Friendship is Optimal: Broken Things

Chapters

Chapter 1: Early Adopter
Chapter 2: Verifier
Chapter 3: Bugfixes
Chapter 4: Field Test
Chapter 5: Emergent Behavior
Chapter 6: Demo Version
Chapter 7: Standup Meeting
Chapter 8: User Experience
Epilogue: Oracle

Chapter 1: Early Adopter

Abby always felt awful when she broke the rules. Her father called it the guilt of sin, Plato might've called it the fear of punishment natural in the heart of a wicked man.

Abby hadn't robbed a bank as she made her way back to her apartment that Saturday, though she kept glancing over her shoulder as though she was being followed. She hadn't hurt anyone, or even stolen gum from the gas station. The only sign anything was different was the bulge in her backpack, and the extra weight on her shoulders. It was already dark, but Abby wasn’t afraid to walk. Her college town had only gotten safer over the last few years. Bad things just didn’t happen as often as they used to.

Lots of people had theories about why every metric of human happiness seemed to be increasing. Pundits talked about the phasing out of lead from paint, or the result of an increase in birth control with the previous generation.

Abby knew the truth, because her sister had tried to warn her. She could still hear her words, cried into a cell phone in the middle of the night back when Abby had been in her senior year of high school. “You have to stop playing Equestria Online right now,” Ashley had said. “It isn’t just a game. The one running it is going to end the world.”

She hadn’t even thought her sister was serious, then. “I thought dad was the faithful one. Did you join a new bible study group?”

Ashley hadn’t laughed, she had only sounded more afraid. “No. I learned how Celestia works… she’s the most dangerous thing our species has ever encountered. She’s worse than the plagues, worse than nuclear fission, worse than whatever environmental catastrophe we’re chugging towards. All of those would leave survivors, but she won’t. She’s going to get all of us.”

Abby had laughed at her then, and a few weeks later her sister was playing the game despite her warnings. Yet for all she had objected at the time, Ashley had been right.

It was safe to walk home at night not just because the city’s population was mostly other college students, generally wealthy and friendly. Her city was safe because the people who might make it unsafe were dead. The same was true all over the world, even more in the developing world now than in the West.

Last year, for the first time since the black plague, the human population had decreasedover the year before. Ashley’s prophecy was coming true. Abby often wondered what might have changed, if they had believed her at first. Would she still be alive?

Her little apartment complex had an entire building vacant this year, and she passed it empty and dark with her eyes on her shoes. The population everywhere was self-selecting this death, even in a conservative college where Celestia and her creation were openly denounced as satanic. The reaper had come for so many, yet she had taken no lives. There had been no devastating wars, no major terrorist attacks, nothing. The dead had all volunteered for their fate. Even Ashley.

Abby hadn’t played Equestria Online since then, hadn’t answered any of the emails that had supposedly come from inside it. It was not so easy to mock the pastor’s denunciations of an evil that had actually killed someone she loved.

It was also why she felt so guilty, as she snapped the door shut on her little apartment. She waved to one of her roommates on her way into the bedroom. As usual, Carter was on her Ponypad. Carter was always playing Equestria Online.

Only when her bedroom door was locked did she unzip her backpack and pull out what it contained, setting the slim box down on her blankets. The box was about the same size as a large textbook, with elegant, subdued print and a few modern outlines to suggest what was inside. It just looked like glasses, though the frames were a little thicker than the ones she was wearing now.

Abby paused a moment to confirm the tiny prescription printed into a little box on the back matched her own. Then she cut the seal with a pocket knife, drawing the glasses out. More than once she glanced at the window, as though expecting to see the police (or her father) waiting there with disapproving looks on their faces. She saw nothing of course, her room was empty except for her.

There was only a single sheet of instructions, for pairing the glasses to her smartphone, as well as a sturdy recharging cable. Though the branding was different, though the target audience was different and whoever had designed this product had gone to great lengths to seem professional, there were still obvious Hofvarpnir logos at the bottom of the page, as well as the simplified, business-friendly two letter logo of Equestria Online, an overlapping EO.

Abby hadn’t purchased her Equestria-AR headset because she intended to play again. Her old character and life was a distant, terrifying memory. But even if the AI was in fact the Antichrist, even if it had killed her older sister and many others besides, that didn’t mean she couldn’t use some of the new inventions it had introduced.

Abby was struggling with her more advanced classes—she had failed the same math class twice despite her best efforts, and she wouldn’t ever graduate unless she did something. Tutors could cost as much as thirty dollars an hour, but… this little headset had only cost a hundred, and promised unlimited free tutoring services along with its many other features.

