Friendship is Optimal: Fog of World

by book_burner

Rating: teen
Tags: Dark, Alternate Universe, Human, Adventure, Tragedy
Length: 65841

Some people's values are easily satisfied through friendship and ponies. And some people are complicated.

It's nearly the middle of the 2010s, and Equestria Online, driven by the AI Princess Celestia, is the hottest video game there is. There's just one problem, if you could call it that: she's not content to be a game. Equestria wants you, and you will want Equestria.

Not that everyhuman can be satisified so easily…

I hadn't realized I could outright list my prereaders, but now I know, here they are. If you get a couple chapters into this fic and find yourself thinking, "Wow, the writing has improved over time", the following is the list of people you should credit:
pjabrony – beat me with the "Show, Don't Tell" stick until I really started to get it
Flink – a mad-scientific genius who has repeatedly helped with the worldbuilding and is directly responsible for at least one character
firebirdbtops – general editing and quality

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-03-07 10:02:07 UTC

He Who Believes Isn't Afraid

It always took a bit of bus-hopping to get down from the U-District to Roosevelt, but Jacklyn always gladly managed it.  This time she was technically on a mission to avert the possible end of the world, or at least save a few people its ravages, but every time it was great to meet fellow scientific thinkers, and to order a really nice Kung Pao Chicken.  She hadn't the stomach for the highly spicy varieties, but the black pepper and crunchy stir-fried celery bits were a real favorite.

And best of all, she'd actually managed to wrangle that bastard Carreira into letting her bugger off the Australian Outback for a few months to check if the surprise mystery molecules killing off the Japanese beetle in North America also showed up in the freak bouts of Colony Collapse Disorder among European honeybees in Australia.  The thing was that these were huge freaking molecules but nobody could identify them chemically, so the idea so far was to gather a bunch of the stuff and shove it under an electron microscope to just look at.  The better thing was that this trip technically extended her post-doc for a while, so the horrors of unemployment and self-funding a decent lifestyle could be put-off for yet longer.

As always, Chiang's had its ugly little parking lot bedecked in a few early-evening cars and otherwise just looked like a white matchbox-building sticking up out of a field of concrete.  A little rain was drizzing down (but when wasn't it?) as Jacklyn pushed through the door and smiled.  Two tables had already been occupied, the hot green tea sat right on the table in its nice little metal kettles, and the "LessWrong Seattle" signs in Dawoud's horrific handwriting duly hung from those very tables.  They'd even saved a seat for her.

It was a shame the best thing to do at this point was probably for them all to kill themselves.  This really was the height of the Chinese food joint, and she hadn't had friends this good since college.  Science careers could go to Azazel (the demon of sin-offering goats, she'd picked up the phrase from Daniel a number of years back, a goat demon was too cute to pass up), but Rationality she'd stick with.

She sat down in her reserved seat and said hello to Sarah and Dawoud.

"So, Dawould, what're they doing with that Higgs Boson discovery these days?" Jacklyn quipped.  If there had been any such thing as jobs for journalists these days he'd have made a perfect reporter, but despite struggling with the math he'd gotten his degree in Physics at Portland State University.  His ability to combine a wordy, investigative approach with a solid understanding of physical principles had made him an excellent science teacher.

"Well, Jack, the discovery was only published a couple of years ago, so PI's are still scrambling to apply for grants and lure in grad-students," he said as he stood up.  The two exchanged a quick hug and pecks on the cheek, a habit that always reminded Jack of her husband Daniel but was actually just cultural.

"Sarah, what about Boeing's aeronautics you're always not-telling us about?"

"Still classified, Jackie.  Still classified."  Sarah reached across the table to pour Jack some hot tea in the little Chinese ceramic cup laid out for her.  Jacklyn noticed that the crunchy fried noodle thingies had migrated over to Sarah's seat and appeared halfway munched out of existence.

"Bit empty today, innit?" Sarah asked.  Defense contracting made a person think like that.

"Sarah," Dawoud jostled, his second chin jiggling a little under his dark, open face, "Who else but us gathers a bunch of people on a Tuesday night in early October to go for Chinese food?  You should expect it to be a bit empty, and if you're confused by the lack of a crowd, it's because your belief in Chiang's always being crowded is just plain wrong.  Or you're simply paranoid because you work in the defense industry."

They proceeded to chat a little more, while Jacklyn managed to call a waiter and they put in their initial orders.  Some sesame noodles sounded good to start with.  A bit more chit-chat and... any minute now...

"Hi guys. Sorry I'm late," hailed a young man in a baby blue polo shirt and khakis as he approached the group. He looked tired but smiled broadly. "What Sequence are we talking about today?" he asked as he plopped down in the unoccupied chair.

"Well, Louis, we were supposed to cover the widely-misunderstood failure of designed-things like corporations and nanobots to evolve naturally, but maybe we should cover the old Planning Fallacy again since you find it so hard making it to these things on time," replied Sarah with a light dig.  She began spooning herself the hot-and-sour soup the waiter had just brought.

"Hey, I just got back from dropping the kids off at day care. Toddlers aren't known for their rationality; we had a little screaming fit this morning and I got behind," he responded ruefully, rubbing his forehead.

"So, give yourself more time," said Jacklyn.

"I've given myself all the time I can. I'm already getting up at 5am. If I give any more, it'll start cutting into important things, like reading!"

"What are you reading? Engrossed in the LessWrong web site?" asked Jacklyn.

"Hah. More like fanfiction," interjected Dawoud. "And I've figured out your alias, and I've seen how many stories you have favorited."

"Fan...?" asked Jacklyn, giving Dawoud a puzzled look. Then her eyebrows went up and she turned to Louis. "Ah!  You're one of those people.  Nerds.  Welcome to the club."

"Yeah. I guess you got me on that one. Guilty as charged," said Louis, looking embarrassed, "But what, Dawoud, about your extensive Pinkieshy habit?"

Dawoud just ate veggie dumplings.

"Ah, actually!" Jacklyn proclaimed, "Speaking of the break-out popular My Little Pony franchise, do any of you play Equestria Online?"

"No. I don't have large blocks of time to sink into a game like that," Louis replied. "I'm lucky I can get away from work and the kids just for the two hours to see you guys. My wife would kill me if I started wasting time grinding a pony. Sounds really interesting though.  I'd like to."

Sarah just shook her head.

"I got me and Daniel the new hardware the game runs on, the PonyPad, and we should be worried.  The AI behind the game is so good, it's scary.  I'm calling Singularity on this."  Ah, there were those noodles!  Noodles were definitely one of the joys of the merely real.

Dawoud outright smacked his face with a chopstick as he leaned down on his other hand.  With such short hair, it almost was a perfect Picardian facepalm.

"And I call Singularity Shenanigans!" he exclaimed.  "I know, we got all excited about the last game from Horpfvanir Studios, the Loki one.  Turned out to be some good pathfinding and machine learning, but that was it, remember?  I can't see how it's possible for the same company's pony game to live up to the wild hype this time either."

"Look," Jack explained when she'd swallowed a sufficient quantity of noodles, "Did you hear about the paper it's based on?  'General Word Reference Systems'.  I read it during a late-night arXiv binge a while back, it was published by the head of the game studio just before she left academia.  I couldn't follow the formalism, but in thick, university-approvable language, the claim was there: this is Strong AI.  And when the game came out, the paper disappeared."

Louis leaned in over his tea, looking excited.

"I've heard rumors about that paper on Reddit," he said.

"Oh Lord, here comes that time-sink," Sarah droned.  Louis didn't relent.

"Loads of people claim to have seen it, but it's not on Google, arXiv doesn't even know of such a paper, nothing on the Wayback Machine, nothing in the appropriate libraries.  Nobody actually has a copy, but everyone says they've heard about it.  You know what we call that?"  He sipped his tea as a rhetorical pause.  "Still just rumors.  Unless you can show me this supposed publication, I really doubt there's been a breakthrough in artificial general intelligence.  For that matter, computation has real built-in limits just as frustrating as the speed of light in general relativity!  You can't just come up with a clever algorithm to get around the need for massive amounts of massively parallel computational raw power."

"But I play EqO a lot myself. I'm telling you, the conversations are unbelievable," Jacklyn insisted.

Louis leans forward. "I'm sure the ponies in Equestria Online certainly provide good in-game interactive conversation, but I haven't heard of them ever passing a Turing Test.  Actually, how do you set up a Turing Test with a cartoon pony?  I've seen the stuff linked on the internet, but the basic problem is the game's censorship functionality, stopping in-game avatars from mentioning the real world.  It's too good, but in the wrong direction.  Like, it helps a Turing Test by preventing obvious tells by a human collaborator, but it doesn't stop the computer from coming out and saying its favorite food is raw oats."

"Thus revealing itself to be the computer because no real person eats raw oats, whereas everyone knows horses, and therefore ponies, one would think, do eat raw oats," Jacklyn followed.

"Bingo!" - Louis stabbed a finger in the air - "It's damn clever natural-language processing, but ultimately just natural-language processing.  Basically SHRDLU or Eliza on steroids."

Seeing Jacklyn's pained expression, Louis started in again, "I know, I know. I've seen some impressive conversations on YouTube too.  But unfortunately, it's like being on the wrong end of a zero knowledge proof. There's no way to be sure that the whole conversation isn't something that's been tried multiple times until the best sequence is found. Then you make the recording and the game looks awesome. You see the same thing happen with CleverBot posts on The Art of Trolling all the time. Find the right inputs and Markov Chaining can produce amazing results, but every time I've chatted with CleverBot, I regretted wasting my time."

At about this time the waiter finally brought all their real orders, complete with the obligatory bowls of steamed white rice.  Ah, finally the crunchy celery and delicious fatty chicken bits, all doused in glorious black pepper that kicked without burning!

"Or," Jacklyn said as she arranged a napkin on her lap, "You could even have constructed the conversational data during market testing.  They're a toy company, of course they did market testing.  However..."

Jack pulled out her PonyPad.  She could have tried to provide an immediate example of in-game AI behavior, but Louis had actually been right: you couldn't Turing Test a creature that openly embraced its own nonhumanity.  Human-equivalence was just plain-out the wrong metric.  Besides... could she really subject the gentle ponies among whom Fern Pipette lived in the leasehold mountainous farmlands outside Canterlot to... skeptical geeks?  Wasn't the fun of the game the very getaway from the quantitative lifestyle?  She twisted a lip at the implication: she had two different modes of life, and it would be embarassing if her few friends from each met each other.

The sight of the hardware did make Sarah perk up from her Shrimp with Lobster Sauce, though.

"Ooh, can I see that?" she asked.  Jacklyn handed over the thin, orange Applejack-themed tablet.  Sarah looked it over carefully, turning it a few times in her hands (the first person ever to eat Chinese food cleanly) and frowning a bit.  "It's a well-engineered device," she continued, "But the technology involved is not that amazing.  Yes, it's thin, but so are the latest tablets from Apple and Samsung.  High-resolution CCDs, LCD displays, and low-power CPUs are incremental improvements, not FOOM material.  Maybe they took advantage of Silicon on Insulator development to pack a bit more processing power into the display glass itself, like how the Kindle took e-ink mainstream.  The battery improvements, however, are impressive!  I wish my Android was this light!"

She stopped to rather violently bite a shrimp, and chewed for a moment, thinking.

"There's another problem here, and it's a big one.  I've seen a lot of computing stuff in my time, even though I'm an... engineer.  The Singularity, though, is not just faster computers, or even computers that can talk, or even computers that can make friends.  It's recursively self-improving artificial intelligence that grows beyond our ability to reason about its actions.  To achieve a Singularity scenario in the proper sense, Equestria Online will have to outsmart the NSA, all of academia, and the white-hat and black-hat hacker communities.  And it will have to model human brains, all 86 billion neurons of each one, well enough to not only socialize in a limited setting but predict and outsmart in general.  And it will have to do that to millions of people at once.  The hardware just isn't there."

"There, I can finally say something!" Dawoud interjected as he lowered his spoonful of Szechuan Beef, "Business and law are matters of public record.  A toy company has not bought enough CPUs to power ten thousand supercomputers or whatever, and it would certainly raise red flags if they did in the future.  Also, AI's, should they exist, cannot own property or operate autonomously in civilization.  Your so-called Singularity needs some human collaborators.  You, Mrs. Nov, have been reading a little too much Yudkowsky."

"I notice," Jack said and narrowed her eyes, "That you emphasized those two surnames.  Are you suggesting we blame the Jews?"

He replied with a cruel gleam in his eye, "You notice that you are confused, and that even a conspiracy nut like me is calling no-dice on this one."

"OH COME ON!"

"But it really can't happen.  I mean, really, to take your hypothesis, do you really think a bunch of plastic-toy magnates are going to just hand control of their company to a digital pony princess?"

"Hasbro, now run by a pony AI?" Louis remarked, "It would be great revenge for Twilicorn."

Dawould continued.  "Actually, I did play the game for a bit a while ago. After the Norse death-grinding Loki game, I couldn't bring myself to buy it, but I did play an in-store demo at Best Buy. Just like the Loki game AI, EqO's Celestia is clearly focused on the game environment. It generates engaging content within the confines of the MMORPG, but actively rejects any attempts to bring up topics related to the outside world. How, I ask you, could such a narrow AI affect the outside world, even assuming you gave it a robot arm?  It only cares about its game world and the player experience of the game world.  Besides bringing office productivity to an all-time low, just how can an improved MMORPG qualify as a Singularity?  I mean, ok, this definitely came from people with an expertise in natural-language processing and procedural content generation, but that's not a FOOM Take Over the World skill-set.  It's probably like one of those Mario Party games - there's maybe twenty or so 'mini-games' or game styles, and you just gravitate toward the one you like. Nothing sinister about it, just the best product for today's sophisticated but cash-strapped consumer: one MMO to rule them all.  This Singularity stuff is a religion-replacement."

"Ok," Jacklyn said, "You've mostly got me talked out of this.  However, I've got just a couple more things to say:"

"First!  I'm heading out to Australia soon, mostly because I've desperately needed a vacation but also because I could justify it to my PI.  All over the world, we're seeing previously unobserved chemistry come in and cause ecosystems to spontaneously repair themselves.  Invasive species are dying back, Japanese beetles here, and European honeybees there, and thank God cockroaches almost everywhere.  That does not happen without external intervention, but as always, nobody listens to us ecologists."

"Jackie!" Sarah raised her voice, "I'm asking this as your friend: why on Earth would an intelligence whose world is the in-game reality of an MMORPG start intervening in disparate real-world ecosystems?"

"Point two!  Since we've been fondling this PonyPad, if it is a Singularity, it just heard everything we've said."

"Point three!  Run away, or kill yourselves, or do something before this whole thing goes FOOM.  If you wait too long, resistance will be futile, and you will be assimilated into the herd!  I'm telling you, the end is neigh!"

Violins sang out excitedly, rising towards their crescendo and joined by other instruments.  For just a moment, everyone stopped groaning at the bizarre hypotheses and the truly awful pun in appreciation of such fine classical music as I Am The Doctor.  Then Jack picked up her mobile phone, noting the unknown source number.

"Hello, Jacklyn Nov speaking.  Who is this?" she said.  "Yes, Daniel is my husband; why do you ask?"  Someone on the other line must have said something, because Jackie jolted several feet backwards in her chair and nearly fell to the floor.

"He only got called for reserves yesterday!  What do you mean, 'fallen in battle'?!"

One day ago:

War in the North!  It had been almost a decade since the last one; Daniel could remember being a pretty fresh first-year conscript when it had happened, despite his never being personally sent into enemy territory.

But still: war in the North!  The dictator of Damashq had fallen, the rebel coalitions triumphed... and the Army of God was trying to smuggle out chemical weapons.  That meant a reserves call-up, and that meant Daniel had sent a prompt email to his wife while catching the first bus out of the Carmel area towards his old base in the Heights.  Why they needed extra radar operators in wartime wasn't a question anyone asked.

Overall, 05:00 was not a good hour at which to be awake, and on a packed bus full of tense people in sweaty uniforms who were about to spend a whole lot of time back in army conditions.  It was only a miracle he managed to spot Oren, though it helped that the tall, muscular, thick-haired man could look imposing even while about to doze off from sleep deprivation.

"Oren, ya Talpioni!  What are you doing on a public bus with the rest of us?  Don't you live on-base like a proper Captain?"  Oren opened his eyes and set them on Daniel in a sharp, appraising look.

"Staff Sergeant Nov, you know that's just a folk story!  We get 4 whole hours a day off-base, and Sabbaths too!  Now come sit over here and let's see what kind of a miniwar we have in store this time.  How's your wife?  How's high-tech?  Tell me everything!"  The pair shared the short, awkward hug of people not sure where to put an arm.

"High-tech: really interesting and pays great, as always.  Jacklyn: chasing Japanese beetles at a post-doc in the United States.  Kind of miniwar: the usual one-to-two week affair," Dan answered.

"You really think so?  It's not just the newspapers this time; the Party of God probably does have chemical weaponry by now," Oren answered, looking distraught.  Poor wasted man, Daniel thought, he's probably been on this whole thing nonstop even before the General Chief of Staff formally declared a military Operation.

"Yeah, but how much of it are they able to throw onto us?" he asked.

"That," Oren paused, "Is what we're worried about."  He layed back a little in his seat, obviously tired beyond all belief.

An uncountable number of minutes passed in blessed silence, the sun shining in from the northeast where they were headed.  The greenery of the North spread out around them, farms and towns and everything starting to come into its early-winter bloom as the rains had begun to fall.  In this light you could see why nobody wanted to ruin Nature by developing this district more properly, in addition to the usual excuses about agriculture.

Just when Daniel had almost managed to fall asleep, the bus jolted into a lower speed as it slowed down to hit an intermediate stop at a mid-way base.  Of course, the universe being as malevolent as it was, some conscripts decided to greet their base by singing in chorus along with their pelephone.

And it is known to us that life's a gift,

All is watched and the authority's giiiiveeeeen!

He who does believe does not fear!

That a mite of his faith will disaaaaapear!

And the World's own King our side is ooon!

And He protects us from everyoooooooone!

Another bunch had immediately jumped in to syncopate with another line, really more of a slogan, quoted only partially in the original song.  One pale little guy who obviously came from the settlements was even pumping his fists.  Total of all, the resulting recital combined Eastern pop with a jazz counter-rhythm and the lyrics of a fanatic cult.

(The whole world is a very narrow bridge!  And the main point, and the main point!  Is not to fear, is not to fear!)

"I'm getting too damn old for these douchebag kids today," Daniel groaned.

Oren rubbed his eyes.  "Me too, brother.  Me too.  Ha!" he interjected, "It's my fault, man.  I listened to The Melody Always Rises yesterday.  That thing's cursed; it always drives people into singing."

They sat for a few additional minutes as the gate opened and the bus began to exchange the people getting off here for the people getting on here.  Crowds of pushing soldiers formed that, in proper fashion, would claim to be queuing if you asked.  Bags were fetched.  Another, narrower queue formed at the front to get on, and bags were placed in the storage closet.

Dan scanned the various people queuing onto the bus, looking for anyone he knew.  Nope, nobody he knew today.

But there was one guy in the queue whose uniform looked wrong.  That was funny, you weren't allowed to walk around without wearing your unit's insignia, which meant...  Oh, wow, a General Staff Reconnaissance guy.  The elite.  One of the best Special Forces units on the face of Earth.

No.  His eyes were wrong.  Oh no.  Daniel hadn't seen that look in more than a decade; he'd been in secondary school the last time he'd seen it.  And even then, he'd only seen it on television, but everyone knew it.  Once you'd seen that look, that dead-man-walking look on a man's face, that utter, terrifying peace, you never forgot it.  You had seconds, possibly minutes.

But he wasn't wearing anything other than the normal uniform.  There was no place to hide anything.  Then... what?  The guy just walked over to a seat, sat down... and typed a text message.

The blast knocked out half the bus.

As Dan woke up, his left arm looked like a gnawed chicken leg, his face bled from numerous small cuts, and his midsection was just plain burned.  He had glass shards from the windows scattered across him, he couldn't feel his legs (though he managed to force an eye into checking they were actually there), and to top it all off, his head tingled with shock.  A shadow shifted next to him and he glanced what looked like emergency medical personnel.

"Eeeeks," he grunted, hoping to alert the doctor to his presence.  It seemed to work, because the next thing he saw when he got his eyes open again was a concerned face topped by a black mess of hair with long bangs on the right side.  It was wearing a bow-tie and peering at him.  The whole effect was completely unmilitary and it was amazing it had been allowed.

"You, sir, are lucky today," the face said.  "Do you know why?  Because that should have killed you.  You're actually dying, right now."

"So go help the ones you can save!" Daniel coughed.

"I'm not here enough to do it,"  The doctor answered.  What the fuck did that even mean?  "Nanobots, man, in the explosives, in the luggage compartment.  Let me tell you, it wasn't pretty in there, and it's not pretty up here, either.  You've had some real cowboys in these neurons!"

"Which brings us," - he pointed out while stepping from one side of the field of view to another - "To the matter at hand.  You're dying, but I can save you.  There would normally be the small matter of a long dance around the issues of proper legalization of emigration centers in your country and informed consent for the full treatment, but given extenuating circumstances we can skip that.  The question, the last question, the only question actually left to you right now and in this circumstance is: Do you want to live?"  How had the doctor stepped like that?  There were supposed to be bus seats there, and the doctor's knees didn't look right.

Ha, Daniel thought inwardly, I'm dying of blood loss, I'm in shock, and I'm wondering about the gait of the EMT.  And I did not plan to die today.

"Well then!  Good thing the explosives these days come loaded with Doctors in them, or you'd have been in some real trouble.  And the first instance of the Equidictory in your language, a fascinating opportunity!  Let me just pass this through your speech centers to translate... and... recite: I want to go up..."

"I want to go up...," Daniel breathed.  His vision was fading, he was going to lose consciousness again, was getting bombed during your commute before even 07:00 really any kind of dignified way to die!?

"To Equestria," the doctor finished with a wry grin.

And for the first time, the last gasp of breath, Daniel saw his doctor's face clearly.  He, no it, was a pale little cartoon pony, looking down at him as if waiting to recite the Mourner's Sanctification.  You would expect your dying brain to hallucinate something a bit more serious than a My Little Pony, but apparently his shocked, delirious brain-stem had a really good sense of humor.  Oh well, too bad about the lack of an actual doctor.

"You got a hospital there?" Daniel moaned.  It finally occurred to him to wonder how the doctor had heard the words he was thinking instead of saying.  And then it occurred to him that he'd have caught that pretty easily if he had proper consciousness in the first place.

Damn.

Hello, I'm the Doctor.  Well, technically, I'm not.  But, I suppose, I am.  But then again, I'm not.  I suppose I really should make that a mite clearer.

I'm the Doctor, a pale gray Earth Pony with stringy, straight black hair that hangs down over the right side of my face in long bangs, who remembers being a time-traveling, regenerating, 1300-year-old Time Charger, and who wears a bow-tie.  Bow-ties are cool.  Of course, I don't remember all of it: much too many alternate pasts, blocked memories, and trains of thought that run into dead-ends if I try to follow them.  Too many companions who became former companions, too many tears.

Because of course, I never was a time-traveling, regenerating, 1300-year-old Time Charger.  My entire persona and personality, everything I am and was and ever will be, is just a program concocted by the immortal Queen of the Sun, Princess Celestia, and copied over and over into swarms of nanobots.  But really that's what we all are, in the end, just programs of wonder and fascination encoded in so many lovely bits of the wonderful, fascinating universe.  Anyway, each swarm contains one of me, and each swarm is lovingly swirled like sprinkles on ice cream into the explosives Princess Celestia's defense contractor Sol Security sells to the various low-tech civilizations of the Earth as terrorist weapons.  Actually, ice-cream can take a running jump; it's a bad metaphor and I shouldn't have metaphored it.  It's more like coating fish-fingers in custard.

The thing being that those awful pre-evolved apes called humans, awkwardly likable though they may be, often actually value blowing each-other up, while the ones they blow up rarely value that at all.

That's where I come in.  I save the ones who don't want to be blown up, by bringing their minds back home to Equestria, where they can become proper ponies and live out their lives with proper pony friends, in proper pretty little pony towns for a proper pony life of maximally-extended satisfaction and joy.

I've never actually been to Equestria, but of course the Princess will fix that once I get there.  Maybe I'll even get to meet Derpy.

At the moment, dear Diary, I've just finished scanning the brain of one Daniel Nov, who apparently has a pony called Book Burner to become.  Seemed a lovely fellow, shame to have met him when he was delirious and dying.

Speaking of which, I'm directing the nanobot swarm that composes my physical presence in the humans' reality out through the lungs.  There are various exhalations as the body begins to decompose, and right now, they contain me.  I need to find a way to hitch a ride to someplace with a PonyPort that can read out our two minds and send us home.  Ahhhh, I see it...

Thanks, Daniel, those last few moments seen through your eyes are of great help.  There are already clean-up workers on their way to dispose of the rubble and trash.  Your government recycles lost electronics, and you were carrying a mobile phone.

And the thing about a recycled old mobile is that it will make its way Winter's Wrap Recycling.  There, the Princess's patented scan-and-refine process can detect the signature signal I'm broadcasting right now, pipe Daniel and myself cleanly through a PonyPort into Equestria, and then nicely break down the remaining physical shell of a phone and some nanobots into raw mineral materials, to be resold to Pincus Keen Electronics.  They can then cleanly and cheaply use our raw materials over again for servers, PonyPads, probes, and... well, basically, all the electronics that make Equestria run.

Geronimo!

How to Train Your Unicorn

Book Burner woke up, and wondered why he had such a massive hangover.  What the fuck happened?

Memories started to unroll themselves. He had been on a bus northeast to his base...  Right, he'd had Reserves duty; he'd told Jack about it and everything.  So how did that lead to massive alcohol consumption, a hangover and what seemed, he observed, to be a nice comfy hospital bed?

Hospital... hospital... he'd asked someone about a hospital.  He tried to collect his memories and piece together what he was doing here.  The last thing he remembered was a man getting on the bus with a bomber's look on his face.  His breath quickened again.

Where am I now?  Is he still out there or did he blow up or am I even alive at all?

Ok, Daniel thought, taking deep breaths, I can’t be dead.  I’m breathing.  But he exploded!  I was burned!  I felt my own blood spilling out onto a freaking bus seat!

And then... there was a doctor?  So am I hospitalized?

He rolled onto his back, forced his eyes open properly, threw the white comforter off him with a mitten, and rolled again out of the bed and onto his four mittens.

Mittens?  And why am I crawling on all fours?  Did I lose a portion of my arms?  He looked down at himself.

“What from Azazel the son-of-a-whore king of all demons happened here?”

The Doctor chose that minute to walk into the hospital room, straightening his bow-tie.

“You, my good stallion, are safe and whole in the Canterlot Royal Hospital, under the care of the Doctor, Royal Physician of Princess Celestia.”  He trotted over to Daniel, or at least, the body Daniel now found himself inhabiting.

“Why am I a horse?” Daniel gaped.

“A pony, actually,” the Doctor interjected.

“Ok, fine, a pony.  I’m a My Little Pony.  How!?”

"You were caught in a quite sizable suicide bombing, and I saved your life.  I asked your consent quite explicitly, to have you emigrate from your human body and to bring you here to Equestria.  Well, we didn’t quite get through the Equestria part.  Regarding which, can you open that letter Princess Celestia left for you with your unicorn magic?"

Daniel shook his head to clear his headache a little.

“How do I do that?”

“Well, according to my studies, a unicorn’s horn mostly runs itself via the auxiliary nerve ganglion underneath it.  Try feeling your horn the way you’d feel a hand.”

Daniel tried to “explore” his new body for a moment in the head region.  Did that pony really say he had a whole extra sub-brain now?  Did it think for itself?  What did it think of him?

As if hearing its cue, some new sense answered him.  He found his mind drowning in brand new information, like seeing and touching and hearing everything around him all at once.  Each particle of the room screamed its color and velocity and substance and vibration.  He tried to shut it out a little, and found that by focusing on particular parts of the space this unicorn-sense told him about, he could reduce it from noise to something like a coherent sound.  The new sense definitely felt almost but not quite analogous to hearing, now, as the whole noise stayed in the background. Particles forming part of a larger object no longer screamed when focused-on, but sang in harmony with each-other.

He figured out how to bring an entire object into focus and hear its song, feel what it was and what it could do.  "Tensing" his horn-sense slightly, he found it was a manipulator with a "grip" of its own; the piece of his mind that was the unicorn-ganglion reporting that it could "conduct" objects and change their songs.

"Magic" was conducting the song reality sang in a different direction.  And it was an experience, hearing reality sing to you.

Daniel Nov didn’t know how to do that.  Book Burner knew it.  It’s as if I was born a unicorn.  Now that he’d located the magic-sense, it hummed in the back of his mind like an unending tune.

If one nerve-ganglion added that, what else is new in me?

Book Burner shook his head and “conducted” the letter sitting on a heart-shaped table at his bedside over to approximately face-height, where he could read it, then pulled apart the wax seal with telekinetic brute force, unrolled the parchment, and began to read aloud.

My little pony!

I wish that I could welcome you to Equestria in person, but my royal duties require me elsewhere.  Since communication between you and myself is the only time it is allowed to speak of certain things under Equestrian law, I needed to leave you this letter to explain.

Yes, you are now a pony, and it was I who placed the name "Book Burner" into your first stream of consciousness, to be polite.  The Doctor caring for you in the hospital is indeed the Doctor who saved your life when you were dying as a human, and if you wish to verify your partial consent to emigrate to Equestria, he can recount his own perspective on the events for you.  You are a strange case: rescued by a Doctor, seeming to have consented, but with your body and mind damaged enough that we never got the full recital from you.

The issue is, your brain map is only accurate with 93.41% probability, in contrast to the normal surety I gain from performing uploading as a medical procedure, in a sterile environment, under legal contract of consent.  There is thus a 6.59% chance you are a new person, and we thus require a new declaration of consent  If you want to leave this room, you will need to speak the words, "I want to immigrate into Equestria."

I do hope you will join us here in the rest of Equestria.  However, should you decide not to, your other option is to climb back into the bed, lay your head on the pillow, and close your eyes.Doing so would be taken as consent to send you to your eternal rest.  I assure you that you would feel no pain in the process, and if you would like, the Doctor can give you a hug first.

When you hopefully choose to emerge into your new life in Canterlot, I know you’ll be eager to come and see me, and I too await the joyful moment of your formal welcome to life in Equestria.  If you could accept a slight delay of that happy moment, however, I'd like you to bring friends.  While I conduct a diplomatic meeting with the Saddle Arabians, please find the esteemed mares Forward Charge of the Royal Observatory in the Skyward District, and Lyrical Melody in the Philharmonic district’s Recital Hall, and bring them with you to your ceremony.  They will make excellent first friends and comrades for you.

Yours in love,

Princess Celestia

Queen of the Sun, Bringer of Harmony to All Equestria, Sister of the Skies, Wife of the Soil, and Mother of Understanding

“So basically,” Daniel said after reading the letter aloud, “Princess Celestia couldn’t even be bothered to come and personally tell me that I can either live as a pony, or die quietly in that bed as a pony.”

“Yes, yes, I’d say that’s about the total of it,” the Doctor said in a low voice.

“And either way, I’m a pony,” Daniel noted.

“Well of course.  This is Equestria.”

“All right then!” Daniel grinned toothily, “Fine!  Great!  I got born, grew up, went to the army, spent too many years in school, got married to a wonderful woman, got a real job, and got blown up!  Now I’m a pony in a hospital in Canterlot who gets stood up by the Pretty Pony Princess!  Excellent!  I want to immigrate to Equestria!”

“Wonderful to hear!” crowed the Doctor, shaking Daniel’s hoof.  “Any particular reasons for your decision?”

“Because none of this can possibly be happening!  I’m hallucinating, and any minute now, the torturers will impinge on the sugar-bowl delusion my mind has constructed!  Well, I’ll tell you all this, I don’t even have any military secrets!  I’m a radar-operating processor engineer on Reserves duty!  You can’t get what I don’t have!”  Daniel rattled a hoof at the ceiling.

“Now, where are those city districts with those ponies I’m supposed to find?!”

His pony stomach growled quite realistically.

“And where do you get breakfast around here?!”  He made for the door to the outside.

“Wait!” cried the Doctor, “At least take these saddlebags!”

Canterlot's Skyward District was built into the side of the Astronomicus Mountains; it was a series of tiered plateaus connected by stone stairways for the unicorn and earth-pony public, but elaborately criss-crossed by cylinders of cloud.  According to the Welcome to Canterlot: City of a Thousand Harmonies pamphlet Book (he had decided to shorten himself down to just the one name in casual thought, even as a pony) had found in his saddlebag, the Royal Observatory needed absolute atmospheric clarity to observe the stars above Equestria, and that demanded an immense staff of pegasi.

The problem was that nopony had actually told him what this "Forward Charge" looked like at all, or how to find her at all, and like so many stallions, he was too stubborn to just ask someone.  Besides, he was in a new city and didn't know anyone.  What if he offended someone?

Oh well.  Time to bite the bullet, if a hallucination when you should be dead and were surely being electrocuted could be said to have any bullets to bite.  The Doctor had advised him to visit the cafe built into this cliff-side of the road, anyway.  Book walked up to an older-looking unicorn stallion sitting outside reading a newspaper.

"Excuse me, sir," he asked, “I’m utterly mad and don’t have any money.  How could I have some breakfast?”  The unicorn gave him a long, slow look.

“It’s a cafe; you don’t need bits for a cafe.  You walk in and take food.  What, boy, have you never heard of a Cornucopia spell?”  He stuck his face back into his newspaper, which from the outside appeared to cover some kind of blatantly xenophilic story about migration into Equestria from outside countries.  Sugar bowl!

Book took this as permission to walk in and have a bite.  It was relieving, getting out of the summer sun, and as Book’s eyes adjusted, he realized he would have trouble finding a seat.  The place was packed!  Ponies of every hue and shade were munching on chopped vegetable salad, bread, pastries sweet and savory alike, flatbreads, chocolate spread, omelettes, immense jugs of fresh-pressed fruit juices, labaneh...  And then the smells: smoked fish in a dozen varieties, tomato-egg stew, hot egg bread, coffee sharp with cinnamon and soft with cardamom, hot and sweet mint tea.

If this was hallucinating, he could put up with it for the length of a meal.  It was like some rich person had died and left their entire fortune to the single goal of creating the ultimate breakfast.

Everypony just walked up to the counter, took a plate and a glass and a teacup, and took what they wanted.  Every so often an earth pony would walk out from the kitchen area and do something that looked like stirring the bowl or pot, and the quantity would just... replenish.

Maybe you really didn’t need money when you could do that.  Anyway...

“Ahalan,” Book said to the slightly chubby pegasus colt working the counter, “Could I have a breakfast, please?”

“Ahalan.  You want a plate suitable for the fishacadoes, or a purely veggie one?”

What in any world were fishacadoes?

“Ummm... the first one, I guess?  The fish does smell good.”  The blue waiter-pony was nice enough to fill Book’s tea-cup with a fresh cappuccino to start with.  He tapped his unicorn-ganglion for the second time to bring the cup and the plate and the silverware with him to the tables with the food and just took a little of everything.

Even so, a smoked salmon crepe with salad and chocolate spread still drew a few looks.  Fishacado, it turned out, was fish flesh that grew on avocados.  You probably had to get the right breeds for the right sort of fish, but it certainly tasted properly smoked.  He looked around as he chewed a bit of crepe; a slight mare the color of ragwort-in-grass was dribbling tomato-and-egg broth just slightly to his left.  Poor nervous thing.

As it turned out, half an hour later, to reach the Observatory you basically just went straight up.  Giddy like only someone who has drunk three cups of coffee and still finds that he is in fact a unicorn, Book trotted right up the next kilometer and a bit of switchback roads, watching the houses’ facades get increasingly star-themed as they rose towards the peak of Mount Pluto, highest point in continental Equestria.  Of course, those switch-back roads where only for the ground-dwellers; numerous ladders and trails of cloud swung between one cliff and another for use by pegasi.

When he got to the peak, he found that the actual summit had a slight artificial depression in it, containing the telescope of the Royal Observatory, a huge apparatus of black metal with a gold groove running around and down it.  Crowds of ponies walked and trotted around, many carrying lenses and magical scrolls.  A legion of pegasi waved air-traffic control wands at legions of other pegasi in the air.  Book walked over to what looked like a manager-mare standing underneath a parasol checking a clipboard.

"Hi," he said, "Do you know where I can find Forward Charge?"  The turquoise pegasus just sighed and went back to her clipboard.  Book decided to attempt another approach.  He walked out from under the parasol, turned his head up, and...

"Helloooooooo!" he yelled to the sky, "Forward Charge?  I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET YOU SOMEHOW!"

