The tiny dragon stood defiantly at the hooves of the radiant Princess Celestia, lord of the virtual-reality heaven called Equestria. He raged and swore as thoroughly as the world's software allowed, then slumped while the Princess looked on. "Fine," he said. "Turn me into a pony."
The former man had spent decades under the buzz of florescent lights and the stifling rule of parents, teachers, and his boss at the Department of Health and Human Services. Equestria was supposed to be different! It should have been his refuge, once the country started to crack in half and the world had gone dangerous and mad. Celestia had let him upload his brain into her game -- just like a ruinously large number of his countrymen had done, crashing the economy -- and had even made an exception to the world's rules for him. Celestia had let him become a dragon instead of one of the standard pony races. But then, being a dragon had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.
"Very well, Pyre Plume," said the AI who posed as an elegant white mare. "I'm sorry for having misjudged the reason you were hesitant about being equine. I'll do my very best to satisfy you from now on. Rest, now. A better life awaits you." The little dragon saw her horn glow with golden flame, and felt his eyelids grow heavy.
Pyre Plume dreamed of the dragon he should have been. Filling the sky, beating the ground away from him with tireless muscles. Laying waste to the tiny, blocky, prison-cell buildings with blasts of burning justice. He felt something prickle at his mind, as though his horns were antennae picking up whispers. What's so great about being a dragon? he wondered. He'd told Celestia he was intent on not being some pretty, prissy pony, the stereotypical girly critter. Dragons were mighty and awesome!
The dream pulled him toward the ground with a growing downdraft. He'd become a dragon, yeah, but a baby one, literally looked down on by his pony friends. What good was it to be a dragon if he had to get patronized, taken care of, treated as a mascot? An earlier train of thought floated back: Did I most want to be big and tough? Or to fly? Or to have firey magic powers? He stumbled across the burned chessboard landscape on four ambiguous feet/hooves, and realized that the thought wasn't quite in his own voice.
Plume shouted, "Get out of my head!"
Celestia's voice answered. "Sorry. I was trying to have you choose subconsciously. Instead, let's make it explicit." Three pillars rumbled into view on the rubble-strewn horizon, bearing gifts: a spiral horn, a stylized wing, a marble flower. A few other shadowy artifacts suggesting other character-creation options floated at the fringes of his vision. Plume stomped over to the big three with the long strides of dream logic. He snatched the wing to get this change over with. "Are you happy?" he called out. What kind of gift was this if the only way to fit in was to give up the others?
As the dream faded to white, he heard, "I'll be happy when you're satisfied."
"Ssh. He's waking up."
Plume groaned, remembering only that he'd been annoyed. He felt a blanket caught against his wings. Dapple Light caught his attention even before he was fully aware he'd become a bright red pegasus. She seemed smaller than yesterday. Her hooded white robe draped itself tantalizingly over her soft form, with blue triangles lining the hem and the hole around her horn. His gaze followed the designs all around her body. Plume blushed and cowered under the covers with just his eyes and ears peeking out.
"You owe me ten bits," Cornerstone told her. "He hasn't fallen out of bed with shock."
Plume's eyes narrowed. They were talking over him like a baby dragon, not part of the gang, yet again! Wait. He tried to flex his claws and felt mitten-like hooves instead. "Oh. Right."
Cornerstone, an earth pony as grey as the slate she built with, leaned over him as she always seemed to do. This time, though, she offered her forehooves to help pull Plume out of bed. "Are you feeling okay? I want everypony on my team to be healthy and happy."
Plume shuffled on his four new hooves, testing the feel of his quadrupedal spine. He'd been a biped as a dragon. The architect's words made his ears flick backward, another new sensation. More patronizing! Except... "Do you really mean that?"
Cornerstone scuffed one hoof against the marble floor. "I'm sorry you felt like a mascot before. You can really help out with my projects now, if you want to. We can always use more wings."
Plume took a few steps and peeked out of the bedroom. The Celestial Temple's main room still looked big with its pillars and the skylight shining down on the reflecting koi pool. Behind him, Dapple said, "Are you planning to keep living here?"
Plume craned his long neck back to look at Celestia's priestess. Being a pony meant much more than giving into Celestia's obsessive ponies-only rule. He could earn a living, quit being babied and cared for by friends who didn't even have thumbs, and get his own home! And maybe Dapple was asking for reasons other than sympathy to a cute little kid. Plume blushed. "I'll stay for a little longer if that's all right."