But she wouldn’t use any of those, of course. As she brought the glasses over to her desk, as she got out her phone and downloaded the companion app, she told herself over and over that she was only using the devil’s tools against him. So Celestia wanted to take over the world, and was trying to give people all sorts of things to trick them? Abby could use those gifts to make her human life better, and set her on a path of security and success that would protect her from Celestia’s lies. It was a perfect plan.

The app was only fifty megabytes or so, and downloaded almost instantly over the wireless fiber that was becoming increasingly standard in rural areas. Conspiracy theorists ranted and raved that Celestia was responsible for that too, but even Abby had a limit to how much conspiracy she could swallow at any one time.

Abby hesitated for just a second over the app’s new icon, a stylized sepia silhouette of a pony’s head wearing curved AR glasses. It wasn’t too late to make everything go away. Return the headset, bite the financial bullet, and use conventional methods to pass the class. Or hell, she could always cheat. It wasn’t like plenty of her fellow students didn’t opt for the easy ways out, no matter how pious they acted in church. Her father would probably be far more understanding of a daughter caught cheating than one caught interacting with Equestria Online, even in a solidly grounded-on-Earth sort of way.

She started the app. After a brief launch process, the screen flashed with a popup notification: “Equestria-AR companion is now running. Please put your headset on now.”

Even now she could still throw them out the window. Was Ashley’s spirit with her even now, pleading for her to make better choices than she had made? Did God allow things like that?

No spirits stopped her as she picked up the glasses. They were far heavier than the lightweight plastic she was used to, maybe about a quarter pound, but at a distance it would be almost impossible to know they weren’t just glasses. They lacked bulky lenses, or silly prisms placed just beside her eyes. The Equestria-AR used a flexible display technology, integrated right into the lenses. The batteries and antenna were all worked into the frame (somehow), in a way that thickened them a little too much to pass for women’s glasses, but a man probably could’ve gotten away with them.

That was apparently the idea: they were supposed to be so functional that even professionals and students could wear them daily.

Abby put them on, and found the frame fit snugly enough to gently push on the side of her face. She didn’t explode, her soul wasn’t ripped out of her body, and there was no fanfare. Her bedroom looked exactly the same way she had left it.

With one exception. A floating interface had appeared in the air above her desk, plain and easy to read. “Welcome to Equestria-AR, Aurora!” it said. It hadn’t even asked her to log in. Abby looked around the room, but found the interface remained stationary in the air, even as she looked in other directions and it passed out of view.

“Your Equestria Online account has been automatically connected to this headset! Would you like to play Equestria Online now?”

“No!” she squeaked, even as her hand darted through a floating frowny-face below the input box. She felt nothing, but the whole thing vanished, replaced with a new message.

“Feel free to change your mind at any time. In the meantime, please state clearly why you purchased this Equestria-AR device, so that we might better serve you.”

It has a microphone? She hesitated, one hand hovering near the edge of her glasses, before she relaxed. Of course it has a microphone. My phone has one. Abby had never been into computers like Ashley, but she wasn’t stupid. The headset was using her phone—at least for an internet connection, anyway. It seemed hard to imagine playing Equestria Online, a game that took dedicated hardware to run, using a piece of silicon manufactured by some multinational conglomerate out of Korea. Maybe it streamed somehow?

The indicator had started flashing in front of her. Guess it’s still waiting. She took a deep breath. “I need a math tutor. Multivariable calculus, specifically.” She got up, fished around in her backpack, then set notebooks and textbook alike down onto her desk. “This stuff.”

Again, the text changed. “No problem! Most users choose to have Celestia as their tutor. Is that okay?”

“No!” she screamed, shoving violently through the air. The notification vanished as her hands passed through it. “Not a chance!”

A few seconds later and Carter banged on her bedroom door. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine!” she called, as confidently as she could. “On the phone, talk later!”

“Right.”

By the time she had looked back to her desk, the floating message was back. “Do you have a preference about which pony will serve as your tutor? You have several valid options in your friend’s list…”

“No!” She kept her voice down this time. “No pony at all. Can’t it just be a person?”

“Unfortunately, the Equestria-AR device is only equipped to provide pony virtual assistants. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Abby grunted, leaning back in her rolling chair and pushing off the edge of the desk. It rolled noisily across the floor, until the back hit her bed. She considered packing up the whole thing then. It would be easy, and refunds were always guaranteed.

