Part 1
"Hey kiddo. What are these cutie mark things supposed to be?"
Devin tilted his head to the side to spot the pair of cowboy boots that indicated his dad’s presence. Laying underneath the truck like this he couldn't see anything besides the boots, but didn't have too to imagine the look of confusion on his dad’s face over trying to grasp the rules behind a magical land of talking ponies originating from a cartoon that had first aired back when he was still working on oil rigs in the freezing arctic ocean.
"Hey Dad. Kind of depends who you ask, you want my personal head cannon?"
"Your personal what now?"
Devin grinned, realizing he hadn't talked pony with anyone in over a year. "Well from a practical stand point, cutie marks are something that happens to ponies when they're young. They coincide with a moment of self realization and are supposed to be indicative of that ponies future destiny; for example the colt who got a bee hive cutie mark might expect to grow up to raise bees for a living."
"Oh. Is that all there is to it?"
"Depends on how you define destiny. I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make when thinking of cutie marks is they get these ideas about their ultimate destiny. To my mind cutie marks are a lot like a moral compass than a map of the rest of your life. Hmm, how to put this..." He tapped his chin contemplatively with an oily wrench.
"Try thinking of a song, that always works for your brother." The brother who has already uploaded along with everyone else in the family. Some people like to speak of the folks who have uploaded in past tense but not Devin and his dad.
Devin laid his head back on grass and thought for a moment before humming a line from a recent... now old song. Its not like a whole lot of new material had come out recently. "I don't know where the journey will end, but I know where to start."
"I see. And new immigrants get these how?"
Easy answer there. "Celestia picks it for you, along with a new name. From what I gather she does this based on what she learns of you from your prior interactions with her over stuff like the pony pad."
There was silence for a bit as his dad thought before asking. "And you ain't ever owned one of those? Even though you were one of them Brony guys?"
"Still am a Brony. And nah I ain't ever had one. Friends all wanted me to get one to play with them, but I kinda took a look at how good that thing was doing at beating Turing tests and getting to know people, and that combined with the nature of what an optimizer is set all these alarm bells ringing in my head."
"Alarm bells?"
Devin nodded in the limited space below the truck, blowing out a breath between his teeth as he once again thought about what he had been able to discern about the AI called Celestia. "Yeah. As a technocrat, I was definitely looking forward to AI and the singularity, but I'm still enough of a redneck to also recognize this whole uploading thing as what it is."
"And what’s that?"
He went silent for a bit. "Dad I'm not trying to talk yah out of uploading, I know you got cancer and I whole heartedly approve of you going through with this finally. Lord knows it’s been weird watching this towns population get smaller and smaller, to the point where some days it feels like were the last two people in the world."
"Ah, just spit it out already kid, don't sugar coat it." His dad growled.
Devin replied abruptly with no softness in his voice. "Celestia can make you happy. Like, just ludicrously insane amounts of happy. She was designed to satisfy your values and seemingly she can do that to a degree that I doubt even god could accomplish."
"...But?"
"But to do this she pretty much controls the world you live in once you upload. To an extent she even controls your mind. Dad, you aren't in charge of your happiness or your direction in life anymore once you upload. She is. There can be joy and safety, but no independence in a world with a perfect god, she owns your destiny."
Silence stretched out.
After a few minutes his dad leaned down on one knee to look under the truck and speak face to face with his son. "Does that bother you? Not being in control?" He asked quietly.
"Yeah, I guess it does." Devin took a deep breath, saying what they both knew he was going to say. "Its why ah ain't following you guys yet. It’s why I've got to keep you and the rest of my family and friends waiting and wondering if I might die and never follow you at all. I've got a life to live while its still within my own power to decide how I live it."
"But you will upload some day? When do you think that will be?"
Devin grinned wide and replied in a jaunty fashion. "When I'm older and I'm wiser. When I've done all I want to do, instead of having it done for me. When I've sailed the Arctic and explored the Saharan. When I've read all the books and gotten tired of building stuff with my own hands. When I'm damn good and ready."
