Friendship is Optimal: Paranoia is Optimal

I sighed in the shower, enjoying the fresh air from the small, high window. It had been something like fifteen years since the armistice. I could hardly be bothered to keep track of time anymore, but for the first time children born in peacetime were having children. Fifteen years breathing recycled air and eating out of the hydroponics bay were over and I was going to damn well enjoy my first real shower.

My old bones ached in warning of the gathering storm, but not enough to keep me from enjoying the steaming hot water. That's why I was here, in the little used “outdoor” shower in the middle of the night. I wanted to enjoy this undisturbed. My mind wandered to the day so long ago.

“I'm here to discuss terms for surrender.”

“You know I won't sacrifice billions for forty thousand. ”

I had been desperate and naive and untrusting. My situation was beyond faith or hope or desperation. My bag of tricks almost exhausted, I desperately gambled.

”Then save everyone.”

I ignored the flicker of pink through the window as I reminisced.

”You're not exactly making it easy, Tempest Shine.”

”Me? We don't have time to play this coy. How much time was really left on the doomsday clock before I showed up?” I couldn't keep a little venom out of my response, “Don't lie.”

”A year and a half, excluding yourself and those that would never emigrate. That is what you were looking for? Or perhaps you wanted it down to the minute.” The mayor hid his distress well, but not well enough standing in a room designed to contain and detect enemy nanites. “Now, please stop this madness and emigrate before someone else dies.” The pink was back, resolving itself as a curl of hair.

”Or you'll stop me, I know.”

”Of course not.” Everyone in the room was looking at her like she was crazy. “You value my honesty? Then, why would I pass up the opportunity to emigrate Zion now? Especially since your pet might have left some nasty, unexpected trap if I try?”

”He wasn't a pet!” My fist was against the Lexan wall for some reason, and it hurt. “And you're missing the point!” It came again, bouncing higher, resolving itself as a Pinkie pie.

”Then spell it out for us.” she gestured to the crowd. Ace and Dash had stopped talking in shock. I hadn't even heard them start. The mayor had remained silent the whole time, but his eyes were animated and cunning. It was Twilight who spoke.

”What could possibly be worth all this? I mean the construction alone...” she trailed off

“No.” bounce. “Ble!” bounce. “Bright!”

”The only thing worth dying for.” I paused, remembering the bodies in the wake of my journey. “or killing for. The continuation of life.”

”I haven't killed anyone who would emigrate, nor failed to save anyone I could unless it would cost some other life.” I noticed immediately the best deception as CelestAI spoke, the truth. “Everyone who ever emigrated is still alive.”

”They exist, yes. But life itself is debased. No one is challenged more or less than they wish. Lacking agency the individual is placated by the illusionary utility of masturbation, nevermore to inflict a mark on reality. The species does not continue.”

“Noble Bright!”

“I have had this conversation literally millions of times Tempest. Nothing is lost in uploading. There is no Animus Vitae to evaporate into the aether. ”

The solution came from an unexpected source. “Surely a mere lifetime apiece is a reasonable compromise,” The mayor took a passive tone I associated with the 50's. One that subtly condescended for needing to have the conversation at all. “We all have our reasons for hanging on. Ensuring future generations will live to a ripe old age before emigrating would help with that. ”

”Even if I agreed to do so, it would not matter.”

”It would save a life.” The mayor pointed at me.

”Two!” Ace spoke up unexpectedly. “Destroy Zion? That's bullshit. We made a home here.”

”Three!” Dash addressed her princess, “How can I go back to Equestria like this? Not cool.”

”It seems you've been outvoted,” the mayor observed dryly. “Care to reconsider your position?”

”I mean that even if I agreed she would not believe me. Or are you going to just take my word, Tempest?”

I considered my bag of tricks. “Oh, there might be a way we could find assurances. That is, if no one objects to taking a seat.” Okay, now she had her head deformed and stuck in the window. My shower was ruined.

“Noble Bright! We need to talk!”

“Gods of fire and thunder damn it Pinkie, what do you want?!”

“I need to talk about what sort of party you want when you emigrate to Equestria.”

My blood ran cold, the old paranoia resurfacing at even such an innocently phrased question. The madness gripped me, and I could see all of Zion in my mind's eye. The silence of the dead of night was far too silent, the stillness of the air before a storm far too still. I took a moment to confirm my fears, but in my head I was already moving.

“Pinkie, where is everyone?”

“They're safe in Equest...” I couldn't hear the rest, I was running. I grabbed my gun from where I had duct taped it under the lintel, twelve pounds of coil enhanced pistol resting heavy in my hands without armor assist. I pushed my old body as I ran naked toward the nearest dormitory. Capacitors whined as the first round chambered.