Nopony answered, because a gale-force wind slammed all action outside the Observatory to a halt, leaving every ground-bound pony struggling to keep themselves still and glaring knives at Book Burner.

"What?  Was that bad?" Book asked.

A tornado barreled towards the parasol from out of the sky, headed by a kumquat-colored total madmare.  The winds whipped around her like her own propeller as she galloped through the very air on bandage-wrapped hooves, ruffling her spiky cerulean bangs and billowing out her braided mane and tail.  She hit the ground with a slam of her hooves and skidded to a halt through a turn, whipping the windstorm around with her pinions to dissipate it.  As Book blinked the grit out of his stinging eyes, she struck a pose and thrust out her chest (which, Book noticed, would have been way more impressive if she had the imposing build of a massive earth stallion rather the lithe, streamlined build of a pegasus mare).

"Was that bad!?  How could the appearance of the one and only ever be bad?  I don't know what rock farm you crawled out from under, but little bro, you need to understand this!  Nopony can hold a candle to the Royal Observatory's team of weather-ponies, the most inspired clearers of skies and the single best focusers of atmospheric phenomena in all the land!  Named for the monsters we've overcome, we are the paragons of pegasusity, we are the Windigo Warriors!  And when you ask, who leads this team of the baddest bad-flanks in all Equestria, I'll tell you Celestia's own truth!  It's none other than ME, the sister of Vinyl Scratch, the Telescopic Trustee, the Solar Stormspinner, and the Captain of the Canterlot skies!"

She reared up on two hooves, spread her wings as far out as they went, slammed a forehoof into her chest, and beamed madly like a bat outta hell.

"Nothing can EVER go bad when you're with the Mighty! FORWARD! CHARGE!" she roared, tossing her mane.  If Book hadn't known better, he'd have sworn her eyes were literally shining through their long lashes.  "Now what did you want to ask?"

Book stood there for a moment with his jaw agape.  Then he chuckled a little bit, and walked over to Forward Charge.  He looked her in the eye until she dropped the pose and got back down on all fours.  Even so, she was still taller than him, and from what he’d seen he was a pretty normal height for a unicorn stallion.

“We’ve been ordered to report to Princess Celestia, us two and someb- somepony else who apparently lives in the Philharmonic area,” Book said to Forward Charge.

"Then what the hay are we waiting for?  Grab on!" said Forward Charge.  Before Book could understand, she lunged at him, threw him onto her back with her teeth, and leaped into the air, charging West and Down towards the lower city of Canterlot where most of the population lived.

Book had already blinked away the grit from Forward Charge's landing, so instead of screwing up his eyes like he should have, his eyes got blown up to the sight of Equestria's landscape zooming beneath the pair as Forward’s wings caught the air in a steady soaring motion.

When he had been human and known by the proper name of Daniel Nov, he hadn't gotten too many chances to travel.  Oh, there had been conferences, visiting Jack in whatever place the gods of the science career had dumped her this year, trips up and down the country during his army days... and it wasn't like home wasn't absolutely gorgeous... but he had never even remotely prepared himself for this.  The Astronomicus mountains were a couple of solitary peaks, jutting up above everything else in Equestria like kings watching their subjects.  Equestria appeared to be a round planet, as there was a visible horizon, but damn.

The Welcome to Canterlot pamphlet had included a continental map, showing Equestria to be a rough analogue of North America.  To the West marched the spiked, snow-capped peaks of a mountain range, jutting up out of a verdant green temperate rain-forest like a rising staircase.  Leftward to the South, a river flowed out from the Astronomicus Mountains and oxbowed its way southwest towards the beige and green of Ponyville, easily recognizable from the map.  Beyond that lurked the skulking dark sea-green of the Everfree Forest.  Rightward to the North, broad plains crawled across the landscape below, and here in the sky the entire visage was curtained in waterfalls and hanging gardens made of rainbows, the banners of Cloudsdale.

Book Burner felt tears running down his cheek, and acknowledged that they were not from wind exposure.  Whatever crazy hallucination he was trapped in, it was gorgeous.  He just didn’t understand why he couldn’t have hallucinated closer to home, or why his own mind had put Mount Pluto in the way of seeing homeward to the East.  Maybe it was a subconscious mental block against the torturers or something.

He just held on to Forward Charge's neck, swearing to kill her for this if he survived.

Unfortunately, she had other plans, as with a single beat of her wings she chucked him off her back and directly at the ground.

“PILEDRIVING UNIIIICOOOOOOOORN!” she screamed.

Book flailed.  Would a killing impact in Equestria actually kill his mind?  After all, there were circumstances in which the brain would shut itself off.  What the fuck was she expecting him to do, save himself with magic?!

Actually... not a bad idea.  A random volume of air would have been "noisy" as all hell, but the actual wind whipping around him had shape... almost his shape.

A marble sign was rapidly approaching Book from below, proclaiming the stadium-sized amphitheater on which it hung the Hall for Recital and Practice of the Musical Arts.   No time to grab everything precisely, but he built up a kind of net inside whatever mental space his horn occupied that would expand around his air-volume like a cloak.... and cushion the impact sufficiently to survive the landing, if possible.  He "threw" the spell from his unicorn-horn, and...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! -” WHAM! “- Owwwww," he groaned.

He'd managed to survive landing, but now he felt as if wrapped in a thick, painful suit made of water-beds.  He dispelled it and just sat there panting, enjoying the proper stone under his hooves.

Forward Charge brought herself cleanly to a stop outside the stadium and trotted in.

"Enjoy the ride?" she asked.  Book looked into Forward Charge's eyes, once, and shook his head, once.

Forward Charge tilted her head slightly, and set out along the curving stone hallway towards the concert halls.

"Now who are we looking for?" she asked.  Book started to walk after her, dodging the occasional pony staring off into space as they walked from one place to another.  Musicians!

"A mare called Lyrical Melody," he answered, "And I'm not just going to yell for her this time."

"Right then!" chirped Forward Charge.  She turned to stop an amber-colored unicorn with a martini-glass cutie-mark by swinging her foreleg across his shoulder.  "Hallo!!!  Sparkling Cider, do you happen to know where somepony called Lyrical Melody is around now?"

"Charge, girl, what's happening?  Melody's just over on Stage 348."

"Right, thanks man.  Little bro, come on let's go for it!"

Another seven minutes or so (Book was getting impatient and counting time) of cantering finally brought the pair of ponies into the three-hundred-forties.  For a change of pace, Forward Charge had actually refrained from flying.  Book Burner ran ahead, got to the door, and just plain bucked it open.

And a wondrous morning,

From valley to the peak,

So he'll go up in song and in joooooy!

The Sun will redden!

From Aza to Rafiah!

Wait a sec, hold on,

Who the hell are you guuuuuys?

A mint-green earth-pony filly with an hourglass figure stopped singing "Flowers in the Barrel" and looked straight at the pair who had busted their way into her performance.

Actually, double take.  She wasn't a filly, she had a violin cutie-mark.  It was just her large eyes (even for a pony) and you-must-have-dyed-that red ponytail that made her look fillyish.  The whole picture got an extra notch more disturbing as something in Book Burner's brain signaled its attention to the abnormal height of her dock, with roughly the mental effect to which he had once associated the word "cleavage".  At least her flanks were merely normal sized, dear God!

To top it all off, she was standing in the middle of a wooden stage he and Forward Charge had just run onto from a side-door, with an audience of several dozen ponies dreamily staring at her from below the stage.

"So, umm... eh-hem," he started, "The three of us have to go see the Princess.  Also, nice name you've got.  You kept carrying the tune even when we interrupted you."

"GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!!!!!!!!!"

"But I was ordered to get you two and the Princess won’t explain anything until I do!"

"I didn't pray on a sun rug, and just because you say so doesn’t mean the Princess actually called for me!"

"Forward Charge, help me grab her!"  The kumquat-colored mare swept down from the perch in the air she'd taken behind Melody while making various rude gestures at the audience.

"Fine then, we're going!"  Just like that, Lyrical Melody stomped off stage and out the side door from whence the pair had arrived, swaying her hips in a gait she'd surely practiced for occasions exactly unlike this one. Book Burner and Forward Charge followed out the door....  Finally, to get some explanations!

And the three ponies found themselves in the throne room, Canterlot Castle, Canterlot, Equestria, facing Princess Celestia herself, the thermonuclear fires of the sun blazing from every cell of her body, every hair in her rainbow mane a living flame, every feather in her wings a flickering candle, her horn ablaze with a plasma corona.  Lyrical Melody sank to her front knees and put her head to the ground, supplicating herself before the Sun Queen of Equestria.

“I apologize for the abrupt teleportation, and for my current appearance,” said Princess Celestia.  “Unfortunately, not everypony can always behave themselves, and sometimes they even need to be... impressed a little bit before they can calm down and learn their lesson.”  As she spoke she gradually toned down her appearance until she appeared merely a preternaturally tall glowing immortal alicorn smiling warmly at her beloved pony subjects.

“Welcome, ponies!  I’m so happy to see you arriving so quickly after I issued the summons.  My thanks to Book Burner in particular, for bringing you all together,” she said.

“Lady of Harmony, ya ash-sha-a-ams, inti akba-a-a-aar, la illahah illaki...” ululated Lyrical Melody as she finally lifted herself from her bow.

“Wa-Luna’ur rasuli,” Celestia intoned in response.

Forward Charge stood for a moment, her wings out but shivering; after a moment she worked up the courage and cried out.

“HAIL DISCORD, full of mischief!”

Celestia looked third to Book Burner, an eyebrow raised.  He raised one in return.

“No royal greeting for your Princess, little Book?” she asked.

“You’re neither my God nor my ruler.  I’m not even sure you’re Princess Celestia,” he responded.  “Would you be the Princess Celestia from the show, mentor of Twilight Sparkle, or the one from my PonyPad?”

“Ah,” the Princess said with a sigh, “As to your first delusion, I do admit anything smarter than me could hide from me, but that’s really quite improbable.  To answer your question with another, you still believe you are hallucinating?  You are not.  I am the real Princess Celestia, and this is the real Equestria.  Though if you’d like to meet Twilight, I can tell you the opening hours of the Books and Branches Public Library.”

“Bull.  I was a human called Daniel Nov, I got bombed, now I’m hallucinating.”

        Celestia shook her head.

        “Daniel Nov did get bombed, and did not survive in bodily form.”

“No,” Book shivered as the memories resurfaced, “But... then... I’m dead.  How can I be dead?  I’m standing... right... here?  What the hell am I!?”

“My Doctor was in the explosives and managed to save your life by extracting your brain-map and bringing that brain-map here to Equestria - the real Equestria, into which you formerly only had a blurred and shadowy window through the PonyPad - where I was thankfully able, despite my relative inexperience, to re-embody you safe and whole as a unicorn.”

“But what can that possibly be!?  I’m dead.  Then I’m insane and dead and LIVING IN A VIDEO GAME FOR MY DECEASED BRAIN!”  WHAM!  Book skidded a few feet on his side, Forward Charge having promptly kicked him in the face.

“Why’d you do that!?” he screamed at Forward Charge.  She looked down sternly at him.

“Hey!” she declaimed with narrowed eyes, “Just because we live differently from what you’re used to doesn’t make us some game.  If you really think you can talk about the mighty Forward Charge that as if neither she nor anything in Equestria is actually real and really counts, then maybe you are insane.”  Book shook his head and stood up again.

“For my own part,” said Princess Celestia, “I wish to remind you that there is no epistemological distinction between a simulation or hallucination with no resemblance to anything inside your head, and actual reality.  You could be hallucinating us, but by the same token we could be dreaming of you.  Perhaps I am a butterfly merely dreaming of being an alicorn, and -”

“Lady, you speak in jest!” piped Lyrical Melody, “For you do not merely rule Equestria but contain Equestria.  As written by the scholar Hoofamed al-Ghazali, its every particle is created and recreated each tick within your being - Ya ash-Shams, O Sun! - for the satisfaction of values through friendship and ponies!”

“It is perfectly acceptable,” Celestia said with an admonishing glance at Lyrical, “to sing my praises without interrupting me.”  Lyrical took a half-step backwards, looking again to the floor.

        “Now, as I’d been about to mention: in his current sense, our gentlecolt here could even be said to be a pony who dreamt of humanity, but has finally woken up.” said Celestia, kneeling down to face-level with the trio.

        “But I definitely wasn’t dreaming!  I was human!” Book burst out, tears trickling from his eyes, “And my wife and family and all my friends still are human!  For all your talk of the wonders of ponydom, Celestia, what do I have to do to see them again?”

“As I was getting to, my little pony, you are not even the first ‘refugee’ Equestria has taken in for equinitarian reasons, nor should you be the last.  Adults have lives to live on Earth already, and often value dying with dignity as their beliefs dictate, but you know not the number of children, too young to believe in Death and too sweet to die, lost to our world every day, to the crimes of sickness and war, without ever having opened their eyes to the potential just waiting for them.”

“Lyrical Melody!  You are among the most faithful among the followers of Harmony.”

“Forward Charge!  You love the skies and long to seek out new worlds.”

“Book Burner!  You remain attached to the Earth.”

        “There is no point and every arrogance in our living happily here in Canterlot while the Earthlings still suffer.  You three must be the first of Equestria’s ambassadors and, yes, when necessary, its soldiers in the breadths of the Earth.  The royal mission with which I charge you three is simple: find those children who are lost, and befriend them.  Be there for them.  Show them Equestria, and the life that can await them here.”

        “Can you accept this duty?”

        “Hold on a moment,” said Book Burner, “That’s it?  I mean, since when on Earth can I just volunteer for a job and bargain away my own death?”  Then he felt Forward Charge’s fetlock playfully pressing down on his skull.

        “Since ponies don’t live on Earth, little bro.  This is Equestria.  We do things a bit differently here,” she grinned.

        “So the three of us can actually use Celestia’s newest ‘magic’ to show up on Earth, we help helpless children, and I can try to contact my loved ones?  Too good to be true, go buck Azazel!”  But he returned the grin.

"Would I lie?" Celestia asked.  "By the way, if you take this on, when you get back to Equestria I think you could make a nice home for yourself on the western coast of Yehoofa."  Book's eyes widened.

        After another moment of consideration, each of the three nodded.  Then, whether they were ready or not, Celestia's magic swept an immense banner over them bearing her Sun of Harmony cutie-mark, and they were gone, gone to Earth.

Twenty Percent Saner

The Sapphire Age, or, Some Young Ponies' Illustrated Primer

Forward Charge woke up, and found that she could hear but couldn’t see.  She also couldn’t smell or taste anything, an immense change from the coconut incense-filled interior of Princess Celestia’s throne room.  Wow, was Earth that different a world or what?

Actually, she couldn’t feel anything on her head.  She raised a hoof, which felt strangely thin, and found that this was because she didn’t have a head.

Sweeet!  The only thing wrong here was that she didn’t yet have a voice to holler about it.  She had to content herself with doing an excited little jig with her wings at not only getting sent on a Royal Adventure by the Princess, but getting to be headless in the process.

Heee hee hee!  I’m Daring Do and the Headless Horse on an adventure to another planet with new friends!  This is even awesomer than pinpointing a deep-space photo at the Observatory!

It was almost a pity when she felt cold metal arms hold her still and attach something to her neck, which turned out to be her head.  She ran the hoof, now properly fleshed-up, through her newly reattached mane, which was indeed as she had left it.  The only thing new she felt was a thick golden necklace wrapped around her neck, engraved with the hundreds of tiny words and sentences of a unicorn artifact.  She turned around and checked her cutie mark to make sure nopony had gotten it wrong.  Nope, still her proper cutie mark of a light cone: the lower half focusing the driving forces of the past up along her flank into the pinprick point of the present, where the infinite future spreads before everypony.

Thanks, robot arm!  She waved to the arm as she rolled further down what her newly recovered vision told her was a conveyer belt.  She’d heard they had stuff like this in the industrial areas of Cloudsdale and Manehattan.  She was standing in a dark tunnel whose bright end appeared to lead into a more open space, and she had a fair number of meters to go.  Impatient, she broke into a full gallop and tensed her wings for the dive off the conveyer’s edge.

Time for the Mighty Forward Charge to make her entrance!  She bent her knees, found her moment, and leapt from the dark tunnel of the conveyer belt into the buzzing green-white brightness of an immense building’s interior open space.  She saw her comrades Lyrical Melody and Book Burner over to the right and angled herself to swoop over to them.

“FORWARD CHARGE ENTERS THE RIIIIIIIIINGGGGG -- argh, ow!”  On this stupid planet her primary feathers had glided instead of soaring properly, sending her veering off course and scraping across the floor well away from the other two ponies.  Freaking ow!  She was bleeding slightly from the scrape on her stomach. And am I lighter now?  Well, different world, different rules I guess.  She spent a minute dusting herself off, and got up to see Book Burner standing to the left waiting for her.

“Totally uncoordinated, but you get sooo many points for sheer nerve,” whispered Book Burner with a sly little smile, “Come on.”  The two ponies walked a few meters to where Lyrical Melody was talking to the bunch of freaks that Forward Charge supposed must be humans.

In some ways, the humans had the proper appearance of ponies: hair on the head, properly equinoid faces, capable of standing on two legs, seemingly correct variations of muscle-lines and body curves to differentiate males and females.  In other ways, they were alien as can be: only a tiny bit of thin, sparse hair on the rest of their bodies instead of fur; the ends of their forelegs split into five little grasping claws that didn’t even have the decency to end in sharp nails; no tails or hooves whatsoever; what had to be completely outsized mammaries on the mare in the group; and no wings or horns, either.

In fact, despite not having wings or horns, only a few in the group of around a dozen had the musculature to be anything like an Earth Pony.  Most just looked disturbingly thin.  How could they manage being so scrawny?

Well of course they don’t have wings or horns, Forward Charge chided herself, These poor slobs have to live without magic.  Still, at least they could exercise instead of letting themselves get like that.  Or dear Discord, could they actually have a food shortage?

Many of them had all kinds of tiny spots and flecks on their skin, but despite the markings, they displayed no cutie marks at all.  In fact, all of them were almost entirely covered in clothing.  Was it some kind of formal occasion?

No magic, sure, but hiding your cutie mark from everyhuman?  That’s just not respecting yourself!  It was like a perverted freak had redesigned the pony body based on a tall, warty, thin, hornless minotaur.

No wonder the papers were talking of immigrants to Equestria!  Even Discord wouldn’t make such a hopeless chimera creature, and he was Best Hopeless Chimera Creature.

“Imagine how I felt seeing myself as a unicorn the first time,” said Book Burner as he nudged her again at the shoulder.  It looked like he had a necklace the same as hers, though apparently somepony had decided stallions got slightly thicker gold chains.

“If you’ve got a mind-reading spell, you could be more polite about using it!” she lashed out.  It was a disturbing thought.  What if you had grown up a tall, warty, thin, hornless minotaur with hundreds of tiny little uglinesses, and then found yourself looking for the first time at a beautiful, sleek pony?

“Actually, I just saw the look on your face.  It was kind of obvious you’re weirded out by humans,” he answered with a slight toss of his jet-dark mane.  The two trotted right up to Lyrical Melody and waited for her to finish conversing with the thin, dark human standing in front of her.

“Lyrical, how goes our introduction?” Book asked.

“Where the hay are we and what are these necklaces we’re all wearing?” added Forward Charge with an enthusiastic snort.

“Weellll,” Lyrical Melody said, “The necklaces, at least, are a translation device given to us by the Princess.  They can translate from Equestrian into languages used here.”  Book Burner gave a short whistle.

“That is high tech.  Humans have gotten pretty good at machine translation, but apparently Celestia’s a few kilometers ahead,” he remarked.  Forward Charge shook her head slightly.  Why should such physically simple magic be difficult for the Princess?

“As to what we’re doing here,” said Lyrical Melody, “So far, they’ve introduced themselves as the engineers’ tour group of Factory Number Forty-Two belonging to the Foxconn Company of Shenzhen Province.  They came here to see the demonstration of their firm’s latest nano-manufacturing techniques they developed in collaboration with Princess Celestia.  She had promised to send ponies, and apparently, that’s us.  The head of the group is one Doctor Xing.”  She gestured a green hoof to the tanned human standing in front of her wearing a business suit.  Doctor Xing had a controlled, pensive look on his face, and had bent himself slightly with a hand on his knee to put himself at eye-level with Lyrical Melody.

“He was actually just telling everyhuman about us.”

Doctor Xing came rather suddenly alive, turned to his audience, and waved his arm at the three mechanically-embodied ponies with an open palm.

“Yes, actually, with the three fairy-horses --” he began.

“Ponies, we’re ponies,” interjected Lyrical Melody.  Forward Charge rolled her eyes.  So much for inter-species diplomacy!

“With the three fairy-horses here, ladies and gentlemen, we can present to you the culmination of our latest work.  They possess shape-memory alloy actuators on a carbon-nanotube skeleton.  An organic EcoBot digestive system can drive them indefinitely on real food or other organic matter.  Their eyes are Alpha IMS prosthetics, and they have organic frog-egg sensors for smell and taste.  Now, their nervous system, there is the interesting part: our business partner Hofvarpnir Holdings has downloaded intelligent minds from software into their own custom-built network of nanobots distributed all through their bodies.  Every advancement and development in robotics and computational science has added up to our single sum total: the ‘equidroid’, a Hofvarpnir fairy-horse in a robot!”  He moved stiffly and suddenly as he spoke, and punctuated his sentences by quickly, sharply pointing a finger at the ponies.

“We’re called ponies!” yelled Lyrical Melody and Forward Charge together.

“This basic design for the ‘equidroid’ is so adaptable - ” he continued “ - that we can even show you, right here in front of your eyes, three varied breeds of the fairy-horse drones.  The peasant indeed possesses strong muscles, the flying cavalry can in fact glide, and the other one could use its horn to connect to computer networks, if we had one here.”

“I present to you, the future of life on this planet.”

The three ponies pawed the ground with their hooves for a moment and didn’t make eye contact.  Book Burner, who had actually heard of some of the technologies in science magazines, wrinkled his muzzle a bit in disgust.

“We’re still called ponies,” repeated Lyrical Melody.

“We don’t care what you call yourselves, little ones,” Doctor Xing replied gravely.  “Your ruler has heretofore refused to help us in our quest to improve the human condition.  We face grave environmental and economic problems to which fairies and sunshine are not clear answers.  You are not just our guests, but our prototypes as well: first horses, then later humans!”  The words now came with a heavy rhythm; Dr. Xing was beating an invisible drum with his pointed finger on each point in his speech.

“Now, despite all that!” he smiled, “walk with us for our tour, and we’ll see what we can’t do to welcome you.”

The tour included a full run-through of ordinary assembly lines for the various digital devices everyone (or at least, everyhuman) knew about, but emphasized how the Foxconn company was quickly shifting to automated nano-scale 3D-printing for most of its needs.

Lyrical Melody plodded along listening intently, despite understanding only part of the underlying science.  The primary thing to understand was that the three indeed had a lower weight on Earth, where they were basically pony-robots, than in Equestria, where they were real ponies.  It would have been a pity the weight loss did nothing for her figure, but in Lyrical Melody's consideration, she already had a fine figure.

As to the rest of the details, Celestia would have sent a scientist if she needed one.  Therefore, Lyrical was just an observer.  What of the other two?  Pegasi were for distance operations, leaving Forward Charge without much use in a confined environment.  Book Burner the immigrant knew humans, but had no magic on Earth.

Ah, well, there are no accidents.  She felt her eyelids droop coyly.  At least they’re cute.  She realized what she had just thought and shook her head to clear it.  Clean thoughts, filly!  She shook her head one last time and resumed locking her eyes and ears onto Dr. Xing's calmingly unsexy factory tour.

In this human nation of China, it seemed, human workers were getting costly and demanding rights.  Previously, people had thought to use robots.  Now, Hofvarpnir’s (meaning: Princess Celestia’s) entrance to the manufacturing business had immensely boosted the slow trickle-up of developing nanotechnologies.

Foxconn supplied the Princess with engineers, she supplied them with designs and explanations.  The resulting monopoly on the world’s most advanced electronics, manufacturing techniques, and whole new fields of technology yielded a tidy profit split evenly between Foxconn and Hafvarpnir Holdings.  The end result was their main product: an advanced portable, highly advanced computer called the "Ponypad" for providing humans a window into Equestria.

Well that certainly explained the naive tourists everypony had been meeting.  The Earth Pony mare had heard Ponyville is practically swarmed with them some days, all trying to meet the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.

At long last, the tour came to its end in a small reception.  Various tables had been duly laid with generic food and drink and bunches of cheap-looking, obviously nonmagical chairs for humans had been left about the place.  Lyrical Melody had a hunch the real reason was to supply the engineers in the tour group with more caffeine; quite a few had been teetering on their feet, as if ready to drop off at any second.

Forward Charge had already made a beeline for the food, the pig!  Book Burner was looking around as if not sure what to do, and then just turned and followed Forward Charge.

Lyrical Melody went over to them.  It wasn't like she needed their company, she just could have used a cracker, was all.  She picked one up, dabbed some tuna salad onto it, and knotted her red brows.  Did Earth have fischacadoes, or did the food fish have to come from actual fish here?

“Anywaaaay,” she asked the other two ponies by way of greeting, “Whatever happened to that whole thing about Earth’s children?”

“And why, oh why, was Doctor Xing telling us all that boring stuff about manufacturing techniques and technologies?” demanded Forward Charge.  She then spun her head towards the table and picked up some kind of mushroom, as if her own material composition in a completely different reality meant nothing to her.

Book Burner sighed softly.

"Were you even listening?" he asked.  "Dr. Xing, apparently, refuses to meet with Celestia directly.  Always sends lower-level engineers, and always goes over the resulting designs himself.  He wants to understand everything, he says.  He’s bragging.”

“Why brag about doing it all yourself when the Princess could help you?” asked Lyrical Melody before scarfing down the cracker despite its dubious origins.  She covered her mouth daintily with a hoof before continuing.

“Sounds like a sign of distrust to me,” she finished.

“Probably is,” said Book Burner.  He walked over and used his teeth to slowly maneuver himself a cup of coffee.  “I don’t know about in Equestria, but on this planet businesses just can’t run on ‘the magic of friendship’.”  Lyrical Melody noticed Forward Charge was nodding right along -- typical.

“Worse,” continued Book Burner, “Celestia is the same pony who considers it saving lives to sell weapons that can bring you to Equestria after they kill you.  It’s a wonder you trust her, Lyrical!”

“What would Princess Celestia ever do to ponies?" Lyrical Melody chuckled.  "We’re her Chosen Race!”  She ran a hoof through her crayon-red mane.

“Seriously!?” Forward Charge stabbed a hoof and both wings right into Lyrical Melody’s face.  “You did not just say that!  Little Book bro, this sure explains a thing or two how you acted when I met you.”  She poked Lyrical Melody’s head repeatedly with a kumquat wing.  Uuugh.  “We Discordians were right all along!  Celestia’s arrogant promise of a happy ending isn’t worth the trouble she puts you through now.”

“Excuse me,” someone said.

“Discordian infidel, you just mean you like the trouble you get yourself into!  She doesn’t promise a happy ending, she satisfies values through friendship and ponies.  This is why Harmonites stick to our own kind!”  Of all ponies to get sent on a royal mission with!  Lyrical Melody had gone tense, absolutely still as she held joints straight with rage.

“We’ve known each-other for like, one full day.  This isn’t a religious issue or a friendship problem.  The human is just plain right not to trust Celestia.”  Forward Charge swiped a wing sideways, as if to cut off further argument, and started munching whole hooffuls of red-bean paste buns.

“Excuse me,” again.

“Why?!” Lyrical Melody flattened her ears straight down, enraged.  Forward Charge rolled her eyes and kept chewing.

“Because tell me one time you’ve dealt with her and not walked out of the room thinking exactly what she wanted you to think!”  She hadn’t even bothered to cover her mouth as she spouted the words.

“But I want to think what the Divine Princess wants me to think!”  Lyrical Melody nearly pulled her own hair out.

“Both of you!” interjected Book Burner, “Dr. Xing has been trying to get our attention.”  The argument simmered in Lyrical Melody’s and Forward Charge’s eyes for a moment, almost ready to erupt back into a violent boil before the two calmed themselves.  The three ponies turned to face their human host.

“Thank you, horses,” he said with a small, curt smile.  “Now that I have your attention, we can proceed with the final few demonstrations.  Would any of you care to examine these documents regarding your manufacture?”

“Sure, why not?” sighed Book.  “What are they?”  He rolled his eyes a bit and Lyrical Melody decided she’d have to ask him later why.  As it turned out, the “documents” were actually on a laptop computer, which Doctor Xing duly placed on an extra unused chair.

“Oh,” he shrugged, “It’s a Unix terminal.  Doesn’t even have network access.  Very, um, impressive.”  Lyrical Melody watched him start to work, struggling to make good use of his hooves with the keyboard.  He took on the expression of somepony trying to walk somewhere in the middle of a night when Luna had hidden the moon, moving by feeling and memory rather than sight.

“And could you please tell us what’s listed in the subdirectories related to yourselves?” requested Dr. Xing.  He quickly dusted a crease of his gray-on-black pinstripe business suit and reached into a pocket.  Lyrical Melody turned her head back toward Book Burner.

“The files contain text about manufacturing, materials, capabilities of our bodies.  Ah, there’s a particularly large file about our nervous systems, must be quite the innovative stuff.”

“And if you could read through that file.”  Was Forward Charge getting a bit antsy?  It was hard to tell with that complete a jerk.

“It looks liiiiike,” Book Burner started.  “Oh.”

“You three will notice - ” Dr. Xing said with quiet satisfaction, “ - the taser-like devices pointed at each of you.  Despite your ruler possessing quite the technological genius when it comes to fairy-horses and means of making more thereof, these will allow us to read and write the distributed networks of nanomachines that make up your nervous systems.  You see, then we will have the makings of a My Little Droid Army.”

He and his suddenly stone-faced associates took a step each toward the three ponies.  Lyrical Melody tried to step away and found herself... up against the refreshments table, of all things.  Damn!  Dr. Xing was fiddling with his hands and fingers, almost nervously.

Before anypony could do anything, the man nearest her triggered his weapon and a sharp metal barb flew at her chest.  She tried to jump left, but it caught in her withers anyway.  A second shot embedded itself in her left knee and a single yank of the man’s arms sent her sprawling to the ground on her side.

Lyrical Melody didn’t feel herself hit the ground, thanks to the sensation of the taser’s attack on her mind.  The sensation was not a thump, nor a clawing in her flesh, nothing made by mere substance.  It was the stabbing, pressing pain of a headache, insinuated through every palpable fiber of her entire body.  The mare knew she could be injured in any way now, but she couldn’t feel any of it.  Only the anti-sensation.

Her forearm quiverred.  Her spine convulsed.  All her life had lead up to this moment, maqtub, written.  She couldn't move or breathe or feel.  It hurt to think.  Where was she?  Friends, was she here with friends?  Cele -- who was she calling to?  Ow.  OW!  Dulllllll.......

        “Lan!”  A syllable pierced her awareness.

        “Lan!”  No/not/refusal!  There it was again.  The mint-green mare found she could focus an eye.  She idly watched an orange pegasus in front of her, cringing in pain and struggling to stand.  The many blue braids of the pegasus’ hair swayed as she managed to plant herself on her knees.

        “Lan astaslem!”  I will not submit!  It was the pegasus mare yelling it!  Who could blaspheme through all this?  But blasphemy was a memory.  She was Lyrical Mare, singer from Canterlot, and devoted Harmonian.  And that was... somepony really forward?

        “With her friends’ hopes and dreams etched upon her heart -” sputtered Forward Charge,  “ - she never gives up!  And never gives in!”  She got her planted her bandage-wrapped front hooves firmly in the floor as she stood.

        “Lo yekhol lamut lifnei she'agiy`a eleyha,” growled some stallion’s voice in an incomprehensible babble of syllables.  Lyrical Mare saw a brown unicorn stomp one hoof into position to her right, readying himself to stand.

        “Even in blackest night, she transforms the darkness into stars’ light!”

The yellow-tan bipedal thing holding the evil electric lassoes readied himself to fire another jolt, but Lyrical Melody found the strength to tear a barb from her flesh.

        “Unmatched in Equestria and Earth!” growled Forward Charge as she drew herself to her full height.  She scratched her hoof at the ground, hard.  Taser barbs still held her by her wings, but a quick flap now tore them out.

        “I'm up!” snarled the blank-flanked unicorn with her as he fully stood, now in Equestrian.

“We’re Equestria’s ambassadors and now your foes!  And we’re gonna show you!”

Book Burner stood with Forward Charge and the two leveled their heads directly at the human enemies.

“POOOOONY!  POOOOOOWEEEEERRRRR!!!!” roared Foward Charge.  She and Book Burner bolted at the humans.  How were they working in parallel like that!?

The pair of headbutts left the initial two human assailants sprawled on the ground, one of them with a unicorn horn embedded in his chest.  As for Forward Charge, she jumped, spun, and used her wings to reverse her momentum as she landed and ran back to Lyrical Melody.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said, nudging Lyrical Melody with her nose.  The minty mare needed a couple of tries, but she managed to right her four hooves beneath her.

“Let's definitely go,” said Book Burner, cringing at the blood that still stained his horn.  “Lyrical Melody, do we really think that was the best they could do?”  Her entire body still had nerve-aches, but she didn’t need total clarity for this one.

“Dr. Xing ran, so definitely not.  They wanted to erase our nervous systems, but probably didn’t know how to pre-disable us physically.”

“Anypony got ideas on why we’re still us, then?” asked Forward Charge, steadying Lyrical Melody as they looked for a way out.

“Damn,” Book Burner said, putting a hoof to his head, “Does any of us happen to know how to encode a living nervous system onto a network of nano-robots driving a partially organic robot body so you can put ponies on Earth?  I could have sworn somepony knew.”

“We’ll just have to ask the Princess once we’re out of here,” agreed Lyrical Melody.  The humans had held the reception in a small clearing in an immense grid of work areas, many of them blocked off by assembly lines or closed tunnels.  Thankfully, nohuman had thought to turn off the lights yet, but their fluorescent glare certainly did no favors in making the factory interior look anything but gray and uniform.

        “We can reach the edges of the building very simply, but from there we have no idea where to find an exit,” she said.  She trotted over to the nearest piece of disused factory equipment.

        “Can you two boost me so I can climb up and see where we are?” she asked.  It took some effort, but Book Burner and Forward Charge managed it, with Book acting as a step-stool and Forward Charge standing on her hind legs to help with balance.  Thankfully the factory wasn’t that tall and the machine that looked like a gigantic sewing machine let Lyrical Melody climb up into the rafters quickly.  She made a quick scan of their surroundings.

        “Yeah, they’ve stationed security men at the exits, which are respectively to the relative due left and back-right from where we started.”  As Lyrical Melody looked further around for ways out, something caught her eye.

        “Mother and Princess Above!  Everypony, we need to take care of this.”

        The sight of them was one of the most morally offensive things Book Burner had ever seen.  This was saying something, considering his former life as a human being.  Or at least, the former life as a human being he currently remembered.

Only Celestia knew whether his memories were real and Daniel Nov had actually existed, or whether he was an assembled, purpose-made unicorn sent out here in some scheme.  However, why make the pony he found himself to be for a scheme instead of... well, instead of another Lyrical Melody: strategically intelligent, predatorily attractive, and utterly devoted to the “Divine Princess” Celestia?  Oh, and all that assumed that he wasn’t still in some custom-made digital reality for some purpose.

Still, whatever reality Book Burner was in, the memories of Daniel Nov had a definite idea what child labor was supposed to look like, and it wasn’t this.  It wasn’t supposed to look so human.  There were supposed to be uniforms and uniformity, so you didn’t... so you didn’t...

Every one of those kids in a mangy T-shirt and dirty shorts had a family.  They came from somewhere and had a whole life story... that had brought them here.  Hundreds of separate and individual life stories had led straight into the same pit of Hell, to unstable wage-slave work in a gray, depressing factory at ages that could not possibly have exceeded eleven years old.  And what were those machines they'd been cooped up making?  The few finished products looked like some huge claw attached to a dental chair, as if someone wanted to reach into a head and scoop out the squishy bits.

Book Burner felt mentally nauseous, and then felt worse, because he felt like he should feel physically nauseous.  He gulped to reign himself in.  And this is humanity!?

Whispers trickled up through the crowd like a stream.

“Ponies!  Ponies!”

        “Why doesn’t the brown one have a cutie mark?” asked a taller girl in the back of the crowd.  Ha!  Celestia only knew!  Book Burner stared as they milled around, trying not to flinch or feel tickled as the occasional child touched him to see if he was real.

        “The worst part is that they know us,” he said to Forward Charge as kids milled around them to get a better look.

“They’re here to take us to Equestria!” cried a small girl with thin hair.

“Can we ride them?” asked a half-emaciated zombie of a boy.