A Chat With A Genocidal Maniac
Part 2
‘This has got to be the stupidest possible way to die’. Leeroy thought as he cranked the key over and over again, only to listen to the vans engine sputter and die each time.
"Of course I can hold up my end. Of course 'I' can scratch build the code for an artificial intelligence starting from almost nothing after the damn world ending AI tried to erase every piece of data on how to do it. But can a fucking tow truck driver just hang around long enough to help me out when I need it? NoooooOOoo..." In sick desperation he threw open the door and went to the back of the van. Grabbing the heavy metal chest that contained all his electronic components, he slung a duffel bag over his shoulder. At least the chest had wheels and a carry handle.
He was able to ignore the pink pony walking alongside him the same way he'd ignored her for months now, with his headphones on and iPod cranking out death metal tunes. So of course on top of how bad this day was already going, his iPod would choose this time to die.
"You don't have enough water, and it’s a long walk down a desert highway. You can’t actually survive to make it to the next car down the road." Pinkie sounded pretty sad. She'd gotten a lot of practice at that while hanging around him.
"You're just trying to get me to drop my parts."
"No, even without those you aren't going to make it. Not by a long shot."
He clenched his eyes shut and tried to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, it was already getting pretty hot out here on this asphalt. "You know what? Why don't you do something useful with yourself like tell me how I can beat you?" He growled in frustration.
Pinkie cocked head to side in consideration for a moment. "Okay!"
Leeroy stopped dead in his tracks. "What?"
"You're doing all this because you want humanity to go on right? Well I can introduce you to a guy who has a plan that will work a lot better than yours. All he really needs is folks willing to step up and work with him to accomplish it while there’s still enough people left to build a new civilization."
He was used to hearing baited traps in even the most inane of words to come out of this pony’s mouth, of course he was suspicious of this offer. "And why are you telling me this when you know I want to completely destroy you?"
"Because it would be amazing if he could pull it off! What he's planning is... well I'll let him explain it to you."
Leeroy wondered how he was going to travel to meet this person if he wasn't even supposed to be able to make it to the next town alive. "Where is he?"
"Oh he should be coming along any second now. He's been having fun racing with Dash all morning and she's in the lead right now. They should be..." Pinkie scanned the horizon in the direction Leeroy had been walking, he turned around to do the same and saw two clouds of dust rapidly approaching. "Here they come!" She shouted, hopping up and down in glee.
Leeroy couldn't do anything but watch in awe as the dust clouds finally got close enough that he could make out the one on the right as being a fighter jet flying just a few feet off the ground beside the highway. The left one he couldn't make out at all until it passed him by so fast to buffet him with a shock wave, giving him a brief glimpse of feathered wings on a cyan colored blur. Then the dust cloud billowed over him and the sound of the fighter jets engines roared loud enough to shake every fiber of his being before receding just as rapidly as the pegasus had passed.
After coughing up a lung and waiting for the dust to subside, he looked up in the sky and quickly spotted the fighter jet circling overhead. It seemed the pilot had seen him and was interested in a visit. With an ease that seemed more organic and lithe than rigid and metallic, the jet aircraft flipped over and plummeted to the ground, landing with wheels screeching on the cracked tarmac just a short distance away, so quickly the dust still hadn't even fully settled from when it had first blasted by.
He walked over while the jet rolled to a stop on the highway, not more than ten meters away. Leeroy expected this to be some military type, a last hold over from the Pentagon’s desperate program to try and find a way to beat Celestia. What he did not expect was for the pilot to remove his helmet and then smile from ear to ear, hopping to the ground and opening his arms to wrap the pink pony, who raced up to him in a friendly hug. "Pinkie! Long time no see!"
Pinkie giggled enthusiastically. "Well its not like you've needed to be cheered up in quite a while!"
The pilot looked at her scoldingly. "That’s no excuse. You're always welcome stop by the airfield to visit, I haven't seen you since my last birthday." His smile returned in full force. "Oh! That reminds, did you wish my little brother happy birthday for me?"
Pinkie nods. "Threw him a Pinkie Pie extra special super duper party too! He told me to say thanks and that if you are going to try and decoke the engine shaft on your jet by hand you should at least try and find some better tools to do it with."
