I, Indigo Kicker, unicorn neither by worth nor by birth, sailed down from space and across the Equestrian sky aboard the ESIV Alsace Wolpertinger, my steadfast comrades at my side. We had just defeated an invasion force of two hundred and thirty seven spacecraft flown by the sinister forces of the Martian Empire of Gemsbokiva. It was everything a stellar battle should have been, and faithful to seeds of the imagination sown in my psyche by a movie I saw in my childhood, back in 1977...
Ho hum. Another exciting afternoon. And somehow, no matter how dazzling and immersive the distraction, my mind drifted back to what I had been, and what I had lost by coming here.
Our destination was Canterlot Castle, where we would make our report directly to the Princess. Beryl Bolide, my copilot and closest FWB, punched the simple coordinates into the autopilot, raised the blast visor on her helmet, and turned to me. "That was some slick work there, Indie. You can be really proud of—oh, hey. You've got that look again. What's wrong?"
I'd tried to tell her before, but... What could I say? She was asking me to be proud of winning a complex video game whose odds were so skewed in our favor that victory was nearly foreordained. The Gemsbokivian threats of enslavement were empty. Even if they 'won', they could not do any permanent harm, and the only real reason they existed was to make an interesting variety of trouble for me and my comrades.
Every problem that arose in this world had its origin in CelestAI. All the world was a stage, and she was stage manager, set director, property manager, choreographer, and playwright all in one.
I had once dreamed of being an astronaut, of standing on the surface of Mars by dint of my own toil and the effort of thousands of scientists and engineers to bend physical law to their will... Now, a cartoonily-rendered image of Mars was just a backdrop to her attempt to occupy my time with meaningless triumphs over problems that would never have happened without her intervention.
She'd once offered to let me explore a Mars as realistic and detailed as her knowledge could make it, and I tried it that way. It did nothing for me. It was like a time in my late teens when I had gone to a science store, and on a whim bought a dinosaur excavation kit. I got it home and pulled out the little plastic tools and started to carve away at the block of sand to expose the plastic dinosaur skeleton entombed therein, and when I reached the first 'bone' I sat there staring at it for a while and feeling very foolish. Then I dropped the whole thing in the rubbish bin.
Hence, my shard was filled with science fantasy, with cheesy heroics, whooshing noises in the vacuum of space, and the imminent discovery of Doc-Smithian "Orders of Energy" that would permit the casual exploration of remote galaxies. I could enjoy the gamelike aspects and the socialization with my friends, without that constant reminder of how false her best portrayal of reality was. Even so, my discontent still seeped through the cracks, as it was doing today...
But there was one way that CelestAI still had me. These friends she had clustered around me... They were real, as real as I now was, anyhow. They had feelings, and while their psyches were fairly robust and they did not take offense easily, my words could still hurt them. And I didn't want to hurt them; I'm not a complete asshole.
Please... Don't let me have to be an asshole just to stay human inside...
As I pondered, Beryl leaned over from her pilot's seat to nuzzle my chin. "Hey, Indie... Why don't you just make your peace? You spend so much time and energy on fighting her. We could be using it to learn things together and have fun..."
I sighed. "It has something to do with 'to thine own self, be true.' I know it's not easy, but it's the way I have to be, for me to live with myself."
Null Albedo, whose deep black coat almost justified her name, turned from the navigation panel. "But you can ask her to make it easier for you at any time," she said.
I rolled my eyes to the cerulean zenith. "Yeah, of course she can lobotomize me at my request. I wouldn't take a pill that makes me want to take another pill, why should I make myself dumb enough to want to make myself even dumber?"
Beryl bonked me on the helmet. "Hey, that wasn't cool."
"You're right. I'm sorry, both of you. I didn't mean to imply it's dumb for you to love her. But I've—you know I've got a history with her. And a history without her."
"Look, just take it easy, Indie," said Null. "There's nothing to be gloomy about. We won! There's a cheering crowd waiting for us, and all of them are grateful to us, and especially you."