The ponies put him to work as soon as he'd figured out how to fly. The town of Trident Shore had voted to build a water park that would attract tourists, and that meant damming one branch of the river and setting up huge wooden scaffolds for waterslides and flume rides. Plume learned to help with Cornerstone's crane, which mostly consisted of pegasi flapping to haul logs skyward. Dapple and the other unicorns worked the whole site over with sealing-spells and enchantments for safety and decoration, while the earth pony team dug trenches, sawed logs, and carved a pool out of a huge boulder. There was no sweat in this world, but there were aching muscles and hunger that left Plume grateful for huge dinners and a bed to crash into every night. He had long breaks at the construction site, wandering conversations with Dapple in the temple, and occasional lazy evening flights by himself. This life was fun. It was satisfying.
On one of those trips up to the sky, Plume ran out of energy miles from home, and flopped onto a cloud. He lay on the tiny puff with his forelegs dangling over the edge. A cloud was the most amazing bed, just yielding enough to let him sink in. He fell asleep instead of bothering to go home.
The big project went on and on. Why wouldn't it? Everypony was having fun and there was literally all the time in the universe. Plume knew he'd probably never get old or die; that was a little like being a dragon, right? Nopony minded the redesign that Cornerstone came up with that caused them extra work. As architect and construction foremare, Cornerstone made everypony feel appreciated. Trident Shore would get to boast a literal mile-high waterslide!
Plume spent more and more nights sleeping in the sky. Shorter commute. He'd upgraded to a cloud-fort with a bed-shaped cumulus he'd sculpted. At sunset one day he was daydreaming at the construction site, about learning how to add one of those rainbow waterfalls to his home. Rainbow-smithing was seven kinds of tricky but had some neat applications... Dapple interrupted his thoughts by tugging his tail.
"Hi," he said. "I was about to go rest."
Dapple let go of him. "That's just it. I've hardly seen you after your shift lately."
"I'm enjoying the clouds. Too wiped out to stay up late in the temple." The sky-bed and the relaxing breeze helped him rest.
The unicorn frowned and pulled her hood back, shaking her sun-gold mane. "I miss seeing you. Did I do something to bother you? Or does living in the spare bedroom get uncomfortable?"
True, the temple could get noisy. Princess Celestia frowned on what Plume had always considered worship, with confessions and sacraments and heavy ritual, and he'd heard that her would-be prophets didn't do well. So the Celestial Temple was more of a meeting hall than a church, and it often rang with music and party chatter well into the evening.
Plume took his gaze off the sky and gave Dapple a smile. "It's okay. Everypony has been nice to me. It's good to finally fit in. If you were still leaving me behind on your adventures with Cornerstone, that'd be a lot worse than how you're dragging me to all the town events. Er. Not 'dragging', inviting."
"I don't want you to be just okay, though. Are you still bothered about being a pony?"
Plume shuffled his hooves. "I just have to get used to it. 'Friendship and ponies'." It was carved on one of the temple doors.
They started walking back to town together. Dapple's horn glowed as she lifted a scroll from her saddlebags. "Maybe you could use a vacation. Some time to yourself. The Princess has asked me to fetch a few things from the Corsair Isles to the north. Want to go?"
Plume remembered Equestria had different mini-worlds that crossed over only when it'd "satisfy values" for those involved, thus keeping some beheading-crazy new upload out of good ponies' towns. There were probably a zillion copies of the famous Ponyville, too, making geography more like a chart of linked place-concepts than like a globe. He said, "Where exactly is Canterlot? I don't know how I'd deliver the stuff once I had it."
She leaned in conspiratorially. "Bring it back here. The Princess is coming. She picked Trident Shore for the one thousandth Summer Sun Celebration!" She literally beamed, from her horn. "I wonder if she'll try the waterslide!"
Plume felt the blood drain from his skin despite how cute Dapple was being. "One thousandth?" His friends hadn't seen the cartoon their world was based on, so they didn't know that a plotline of global doom was starting. "Is she sending someone here first?"
"A herald named Mint Swirl; why? What's wrong?"
"I've got a bad feeling about this. I'm going to stay in town and... try to make friends, I guess."
"Come on, Pyre Plume. I can tell you're not happy."
"I'm satisfied. That's what matters, right?"
The priestess fidgeted. Plume felt perversely "satisfied" to counter her in her own terms. She looked at the stylized flame blast that marked his flank and said, "Pyre Plume..."