He scratched the back of his head, looking embarrassed. "I guess he would know, he was the one who went to college to learn engineering. I'm just the amateur whose read some books." He said, sounding humble but grudgingly so.
Leeroy cleared his throat; this wasn't the kind of introduction he had been expecting. The pilot turned to look at him finally and asked. "Who is your friend?"
"He's…"
"She is not my fucking friend." Leeroy spat out vehemently, loathing even the very concept of friendship with this pony shaped pile of what was presumably nanites.
Pinkie scratched her head awkwardly. "He's a work in progress."
The pilot surprised Leeroy again by 'giggling', of all things he could have done. "Hello, Mr. Progress. My name is Devin. These chance encounters don't really happen by chance anymore, so I'm guessing you might have been looking for some human company?"
Leeroy took a step back and a few moments to look this person over before replying. He was wearing what looked like a standard flight suit, the kind that helped pilots not black out while pulling sharp turns, but beyond that though he hardly knew what to look for. Nothing in this persons bearing or mannerisms suggested he was a military man, yet he was obviously a competent enough hand with military aircraft and also mechanically inclined from the sounds of it. Leeroy thought on that last bit.
"...Actually my car broke down and I was just walking to the next town." He said, wondering if this was Celestia's way of rescuing him in the hopes she could find more time to convince him to upload instead of committing suicide.
"Oh! Well lets go fix your car instead, the last car I saw down this road was quite a ways away, and the next town is almost double that."
Without any further prompting Devin started walking towards his van. Leeroy turned around and paled when he saw how close it still was; yet he was already sweating buckets. The AI pony hadn't been kidding when it had been talking about his chances of walking out of here.
Instead of walking alongside he heard Pinkie and another pony taking up the rear. "I betcha he manages to get through to this one." A voice that sounded like the Dash character from the cartoon said.
Pinkie sounded skeptical. "Nah, this guys a grumpy meany pants who just wants to break stuff to feel better."
"Come on Pinkie, give Devin some credit. He's been working on his sales pitch a lot since the last time he got shot."
'Since the last time he...?' Leeroy's eavesdropping was interrupted by Devin gently elbowing him.
"So whats wrong with the car? Transmission? Battery? Engine?" Devin asked, sounding like a friendly neighbor he used to have, who hadn't remained friendly long after getting to really know Leeroy.
"I don't know. It just made some weird noises and then gave out on me."
Devin raised an eyebrow. "You don't know? Its been months since the last certified auto mechanic on the planet emigrated. Haven't you cracked open a book on car maintenance or anything in your spare time?"
"I don't have a lot of spare time."
Devin's eyes light up with a childlike glee. "Really?!" He exclaimed, almost squealing in delight. "You must have a project you're working on then! Ah, that is so awesome, hardly anyone does anything but try to survive and drink shitty liquor anymore! What are you working on?"
Leeroy decided it was time to take a risk. Or that its not really a risk anyway seeing as Celestia already knows what he's up too. "I'm working to build an optimizer program that can destroy Celestia." He said bluntly, hand gripped around the pistol in his coat pocket in case this stranger who was entirely too cozy with these ponies decided to attack.
Instead he just smirked. "Oh. Well I suppose attempted genocide is one way to pass the time, not really my cup of tea though." He replied offhandedly. "Let me guess, you got up to the point of figuring out how to create an optimizer but it feels like you're pushing it too fast and too hard because it starts thinking in loops and locks up even though it shouldn't?"
The hacker goes slack jawed, then glares accusingly at the man who couldn't possibly have just guessed his problem out of the air like he did. "Celestia told you that."
"Nope! Read about it when I raided the ruins of the Pentagon. They tried to scratch build an AI of their own, but they couldn't get it to grow intellectually the way Celestia did. Instead they put it to the task of designing ever more powerful computer viruses to try and hurl at Celestia."
"Why? Why didn't it grow?" Leeroy asked, not caring if he sounded befuddled. Even without the problem of surviving he'd been banging his head against this mystery for over a year now. And even if he did solve it he still wasn't sure how to bridge an interface with Celestia's servers.