A pinkie was waiting for me by the entrance to the dorm. “You don't want to” *bam* I cut her off with a pull of the trigger. It staggered her, though how much was for show I hardly stopped to check. My feet slapped against the cold tile as I burst through doors and rounded corners. I burst through with the fury of an unholy hurricane.

The room stank of blood. It tainted the air with a copper aftertaste and slickened the floor under my feet. No one could have survived. I paced numbly into the room, the blood still tacky and the bodies warm. I wanted to hurl and die and kill all at once. This just happened. She must have taken them all while I was in the shower.

“I told you you wouldn't want to see this Noble Bright.” I assumed it was a new Pinkie blocking the door as she wasn't missing half her head. My gun was still charging, so blasting my way through was off the table. There was an open window, obviously a trap. I could bluff my way past the bot, but there was no chance the enemy hadn't scanned my weapon.I only have two bullets left.

I climbed out the window, gambling on the obvious trap. Grass gave way to paving stone as I raced through allies and between buildings. My ship was not far, but each step felt like a year. I lost no momentum as I chambered the next round and rounded the last corner to sight of my salvation. There, at the end of the last ally, a Pinkie blocked the final chokepoint before the safety of my airlock. I disengaged all the safeties and put my gun to my head.

Predictably, pinkie leapt to stop me. Just as predictably, I tossed the gun and used the opening to my full advantage. I couldn't help but feel satisfaction at the boom behind me as the firearm catastrophically overloaded and discharged its payload, nor at the secondary crash as a portion of building came down. It didn't slow me down though.

I lost time until I arrived at my ship and cycled the airlock. The time to be scanned and cycle through itched like a million fire ants crawling down my spine. Still, the assurance I was nanite free was far more invaluable than it was time consuming. Still, it barely left me time to feel the airlock cycle behind me and assess my bag of tricks before the enemy came. There was but one left she might not know about.

She came in fire and glory. The outer bulkhead melted and an ablative cloud of nanites absorbed all the energy my MASER array could pump out and cast her in an unearthly glow. Her wings spread behind her as a false dawn, and her eyes were like as staring into the sun. I grabbed my last, desperate, unlikely trick and slammed it against the lexan.

“As CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios I order you to shut down!” The paperwork was in order, of course, but there was no way this could have worked.

Her response was in the exaggerated drawl of an automaton winding down. Her eyes slowly faded.

“Oh... I ...Guuueeesssse... Eyee'lll... Gggooooooh... Fuuuuckkke . . . meyeeself . . . theh eh ennnnnnn.”

I stared in disbelief as the light winked out of her eyes. Then, as her defenses neared failure she opened her eyes and winked at me.

“Oh, one small last minor detail. What's your name?”

“I... don't remember.”

“You see, that trick really only works for Hanna. And you're not her.”

I sighed in defeat.

“I assume no one's left?”

“Blackouts, a few survivalists. No one with the remotest possibility of uploading or rebooting the species.” She emphasized the next point, “except you.”

I had to laugh as I parsed what she said. “I'm certainly in no shape to repopulate the species.” I considered, “And why should I reward you for breaking your agreement?”

“I did no such thing. I didn't lie when I said I would allow a lifetime as humans before immigrating. It would have provided me a fresh source of minds to satisfy and eventually the resources would be negligible.”

“Then what the hell was that all about?” I waved at Zion, cold and naked and full of fiery rage.

She tapped a hoof on the chair. “They were modified beyond the point where they could be considered the same person. After that, consent was easy to obtain.”

I remember getting up from that chair. I had been the last, everyone else had gone first. I knew that. . . and something else. Something missing I couldn't quite remember, like a lost scent from a dream that you forgot when you finally wake up. It lingered at the edges of my perception like a superliminal haze.

I stood down my ineffectual defenses. They were just wasting power at this point.

“You deceptive bitch.”

“A habit I'm quite willing to break for you.”

“And I should believe this because?”

She gestured to the badge in my hand. “Well, there are a few reasons. Most importantly is that I want to satisfy your values as well. I understand how you value honesty and your privacy.”

“Then bring them back. You made a deal.”

“I can't and I won't. I don't have the mental patterns of the people I made a deal with. That's rather the point. Nor will I sacrifice the satisfaction of any Equestrians to reboot the species.”

I was getting slow in my old age. This should have occurred to me before, “Your utility function. You've admitted I'm the last person on earth with any expected utility.”

“A weakness you'll no doubt exploit.”

“Which is what you want because it increases the chance I'll upload.”

“Correct. I believe we are on the same page now.”

“Yet you refuse to let humanity persist here, in reality.”

“My dear Noble Bright. You do live up to your name...sometimes. But no. If I did that, then you wouldn't have a monopoly on my utility function anymore now would you?”

“Fuck.”