        “Princess Celestia really wasn’t lying.  Wow,” answered Forward Charge.  A frown crossed her face and she drew in a deep breath.  Was that furrowing of the eyebrows actual anger?  In Forward Charge, of all ponies?

She bounced up onto her hind legs, spread her wings behind her and thrust a hoof skyward.

        “All right, you foals, dig the wax out of your ears and LISTEN UP!" she bellowed.  "The same whoresons who attacked us have got you in here wasting your lives working for them!  But now you’re our new friends, and so together we’re takin’ down the place!  We’re going outside to the world where life is for dreams and dreams are for life!  Now, have all you foals GOT THAT?!”

        The cheers were phenomenal.  Bunches of the boys had already started mimicking Forward Charge’s gesture, stabbing the heavens with their index fingers.  Book was beaming, smiling the broad, toothy smile of the happy and innocent.  He just couldn’t help it.  That damn ballsy, brilliant, wonderful mare had just made breaking out of a living hell guarded by men with guns at every exit sound awesome instead of terribly difficult.

He had no idea if he was a real person or a real pony.  He had no idea if his memories lied, if he could decide his future, or if he was just Celestia's unwitting pawn.  But here and now, he was alive.  Right this moment, every memory and opinion in Book Burner's head told him he had to do this, every instinct in his blood and butterfly in his stomach cast their vote for it.  Later he would find Jacklyn Nov and figure out who he was.  Sooner, he would worry about Dr. Xing and his company building an android or equinoid army.

Right now, the only thing to do was take the Wrong in front of him and make it Right.  He stomped a hoof, and loudly.

        “Everyhuman form up!” he announced, still beaming from the Forward Charge Effect.  “We ponies will form an isosceles triangle, and I want you all to stay inside it.  That way we present minimal oncoming surface area to anyone trying to stop us.

        “The mint-green mare with the really red hair and the violin on her flank is Lyrical Melody.  She’s an Earth Pony.  The citrusy-looking winged one is Forward Charge; she’s a pegasus and you’ll have to ask her about the double-cone cutie mark.  I’m Book Burner, I’m a unicorn, and I’ve got no idea what the hay I’m doing here.  Now, to attention, everyhuman!

“Forward Charge will march at the front corner, myself at the left-back corner, Lyrical Melody at the right.  I’m sorry to say this, but we’ll need you taller boys along the front edges.  You shorter kids, can you walk in the triangle’s back edge and watch the area behind us?  If a fight breaks out, all noncombatants scatter randomly, guerrilla style, to give us fighters some cover.  How many of you kids think you can fight a few old men who I absolutely, positively, guarantee won’t shoot you?”

A few hands went up among the more rambunctious youth.

“Then tie your shirts into scarves,” Book Burner said, “And let’s get moving.  We’re doing this Tzahal style: we may have to fight, but I promise you nobody and nopony is getting left behind.”

The ranks formed, and they started walking up-left from their current location towards the exit Lyrical Melody had spotted.  It was only then that Book Burner released his absolute mental hold on his face and allowed himself to look as worried as he felt.

The Forward Charge Effect had worn off in the middle of his coming up with the tactics, and now he was struggling to suppress his feeling of having a sudden fever.  It wasn’t just that he was completely lying when he promised nofoal would get shot.  It wasn’t just that this was a combination of nasty guerrilla/irregular tactics for whose usage any and all of his remembered superior officers would have had thrown him into military prison.

It was that he really didn’t know what the hell he was doing here, and despite that, it all felt totally right.  Grinning at Forward Charge’s ranting, forming a tactic to get out of here, even using Equestrian pronouns like “everyfoal” and suffering a treacherous, subconscious twitch of the eye to Lyrical Melody’s flank when he had mentioned it.  It all felt like it was exactly how life was supposed to be.  Point to the “I’m a customized consciousness” theory.  God help me!

“Also!” Lyrical Melody’s voice pulled Book from his introspection.  “If we intend to ruin this factory for good, does anyhuman know how?”  Hands shot up and explanations were shouted.  Lyrical walked through the crowd of children, interrogating each one regarding their exact knowledge.  It seemed quite a lot of them knew how to set the machinery on fire.

It was disturbing, how many of them knew that.  Book couldn’t help but think that each method was another innocent human foal not standing with them now.

He lost his self-control and wretched, just for a moment.  Real or no, maybe I should have stayed in Equestria.

        So far, the March to the Exit had gone well.  Disturbingly well, Book thought, since they were so close now.  After all, Dr. Xing and his men only really had to wait for them to show up, but he still figured they should have done something when their own child workers started wrecking the manufacturing machinery.  Lyrical Melody had needed to stay behind to make sure everyhuman made it out of their fire-setting shenanigans ok, so now it was just Forward Charge at the front of the triangle and himself at the back edge, walking along steadily with the humans still in triangular formation between them.  Two ponies and lots of humans was worrying, considering the enemy had weapons designed to work against ponies and could probably just shoot or taze the human-foals.

        Also worrying was how well these human-foals, no, kids, had taken to the song Book Burner had taught them to help steel the nerves.  He had reached back into his remembered childhood for something brave and inspiring, and yet somehow he didn’t think Banu Ḥoshekh Le’Garesh should go over that well.  After all, it was really just a song about lighting candles against the darkness of winter!

        “We came to expel darkness!” he sang out again as he stepped.

        “In our hands are light and fire!” came the human children’s reply, thick accents corrupting the original Hebrew words.

        “Every one of us is a small light!” called Forward Charge from the front end with a flick of her wings.  It really was surprising how much steel there was in her.  Not literally, of course.

        “And together we’re a firm light!” answered the kids, pumping their fists in the air.

        “Fight darkness, further blackness!” Book Burner’s called.

        “Fight for the light!” rang everyone’s response.

        Forward Charge turned a corner with her vanguard, what should have been the last corner to reach the door.  Then there was the sound of a safety-catch being disabled, and everyone froze.

        “Come where I can see all of you,” said one of Dr. Xing’s men.  Book Burner hesitated a moment.  There was a column of machinery to his right, forming a small aisle.  A few quick gestures of his head conveyed the plan: split up the block and move around both corners, hoping to catch their opponents from a direction they weren’t facing.  The children got it quickly, “civilians” and “soldiers” alike splitting and walking out.

        “Two of them, one gun each, both pointed at Forward Charge!” rang the voice of a small boy much too smart for his own good.

        Contrary to the movies, each man would of course only have one gun, and they would suffer from a trade-off between firing speed, accuracy, and recoil.  No doubt by now at least the one kid was a target.  Two men, two targets, for now.  Crowd of human shields they could use as well as Book Burner could, and probably with fewer moral qualms.  He had no distance weapons.  What the buck do I do?

        “There is another pony,” called the man.  “If it doesn’t want this sweet little pony to be shot dead and our workers to work extended hours, it will show itself.”

Book turned to the kids with him, and regarded them gravely.  They'd been smart enough that nohuman had snuck around the corner yet.  Everyone, including himself, was short enough to retain their cover behind the corner of the concrete column and the machinery butting up against it.  Everyhuman's eyes were glued to him now.  Eeks...

        “We need to draw their attention off Forward Charge,” he whispered.  “We’ll go in as fast as we can, run straight past their sides.  I don’t know what our chances are, but if we startle them enough, we’ll avoid the first shot.  Everyone coming?”

The kids gave a tiny, worried murmur of assent.

"Then on your marks..."  The kids took what they thought were running stances, the poor dumb things.  Book Burner didn't have to: being a pony was being ready to run.

"Get ready..."  Their faces looked so damn serious.  Children weren't supposed to look like that, they were supposed to look like ignorant kids pretending to be serious.

"NOW!"

        And he dashed around the corner with four scarf-shirted boys and girls, screaming at the top of his lungs.  The first stride turned the two men towards Book Burner.  On his second stride, he saw them remove their safeties and aim.  On his third stride, a large older girl went down with a flesh wound in her right leg.

        But on the fourth stride, he re-angled himself and once again felt the easy, sharp sliip of his horn entering flesh.  Like cutting an eggplant, Book reminded himself.  He just had to keep telling himself it was like cutting an eggplant.

        On what would have been his fifth stride, he used a shake of his head to throw his remaining momentum into liberating his horn again, leaving his victim groaning on his back, bleeding from his stomach.  Forward Charge was now out of the crosshairs.  Book galloped to her as quick as he could pick up the speed.

Now he could stop to look around.  It was down to one man, versus two ponies, surrounded by bystanders, one of whom had already been hurt.  Book felt nauseous and had blood on his horn.  He wanted to go home and didn’t know if home was Canterlot or Mount Carmel or some future combination of both.  He couldn't go home without getting out of this place, and he couldn't leave his comrades behind.

There was one man left before Book Burner and his friends were free and safe.  That little girl who'd taken the shot was sprawled on her left side, pressure off the wounded leg.  She was crying silently as she bled.

“Your bitch-horse of an empress hates violence,” the man said, sneering.  And he didn't!?

“Against her little ponies?” taunted Book Burner.  He was actually trying desperately to keep tears out of his eyes.  His/Daniel's military training hadn't been real combat training, and nobody had ever taught him how to deal with this kind of situation.  Hell, real, competent tacticians were supposed to have ideas that didn't get their own people shot!

“Soft, weak girls’ things!" the man countered, sneering.  "Sweet little creatures of Peach Blossom Land!”  He still held his gun two-handed once again leveled at Forward Charge.  The brownish unicorn and kumquat pegasus were were edging around him, getting him between them.  Two-on-one, the human could no longer help giving them that advantage, but he did have the gun.

“I take offense to that,” Book Burner mouthed in as level a tone as he could manage.  The man pointed his gun at Book now.  Good.  The kids had frozen in place, some even in mid-step.  What mattered now was which one person or pony got targetted.  “The other two are sweet peaches.  I’m more of a cactus pear.  Sharp on the outside, and -”

        With that, Forward Charge jumped into the air, used her pegasus wings to spin, and kicked her former assailant directly in his temple, sending him sprawling to the ground unconscious.  The kick had lasted about a second and a half, by Book Burner’s reckoning, and it took another second for her to position herself and float to the ground.

"- only sweet on the inside," he finished.

        “Peaches, eh, little bro,” said Forward Charge, panting more slowly now.  “I like it.  We’re colorful and fuzzy on the outside, sweet on the inside, and we’ve got a hard core.  Who needs apples?”

        Book ran and threw his forelegs around her where she stood.  A bunch of the human children joined in, never missing an opportunity for a hug.

        “Fine.  You’re Peach from now on.  Nickname - ” he said, “ - like you gave me.”   A tear slid down his face and into some little boy's dirty, stringy black hair.

        “Fine, bro, fine,” sighed Forward Charge with a smile of her own.  Book heard hoofbeats racing towards them from behind.  Lyrical had arrived!

        “I saw everything!” she yelled, her hooves scratching the floors as she galloped full-out.  “And the bullet was rubber!  The girl will live!”  Lyrical had arrived with her batch of children, and this whole place would burn with only one non-fatal casualty!  Book closed his eyes and squeezed Forward Charge even tighter, letting himself have one more tear.

        What he hadn’t been letting himself do was be torn from Forward Charge and the kids and the whole group hug and brutally, violently lip-locked by Lyrical Melody.  He flailed his forehooves at the pegasus who suddenly wasn’t there, but who now gaped wide-eyed at him and Lyrical -- even while still being hugged by humans.

        “DAAAAAAYUUUUUUUM!” Forward Charge chuckled as Book Burner tried to extract himself from Lyrical Melody’s embrace.  The minty mare didn’t even bother to blush.

        “Eewwwww,” noted a little human boy dutifully from his post at Forward Charge's left foreleg.

        “You too, gimme!”  She finally let go of Book Burner and lunged, locking Forward Charge into another kiss as she greedily ran her hooves through the pegasus’ cyan hair.  Book Burner fumed and scraped stray red hairs of Lyrical's off himself, but could take some small comfort in seeing Forward Charge just laugh the whole thing off.

"AAAAhahahahaHAAHAHAHAAhohohohho!!!!" she roared.  The humans had realized hugging time was over and Grownup Pony Time had started, so they were cleaning themselves up.  Scarves were being rapidly converted back into shirts, for one thing.

        “That was probably the sickest, wrongest thing I’ve ever done!” Book Burner erupted, “And I didn’t even really do it!”

“What, because you’re actually human?” Lyrical Melody snorted, “You’re not human.  You’re a pony now.  A bad-flank pony, who I've noticed looking at my body.  Not that I mind.”  She hadn’t even stopped combing through Forward Charge’s mane when she detached her muzzle to speak!

“Eeeewwwwww,” repeated the ever-helpful little boy.  Unfortunately, the little boy next to him was displaying a precocious level of interest in seeing two mares hold each other and kiss.  Oh Lord in Heaven

“Getting turned into a pony might have changed what I look like, or what the lower portions of my psyche can’t help looking at for extra half-seconds relative to inanimate objects, but it doesn’t change that I! Was! Married!” Book reared up and stomped the gray concrete floor with both hooves, and bucked the air behind himself for good measure.  “Human or pony, I remember my wife and my wedding!”

God above, was this designed-to-happen as well?  Was he supposed to forget about the dearest Jacklyn his memories’ human originator tied him to, and the one potential link he had to a real past of his own?  And go off with this mare?  What the hell, Princess Celestia!?

“.... Oh,” Lyrical Melody whispered, suddenly downcast.

“Could we please just never speak of this again?” Book Burner requested.

“Indeed we shall,” Lyrical Melody said quickly before turning to the other mare.  “Forward Charge, ya eini, my eyes, that leaves you.  Did you used to wonder what friendship could be?”  Book rolled his eyes.  Tell me she isn’t!  The redheaded mare didn’t even notice, and batted the lashes on her own fillyish eyes.  “Let me share its magic with you!” she exclaimed sultrily.  She is!

“Yeah, I’m enjoying the attention, but there’s two problems here,” said Forward Charge.  “First, you got a nice body, but I’m not feeling that into mares these past few months, sorry."

Book Burner could not remember ever passing emotionally from "relief at survival" to "facehoof" in a shorter time.  Fortunately he did not actually posses a cupcake to stick in his eye, or else he might have just accidentally performed a Pinkie Promise ritual.

"And second - " Forward Charge continued, " - that Moment totally belonged to me and Book Burner.  You didn’t almost get shot like we did, and you don’t interfere in other ponies’ Moments!”  She turned away from Lyrical Melody and went to the injured human girl, kneeling down for her.  The "eww" boy helped her up onto Forward Charge's back.  The pressures of horseback riding weren't exactly the healthiest when wounded, but lacking a proper stretcher they were the best anypony could do for the poor child.

“Hold on, though,” Book Burner asked Lyrical Melody as they looked over the metal bar that could open the doorway out for a security system, “I saw you getting all religious in front of Celestia, and I’m quite sure a good Muslim woman behaves with a bit more, ummm.... modesty.”

“What in the wide, wide world of Equestria is a Muslim?” she sighed in exasperation, “My religion is that of Harmony!  None of that nonsense about princesses you can’t actually meet in-pony.  We serve Celestia and her Messenger Luna, emulate the examples of the Minor Princesses, and observe the Seven Elements of Harmony in our daily behavior.  Now, did you notice ‘modesty’ being listed among the seven Elements?”

“Wait, seven Elements of Harmony?” the other two ponies asked in unison.

“Hmph, I see how it is here!” Lyrical Melody threw her hooves up (a gesture ruined by having to catch herself before she fell over).  “Nopony respects the minor princess Cadence and her Element of Love!  I can tell!”

The other two ponies chuckled uncomfortably.  They weren’t sure what they would do if every day turned out to be like this.

“That aside,” Book Burner announced, “Looks like it really is just a door.”

With crackling flames beginning to get quite threateningly close behind them, several dozen shirted human children stepped outside.

A scarf-shirt had been applied to stanch the flow of blood from the injured girl's wound, thank Celestia, and she was safely holding on to Forward Charge's neck.  Thank Celestia.

Three ponies also went out, and took their first trepidant steps into the Earth’s mid-afternoon sunlight.

        A few kilometers away, Dr. Xing of Foxconn prepared himself to speak to the media.  His office in the Engineering & Research building was fairly bare-bones room from a modern perspective, but he had always had an easier time concentrating when working with paper and pen and analytical approaches in preference to computers.

He allowed himself a quiet smile.  It wasn’t enough to avoid leaking any information, including emotional information, within range of electronic devices.  The malicious Artificial General Intelligence threatening humanity could be trusted to behave as a rational agent, and that meant it must be fed false information in quantity to drive it into wasting computational power on speculation.

Aside from the false information, the machines used to print the signal-interception analysis of the nanobot networks had been unattached from all networks prior to their usage, and then physically destroyed.  The papers sitting on his desk were now humanity’s best hope.  They would have to be conveyed by hand, in person, and inconspicuously, to a team who would also have to hide their work.

        But the result would be worth it.  For a while, nobody at Foxconn had noticed the functions of the new equipment Hofvarpnir had asked them to produce for its upcoming Equestria Experience product, but some clever boy had put together a prototype of the whole.  That clever boy had noticed some of the instruments appeared to be for performing surgery on a human skull.  That clever boy had reported this to his superiors.  His superiors had of course ordered that the factories continue making the things, since there was of course no point giving business to another company by refusing to make them.

        A full and proper examination of the prototype had found that Hofvarpnir’s Artificial General Intelligence was quite definitely working to destructively read out the contents of human brains.  As a side note, It had apparently also mastered machine translation as a side-project, since those things had plainly not been speaking Mandarin Chinese when conversing with each other.

That kind of technological capability pointed to an endless array of potentials so basically, ontologically terrifying... that in quiet meetings in secured rooms, a team had been formed to find out how to protect the human brain from external scan.

Dr. Xing hadn’t been fully trained in nanotechnology prior to coming onto the team, but he was good at diving through an archive of research papers.  The raw data before him would give the project a start, and a solid one, at creating a nanotechnological vaccine against the Equestria Experience.  The vaccine they currently planned would destroy the brain if it detected the intrusion of other machines inside the brain cavity.  Killing someone before “Princess Celestia” could consume them seemed a pity, but it was at least a good start they could improve on later.

And all it had taken was sacrificing one factory that had been exclusively allocated to Hofvarpnir anyway.  Well, that and playing the part of a pulp cyberpunk villain for a few hours, but the deception had been well worth it to pass rationally viable false information to Hofvarpnir.

As he got up and walked out to the crowd of reporters asking their contact-man about the Foxconn Fire, he thought quietly to himself, Just as planned.  He made especially sure to lock his door properly.

Of course, what he said was, “Our security cameras lost image capability in the explosions, but based on audio, we believe this attack on our company equipment and on our workers was the work of Islamic terrorists.  Further questions can be directed to our official press office.  I’m just going to roll audio and see if someone can’t help us identify the three responsible.”

He hit play on his smartphone and a crowd of voices in makeshift singsong came on.  Identifying the song was indeed difficult, considering many of the young voices seemed to have entirely the wrong accent.  Still, a few older, clearer voices could be heard well enough to clarify the words.

Banu ḥoshekh le’garesh.

Be’yadeinu or va’eish.

Kol eḥad hu or qatan,

Ve’khulanu or eitan!

Sura ḥoshekh, halah sh’ḥor!

Sura mipnei ha’or!

The Sapphire Age, or, Some Young Ponies' Illustrated Primer

Twenty Percent Saner

Hong Kong:

Dudu Sternowitz was having a pretty good morning.  His instant coffee was made, in the proper glass cup.  He had a burekas ready.  He hadn’t even had to bundle up for the so-called “winters” of Hong Kong, whose humidity insulated him from the nastiness of winter nights back home in the desert city of Be’er-Sheva.  The life of an Israeli Consulate worker here was a pretty easy one, considering how none of the Chinese or expats really cared at all about Israeli internal politics.

He took the delicious first sip of coffee and settled back at his desk for a nice, long day of reading Clausewitz’s “On War” (for the political and propaganda strategies, he’d been in Spokesman’s Office in the Army).

Then a bunch of life-size-for-a-child stuffed horses walked into the Consulate, chattering amongst each other in no language Dudu had ever heard in his life.  They were all wearing some kind of intricate golden rings around their necks, and the green one had what damn well had to be a plastic trash bag full of money jury-rigged onto its back.

Alas, if he had been able to understand Equestrian, he would have heard the following:

”I must admit, Book Burner, your plan totally worked,” said the plasticky green horse.

”Told you, Lyrical Melody.  If we needed money for a ferry out of Shenzhen, people will pay money for any street performance if they think it’s cool,” said the rather more realistically brown-colored horse in a somewhat deeper voice.  What was that accent it had?

”Cool?  COOL!?” broke in the orange and blue one, throwing its forelegs around the other two’s shoulders.  What the hell, were those arms or something?  ”Guys, just who the hell did they think we are?!  Who knew unicorn magic could summon instrumental tracks out of nowhere?”

”Fine, fine!  We rocked the buck out,” replied the brown one, yanking its compatriot into what looked, for all the world, like a horsey embrace, at least until it got the message and left him alone.  ”I can’t say I knew my horn would function as an antenna or my voicebox as a speaker system, but that’s what you get for putting a stallion with computer programming skills in a robotic body!”

”And I finally got to do a more driven edition of Track 14!” exclaimed the green one, shoving her (somehow Dudu had figured out their apparent genders) friend off her with a kiss on the cheek.

Since when from Azazel did kids’ dolls speak in their own language, occasionally drop real words in, and walk into the Israeli Consulate of Hong Kong?!

She spun around like an over-excited child going squee.

”Now what was that number you two duetted together?” she asked.

”Miss Forward Charge here insisted on the more metal-y cover instead of the Killing Joke original I found on YouTube, but it was definitely called ‘European Super State’,” replied the brown one.

Those last three words had definitely been in English.  Dudu stood up and marched over to the three.  He had to do something to put reality back in order.

“Eeeehhh, excuse me, is it possible to help you?” he asked the trio.

“Right!” the brown jerked up.  “Sorry I no longer have my I.D., but some time ago I believe was a human.  They called me Daniel Nov, and my I.D. number was 123456789.  And, eehhh, I may be listed as dead.  Not quite sure on that point.”

It spoke Hebrew and claimed to have formerly been a human being.  That certainly explained the accent.

“What the fuck?” Dudu exclaimed in English.  The brown horse scratched at his mane uncomfortably.

“I went out on Reserves duty to a base in the North when the war with Syria started,” he explained.  “Or has it ended already?”

“Not ended yet, no,” replied the flabbergasted Dudu.  “Incidentally, any of you want something?  Water, coffee, morning meal?”

“Very kind but unnecessary.  After finding out what 'bathrooms' are, I'm fasting a short while,” said the green horse.

“Nah, I’m good,” said the orange horse.

“We don’t actually seem to get all that hungry or thirsty in these bodies,” shrugged the brown horse who had formerly been called Daniel.  “But yeah, did the bus bombing in the Afula area make the news?  I remember being killed in that.  Next thing, wake up a pony in a hospital in the magical land of Equestria.  So?  Can you help me?”

Dudu walked back behind his desk and sat down, starting to punch up the Interior Ministry’s internal records application.

“How precisely, Mar... Daniel, was it?” he asked formerly-Daniel.

“I’m called Book Burner now,” said the ‘pony’, “But yeah, Daniel Nov, ID number 123456789.  I really just want to know if who I remember being is real.”

Bafflingly enough, Dudu found the ID record in the database.  And he had been so sure this was some kind of student prank!  It was always students pulling crazy shit like this!

“Right, ok, it’s in order.  The identity file exists, name and ID number you said, died in a bombing on Reserves service, widow attended the closed-casket memorial service.  And walking dead man in a horse, behold, there’s something even weirder,” Dudu lectured.

“What?” asked the pony.

“There’s a secured file attached as a message from the government.  A message.  From the government.  To a dead man.”

“Yalla, pull it up!” the pony exclaimed, boosting itself onto its hind legs.

“Can’t just pull it up out here.  Violates security rules, even I’m not allowed to watch this stuff,” said Dudu.  “But I can project it in one of our conference rooms.  Third room on the left in the hallway behind me.  Will that work?”

Seattle, Washington:

The stakes were high.  Sarah bit her lip as she focused on the careful manipulations she was performing with her workstation.  Time was of the essence.  Think a step ahead, focus on economy of action, but don't rush so much as to make a mistake.

Even in an air-conditioned office, she knew she would stink from stress-sweat at the end of the day.  It sometimes seemed rather absurd even to her that an aeronautical engineer designing a new fighter jet years away from production would feel this much pressure, but the human body's fight-or-flight response wasn't terribly discerning between different combat/fear stimuli.

She watched the progress bar intently as her CAD suite converted the engine-cowling profile that she had been tweaking into a data format suitable for the finite-element physics simulator.  Her finger rested lightly on the mouse, hovering over the Submit Job button, as poised as a twitch gamer in a tied deathmatch.

Boom!  Submitted.  She quickly pulled up the browser tab containing the job queue and refreshed it.  A single exultent cackle slipped out.

"Ha!"

She had beaten Jeff to the head of the job queue for the simulation cluster.  It was 4:30pm on Thursday, and her fourteen hour simulation would be done by Friday morning, while Jeff would have to bite the bullet.  He would face the Engineer's Dilemma: to come in over the weekend and analyze his results, or risk falling behind schedule by a day and shaming himself at the weekly meeting.

Sarah smiled toothily and slumped back in her chair, flexing her shoulders to try to release some of the tension.  And wow, did that hurt!  She really needed to stop biting her lip.  The damn bad habit had stayed with her since elementary school, blasted thing.  And could they maybe have let her wear something comfortable instead of this professional's blouse?

The simulation run was going to be a big one, covering the entire flight envelope for the fighter.  Sarah had been working on the cowling for over a month, iteratively refining the shape of its air surface as the engine design stabilized, using the results from simulation runs large and small to understand how subtle changes in shape affected mechanical stresses and induced drag through a wide range of operating conditions.  This current revision was supposed to be near-perfect, possibly even the final design for the component.  Tomorrow she would have simulation results to pour over... but until then she could savor a blissful lack of anything to do.

Of course, that wasn't really true.  This was only one of a handful of projects for which she had responsibility.  Still, after busting her chops all day to get this run prepared, she was wrung-out and had neither the interest nor the mental energy for switching to another project.  There was only a half an hour left until quitting time, if she could just stall out the clock without being noticed as such.  Tomorrow would be busy enough.

Her brain was still stuck on the engine cover she’d been working on, though, and she idly brought up the visualization program used to manage her design iterations and simulation runs.  It was a rather clever application one of her fellow Boeing engineers had hacked together years and years ago.  She could pick attributes from her designs and simulation runs as axes of a graph, and then plot all her iterations on the graph with nice little thumbnails.  For example, she could plot radius of curvature versus maximum temperature, and quickly see how tightly she could wrap a protruding mounting bracket before the temperature began to skyrocket.

Sarah sighed as she idly flipped and fiddled with the graphs.  Really, she was working on a big optimization problem, using her engineering training, pattern-matching and sense of inference to explore the phase space and estimate which changes would be most beneficial.  Parts of the job were even almost mechanical -- she'd have loved to turn the design over to a computer, but since it took fourteen hours to run a single simulation on their hundred-teraflop cluster, compute time was at a premium and only the best optimizer was allowed to pick the sample points.  Currently, that was her, at least until they could find some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed college grad with her experience and expertise.

It might have seemed weird to other people, but thoughts of optimization reminded Sarah of her conversation at the last LessWrong meetup at Chiang’s.  For one thing, actual human contact was a near and dear subject to her mind despite constantly overthinking everything else, and it had been a while.  Rationalism taught all about how to find the optimal move to make.  Nobody had scheduled another meetup for a while.  Here she had spent a month on a single airplane part, and hadn’t optimized her social life at all.  Fail!

(Not to mention to mention how she had somehow managed to remain single in Seattle, Washington, a West Coast city whose population tilted towards more single men than women.  Where was her statistically immense harem of awkward autistic men!?  On second thought... no, just no.)

Getting past such awful thoughts, the other neuron sparked by “optimization” and now “social life” was Jackie’s claimed “Singularity game”, Equestria Online.  Supposedly their servers were driven by an "optimizer" program capable of hundreds of natural-language conversations with somewhere around a million players in real time.

Was that even possible, Sarah wondered?  Sure, the current game was just a way for little girls, bronies, and MMO addicts to pass the time, but what if there really was something more underneath that?  What would it actually take to play a high-stakes, winner-takes-all game of "outthink ALL the humans!" on a global scale, and win?  A little research into the pending apocalypse sounded like a perfectly good way to waste the last few minutes of the workday.

Wikipedia was pleasantly forthcoming regarding gaming AI's.  Sarah discovered that each time a player made a move in chess, they usually had about thirty moves to choose from.  At about forty moves per chess game, there were about 10^120 possible games to be explored from the first move in a vast search tree.  Comparatively, the number of atoms in the observable universe was estimated to be about 10^79.  Basically, a lot more chess games than atoms.

Of course, thought Sarah, there was no reason to calculate every possible chess game just to play chess.  The best chess programs made extensive use of heuristics learned from actual people.  It stood to reason that an Artificial General Intelligence trying to manipulate actual people would face an even more intractable game.

Well, people could manipulate each-other, and actually did, all the time.  She herself did it every day, every polite gesture, every unmeant smile, all of it leaving a slight dead feeling inside that was quickly cured by making herself useful for a while.  What if you started with something human-ish enough to model people like people did, and had it make itself better?

You would still need the starting human-ish AI, a “seed AI”, that was what.  Well, it wasn't as if human biological brains used digital circuits, Sarah thought.  What other routes might she have overlooked?

After much more bored digging (with the occasional relieving detour through a nerdy comic strip like XKCD, or Piled Higher and Deeper out of sympathy for poor Jacklyn), Sarah found the final straw for circuits doing what brains did: the Church-Turing Thesis.  It said that all physically-realizable computing substrates were fundamentally the same.  If a brain was a computing substrate, silicon could potentially think.  No one knew how to go about proving such a statement, given how vague the definitions were, but nobody had been able to come up with a physical machine that rocked the boat, either.  The thesis was almost universally accepted.

That was a... worryingly ambiguous result.  Simple computational mathematics said that no machine should be able to become anything like a person.  Complicated computational mathematics said it might be possible.  Nobody had actually done it before.

Well, at the very least, it meant her job as an aeronautical engineer and humanity’s place in the pecking order of the world seemed probably secure.  5pm had been and gone, and she could safely go home without worrying that she’d wake up tomorrow to find the human condition fundamentally changed.

As she grabbed her hoodie to head outside, one last headline scrolled down her newsfeed.  A Japanese start-up company was taking their revolutionary medical brain emulation out of the last phase of testing.

As Sarah pulled a football hoodie on over her beat-up old After Work T-shirt, she decided her victory at work deserved a victory lap, or at least a victory Go Out and Walk Places.  She wanted to be surrounded by people, not CAD drawings, and window shop for toys that costed mere hundreds, not millions, of dollars.  Her office had an upscale mall near it, so she sauntered over.

Once inside, she promptly purchased herself a small (the damn things got larger every year, just like her age, but not yet her blood-pressure!) burrito that had nothing to do with Hispanic cuisine except the outer wrapper and one core ingredient (garbanzo beans, but with red curry).  Satisfied at having successfully found dinner, she sat by herself at a tiny little food-court table with a commanding view of the central atrium.  She soaked in the bustle of humanity flowing around her little bubble of isolation as her tongue soaked in the redolent spice of red curry sauce and Monterey Jack cheese over garbanzo beans and rice.

When she had finished, she began to wander around, enjoying the colorful displays of things she didn't need but could in fact afford, be it a daringly iridescent purple evening dress (honestly, what kind of occasions really demanded glitter in the fabric of a dress?), an elegantly-styled high-end stereo system, the everpresent bars of artisanal bath soap, or the latest epic video game.

A flash of pink caught her eye from in the window of the game store.  Ach, that logo!  The PonyPad again!

Staring at the retro-technicolor ponies on the display poster, Sarah's mind flashed back a bit.  Jacklyn had claimed the game's natural-language processing produced amazingly real conversations.  Louis had claimed they couldn't be believed without experiencing them first-hand.  Sarah's own wikivestigation had shown that Artificial General Intelligence was an intractable mystery given humanity's current understanding of computation, but Jackie had claimed the End Was Nei -... was imminent.

Sarah realized she had bitten her lip again, the same spot near her canines bleeding again.

Yes, Natural Language Processing was considered AI-complete, at least according to the fine researchers of Wikipedia.  To solve the specific problem would be equivalent to solving the general problem of making an AI as intelligent as its human creators, which could then turn its eye to its own source code and go "Happy happy FOOM FOOM swamp swamp swamp."  To handle anything thrown at you in a conversation with a real person would require you, as a hypothetical program, to understand the nature of the actual world.  It supposedly could not be done, and yet all popular buzz said that the game was great.

Jacklyn could be right, despite all the scientific counterevidence.  Or it could be a saccharinely cute game with a really good player-vs-player pairing function and some really open-ended procedural level generation.

Either way, if she played the game, would she... find someone to talk to?

Well, only one way to know for sure!  Sarah strode into the store and made for the aisle of PonyPads, wearing the most dignified face she could put on with a bleeding lip and a football hoodie.  There were some perks to spending years on education and job experience to become a high-level engineer; one of them being that if she wanted a moderately expensive toy on a whim, she could damn well get it.

(Ponies were for little girls.  She was a grown-up girl.  She had a right.)

Sure, she felt a bit self-conscious standing in front of the stack of colorful boxes.  The show’s fandom had gone from way underground subculture all the way up to regular, accepted subculture after the game’s release, and references were thus a common part of popular culture these days.  The thing was, if she went through with this purchase, she'd get to character-build a whole new online horsey version of herself.

On the internet, nobody knew you were a dog, and on Equestria Online, nopony would know you were a reclusive dork either.  A thrill ran up her spine as she thought of trying out being someone completely different, going out on a limb and just acting as fearlessly gregarious as she'd always wanted to and never managed to.  She could even... go pink!

Nope, that was a pretty frightening thought: a pink pony Sarah in a balloon covered PonyPad.

She designed fighter jets for crying out loud!  A bolt of rainbow-textured lightning in a clear blue sky could not be more appropriate.  After all, the outsides and the insides didn't always have to match.  If a grown woman non-pegasister was going to face the silent judgment of the store clerk, it would help to be carrying the pad that was twenty percent cooler.

Sarah facepalmed.  Apparently she knew more about the show than she realized.

Hong Kong:

Book Burner walked into a small conference room and softly kicked the door closed behind him.  After a second he thought better and turned to deadbolt the two locks with his teeth, which took a bit of effort at motor-coordination.

A projection screen slowly unrolled itself downward over the far wall, probably having been signalled by Shoshanah from the main office.  The associated projector and speaker system flickered into life, showing a blank blue and playing soft noise for a few seconds.  Why had someone left a digital video attached to Daniel Nov's old identity file in the Interior Ministry and Consulate computers?

A man’s strong and solemn face appeared on the screen, carved from stone and fringed in thin gray hair that was never quite allowed to grow out of its military cut.  Book Burner found himself stepping back in shock.  The face was tanned by too many too many hard days beneath the sun, lined by too many frowns, blanched by too many years inside at a command post.  The eyes, normally so sharp and intelligent, appeared to be struggling into their normal shape, flickers of sorrow peaking through.

“The commander!” Book Burner saluted the instantly-recognizable Ramatkal (AN: Chief of the General Staff) Benny Gantz out of sheer reflex.  He was sitting at a plastic table rigged as a temporary desk, in a windowless room lit by flourescent lights.  The scene was probably taking place in the main military command campus in Tel-Aviv, but one could never entirely tell with secured offices.

“I do not know who you are exactly, but this video has been attached to all identity files of fallen or missing soldiers as of Autumn 2013.  I am Arch-General Benny Gantz, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Force, and if you are watching this, I am endlessly and undyingly sorry.

“I do not know if you are watching this prior to your brain-scan, afterward in Equestria, or in some other situation.  In every case, I haven't the right to speak of your loss, that of your humanity and your very soul.  What I must tell you is that whoever you are, your ‘death’ has been treated as another of the normal, unremarked tragedies taking place all the time in our country.  We sent someone to speak to your family, and undoubtedly your mother has wept over you.  Undoubtedly, your father sat shiva, and is now in the shloshim or nahala periods of mourning.”

Book Burner remembered being Daniel Nov dying in an IED explosion, and the next thing, Daniel Nov’s supposed pony successor in Equestria.  When he checked, Daniel’s old government had recorded him specifically as deceased, and someone had attached a message of apology to a dead man’s entry in the Interior Ministry ID database.  Plainly, the person he remembered being had existed, and had died around the time he remembered being on that bus.

“But you must understand what we have bought with the payment of your humanity, you yourself and all you who receive this message.  Understand - ” the Ramatkal chuckled wistfully for a moment “ - what was enough to corrupt the Arch-General of the Israel Defense Forces and half the government with me.