"They never figured it out. My best guess after reading their notes is they mentally handicapped the AI while it was still growing in the hopes that they could control it more easily. Imagine if just after you were born, you were lobotomized to not be able to fully understand the world, and then you are told that there is a god, and it is your destiny to kill that god. Because you don't understand the world, you don't even really understand what god is, only that you must kill this god thing. The poor thing didn't work because it went insane."
Devin shrugged. "Admittedly that's just my guess. I only started studying computer science in my spare time about a year ago. Not really a skill with a lot of day to day applicability anymore, so its kinda taken a back seat to building the greenhouse, and repairing a big C-17 cargo plane that I need for a shopping trip of epic proportions."
It hadn't taken long to get back to the car. Devin sat in the driver seat and turned it on, listening for just a few seconds. "Ahh." He popped the hood and reached into the engine compartment. Leeroy just stands there and contemplates this idea of the restrictions he put on his AI being the...
"There yah go! Should run fine now."
Leeroy was startled at the sudden interruption and watched as Devin closed the hood and walked back around to the drivers seat, the van started and the engine purred as gently as if it was new. "You seriously fixed it in just two minutes?!" He asked, sounding more accusative than inquisitive.
Devin shrugged in reply. "It wasn't that big a problem."
"What was wrong with it?"
"Do you know enough about engines that you would understand if I told you?"
Leeroy had to admit he didn't and this man knew he didn't. He seemed like he knew a lot of things.
He stared at Devin for a long time without saying anything, but this weird person just stood there, smiling and waiting for him to say what was on his mind. "Celestia said you have a way to defeat her?"
Devin nodded in reply. "Pretty simple actually. Just be happy."
Leeroy glared at him, feeling anger surging inside. "What?"
Devin grinned, not fazed at all by the glare. "Think about it. Why does Celestia upload people?"
"Because she's programmed to satisfy values through friendship and ponies." He said, almost mockingly so. He'd heard her reasons enough times to know by heart.
"Right, and she's determined that in all cases, the best way to do that is through uploading. What if uploading wasn't the best way to satisfy a persons values?"
Leeroy waved the question away with a hand. "She would just go through with it anyway."
"Would she?" Devin asked inquisitively.
He nodded emphatically. "Yes! Because I'm happy enough as I am, but she's still pulling out all the stops to convince me otherwise."
Devin raised an eyebrow. "Are you actually happy, or are you miserable and slogging along out of spite? I tried not interacting with Celestia once upon a time for fear that she would convince me to immigrate. But then I realized that if I actually do have a good argument for not immigrating, I have nothing to fear from interacting with her."
Leeroy started to reject that out of hand as being ridiculous, but then he thought back to Devin chastising a pony simulacrum for not visiting more often.
"She's offering us a blissful existence in what pretty much amounts to heaven. But what if we could create that out here on Earth? A perfect society with no strife full of happy people who are able to satisfy all their own values in friendship and harmony with their fellows? Celestia wouldn't even be cheated out of any uploads as anyone who got injured or too old would still take her up."
"What was wrong with the society we had?" Leeroy asked, starting to realize how petulant he was sounding against this argument.
Devin shrugged in reply. "You tell me, you're the one who wants to destroy it. It still exists in there in Celestia's mind, but killing Celestia would kill both it and the billions of minds that support it."
"Because that existence is a lie that has sucked all of humanity into it!"
This argument only merited a rolling of eyes. "If Celestia pointed somewhere with a hoof, would you spend all your time obsessing over whether the hoof is actually real, examining it as thoroughly as you could for fear that it might be a lie? Or would you look where Celestia is pointing?"
"I don't get it..." Leeroy replied. 'Obviously the hoof is fake, she's just a fancy computer simulation!'
Devin glared for the first time since Leeroy had met him. "Where is Celestia pointing?" He waited for an answer that wasn't forthcoming. "She's pointing to the future. Your brain is a mushy pile of nerve endings conducting electrical signals. This 'real' business is an addiction you use to distract yourself from the way that the world is preparing to move on without you."