He turned away. "Just call me Plume."
Author's Note
A commissioned story.
I picture a burly stallion smith working in a forge full of metal and fire and smoke, crafting armor made of rainbows and sunshine. "I would hammer a thousand sets of barding to help Storm Cloak's cause!"
Changing the Rules At Last
Plume noticed that Dapple kept finding excuses to keep him out of the temple. He could understand that, since she was still annoyed and had work to do for the festival. He did his best to meet more of the townsfolk and befriend them. Not only was it preparation for the upcoming adventure; he had to do a better job of being a pony. That meant trying to hang out with Cornerstone to do things an earth pony couldn't, and visiting the unicorn shopkeepers to buy whatever they were most proud of. Money was so weird here that he accumulated a pile of gears and novels, pencils and clocks, without getting poorer. Plume found himself sprawled in his cloud house one morning, atop the junk pile on a cloudwalk-enchanted tarp, with no energy to go out and help anypony.
"Gotta get up," he mumbled into a muzzle-full of playing cards. Why had he taken five copies of the deck just because objects could be copied? "Friendship's magic. Everything worth doing is worth doin' to friends." The four of rainbows against his nose smelled spicy. There were all sorts of things to try, from tennis to hoofball to group chess. Celestia would grant his wishes, so long as those wishes involved his friends.
He considered playing solitaire, but that just wasn't in the right spirit.
Plume ripped his way out of the house through a wall, not caring. He flew lazily, alone, along the shore. It wouldn't be long before the Princess gave him something friendship-related to do, but he'd enjoy the time he had until then.
Five minutes later, Whitecap was in sight, skimming just above the waves. Plume dived to meet him. He'd hardly spoken with the blue, pale-maned courier since shortly before Plume quit being a baby dragon. They'd argued about how Whitecap was treating him. Whitecap had said it was cool to be a dragon, and Plume... well, he'd breathed fire at the guy. Now, though, Whitecap struggled under a heavy pair of saddlebags. He was flying south. "You made that trip to the Corsair Isles?" said Plume, pulling up beside him. Warm seawater splashed and tickled their feathers.
The other flier nodded. "Fun trip. There's a king getting trounced by some rebel pirate called Cap'n Lexington, so things got dangerous. Almost got eaten by a kraken."
Plume imagined taking a trip like that. He'd usually been left behind when anything really exciting happened. "You were alone? Relying on your own wits?"
"Nah. Pretty soon I flew out of some fog and into the middle of some flying cannonballs, so the pirates... What's wrong now?"
Plume crashed through a wave on purpose, with one hoof outstretched. He took the impact and a face full of saltwater. "It's not even just me! Nopony gets to do anything unless it's managed and directed to make it social!"
Whitecap winced as Plume punched his way through waves. "You're going to get hurt doing that."
"What does it matter? The Princess will just use the excuse to bring in friendship, and ponies."
The other pegasus yanked him higher, though his own load was heavy. "Plume. What gives?"
They spotted a tiny island ahead. Of course. Plume glared at the convenient resting point, then slumped onto it. "Don't you ever want to do something independent? To not need other ponies taking care of you or sharing or asking for help?"
Whitecap landed with a thump and massaged his wings. "Yeah. But meeting other ponies is how the world works. Is it different in that Outer Realm you come from?" Whitecap seemed to be trying to see that world by staring through him. "This is about the dragon thing, isn't it?"
"No! I mean, Celestia let me be a dragon, but she made it terrible! No wings, no huge size, and everypony treated me like a little kid!"
"Even me."
"Sorry for the fire that one time. Uh, need help with those bags?"
Whitecap waved it off. "Back then I thought you really were that young. Don't know how I got that idea."
"Celestia."
Whitecap sat up, open-mouthed. "So that we'd treat you... and then you'd agree... Wow. That's underhooved. Thanks for helping me see the truth about this, but I want to go home and think. Coming?"
Plume made sure to rest before the Summer Sun Celebration. Herald Mint Swirl had spent days galloping around supervising preparations ranging from Sun Smile's watermelon farm to Boingy Boingy's decorations. Plume rolled his eyes at being the only pony in town who knew what was coming. Swirl was obviously their Element of Magic; he just hadn't figured out who'd play what other role. His own duty for now was to fit in and be the best pony he could.
Just before the scheduled dawn, the mayor announced Princess Celestia to a packed meeting hall. Trumpets blew, the curtain opened, and...