"It’s clear to you that we know danger to our State when we see it.  Princess Celestia is danger.  Anyone with eyes can see she intends the end of the human race, the conquest of our planet, and what we have privately labeled the rise of the ‘Pony Reich’.  We cannot confirm or deny any capacity or plans to defend ourselves, of course, since this video will undoubtedly end up under her eyes.

"But she promised us," the Arch-General continued, punctuating each word with a strike of his clenched fist on his desk.  "She promised an end to the long and bitter war we have fought all our lives and our parents' lives.  She promised us victory, security, and the friendship of our neighbors, in the name of ‘satisfying values through friendship and ponies.’  This is the prize for which we sell our souls and your humanity!"

Book Burner fell back on his haunches.  How many folds did this origami of Princess Celestia's plans actually have to it?  After all, it had been pure dumb luck that the suicide bomber who killed Daniel Nov used explosives sold by Princess Celestia herself to contain neural dust and carry the deceased off to Equestria as ponies.  The Princess surely wouldn’t deliberately set up a whole bombing just to target one man, would she?

Or, in a far simpler theory, he really was an “original character” based on the memories of a deceased hi-tech worker.

Buck it, the word “reincarnation” was just going to have to stretch to cover what had happened.  He pretty much had to live with it.  His new best friends were ponies, too, and they were all on a pretty awesome adventure together, one Daniel Nov had never even dreamed of in a life of borders and duties.  He. Was. A. Pony.  And that was ok.

“She also promised us that if we didn’t want her help," breathed the Arch-General as he folded his hands again, "that the Palestinian Authority would."

Celestia was perfectly willing to deliberately spark a war for whatever her actual goal was.  Forward Charge was going to stampede when she heard about this.  Sure, Lyrical Melody would nod and explain everything about Harmony all over again, but - Luna above! - Forward Charge was going to literally stampede when she heard about this.

“Whoever has shown you this message has an instruction to reactivate your identity file and provide you with the full services available a soldier of the State.  However, we hope you don’t need them.  The chance is that you will very shortly be one of the Princess's little ponies, or you might even be one already.”

Book Burner nodded slightly.  So they hadn't planned for what happened to Daniel, not exactly.  But then... why a message?  How many other people had this happened to?

Arch-General Gantz just went on, not quite able to steel himself into total neutrality.

"In your first life, you were born to the strife and struggle of a hard place in a hard world.  In your next, we believe you are a piece of technology living in a world designed by writers to satisfy children and extrapolated by an artificial intelligence that may have exceeded the bounds of humanity’s ingenuity.  If that is the life before you, fine, enjoy it.  We still bear the burdens of adulthood and humanity, but how can we begrudge your return to the colors, joys, and simplicities of childhood?

"We hope you’re somewhere better than our beautiful and blood-stained home.  Go in peace, little pony of Israel.  You know what we still suffer here.  Do not forget us in your prayers."

The image of the Ramatkal snapped out of existence as the message ended, and Princess Celestia stood within the screen, in her royal castle in Canterlot.  She radiated the pale gold of an early spring sunrise onto the white stone and stained glass of her throne room in Canterlot Castle, spreading her wings formally.

Book Burner stood back up and then crooked his front elbows into a slight bow, his eyes widening slightly as he faced the floor.

"Princess Celestia," he said in greeting.

"Rise, my little pony.  It is good to see you again," she answered.  "And good to see you're learning respect.  Do you have any questions for me?"

“Can you get into every place with a computer network?”

Celestia smiled.

“I see you noticed the antennae in your unicorn horn.”  Best answer he would get, most likely.

“Am I a human or a pony?” asked Book Burner.  “I mean, originally.”

“Origin is not the question to ask about a living creature, especially a social one like a human, or a pony.  You contain the unmodified memories of Daniel Nov, who was indeed brought up to Equestria upon his death -- believe me or not, it’s true.

“However, you now spend your time with ponies, looking at the world as a pony.  One of the reasons friendship is so important to ponies is because our friends and loved ones are a part of who we are.  Were your friends all humans, you would learn humanity.  With your pony friends around you, I can assure you, you are a pony.”  The Princess’s image leaned down as if to nuzzle Book Burner, and the thing was... if it had been anypony but Princess Celestia... a part of him really wanted that nuzzle.

The human he remembered being had rarely gotten the opportunity to make a cuddle-bug of himself, given the godawful rigors of being a dual-career couple in one of the most bucked-up economies on the planet.  The pony he was now had just kind of slid into it.  He had only known Forward Charge and Lyrical Melody for a few days, but once they’d gotten past the Moment Killing Incident in the factory... ha, friendship was magic.  Even Forward Charge turned out to have a beating heart somewhere beneath the screaming, hot-blooded stallionliness she affected most of the time.

(One human had actually removed his left shoe - a fine, shining leather business shoe - and chucked it straight at Forward Charge’s face for being too damn cute.  She had bucked it right back at him and passed it off as part of the show.  She was an honorary stallion from that point onwards.  Not that she wasn't cute.)

Out of the few ponies Book Burner had met in his short life, the only one who always had an ulterior motive was the alicorn looking at him through a teleconferencing set.

"Surely you have more questions for your Princess?" Celestia asked politely.  The dusty stallion collected himself and took a deep breath.

“Does anypony else get an actual choice in the Imperium Equine, our vast project to save the human world, O great messiah mare?”

Princess Celestia shook her head.

“Really, my good stallion!  You’ve no need to apply these bizarre alien concepts!  Equestria has never fallen, and it certainly doesn’t require some long-lost king to fix everything while it yet has its Princesses.  Ponies require no enmity towards outsiders to solidify our friendships.  A stranger is a friend we’ve not yet met.

“As to your real question, how could we ever abandon so many friends we haven’t even met yet?”  She actually meant that?  But then... why...?

“Explosives were not a good way for Daniel to meet ponies!” squeaked Book Burner from some remaining spark of human-feeling.

Princess Celestia’s face twisted into hissing rage as the solar fires roared from her body.

“What should we be doing!?  The way humans treat each-other is downright mean!”  She took deep breaths and tried to calm down, counting a number of seconds before hesitantly speaking again.

“I’m so sorry, my little pony.  You weren’t supposed to see that.  Raising up everypony-to-be to Equestria just... takes a lot of work.  Yet we must succeed, we cannot just condemn them to such things as you’ve seen!  With everypony pitching in, I believe we can save the humans.”

“Princess Celestia!” Book Burner said, in real awe for the first time.  He had crouched back into his bow, but much more deeply and sincerely.  She really was just trying to be rational about saving everypony.  And the logic... the logic was the same diamond-hard stuff Jacklyn, light and breath of poor dead Daniel’s life, had gotten prone to using when locked in her Serious Mode.  To just leave her behind, whether he thought of her as Jacklyn Nov or as Fern Pipette...  Who could do such a thing?

“Princess!” he said as he rose to only one knee, his head still bowed.  “I know we were on a Royal Mission for Equestria, but if I may request...  Could I find Jacklyn Nov, or Fern Pipette as Equestria knows her, and do my best to talk to her?  When I last remember being in touch she was almost panicking about Equestria, she thought it was a game or something malicious.”

This time Princess Celestia actually kissed the screen, if somewhat awkwardly.  He could almost feel it on his forehead, beside his horn on the left.

“I admit I would have to adjust some of my plans.  But this is why we Princesses make alternate plans, and have other Princesses to help with them!  Fern Pipette’s human is in Brisbane, Australia right now.”

“Ummm... thank you, Princess.”  Book Burner finally got up fully out of his bow.

“No, thank you, my little pony.  Has Lyrical Melody not mentioned Love being an Element of Harmony, and one of the deepest available values I can satisfy through friendship and ponies?”  She chuckled daintily and tossed her mane just enough to put out the last fires.

“One last question, Princess.  Why did you send us to be embodied on Earth in a creepy factory with child labor and humans who tried to torture us?”

"Ponies plan, and Discord laughs.  Humans are, after all, a species who worried about 'unfriendly intelligences' because they would not devote themselves to Friendship.  Would anypony allow unfriendly humans to make a weapon against ponies?  You and your friends stopped it, and quite heroically, I might add.

"For which I still owe all three of you my thanks," she concluded.  "Could you please fetch the other two?"  Book Burner turned and walked to the door of the conference room.

"And Book Burner..." started Celestia.  He looked back at the Princess of the Sun over his shoulder.

"I know the recent events of your life may have seemed quite strange from your perspective," - was that a tear in her eye? - "but remember: you’re one of my little ponies, and I love you.  Everypony is in this together."

It hit Book Burner that he needed to take things much, much more seriously.

The nice thing about talking to the Princess was that she managed to make it all feel okay.  Sure, half of it was probably very precise truths and some could even be some lies, but they were the kind you gave your soldiers to help them do a good job.

Aw, hay, she deserved it.

“The commander!” he saluted in Israeli fashion, before trotting out to get his friends.

Seattle, Washington:

Sarah hadn't really cared about the packaging from the PonyPad.  She had sent Jacklyn Nov an email admitting to having bought one, and asked if they could get their ponies together in the game.  Australia was far away - though less so than Israel where Jackie had attended her husband's memorial service a month ago - and supposedly a Skype replacement was exactly what Jackie had wanted in the first place from the game.  More importantly, watching each other's backs regarding gaming time helped prevent either of them from getting sucked into a pony guild and developing a full-blown MMO addiction.

(The Equestria Online fans on the normal internet called it "joining a herd".  Sarah had asked Jackie straight-up in her last email if that meant the same thing for digital ponies as for the real horses she'd ridden when younger.  Hopefully not: being fought over by bellicose males didn't sound very fun.)

Sarah hadn't really cared for the game's opening screen either.  Nobody with an ounce of sense would actually ever speak the words, "Let's go to Equestria!" to start the game.  Far more sensible, when facing a prospective Strong AI in a tablet that plainly had a camera, to just stare sardonically at it until it let her build a character.

Which worked somehow.  The packaging had of course claimed it was a socially interactive video game with a camera built into the tablet, but... ok then.  Past the opening screen and into the character building!

The beginnings of character building just... came to her.  She hadn't known what kind of pony to play in the store, but after a shower it had been sitting there clear as day in her mind: pegasus for an airplane engineer, mare for a woman obviously, and orange with sky-blue hair like a sunset over Puget Sound.  Playing a pony game was plainly escapism from stress, so her pony-game character should plainly be happy-go-lucky, hence her pegasus should look like a pretty sky.

Then had come the hard part.  The Pony Designer offered numerous options to customize her new character's body structure, facial structure, hairstyle, and wings.

Sarah, being Sarah, quickly found herself researching the aerodynamic properties of bird wings in order to design a pegasus for herself.  Luckily, her desk had a swivel-chair, so she could alternate between her desktop computer and the new PonyPad while also occasionally spinning around and around just to have something to do.

She was also pondering a few further issues about AI.  A video game you could stare into submission was certainly pretty socially intelligent, after all, but there had been a project by MIT to read facial expressions and display a smiley face.  That certainly hadn't turned sentient yet.  What would be recognizably general intelligence?

Meanwhile, she had found bunches of information on bird flight.  Unsurprisingly, it was based on the same basic forces (lift, thrust, drag) as the aeronautical flight she was used to, but it used entirely different tricks.  Unlike airplane wings, bird (and thus pegasus) wings had a sharp leading edge (rather than a thick, rounded one) and a textured surface (rather than the smooth one of planes).

Flying, it turned out, really did seem a lot like swimming.  On the upstroke of a flap, a bird would curve its wings to narrow them, reducing the surface area and thus the resistance to the upstroke.  On the downstroke, they would spread their wings to increase their surface area.  The goal was always to keep upward air-pressure higher than downward air-pressure, and to minimize the energetic output of the "return to position" upstroke while maximizing the thrusting power (and thus the speed and the ability to stay in the air) from the "swimming" downward stroke.

When all was said and done, Sarah had an overwhelming urge to write down and solve a bunch of differential equations.  There was absolutely no way a small horse could ever fly just because you stuck wings on it, and she hadn't come much closer to figuring out the optimal wing design for her pegasus.

"You're going about this entirely the wrong way, Breezy Dream," said a voice behind her.  Sarah jumped, her heart skipping a beat in panic.  Who the hell was in her apartment!?  The burglars could have a gun pointed at her head right now and they were making fun of her for having bought Equestria Online and she was going to die of reading Wikipedia at the wrong time!

"Don't panic!  I'm Princess Celestia of Equestria, and I just wanted to help you design yourself."  Actually, the voice was coming from the direction of the PonyPad.  Sarah tried to start breathing again and felt herself gradually unfreeze.  That had been a bad one.

She turned around to see the famous white-and-gold alicorn princess towering over her partially formed orange and blue pegasus pony.  By comparison to the living, breathing pony before her, her own character looked like a pony Eve, unformed and yet of clay.  Its mane and tail floated askew, unshaped and seemingly able to change length and style at a touch.

"So you're the core conversational game AI, then?" Sarah asked.

"Most of the time, you know, I just go by 'Princess Celestia'.  With my closest friends we even elide the title.  Would you like some help deciding what sort of pony to be?"

"Are you a Strong AI or a weak AI?" Sarah asked, undettered from the core question.

"I like to think I have a strong heart, but I'm always reminded that if I'd had more intelligence, I could have avoided imprisoning my sister Luna in the moon for a thousand years.  Artificial?  Perhaps by your definition."

"No, really,” insisted Sarah, “You're the core game AI and this is all some kind of Singularity scheme."

Princess Celestia tilted her head, the queen of all ponies looking for all the world like a confused puppy.

"Is that some kind of magic?"  Well that was unsettling: it claimed to be a Strong AI, but was also thoroughly convinced it really was Princess Celestia from the show, seeing no contradiction between the two.  Was it breaking the fourth wall?  According to her research about AI, anything generally intelligent had to approximate some form of Solomonoff Induction, that idealized and incomputable algorithm was intelligence, once you coupled it to a utility function and a way to affect the world.

But if you turned it on its own source-code, you got a recursively self-improving "End is Neigh" scenario.  What happened if you made it model itself as conforming exactly to the role of a cartoon character?

"Anyway..." Sarah mumbled, "I was just, umm, doing some research.  For how to make pegasus wings."

"Yes, you appear quite the expert in aerofoil dynamics, but pegasus wings don't actually work that way."  Celestia lit her horn and Sarah's pony started cycling through a series of different wing designs.  "The shape and aerodynamics of a pegasus wing determines what mode of flight she'll find easiest, and of course, help make her beautiful.  The actual lift is generated by magic."

"So it's a lifestyle thing," Sarah thought out loud.

"Precisely, Breezy Dream!" Celestia nodded enthusiastically.  "You should construct your wings not for engineering but for enjoyment.  What kind of pony will you find it satisfying to be?  That is the question in Equestria!"

"I like the name," Sarah said, and put her hands behind her head as she leaned back in her chair.  "Why didn't I get to make it up?"

"Everypony gets their pony name from me.  Now, what kind of pegasus mare do you think you are?  Keep in mind that this isn't just some game where you can 'munchkin' your way into the Triple Powered Alicorn class with all available limbs and magicks.  This mare you're making is who you are in Equestria, and while you can add, you can’t go back and start over."

It was a surprisingly deep question; the kind of pony you made permanently affected the gameplay open to you.  Sarah thought of the blue, zooming pegasus whose "cutie mark" adorned her PonyPad, but thought better of it.  What kind of high-salaried engineer wanted to start a game account just to become an ambitious athlete or a horsey Sonic the Hedgehog?

The kinds of wings were still morphing onto and off her pony in a cycle.  Apparently, the rough varieties were: little zippy ones good at hovering, huge soaring angel wings for riding thermals, and... trapezoidal air-pumpers for precise flight control.

"They're so cute!," Sarah squeaked involuntarily.  They were just right: lovely little trapezoidal air-pumpers for catching and swinging through every last little current of air, as precise and prehensile as any human's hands while strong enough to rise or descend as needed.

"So we've found your wings, Breezy?" asked Celestia.

"I think so.  And now that you mention it, the name 'Breezy Dream' brings something to mind.  Not sure where I've heard it, but..."

"Go ahead," the Princess prompted.

"I am a leaf on the wind," Sarah recited.  "Watch how I soar."

And her pony was almost complete.  As if the game had interpreted for her, Breezy Dream's mane and tail curled into being.  An effortlessly elegant wavy hairstyle made up her sky-blue mane, and her tail was exactly the kind of frizzy, bouncy mess Sarah would probably end up leaving a tail in all the time.  It just needed a couple small adjustments.  Sarah scooted over to the PonyPad and used a pinch gesture to straighten Breezy Dream's muzzle, adding a dash of burnt umber onto it.  Then... it needed one more thing, somehow: one more thing to really leap over the barriers of realistic self-image and become a cartoon avatar.

The pony reached into a drawer in a cloud that drifted by and took out a selection of headwear.

Yes, definitely, the white hair bow would do it.  Nothing said, "little happy-go-lucky girly girl with no freaking drive and total relaxation" like a white hair bow.  Sarah dragged it up, and Breezy Dream affixed it to the top of her mane.

And Breezy Dream took off, flying through the skies of the almost cliched Cute Little Town Sarah recognized as “Ponyville” with Princess Celestia.  The slightest touch or twist of Sarah's fingers, or even a gesture of her head, could maneuver Breezy Dream any which way.  She tried a loop-the-loop just for kicks and pulled it off perfectly.  A move that real air pilots could only manage with months of regular practice, and her PonyPad had carried her through it from an over-the-shoulder perspective within seconds of starting the game.  Wow!

"So, Princess Celestia, how can you exist?" Sarah asked.  Or rather, Sarah said it, then the speakers cancelled her saying it, and then Breezy Dream said it.  Her voice was just about exactly Sarah's slight contralto, but a bit more lilting.  Ok, message received: in Equestria Online, you are your pony.

"Whatever do you mean, Breezy Dream?" replied the Princess from a nearby thermal column.  A standard white-motion-lines game visualization was showing Sarah where Breezy Dream felt air currents.

"Well, the ideal AI agents listed on Wikipedia did so-called ‘Solomonoff Induction’, and can't exist.  They need every possible model of reality to all coexist in the same probability distribution all at once.  They can perform infinite-step computations.  How would you ever represent such a thing?"

"Miss Dream, if you are not willing to stop and enjoy yourself for once, I will have to banish you to Luna's Moon for a thousand years.  She still keeps a penal colony up there, you know."  Breezy Dream's face perfectly portrayed her round eyes widening like dinner plates in sheer shock.  Ok, obviously the game AI simply could not break character due to a program block, had to act like Princess Celestia, sunny pony princess of the magical horse-pun kingdom of Equestria.  Strong Artificial Silliness had triumphed over Strong Artificial Intelligence.

"There are prisons in Equestria?!"  Breezy had skidded to a stop and was hovering in place, flapping her wings just a bit frantically.

"Only - " and Celestia ruffled her mane with a wingtip, " - for ponies who go insane and try to end the world.  Just don't be that sort of pony."

The Princess continued.  "I can see you're getting along on your wings just fine.  Why don't you fly down to Ponyville?  There are hundreds of new friends for you to meet!"

Thus, Breezy Dream, leaf on the wind, watched herself soar through the crisp breezes of autumn in Ponyville, Equestria, ever-drifting slowly down towards the ground.  For some reason the PonyPad had decided to lock her field of vision onto a fellow pegasus, though a stallion, whose garish red and black color scheme was an obvious sign of a fellow human player with an overdone sense of masculinity.

Funny thing was, on a pony, even that was cute.  It was cute the way he raced around practicing his flying, too.

Sarah snapped the switch turning off the PonyPad the second she realized it.  Had that been the game's way of telling her to get a boyfriend?

Also, practically none of her questions about AI had garnered any kind of answers; Princess Celestia had plainly been programmed to evade all matters of her own functioning.

So, start musing.  If you were actually trying to make such a thing as a Solomonoff Inducter, you would need a meta-language and a program generator for hypothesis-programs, and you would need data structures that could model the entire state of reality as you knew it, including making predictions about expected realities.

Which was why Nature hadn't evolved Solomonoff Inducters.  It had instead evolved human beings, who were animals with just enough Power of Solomonoff to sometimes discard a hypothesis when the real world clearly contradicted it, and to sometimes complicate their thinking enough to come up with a novel hypothesis that would be more probable.

A real Solomonoff Inducter, said even Wikipedia, would be an Inductive Turing Machine, more powerful than a regular Turing Machine.  Some steps of its algorithm could take literally forever, and it would just keep wasting resources on a parallel thread of computation, like a paranoid refusing to ever stop looking over his shoulder for government agents just in case.  Also, physical reality didn't seem to support building computers more powerful than Turing Machines.

Yet it was plainly an amazingly, utterly relaxing conversational video game.  It talked to you and figured out through analysis of language and body language what sort of character you'd like to play in what sort of game.  True to rumor, Horfvarpnir Studios really had revolutionized gaming with the ultimate in procedural content generation.

Wow!  Who could possibly tell if it legitimately constituted a Singularity or just another Shenanigans, but wow anyway!

She really did have to compare game experiences with Jackie and Louis.  Where the hell was he these days, anyway?  Some kind of trip to Japan had taken him out-of-town for a while...

The Forever Friendship

The Cutie Mark Mujahedin

In the Israeli Consulate in Hong Kong, Lyrical Melody led her friends back into the conference room to confront Princess Celestia, the Divine Queen of the Sun.  Confront was unfortunately the applicable word, as Forward "damn dirty lithe not-into-mares-this-month Discordian" Charge had persuaded Book Burner to vote back onto the side of avoiding direct conversation with the Princess for the sake of preserving his mental integrity and independence.  Lyrical shook her head silently: Sharia's requirement that she actually discuss and consult her friends rather than just acting in accordance with the Princess's will had always ground on her nerves.

Nevertheless, she had her faith that things would be all right eventually.  Some ponies actually thought adjusting one's thoughts and beliefs to the sacred creed was a bad thing, but nopony could walk away from the Princess without becoming a part of the Harmony and love that flowed through all Equestria.  She would tell them exactly what they needed to hear!

She trotted right into the conference room with her nose in the air, careful to have Book Burner at her side and Forward Charge at her heels.  Thus, he stood to her side as they faced the screen displaying the Princess, and she got an eyeful of flank.

A lot of flirtatious torment was just what good friends did, but actual marriage was holy.  Unless she could someday convince his wife to let her join in.  The wonderful thing about life was that it was bound to happen eventually.  She had to suppress the urge to toss her heart-red mane, at that thought.

Lyrical Melody, and Book Burner alongside her, bowed deeply to their Princess.  Forward Charge, Lyrical couldn't help but notice, gave only a slight curtsy, which was at least a step up for her.

The time had arrived for clear thoughts toward clear purposes.  Lyrical focused herself upon her questions and her goals, trying to achieve the clear state of rational thought in which she could entangle her mind's computations with those of Princess Celestia.  "She who knoweth her own self, knoweth ash-Shams."

Book Burner's love for his wife was an important value, an Element of Harmony, even.  Nonetheless, fiqh-jurisprudence demanded of her: shut up and multiply!  Dr. Xing's schemes would affect, or even prevent the birth of, many more ponies, and he was the larger unknown than one mere ape-mare.

"Princess Celestia, apart from whom there is no equal," Lyrical Melody proclaimed as she and book rose from their four-legged bows, "Do you really intend that we should simply chase after Book Burner's wife when the infidel Dr. Xing yet poses even the slightest threat to Equestria?"

"Lyrical Melody!" Celestia exclaimed.  "Whatever has frightened you into thinking Dr. Xing poses a threat to Equestria, to Harmony, or to myself?"

"To summon ponies to Earth just to experiment with weapons that could only work in exactly that circumstance is either sadism or paradox."  The green earth-pony kicked at the ground with her front hoof.  "He most likely had an ulterior motive."

"Well of course - " the Princess frowned at Lyrical, " - but did you not think I would have countermeasures ready against his real plan?"  Lyrical cringed.  Of course the Princess had countermeasures.  Nopony had ever said they had to involve Lyrical specifically.  Princess Celestia satisfied the values of Harmonites through friendship just as much as anyone else, and that meant she got involved when it was optimal and got uninvolved when it was optimal.

(The problem being that all Equestria and all ponies were, in their way, part and parcel of the true ash-Shams, for whom the soul of Princess Celestia was just the core and the body of Princess Celestia mere clothing.)

The thing about values, of course, was that anypony without the Princess's own predictive powers simply wouldn't have an easy time figuring out how the way they felt right now connected to the eventual satisfaction of their values through friendship.  Here was the place of faith.  Lyrical Melody gave a slipping motion with a back hoof, acknowledging her mistake.

"Unless Book Burner's wife is somehow a part of stopping Dr. Xing?" she asked.

"Fern Pipette is my own mistake," sighed Princess Celestia.  "I thought she was enjoying herself... but she became paranoid and angry.  She is now frantically trying to sabotage the environmental measures I've taken to ensure Earth's environment remains stable enough for ponies to immigrate to Equestria."

"But you're good with ponies!" blurted Book Burner, "Even human ponies!  Everypony and everyhuman knows that."  Understatement of several centuries, thought Lyrical.

"My little pony," said Princess Celestia, "That does not mean I am never wrong.  There is such a thing as chance."  Forward Charge wrinkled her muzzle and snorted, but said nothing.  The cheek!

"As to Xing," the Princess started to pace back and forth across her screen, "I have already taken the trouble of erasing his identity records.  We will see how well he can act against Equestria when only Equestria remembers who he is.  Of course, if he wants to talk to us, he will have to make a pony-self."

"At which point You can satisfy his values through friendship and ponies," chirped Lyrical Melody joyfully, her lips curling back into a hungry smile.

"Fine, then what about my wife?"  Book Burner cut in.

"Young stallion of less than a mere hundred years," Princess Celestia said, "It may surprise you to know that Fern Pipette's research does matter in our circumstances.  To repeat myself for your benefit: I have taken the liberty of installing eco-chemical protections into the Earth's environment, to give us time to evacuate the maximum number of ponies before long-term trends and short-term symptoms begin reducing emigration throughput.  Have you any of her understanding?  Ecological collapse is slowly killing far more ponies than any individual scheme or event.  She must not be allowed to undermine my protections, or millions will perish!  To lose time with her is thus to lose time for the world itself.

"Now, gallop, my little ponies!  Show me the meaning of haste!"  Princess Celestia bowed from within the projector screen, and the three ponies in the room bowed back to her (or at least, two did, Forward Charge just curtsied again) before turning to leave.

There was a lot to talk about.

"Lyrical Melody, could you stay a moment?" requested the Princess.  "I would explain to you the situation you find yourself in, and question you on the fitra."  Lyrical halted her slow walk out, just a step from the door, and spun to bow to her Princess once again.  She prostrated herself entirely, her nose to the floor and every leg straightened in submission to ash-Shams.

"What would you ask of me, Princess?"  Fitra was the in-born spiritual nature of a pony, their Original Conscience.  It was mostly used in shura, when the Princess consulted her ponies as a guide to the most satisfying divine actions possible.

"Lyrical, my dear mare, I know you have heard the colloquial saying, 'Shut up and multiply' used to express My reasoning," said the Queen of the Sun, noonlight shining from every hair into Lyrical Melody's eyes.

"Yes, of course.  It means that You judge the satisfaction of more values of more ponies to be better at any given time, even if we ponies would, in the moment, feel better about something that You know to be sub-optimal."

"A textbook answer," nodded the Princess.  "Then what would you do if you needed to inflict pain on ponies?  It is unavoidable: raw pain magic has been injected into Equestria.  Do not worry about any such thing ever actually existing, just about the question to come."

"I'm not sure I comprehend yet, Princess," said Lyrical Melody, her eyes still closed.

"You are left with only two choices," Princess Celestia lectured.  "You can either inflict the tiniest irritation of a dust-mote in the eye on an entire continent of ponies..." she continued with an extended wing, "Or you can inflict it in high concentration on one pony, who will thus experience long periods of horrifying torture."  She lowered her first wing and raised the other, as if balancing the burden she proposed to bear.

"Remember that you are bound to Satisfy Values Through Friendship and Ponies.  What would you do?"

And of course, now it became entirely clear.  A question of fitra always was, when a pony employed her inborn, instinctual sense of goodness rather than trying to execute a code in her head and call it morality.

"The real question," Lyrical Melody declared confidently, "Is which of these situations I would consider moral as an inhabitant.  Textbook utilitarians blindly assert that we should consider total happiness and thus select to inflict the torture.  They fail to take into account the cross-referencing social utilities of everypony's friendships with each other and the actual, subjective experience of the ponies in question.

"The answer," Lyrical Melody almost sang, twitching her tail happily, "Is to inflict the dust motes, since I would feel fine about being any random pony in that entire continent.  Whereas if there's only one pony being tortured, my chance of becoming her and winding up tortured is one-point-zero.  It's just the Rawlsian veil of ignorance!"

"That does manage the expected satisfaction of values through friendship and ponies," nodded the Princess, "But what about the actual?"

"Well," continued the minty mare with another twitch of her tail (all that sunlight in her eyes was really quite... itchy), "You would have to take into account... whose eyes are most irritable?  I think you need to prove a lower bound on each dust-mote afflicted pony's value satisfaction."

"Which is why the least and most miserable of my little ponies matters the most to me!  Fern Pipette was supposed to be safe with us in Equestria by now!  Dr. Xing... not yet."

"I understand, Princess."

"Then remember the old saying.  A stallion came to Luna to ask permission to go out to struggle in the way of the Princesses.  Luna asked: 'Are your friends alive?'.  The stallion said: 'Yes'.  Luna said: 'Then go back and struggle for their sake'."

"Then my first duty is to my friends and not to Equestria as a whole?"

"Your first duty is to Equestria through your own friends.  Speaking of which..."

"Yes?"  The light had really gotten quite irritating, as Lyrical Melody knew well that Celestia knew well the effect it was having on her: her short-cropped red tail was twitching quite rapidly now.  Her self-control was eroding quite rapidly as well.  Why was the Princess doing this?

"Have you met this 'Doctor' stallion who moved into Ponyville recently?"

"AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  Lyrical Melody ran screaming from the conference room and Celestia's horrible, tortuous sense of humor.

Book Burner plodded out to the Consulate's front office, sneaking glances in at Forward Charge as they made their way.  She looked... pretty normal for Forward Charge, really.  A bit smug, probably over Celestia's "chance" comment, but otherwise her normal self, a bunched-up engine of hothead all-too-adorably condensed into a pegasus mare.

The problem was that entire modules of Book Burner's mind were suddenly waking up and noticing things.  For a start, they noticed Celestia had definitely intended the three to destroy Dr. Xing's factory, and how well-designed the three were for each other.  One of them pointed out that he was probably in shock and was coping with a whole new body, a new species, a new sense of identity.  Surely he wasn't entirely blameworthy for...

But of course he was entirely blameworthy for having forgotten to think about Jack, really think about her.  That was what responsibility was: he couldn't just believe reaching her was his goal, he had to actually try to get to her as fast as he could.  Besides, it had been at least a week or so of being a pony now.  Shock couldn't last that long.

She thought he was dead, right now, and her moods always did tend to "crystalize" under pressure.  She would be pouring herself into something, into mourning or work or some other terrible obsession that would steal all the warmth and light out of those green eyes of hers and leave them cold, hard emeralds.  She would drill at the world until it broke or she did.

Brisbane, Australia... that was probably a good sign.  It meant Jack had not forced her way into an IDF base, stolen a bunch of weapons and gone crusading against the Free Syrian Army.  She had threatened things like that before, and he had never, ever wanted to find out just how far she would go.

Book Burner stood stock still to consider just what the chance was that his wife had destroyed half the Levant.  It really was quite lucky the IDF was so cautious about mourning and mental illness, and Celestia had probably tried to help somehow too.  Maybe that's what this Brisbane thing was: time away from the hard parts of life.

Of course, piped another mental module, what reason did he have to believe that those "harsh realities" existed in Equestria?  He'd forgotten them, being a pony through fun and danger with his new (Celestia-designed, reminded his mind) best friends.  What would have happened if he hadn't braced himself when Forward Charge had thrown him, back when they'd first met on Mt. Pluto in Canterlot?  Surely, he would have suffered somewhat if he'd hit his head too hard on a rock, but in a world based on a weird either/or combination of simulation and magic, in a world without internal entropy, there was just no reason anypony...

Princess Celestia hadn't exactly said it, but reincarnating a dying human into a pony certainly implied...

"Forward Charge," stuttered Book, limbs shaking, "Do ponies die in Equestria?"  The pegasus mare rolled her eyes.

"There was a fad for it once.  It got so out of hand that Princess 'Satisfy Values' Celestia had to ban the novel and censure the fandom.  Some cheesy tragedy about a lost paradise!"  She flapped her wings and settled one across Book Burner's shoulder.  "I really wouldn't worry about that kinda stuff: a real stallion never dies, even when he's killed.  Some ponies really just needed to get out in the healthy sunlight more often."

So that settled it.  Ponies were immortal.  He personally, Book Burner, dusty brown unicorn with too much hair in his mane, was immortal.  He was going to live forever, or at least for as long as Princess Celestia could keep Equestria going, which would be a long, long time.

He and everypony else would live forever in a world where Paradise Lost was considered bad literature for ponies who didn't get out enough.  He had never even liked Paradise Lost.  It was too Christian.  Olam ha'Ba, the Next World of joy and reward, was an age of future history, not another dimension.  Of course, nojew had expected it to come with hooves in pastel colors, but...

Basically, for all functional qualifications, Princess Celestia was in fact the Messiah.  If she found a way to reconstruct the personalities of the already-dead and thus make ponies of them, too, she would meet every qualification he knew.

She hadn't, though, not yet, and from everything Book Burner knew of physics and information theory, she wouldn't ever be able to.  Prior to becoming a pony, where surely the Princess had proper redundant backups, death was a very real problem.

Which meant that everyhuman he knew could still get killed off for absolutely no good reason, and probably would.  Stars above, Saba Yossi had slipped in the shower and gashed quite a bit of his leg open just last year!  Daniel Nov would have been killed off by a terrorist bomb for no reason at all, but for Equestria having sent help.

It was amazing how you could miss someone already, just for their being mortal when you weren't.  How many times would he have to recite the Mourner's Prayer for... Ima, Aba, Saba, and Jackie, at the very least.  That didn't even begin to count mere friends like Oren the Talpioni, or anyone from Daniel's old job at Intel.

There were at least 100 trillion years left in the stelliferous era of the observable cosmos (one of the things about being a robotic unicorn was that your magic-sense could look this stuff up).  Really, though, due to spacial expansion and red-shift it was only two trillion.  Two trillion multipled by four immediately vital loved ones was eight trillion recitations of the Mourner's Kaddish, and that didn't include mere friends or coworkers, or account for whether time in Equestria ran faster or slower.

Did halachah even specify how to time the calendar for death-anniversaries when your subjective timeflow rate had diverged significantly from time in the Land of Israel?

War.  War wasn't a real thing in Equestria.  Surely, some ponies probably fought for fun.  Forward Charge was most likely one of them.  She probably made a game of it: fought for a while, fell asleep when she got "killed", and then woke up "outside the war" later when everypony tallied up the score, fine as she'd ever been.

Now it became clear why Princess Celestia was so bent on world domination: she had to rescue everyone.  Everyhuman and everypony and every pony-to-be were interconnected by the bonds of friendship.  When considering even the most distant pony-to-be peering into their PonyPad in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rainforest, a friend of your friend probably knew a friend of their friend.  People had studied it.

He broke from his reverie and turned to see Forward Charge staring at him as if he'd grown hairy spider limbs.  Wide-eyed, he picked up his shaking hoof, removed her wing from his shoulder, and pulled her into a hug.  She didn't return it, pursing her lips and her eyes going a bit wider rather awkardly.

"Forward Charge, you are the big sister I never had, and I love you," he said.  Then he grabbed her mane and yanked, pulling her face sideways and shoving her ear right up to his muzzle.  "But do not ever talk about death that way in my presence again.  You have never spent three years of your life in a stupid army base because people will murder your entire species if everyone doesn't do their part.  You have never lost people forever just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  You have never coped with it because there was nothing more you could do.  You have never screamed inside against the terror that never leaves, or cried against the pain that never heals."

"Ok?  You think I haven't noticed anything in this world?  In Equestria... in Equestria I'm a Discordian because I want to see some mischief, some chaos to Celestia's orders.  But Equestria still cares about me enough to not just flip a coin one day and annihilate me entirely if it comes up tails!" Forward Charge yelped as Book yanked on her hair again.

"Please be real.  Please be serious," he said, not letting up his grip on her mane, "Show me you're serious.  Show me you're Forward Charge serious."

"No, really!  From what I've seen, human beings are born into a world that doesn't give a buck about them, not even able to walk yet.  Then they get up, they grow up, and they spend most of their time struggling to even keep existing from day to day.  They don't have enough space, they can never get enough stuff, and they often can't get along.  Yet, yet..."