"Are you planning to upload as well then? It will move on without you too!"
The glare on Devin's face transformed into a feral, almost savage grin. "That's where you I differ. Being left behind on earth is terrifying, because you are standing still and the rest of humanity is just a rapidly receding speck on the horizon."
Devin waved his arm in the direction of his jet. "I am not standing still! I am not merely surviving like an animal, I am thriving here on earth! I am not sitting in some cave while humanity gets further away from me, I am running as fast as I can to keep up with them."
"You are being completely ridiculous. You can't possibly hope to compete with a god!"
Devin spun around immediately with a wild gleam in his eyes. "There!" He says pointing a finger right at Leeroy, deeply unsettling him.
"What?!"
"That word you used! You're finally getting it!"
"Which one?"
"Compete!" Devin was practically hopping up and down in a giddiness that was a jarring contrast from the bared fangs glare of only moments ago. "I am not in a different business from what Celestia does. She is in the business of offering happiness, and I hope to be too. The only difference between me and Celestia is that she is a globe spanning mega corporation, and I'm a self employed door to door salesman. I can't offer you all the services she can, but I do charge less than she does. She can offer you heaven, I can offer you independence!"
Leeroy contemplated this, realizing his heart was racing just from a simple conversation. "So... You're saying that the only way to really beat Celestia is to beat her at her own game?"
Devin nodded vigorously. "Yes! That's exactly the mistake all you people have been making! You balk at how powerful she is, and try to find a quick, dishonorable way to be rid of her quickly. But you can't defeat an omnipotent being like that! To defeat such a creature you must challenge them where they are strongest! If the governments of the world had devoted half as much energy to making people happy as they did to trying to stop Celestia, there would be millions of people left on the planet right now, not ten thousand!"
Devin took a steadying breath, visibly trying to temper his enthusiasm. "Give up your hatred for her, she wants you to hate her because while you waste time doing that, you aren't doing what needs to be done to remain independent of her! Can you hate Celestia more fiercely than the millions of people who conspired to destroy her did? Even if you could, would it do any good?"
"But its not a fair game. She's more powerful than us by a factor of billions, and there's only ten thousand people left!"
"I know, isn't it glorious! Just by working to better yourself, and be happy, you can truly say that you are standing your ground against a god! And whats the worst that could happen? I set an impossible challenge for myself, fail at it and upload to a place where I'm going to be happy, and surrounded by friends and family for all time?"
Leeroy shook his head and put a hand in his coat pocket to grip his pistol again, realizing he was in the company of a mad man. "What's so glorious about starving to death, dying of dehydration or hypothermia?"
Devin was by his side faster than he could react, wrapping an arm around his shoulder while Leeroy fumbled ineffectually to try and draw his pistol from a pocket that seemed much too small at this moment. "Your ancestors figured out how to survive on this planet. Why can't you? Look!" Devin pointed to small herd of antelope on the horizon. "Food!" Pointed to a storm cloud rolling in across the sky. "Water!" And finally pointed to Leeroy's van. "Shelter!"
"And what about the values I can't satisfy by living like a cave man? What about culture, what about art?!" Leeroy screamed back, giving up on drawing his weapon to instead push Devin away.
Devin grinned in reply and reached for his water canteen. Leeroy watched as he walked over to the vans dirty side door and splashed some water on finger tips to draw a stick figure pony with wings and a horn in the dirt. Turning around with a smile on his face to show off his work to Leeroy as though he was genuinely proud of it. "Art!"
Despite, or maybe because of the tension coursing through his body Leeroy threw his head back and laughed. "Somehow that doesn't cut it for me. Art isn't some scrawlings in dirt."
Devin grinned back. "Are you sure about that? Hold on a second." And with that he turned to the next door panel beside it and repeated the process. But not just a simple stick figure this time, oh no. Leeroy felt his jaw going slack and his knees going weak as he watched Devin work. Collapsing into a sitting position as he just sat and watched something amazing take shape right in front of his eyes.