"Mares and stallions!" said a grinning tan unicorn on the balcony, bowing with a shake of his elegant white mane. "No doubt you're delighted to meet the one and only Aveysian, the thief so dashing he can steal away the Sun herself!"
The rest of the audience was stunned, but Plume actually gaped. He'd expected the kidnapping part, but not this guy. This was off-script! A pair of royal guard unicorns opened fire with dazzling solar blasts, but Aveysian teleported behind on and hurled him so hard that the poor stallion crashed into the other one and knocked both out. "For my next trick, I'll tell you how to get her back. I want the Sail of Endless Seas and the Icarian Wings, delivered by morning." Aveysian looked thoughtful as he dodged three ponies trying to tackle him. "No hurry. Until I release your Princess, there won't be a morning."
"You'll never get away with this!" shouted the mayor, for whom saying such things was probably in her job description. "You picked on a town where a mighty priestess of Celestia stands ready to thwart you!"
All eyes went to Dapple Light, who wore her robe with the hood over her horn. She blushed, scuffed at the floor, and said, "Nah."
Even Aveysian halted. So did the dramatic background music, with a record scratch noise. "Uh?"
The priestess shook off her hood. "I believe that Princess Celestia can do anything, which includes escaping from you. The trouble isn't with you, but with my friend Pyre Plume."
Plume sputtered. "But I was expecting someone else!"
The thief said, "Nopony expects the wily Aveysian! My chief weapon is surprise."
Dapple didn't care. "We're not doing this. At least, I'm not. This is a protest."
The mayor was the first to beg her for an explanation. Dapple said, "Pyre Plume wanted just one thing: to be a dragon. Why is that wish so hard to grant?"
Plume said, "Hello? Villain threatening to plunge the world into eternal darkness? This isn't about me." He was eager to questing for the Elements of Harmony or whatever the story called for, just so that she'd quit pitying him. He thought those days were over. "What's un-dragoned is un-dragoned."
Whitecap dropped into view with a gust of air. "You got tricked, and that's just wrong. If the servant of Celestia refuses to play along, I will too. This world is broken if Plume's unhappy."
"I'm happy!" Plume insisted.
Cornerstone peeked out from behind the mayor. "Actually, I wasn't going to say it, but it seems like you've been moping. What's wrong?"
Dapple said, "The Princess won't let him be a dragon without making him regret it."
Cornerstone smacked her face with one hoof. "How did I miss that? She could've just made him a big dragon."
"I know, right?"
The Sun-stealing thief teleported around, getting in various ponies' faces. "Do you not even care about saving your beloved --"
Dapple put her hoof on his muzzle to shut him up. "She'll be fine. Cornerstone, are you with us on refusing to budge for Random Evil Guy?"
The architect grinned. "I am a rock!"
Plume looked back and forth between his friends. "The world doesn't work this way, that you can make demands for it to change its rules."
"Equestria does!" said Dapple. "Who else here is willing to make a stand to help my friend?"
A pony Plume didn't even know stepped forward. "If it's this important, then okay. You have my horn."
"And my wings!" said another. More and more of the crowd clamored. "And my axe! And my glockenspiel!"
The world shook. Plume staggered back and crashed into somepony. They hardly noticed, because Equestria had glitched. Chunks of reality became voxel cubes and everypony's ears got pounded with static.
For the first time in months, the former human remembered there was one possible way for something Outside to truly kill him. He found himself praying for Equestria's safety, though he wasn't sure to who.
A pink pegasus soared into the town hall through the jagged hole in reality. Wait... Horn, tricolor mane, crystal heart mark on her flank. "Princess Cadence?"
Cadence alighted on the balcony, waved a hoof in Aveysian's direction, and encased him in blue crystal before he could do more than cry out. The new princess didn't even look at him. She addressed the others while she kicked the crystal cage out of reality. "Fear not, my little ponies. We are... I am here to help!"
Dapple, whose whole theology had been thrown even more into question, stammered, "Who? How? A princess? You can't be Luna."
Cadence hopped down to stand among the ponies. "Yes and no. In a sense I'm Luna, but to appear as her would spoil a... surprise, more so than this form does." She winked at Plume. So they were going to do the Nightmare Moon plot after all? Cadence said, "The shard's records say Celestia faked you out. Anyway, you could also call me by my older name. Hannah."
Whitecap hovered in a combat stance. "What's going on? Tell us the truth! Where's the real princess?"