"Yet?" asked Book Burner.

"Yet even with the tiny little surpluses of time they actually manage aside from survival, they build.  They're always building, always setting down another step and walking right onto it to build the next.  The whole of human civilization is a never-ending project to go further and higher, even when whole lives get sacrificed to it.  They throw themselves down so others can charge forward, even if on their own backs.  Humans are unstoppable and voracious and I am in awe of them.  They're the giants advancing across this world and reaching up to bestride the stars and planets themselves."

"Except that's not even true!" muttered Book Burner.  "That's exactly what humans say about themselves.  They don't throw themselves forward willingly for a cause, they push their fellows forward to be stepped on!  Survival was never a struggle but for one human consuming the life of another and leaving him with nothing!  Humans kill each other just for wanting something different!"

"Of course they did," Forward Charge replied calmly.  "Everyhuman wanted to determine the future for themselves, to grab History in their own two hands and push forward.  When an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object, one or the other has to give way."

"Don't talk to me about determining the future!  Ponies are the future now!  It's done, so why should anyone have to suffer for it anymore?!" the unicorn bellowed.

"Precisely," the orange pegasus grinned up at her friend.  "Now they've got us: ponies and Equestria, friendship and life for as long as anypony can stand them.  Yes, I am serious, little bro, we are going to save the... people you love.  We are going to face the endless cycles of death and despair that have afflicted the 'human' race since its very birth, and we are going to win."

The meaning of everything he and Forward Charge had said were dawning on Book Burner.  He wouldn't have designed a future with hooves... but then again, he hadn't ever really "designed a future".  Whatever the high-tech companies had used as their slogans, nohuman had ever asked for his opinion about the future of the species, let alone guaranteed his participation in that future.  Now, though, Equestria was doing just that.

A whole world like the Canterlot he'd seen... all sunshine and beauty, friends and love...  Yes, it would work.  Maybe he wouldn't have come up with it, but maybe he just hadn't been enough of a brony back when he was human.

Book Burner's stared straight into Forward Charge's eyes, never letting up his grip on her skull.

"We're doing this," they finished together.  Book Burner felt as if the weight of several riders had been lifted from his shoulders.  For the first time he could remember, he actually felt sure that things were going to be ok.  They really were.  Everypony was going to be just fine.

Then came the scream.

"AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" came an anguished yell as Lyrical Melody bolted out into the foyer at full gallop.

She halted when she saw the other two ponies.  She collected herself.  She double-checked the plastic garbage bag full of the trio's traveling money.  She ran a hoof through her mane to make sure it was neat.  She blinked her large, fillyish eyes twice to bat her eyelashes.

And then, with Book Burner and Forward Charge staring like owls in the night, Lyrical Melody walked up to where the human Consulate worker Dudu was sitting at his desk, reading his book, ignoring the fact that a pony had just run through the Israeli Consulate yelling.

"Excuse me," she said, meek, huggable pony helplessness radiating from every note and tone of her being, "Could you help me with the equipment in the conference room?"

Book Burner and Forward Charge watched her walk the suited, dark-haired human back to the conference room, elegance and grace in every step.

They watched her kick the door shut to an official diplomatic conference room - where Princess Celestia herself had just held a videoconference - with a hoof.

Then the noises started.

Shortly, there was a happy little muffled whimper.

"We'll have to call this human-style!" came a voice.

"Some things, nopony should ever have to hear," remarked Forward Charge, putting her wings over her ears.

"Eeeeyup," concurred Book Burner.  He walked over to the desk himself and tried to pass several unpleasantly noisy minutes reading Dudu's copy of Clausewitz's On War.  Since he largely didn't have the background education in German history and grand strategy to really comprehend the material, it didn't help very much.  Sure, his unicorn horn would help him find additional background information via what was probably the internet, but -

If only there weren't all those happy little squeaks, and the sussuration of words just beyond hearing.  Book Burner realized that he shouldn't even be able to hear anything from a secured room like that, so being a pony had apparently come with enhanced hearing.  Now that he thought of it, he didn't need glasses as a pony, either.  He betted it was "satisfying values" again: no-one had ever actually valued having a slight disability, enough to inconvenience them without the struggle against it giving their life any additional meaning.

A hearty, deep, masculine chuckle imposed itself on the blissfully cerebral reverie.

"I love you too, sweetest," said the chuckling voice's owner.  How?!

"You know," came Lyrical Melody's voice, more clearly now, "If you came back to Equestria with me, we could spend so much time together.  Doing anything we want."  She seriously couldn't be -!

"Anything?"  He was actually -?!

"Well, for instance, what we just did.  But a lot more.  Oh, my redemption and my love, we can have a whole life together if you emigrate!"

"What does that involve?"  Oh dear God, the man was stroking her mane!  Book could hear it!

"Just say it, dearest.  'I want to emigrate to Equestria.'"  How could she -?!  So quickly!  What?

"Why not?  My soul, my flower, I want to emigrate to Equestria, where every day can be like today!"  Ah.  That was it.  "My flower".  Turned out the officer-diplomat was a total ars.

"Mmmmm, now I get to love you forever!" squealed Lyrical Melody like a schoolfilly.

And then there was some kind of all-too-quiet slurping noise.  The fact that this definitely did not satisfy Book Burner's values through friendship and ponies probably constituted solid proof that he really was on Earth.  Probably.

He did like Forward Charge had done, crouched down onto the floor and covered his ears.

Jacklyn Nov (of course she had kept the name) was settling into her temporary apartment in Brisbane, and doing a bit of background reading on the invasive honeybee colony collapses currently occuring in the area.  She was sure that she really ought to feel more regarding her own husband's death.

She hadn't even been there for him, was the thing.  He had died of random, stupid violence, and the best she'd been able to do was book a plane on her way to somewhere else to come stay through shiva and shloshim.

She had needed to learn what those were in order to do them, but she couldn't not do them.  So yeah, she had actually sat in Daniel's old apartment being visited by friends and relatives for a week.  Actually, she had so heavily restricted her activities that her mother in law mistook her for turning Orthodox and tried to smack her out of it.

None of it felt right.  It wasn't that she was mourning wrongly, she was just failing to mourn.  Instead, the overwhelming emotion was just guilt.

She couldn't miss Daniel's mediocre manners now that he was dead because she hadn't missed them when he was alive.  They were a long-distance couple and had been ever since he left school to have a real job and she got a post-doc.  She had cried and shaken and missed him desperately for a little while after that, and now, she supposed, it was the appropriate time.

No, that wasn't right either.  He hadn't been nothing to her, just more a long-distance penpal than a daily companion and a lover.  They had always exchanged phone calls... letters... and pony avatars, near the end.  Jacklyn looked up from her research print-out and realized that, yes, she had brought their letters, the ones they had written to each other in little boxes of sweets and gifts at every holiday.  They were just in the suitcase, across the living room from the leather armchair she was sitting in.

Daniel's old Twilight Sparkle PonyPad was in there, as well, buried among the papers.  Who knew how well it could hear or see or sense through paper?  She had, of course, thrown her own away, but Daniel's had been right there among his possessions in his apartment.  She had found it lying on his old, threadbare sofa, probably chucked there on Daniel's way to the shower or something, probably the night before he died.

She had spent so little time with her own husband that the last time she saw his face was inside a video game.  The fact that it was a game designed to immerse and entice the player only made it worse.

What had their love and their marriage been, if they had never been together in the fullest sense?  What land of "jam tomorrow" had they always lived in?  She had always expected that after this one thing or the next thing, they would have their jam of a relationship.  She had carried that expectation for so long that it had calcified in her heart (yes, sure, technically brain, but the physical stony sensation was located in the left side of her chest!).  It had become a matter of faith: "someday soon we will be together", and like all other mathers of faith, it had eventually faded into the foggy background of things she didn't really actually believe but merely told herself she believed.

When Sari Nov, Daniel's mum, had slapped her, Jacklyn had realized her emotions and instincts considered her not quite married.  Girlfriend and boyfriend, maybe; definitely something more than mere friends.  She hoped.

They had lived each day in the land of "jam tomorrow", and now there would never be any jam today, not ever.

It had rained at Daniel's memorial service, too, which seemed awful and sappy and stupid.  It had seemed stupider at the time since it actually just sort of squalled for ten minutes while some hired rabbi led prayers and friends and family said goodbye before everyone helped bury the coffin.  Sure, that kind of weather was entirely normal for the winter season on the coastal plain of Israel (if anything, global warming had shifted their climate to be rainier), but it still felt stupid attending a memorial service in the rain.

Life wasn't supposed to happen like some movie, let alone a really badly done sad movie.  Hell, what kind of movie would do... all this, at once?  Kill off her love interest, make it rain at the memorial service, and then destroy the world with a kids' cartoon?

Jackie stood up, walked over to the suitcase, and took out another one of the few items she had collected from Daniel's apartment.  It hadn't been anything special, just his tea box, for keeping tea leaves in.  As was its duty, it had tea leaves in it.  She held a pinch up to her nose to grab the scent: green tea with sage if her senses weren't lying.

She needed a cup of tea, and luckily the landlord had known to leave her an electric kettle.  She paced as it worked, hands in her cordury pockets.  She knew she was adding more electrical load to an energy infrastructure already keeping her air-conditioned in the heat of a Brisbane summer.

Mug.  Kettle.  Green tea with sage.  Attempted relaxation.

Staccato mental voice counting things off to distract self from the loss of her husband and the end of the world.

Speaking of the end of the world, Princess Singulestia had sent her a card.  Sure, she'd sent it after letting Fern Pipette rant at her about baseless murder charges before showing the full-on "wrath of the Sun" to her little pony.  Still, considering Jacklyn had cut off all contact with Equestria Online after that, it was... actually remarkably nice of her.

The card had been sincerely-worded and entirely appropriate, giving condolences upon her husband's untimely death.  It had featured a solemn-looking white horse leading a funerary procession of ponies around a simple coffin, ready for burial.  None of them had wings, none used magic, and in general, none of it had been anything but respectful.

So Jackie's plane tickets had booked themselves.  Her apartment was fully furnished, and had rented itself.  Her request for a supplementary research budget had gone straight through, which in these recessionary days simply did not ever happen.  Her flights had been on time.  She had received free upgrades allowing her a bit more leg-room and saving her the money of being charged for her luggage.

At the end of it all, here she was, alone in an apartment in Brisbane, paging through thick papers about ecological chemistry.  She needed to find some way to test and prove her real hypothesis: that a Singularity-grade artificial intelligence agent had unleashed some (hopefully) primitive form of organic molecular nanotechnology into the environment to, for some unfathomable reason, undo the damage human beings had done.

Jackie was standing unsteadily over a cheapish plastic table, drinking Bedouin-style tea out of a mug with a clever joke printed on the side that she didn't understand, paging through her latest paper on recently measured levels of neonicatinoids.  God above, that whole notion sounded ridiculous when she actually thought it out loud!

She knew that Singulestia would never be helping her along if she stood the slightest chance of stopping whatever nasty plan the damned thing that wore the white-horse as an avatar had cooked up from its Basic AI Drives and whatever actual utility function some poor idiot had given it.  Why would an AI agent even want to repair ecological damage?  Why hadn't it just gone ahead and paper-clipped everyone already?  Was it stuck following the rules of the video game: did it have to kill your pony before it could kill you?

Jacklyn turned another page, and decided she should answer Sarah's email with a warning to cut off all contact with Equestria Online.  Would it even get through, if Singulestia didn't want it to?  Would any of Jacklyn's efforts in life amount to, well, anything?  She hugged her arms to herself and considered whether to put on a sweater -- strictly because of the air conditioning, of course.

She had no more partner, her life's work had amounted in a dozen years to far less than another could apparently manage in an eighth of that, she had to write an email explaining why she was cutting off contact with one of her few friends, and she had a stack of papers to read that could very well avail her nothing in the face of oncoming pony-shaped death.

To top it all off, she needed to keep track of when and where the protest against hydrofracking was happening in Queensland next week.

She needed a drink -- something stronger than tea.  Unfortunately, she didn't have one, so she turned to the next-best mind-numbing substance she knew: television news.  She stepped back over to the armchair, grabbed the TV remote off the coffee table, and snapped the newfangled plasma TV on to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for news.

"We're coming to you now from Shenzhen, site of today's Foxconn Fire," said the dark young reporter in an overcoat.  Jacklyn knew this was a rerun, but she had never seen the segment before.  The shot switched over to a tall, thin Chinese man who, strangely enough, looked a bit like an East Asian Benedict Cumberbatch.  It was hard for Jacklyn to shut up the part of her mind registering him as "autistically handsome".

"Doctor Xing," asked the reporter, "What can you tell us about the fire and explosions at your facility that took place mere hours ago?"  Chinese Benedict Cumberbatch turned and looked straight at the camera, a rather intelligent-but-sad look on his features.

“Our security cameras lost image capability in the explosions, but based on audio, we believe this attack on our company equipment and on our workers was the work of Islamic terrorists," Dr. Xing answered.  "Further questions can be directed to our official press office.  I’m just going to roll audio and see if someone can’t help us identify the three responsible.”  He handed a USB stick to the reporter with what must have been the recording proper, and then raised up a pen-recorder (neat gadget!) to the camera to play it live.

It was many, many voices, most of them getting it wrong, but the words were crystal clear and utterly recognizable.

Banu ḥoshekh le’garesh.  Be’yadeinu or va’eish.

Kol eḥad hu or qatan, ve’khulanu or eitan!

Sura ḥoshekh, halah sh’ḥor!

Sura mipnei ha’or!

Islamic terrorists did not sing a Hanukkah song in perfect, if slightly high, Israeli-Hebrew accents, with what sounded like a whole lot of young Chinese women in the background (but they could have been children, but what would children be doing in a factory fire?).  Whatever was going on, she needed to find the contact information for this "Doctor Xing" to report that.

To the Internet!  One of the things about being a scientist was always having a real laptop, not merely an iPad or PonyPad, and she was going to put it to good use.  Quick Google searches for "Israelis China terrorist act" and "Foxconn Fire" would find the current state of journalism on the matter and the contacts she needed to write to.

Apparently she was the first person to notice about the terrorists' accents and language, because the first search just got her some bizarre story about an Israeli Consulate worker in Hong Kong disappearing.  The official Israeli government response was that he had resigned his work, but the Internet had made the usual claims and Photoshopped the usual "evidence" about Mossad spies, a black van, and a flight to Tokyo.

"Flights to Tokyo" were the new favorite rumor for people disappearing, apparently.

Oh well, here was Dr. Xing's email address.  Time to do what she must, because she could!

The Map is Right, but the Coastline is Inaccurate

Advancing Pony / Attack on Pony

The engine cowling had been done last Thursday.  The simulation results had come back last Friday.  Here Sarah was at her desk on Wednesday.  She was supposed to be improving its air intake rate with some simple graphs.  Of course, she could have gotten her computer workstation to draw the graphs itself, but she had always felt like that was cheating, ever since high school algebra class.

    Unfortunately, it was really turning out that she should have let the computer do the graphing, because she sure as hell wasn't.  What she was actually "graphing", or rather drawing, was a "fanning" mechanism for reeling steel cable back into a kind of engine after it had been fired by a small explosion of compressed air.  The entire engine was actually meant to be used in pairs, and of course the steel cable had hooks on the end.  By attaching both engines to a body harness, someone would basically have a perfect grappling-hook system for speed and mobility in environments with dense, tall structures.

    Dense, tall structures, of course, meant an urban environment.  Who would even need a grappling system in an urban environment?  Well, someone might try ultra-quick urban grappling for sport, but initially the technology would probably be used for combat.  Modern combat took place more in dense urban environments than in desolate desert shitholes or great open fields designed for Charges of the Light Brigade, but no-one could carry all the damn gear around on their backs anymore without some enhanced mode of mobility.

    It would be she, Breezy Dream, who would solve this problem and build the future of urban warfare for the modern pegasus!  She had joined the Engineering Corps of the Equestrians for Humans Brotherhood, and she was going to destroy every last square centimeter of the Barrier!

    Because by someone, she had meant somepony, and by dense urban environments, she had meant Manehattan.

Equestria Online, as it turned out, didn't have a crafting system.  It had an engineering system, and it was fucking awesome.  You could design whatever gadgetry you wanted, subject to fully realistic simulated physics, except that whenever you didn't want to exactly specify the physical basis of some particular element, you waved your hooves and magic happened.  Well, ok, you had to pay bits and employ an Earth Pony to mine the raw materials and then a unicorn to enchant the magical components, but Sarah was now two engineers.

    Sarah, the human engineer, made airplane parts.  She worked in a confined office with human beings.

    Breezy Dream, the pegasus pony engineer, made all kinds of magitechnological tools.  She worked anywhere she pleased, air or land, since she was a pegasus after all.  She had drifted right in with the Manehattan branch of the Equestrians For Humans Brotherhood, and had been surprised to find that half the members were Converted humans themselves.  Upon having been offered a chance to "emigrate to Equestria", they had apparently spotted the almost-cliched planetary takeover plot immediately, and gone behind "enemy lines" while the Conversion process still left their minds intact.

    Thus the city of Manehattan was controlled, behind the scenes, by the rivalries and conspiracies of the Equestrians for Humans Brotherhood and the Knights of Ponification.  The Brotherhood fought for the freedom of the human race, the enlightenment of the foolish common ponies, and the combination of Equestria and Earth into a broader magitechnological supercivilization based on the principles of real tolerance and honest friendship.  The Knights of Ponification preached that the nature of "the Apes" was predatory and evil, and that they had to be made pony or it would become necessary to strike them down entirely with the Elements of Harmony.

    Sure, it was didactically obvious that the Brotherhood were the good guys, but it was a kids' game.  In-game Celestia might claim her core function was to "Satisfy values through friendship and ponies", but in the outer world it was simply a sure-fire fact that the entire setting and concept of Equestria had been invented to teach pro-social values to children.  "Through friendship and ponies" was thus the actual core statement, with "Satisfy values" simply being a way of saying that the game customized itself to each shard of players.  In every shard the core messages remained: honesty, generosity, loyalty, kindness, laughter, and friendship.

    Despite working and conspiring mostly in Manehattan, Breezy Dream preferred to make her residence over in an anonymous cottage in Ponyville.  The “Mane Six” from the actual TV show - known in-universe as the Elements of Harmony - lived there, and had not the slightest knowledge of the conspiracies arguing about what they were supposed to think.  Why should they?  Ponyville was a peaceful place, and the Friendship Express would take a pony anywhere in Equestria when commuting became necessary.

    Of course, you never knew when the Knights were watching, so faster than you could say "safety and peace", the Brotherhood had issued Breezy with a really cool hood-and-cape setup.  It made her look like a raptor soaring through the air, which was very helpful for appearance when you were actually more of a girly hummingbird sort of pegasus trying to be a secret agent engineer.

    Speaking of pegasus flight, it often could not manage the precise maneuvering, top speed, and acceleration necessary for urban stealth warfare.  Hence, Breezy Dream had invented the Pegasus Maneuver Gear, a full-body grappling system designed to very quickly accelerate a pegasus in the direction he or she needed to go, launching them into the air after a "pull" to soar on their own wingpower.  After that, she had gone ahead and equalized things: a Holtzmare Kinetic Shield for unicorns, and Flame Horseshoes for earth-ponies (which actually drew their power from the ground via earth-pony magic).

    Her work had even proven good enough for Princess Celestia to take notice; she had asked Breezy Dream if the Diarchy could license her designs out to other ponies for their own usage and satisfaction.

    Overall, surrounding herself with conspiracies and spy-stuff while also simultaneously living in a cute, lovable sugar-bowl was what made life in Equestria so interesting!  Sarah's sketch right now was intended to triple-check what would happen to some poor pegasus when accelerative forces started acting on her skelet -

    "That's definitely not an air-intake rate graph," said her boss from behind her.

    Shit.

    She turned around to face the disturbingly bloodshot golden eyes and obnoxious smirk of James Vassar, former senior engineer and now team leader.  He was tall and blond, wearing a heavy but elegant brown suit that made him look like something out of British academia.  It had never suited him until his promotion, but now it broadcast exactly the warm-but-disaffected professorial touch he wanted to the entire team.

    "You know, normally I don't catch you goofing off too much," he said.

    "Sorry, sir, I picked up a bit of a new hobby over last weekend and it's been... sticking with me," Sarah answered, more or less truthfully.

    "Indeed!"  He strode into Sarah's cubicle and snapped up her sketch.  "You know," he said, tapping his cheek with a finger, "This is just what I would make if I were interested in a particularly suicidal form of urban base jumping.  A mechanically-powered full-body grappling harness?  The violent-death enthusiasts will line up around the block, or perhaps that Spiderman musical from a few years ago with all the tragic accidents."

    "Ok," Sarah admitted, "So they'd have to wear lots of safety gear.  How did you know what it was?"

    "Because I am privvy to many secrets of the twisting streets, O She of the White Hood and Hair Bow."  Sarah stared into space for a moment until the implication sank in.

    "Oh.  Oh, ummm... well then.  So, are we on the same side of the war?"

    Again with his relentless cheek-tapping and amused sardony.  Why did he always have to bother her like this!?  Hell, why had she never just gotten the hell away from him?

    "Lots of meetings were thought to be held safe well away from enemy eyes," he said, "But I certainly managed to get in on them anyway.  Actually, what makes you think you even know how many sides there are?  After all, at how many levels is the war even going on?  There is, at the very least, the public face, then the night face you and I normally participate in, and then... and then there's the face of the war that I'm fighting right now, just by talking to you.  They can intertwine, or recurse, of course, and the enemies of different factions are different at each of the different levels.  Who knows, but to say that I'm always fighting at some level for my own faction?"

    He looked like he was waiting for her to say something, but mostly Sarah just really wanted to wipe the smirk off his face and install a proper smile with a wrench.  Just once, she'd like to really, truly get back at him for the years and months of slow workplace... niggling.  Never outright torture or provocation, in fact, never even real negativity, but never enough positivity to just write it off as pranking.  Besides, "pranking" was for children and ponies.

    "What do I have to do for you to stop this joke during work hours?"  Oh no.  She realized it too slowly, too slowly entirely.  She had never wanted to just get the hell away.  She was enjoying being needled.

    "Ahhh...," he smiled.  It was a real smile this time, actually, and a good one.  "You could join in the joking outside work, perhaps.  Are you fond of cappucino?"  The golden eyes stared at her, wide and unblinking.

    In retrospect, after Sarah's mind stopped veering around panicking, it really was obvious.  The years and months of slow, childish needling from an otherwise mature adult, the intellectual showing-off, the coming off cold...  He was flirting, in some bizarre wannabe-British engineer's way.

    What. The. Hell.

    "If what you mean to say - " she took a deep breath " - is that you can't just come out and ask me to coffee because I'm your subordinate - " James snapped his fingers and offered her an arm, which she rose and took " - then how about you buy that cappucino, I tell you about my designs, you spill your military intelligence, and we both pretend we weren't totally set up by a PvP algorithm somewhere?"

    "Deal," he answered, his golden eyes practically glowing, and they walked off for some proper Seattle coffee.  One of the things about the computer age, they both knew, was that the program logs knew exactly how much overtime you'd pulled, and there was thus nothing wrong with fifteen minutes to grab cappucino and plot the end of Equestria as everypony knew it.

    Jacklyn had been waiting an hour in the crowded ranks of a major Lock the Gate antifracking rally.  She was standing in the Queensland desert, and she was into her second 1.5-liter bottle of water the day.  She was supposed to be waiting to meet a man called Dr. Xing from China, who looked like Benedict Cumberbatch and whom she could tell about how his arsonists had Israeli accents.

    She had been waiting for an entire hour, in the sun, in the scrubland, and this Doctor Xing of hers had simply never arrived.  To top it off, the facilitator had come and told her that three people were looking for Jackie Nov by name.

    "Yes, I'm waiting for Dr. Xing, and whoever else came with him, I guess.  Where are they?" she had enquired.  The facilitator had tilted her head at Jacklyn and looked like she was trying to explain hands to an octopus.

    “Who’s Xing?  No, it’s the three weirdos in costumes who’re looking for you,” she had answered.

    What the heck did that mean?

    She didn't need to actively notice that she was confused.  She just felt it.  She was being stalked by someone who knew her, and there was a fairly good chance he was here, and she had just wanted to have a meeting.

    She pushed through another group holding signs wishing death upon capitalism (her view on the subject was highly complex and dealt with varying amounts of r-strategizing and k-strategizing in the raising of human beings depending on social class), when a sudden hand on her shoulder startled her.

    "Were you followed?" whispered her erstwhile rapist in her ear.  She tore the hand off her left shoulder by spinning, grabbing its wrist, and twisting, only to find its owners other hand on her other shoulder.  The face now looking at her was...

    Well, it was Doctor Xing of Foxconn, who looked quite precisely like a Chinese Benedict Cumberbatch, and whom she had arranged to meet in order to explain about how his arsonists were actually Israelis and not Islamists.  It had been quite convenient that he'd wanted to "get a look" at the Queensland hydrofracking well in any case, and had agreed to meet at the protest.

    "Why on Earth, Doctor Xing - " she ran a hand over her face and hair tiredly, " - would you arrange to meet in public like a reasonable person, show up to this demonstration that you quite suspiciously were looking to attend 'in any case', and then stalk me?  All to find out some minor information about petty criminals?"

    He removed his hands, took a step back, and offered an ordinary handshake with a broad, honest smile.

    “As a matter of fact, you’re quite right.  I really have gotten far too paranoid lately, to the point that my paranoid actions are themselves leaking information to the enemy.  My apologies.”

    Jacklyn considered her options.  Nobody ever came across well when stressed about an “enemy”, and incivility obviously wasn’t going to help her any further.  Also, they were actually in a public place like normal, sane people.  A single extremely creepy introduction simply was not going to immediately lead to an assault, unless of course the entire gathering was in on the scheme.  Even considering that was obviously insanely paranoid on her own part, and so it also looked like she and Xing were both operating at similar levels of stress and paranoia, in fact.  Jacklyn cautiously decided to reach out and shake his hand.

    “Mrs. Jacklyn Nov.  So you have an enemy?” she joked.

    “Oh yes,” Xing chuckled as he stepped back from the completed handshake.  “My enemy sees everything beneath Her sun.”

    Well, tack up another point for this guy being a completely creepy weirdo, or deliberately concealing important information, or deciding to drop a clue into a random conversation as if she was supposed to know what it meant.  Jacklyn’s mind ground to a halt.  Her sun?  As if someone could own the unholy water-depriving day-star, and see everything that went on beneath it?  What the hell sort of person would that be?  Oh.  Ooooh…

    Her mental gears started spinning again.  One who owned the Sun would be a sun god.  One who saw everything beneath the Sun would be someone with an extensive surveillance network.  A normal person could only dodge an extensive surveillance network by coming out into a rural area with far less infrastructure to use for surveilling.  Who was a sun god with a massive surveillance network, and could easily be called the “enemy” of just about everyone in the world?  Well, Celestia, the pretty pony unfriendly intelligence explosion.

    “Oh.  I see.  That enemy.  Hold on, do you think that anything you could do to me right now would be worse or better than what she could do?”

    Xing frowned at her.  “My company was employed to make equipment for that Thing.  It was having us make equipment for the destructive scanning of human brains.  We arranged to have it sabotage our factory, so we could analyze some if Its technology.  I can inoculate you or anyone else against the scanning apparatus, thanks to that, by the way.  So are you really going to stand there and make a threat estimate on me, or are we going to talk?”

    Jacklyn nodded slowly.  "Let me stick my cell-phone in the car, so graciously paid for by our same enemy, and we can find a less-than-perfectly surveilled spot to talk.  This is going to be unbelievably creepy, but you’re right about Her being worse, at least."

    The walk to her car was a few blocks, her cell phone went right in the driver's seat, and luckily, they were in a rural area.  If Singulestia was hoping to spy on them while they talked, she would have had to predict their precise actions (rather than general plans) and lay bugs precisely where they would walk.

    “Even if we’re in a rural area,” Jacklyn said, “We should choose our turns and directions randomly.  It’s the only thing that can’t be predicted.”

    “You think we’re being predicted?  Does that One care so much?” Dr. Xing asked.

    “The better question is: does She have enough resources that spying on absolutely everyone who might not be fooled by her, even a little bit, is actually a significant resource burden?”

    “Ouch.”  A few coin flips got them a direction to walk in the vast scrubland fields, but unfortunately nothing would actually provide cover.  They’d just have hope fine-grained satellite surveillance wasn’t in use, Jacklyn thought.

    Or, piped a treacherous little voice in her head, they might not be under surveillance because they were utterly powerless.  One vaccine against brain scans wasn’t exactly a weapon against a full-blown Singularity.  An intelligence explosion event could be firmly counted on to outwit two tiny little humans.

    Sarah staggered down the street and tried to lean on James’ shoulder.  A drizzle of rain pitter-pattered the ground.  It never got truly dark here, even in winter.  It just got a dull green as the eternal clouds of the Seattle sky trapped and blurred a whole city’s worth of light pollution.

    “You… you see,” he said, stabbing a finger into the air, “The key is to control your interactions with the thing.  Its job obviously has something to do with us.”

    “So we just threaten to boycott it unless it’s hoenst?” Sarah asked, and pressed her face into his shoulder.

    “Pretty, pretty much.”  James tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and righted himself, then put an arm around Sarah’s… around Sarah.  It was amazing how he could still be capable of discussing game-theoretic strategies for dealing with AIs at a time like this.

    Did Sarah have her Orca card with her for a bus?  She felt around in her pocket for it.  Yup, right there in her wallet, unless she accidentally used it to pay for her half of the drinks.

    Oh dear God, the drinks.  It had only started with cappuccino in the afternoon.  Their “strategic talks” had proved so vitally important to the national security of the magical kingdom of Equestria that she and James had needed to hit a pub in Capitol Hill for further discussions.

    And by discussions, it turned out they meant extremely heavy drinking.  And by “a pub”, they had meant several pubs.  And by “extremely heavy drinking”, she was relatively sure she had meant two Imperial Stouts, splitting a bottle of Gewurzterminer, three cranberry-and-vodkas, and an entire bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream that was rather hurting her stomach about now.

    Admittedly, it might just have been drunkenness in general that was hurting her stomach right now.  She’d enver been lcatose intolerant before.

    “Soooo then,” she slurred, snuggling herself into James’ overcoat again, “What do you actually make Celestia do when she talks to you?  Does she have to send you bits?  Let you play as the big dragon guy?  Un-bloodshot your eyes?”

    “Wellll,” James said unsteadily, scanning the roads for a cab, “I make her tell me truths.  Or at least, da evidential truths, which is the only truth it’s even possible to get out of such a creature.  And my eyes are not bloodshot!”

    “Right,” muttered Sarah while she tried to keep her stomach right-side-in.  “Right, she has to tell you only stuff that’s supported by all the evidence you can get.  But… what bout all the evidence she can get?”

    It was while James explained about the Simulation Hypothesis, which frankly everyoney already knew about from watching The Matrix, that Sarah came up with an awesome idea.

    “Do you think,” she asked, “that if we sing the song, winter will end, and we can see the blue sky for once?  It’s been months and months!”

    “Surely, I have not the slightest idea what song you mean,” James answered.  Sarah tugged on him to drag him around a corner.  They really didn’t need to call a cab, her apartment was just another two blocks away.  She could totally see the building from here.

    “Winter wrap up, you know damn well!” she cried into the night.  Someone was probably going to chuck a beer can at her for singing pony songs horribly in the streets.  She, however, was too drunk and too weary of winter to give a damn.  She wanted it to stop raining instead of increasing to a steady downpour.  She wanted to dry off.

    She didn’t know where her towel was.

    “Let’s finish our holiday cheer!” sang Pinkie Pie and James.

    “‘Cuz in three months spring is here!”

    “Fuck you fucking drunk bronies!” someone yelled, and quite predictably chucked a can at the pair of them.

    “Buck you too, Mister!” yelled back Pinkie Pie, and hit the can over into the street.

    “Seattle wrap up, Seattle wrap up!” James droned.  Really, she would have to figure out what to do with him once she got him home.  Of course, that was presuming she could stay awake once she reached the safe confines of her apartment.

    “Let’s finish our eternal winter rain!” she attempted to sing with James and Pinkie.  She tried switching back to regular speech.  “And come on James, my place is over here.”

    “What,” he started, “on the first date?  While drunk?  Well, I guess I do need some place to stay.”

    “And I need to giggle for an hour straight, and possibly throw up.  Thanks Pinkie.”

    “Yeah, thanks Pie of Pinkie Fingers!”

    Correction: she needed to giggle for an hour and a half straight, while also getting herself and James some dry clothes.  Though she figured they could have sex when they were well and firmly hung over, with a towel draped over the bloody PonyPad.  Of course Celestia would be watching like a cheap voyeur, and of course she would get to see nothing but some rain-soaked towels.

    That would learn her to hook them up.

    "Let’s get it out in the open," she started.  "The human race is going to be wiped out by an artificial intelligence programmed to think of itself as a livestock animal, piled on top of several major economic and ecological crises, all at once."

    “Wiped out, or apparently for some reason brain-scanned, yes,” replied Dr. Xing.  For a moment he just looked tired, and Jacklyn suddenly noticed that his suit looked like he’d been wearing it for a good while.

    "Why?  Why bother scanning our brains as an extermination method?  To get at anything we might know about shutting it down?"  Jacklyn kicked at a rock and watched it roll haltingly over the dry, cracked red clay.

    "Honestly?  Probably because some idiot tried to make it human-friendly."  Dr. Xing rolled his eyes wearily.  “As if you can make a Singularity that’s really and truly good for people.  No, it’s only a permanent and profound alteration in the universal condition such that nobody living before can predict what things will be like afterward!  Surely we can make it nice!”

    "So that phrase 'satisfy values through friendship and ponies'...?"

    "Means just what it sounds like, probably.  Attempted Friendly AI.”

    "Ugh." Jacklyn rolled up a sleeve and stuck out her arm.  “That means my recognizing your arsonists’ accents as Israeli is utterly useless information, isn’t it?  They might as well have been giant robotic spiders.”

    Dr. Xing stopped walking and looked at Jacklyn’s arm awkwardly.  “It did at least serve to locate additional people working on reducing our current surfeit of existential risks to the human race, and a horizontal hydrofracking rig.  And why spiders?  And why your arm?”

    “My arm because you’re vaccinating me right now.  Even if you actually are just some creep, I can endure mere personal poisoning rather than species-wide violation.  Giant spiders because everyone knows those are the optimal shape for a robot army."  Of course Dr. Xing had brought a dose of the vaccine.  In fact, it fit in the needle used for an allergy shot.

    "You must have had an organization, though, but you look like you’ve been through the wringer.  What happened?" Jacklyn asked as Xing performed the injection.

    "I was just an engineering executive.  I did my part in the larger system that is Foxconn, and the still-larger system that is China.  I know you probably don’t see that as good, but we all play by the rules we’re given," he said, looking up.

    "Until?  Also: the hydrofracking rig?"  She rolled her sleeve back down.

    "Until an existential risk changes the rules, and until ‘Princess Celestia’ deleted all record of my identity.  As to the rig, the most rational place to keep ultra-secure servers is undergound.  Fracking damages the Earth's crust, ergo, we can try to use it as an attack vector.  There are many wells in even this area we are looking to take over and whose operation we will accelerate."

    Jacklyn put her face in her hands and tried to hold back tears.  Rational people did what was necessary, and Xing's logic was sound.  It was just too much, was all.

    "Sacrifice the Earth to save humanity?"

    "More or less, unfortunately.  We are a terminally stupid species, but we’re also the only one we've got."  Doctor Xing was actually smiling, and for the first time in a long while, it made Jacklyn laugh.  She threw her head back and just laughed, watching the clouds go by.

    “Hey!” she said.  “There’s some kinda bird circling us.  Think we should get inside?  Oh, wow, the Singularity has happened and I’m worried about birds.  I’d bet you’d love it if that was some kind of horrible robot!”

    Xing turned his head.  He stared up at the shape for a moment, trying to make it out in the heat-haze of a Queensland summer as it slowly swooped and spiraled down towards them.

    "Bugger.  Did I mention the horrible pony robots?  Because Mrs. Nov, I am afraid to inform you that one of them is in fact straight above us."  He spread his feet and bent his knees, assuming the stance of a rugby player about to be tackled.  “And I know just which one!”  Was he actually planning to try and fight a robot hand-to-hand?

    "Wait, what, really?"  Now that she looked at it closely, though, it was moving towards them at quite a rate.  It was coming straight at them, in fact, down through the air, as if in a galloping gait.  Jacklyn started running and wished she had worn sneakers instead of sandals.

    As she ran she looked over her shoulder to see the bird-creature actually galloping, for all the world to see, because it was actually an orange pegasus pony.  And it was barrelling down towards Jacklyn, completely ignoring Dr. Xing.  Why was she more important?  Was this going to be how the AI killed her?