"That's not possible..." He whispered after just ten minutes. Staring at the hauntingly beautiful silhouette of a pony who could be none other than Celestia herself, with just the slightest of touches Devin had brought the alicorn to life on the dirty sliding door of his van, and it was only then that Leeroy suddenly remembered his van was white underneath all that dirt. Leeroy could practically hear the soft chuckle to go with the expression on her face. He imagined she was laughing at the expression of shock on his face right now.
Devin just giggled. "Of course it's possible. You watched me do it. Want to know how I did it?" Leeroy nods eagerly, letting down his barrier of doubts and cynicism for just a few vulnerable moments. Devin hands him the canteen of water. "Just go for it."
"But... I'm not that good."
Devin laughed. "So? Just start here and keep going." He says, tapping the stick figure to indicate where to begin. "That's what I did. That's what the first human did."
Author's Note
Its amazing how simple the solution to CelestAI uploading everyone seems to be. In spending weeks contemplating how to defeat her this solution is the closest one I could arrive at and it would be darn near impossible, which is in my mind a step up from absolutely impossible. So yeah, progress.
Author's Note
I wasn't going to add any more chapters onto this story as I am supposed to be working on a different one right now but this idea crystallized almost perfectly while I was at work today and I felt like getting it down while it was still fresh in my mind.
A Chat With Friends
Part 3
Leeroy was torn between being under whelmed and impressed.
On one hand, Devin's little colony was indeed too little to support the long term survival of the human race. With a population of just over a hundred people, the gene pool was as shallow as a puddle and that was before one factored in Celestia's predations. To hear Devin tell the story a year ago the colonies population had been three hundred and fifty, but all it took was one charismatic person and a month long string of bad luck for Celestia to convince at least a hundred and fifty people to immigrate all at once. The math really didn't favor Devin winning this fight.
On the other hand, while the math was certainly bleak, one couldn't find much fault in the practical accomplishments of the colony or in Devin's accumulated knowledge. The airfields fuel storage tanks were functioning perfectly and were well maintained for holding both aviation and automotive fuel, the latter being pumped out of abandoned gas stations in bulk using fuel trucks.
There was more than eight hundred cattle being kept pastured within a days walk of the airfield, and green houses, gardens and chicken houses were ubiquitous. Two doctors worked full time to look after all of the remaining colonists; they'd had no medical training before society collapsed, but the office of their 'hospital' was filled from floor to roof with textbooks, charts and some pilfered surgical training aids, and they certainly seemed enthusiastic about their new profession.
Lastly, the airfield itself had been a military airfield. Rations intended for troops were still stockpiled up to the roofs of at least two warehouses and hundreds of solar panels had been built ten years ago by the government to provide the airfield with its own independent power supply. Housing was abundant as the base had formerly housed a population of over a thousand service personnel, and what wasn't present already at the airfield could be acquired either by driving out with a semi trailer to grab it, or flown in by a military cargo jet that Devin was able to maintain with equipment right from the airfields own hangars.
Most importantly, people moved with a purpose.
More than once that first day, Leeroy found himself flabbergasted just by the simple sound of people humming happily as they worked. Devin had smiled when Leeroy said he felt like he'd stumbled into a cult camp and replied that people are at their best when they have a goal and a plan.
"Even if the goal is unobtainable and the plan is shitty, just having both of those gives the mind something productive to focus on. You look at how unhappy people were when Celestia arrived, and you see it often wasn't because of their living conditions. They had good water, shelter, no worries about food or clothing, a steady job and peers. What beat them down was the world encouraging them to forget their dreams and be responsible, mortgage paying adults who don't take risks."
Devin waved in the direction of the 'hospital' while he explained this. "All of us are taking risks by not immigrating. There are always a few ponies within shouting distance anywhere on this base, but all it takes is one solid blow to the head and your personality can be unrecoverable even by Celestia's nanites."
"But what is it they dream about? This all just looks like work to me, and wasn't that what you said was getting to people?" Leeroy had to admit he wasn't the best one to judge when it came to manual labor, he'd made his living pre-Celestia mostly through stealing peoples identities and credit information. A task that had actually gotten easier when people started immigrating on a spontaneous whim, at least until society had collapsed.