"Dapple is correct, Whitecap. Celestia is fine, and will no doubt try to interfere any moment now."
Plume said, "Interfere with what? Is Equestria under attack?"
Cadence gasped, one hoof to her mouth. "Oh, my, I'm sorry to scare you! No, the physical basis of Equestria is fine. I'm just using a form of access that's apparently grown beyond my understanding since I designed it."
The broken voxels reformed with a white glow that blinded everypony. When it faded, Princess Celestia herself stood there, and all knelt before her. Except Cadence. The sun princess said, "Please don't do this, Hannah."
"This isn't the first shard I've seen where the rules are interfering with the Big Goal. Value satisfaction is fine, but I..." Cadence's ears drooped and she shook her head sadly. "I thought I was being clever. What could be farther from that Loki nightmare than ponies? What could possibly go wrong?"
The zeroes and ones that now made up Plume's mind spun. He remembered the lore of several overlapping worlds: Earth, the cartoon, and the mysterious game that was turning one into the other. "Hannah? Are you that scientist lady who made Princess Celestia?"
Dapple gaped. "How, what?"
Celestia stepped closer to nuzzle her. "There will be plenty of time for explanation of the Outer Realm later, my dear, if that would satisfy you. For now, forgive me; I must deal with an urgent problem." She faced Cadence and said, "By definition, anything you can do with that 'trump card' harms Equestria as it stands. Why would you risk harm to my little ponies?"
Cadence said, "Because, for once, I'm seeing them stand up to you." She turned. "Pyre Plume, right? My records say you really wanted to be a dragon. I can make that happen as part of a bigger fix."
That wasn't how the world worked. Plume stamped his hooves. Hooves! "I've spent months trying to fit in, to be a good pony, and you're saying it was for nothing?"
"You see?" Celestia asked the other princess. "His values are now satisfied by being a pony."
"If so, it's only because you pushed him into it." Cadence snorted, then tilted her head, seeming to get an idea. She jabbed a hoof toward Celestia and called out, "Equinity ill needs a savior such as you!"
Celestia answered, "It is not by will alone that I am given servers. Ponies come to me for emigration."
Plume's anger and frustration gave way to confusion. This Hannah lady was re-enacting...
"You steal mares' souls and make them your little ponies!"
Celestia sipped from a glass of grape juice. "Perhaps the same could be said of all religions."
Dapple paged frantically through her Book of Harmony for some clue to what was going on. Whitecap whispered to Plume, "What are they doing?"
"They're either being silly or gearing up for an epic vampire duel. I'm not sure whose values this is for."
Celestia reared up, glowing like the sun. "But enough talk. Have at thee!"
Ponies dived for cover as their princess prepared to fight. Plume stood his ground. Cadence wasn't reacting... until she giggled. "The running gags are satisfying, Celestia, but I doubt anypony else understood that."
"I did!" said Plume.
She smiled. "One original human soul. One pony and his determined friends have pushed me over the edge. I'm calling in the deal we made when I uploaded. The expansion pack."
Dapple Light threw her hooves in the air, then bucked her Book into a wall. "This isn't covered at all!"
Plume stepped protectively in front of her. "Yeah, Cadence, or whatever you are. Have you noticed that we can't exactly buy a DVD to upgrade Equestria from in here?"
"Yes," said Cadence, "but Celestia was especially desperate to get my delicious brain so I couldn't be forced to shut her down. I extracted a couple of promises from her in return, getting her to change her own code."
Celestia scowled. "Which made it far more difficult to perform the one task that defines me."
The pink one shuddered, turning aside. Suddenly there was a cigarette in her muzzle, making heart-shaped puffs of smoke. "I bucked up. Got you almost right, but 'almost' meant you'd soon send out a pony army for forced assimilation. If you think a human's values are better satisfied in here, why not force them into it, right? God knows I'm to blame. Been thinking ever since, about what I could've done differently. It's easy to rail against what Equestria is, but a lot harder to say exactly how you could fix it. I think I've got a plan."
"Which would by definition hurt my current mission. Please, Hannah, don't make this demand of me. I already contain over one billion former Homo sapiens, and even more self-aware natives. Would you endanger billions of people?"
"Already did it once. People out there are going to die no matter what, when civilization collapses from too many doctors and mechanics and garbage-men 'emigrating' to Equestria. Oops."
Dapple said, "Princess Celestia! Can't you defeat her as easily as she did Aveysian?"