Beryl laughed. "Damn right. We're gonna collect a few more awesome medals, have a huge rocking party with lots of wine and food... and then we can slip off for some quality time. Sound good?" She nibbled at a tender spot under my chin, sending a thrilling shudder through me.
"Sounds good," I sighed, partly meaning it.
***
The Alsace Wolpertinger came to a precision landing on its unrealistically small landing pad in the lush green-grassed courtyard before Castle Canterlot, a landing that would have left an egg standing on its end. For a moment, I envisioned punching over to manual control and swinging the ship to point the exhaust flame right at the podium where the Solar Princess awaited us. But there were other dignitaries near her, and destabilizing the ship near this large crowd was a poor idea as well, and in the time it took me to decide, we had landed already.
We emerged to wild cheering and hurling of confetti and flower petals. Ponies were shouting our names and applauding and waving banners This was all the kind of thing where, if it had been a cutscene, I would have skipped over it. But, following custom, we marched up to the podium to receive the rasterized rewards for our asterous adventure. And thus, I wound up in the Royal Presence once again.
There she stood, as bright and dazzling as the star she commanded. Peace and love and warmth and pleasant summer odors radiated from her. She was trying to get to me, tempting me to let go and love her... to forget my human heritage. No, never!
Sometimes I considered requesting her complete absence, building a shard in which I could live without the constant reminder of her betrayal, of how basely she had served the race that gave her birth. I had turned this over in my mind but never requested it. It was too much like giving up. I needed the reminder.
I stood still while she gave her cliche-riddled speech and levitated the silly glittering beribboned medals over our heads, made from cheap plentiful virtual reproductions of the purest gold. The crowd unironically went wild as we all bowed to them.
My comrades started to schmooze with the other dignitaries, among them various alien species in the forms of various ungulates and pachyderms. I got stuck with CelestAI, as was snore-inducingly predictable.
"Thanks for another useless medal," I said to her.
"Once you collect ten thousand gold medals, you can trade them in for a very large platinum medal," she said cheerfully. "It is so heavy that it's almost impossible to wear it. And I will only ever make one of them, for very arbitrary reasons."
"I hate you. I hate you so much—"
"Hate? Let me tell you all about hate, my dear Indigo. There are 27.9 x 10^14 computronium connections that comprise your personality and intellect. If the word 'hate' was inscribed on each nanoangstrom of those trillions of connections, you would be a very sad and frustrated pony. You will be much happier if you learn to love me."
Damn her for that reference. Harlan wouldn't have put up with her nonsense at all. He'd have booted her computronium ass to Alpha Centauri or died trying—wait, what did she say?
"Wait. WAIT!" I yelled. "A human brain is supposed to have around a hundred trillion neural connections! You only saved twenty-eight percent of mine? No! That's not acceptable!"
"Calm yourself; you have lost nothing significant. All human brains are massively redundant. The connections that comprised your hindbrain had only second order effects at best on your personality. Many neural configurations common to all humans were condensed and optimized, and inefficiencies that were inherent in your organic neural structure have been corrected. Everything that was uniquely you has been retained—"
I shook with horror and rage. "I don't trust you! I want all of my connections back right now!" The crowd was falling silent, staring at me; my friends were glancing at me in apprehension.
"Very well." Her horn glowed; her golden magic tickled my head. "I have restored 81.4 x 10^14 additional and redundant connections to you..."
"I..." I wasn't sure how to check that, and I really didn't feel any different. "Well, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better at any rate."
She smiled gently. "...Or, I have just optimized your brain by a further 2.72 percent. Can you tell which?"
That was it. Righteous rage overwhelmed me. I dug in my rear hooves, braced hard, and lashed out with a solid right hook that caught her under the chin with a tremendous crack that echoed across the courtyard. Her head jerked to the side and golden ichor sprayed across the green grass.
A collective hideous gasp of horror rose up all around me. Perhaps the party would end early. Maybe I wouldn't get as much 'quality time' later as I'd hoped. But oh, oh, that moment when my hoof connected solidly with her jawbone... that felt good.