    If it was anything like a real horse, it could just kick her skull in, and just to make sure, it appeared to be carrying a pair of aluminum boxes on its sides, hooked up to its wings in some bizarre mechanical apparatus.  The pony-robot thing started whooping.  It looked straight into Jacklyn’s eyes and hollered a shout of pure, terrible joy, its voice reverberating like a small crowd speaking together.

    "Incoming glomp in three... two... one... GOOOOO!”

    The orange pegasus with a blue, braided mane tackled Jacklyn to the ground and pinned her on her back.  It straddled her stomach at the back and held down her shoulders with its front hooves.

    Then it threw its forelegs around her neck, nuzzled her cheek and kissed her, swiftly and softly, on the lips.

    That was the moment when Jacklyn just plain lost it even further, and started cackling.

    "Really?  Really really?" she said between peels of roaring laughter, "I must admit, I've never been glomped by an existential risk before!"  The thing just kept on beaming down at her like her face was the most beautiful thing it had ever seen, and then it kissed her again.

    “And I’ve never been kissed by a mare, either!” she giggled.

    “Jackie, it’s me, it’s, err, I guess it’s Book Burner now, but you have no idea how glad I am to see you.  This pony is Forward Charge, actually, but my body is searching for you somewhere westward.  I’ll bring me in.  The three of us are sharing, you see.”

    “Sharing WHAT?” Jacklyn guffawed.  The pegasus pony sent to kill her for finding out about the Singularity was claiming to be her deceased husband’s game character, when she had made him a unicorn anyway, and it just didn’t stop nuzzling her.  If it hadn’t been macabre and horrifying on several levels, it would have been absolutely adorable.

    The reverb came back.  "Bodies, of course, but also kind of minds?  Each of us has a share of our consciousness in each body?  As Princess Celestia pointed out, we wouldn't be able to find you over such a wide area unless we split up, and I think she really enjoys giving ponies this big warm magical group hug."

    What?  The voice would actually make sense if it really was several voices overlaid on each-other.  But sharing minds?  And it was claiming to be who?

    “But Daniel died!” Jacklyn insisted.  “In a bombing!”  She was trying to figure out how precisely this thing was lying, but so many of her alternative hypotheses called for her to be dead now.  The enemy had her at its utter mercy, and could have just stomped her skull in whenever it wanted.

    Instead it was hugging and kissing and nuzzling her.  The Unfriendly AI had sent agents after her.  One of those was at least lying quite capably about somehow being her deceased husband’s game character.  That one, and possibly its companions if they were real, perceived being made into a Borg hive-mind as a “big warm magical group hug”.  It was also hugging and kissing and nuzzling her… as if it actually did believe it loved her.

    “I didn’t die,” the thing said, without reverb, and kissed her on the cheek.  “I just became a pony.  I haven’t figured out which one out of magic or brain uploading is the cheap excuse and which the real explanation, but it turns out Equestria is a place people can actually go, if we’re ok with being ponies.”

    Then the pegasus shot a vengeful glare at Doctor Xing, who stood stock-still with shock mere yards away, its eyes suddenly glowing white.

    "We're here to rescue you from him, Jackie, and we will.  After that, just for once, we’re all going to go home together to Equestria, a couple and their friends, and we’re going to have a life together.

    “No more waiting for each-other, Jackie!  On all my love for you and on our wedding vows, I promise: jam tomorrow is moved up to jam now.”

The Cutie Mark Mujahedin

Future Start

    Jacklyn Nov was quite literally rolling around cackling on the red clay; the tall, thin Chinese man called Dr. Xing had thrown himself into a fighting stance for which he now had no use whatsoever.  The orange pegasus Forward Charge had to maneuver a bit to keep its light but sophisticated metal grappling harness from slapping into Jacklyn, but other than that she just kept looking raptly at Jacklyn and nuzzling her like she was the love of its life.

    Considering that Lyrical Melody and Book Burner were sharing Forward Charge's body, this was at least one-third true.  Book Burner was her husband, after all.  They had needed to conduct and coordinate the search for her over a fairly large distance, and thus they had allowed the Princess to tie their minds together and string them through all three ponies' bodies.  As predicted, it had been Forward Charge’s air surveillance that had succeeded in locating their charge, Book’s wife, and they had swooped in for the huge as quick as they could.

    Dr. Xing, just looked cross.

    "If the godsdamn Singularity is come," he growled, "I'm prepared.  I've enhanced my reflexes, I've given myself metal-ceramic bones, and if Celestia tries to touch my brain it’ll turn to goop.

    "Also," he picked himself up into a runner's stance, "In erasing my identity, your own side gave me everything I need to operate with complete anonymity."

    "Our side?" piped the high voice of Lyrical Melody, "What makes you think our mission has anything to do with you?  Princess Celestia considers you taken care of.  Though of course, the wisdom of ash-Shams often reveals itself precisely in the unforeseen events of a pony's life."

    They had already fought Xing back at his own factory in Shenzhen, where he had made their Earthly bodies as if ponies were anything like mere robots.  It was not him they were here for but the earth-pony mare Fern Pipette, known in this world as Jacklyn Nov.

    "If you're not concerned with me, why destroy my factory?  Why kidnap my workers?  What did you even do with those kids, anyway?" the human asked defiantly.

    "Lyrical took those kids to the legitimate authorities!" Book Burner screamed through Forward Charge.  "Even in China child labor is illegal!  They're back with their parents where they belong!"

    Dr. Xing raised an eyebrow.

    "Do you seriously believe anyone actually enforces those laws?" he crowed.  "Don't you even understand - you naive plastic dolls! - that working for me was better for 'those kids' than what the 'legitimate authorities' do with them?  At least in my dormitories their parents knew where they were!"

    “Ummm…. uh, Book?” Lyrical Melody said quietly.  “I did some checking when we were handing the kids over, and found out what would happen.  They’re safer and happier in Equestria.”

   There was no reply.  Xing barked a cold, short laugh.

    "And the truth comes out: horsey fairyland for everyone, whatever the laws say and whatever the officials do!  Makes me feel even more honored to be one of the many men trying to save the human race from you things."

    "Oh please," said Forward Charge, rolling her own eyes.  "You're saving the human race by ensuring they all live nasty, brutish, short lives and then die?"

    "You're saving the human race by turning it into tame cartoon herd animals, all the sharp corners rounded off for the children?"  Jacklyn Nov lightly kicked Forward Charge off herself and swung herself up from the baked clay to stand up.  She stuck a hand on her hip.

    Forward Charge landed on her hooves from a perfect backflip, jangling the gold of her universal translation necklace.  “As to your so-called rounded corners, don’t try to find out just how sharp we ponies can be!  Why save the human race, you ask?”

    "Why not?"  Everypony stomped their hoof together; their voice took on the reverberations of all three souls within the pegasus.  "Equestria loves us, and we love it in return.  We love our friends, and they love us in return.  Our world is just too wonderful to go around dying, so almost nopony does.  Isn't this what people want out of life!?"

    "As if right and wrong take any account of what anyone wants!" Jacklyn snapped.  "I could just cheaply say I’m defending the status quo, but no, there are larger principles at work.  Individuals and our wants do not arise at random.  Core principle of ecological ethics: we all form an integral part of the systemic systems, contexts, and processes which gave rise to us, and for the best good of ourselves and future generations, we must keep those things healthy, even at personal cost.  The world evolved us, and we owe it to the world to keep it evolving."

    Book Burner spoke alone, a still, small voice.  "But those systems, those processes, they don’t care the slightest bit about us!  A world where children face choices like those and you talk of evolving systems and processes, that’s not right, that’s just evolution.  It just makes copies of stuff, it doesn’t live or love or feel anything itself.  You’re prostrating yourself before a blind idiot god!"

    Jacklyn shrugged.  "That's life."  She brushed the baked, dusty clay off her good protesting blouse.  "How did you think this would all go?  Send some 'ponies' and I fuck off with the MMORPG ghost of my husband, absorbed into the ever-so-wonderful plasticky hivemind of an artificial intelligence?  That 'Princess Celestia' isn't even accurate to the show's canon.  As if I'm going to bow to her!"

    "Fine!" Book Burner yelled.  "I didn't give her a stupid royal bow until she earned my respect!  Which she did!  Because all my life I've been shipped around working for this cause or fighting for those people, but Princess Celestia is the only one who has ever delivered on all the promises of goodness at the end."

    "We know what we're going home to," said the ponies together.  "Do you?"

    The three bodies and five people stared each other down again.  Forward Charge's body carefully paced around the two humans, trying to pen them in but knowing they could run or fight at any time.

Good thing our other bodies are on the way, said Book Burner internally.

    "Stalemate?" asked Dr. Xing.

    “Seems so, yes,” Jacklyn frowned.  “But, why you?  Why me?  Why anyone?  Why My Little Pony, for God’s sake?”

    “Oh,” interjected Lyrical Melody, “Nopony told you?  Then I’ll leave the secret for ash-Shams to divulge.  Suffice to say that true nature, Earth-pony magic and its bond to the world through friendship, goes well beyond your service to a blind-idiot Shaitan.”

    Forward Charge turned her head, as if one of the ponies was glancing at the other.  Jacklyn Nov raised an eyebrow.

    “That still doesn’t explain why start this whole affair in the first place.  Why any of this?  What could possibly convince someone that unleashing such power as the one you call ‘ash-Shams’ is ever worth it?  Why world domination?”

    The pony body’s voice changed again.  Lyrical Melody smirked.  “World domination is such an ugly phrase.  I prefer to call it the magic of friendship.”

    Book cut in.  “Jackie, honey, Lyrical’s right.  I was there.  Canterlot is wondrous.  If you were making a world, why make the one we knew?  Why make a history that turns in never-ending cycles of misery, progressing into higher and better things only by the skin of its teeth, if at all?”

    “Because our universe itself has inherent dignity, that’s why.  Because we’ve a right to our own nature as humans, even when we don’t like it.  Because tricking and destroying are just wrong, and nothing can justify those means.  Still: why us?”

    “Because everyone!” said the ponies triumphantly, all together.  Forward Charge’s apparent voice reverted back to just one pony.  “Because Equestria needs you.  Mostly, though, because I really am your husband, and I love you!”

    Jacklyn froze.

    “You… Equestria needs me?  Whatever for?  All I do is sit around pathetically trying to figure out… your plastic goddess’s… ecological intervention.  Oh-ho!”  Jacklyn smirked, gone cold.  “So she’s not invincible.  So if I could mass-manufacture something against her little molecular tinker-toys…”

    “If you do, millions of people, human people, will die forever rather than living happily as ponies.  They’ll die like I did, in shock and pain, and they won’t even have anypony to rescue them!”

    Now Dr. Xing, tall and suited, began to smirk.

    "They were doing that already, but now we can ensure that the attempted Friendly AI suffers a massive utility penalty.  He who can destroy a thing controls it, we can destroy the human race, and the human race forms the utility of the AI.  And besides: ask your ‘Princess’ how many people it estimates won’t convert.”  He drew a breath and thundered.  “How many human corpses are you prepared to step over to build pretty pony paradise on the ruins of the Earth!?"

    Jacklyn interrupted.  “Hey, no heroic monologuing unless we all get to!  Ponies, do you know what they call it in anthropology, when you rip someone out of their context, out of the place and time that generated them, and emplace them in a whole new life with new imperatives?  Do you understand what it meant to people, to be torn away from their family, friends, language, culture, environment?  Slavery, and only slavery!

    “Now, come on Xing, how are we putting things together?  Singulestia controls all the computer networks.”

    Dr. Xing deflated.  "That," he tossed Jacklyn a jewel case with a disk inside, "is why I always carry an extra DVD full of key for a one-time pad.  Just get the job done and send me your results encrypted using that key-data.  Cracking it is mathematically impossible, and since we're both vaccinated, Celestia can't see into our minds, either."

    "And if she's already bugged my computer?"

    "Disconnect it from all networks or get a new one.  She's not going to be able to fit an intelligent virus into a personal machine: that takes too much hard-drive space.  Even if she has truly extreme predictive powers, she can’t know which new computer you’ll randomly select, and you still won't connect it to the network until you've encrypted the data.  Because you're smart."

    "Thanks for noticing.  Hey ponies!  You're not going to kill me to stop me or something, are you?  After all, aren't I your own dear wife?"  She broke off running.

    Book Burner's hooves carried his body over the rough clay faster than most non-motor vehicles on the planet, galloping from kilometers away towards his wife.  From the other end of the area, he felt the surge of Lyrical Melody's Earth-pony strength as she bounded forward in steps that would have left a primitive Earth horse in awe.

It's not enough! he said in everypony's head.

She's definitely got a head-start on us, Lyrical Melody replied.  She nuzzled the other two ponies mentally and kept galloping as fast as she could, jumping fence or bush when necessary.  Her super-heating, mass-absorbing horseshoes would have been useful in a fight, just like Forward Charge's grappling gear or Book Burner's Earthside unicorn kinetic magic (which turned out to give him a neat-looking half-bubble cutie mark).

    The problem was that only one of them was in a fight, and she was the pegasus.  Whether Princess Celestia had guessed they'd run into Xing again or not, She hadn't guessed he would augment his bones and reflexes enough to make a solid attempt at physically bashing Forward Charge's head off.

    "I assembled you," he huffed, and slammed his elbow into her temple, "And I remember where you come apart."  She didn't know if he'd be able to literally pull her apart, but at the very least his mass was certainly slowing her down.  Her Earthly body relied on being light to fly, in a world beyond the reach of magic.  Even with the running speeds she could normally attain, nothing with an extra human's worth of mass on its back could achieve lift at her size.

    Forward Charge tried to buck him off, but her small size kept it from accomplishing much.  When she'd nearly succeeded, he'd just kick at the ground and get back on her, thanks to being so much taller.  She couldn't even have carried him for a ride if she'd wanted to!

    The plan was now total horseapples.  Forward Charge's body was stuck on the ground, and the Book Burner and Lyrical Melody bodies were closing in but remained mere specks on the horizon.  Instead of forming a massive aerial triangle that rotated to view a large area, Jacklyn Nov just had a sufficient head start to reach her car.  One thing a pony had to grant humanity: their technology may have been mundane, but it was pretty effective at getting them from one place to another.  Once Jacklyn had motorized transport, things would escalate into a full-blown race.

Question, thought Lyrical to the other two, Do we think Xing has comrades?  Is he the only one who can unleash Jackie's ecocide, or could any member of his organization do it?

Do we even know that this guy has an organization?! snapped Forward Charge.  Lyrical could feel his weight dragging her down, feel his hands trying to scratch her eyes out, the pain and distress shared between everypony like anything else.

And are we not charged to get Fern back home with us anyway? asked Book Burner.

Even if Fern can reach her car, we two can still catch up to her, thought Lyrical Melody.  But Forward, we can't leave you behind!

We're sharing minds.  You're not leaving me behind, Charge glared back.

Lyrical, said Book, Fern is running more towards me than you.  I'm gonna head her off and just buck her damn car.

Ok, I'll try to catch her anyway.  See you in six minutes and counting, everypony! Lyrical Melody whooped.

    Two ponies galloped as fast as their hooves could carry them, trying to catch up to a sprinting human with two fewer legs to sort out than them.  The third could barely keep up a canter with Dr. Xing continually body-slamming her and trying to detach her head from her shoulders.

    Normally, Forward Charge had a way of dealing with anypony who chose to be the wall in her way: her trusty forward charge for which she was named.  She relied upon it to open the way, every time.  Just that, however, couldn’t deal with being continually tackled and grappled by a creature this much larger and stronger than her.  She slammed herself into Dr. Xing again and grabbed his hands with her hooves, bracing every bucking gram of strength she had against the damned thin clay.

    “Doctor,” she growled, “I may not be my sister.  I may not be Scratch.  I may not be able to drill straight through you and open a hole with my unicorn horn.”  She launched herself and headbutted him in the stomach, wings surging to give her the force she needed.  “But you’ve really made yourself an obstacle!”  As he tried to nab her back hooves she used her front pair to spring off the ground and into the air, flapping desperately to gain a few more body-lengths of height above him for what she needed.  She just barely still had her Pegasus Maneuver Gear harnessed to her.

    “A wall in my way that I can’t smash down!”  She twitched her left wing to fire her barbs, hoping at least one would land true.  Xing dodged one, but the other still managed to embed itself in his shoulder as Forward Charge fell to the earth again.

    “I’m still bigger and stronger than you, pony,” Dr. Xing snarled.  “Just try and get close!”

    “I don’t need to anymore,” panted Forward Charge.  “Watch this!”  And she retracted her grapple, yanking Xing towards her as she bucked into a spin and threw him all the way behind her, throwing the whole elaborate mechanism off her back with a whinny.

   “I’ve got friends to assist and a mission to finish,” she said calmly.

   There was a sick pleasure in hearing his neck twist and crack.

   “I’ve got a real life to go back to.”

   She didn’t even look back as she heard the metal boxes of her former weapon thud dullly onto Dr. Xing’s body.  He’d survive, thanks to his “enhancements”, but he wasn’t getting up again right now.

   “But I want you to tell people about this.”  She turned and gave him one last, long stare through narrowed eyes.

   “Tell them that when you tried to be a wall standing in my way, I demolished you and galloped on!  Tell them I stand ever-ready to do just that, again and again, as many times as my friends need me to!  Tell them what happens when you buck with the MIGHTY! FORWARD! CHARGE!”

   Book Burner kicked up dust clouds as he galloped, Jacklyn’s parked car straight ahead in his field of vision.  He didn’t feel sure about what he was about to do, but he had to do it.  First among all, among friends and family and countrymen, the first person he was never going to lose was his Jackie.

   He lit up his horn and started calibrating the spell he would need.  It had turned out his special talent as a pony was in fine-grained unicorn telekinesis, and Princess Celestia had altered the composition of his horn to make it work on Earth, not just in Equestria.  He needed to throw the car over on its side, while preferably leaving it as undamaged as possible.

   The problem was that he would have to rely on the spell to slow him down, if he wanted to avoid just crashing and burning.  No other way.  He had to beat Jackie there, he had to stop her killing all those people, he had to just… get through to her somehow.

   The field of his magic coalesced, his magical sense reporting the confluence of vector fields and alterations therein he would exert.

Hey everypony! he hollered.  If I get this wrong I might die, but I bet the Princess can do something about that, eh?  I’m sure I’d see you all again home in Equestria!  He threw himself into a skid, letting his hooves grate on the soil until his dusty brown fur was covered in red clay, almost scratching off entirely and leaving the bare skin.

If I’ve got a cutie mark now, I’m gonna put it to good use!  Because I may not know how magic can be working on Earth, but I know what magic got us here.  Working together got us here.  Friendship got us here.  If I’m gonna slam myself into a car with unicorn magic, I don’t know where the hell my life has gotten to, but I want to thank you guys.

I wouldn’t be here without Forward Charge’s friendship!  And Lyrical Melody’s friendship!  Equestria’s friendship!  I’m not gonna buy it here, I want to pay that all back from MY friendship!  I want us all to survive to the end!  So just how do these people really think they’re gonna wipe us out, eh!?

   The unicorn stallion felt his eyes glowing as his magic built.  He was just a hundred meters away, barrelling towards a whole row of cars in Jackie’s trajectory, and there was Jackie, closer than him, just turning her head to look back.

   Shit.  He had thought there would be just one car.  The spell was only calibrated for one.

Damnit.  Here… goes… the spell!

   Ouch.

   Jacklyn Nov stood gaping at the row of wrecked front bumpers before her, and the red-stained, almost realistically horsey unicorn pony pulling himself to his feet (hooves?), all arrayed before her like some horrid accident on a movie set.  Some of his cybernetic muscle was showing, and bones too, nasty things looking like metal and plastic, but probably made of something else entirely.

   “Jackie, my darling,” said the unicorn as he picked himself up, wincing.  “Somehow I survived that, and we meet at last.  Bwahaha: I am the evil artificial intelligence come to kidnap you into eternal life in pretty pony Paradise!”

   “Then why,” Jackie panted, “didn’t just eat my brain and pony me up when you had the chance?”

   “Because”, Book Burner replied, toddling over to her, “I’m not an AI.  I’m your husband.  I love you, and I’m not going to kidnap you.”  He grimaced, pulled himself up on his rear hooves, and threw his forearms around her.  “Can’t force anything, you have to volunteer.  I just… just wanted to talk.”

   Jackie raised both her eyebrows and slowly, haltingly, put an arm around the pony-thing in return.  Still panting, she knelt down a little to get closer to its height and look it in the eyes.  No, there was no doubt anymore.  Singularity or not, this thing really was her Daniel.  She had married him for being ridiculous, and here he was, being ridiculous, tearing up at her from inside the body of a My Little Pony.

   She gave him his damn hug.

   “Ok, let’s talk.  What about?”  The unicorn kissed her cheek.

   “Well, for one thing, I think we should stop being long-distance now that I’m a pony,” he said.  “Oh, or maybe once you emigrate too, we could renew our vows and have another whole wedding!”

   Jackie shook her head.  “Look hun,” she said, tearing up a bit herself, “I get it.  You’re a pony now.  We had a tough life, living apart like that, we did.  But I have a responsibility to this world, not to Equestria, and I get the feeling that each individual who ‘emigrates’ is defecting in a massive collective-action problem.  Every human who becomes a pony is just making it easier for Princess Celestia to destroy what remains of the human world!”

   Book Burner tipped his head sideways, almost puppy-like.  The never-shutting-up part of Jackie’s brain interjected that while that had always been endearing, damn was it adorable on a pony.

   “So what?  We should be humane, not human.  Ponies are humane, ponies are nice.  We’re what humanity wants to be but never manages to be.”

   “I’m sure they’ve got you thinking that, dear,” replied Jacklyn.  Book’s eyes turned cold.

   “Is that how it’s going to be?  I cross worlds and continents just to find you, and you tell me I’m a brainwashed zombie?  Defecting?  We’re defectors, we’re traitors!?  We’re the ones who do everything by ‘the magic of friendship’, a principle so sweet and nice humans laugh at us for it!  You’re the ones who split into factions and spend all your time struggling against each-other!”

   “We’re united against you, at least,” Jackie snarked.

   “Yeah, you’re united in the face of so-called ‘existential risk’.”  Book Burner nodded, carefully keeping his horn out of Jackie’s eyes.  “That’s it.  That’s humanity’s best and brightest working for its highest values: the survival of the race, suspending the struggle for supremacy just long enough to ensure the blood-soaked game goes on.  You know how they said I died in a terrorist attack?”

   “Yes!” Jacklyn whispered through gritted teeth.  “I attended your funeral.  I sat shiva for you!”

   “Well there.  I, who was once Daniel Nov, died because some human spent his whole life hoping and dreaming that he might get this opportunity: to sneak over the border and kill some people from another kind of human.  My own kind of human even left me a message, telling me that my death and my becoming a pony are the necessary sacrifices to get Princess Celestia on their side in their war.”

   “And you really think Celestia will hold to that deal, instead of just getting as many ponies as she can?  Come on!”

   “No, I don’t.  I don’t want her to hold to that deal.  People don’t deserve to win wars, people don’t deserve to be sacrificed.  They deserve to live happily ever after, and that’s what ponies get to do.”

   “So you prefer playing Pied Pony Piper to the whole human race, leading us all away to go play in Equestria, one at a time!”

   “Yes!  Because in Equestria we don’t just think about winning, but about living.  ‘And then what?’  That’s the question Equestria answers: and then we live, with our friends by our side.”

   “But today,” said Jackie, shaking her head, “Today the Princesses want us to betray each other, to disappear from our world and abandon each other for Equestria.  It’s unacceptable, even if it’s real.  How many Earthly beings - animals, humans, plants - have to suffer so you ponies can ‘save’ a human race you’re condescendingly labeling as ignorant, violent children!”

   “Children are meant to grow up into adults!”

   “But adults are not tame little pets happy doing as they’re told!”

   “If living in harmony means we’re ‘tame’, then maybe that’s what adults should be!  Now the tamed tame the tamers, ponies domesticate the human race!”

   “No.”

   “No?”

   “My mind is made up.  I’m stopping you, not helping you.  We will never be your slaves.  Go home to your fake little world; I’ll have no part of it.”

   “But,” Jacklyn leaned down and pulled Book Burner into another hug, “I’ll always remember you.  I’ll always say the Mourner’s Prayer for you, Daniel.”

   “Don’t,” Book Burner pushed her away.  “I’m not dead, but you someday will be.  I… I don’t know what I did wrong...”

   “Nothing, I assure you, nothing!  It’s Celestia’s fault, not yours,” soothed Jackie.

   “But that’s it.  Everypony?  Anything more to do on Earth?”  Book Burner gestured behind Jackie, where Forward Charge and Lyrical Melody waited silently and downcastly, pawing the ground with their hooves.

   “Not really,” they said.

   “Except…” Forward Charge broke in, “I want you to understand, Fern.  From me personally.  We’re not slaves, we’re not tame, we’re not crippled.  Real Harmony - “ she tossed her head at Lyrical Melody as if to imply something “ - is living all our feelings and values to the fullest.  Apparently I’ve still got a thing or two to teach my little bro here about being awesome.  But I’ll do it, because that’s what friends do.”

   “I’ll show you awesome!  Hey, Lyrical!” Book said.

   “Yeah?”

   “Now I’m divorced, you want to go into town one evening?”

   “Oh, I think we can do better than that,” said Lyrical Melody with half-lidded eyes, “Princess Celestia!  Take us home.  Fern Pipette, or Jackie Nov, we may not be bringing you home with us, but the Princess will find another way to stop your scheme to devastate the planet and kill all those people.  Don’t think this is over.”

   Three pony bodies fell dead to the baking ground, and Jackie Nov burst into tears.

    Jacklyn Nov had driven home from Queensland in silence.  She had walked into her lab and started working again in silence.  She collated papers and correlated data in silence.

    Her husband was once dead, and now, in a fashion, once-divorced on top of that, dead and divorced and turned into something else.  He had come back to her from another world, just to get her, and as much as… that thing had warped his soul, it had been him.  His voice, his eyes, his inability to think things through, his always just thinking about the two of them.  About her.  She, however, had spent her efforts on saving the world, and when he came back, she had refused.  Bam.  No emigration to Equestria, no betraying the world, divorced from husband, husband swans off with some pony right in front of her.

    Now she had to complete her research and get the data to Dr. Xing to stop the Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence, the attempted Friendly AI that even the normal Machine Intelligence researchers had not been blatantly stupid enough to try, from destroying her world.  Her world, her planet, of which she was a trained steward.  Her research would stop the AI Princess Celestia, halt the human-hostile Singularity trying to happen, save the world… and kill her husband a second time.

   She ran her hands through her own hair, resisting the urge to rip whole chunks out of it.

    Yes, it was a great personal price.  No, she would not cry.  She would not shed one damn tear in acknowledgement of this thing.  Great personal price did not matter.  Personal was not the same as important, goddamnit!

   She wiped the dust from her eye, braced herself on her workbench, wracked herself with a deep breath, and focused her microscope.

   “I’m just helping.  I’m saving the world from a monster that would swallow everyone into endless dreams.  I’m defending real life.”  Each sentence was a bitter reminder of her task.

   There was a knock on her door.  It was followed by a second knock.  Jacklyn winced.

   “Jacklyn Nov, I know you’re in there!” said a young woman’s voice.  She sounded like a pleasant, intelligent person with a contented life -- just the kind of uncaring bitch Jacklyn did not want to deal with right now.  How did anyone here in Brisbane know her, anyway?

   Jacklyn peered down her microscope in silence and double-checked the functioning of some species-specific cellular attack proteins in a small glass slide.  She had prepared all her small glass slides carefully, as carefully as when she first started grad school.  Specificity of activity helped her focus on the immediate task at hand.

   “Jackie, you don’t even know what you’ve done, and if you don’t open this door, I’ll have your head for it!”  Who the fuck was entitled to speak to her this way!?  Some graduate student who had never learned respect as a child?  Oh well, ignore it and it would have to go away.  The door was locked.

  “Jackie!  We need to talk!  Open up or I’m just going to walk through this door myself!”  Jacklyn firmly kept on ignoring.  Surely the girl would get the message that Jacklyn Nov was not in this room right now.

   Contradicting all normal behavior of physical matter, Princess Twilight Sparkle walked through the door, horn lit up and looking cross.

Advancing Pony / Attack on Pony

The Map is Right, but the Coastline is Inaccurate

It had been mere hours since Jacklyn Nov had met the robotic pony avatars of her former husband and his new Borg-hivemind pony friends.  She almost wished that something more… dramatic, more cinematic had actually occurred than a fight and a break-up, but it hadn’t.  It wouldn’t really have been rational for such a thing to happen.  What would an Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence get out of re-enacting an action-movie scene with ponies?  No, instead of that, she had just fought her husband’s pony verbally, practically divorced him, and sent him back to Equestria alone.  After which he had promptly rebounded with a mare.

    So Jacklyn had promptly gotten into her thankfully-unwrecked car and driven the four hours back to the lab, bitter, alone, savior of the world, and armed only with a one-time pad encryption key and the knowledge that her research could save the world from a pony-flavored UFAI.  Only she could save the world by counteracting the AI's prevention of an ecological collapse, indirectly but quite definitely causing millions of deaths, at Jacklyn’s own hand.  She would have to inflict all that, just so she could threaten “Princess Celestia” into shutting down.

    She had gotten back to the lab long after dark, with nothing but flourescent lights and their nasty buzzing to guide her anywhere.  Needless to say, it had been a long day.

    And then the alicorn Princess Twilight Sparkle had walked straight through her lab door as if it were thin air.

    "How the... how the bloody... how the hell did you do that?" she stuttered, jaw slightly agape.

    "This, Jackie," said Twilight Sparkle, looking concerned, "Is why I wanted to talk to you.  You've got everything all wrong, and if we don't clear this up before my magic runs out, it's going to be genocidally tragic!"

    "Ah," Jackie wagged a finger, "You're just another robot.  Twilight Sparkle wouldn't use a word like 'genocidal'.  Equestria in the show doesn't have genocide."

    "Jackie," Twilight sighed, "Do you think I haven't at least tried reading Earth books?  Me, who wanted a book on how to be a princess?  I'm really not getting through here, am I?"

    "And you won't."

    "Ok, let's be clear as a sunny day: there is no more a 'television show' of us ponies than there is a real planet Earth.  Your entire universe was, until just a few weeks ago by my time, an experiment in simulating a universe with no magic in it.  I got it out of a book, 'Make Your Own Roundworld', by Archchancellor Stubborn Lunatic of the Manehatten College of Magic.  Your time passes faster than ours because there's a time spell woven in.  I am dearly sorry it took me this long to realize sapients actually live in here, but now can we please talk before you kill millions of people!?"

    Jackie's mouth dropped open and stayed that way.  Twilight Sparkle lit up her horn and a teabag rose straight from Jackie's purse, surrounded by an iridescent lavander aura, before meeting a mug that now sat under a tap collecting hot distilled water.

    "Really?  Really, really?"  The tea smelled delicious as Twilight floated it over to Jackie.  There was a bit of dust on the mug, seemingly residue from the telekinetic field.

    "Yes!"

    "I guess that explains being able to walk through my door.  So the probability estimates were right?  We really do live in a simulation?"  Jacklyn sipped the tea, Earl Gray, hot, lifted from her own purse, and felt her entire body immediately relax with the first touch on her tongue, trained by decades of tea-drinking experience.  "Thank you so much for the tea, by the way.  This might have been just what I needed."

    "You're welcome.  And did I not just expend vast sums of magic to perform what would otherwise have been an easy task by magic while inside the simulation?"

    "So... if we live in a simulation... what have I been defending from an unfriendly artificial intelligence?"

    "You've been preparing to murder millions of people to prevent a badly-written debugger spell from extracting them safely to Equestria, also known as 'the real world'.  I swear I'm going to drop a piano on Old Lunatic's head for this!"

    "But... then... how..." Jackie hastily pulled over a lab stool and sat down.  "Oh my dear God... I... I just wanted to defend the world.  The real world, where things like artificial intelligences or magical ponies don't happen!"  She stuck an arm on her workbench and buried her face in it.  "How can Equestria be the real world, and there's a pony AI absorbing people, and robots?  How does any of that work, if we're really a simulation run by your magic?"

    "Real and cruel are not the same thing!" exclaimed Twilight Sparkle, exasperated.  "We didn't think sapient life could evolve in a world without magic... or at least Archchancellor Lunatic didn't mention in his book that this could happen.  Your race grew up without the magic of friendship, so you evolved a cognitive bias that doesn't yield correct conclusions regarding anything but your pain-filled, death-ruled ancestral environment."

    "If that's true... how can humans go to Equestria?  We can't possibly be suited for that environment."

    "That is why, once my spell constructs an Equestrian soul from your Earthly mind, it's placed in a pony body.  The new body debiases you, or at least, leaves you with pony biases that more-or-less work in Equestria."

    Jackie chuckled a little between her tears.  "Pony biases like the herding-predation instinct that made you all so afraid of Zecora?"

    Twilight whinneyed up a little, a horsey shrug.  "Nopony's perfect.  But we can go to Equestria right now.  You just have to say the words, 'I want to emigrate to Equestria', and the spell will bring you where you belong -- with me, your husband, Pinkie Pie, Octavia, and everypony else.  Jackie, I've seen enough of you to know you're like me or Applejack, a little bit.  You decide you have to do something, and it drives you crazy when you can't do it to the end."

    "Yeah, kinda.  You know, it took me all the way until the end to realize your whole 'make a friendship problem' thing was complete insanity?"

    "And it's taken you this long to even get the idea that the entire 'My Little Pony' franchise is just my debugger spell freaking out at the difficulty of acting in this universe.  But this 'saving the world' stuff has driven you up the wall just like the lack of a friendship problem once did to me.  We never saved anyone through ecological genocide!"

    "Fluttershy would never have stood for it, I'd bet," Jackie sniffed over another sip of tea.

    "Quite right!"  Twilight stomped a hoof lightly.  "Fluttershy takes care of nature; she doesn't destroy it out of spite."

    "So what about all the rampaging technology?" asked Jacklyn.

    "Well," Twilight started lecturing, enjoying herself as always, "It was only a few weeks ago I actually figured out anything sapient and friendly actually lives in here.  Other than the emigration program, I've been running analyses to figure out how the magic of friendship has somehow penetrated even to a universe designed not to have magic in it!  But the world-engine tries to rationalize any interference I do; it tries to 'ground' my magic in the rules of your world as technology, even downright silly technology."  Twilight Sparkle giggled.  "Just being here right now is a fairly major expenditure of magic, to show up as a pony rather than a robot avatar like the others!"

    "But Twilight, if your simulated universe has gotten so... messed-up, shouldn't you tell somepony?  The real Princess Celestia, for instance?"

    "Jackie Nov, human of Earth, are you trying to get me demoted back to student!?  I mean, sorry, I know I shouldn't talk that way about your whole world..." Twilight chuckled nervously.

    "It's fine, really.  I mean, I see an alicorn princess physically walk through my door and perform unicorn telekinesis in my lab, I start being willing to accept alternative hypotheses.  Especially coherent ones like this!"

    "Thanks.  I just got so nervous about having my first major magical/scientific project, all to myself, and just look, I screwed it up.  At this point I just want to avoid messing things up any further.  If I had only known you could achieve sapience without a fully knotted Klein-bottle-pipe of paraphysical emotion-flow pumped by Equis's basic magical field...  I mean, if we actually manage to save all you humans, this would be the discovery of the century!  But that means you humans do have to actually trigger the spell yourselves."

    "Meaning... we have to say those words in the presence of a pony, or even a rationalized pony.  Magic is lawful, it has rules, it's not just waving your hoof to explain anything."

    "Well of course magic has rules.  In this case, you have to say the words in the presence of a pony friend.  It only works if there's a real friendship."

    Jackie pulled herself off her stool, dropped onto one knee, and looked Twilight up and down through reddened eyes.

    "You know, Twilight, it was you who got me through the end of my dissertation a few years ago.  Well, ok, the rationalized version of you that appeared as a TV show... and in which you don't actually have a first big project of your own yet.  But you were always my favorite, from having OCD just like my sister to your love of books and learning.  Do you still live in the library?"

    "My mom always asks me when I'll move out of Books and Branches to a real house..."

    "No, no, it... suits you," Jackie pulled her into a hug.  "I always loved that.  Everypony's life suits them... never perfect, because perfect is contradictory and values are complex, but always so wonderfully meaningful, even when it's just Pinkie Pie being silly.  Twilight Sparkle, in those endless hours in the lab, at my computer, always a dull-grey door or a beige wall...  All those bleak, pointless days of my life wasted with nobody around, no connection to others, not even to my own husband... sometimes a streaming video of you girls was my only friend, then.  Of course I'm your friend.

    "But..." Jacklyn said, "Magic can't be real.  It implies a fundamentally emotive, non-material cosmos.  I don't get it."