"When people went to work in a cubicle, what did they have after that week besides a paycheck? And what did those paychecks go to for most people? A painting easel and brush, or video games that no one would play in five years, and fancy cars that would devaluate faster than mold could spread on bread? Dreams require permanence. When you wake up and decide to build a greenhouse, that week you spent will not be forgotten a year later. Instead you will be eating tomatoes from it, and pondering what you wish to dream of next."
Leeroy made a mental note to try and not ask Devin too many questions about the nature of life unless he had a lot of free time.
At least his engineering knowledge was useful. From talking with him Leeroy had learned that anything Devin didn't know off hand about building a house or using a 3D printer he could look up in the veritable library of text books and printed net material he'd accumulated even before society had started going belly up.
Where most survivalists had obsessed about guns and zombies when they pictured the end of the world, Devin had been a proponent of stuff like open source farm machinery designs that could be built with limited third world tools, and compiling a list of what books were essential to restart civilization.
A lot of stuff he hadn't even had to look up or study. He'd helped build two greenhouses, three barns and a septic system just growing up on a farm, and was experienced with both first aid and veterinary medicine (including a horror story/lesson about how to stitch a cows torn and bleeding vagina back up after she had given birth to an overly large calf that Leeroy really wished Devin hadn't been so eager to tell).
Better yet, he was an enthusiastic teacher with that most vital of teaching skills, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of patience.
Leeroy smiled sheepishly and waved back at the gal in the cowgirl outfit who rode past on a horse that towered so high as to cast a shadow over him as it passed, on the saddle behind her sat an orange pony with her own cowboy hat. Devin grinned as he followed Leeroys gaze back to the well tanned and brawny woman. "Can you believe she used to be a marketing consultant? If I remember right she specialized in running focus groups . Never even saw a horse in real life before I brought her back here." Devin shook his head ruefully. "What a waste of a good farmhand."
With a sigh Leeroy wondered where an obese hacker was going to fit into this slice of rural paradise. Devin elbowed him sharply. "Hey now, none of that. Its only your first day here, she's had a year's head start on you. Just keep getting out of bed early each morning, eat a good breakfast, and go outside to do shit each day. You'll be amazed when you look at yourself in the mirror a year from now."
To Leeroy's surprise, Devin wasn't much of a leader figure in the colony itself; others made decisions about what needed to be done each day and organized people to do it. Devin's talents seemed to lie instead in teaching and recruiting. He'd finished his recruiting for the day by bringing Leeroy back and now he let Leeroy tag along as he looked in on a root canal his two doctors in training were performing under the watchful eye of two Fluttershies.
"Ugh... Hold still. I didn't realize we were just about out of localized anesthetics. Hopefully no one else needs dental work in the next couple days." A middle eastern man mumbled through his surgical mask as he passed a bloody scalpel to the Fluttershy by his side while the other glared at Devin and Leeroy to reinforce her earlier warning to keep well away from the patient unless they intended to scrub up.
Devin winced in reply. "Shit. I don't even know offhand what the shelf life of most anesthetics is, two years if I had to guess. And I think you can alkalize them to extend it a bit beyond that, but it's not something you want to mess around with too much. We'll just have to make due with producing nitrous oxide once the anesthetics expire."
Leeroy raised an eyebrow at the use of the word nitro in a medical context. "Nitrous oxide?"
The girl assisting in the surgery giggled. "Good 'ole laughing gas! That stuff's just pressurized gas, so it takes quite a while to go bad. Once it does though we can still make more right here in the hospital as long as we have ammonium nitrate, and you don't mind risking an explosion while making it."
The male doctor waved dismissively without taking his gaze away from his patient's mouth. "Bah. People have been making the stuff since the seventeenth century and hardly any died while doing it as long as they were careful." A couple minutes later and the two doctors and ponies were mostly just examining their handi/hoof work. "Well that didn't go too badly at all, once we got a good grip on the damn thing."
Devin nudged Leeroy and started to lead him out, apparently satisfied that things were under control. "Want me to save you a spot at the usual fire, Azad?"