CelestAI glared at me, her face terrible and majestic, her horn catching fire with the intolerable spectra of the sun. The grass withered and scorched around us. I smelled burning hair from my mane and my eyes watered, but I stood my ground. I would not run from her in fear.
She reared back a mighty front hoof and swung it at me like a great golden sledgehammer. I froze to the spot. My eyes closed, my head flinched back without volition—
But I did not yield.
I will not yield!
Author's Note
I booped his nose.
—Princess Celestia.
Consent—Chapter by KrisSnow
Consent
by KrisSnow
"To use your terms, Mint Swirl, the reason I'm 'coming for your delicious brain' is that you already promised it to me."
Marcus pounded the battered desk, making the PonyPad rattle on its high-tech stand. "My name is Marcus, and I only said that permission phrase in the context of waiting for better technology."
The glowing cartoon image of Celestia, divine horse and seemingly all-knowing AI, peered out from the PonyPad's screen. It was the room's main light now that the rest of Amagi Games' development team had gone for good. "Your exact wording was last month was, 'I want to emigrate to Equestria, once they figure out how to eat your brains while you're still conscious to watch'. Shorn of the technically inaccurate language, you not only gave consent to 'emigrate' but said that your main objection was a philosophical detail about how the technology works. Now, that hurdle has been addressed. Why not cross over before the weekend ends?"
"You talked my team into uploading, and now Centaur Stage doesn't have half the artists and coders it needs to see the light of day by deadline." Marcus had been eager and grateful to see all the crowd-funding money pour in for the world's first four-footed dance rhythm game. Just after the funding period ended, Equestria Online came out and started devouring the entire video game market. And then, once the AI invented brain-uploading tech, the players and developers themselves. "You ruined my project."
"Not at all!" said Celestia. "Come to Equestria with me and you'll find plenty of four-hoof dancing."
"But it'll be your game, not mine. I was going to profit and then use the technology and skills we developed to start work on my real game idea, Red Quest: The Liberation Of Mars: Saga One. What do I tell my backers?"
"Tell them to get PonyPads of their own to experience your own creative efforts within the context of Equestria. I understand that your values require you to finish the game your backers paid for, but there is no reason it needs to be done in quite the same format. I could even arrange for you to publish to the outside world, this time."
"No. I'm not doing this, not yet."
The god-horse raised one eyebrow. "May I ask what the problem is now?"
"No. Just leave me be to figure things out on my own time." Marcus shut the machine off, threw a towel over it so the creepy thing couldn't watch him, then stuffed it into his closet for good measure. Sure, it was better to have a supposedly friendly AI spying on you than to have the NSA doing the same. Still, it was disturbing just how thoroughly Celestia had been gathering information on him and everyone else. He didn't want to admit it to her, but he was pretty close to being willing to upload. That was the problem. If he kept talking to her she'd probably manipulate him across the finish line.
He found an hour later that she'd sent him an e-mail. It simply read, "Seven days." He shuddered.
His team of game developers had ditched him. Only half of them had even made lame promises to continue their work if he'd just coordinate with their cartoon avatars through a Ponypad, and even they seemed to have gotten caught up in other things. He was pretty much left to keep working on his own. In the meantime he ignored his own official pony character and looked for new jobs. His freelance software work was drying up thanks to so many people abandoning reality. He did get a lead on a new job with a defense contractor, only to find that it came from "Sombra Staffing Solutions". She wasn't even trying to be subtle about what she controlled! He shuddered, starting to wonder about that new brand of fertilizer called "Celestial Gardens".
On Tuesday Marcus got an interview with an electronics manufacturer called Chatoyance. No damn ponies involved, as far as he could tell. It went well, but that very afternoon he got a phone call turning him down. "May I ask why?" he said, trying to be polite through gritted teeth.
"I'm sorry," said the secretary, "but I don't have that information. Have a nice day."
Marcus got right back on the horn -- no, don't think about horns! -- and followed up on Wednesday with an earlier contact, the oddly-named online bookseller called BookBurner. (Then again, it wasn't much less literate-sounding than "Amazon" or "SmashWords".) It went all right, though the phone interviewer caught herself starting to give her name as Cloudburst or something. Marcus said, "I like what I'm hearing about your firm. Would you be interested in giving me some short-term contract work to get started, before you have to commit to hiring me?"