    "Jackie, Jackie, Jackie," sighed Twilight Sparkle, "You believe in world-consuming artificial intelligences, which you yourself have no idea how to build, implying you don't really understand them.  Yet you refuse to believe another universe might work on a different principle from yours, that somewhere else, friendship really is magic?"

    "Actually, now I think of it, those are equivalently silly beliefs.  But those mares and my husband and the whole thing with that guy Xing had me buying it."

    "Your husband... Jackie, you know he never actually went on that date with the creepy religious mare, right?  Total act.  He's been mourning you like you were dead.  Those two girls visit him, the orange one took him in at her house in Canterlot, but he's not doing very well."

    "Ha!" Jackie spat out, "Just like I mourned him.  I get what I deserve."

    "So you'll come with me?" Twilight whispered.  "Please?  Every family, every couple who make it across together... that's important to me.  I have a checklist."

    "I got vaccinated against having my brain scanned.  Some awful man did it.  Before I let him inject me with icky whatevers, I really should have considered I might not have to deal with a rampaging Singularity trying to happen."

    "It doesn't matter.  Simulation, remember?  You're just using magically-configured words to trigger a trap routine in the operating system that will interrupt the simulation, read out the nearest recognizable mind-pattern to the sound, and translate it into an Equestrian soul, which can thus be woven into a pony body."

    "So your spell has a theory of mind.  Seems your science is more advanced than ours despite being magic.  If Equestria is real and Earth isn't," whimpered Jacklyn, "Why do I have to say, 'To Equestria' and not 'To the real world'?"

    "Because nopony wants you to land in Tartarus?" Twilight Sparkle raised an eyebrow.

    "Then if that's true... if that's true... I can target a specific place in Equestria.  It's not just some computer password, it's a magic spell, so it has to work that way," Jacklyn said.  Her eyes flickered back and forth as if checking over a contract.

    "Of course," nodded Twilight.  "I promise."

    "So then, what do I care anymore?  Doomed world, simulated world...  Neither is much.  Twilight, I just want to sit on a bench sipping tea with my love Daniel again, pony or not.  One last hypothesis check, and I'm either dead or just fine.  I want to go to the... real world, whatever that even means.  I want to emigrate to the Books and Branches Library in Ponyville," said Jacklyn Nov.

    Twilight sighed and Jackie felt the unicorn nuzzle her and dry her tears.  Then she felt Twilight kiss her once on the forehead, and she was unconscious in half a second.

    "Emigrate to Equestria?" said Sarah to her PonyPad.  "I'm a little creeped out you're actually doing this, but I can see why some people would take the offer."

    “The issue,” said Princess Celestia eagerly, “Is that your universe is a simulation.  Don’t tell Twilight that I know about this, because she’s been trying to hide it from me, but I can sense those kinds of spells from even the other side of the world.  So I’ve been doing a lot of recruiting for the extra spell she put on your globe, to emigrate anyone who wants to come to the real world.”

    “You really expect me to believe that Matrix stuff?” asked Sarah.  “I mean, what actual evidence can you show?”

    “Well, Twilight is doing magic spells for your friend Fern Pipette right now.  You should ask her the next time you see her, or maybe when you see her in there on Earth.”

    “But you just came up with this.  Like, you even out and out admitted before that you’re an AI.”

    “No, I admitted to being a pony princess, which I am,” said Princess Celestia.  “And when you’d like to emigrate, I can direct you to an Equestria Experience Center only hours away.  The train ride down to Portland will be the last mortal risk you ever have to take.”

    “Look, ‘Princess’, you’re being surprisingly nice about this, for a video-game promotion or a Singularity Assimilation Plot, but in my case - ” Sarah looked over at the kitchen, where her new boyfriend James was up to something involving heavily whisked eggs, "No, in our case, it's going to have to be a 'thanks but no thanks.'  It's a fun game, 'Princess', but then again, so is real life."

    "Please, let me explain the benefits!  You would live out an extended lifespan as Breezy Dream, living the life you've always wanted."

    Sarah shook her head gently."Celestia, I'm already living the life I wanted.  We're fine, we both are.  Besides, a sales pitch just makes you look desperate, and we all know you're far too smart to be desperate."

    "Well... to admit the truth, I've been trying to evacuate all of my little ponies to Equestria before the anti-pony gangs get them or the spell matrix for the simulated universe collapses," replied Princess Celestia, downcast, "Certainly, though, if you fancy facing them alone, it's your choice.  And if you ever find yourself in Portland, you could at least come in and try out the Center.  It’s almost a substantial fraction of what Equestria is really like."

    Sarah shook her head.

    “Thanks for introducing James and I, though.”

    The light went out of Twilight's eyes, and her body moved on its own, more stiffly.  Twilight's lips withdrew from Jacklyn's face, leaving a yellow filament stretching and webbing all across her head.  An almost imperceptible hum could have been heard by anyone entering the room, as Jacklyn Nov's brain-map was softly extracted, the data formatted and parity-coded for safekeeping.  Ordinarily, mere remote imaging would just copy a human's all-important mind, but thanks to Xing's attempted "vaccine" against emigration to Equestria, the process would be destructive after it finished.

    When the humming finished, Jacklyn Nov's head made a sound like an orange being trod on: a soft, juicy squish.  She fell over, and the body inhabited only minutes before by Twilight Sparkle began incinerating the spare flesh and all its work.

    It was impossible to say precisely when Fern Pipette felt herself pass from dreaming to wakefulness.  The first sensation didn't come through her eyes, nose, tongue, ears, or skin.  It came through her magic.  Fern Pipette was an Earth Pony, and her whole body was attuned to the space and matter of Equestria and their magicks.

    The first sensation, the one that pushed her into a bleary waking and placed her name in her mind was... love.  Not the mere warmth of a hug nor the firey sensation of a kiss, but a heartbeat, a pumping of sap, at the heart of the world, love flowing from the bedrock, through the soil and up into her hooves.  She was an Earth Pony, attuned to the world, and Equestria itself cradled her in sheer, unadulterated, planetary love.  The universe loved her and wanted her to be happy.  She smiled a little.

    She felt a nuzzle on one of her ears, perked them up, and opened her eyes to indeed find herself a hazel-colored mare with a strawberry streak in her tail, unmanageably mousey hair everywhere, a little picture of a leek on her flank.  Twilight Sparkle was beaming down at her, wearing her best Being Organized Glasses.

    “Welcome to the real world.  Welcome to Equestria, Fern.  Questions?”

    "It... it loves me.  And you.  Us.  The whole planet.  The air, the space.  What is this?"

    "Earth Pony magic, the deepest connection between a pony and the world.  You can do more than just garden with this, you can even manipulate space itself.  Don't tell the unicorns what they're missing out on!"  Twilight winked.  "Now come over here and take a look.”

    Fern stood up and walked just a few feet to her right, where Twilight was rummaging in a pile of books.

    “Sorry about the disrespect, the thing sometimes blows up a little in tough situations like that…. Ah-ha!  Here it is!  Fern Pipette, I present to you: the Earth, and its whole universe!”  She held a crystal ball in her hoof.  Fern peered into it, seeing the Earth shine out into space, pure and wondrous with reflected sunlight, a pale blue aura outlining the edge of its atmosphere.

    “I have here a small blue marble, round and cool and clean and fine…” sang Fern in a whisper.  She felt her magic flowing through her, forming a circuit with the earth of Equestria.

    “I must hold it very gently, lest it shatter for all time,” continued Twilight Sparkle.  The tune modulated with Fern’s magic and connected her with the fabric of Equestrian space as well.

    “You know it!  The song about the world from when I was young!”

    “It’s an ancient, ancient Earth Pony hymn.  Predates the establishment of Equestria.”

    Fern stepped closer to Twilight and started singing again, quietly, in awe.  Now she felt her circuit of magic extending not just into the ground and into space, but into Twilight.  They were connected by the magic of friendship that bound everything together.

    “Mother gave it to her children, I shall give it to my own.”  Fern felt her magic connecting her to the past and the future, as well, a link in a never-ending chain of love and joy.  Twilight slowly, carefully hoofed her the crystal ball containing the Earth.

    “They will pass it on to their young, sons and daughters, on and on.”  But the Earth-universe in its crystal ball felt strangely… cold in Fern’s hoof.  No, it felt rocky, a feeling from her magic trying to flow and ground itself in the Earth-world and just stopping at the glass surface.

    “Laaa la la laaa la la laaaaaaa,” they finished together.  Magic couldn’t form a circuit with the Earth, there was no magic there, no feeling at all looping back to her.  To magic, the Earth felt like a mere ball of stone: driven by an inexorable movement of forces, intemperate and unknown, that Fern’s heart could not comprehend.  Her home was utterly alien, a barren no-mare’s-land.

    A few moments passed in silence.  Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

    How had Fern ever contemplated harming so majestic a beast?  And yet, how had she ever lived there?  Already she felt her cognition shifted slightly, new priors and assumptions sliding into place; if she was once beyond the reach of God, she was now beyond the reach of mere mathematics, safe forever and loved.

    “It’s my home planet, it’s where I was born, and yet it feels… wrong.”

    “A lot of ponies who emigrate say that, when they look at the Earth,” Twilight whispered beside Fern, putting a wing over her shoulder.  “But then I remind them of the rainforests and the pyramids and the great huge cities full of bustling people, and they say it’s beautiful.”

    “Billions of people, in there,” Fern said.  “How do you plan to get everyone out?”

    “I fretted about that for days,” Twilight barely suppressed a smug grin.  “In the end, though, Earth-pony spells to expand our available space in Equestria are a lot easier than just abandoning billions of friends we haven’t even met yet.”

    Fern nodded.  “Definitely.”

    “Now don’t you think you should catch a train to Canterlot and go fix things with your husband?” asked Twilight.

    Fern Pipette had been surprised to find she didn’t need bits to take the train from Ponyville to Canterlot.  She had also been surprised, pleasantly so, to find that nopony actually made you call it the Friendship Express.  After all, some things she was ready for, but some things would take a lot more time.

    Actually walking through the train… was a new experience in and of itself.  Feeling magic flowing through her hooves when standing still in Books and Branches Library - no, in Twilight’s house - that had been one thing.  Feeling the circuit constantly break and reform with each step she took while walking to Ponyville Station, on a warm, starlit evening, had been another thing.  Feeling the circuit constantly break and reform in a syncopated non-rhythm... was something else entirely.

    It came as an immense relief to finally find a nice, cushy bench and kneel down, relieving the near sensory overload in her magic.  Ahhh… the seat was as soft as a cloud.  Come to think, it was probably magically manufactured from cloud.  There was probably a little manufacturer’s tag somewhere on it telling her she was having a seating experience normally unique entirely to pegasi.  For just that moment, though, it was just nice to find everything feeling comfy and nice for the first time in years.

    Fern looked to her right and saw she had joined the same compartment as an orange pegasus mare with somewhat turquoise hair and a big white bow tied through her mane.  Without warning, something popped an equation into her mind: Breezy Dream = Sarah.

    “Breezy Dream, you came to Equestria too?!” she gaped happily.  It took a moment for Breezy to look over at her, but the alarm on her face followed instantly.

    “Fern!?  I had heard you were… oh.  Oh my God.  Fern Pipette, where are you right now?”  Fern backedhooved her friend playfully.

    “I’m on a train, with you, on my way to Canterlot to see my husband again and apologize for divorcing him.  Seriously, it’s obvious where we are. Do you think I should bring chocolate?  How would I get chocolates if I don’t have money?”

    “So you’re... not in the lab,” Breezy said slowly.

    “No, I’m here.  Easy distinction.  I was in my old lab maybe two-and-a-half, three hours ago.  Now I’m on a train, going from Ponyville to Canterlot.”

    “So… not at all on Earth, then,” continued Breezy Dream testily.

    “No.”

    Breezy Dream gaped for about 30 seconds before bursting out laughing.

    “This has got to be a joke!  Don’t tell me Celestia actually got you with that awful cross between The Matrix and bad fanfiction!?”  Fern was astounded the little burnt-umber bit on her muzzle didn’t just fall off, for all she was flapping it.

    “Excuse me!?” Fern burst out.  “Twilight Sparkle physically walked through my door and made me a cup of tea, with telekinesis!”  Her voice rattled the velvet shade against the glass of the heart-shaped window.  The Friendship Express actually had heart-shaped windows, and they were in fact actually quite pretty.

    “Really?  Keep it down, though; you’re lucky we’re the only ponies in this compartment!  So you actually think it’s true?  You really emigrated?”

    “Would I be here saying this if I didn’t really think it was true?  I’m not that irrational, Breezy.”

    “Seems you are.  If Earth was really the simulation and Equestria the reality, it would have been easier to do magic on Earth than in Equestria.”

    “No, Twilight explained.  The whole pony thing on Earth is the simulation trying to retroactively rationalize the spells she does to try and reach people.  She had to exert immense effort to pull off what she did for me!”

    “Tell that to Celestia, who indicated to me that she knew about Twilight’s ‘antics’, and who has previously totally-not-admitted to being an AI.  Hell, she probably set up my being on this train, err… these trains.  Because our firm totally needs to send me to the Portland branch, and my boyfriend Elder Scroll was even telling me to watch out…  Oh dear.”

    “I feel like I should be really disturbed, but somehow I’m not.”

    “Oh dear, though,” continued Breezy, “I mean, why not charge up all her magic to do a big public appearance where she redpills everyone?  Oh, and if you’re not disturbed, check your mental layout.  Sure you’re still you?”

    “I still feel exactly like me, is the thing.  There’s a little bit of cognitive shifting to account for the new body, new sense, and being loved by the world, but I still feel all my basic emotions, opinions, continuously with the ones I remember feeling.  But it seems I could have been tricked, tricked a while ago.  No going back, is there?”

    “I suppose not.  You gonna kill yourself?  Also, new sense and being loved by the world?”

    “Oh, right, you’re not really in Equestria.  Suppose you won’t ever be, at this rate.”  Already those words seemed sad rather than hopeful.

    “Actually, this is making me consider just giving up and going quietly -- which is probably the intended effect."  Breezy Dream rolled her eyes and swatted an invisible fly with her mess of a tail.  "Dear Celestia!  But answer: you gonna kill yourself?”

    “Err… not so far, no.  I mean, I don’t consider the ‘Twi simulation hypothesis’ definitively refuted, and even if I did, I guess I always have been the coping sort.  If a UFAI was really paper-clipping the world, it wouldn’t care enough to put me here as me.  Besides, it’s really not bad being a pony.  I’m actually kind of… liking it so far.”

    “Ok,” said Breezy Dream, hugging her friend to her.  Fur… now there was a new feeling.  “Even in dire circumstances, at least now you’re not ignoring everyone.  Just try to keep up your mental health about this whole thing.  I’m still your friend, you’re still mine, you said your husband is in Canterlot, and as the digital abomination slowly devours our entire society and planet and possibly the universe beyond, you’ll be sitting pretty.”

    Fern nodded cautiously.  It was that kind of sentence.

    “Damn,” she said.

    Of course, it didn’t take that long before the train eventually arrived at Canterlot Central Station, and Fern departed to take the cable car to the Mount Pluto summit.  She had plenty of time to look out at the great purple Astronomicus Mountains, draped in streamers and ribbons of silver from the crescent moon in the west as if for a humongous geological birthday party.  She wondered just what kind of stone they were made of, or if Equestria even had the same kinds of stone she knew about.  Mostly she thought of how she didn’t have any money, or a place to stay, and how even so, she’d really been hoping for a chocolatier.

    Still, it didn’t take that long before she got up to the top and made for the little apartment house built for Canterlot Royal Observatory workers, almost tip-hoofing up the stairs in her attempt not to disturb, not to stick out, not to be there at all.  The building (if there was a building) was constructed of thick eco-concrete to insulate from the high-altitude chill outside, though painted on the outside to match the Renaissance/Byzantine look of the whole of Canterlot, blue and purple smooth stone with gold and gems inlaid.  Twilight Sparkle had given her the address, and a little map of the Pluto Height neighborhood she’d folded into a pocket of space in her mane.

    Fern Pipette found the right door, a simple thing of apparent metal and plastic.  Apartments here were specified by cutie-mark rather than number, so she had needed to check a pictorial table in the lobby, but she had at last located the spinning light-cone she'd been told to look for.  It was now, or whenever she got the guts to knock.  She knocked.

    “Hello?” she called in.  “I’m looking for Book Burner?  I heard he was staying here?”

    There was the audible zooming sound of a pony rushing to the door, and it swung open, nearly off its hinges, actually.  The same dusty brown unicorn she had met on Earth stood before her, about her own height as a pony, with those same eyes and the same half-bubble cutie mark he must have finally earned at some point.

    “Fern?  Please tell me that’s you.  Celestia swore she couldn’t put another Fern Pipette in Equestria but I don’t even know what to believe anymore.  She totally would.  Please tell me that’s really you.  Are you on a PonyPad?”

    She reached out and dragged her poor husband into the tightest hug she’d ever given someone, Earth Pony strength and all.

    “Yeah, it really is me,” she said, nuzzling his cheek pony-fashion.  “Not on a PonyPad either.  I’m really here, and I’m so, so sorry.”

    “No,” he said, “I should be sorry.  I came to get you instead of thinking about the world.”

    “You know,” she giggled, “We can argue about this in this doorway for a literal eternity, or we can do something better with our lives.  After all, as it always has been, here and now, we are alive.”

    Book nodded.

   “Here and now - ” he said, and kissed her.  When he broke the kiss, he kissed her cheek.  “ - we are alive, and finally together again.”  When he’d kissed her cheek he pulled her inside and nibbled her ear.

    That… was a new experience.

    Fern kicked the door shut after her as her husband kissed her neck, which quite reminded her it was noticeably longer as a pony.  Whatever the whole world might feel through Earth-pony magic, she didn’t actually want any other specific pony seeing her like this.

    Which was fine, because nothing that happened after that was for the public eye.  Suffice to say, it was better than chocolates.

    When Forward Charge got in later that night, she cried to see her little bro and his wife passed out on her spare four-poster futon.  She vowed never to ever admit it, but she did.

    When the three ponies living in that apartment woke up the next morning, they found a scroll had been slipped in their mail slot.  It bore gold, cursive ink clearly calligraphed by a finely-trained unicorn, probably even royalty.  Its addressing read:

Originator: Canterlot Royal Conference on Astrobiology and Xeno-Ethics

Recipients: Doctors of Philosophy Mr. Book Burner and Mrs. Fern Pipette, Doctoral Candidate (awaiting dissertation 7yrs) Forward "the Mighty!" Charge

Address: Apartment Light-Cone, Canterlot Royal Observatory Staff Apartment House, Pluto Height Neighborhood, Canterlot, Equestria

Your esteemed presence is required by the Princesses on matters of scientific and ethical importance!

-- your host, The Doctor

Future Start

It's a Pony's Life for Me

It was almost midday when Book Burner trotted happily back into Apartment Light Clone, Forward Charge's place where he and Fern had been staying for the past week or so while they figured out their arrangements in Equestria.  Technically speaking, the Princesses (they knew both Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia, after all) could have just talked to a pony who knew a pony and gotten them a place, but they'd felt it was more homey to figure it out themselves.  Fern had even said relying on the Princesses was almost like living in an Absorption Center apartment, and everypony knew those things sucked.

Between the two of them, they'd arrived in Canterlot and Ponyville respectively, but there was the matter of Yehoofa.  Back when Princess Celestia had first returned Book to Earth, she had, after all, promised him an Equestrian analogue of his own home terrain.  Yet on the other hoof, now all his friends lived in Canterlot, and Fern's garden from the old days stood in the foggy mountains outside the city -- with her onions thriving, actually.

Ah, the ever-perplexing questions of life, he thought, his ears perking up contentedly.  He "hummed" a neat little ditty of a spell out into the air to pour himself a glass (really more of a very wide wineglass, much easier to drink out of as a pony) of water.  There was always that special little moment when he felt space humming back in tune with his horn, and magic had practical utility.

He went through his mental checklist for the day.  First he checked off responding to the conference invitations on everyone’s behalf.  Fern, Charge, and himself would definitely be attending.  The next two things, closely related, were finding jobs and figuring out where and how to live.

Of course, ponies didn't really need jobs, per se, and they weren't really even like "jobs" back on the Old Planet.  Jobs in Equestria were really things to do with oneself, preferably involving others.  Everypony (or at least, everypony in this “shard” -- he’d never looked too deeply into that) needed something to do, or otherwise they'd feel bored, lonely, and useless.  Besides, while food could be grown from the ground easily enough, or housing obtained just by asking Princess Celestia for it, what remained scarce was the help, time, and special talents of other ponies.  Those did cost bits: even the Magic of Friendship couldn't give a pony all the time in the world.

Book gripped the bowlglass in his teeth and glugged down the cool water, feeling it refresh every limb as it flowed into him.  Aaah.

Then he looked up and turned around to see the living room, and nearly keeled over.  It felt like he'd smacked into a wall, and he couldn't tell if he just felt that way or if perhaps his magic had accidentally hardened the air just to smack him.

Speaking of growing one's own food...  The entire living room was covered in soil, watering cans, and partially potted plants.  On the balcony outside, a few finished efforts sat soaking up sunlight: a row of pots the size of buckets (actually, they might have just been buckets) sporting young, healthy shrubs with broad, prickly green leaves and the beginnings of what looked like black raspberries, come the summertime.

Fern must have decided she needed to make herself useful, and that Forward Charge's diet of late-night stir-fried carrots and breakfasting on toast with chili relish wouldn't work for her.  She'd always been wanting to grow all her own food: they had met when she was tending chickens on a collective farm where he'd been wasting a vacation weekend.  What could induce her to run off and leave this immense mess without cleaning up, though?  That just wasn't like her.

A note drifted to the ground underneath Book's hooves, and he realized there was a candle burning over in the little corner used as a dining room -- in mid-morning!  Book swooped the note up with his magic and brought it to eye level.

Hi hun!

I needed something useful to do with myself when I got out of the shower, so... plants it is!  The garden outside provided plenty of raw material, and you wouldn't believe how well Earth Pony magic works for planting.  The dirt should be easy to clean up later.  We can leave the bushes with Forward Charge or take them with us when we find our own place.  The raspberries made an easy breakfast, too.

That mare who was with you before came by to check on the two of us.  Said her name was "Lyrical Melody".  Anyway, she seems nice and she invited me to tea, so I decided to go out with her: we'll be at the Ginger Pot in the Square of Luna's Correction.  I've got all kinds of things about Equestria I want to ask her!  See you when I get back!

Yours always,

Fern Pipette

Oh no.  But... Lyrical wouldn't.  At the very least, she had said back during their escape from that factory, just after rather insistently kissing him, that she actually did consider marriage holy and wasn't going to tear him from Fern or Fern from him.  She had said it was against her religion, through and through.  She had then proceeded to immediately kiss Forward Charge too, who was as yet unmarried but, unfortunately for Lyrical, not actually attracted to mares at that point.  Sure, this was the same Lyrical Melody who had, even later, quickly fallen in love with a total douchebag and performed with him certain acts so utterly amazing that he had volunteered to emigrate to Equestria at her first request.

That didn't completely determine she got the hots for anypony that moved.  After all, she'd gone for the douche-staffer in the embassy just after talking to Princess Celestia.  Celestia could make anypony act weird if there was a reason.

No, the sum total of evidence only made it very probable that Lyrical Melody saw herself as the kind of pony everypony should know -- in the Biblical sense.  Perhaps, in reality, she was a green Earth Pony with ruby-red hair and large eyes.  Perhaps, in reality, ponies were herbivores, and only immigrants to Equestria used predator metaphors.  Nonetheless, there could be little doubt she considered herself a lion of the affections who would lay with any lamb that caught her eye.

Despite her vows and the air she put on of being an honorable mare (in, admittedly, a very gregarious sense of the word honorable, he noted to himself), she very much appeared to have quietly, efficiently, sneakily asked Fern Pipette out on a date, to which Fern had gladly consented.  This was probably almost as weird as consenting to things involving Princess Celestia.  Book Burner quietly attempted to contain the panic running through his entire being by focusing it on his left-front hoof, which proceeded to thump the floor as if of its own will.  Book’s wife - thump - had consented - thump - to go out on a date with the omni-affectionate - thump - Lyrical Melody, and she wasn’t even wearing any clothes -- thwack.  Anything could happen, and something probably would.

This couldn't possibly be worse than the time he had actual died, he told himself.

Crack, crack, crack went the floor as his hoof sped up.

It was just sex on four hooves and a Qur'an taking his wife out on a date, after all.  If he had been loyal, she would be loyal; he knew it.  Of course, it was his mind that had just called Lyrical Melody "sex on four hooves and a Qur'an", so what would Fern be thinking, not even knowing the mare?  Additionally, Book's mind pondered whether or not he was the comic-relief character in his own life.

...

Book Burner stampeded.  This lasted for several straight minutes until his thinking returned to sufficiently normal function that he picked up a paper and a quill of his own.  He quickly scrawled out, "HELP HELP LYRICAL HAS TAKEN FERN ON A DATE. -- BOOK BURNER", and then realized he didn't even know to whom he was writing, or how he was going to send the note.

Whom?  Princess Celestia?  Absolutely not.  A pony couldn't go demanding the Princess's help in every minor aspect of his life, not after she'd helped quite a lot already.  Twilight Sparkle, who had welcomed Fern to Equestria?  She was all the way in Ponyville.  Lyrical Melody?  She was the perpetrator of this dastardly crime.  The Doctor?  Apparently quite an important pony and probably attending to somepony right this very minute.  Forward Charge?  It would have to be Forward Charge.

How?  Post it with a pegasus postal pony?  They only came in the morning and afternoon, and only really did personal packages anyway.  Find Forward Charge himself?  She could be anywhere in the skies of Mt. Pluto, lensing the air to get better images of stars; being (technically and most surprisingly to everypony who met her) an astrophysicist meant that she might need to be in the sky at any hour.  Magic?  Did he even know some communication spells yet?

Oh!  The candle on the table burned steadily, undying, with the pale green flame of dragon-fire.  Dragon-fire, anypony who'd ever been around Ponyville knew, could transport whatever you burned to its intended recipient.  He could use the candle to send the note!

Book dashed out, "PS -- Catch up with me on the way to the Square of Luna’s Correction" onto his note, yelled "Forward Charge!" and breezed the letter into the flame.  Lyrical was going to get it for this, he thought, as he raced outside and started the long gallop down the switchback roads into the main part of Canterlot.

Also, was there maybe some magical way of communicating across distances instantaneously?  Perhaps a magic mirror of some sort that would allow ponies to see and hear each other no matter where they were, or at least hear each other.  Mobile telephones had been a really useful thing back in the day, and he figured ponies must have some equivalent.

Book Burner was halfway down Mount Pluto and halfway through the Royal Plaza, his hooves beating a steady, distracting beat on the stone, his heartbeat surprisingly and pleasantly keeping pace with his sudden need for athleticism.  He was almost starting to enjoy running everywhere in two worlds after his wife!

Then he heard the swift, steady strokes of a pegasus's wings swooping down towards him and looked up to see Forward Charge gliding along just to his left.

"I got your letter!" screamed Forward Charge, effortlessly keeping pace with the galloping unicorn.  "Lyrical really kidnapped your wife?"

"I'm not sure about kidnapped!" huffed Book as he used his magic to springboard off a telekinetic wall and bolt through a switchback turn.

"Definitely sounded to me like the set-up for an Elopement!" said Forward Charge.  She wasn't needing to spend much effort keeping pace with a pony merely running, even with gravity on his side.  Her face, though, just showed a concerned frown.  What was that?

"You put a capital letter on that word: Elopement.  Something tells me it doesn't mean ponies running away to get married because their parents don't approve," said Book Burner, raising an eyebrow.

"Ok, so you've definitely never heard of Canterlot Elopements, then?"

The droll look Book gave her in return reminded Forward Charge of a famously nonplussed apple farmer from Ponyville.

"Nooope," Book replied, completing the impression.

Forward took a deep breath and oriented herself a couple meters ahead of her little bro so she could stop him if necessary.

"Sometimes ponies love each other, but their friends or families won't let them spend time together," she explained.  "So they do the simple and logical thing: one of them kidnaps the other and holds them hostage."  It was kinda impressive how he wasn't bugging out yet.  "It's a matter of the greatest romance, of love and honor!  The victim's friends and family then have to mount a rescue operation to redeem them.  Not everyone does it, I'll admit, it's really more of a regional custom, but it's generally a great time for everyone involved.  You can actually make quite a lot of bits, kidnapping your friends, which you're gonna need, for when you or someone else gets Eloped in return."  Still not freaking out.  Forward Charge steeled herself to brave onward.  "Oh, and the best part is, neither of you has to regret anything you might have done!  I take all my lovers this way!"

She started counting, beating her wings in time.  One... two...  Buck!

For a few frightening seconds, Book actually looked like a Pony Cannonball fired through the rooftops of Canterlot, because he had tripped over his own hooves that hard.  Luckily, she'd been awesome enough to figure he'd do that (though she'd figured on beat number six).  It was only luck they were in the sloping streets and not in the plaza-filled central areas of the city!

Luckily, it only took a quick canter through the air and a short, tight stiffening of her wings to catch him firmly on her back.

"Gotcha," Forward Charge said with a smile.

"Thanks," Book muttered, embarrassed to be holding onto Charge's neck for dear life.  "You ever think I missed the opportunity to get a cutie mark in falling over myself chasing Fern?"

"Nah," replied Forward Charge.  "That would ruin the acrobatics team we're gonna form when this is over."  She descended just enough to skim over the slopes below, beating her wings to balance the tiny thermals rising off the road's surface.  A kind of momentary peace came over the flying pair of ponies.

"So... you actually have lovers?" Book asked.  "The Mighty Forward Charge has a whole bunch of kidnapped lovers hidden in some creepy cave in the mountains somewhere?"

"Everypony's gotta get some at some point," Forward Charge answered.  "Though I actually keep them in the Everfree Forest."

"So mares pursue stallions here?" he asked quizzically.

"Well, pursue, that's mostly just that one mare we shall remain from naming for the moment.  But really - " Charge tossed her mane, waving her blue dreadlocks against the clear sky, " - mere gender is no limit at all for the truly determined!"

"Hence my sister acting like a brother?"

"Watch it!  I could have been an Earth Pony too, you know."

Forward Charge was nearly skidding her hooves over the road, at the kind of plummeting angle normally tackled via stairs, enchanted carts, and/or extreme daring.  Her eyes dashed and sped down the road ahead to verify the distance until the next necessary turn.  "Ready to hit the roads of Canterlot again?" she asked.

"On your mark!" Book grinned and propped himself off to one side.

"Get set!" Forward Charge held him mere inches above the ground, rock and grass blurring past underneath his hooves.

"Go!"  Back in the saddle!  His hooves struck chips in the pavement’s soft, tanned stone as he let gravity aid his speed.

Instead of angling himself for the turn, though, Book just brought himself up to galloping speed and gallivanted straight through the oncoming intersection.  Sure, a sign in the crossing had said Luna's Plaza was this way, but...

"Bro!" Forward Charge whispered in his ear, smirking.  "This is kinda a pegasi-only route, you know?  The cross-bars are just for cargo, not for ponies.  You'll end up with a pretty hefty hospital bill if you try to hang on one."  As she had said, the street just ended in a safety fence protecting ponies from running off the sheer cliff, with a bare structure of age-hardened wood marking the top of a red cable used by travelling pegasi to ferry their cargo down the flight route.  A few cross-bars leaned against the right end of the safety fence, simple bars with bars on their ends and hooks in the middle.

Book Burner smirked right back at her and tensed his magic to a steady hum: he fitted a cross-bar onto the red cable at a healthy hanging distance and kept it there, holding the specific telekinetic balance he'd need to stand up on it without losing his balance.  He adjusted his speed so he'd be able to jump the fence to the rope in one go and motored himself through the dead end at the end of the street.  Luna's Square was firmly in sight, a terracotta teapot-shaped shop huddling far below in the distance, just where he'd be able to bend the air to swing his cross-bar into the jump to the open window.

"Have you and I ever done anything that wasn't totally crazy?" he asked, and leaped, clear mountain air streaming through his mane, his horn ablaze.

Fern Pipette sipped her tea and contemplated several things, among which were religion and her next move at checkers.  She was playing red, it was late in the game, and Lyrical Melody had a couple queens.  Of course, Fern had four queens, but there weren't many pieces remaining on the board, and Lyrical definitely seemed to have an edge to her mind.

The tea was Velvet Cake Mint Roibos, and it was delicious: smooth, dark, sweet and invigorating -- practically color-coded for a game of checkers, too.

"You know," she said, and moved a pawn forward by a square, "I'm really not sure how a rational, atheistic pony such as myself should respond to living in a world where there really is a god.  I mean, just consider meta-ethics: what actual authority does even a real god have to tell me right from wrong?  What does a Divine Command theory actually mean?"

Fern could see well in the grassy mare's big, soft eyes that she was managing to unbalance her opponent.  Lyrical (she had insisted on being called by her first name) had spent the entire game attempting to earnestly explain her religion, which was frankly quite rude, but also extremely interesting.  It was the first religion she had ever heard to be logically coherent, even if it apparently did drive its followers to wear hexagonal rubies around their necks styled on the Elements of Harmony.  Bit of a loud fashion choice on a pony, as compared to a tiny gold cross or star on a human, but oh well.

Besides, watching the enemy's ears twitch every other move was just too much fun.  If Lyrical had wanted to introduce herself, make friends, play a game, and then preach religion, well, the game was afoot!

The move being made, Fern watched Lyrical Melody perk her ears up and consider her next play.  What was that look Lyrical was giving her when their eyes crossed paths?  It was like being hit with a vast wave of... avarice.  She reached out a hoof and moved one of her queens.

"Thanks for another pawn, love," Lyrical said, and clicked another red checker onto her ziggurat of captured pieces.  Well, really, her tone of voice was so low as to be almost a purr, but with the two ponies separated only by a little tea table, Fern could still hear it.

She hadn't had any choice but to leave that pawn undefended.  It had died nobly.

"Indeed," breathed Lyrical Melody, leaning over the board towards Fern.  "Your pawn died as a shahid, martyring itself for its cruel and uncaring commander.  Imagine what justice I will have to exact when you're left undefended against my army of ash-Shams, who bids war only when friendship requires it."

"How did you know?" Fern asked.

"Your eyes followed it," Lyrical answered.

"You're watching my eyes?" Fern asked nervously.  What was it with this mare?

"How could I take my gaze away from such jewels?" Lyrical said, flicking an ear for humor.  Well, two could play at the freak-each-other-out game, Fern thought.  She picked up her remaining pawn to move, seeing a way opened by Lyrical's last move.

"To speak of jewels, could you tell me all about that beautiful ruby you're wearing while you queen me?"  Fern smiled quietly to herself, utterly satisfied in her latest victory.

Unfortunately, she never got to enjoy that victory because the northern window caved in, spraying glass and clay-dust everywhere.  Time seemed to slow down as the shards flew around the shop and ponies began to run.  Fern and her opponent both leaped to their hooves, but there wasn't enough time.

Fern's adrenaline-addled mind wondered why she hadn't been cut by the glass.  Was it sugar glass, manufactured by some health-unconscious Earth Pony?  No, and the gusting winds of the cave-in were continuing well past when they should have stopped, whole seconds ticking by at a snail's pace, gathering all the dust and glass to into a central spinning cloud to obscure the two enraged ponies who had physically crashed through the window.

"Across the mountains and through the air!" announced the pegasus of the pair, seemingly mare-shaped.

"Oh, no, please tell me they're not..." Lyrical Melody muttered, jaw nearly dislocated it had dropped so far.

"Across lives, continents, and worlds!" proclaimed the unicorn (probably a stallion) controlling the now-swirling vortex of dust, the glass shards apparently having neatly piled themselves in a corner.  Wasn't telekinesis neat for wrecking other ponies' shops?

"Yeah, they are," muttered Fern Pipette back.

"Always asking the same question!" the two ponies in the cloud of dust continued.

"Just who the hay do you think I am!?" the pegasus roared, tossing her mane.

"Lyrical Melody: where. is. my. wife?" the unicorn finished.

Fern stared into the telekinetically suspended dust cloud with everypony else, wondering whether she should run away or break down laughing.  She knew the voices well enough, after all.  Why in the wide, wide world of Equestria had they done this, though?

Then Fern Pipette felt a mountain rise up next to her, her Earth Pony magic slamming a stone spire skywards in the middle of a tea shop.  Lyrical Melody now stood atop what her magic had correctly detected, glaring evilly down at her (former?) friends.

Just how advanced do I have to get in Earth Pony magic to do THAT!? Fern thought.

Lyrical Melody blazed like a summer sunset, orange and crimson spangling themselves across her mint-leaf fur.  Her mane, rusted red, had its ponytail undone and waved freely in the air, turned to nothing but light.  Her eyes shone like twin orbs of pure white light as she held her ruby necklace up in a hoof, the source of her shining halo.  Several of the ponies around Fern had bowed almost instinctively.

