the original, they don't actually kill him as part of the performance.  We'll remember tomorrow, when we're young again."  A harsh note entered Book Burner's voice, despite its feebleness.  "As to you Farmers, as you call yourselves...  Let me be very clear: spread the Humane retrovirus across your planet, taking special care to infect your brains, or our Princess will break you down atom-by-atom and reuse your mass as computer substrate."

"She's going to do that anyway, in the end," said Fern Pipette.  "I hope you understand.  You wouldn't, of course, not with mind-designs like yours, but maybe you could do your Cattle the favor of showing them this message.  They will understand.  They are already destined to end up as ponies, like us.  You, however..."

"You need to make what might just be the last choice your - what's that noise?" finished Book Burner.

The magic mirror Fern and Book had tucked away in the corner of the room was emitting a melodious squawk indicating it was about to become a fully-patent spacial gate by outside forcing.

Inky red spell-energy spiralled around it to form a true, open gate taking up the entire already-broad wall.  Through it, the pair of ponies could see the bright, white sterility of an old-fashioned spaceship cockpit, with an entire old-fashioned crew busily dashing around in the rainbow robes of devoted Harmonites.

"Hold it right there!  This is the ESS Honesty making a social call upon the Earth Pony vessel Manta Rein!" announced the Dutchess Lyrical Melody.  "Those aliens are evil, and if you intend to bring them into Equestria, in the name of Harmony, we will punish you!"

Her ship rocked as something exploded against it.  Book and Fern stared incredulously, wondering how many times she was going to get caught by the same damn trick of etiquette.

"Backup is here?" Book asked with a smile.

Lyrical's video screen lit up to show none other, of course, than Forward Charge, wearing her favorite pirate hat.

"Even when trapped by the predictions of ash-Sham's, the will we never gave up opens the door to play with Discord!  The one and only Giant Pirate Pegasus Mecha of the Chaos Fleet has once again lit the flames in its burning soul to provide military protection to the Manta Rein in execution of its sacred duty, captained by the Mighty! Forward! Charge!"  The effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that Forward kept winking every few seconds through her speech.

And then she strode straight into the room with Book and Fern.  That was new.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Fern?" asked Book Burner.  She grinned from ear to ear.

"You know I am.  Maybe this'll all show those Farmers what being a pony is all about!"

"Then - " the couple hoof-bumped their ring-laden left hooves together, ending their age spell and shrouding them in light, " - let's party!" they yelled together.

They didn't know what the aliens would make of their gesture, but they knew they needed to make it.  The whole point was to extend a hoof in friendship, after all, even to those so different as to be scarcely within comprehension.

The white light of the spell fell away and revealed two ponies in the peak of youth and health, their manes streaming in the arcane wind and lightning crackling through their eyes as they readied their own skills.  Together as a couple and, with Forward Charge by their side, a family, they stood to defend even the hated and the alien.

The camera kept running the entire time.

The many of the Farmers' Council looked from one to another, whisker-signing quickly while their tails twitched their uncertainly.  The video broadcast that had arrived to their astronomical stations had required updating almost all their beliefs in the length of a mere planetary rotation cycle.

The Farmers and the Cattle had thought they were alone in the universe, previous to this.  They had thought it their destiny to spread throughout the stars and conquer all the worlds and galaxies beyond.  This was, after all, the best way to preserve their race, and ensure its longevity against all existential risks.  They would maximize their expected lifetime and their expected quantity, spreading their form across all space and time: squat beige quadrupedal bodies on padded paws, ending in large fluffed tails, with a ring of red fur across their backs, and a head with four ears on the front.  The two smaller ears were used to hear, while the other two had extended into prehensile grasping expanses of skin and fur, mostly used for sensing movement.  Gold rings and small crimson jewels were worn on each one's prehensile ears to indicate rank.

All-red pairs of eyes glinted around the Council table, reflecting the yellow light of the noon day-star.

The problem had not been that the aliens looked strange.  Yes, they had no primary ears, but some of them seemed to have some variant on pteryx wings instead.  Yes, they came in all variety of colors and wore tattoos on their gluteal muscles.  Nobody could determine the function of these strange appearances, but doubtless there had been some signalling purpose in the aliens' ancestral environment.  Yes, the aliens moved their mouths to convey worrisome forms of personal communication and appeared to have rather a lot of teeth.  Still, if they had made it into space, they surely Farmed their own food.

No, the problem had been that the aliens thought like semi-furred, irrational bipeds.  Or, in other words, like Cattle.  They had emotions, a mental illness of the pre-evolved, pre-sapient races.  The problem had been that those weak creatures who had apparently never bothered to bioengineer themselves had skipped the entire civilizational stage of bio-rationality and developed some form of nonliving, artificial optimization process, which had carried them to the stars and was utterly devoted to disassembling any world that got in the way of caring for its "little ponies".

The problem had been that the optimizing carrier of the "ponies" had decided the Cattle bore more resemblance to the ponies than the Farmers did, and that thus the Cattle would be uplifted into the ponies' "herd" by default, whereas the Farmers...

The first condition by which they could survive was that they could not alter or kill a single Cattle until the alien ship arrived.  They would have to live entirely on synthetic food.

The second was by far of lower expected utility.  The Farmers had been given a simple design for an engineered retrovirus.  If they chose to produce it and unleash it across their world, each and every Farmer would have their brain altered to resemble nothing more than Cattle.  Their reason told them that only through embracing complete and utter madness, changing their nature and values entirely, could they survive.  And yet it was their only means of survival!