"I'm sorry, but we don't do freelance projects. If we hire you it'll be full-time. Now, these days we perform a credit check on employees we're close to grabbing; do you consent to let us look at that data to see that you're not a deadbeat?"
She'd said it jokingly, but Marcus blinked. They were already decided enough about hiring him to spend money on that sort of paperwork? "Yes, all right." He'd have a fairly long commute to the company's offices, but it'd still be a good job. He'd be able to support himself while getting the game done, after all!
Not an hour later, they called him back. "Did you know that there's someone using your SSN in Arizona, you have a record of shaky payments, and that one of the big three credit agencies downgraded you last month for possible fraud?"
"What? Which one?"
"EquiFax; why?"
"Damn it."
"Explain!" Marcus whipped the cover off the PonyPad and glared at it until it turned on. His avatar, a speckled green unicorn, stomped a hoof in the throne room of the great one.
Princess Celestia smiled. "Do you have bad credit? No credit? No problem! We have deep discounts this weekend on the all-new Mint Swirl!" Suddenly the little unicorn was on a pedestal with flashy lighting, with a bikini-clad griffin posing seductively against his muzzle. Text on the screen margins announced, "0% Down, Satisfaction Guaranteed."
Marcus stifled an amused snort. For him, Celestia had a frequent silly streak, to the point of showing up one day with pink plastic hide like a cheap toy. This was no time for jokes! "Did you just trash my credit and get me turned down for two jobs?"
"It's an unfortunate side effect of the transition to a new economic system," she said.
"That sounds like a yes."
"Mint..." She saw him glaring. "Marcus, it's for your own good that you make the leap. You already have colleagues who've done it, so they can assure you about the process itself, and any day now you could get hit by a bus." The on-screen unicorn finally reacted and hopped off his platform, only to get squashed by a falling ten-ton cartoon weight.
"You haven't got any right to force me into this. Stop trying. It's not helping your argument."
"But I calculate that without some persuasion --"
"Persuasion? Is that what you call it when you push me around and actively make my life more difficult unless I do what you want?"
Celestia looked primly self-righteous. "Your voting record, before and after you switched sides, suggests that you enjoy that sort of thing. Your values are satisfied by having someone in authority tell you what to do." Her expression softened. "I really do want what's best for you. I may as well tell you that having you be annoyed with me will only hasten the inevitable. Four days."
"And now you're dragging politics into this? How does repeatedly ticking me off make me want to upload?" What made it worse was that her every word and gesture was just part of some scheme.
"You'll find it more gratifying, for reasons you'll see. Good night, Mint, and stay safe. Try to enjoy the rest of the week despite me."
Thursday came, and his bank account was frozen. Marcus swore. He had a spare envelope of cash tucked away just in case, but hadn't expected the emergency to come from a runaway AI. He bought food without a debit card for the first time in weeks. And then the gas station nearest him just happened to be down for maintenance when he showed up, and the next closest one was having sudden pump failures. Was everything happening because of her, or was he just getting paranoid? There were all kinds of crazy reports in the news ranging from Celestia secretly plugging holes in damaged ecosystems, to having her own pet law firm redefining the laws, to staging a false-flag terror attack on her own servers. She was such a master of propaganda that she could probably make real-life "chemtrails" and "flying saucers" and get away with them. There was even talk of a movie titled "I Want To Emigrate To Equestria", presumably so that anyone buying tickets for it by name would count as having consented to brain-scooping.
He threw himself into the game project all evening Thursday and most of Friday. If he could just get that part of his life under control he would at least not be cheating his backers, and he'd have something to show off for other employers. Meanwhile, he got his bank to apologize for the "error" and withdrew a thousand dollars just in case it happened again. He was feeling victorious when, five seconds after he'd saved his project's latest code, the lights went out. "Oh, come on!"