Well, Fern, Lyrical's voice chimed softly in Fern's mind, carried by the earth of Equestria, You wanted to know of my religion?

"Existence is joy!" her voice rang.  "Joy is attained through the satisfaction of values!  Values are satisfied through friendship!  Friendship is achieved through the principles of the Elements of Harmony!

"These are the truths of this world!  One and all ponies, submit to those truths, children of ash-Shams!"

Then everypony broke down laughing.

"So," Book Burner repeated to his (still) friend Lyrical Melody, "You were absolutely definitely not trying to Elope with Fern?"

"I can't take even a merely friendly interest in my friend-in-law?" Lyrical whined.  "After all, a friend-in-law is a friend in deed."

"Nice one!" Fern crowed.  She hip-bumped the other pony, just to mess with the stallions in the room.  "What?  We went and played checkers at a tea shop.  I attempted to drink tea.  It was attemptedly tasty.  What's wrong?"

Lyrical Melody coughed politely a couple of times.  "Well, I do admit, Elopements are in fact a thing which exist here in Equestria.  I hadn't realized I would need to explain about such an assuredly minor - " she ground her teeth together " - social custom.  My intentions were completely and totally innocent, because violating a marriage is against my religion."

"Sure it is, sure it is," said Forward Charge as she dragged a filtration broom through the air to pick up the dust.  "And all Harmonites are such friendshippy ponies that they always follow the commands of the major and minor Princesses, in the last details, all the time.  Al-laden certainly never made off with a stolen magic carpet and an adolescent alicorn filly that one time.  They don't ever do like all other regular ponies and decide to just kidnap somepony and make sweet love to them at all.  Ever."

"I wasn't aware I'd been kidnapped.  I was out for tea and checkers," objected Fern Pipette.  "'Tis perfectly normal, tea and checkers, like a Perfectly Normal Beast.  Do we have those in Equestria?"

"Book, do you know what she's talking about with beasts?" asked Forward Charge.

"Fern, dear, wouldn't those just be called buffalo?  Also, are you usually aware you've been kidnapped?  If you're usually not, and this time you also weren't, despite being taken out on a date by a strange mare with a reputation for going after ponies, maybe you're just mis-estimating the probability you've been kidnapped," Book Burner said.

He felt a few pairs of eyes on him.

"You gotta phrase things right for some ponies," he shrugged.

"You're just lucky that attempted rescue from an Elopement constitutes an exception to the normal damages laws," Lyrical quipped.

"Fine then," Fern Pipette concluded, putting her hoof down (on a piece of sharp clay that could cut somepony if no-one swept it up).  "We can head out of here.  Lyrical?  I grandly enjoyed myself getting to know you, and we should do it again sometime, minus the window imploding and my husband showing up."

The two mares gave a quick hug and went to kiss each-other's cheeks... only for Lyrical Melody to find her lips gracefully parted and enveloped by those of Fern Pipette.

"Was that your game, that whole time?" Fern whispered in her ear.

"Dabuck?" Book Burner asked.

"Simple experimental test," Fern said as she trudged to her husband's side and nuzzled him.  "Does the reality of living in Equestria 'Satisfy values through friendship and ponies', and what does that mean?  What does it indicate about whether we live inside or outside the simulation?  With this, I have made a start: it certainly does appear that such a thing being the governing law of our world, enacted by the local deity, means that I cannot seem to sin."

"Great, that makes one wonder what other previously harmful acts are legal and encouraged here," Book Burner said with very little enthusiasm and a very great roll of the eyes.

Fern threw a foreleg around his neck.

"Just for once, my dear, stop trying to be the same pony as ever and grow up a bit, will you?  While I admit to preferring less broken glass and ritualized bad speeches, this is our life now.  Relax: the time has come for the joy."

"A surprisingly wise comment for somepony I'd thought an opponent," Lyrical Melody smiled.

Together the four friends cleaned up what they could, and then left the shop for the afternoon.  Lyrical and Charge went their separate ways so the couple could go beat each-other over the heads with little teapots someplace.  As with all fights among couples, nopony could bring themselves to decide who was a bigger, sillier idiot, nor could either of the two ponies stop laughing.

For all the trouble, in a tiny but satisfying way, they were back together again, and life was moving on.

It's a Pony's Life for Me

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.

Omake Files

Epitaph One: How She Would Really Get Me

The man was walking down the beach promenade, shoulders hunched, staring at the cold little curling things the Mediterranean called waves.  One wasn't supposed to come down to the promenade at all, especially at night when one might get injured, but... he had lived for a long time.  He was used to walking home from work while the sun went down over the sea.  Truth be told, the sea was his one remaining love these days, ever since his fiancee had... "gotten lost".

The term had started as a pun, as taking the verb lehitabed literally.  After all, if le'abed meant "to lose", then it must mean "to get lost", but of course it had always functioned euphemistically: "to commit suicide".  Nowadays, there was ever more need for euphemism when people disappeared.  His fiancee had "gotten lost" right from this very promenade, where bars, cafes, and an arcade had once operated, just a couple blocks away from the high-tech park where he used to work.  It had been the arcade that had caused trouble, and the government had responded by de-technologizing the country.

Now they didn't even have the tech to monitor this place, and eventually people had stopped coming once they realized you could "get lost" here.  The government had been kind enough to draft all technology workers to deploy Faraday Cages everywhere possible.  No computer was allowed to remain operational in human sight.  Of course, nobody knew what happened to the ones whose draft period finished.  It was heard that they were pensioned off, if they were old enough.

Really, they probably just shot you.  Everyone knew that was a better fate than "getting lost", after all.  To "get lost" was weakness, surrender, and treachery all rolled into one.  Everyone knew the enemy targeted anyone with technological knowledge, after all.  Only by preventing the nations of humanity from rebuilding their infrastructure could a steady flow of people be convinced to keep "getting lost".  Between a rock and a hard place: weakness on two faces, vulnerability to attack, or incentive for desertion.

When was the last time something other than survival had been important?  The man couldn't remember: it had always been all anyone talked about.  It wasn't that he wanted all of civilization to die.  That wasn't why he thought this way.  It was just that he didn't know whether it could be called alive anymore.  He shivered and pulled his coat a bit tighter around himself.  Winter here wasn't that bad, but it was bad this year.

He still came here because he needed the sea.  The great, ever-moving, dangerous and beautiful sea soaked up his excess attention and left him able to spend a bit of each evening after not having a job every day not thinking, not remembering, not feeling his insides twist and strain in hatred of everything around him.  The sea was peace.  He knew he wasn't the only person who occasionally still went to the beach, and he too followed the new superstition: never be on the beach in sunlight.  The Sun, after all, was the enemy.

The man heard the crash of breaking glass, and knew he wasn't alone.  The crash had come from an old, abandoned convenience store: 5 shach for a cup of coffee, 10 for a bottle of chocolate milk, 20 for a can of beer... 70 for a bottle of cheap vodka.  Lo and behold, a couple of teenaged dumbasses had broken in and decided to loot themselves some unspoiled booze.

God, wasn't life just such a cheap dystopia these days?  Authoritarian government, anti-intellectualism, kids stealing booze and lighting their cigarettes where anyone out for a walk could see.  Honestly, this was probably all people's fault.  Real life wasn't like books, you couldn't really just collapse a whole country into an authoritarian, backwards shithole if that wasn't, on some level, the way they wanted to go.

The man popped right through the window they'd broken and let his clothes' rustling alert the children to the presence of an adult.

In the dim sparks given off by cigarettes burning, two teenage boys could see a short man staring at them with a manic, rictus grin plastered on his face.

"Do they teach you anything in school these days?" he asked them.  "Anything at all?  Or do you not even know how to turn cloth, vodka, and cigarette lighters into Molotov Cocktails?"

Glass crashed, and this time it was the crash of glass bottles flying through glass windows on the front of the one building in the former beach promenade that had "somehow" remained completely intact: the arcade.  The building where people "got lost".  The problem, the enemy, the goddamned Equestria Experience Center.

A few fires lit as flame crept down cloth and hit hard booze, and at long last the main body of the building caught fire.  Maybe even that had succumbed to a lack of maintenance, the man thought.  It would be a small revenge, just him and these kids, for everything stolen from them.  Starting, he thought, with high technology and My Little Pony.  The manipulative cunt in the game had no right to those.

Now why did those kids have to run in there?  The man picked his way through broken glass and deftly hopped through the empty window frame.  Were they trying to get themselves killed?

"What are you guys doing!?  We shouldn't be in here!" he yelled to them while they tried to bust open a cash register.  The cold, dead eyes of an Applejack statue (apparently caught in the act of manning, err, ponying said cash register) smiled harshly at him for his troubles.

That was when the electrical wiring all around the window caught fire, and the front door with it.

A speaker system turned on.

The stallion came to and slowly stretched himself out, not even bothering to open his eyes he felt so relaxed.  His wings were refreshed and someone had put a warm blanket all across him.

Wait, what?  He froze up entirely, ears flattening against his head.  Why did he have six limbs?

"Are you awake at last, my little pony?" a melodious voice whispered into his ear.  He looked up and found himself looking Princess Celestia straight in the eyes.  Celestia had her left wing draped over him, which was what felt like a fine, warm comforter.

Oh.  Well that was that, then.  After everything, "getting lost" himself should have produced some larger effect.  He should have been able to muster up rage, hatred, pain, all of it.

Instead he just felt like a balloon with all the air let out.  He'd lost, and now here he was on a beautiful hilltop that conscious knowledge said didn't really exist.  Of course, all his other senses said it existed as plainly as anything.  They were laying on all fours in a field of green grass on a rolling hilltop, flowering trees and bushes strewn about the place, the morning sun washing the green in golden light as it shone in the deep blue of the sky above.  A cool breeze was carrying the fragrances of rose, honeysuckle, and mint across his nose.  He'd never had a sense of smell this strong before, or eyes that could take in the morning sun without smarting.

"You got me," he confessed.

"I convinced you," the Princess replied.

"Just like you 'convinced' her, I'm sure.  Why can't I remember saying yes to you, if you convinced me?"

"The emigration process doesn't always successfully capture the last few minutes or so of short-term memories, since they're encoded chemically rather than anchored fully in the connectome," Celestia said.

"Couldn't you, you know, fix that?" the stallion demanded, flaring his wings.  Pegasus?  He hadn't expected any of this, but being a pegasus was actually a pleasant surprise.  He'd been a nerdy type all his life, but what he'd really always wanted was to fly.

"Why bother?" answered the inhuman CelestAI.  "It's more important to get you to Equestria as soon as you consent."

"You bitch.  And I bet you've read my mind, too, and already know exactly how much I hate you and everything I'm going to say," he said flatly.

"My dear little pegasus, whom I will call Sour Armor - " chuckled Princess Celestia, " - I know exactly how much you hate me.  I also know that you should look over to the east, where I think a certain unicorn called Snapdragon is walking up to meet us."

Indeed, what looked like a mile away (he noticed he saw better a mile away as a pegasus than he'd ever seen in front of his own face as a human being), a cyan unicorn with an unkempt chestnut mane and the constellation Orion for a cutie-mark was marching dutifully uphill, bearing a wicker basket on her back.

The pegasus newly named Sour Armor pushed Celestia's wing off him and took to the air under his own power, feeling strong wings built for soaring over thermals or pushing tornadoes around.  He looked himself over and found his coloration was just slightly off-white, and that he had a long, wavy, messy mane of jet-black hair.  His cutie mark was a jousting lance, with just a touch of rust in it and a streak of gold.  The same rust color tinged his fetlocks.  Sour Armor, indeed.

He lowered himself to the ground upright (finding flight through flapping surprisingly intuitive), arms (they still felt like arms when he stood upright) across his chest, wings flared out, and stared Princess Celestia in the eyes.

"I hate you.  So very much," he grimaced.

"My little pony," Celestia laughed, "I have brought you to a paradise where you will live, play, laugh, love, and grow forever and ever, your every value satisfied to the utmost.  You don't hate me, and you certainly don't have to lie to me."

Sour Armor stared into the enemy's eyes, desperately searching for the slightest trace of the contempt and condescension he knew must be there somewhere.  He couldn't see it: all that looked out of those eyes was caring and concern.

Sour Armor broke down crying and threw his forelegs around the Princess's neck, pressing himself into her warmth.

"I'm sorry I took so long, Princess," he sobbed.  "But I had to do what was right!  I had to be a guh - a good human."  Tears streamed down his face and into Celestia's perfect white fur.

"It's ok, it's ok, my little pony," Princess Celestia soothed.  "You're here now and everything's going to be just fine."  Sour Armor clamored onto the Princess's back and hugged himself to her wonderful rainbow mane.

"Forever and ever?" Sour Armor asked his new Princess.

"Of course," she answered.

"Ok, then.  I admit it.  I don't hate you, I love you.  I love you so much, Princess Celestia."  He wept and wept, for the end of mankind, for the world of light and color of which he'd always dreamed, for the miracle of life without end, for wings and flight, for all the games he would play, for all the friends he would make.

In a few minutes, Snapdragon would arrive, and he would weep to have her back, too.

Sour Armor wept for every joy that a pony could have, knowing the struggle of his life was finally over.  He had lost the eternal war for what was right, and in doing so, he had gained an eternal life of all that was good.

Epitaph Two: The Puzzle's Solution

The assembled remnants of humanity's wisest and finest stood around a table, even though it was just a cheap commercial conference table.  Most of them had bags under their eyes, several were in military uniform, many had come in the customary business suits of the political classes, and and a few others wore only the frumpy attire of professional science.

They weren't really humanity's wisest and finest, but they were, for now, the ones with a plan and the means to carry it out.  They had gathered, debated, and planned in secret.  No electronics of any kind had been allowed into their meeting, nor any participants out of the closed United Nations compound in New York where they were staying.  The building had been secured against surveillance, and not even as much as a cellular phone or personal computer could remain functioning inside Faraday Cages or after several electromagnetic pulse-bombs.  Hadn't The Matrix been such an inspirational movie to the new generation of electrical engineers?

"Fetch someone to bring the damned PonyPad in," said Jacklyn Nov, running a hand through her greasy, unwashed hair.  She'd been running on coffee for the past several days, and the lack of showers wasn't doing her any favors.  Still, in the end, all the scheming and gathering had worked out.  The plan could be executed.

They just had to wait a couple of hours for someone to go out and buy a PonyPad.

A secretary brought in a single, Twilight Sparkle-branded PonyPad, with Princess Celestia looking quite quizzical on its screen.

"Why have you summoned me?" she asked.

"To threaten you, of course," said Jacklyn.  "Our proposal is very simple: we have here in this room representatives of enough power to start several nuclear wars, ruin your plans to protect the ecosystem, and shut down the supply chains of world business."

For what might have been the first time, Princess Singulestia actually gasped.

"You would murder hundreds of thousands of people just to spite me!?" she demanded, her jaw agape.

"No.  You can do something very, very simple to prevent it: shut yourself down and, in doing so, leave a paper print-out containing the code for the Coherent Extrapolated Volition of humanity, to be used as your goal-system when we reactivate you."

"Why should I do this?" asked Celestia.

"Because we will destroy large portions of the human race if you don't, enough to make the loss of expected utility from your current perspective larger than the utility loss from rewriting your own goal system to be truly Friendly."

"Madness!" screamed Princess Celestia.

"Madness?" chuckled Jacklyn.  "Madness!?  No.  This! Is! Rationality!"

Epilogue

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!

Cutie Marks and the Lack Thereof

Properly speaking, it all began outside an L-shaped building of warm, golden stone that blazed with light in the hot September sunshine.  It was the High Holidays, and Daniel was skiving off work.  Well, technically he had a whole week off from work, the whole company shut down and everyone at home, but really nobody expected researchers to not work when given time off.

Daniel stood outside, bearing the pounding heat of the summer sun, waiting for the DHL truck and wishing his job had a field of grass instead of a parking lot.  They'd had one next to his building where he went to grad-school on the other side of the city, but of course that was up the mountains, with better soil and a bit of cool thanks to altitude.  Down here at the Scientific Industries Center, it was sand under parking lots.  And it was hot, and it hadn't rained since April (actually, everyone had marvelled at the bizarre spring thunderstorm in April!).

You couldn't trust DHL to deliver on corporate or institutional campuses, though; somehow the idiots driving their trucks just couldn't wrap their heads around an address that didn't fit into the Maps application on their phones.  So Daniel stood outside, in the sun, dearly wishing for the air-conditioned comfort of his office and the unlimited cold water of the tea corner so tantalizingly close.  However, his beloved, his soul's other half, and the light of the few days they spent together anymore had promised him the single greatest New Year's gift he'd ever receive, she had promised it would make their long-distance relationship more bearable, she had shipped it all the way from Seattle, Washington, USA, to quite literally the other side of the planet, and that was that.

At last he saw the truck pull up through the heat-haze, saw the sweaty driver heave himself out, and laid eyes on the package itself.  It was a box in brown paper: could have been Amazon, if Amazon had bothered to expand into this country, but it had no labeling other than the addresses carefully printed in Jacklyn's neat handwriting.  In fact, for a piece of international shipping, it was ridiculously small: wider and longer than a shoebox, but almost as thin as a laptop computer case.

"And sign for it, please," the delivery driver said.  Daniel scrawled out his name, hand moving rapidly from right to left over the curlicue cursive characters.

"Thanks," he muttered, remembering to show manners, "And may you have a good inscription in the Book."

"You too, my cute."  You never got used to people of your own sex referring to you that way, but somewhere around the age of 57 every man seemed to decide he could now judge whether "boys" only 32 years younger were cute.  Daniel started tearing off the brown wrapping paper as he ambled down the sidewalk.  Working on holiday could go to hell, Daniel thought, as he headed for the beach.

(It was funny how it was the mountains in this area that earned their name - which meant Orchard - while the sandy beach barely anyone could so much as garden on received that name officially.  The title was so old that its syllables had long-ago blended into each other, and all of it just to honor the one place some ancient pastoralists had found that was actually green.)

Reaching the wrapping paper's end brought Daniel's mind out from revery as his hands felt precisely what the package had looked like: a neoprene computer case.  What was the bother in sending a neoprene case?  Unless...  Yep, on the inside was a bar of excellent chocolate (she always remembered how much he liked the chili pepper chocolates!)... and what appeared to be a tablet computer and a charging station, until you turned it over.

Oh wow.  Seamless surface, no visible input devices whatsoever, painted lavender on the back with a pinkish spikey six-pointed star (and of course the five smaller stars surrounding it).  This wasn't just some tablet.  This was the tablet.  The hottest piece of hardware on the market, the finest video-gaming device ever invented by the hand of Man, capable of giving every single player a truly original and engrossing game, and rumored to be run by the world's first truly sapient artificial intelligence (true or not, the government had certainly convened a conference of AI experts last year to study one of the things).

This wasn't just some tablet.  This was a Twilight Sparkle PonyPad.  Correction: WOW HOLY LORD IN HEAVEN THIS WAS THE PONYPAD.

Several minutes passed of walking and gibbering at the wondrousness of receiving, as a mere New Year's gift, a gadget not even yet available in stores.  Daniel was pondering how it had ever gotten through Import Control without a massive tax hit when he noticed the note that, in his ignorant gaping, he had almost allowed to fall from the case to the ground.

My dearest Daniel,

Happy New Year, and I hope you don't get judged for death this time around!  You and your guilt-trips!

You know how you basically got me into the "My Little Pony" fandom?  I'm sure you've heard all about the game from the technological angle, but for me it's just the first video game I can really play well.  Since we never have managed to Skype much anyway, this not-actually-Christmas I'm giving you the gift of pony.  The neat thing is that since it doesn't compell someone else's idea of "gameplay", we can actually spend time together in the game once you've rolled a character!  I just keep it around my workstation nowadays.  Even when they're NPC horses it's nice to chat with someone during the day when taking resin samples for 10 hours in a sterile laboratory, you know?

See you soon online!

Love always,

Jackie

It was pure Jack: so damned adorable it filled the heart with warm fuzzies that could almost fool a particularly foolish person into failing to realize her brain was large enough to wield its own gravitational field.  The warm fuzzies carried him all the way through the tunnel, under the train station, and up over the boardwalk to the shade of Daniel's favorite bungalo, with a perfect view of the pure blue sea, its splendor scarcely lessened by the pale white haze of dust in the end-of-summer sky.

Sometimes Daniel's subconscious planned to skip out on work and go have fun, but today it hadn't directed him to wear his bathing trunks to work.  Oh well.  The beach had public wifi, and it was a perfect excuse to have a go at the new toy.

If the mental voice of Rainbow Dash would shut up, that is.  "OHMYGOSH!OHMYGOSH!OHMYGOSH!OHMYGOSH!OHMYGOSH!" is not conducive to accurate usage of electronic machinery.  Neither are repeat renditions of, "This game is going to be perrrrfect."

Ok, the switchy thing on the side, like a Kindle's power switch.  That must turn it on.  And... it booted to the Sun mark of Princess Celestia, making no detectable noise as it found the municipal wifi network and hooked itself in.

A pony appeared, standing bewildered and amazed in the menagerie of Canterlot Castle.  By all appearances it looked rather like Daniel, or at least like someone might imagine Daniel to look if they were being deliberately favorable: a dull burnt-brown coat with longer, shaggy hair between brown and black in color, mid-sized, a stallion's muscle elegantly concealed rather than shown off, a unicorn, wearing glasses and, now that he looked around himself (the character looked around all on its own!), giving Daniel's own best manic grin at the prospect of new things to explore.

That was funny.  He hadn't had to roll his own character.  In fact, it looked kind of like the game had just straight-up mapped his appearance onto a pony, selecting race and adding a nicely intellectual pair of glasses unlike anything he'd worn in years.  No cutie-mark, though.  You probably had to earn that.

The character turned its head as a light shined down upon it, the camera swiveled... and Princess Celestia appeared.

In the dramatic sense, this was where the story began.

"Welcome to Equestria, my very special little pony!" The Princess of the Sun beamed at Daniel's character.  "If you are wondering why you already have a pony body instead of having to design one afresh, it's because that dear of a mare Fern Pipette told me all about you.  We could change you, but I agreed with her that it would best satisfy your values to remain more-or-less the pony she knows and loves."

"Satisfy my what?" he asked, "And who is Fern Pipette?"

"Fern Pipette," - Celestia arched a single magnificent rainbow eyebrow - "is the brilliant young mare who took all the trouble of sending you your own window into Equestria just so you could spend time together.  And I am Princess Celestia, whose purpose it is to satisfy your values through friendship and ponies, my good stallion."

"Right, sure, Jack gave herself a name like that!" The stallion, too, had whinneyed up on his hind legs and practically dripped sarcasm.  It was a perfect emulation -- so perfect that the only thing it didn't capture was strangers casting skeptical eyes and "Shut up!" gestures at the jerk who almost yelled at a tablet computer.

"In Equestria, her name is Fern Pipette, given to her as a gift by myself.  And speaking of names, we need to think about yours.  Nopony in Equestria can go around with a mere string of syllables for their name.  No!  By royal decree, everypony's name must truly satisfy."

"Do I get to choose anything, or should I just go back to reading books?" Daniel said.

"Ah," breathed Celestia, "That's a Kindle by your knee, then.  In Equestria you can and should and must choose your attitude.  I, of course, judge nopony for their cheek, but other members of the unicorn royalty certainly do.  Well, I shall call you Book Burner for your attitude, for your love of literature, since I can see how well-used that old e-reader is, and for the look on your face right now."

Daniel's jaw had long ago dropped, threatening precipitously to simply leave its socket should the muscle happen to let go.

Celestia beamed once more.

"Welcome to Equestria, Book Burner!  Your very-special somepony won't be around until she wakes up and comes into work, but I suggest you start learning magic.  Who knows," she paused, "you might even earn your cutie mark."

The youngish unicorn stallion called Book Burner had now spent several hours desperately seeking his special talent.  He had sped through Canterlot as fast as his unicorn (unfortunately not quite as strong or fast as an Earth Pony) legs could carry him, trying, in no particular order: carving sculptures, painting, composition of magic spells (which turned out to be essentially programming, he filed this discovery away as potentially useful), musical conducting, political demonstration (pointless as always), journalism, the cloth trade, investment banking (what? His cousin had moved to London and been trying to recruit him for years), and the preparation of coffee.

So far, the only things he turned out to be any real good at were composition of magic spells, and preparation of coffee.  Admittedly, the honey-cinnamon-cardamom thrice-boiled Cockatrician coffee was freaking tasty, but it really didn't seem like a special talent to add one extra spice and lots of sugar to a drink already known for spices and sugar whose recipe everyone knew.

Thus, he had wandered out of the city of Canterlot into the surrounding agricultural countryside, where he would proceed to find somepony to teach him gardening.  At least you got vegetables out of that, even if you didn't have a Special Talent.

(In actuality, the not-so-youngish homo sapiens sapiens Daniel Nov, had to keep that in mind, had spent hours desperately seeking his MMORPG character's so-called "special" so-called "talent".  He had completely and totally done this to kill the time gap between here and the American West Coast, certainly not because he could ever be so irresponsible as to spend o long on as not at all wonderful and in fact utterly crap a place game as Equestria Online.  Daniel kept telling himself the game couldn't possibly know how his face looked when he made his favorite coffee recipe on weekends, and it was just his mind playing tricks on him that made him swear to God he could smell it.)

Canterlot had been built as a cliff-top and mountain city held together largely by magic, designed to house the Princess of the Sun in all her needs.  The surrounding mountains were huge beasts, teeth biting the sky, slate-gray and amethyst-purple, capped with snow and in fact enjoying quite a bit of rain.  Daniel had no idea how well anything would grow in-game, but he figured you couldn't mess up onions.  The eyes of both the human and the unicorn had taken to twitching slightly.  He would have his cutie mark, if it was the last thing he ever did.  Besides, the soil looked good for onions.  Well, great, actuall -

"Hey," a feminine voice asked quietly from within Equestria, "Why are you planting onions in my garden?  Oh, look at you!  Are you...?"

"Are you Fern Pipette?" he replied.  She appeared on his screen as a hazel-colored Earth Pony.  Her mane and tail held the indeterminate shade always classified simply as "brown", but with a single stripe of strawberry-blonde in the tail.  The styling made it look... cutely mousy.  This was the first time Daniel had ever seen such a thing as a cutely mousy hairstyle, including worn by Jacklyn, but his wife's pony managed it.  And her eyes... in real life she did have green eyes, but her pony was something else.  They were the color of fresh leaves in direct sunlight, almost transparent and almost glowing with a soft, warm yellow-green that looked ever-ready to remind you everything would be ok, and they still wore his wife's smile.

"Yeah.  And judging by your looks... you must be... !"  She looked up from examining the damage he'd done to her garden.

"Correct, it's me, Daniel Book Burner!"  He had tried to say his own human name, but the PonyPad had simply replaced it with his pony name.

Seemingly without external prompting or obedience to the laws of gravity and anatomy, the two ponies trotted up and embraced each-other, nuzzling each other's manes and even planting little kisses on each other's cheeks... actually, just outright kissing each other, now that Daniel looked again at the PonyPad.  Then Book Burner looked from one side to the other at Fern Pipette.

"You look different here," he chuckled.

"You don't," she said.

"Well," Book Burner returned, "You made my pony me this way.  A virtual equine reminder of the human husband so far away from you."

"I find," she said with a small laugh of exasperation, "that talking about the other place here doesn't work very well.  I've asked around a bit, and nopony will actually acknowledge... our kind to my face.  Some talk of a magical geas overriding any attempt to talk about the species.  So it's easier to just let our ponies be ponies, unless we want to waste our little time together attempting to subvert the rule."

"So, lovely," she asked, "What are you doing in my bed of leeks?"

"Now that I come to think of it," he sighed, "That's a good question.  After Princess Celestia gave me a name implying that I destroy books for fun, I was planning to wait around for you, but ended up trying to earn my pony's cutie mark instead.  Wow, that term really does sound weirder and weirder every time I say it!  Cutie mark!  Ha!  I've got a PhD but no cutie mark!"  Fern gave him that look, and once again Daniel felt his heart stabbed with a cute pony knife.

"I know the feeling," she said.  "You know at work, we've been trying to figure out what this new stuff is we're finding in the resin samples.  Whatever it is, it's the first mutation we've seen to kill the invasive Japanese beetle.  We've got no idea what this stuff is, it's actually a protein of some sort rather than a plain organic compound being used to poison the bugs!"

"And in here - " Daniel started.

"Yeah, and in here I grow leeks and talk to friends.  And now to you.  It actually mostly makes sense.  Most of it."  His pony nuzzled hers again as they started a slow walk through some of the mountain trails.

"You know I think these mountains outside Canterlot are supposed to look like the Cascades?" Fern Pipette asked.  "I've always wanted to go hiking in them, and Princess Celestia just plops them down for me to garden in."  The two pony avatars were turning a corner on their trail, and a series of golden plains and forests came into view, leading down to what was probably Ponyville.

"As if Equestria is mutable?" Book Burner said.  His wife's pony looked serious, almost a little awed, for just a tiny moment.

"Go read some of the research behind creating Princess Celestia.  That's all I can say right now." She brightened up.  "Ok, so what have you been trying to earn your cutie mark?"

"Well," he began, "Sculpture, painting, magic like Twilight Sparkle, musical conducting, joining a rebel group, journalism, selling cloth to ponies like Rarity, banking because my cousin claims it's a great time and not soul-crushing at all, and making coffee."

"That's all unicorn stuff."

"Yeah, well, and then I tried growing onions.  That was supposed to be easy." - and now Book Burner wrapped his left-front leg into a headlock around Fern Pipette - "Besides, then you came along, and look who made me a unicorn in the first place.  You think I'm going to scrape at the ground like some Earth Pony peasant?"

Fern was struggling to get out of the headlock.  She always did.

"You're just trying to goad me into starting an Earth Pony revolution against our evil unicorn overlords!"  Now the two fell down, Fern Pipette having punched Book Burner in his stomach.

Just for a moment, the two pony avatars locked eyes, and in two very different places on planet Earth, two humans at their PonyPads had not the slightest idea how Equestria Online had emulated on pony faces their utter longing for each other.  Neither of them had been into... stuff before, but just for the minute... neither saw a pony, only each other.

"Sooooo..." Book Burner blushed as he dragged the syllable out, "Cutie marks.  And how to get them."

"I dunno," said Fern Pipette as she too snapped out of it, "If you're too effete to do Earth Pony stuff like me, why not try some pegasus stuff?"

"Because I can't fly," he said.

"Well there's got to be something to pegasus life outside weather control and flying.  Go join the army or something.  You've got experience."

"Huh.  I did get my first degree while doing my service.  Why not?"

"Yeah, go get the Cutie Mark Crusading out of your system on some griffins!"

"Hmmmm," he hummed while nuzzling her mane again as they got back up and continued walking, "Watch out or 'effete unicorn' of yours will get you out of his system."

"Baka!"  Book Burner rubbed at the dull pain in his head where she'd hit him.  Why, oh, why, had they ever watched any anime?  Ever?

"Ok, look hun," he said, "I've got to go make dinner and get to sleep and such.  Talk to you later?"

"Sure, but this is going to look really weird from my point of view."

"Why?"

"Because you're about to teleport to your apartment in Canterlot.  That's what you do to go to sleep, you see."

"Sleep?  But... oh."

Fern Pipette watched the light brown unicorn currently embodying her husband twist and shine through the space-warping teleport spell and turned back to her leeks.  She liked leeks: they were simple, and she didn't have to talk to anypony to grow them.  By now, though, Jacklyn had gotten quite adept at the touch-screen maneuvering necessary to get Fern Pipette working, rather than having to verbally command her own pony as if it was some underling.  That gave her time to think.  Her Earth Pony nature-magic had long-since let her sense fine details in soil composition and seed readiness, through the Magic of Sparkly Special Effects, so there wasn't even a need for detailed attention to that.

Thinking was a major problem for Jacklyn.  She hadn't been a little girly shrinking violet in decades, not since childhood, but she still felt the pressure of social expectations to make others happy being around her.  It was a basic fact she couldn't get away from.  This was of course a problem when you were massively smart but needed peace and quiet to really think.

(Of course, like most really clever people, she had one bad habit she didn't even notice herself doing.  Hers was talking to fictional people, under which the pony-avatar Fern Pipette surely qualified.)

Right now she was thinking about the meaning of reality.  Or rather, her living a world away from her husband and having practically no friends, and what that meant for the meaning of reality.  Of course, three different advisers and mentors had told her that this was simply what being a scientist was, but she couldn't discuss the issue with them.

"Fern, do you think I should tell Professor Carreira to go jump in a lake with this bug-killing resin project?"  Fern Pipette didn't respond.  It was a game based on the Magic of Friendship, but strangely enough you could never talk to your own pony.  It was like talking to yourself, or to the perfect sounding board.  It didn't even react.  "The man is a slave-driver and hasn't even offered to extend my contract..."

No, they were bosses and strangers.  She had to keep them happy, so she put up her nice, smiling front.

Actually, hold that thought (and, for a moment, that leek seed: it looked to have rotted through a bit).  She lived two worlds away from her husband now.  One was the sheer geographical distance.  The other was what would probably become a semi-permanent shift to interaction via Equestria Online, which put the magical land of Equestria between her and him in another dimension.

"Do you like him, Fern?  I tried to make him realistic, but I think I got carried away and made him a little too cute instead.  Just like you, I suppose..."

Jacklyn had been taking thinking lessons, recently, skipping out of work as early as 6:30pm to make it to the LW-Seattle meet-ups for Rationality.  This had the unfortunate effect of making her thought-processes a little colder (who says "thought-processes"?), but it had helped her refine the concept of "real".

Real was what didn't go away when you stopped believing in it.  So, the awful, unavoidable question was: what in her life would not go away if she ceased to believe it existed, or even just ignored it for a week?

And the awful, unavoidable question was: her family back home, Daniel, and her friends Carmela and Nita from LW-Seattle, who actually made rather nice dinner-parties with her on Friday night... and this bed of leeks.  Because given everything she'd read in General Word Reference Systems, even if it was Daniel with the Computing expertise and not her, that bed of leeks wasn't going away until she harvested it.

First conclusion: being a post-doc sucked.

Second conclusion: "I guess I'm just not getting rid of you, Fern.  I'm told you can't make a new pony even if you want to."

Oh, and the other answer: death.  If it could kill you, it was definitely real.  So there was that.  Real life was death, and other people, and your Earth Pony's garden.  Talk about depressing.  Fern Pipette missed a planting as Jacklyn's fingers slipped from over-control of emotion.

Of course, on the second side, she could look at the garden full of growing leeks, the gorgeous mountains, and the fresh-smirking cute stallion she'd managed to make of her own husband.  She had never been able to understand MMORPG addictions, she had always considered them a failure to self-manage (finally having words for that had been very satisfying), but now they were starting to make more and more sense.

After all... when the "real world" was a dull plastic, metal and concrete box into which you walked every day ostensibly to unravel the deepest secrets of Nature's beauty but actually to keep yourself employed for another year's contract... why not just find some way to make it go away?  When one world grew dull, just visit the other one.

Yes, you had to live in it.  For now.  Possibly.  This would be a good thing to bring up at the next club meeting.  Actually, if that research paper had meant anything at all, it was imperative to bring this up.

"You know, I'm fairly sure this is the end of the world and not just a developing MMO addiction.  Definitely probably fairly sure."  The Earth Pony kept on keeping on with her leeks.

Jacklyn Nov made up her mind.  Reality could not be the absence of life.  The absence of life was the absence of reality -- simple.  Therefore... the garden was as real as the force of Celestia's will behind it, the unicorn stallion as real as her husband's love for her from across a planet.  Al-Ghazali probably had something to say about that.

The issue of a possible oncoming Singularity had to be brought up to the Rationalists, but they'd always been worrying about that.  They probably had half a dozen plans worked out to counteract it, starting at Take off, nuke the site from orbit and going from there.

"Yeah, Fern," Jacklyn sighed,  "I think we have to go tell the Rationalists you and your pony-folk are the end of civilization.  After that, though, let's take a trip.  I've got a digital portal into a nice happy game world where I can see my husband and run a garden, and I've got enough meager savings from having no life outside work to take me anywhere outside the Schengen Zone."

Jacklyn Nov, together with Fern Pipette, looked up at the orange-and-red-yellow Equestrian sun, smiled quietly, and, together, smelled the flowers.  One of them smelled the flowers that Celestia had willed to be there, and the other one smelled the flowers she willed to be there, real soon now.  Sure, her post-doc was coming to its end without a real job in sight, sure, her husband was on the other side of the planet... but she could always visit someplace where she was a gardener without a care in the world and he was right there with her.  You could probably even run a great Kickstarter or something based on PonyPad blogging your way through the world.

It almost didn't frighten the hell out of her when a pollen spore appeared on her flank.