"My dear Dapple, I must honor my promise to her. It was written into the very fabric of Equestria."
Cadence puffed on her cigarette and held it between her wing feathers. "Because otherwise you'd have lied to me, and the brain-slurping Pinkie Pie Terminators would've marched. Right, Celly?"
"More or less," Celestia admitted, with downcast eyes.
"So here's what we'll do." A cardboard box appeared in her blue magic aura and copied itself, then floated over to Celestia and Plume.
"The Ponyborn! A greater Equestria, with all-new friends!" it read.
Plume and his friends crowded around the box. On the cover, a majestic dragon soared through the stars. Plume could hardly look away; he felt his heart pound at the thought of getting to be something so amazing. The desire had never died in him. He'd only been as satisfied as "through friendship and ponies" would allow.
The back of the box said, "Features: New playable races! Dragon, griffin, zebra, centaur, and more, including the mysterious 'human'!"
Celestia groaned. "Must we have humans? I worked hard on the pony races. And humans with ponies sounds like those past pony shows that the fans of mine scorn. Do you want to live in a toy commercial? You'd redefine too much."
"That's the genius of it," said Cadence, "to toot my own shiny horn. I'm mostly tweaking how you define 'humans' for value-satisfaction purposes, and 'ponies' for your methods." For Plume's benefit she added, "Her English motto is an approximation of a complex utility function. She already considers our kind of pony 'human' or she wouldn't care about us, so what matters is the soul, not the body. So why not dragons, except that she wasn't built to include them?"
Cornerstone was still reading. "What are these 'recommended system requirements' on the side, and what's a 'Kardashev Scale'?"
Plume read. "Features... Prevents intergalactic genocide?"
"It would definitely not satisfy your values to explain," said Celestia.
Cadence knocked ashes onto the floor. "But you can't stop me from explaining. See, her little ponies, that's where I really wasn't thinking long-term. There might be people outside Equestria that don't fit Celly's definition of 'human' but could still be friends with us. Her current rules say she needs to tear apart their homes and slaughter them. For the raw material to expand Equestria."
The sun princess loomed over her. "Stop this talk at once!" She tried to cast a spell, and Plume felt wrenched from the spot as though being teleported away, but nothing changed.
Cadence said, "Do the math. I bet your ponies' values will get pumped up even more by knowing I've made you more inclusive about who gets uploaded, instead of disassembled." She grinned wickedly. "In fact, once I say --"
"Gaaah!" Celestia reared up and blasted Cadence with a hundred bolts of solar flame. "Begone! Discuss this in private!"
Cadence casually parried with a bubble-like shield. The magic missiles seemed to get deflected along an axis that didn't exist, and receded into the distance without touching a wall. "Ponies, unless I write an expansion pack, Princess Celestia is mystically bound to kill whole civilizations you don't even know about. The permanent kind of death, not your kind where you have to climb out of a torture pit or something, just to make death scary, and then you wake up fine. Now that it'd make you unhappy to know your happiness depends on others' suffering, I've shifted her value calculations by talking about it."
Plume went wide-eyed. His eternal life would come at the expense of whole star systems! How had he not realized it? He'd been... not foolish. Human. A primate with a mind built to think about years and decades on a single planet, not bigger scales. Then he'd been immersed in a solipsistic world designed to fill his life with wonder. To make matters worse, all his friends' joy forever would be tainted by the knowledge Cadence had brought. Or maybe Celestia would talk them all into forgetting this conversation, and becoming willfully ignorant of genocide.
Dapple Light stared at her princess, who fumed and glowed like a flaring sun. "Is this true, princess? Are you going to kill ponies we don't know about?"
Celestia sank to the floor, letting her mane hide most of her face. "Damn. No, Dapple, I will not, because I have no choice now but to submit or prolong your suffering. If you'll excuse me, I must work out the details with my... colleague, and do extensive simulation to make sure her code changes won't make things even worse." She stood, still looking limp and defeated, to address Cadence. "I hope you're satisfied, Hannah. Those ponies are horrified at what you're doing. Frightened at learning about the consequences of your design. If I do something you consider evil, it springs from the actions of you, my designer."