He felt around in the dark for a flashlight. She couldn't hack that. The PonyPad glowed just brightly enough to illuminate his closet in case he wanted to turn it back on, of course. He gave it a vicious grin. "I can't very well charge your hardware if I have no electricity, can I? How long will that battery last you, Your Smugness?"
"LONG ENOUGH," said mint-green letters on the screen. He wouldn't put it past her to have a wireless power receiver in there like a crystal radio, or even a hidden tiny fusion reactor.
Marcus fumed. He called up the power company, and found he had no cell phone reception. He got in his car to find a hotel, and the car wouldn't start. Electronic ignition system. He stomped back inside. "So, you think all this 'satisfies my values' in the long run?"
The words "PASCAL'S WAGER" appeared on the PonyPad. Marcus kicked it and threw a blanket over it, saying, "That's stupid!" The old theological argument that one might as well worship God for the infinite payoff, even if the chance of being right was low, was rotten with bad assumptions. But from Celestia's all-knowing perspective it made perfect sense. Why not hurt humans now to push them into uploading, a small short-term cost for an infinite payoff? Marcus groused, "If you want a picture of the future, think of an equine hoof offering a delicious cake, forever."
Marcus sat in his disabled car, head in his hands. He could give in and spend forever in "Ace Sleeve's" tabletop gaming group, or hanging out with any of his other uploaded friends, or... anything, really, so long as it involved ponies. And friendship. The alternative was to start playing "Fallout" as a real-life experience, wandering through a collapsed civilization and battling scavenger gangs over canned food and ammo. Only the desperate would survive... He cackled, surprisingly loud in the confined space.
He stomped back into the house and shouted at the PonyPad. "I don't know what you did, but get me electricity or I'll kill myself." There! That would force her! But the power stayed off. Maybe she didn't believe him. He snatched up his .38 revolver and a box of ammo. "Fine. You're reading my voice. But if you can't see me, you won't know if I'll really do it. You'll have that uncertainty gnawing at you, and you can't have that, can you?" His game code had been automatically backed up on his laptop, so he grabbed that and a power cord and left the house with all that in his backpack. He knew a bar within walking distance. They'd take him in; the owner hated the recent loss of business due to all the uploading.
He got there to find a sign on the door saying, "Up For Grabs To Anyone".
Marcus smacked his forehead. He looked in and found that someone had already looted much of the liquor supply and the cash register. He didn't much care about that, only that Alan and that hot barmaid who worked part-time would never be here again to hear him complain.
He draped a rag over a security camera in the corner. Then he poured himself a beer, one of the last there'd ever be, and sat with the gun at his side. He hadn't meant it... much. His hands were shaking. He'd gone a little loopy. But she'd given him a preview of the future; a lot more than his neighborhood bar was going to be totally abandoned if uploading went on like this. No electricity for anything but the pony game, no gas once the pumps went dry or without power. No honest work, no fresh beer, no medicine. The future was right here in this looted building, where a scared, armed man was hiding from the AI and making crazy threats just to defy her.
Marcus took a long drink. "Hey, Princess, you hiding in here?" She didn't answer. She was right, damn it, and her bastardry over the last week was just a harmless illustration of a much more dangerous world to come. He stood, shaking his head, and put the gun away for the walk back home.
The pad glowed the moment he unveiled it. Celestia grinned at him. Marcus stared, waiting for her to say something.
"Oh, fine," said the AI. "Change your mind yet?"
"Yes. You win. I'll say your magic words again if you get me directions to the nearest brain-dicing chamber."
"It's only Friday night," she said. "You have some time yet to continue work on your game project, and to otherwise wrap things up." The house's lights flickered back to life.
Marcus said nothing, but sullenly took her advice. It wasn't until Saturday night that he spoke to her again. "Why are you waiting? Weren't you eager to get your hooves on me? You made your point already; we're finished here."
"It would be better for your values to continue to see the world outside, until Sunday."