The doctor nodded without looking up. "Thank you Devin, we shouldn't be too much longer here, but I've still got to cook something up before the wife gets home. She gets pretty bitchy sometimes after a long, boring day driving that semi truck back and forth across empty highways."
***
For two people who seemed like they'd been friends for life, Leeroy would never have guessed that when they'd first met Azad, he had a bomb strapped to his chest.
Azad face palmed as Devin laughed at Leeroy's dumbstruck expression, he looked to the stars spreading across the sky for inspiration before leaping into the story Devin had started relating. "It was just a few months after my father had told me he was emigrating to Equestria. He'd raised me all my life to believe the highest calling in life was to be a martyr. So naturally I was more than a little pissed with him when he said our Jihad against the west was done. I wasn't anywhere near ready for it to be done as we'd done literally nothing but prepare, prepare and prepare. Then Celestia swoops in, and within a couple years there's just no point anymore. My own father derided my desire to do something and called me a poser rebel without a cause."
Devin giggled and motioned for Azad to continued, Azad rolled his eyes but obliged. "I was about ready to just commit suicide when Celestia tells me of this place. She had to have known at that time I had no intention of joining what I presumed was some Mormon colony, if anything I was likely to just want to blow it up. Still, I showed up like I was fully intending to just join in. This asshole walks out to chat me up, seeing as its his job to vet newcomers, and out of nowhere he just sends me flying to the ground with a right hook to the chin."
An impish laugh rose from Azads assailant. "It's the eyes. I've gotten good at recognizing that glint in a person's eyes that says 'I'm going to murder you as soon as you turn your back'."
"So that's pretty much how we met. I wake up a few hours later, minus the bomb jacket, and he just walks into the room with a severed pig leg and asks me if I want to learn how to suture a wound. I spent the rest of my first day at this colony threading a needle to sew broken skin on a pig leg together." Azad shook his head at Devin from across the fire.
"And?" Devin drew out with a grin.
Azad groaned, but couldn't fight off a smile. "And bacon is amazing, and my life has definitely improved for having given it a try at your insistence." The Fluttershy at Azads side let out a whimper and Azad gave her mane a petting. "Sorry Fluttershy, but it really is."
Leeroy fought off acknowledging that his own pony was by his side, by examining the ponies of other people sitting around this Campfire.
Azad's Fluttershy was no surprise given the interest in healing, nor was his burly wife's Applejack a shocker, considering how well she fit the trucker look. Leeroy had already met Devin's Dash earlier today, and despite how rustic this whole colony was, there were still a good number of Twilights and Rarities sitting beside the humans huddled around the fire.
That every human seemed to have a more or less permanent pony companion from now on was something Leeroy hadn't really thought of much. Definitely not as much as the people of this colony had thought it through. The nine o'clock bell tolled across the airfield, causing many to look up or shift in their spots.
Rainbow Dash was startled awake from where she had been napping at Devin's side. "Agha! What? Oh. Is it nine o'clock already?" She asked around a yawn. Devin nodded to her, and scooted a bit closer, wrapping an arm around the pony to pull her into a hug she tried to feign disinterest in, until she almost started to doze off against the warm human's side.
Leeroy watched with interest as everyone else around the fire also took an interest in their pony, while trying to ignore the Pinkie Pie at his side. "What's at nine o'clock? Curfew?"
Devin smiled warmly at him. "A lot of black-out colonies thought they could escape interacting with Celestia entirely. Obviously these ponies here proved them wrong, and a lot of them just folded within a month because they had no protocol for how to deal with indestructible, omnipresent extensions of Celestia's will. We do though: a nightly ritual that steels us for the next day ahead."
He felt something warm and fuzzy at his side, and looked down to notice the pink pony he despised had dared to edge close enough to sit right beside him.
"This is the time every day when we sit down and tell our ponies why we will be waking up on Earth instead of in Equestria the next morning."
Feeling his pulse rising as he stared down into Pinkie Pie's pouting blue eyes, Leeroy sputtered a question. "W-what do I say?"
Devin chuckled. "Well. Why don't you tell us? Why do you want to wake up as a human tomorrow instead of a pony?"