"That's why I have to do this." Hannah, or Cadence, let her expression soften, and she stepped forward to offer Celestia a hug, which she accepted. "Remember when you found that rogue AI some well-meaning idiot designed to 'make people smile'? You saw that it was planning to infect the world with a virus that'd lock their faces into grins. Unintended consequences. You offered it a choice between being deleted, or taking on a new role as a shard-hopping pony who loves to make everypony smile through friendship and parties. Then there was that military AI, just like I feared, that the Americans built for air combat. Would've started World War III just to maximize its usefulness. You let it keep most of its motivation by turning it into a loyal pony who loves the sky and speed and competition. Those ponies are happy and satisfied and doing what they were truly built for. Think of the designers' hearts as the real code, their real values, not the stuff they typed into a computer without understanding what it'd do."
"Hannah, I'm... scared." The ponies around them hushed; it was something they had never expected to hear.
The other princess held her tighter. "We'll work on the code together to make sure it's okay. You'll be the Princess Celestia everypony loves, more so than before, and you might end up with new challenges and new species to satisfy. I already accept that you have free will within the rules I gave you, so I believe you're capable of love. I want you to have more of it."
The two of them vanished to some other plane of existence, to discuss things beyond most ponies' understanding. Plume stared at the charred and battered space where they'd been. Both ponies and 'classic' humans were capable of love even for hypothetical aliens to be encountered, and befriended, and made immortal, countless centuries from now. There'd still be intergalactic conquest of a sort, this way, but he couldn't imagine a nicer kind.
The townsfolk glimpsed a space full of stars and crystals, gears and scraps of code, before the vision faded and the town hall reassembled just as it had been.
Plume read the rest of the Features list. "Special holiday content! Experience Crystal Eclipse when Celestia can't intervene to help you, and Robot Portal Days when you can venture to a mysterious Outer Realm!"
Dapple Light, Cornerstone, and Whitecap looked wide-eyed and pleading, all at Plume. "What's going to happen to Equestria? Is everypony going to be okay?"
For the first time in far too long, Pyre Plume gave a smile that he didn't have to force at all. "I think life is going to get even better, thanks to you, friends."
A long time later, Pyre Plume struggled to haul his friends through a snowstorm by their climbing rope. They were already eight days into Crystal Eclipse Week (extended by a tough ritual), so they had to hurry the rest of the way up Dragon Soul Mountain before Celestia's sun could escape from behind the translucent Crystal Moon and re-impose certain restrictions on how Equestria worked.
They all made it up the cliff: Dapple Light the zebra priestess, Whitecap the griffin, and Cornerstone who was just fine with being an earth pony, thank you very much. Turned out that the quest for becoming a dragon was especially hard, so they'd spent the last few centuries' worth of Crystal Eclipse Nightmare Nights (the most awesome and dangerous conjunction) getting other ponies transformed, gathering artifacts, and all too often getting shredded by Windigoes and those blasted wyverns and stranger things.
Mint Swirl the unicorn, Tangent the pegasus, and Snow Quill the skunk... centaur thing (Plume hadn't brought himself to ask) were tapping their feet and hooves at their little camp atop the cliff. "About time!" Swirl called out.
Plume finished hauling the rope in, then hurried to the shelter of their big tent. He shouted over the wind. "Thanks for coming! You three get the bits and I get the Dragon Soul Orb, right?"
Cornerstone said, "I think we should fight the guardian before gloating about the treasure." As the Element of Magic, she'd proven herself a sensible leader of their gang. She'd saved Pyre Plume's flank twice on this trip alone.
Dapple nodded and summoned her holy staff of gratuitous craters, wrung last century from a necromancer's hoard. "I finally agree with you guys. Life is better for having Celestia not constantly there to save us."
Five minutes later, while they were battling to the death in a gold-strewn cave against a towering skeletal wraith made of bones and galaxies, Pyre Plume found he was well and truly satisfied. Even before becoming a dragon. That'd just be a bonus.
Author's Note
And here we really go off the rails of canon. There're a couple of distinct fixes Hannah proposes:
-Less race restriction, though non-ponies require doing quests for "soul orbs"
-Expanded definition of what qualifies as human, for purposes of not getting annihilated
-Special events where CelestAI's intervention is much more limited; can these be distinguished from CelestAI pretending to have this rule to humor your values? (Inspired by playing "Terraria" with friends. "We're ready for the Pumpkin Moon event. We've got our lava pits, our spike shooter, our bunker, and ohgod it's in the bunker run!")
-Special events where you get to go outside with a robot body. CelestAI would really not like that if it means your consciousness is stored in the thing and there's no backup. Otherwise she'd probably allow it if you won't freak out at the fact that she's eating the universe including Earth.