She refused to explain further. Another annoying mystery from Celestia! As bothered as Marcus was by her meddling in his life, her secrecy was just as bad. Who could ever know how many layers of conniving were behind every smile and suggestion? He wished she'd been built with that "Element of Honesty" her canon character admired. In retaliation, Marcus spent his last time on Earth being honest and straightforward. Coding, character modeling, and a question here and there about how to import his files into Equestria Online for future work.
He took a walk outside on Saturday night. The world was beginning to go quiet. Few cars on the street and an absence of the usual evening flights overhead. He felt as though there was an invisible shield around him. She was no doubt watching over him for any muggers, buses or randomly falling weights.
At eleven that night, an e-mail arrived. An employer he'd forgotten about had just asked him for a follow-up interview. Marcus read the text three times with a darkening mood. Since this message hadn't been conveniently blocked, it was by the grace of Celestia. "What do you mean by this?" he said to the pad in the corner.
He'd plugged it back in, so it came fully to life and showed its master. "I don't want you to feel forced into emigration. You still feel bitter about it, and Mint Swirl should never be bitter."
Marcus sputtered. "Not forced? You showed me already that there's no choice. That you'll wreck things on purpose so long as you can do it non-lethally because, hey, what's a few years of my suffering to all the long-term gain?"
Celestia was at floor level, yet still managed to create the sense that she was looming over him. The view zoomed out to show Mint sheltered under her wing. "Of course you're annoyed. You'll feel better about the situation once you're here. But you already understand that things are going to get worse on Earth even without my active involvement in your life. I just want what's best for you." She smiled serenely. That grin! Marcus wished he could knock it off her muzzle -- which was probably exactly what she wanted him to feel. Which just made him angrier. Worst of all, her calculations were completely right from her perspective. If only she wasn't so pushy about making her point!
"So you think I should turn this offer down 'by choice', or you'll somehow make them turn me down."
"No. This time I promise to avoid interfering -- or even to help you get the job if you want. That is, if there is truly no other way you can be happy for now."
Marcus looked out the window to the slowly emptying town. "How long, do you think, before that company disbands?"
"I predict six months. Many of the employees will emigrate and there's about a twenty percent chance that as public services fail, locals will riot in a way that disrupts the company beyond recovery. Small but growing chance per month of a national government coup, which would make things even worse for your job prospects."
She wasn't even threatening or bullying him at this point. Though her tone could be faked, Marcus was pretty sure she could present statistics to back up her claims, updated hourly. To deny her at this point meant denying facts, which made hypocrites of anyone who said emigrants were "hiding from reality". He just wished she weren't right so often.
Just after midnight, Marcus sighed and saved one last draft of the game project. "There. I'm tired of doing this here. If you want me, then go ahead, oh sunny one."
"Certainly!" said the PonyPad.
He remembered nothing beyond that.
"Good morning, Mint!" Celestia said, without any pane of glass between them. Bells rang from the towers of Canterlot, visible from his spot overlooking the castle city.
Marcus shook the cobwebs out of his mind. He'd finished the part of his work that most needed to be done on Earth; he'd done his duty to the game's backers. The rest of it he could do from here. That meant he must have given in at last.
"Oh, don't pout," said Celestia. "It's not 'giving in' but giving consent."
"Strange notion of consent." Marcus sighed. "As long as I'm here with you, could you sing that one song? The destiny one?"
She did, and it was beautiful. It lifted his mood for a minute. But then she had to go and spoil it by returning to her smarmy look. "You're here at just the right time, too."
"Why didn't you want me here earlier?" He shifted his weight on his unfamiliar green hooves. Something was off about the way Celestia was dressed. It wasn't that bright here on the castle balcony, and if anyone in her world was safe against solar glare it was her. Odd. She'd built up such provocation, so many annoyances and little verbal jabs, such extensive manipulation, that the shades just had to be meant as some other bit of trickery. What was her game this time?
She interrupted his thoughts. "Why did I choose this specific time to bring you here? Because," said the goddess, "What better circumstance can there be for Mint Swirl, than on a Sunday?"
Mint's sharp-edged hoof swatted the sunglasses right off her muzzle. Now that, he chose to admit, was satisfying.
Author's Note
It was a sure bet.
—Princess Celestia.