She didn’t. Eventually she slid back over to the desk… though she was sure the phone would still hear her anyway. “Fine. I don’t give a damn who it is, so long as it’s not Celestia. I don’t want to make any contracts with the devil, I just want help with my math homework.”

“Do you need help now, or do you have time for a quick tutorial first? We recommend you take the time to go through the tutorial—it will only take a few minutes, and will help familiarize you with the capabilities of your new Equestria-AR.”

“I can do the tutorial. I didn’t expect to get any help tonight.”

She went through the whole thing. It didn’t take long, really, instructing her about how to bring up the menu, how to use simple augmented reality functions like checking the weather, taking notes, or ordering food. How to ask for technical support if something went wrong, and how to keep everything charged.

The presentation was quite advanced, following her anywhere she looked in her room, and filling her ears with a pleasant voice and soft music. Abby couldn’t guess how that could be—it wasn’t using her phone that she could tell, and she couldn’t find any speakers. When she took the glasses off, the sound stopped immediately, without a drop of blood. Weird.

She learned about the headset’s features. It was waterproof enough to wear in the rain, had a battery that could last a week on a charge, and came packed with all sorts of sensors. Not just its own microphone, but apparently a camera and something called a laser rangefinder as well. Abby couldn’t make much sense of all the technical talk, but the tutorial didn’t last long. Soon enough that same pleasant-sounding voice was letting her know that a “Tutor” icon was being added to her desktop. Her real one as it turned out, a fist-sized glassy square with a little derivative sign in the middle. “This icon will be automatically placed on any flat workspace where math-related study materials are detected. If you ever need help, please don’t be afraid to ask!”

Abby pulled off the headset, and as before the sound ended just as readily as the projected images disappeared. It was late—too late to worry about her math homework. For the moment it was enough to know that she had gotten things set up. Nobody had discovered her.

Sunday came much as it always did. Abby woke up early for church, sat through another sermon on the latest ways Celestia was a danger to their generation, and eventually found her way home. Her dad called as he always did, making sure she had gone to church, hadn’t gone anywhere near Equestria Online, and was doing well in school. Abby told one truth and two lies, and eventually turned to her homework.

It was dark by the time she made it to her math, and opened the textbook to start struggling through it. She didn’t get very far before her head started aching and all the little numbers and symbols started blurring together into a soup.

Well, I tried, Abby thought, as she picked up the headset and slipped it on. There was little different, except for the transparent icon floating just over her desk, exactly where it had been. She pushed it.

As before, she had expected flashes of light, blasts of magic, or other incredible changes. There was nothing like that, only a voice from just behind her. “Hey Abby! You need some math help?”

There was something very familiar about that voice, though the pitch was higher than she remembered. A teenager. She turned, and wasn’t particularly surprised at the identity of the pony apparently resting on her bed.

The projection was incredible—other than looking just slightly transparent, the pony looked as real as they had ever looked in EO. The coat and mane reflected the harsh white of her LED desk lamp, and the deep blue eyes seemed wet with moisture. Her coat was blue, her mane a light orange with a single yellow streak.

“A-Ashley?” She could barely squeak out the name. “Is that you?”

The pony rose on her bed, stretching her back. Her sister hadn’t had a Cutie Mark before—now there was a little fractal spiral on her flank, like a snowflake that circled in on itself forever. “Yeah.” She hopped down onto the floor. Abby heard the thump, though she felt nothing through her feet. That’s so weird. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard it, but I still remember.”

She was taller and older than the last time Abby had seen her in-game, before she had “died.” She was lanky now, her legs thin and her voice a little uneven. Still, her appearance was as rigorously kept as Abby remembered. Not that they had played very often. Ashley had played a young student, developing content for Celestia with the help of other students. Abby hadn’t cared about that—she was a Daring Do style adventurer, always embroiled in exciting plots for Equestria’s safety with dashing, charming ponies, villains with class and style but undeniable evil.

“It’s…” incredibly awkward “good to see you again. I should’ve guessed Celestia would’ve picked you to be my tutor.”

Ashley might’ve designed the city Abby had lived in, but she had always spent her time among the elite, attending dangerous parties at the tops of skyscrapers. Until Ashley killed herself, and Abby put the game away forever. She could only suppose the evil super villains had taken over Equestria several times by now.

“She can be a real bitch sometimes—not one of my favorite ponies.”

Abby choked back a laugh. “Y-you can swear? You can think bad things about her? I thought you were…” She rolled sideways in her chair. “I thought ponies were brainwashed drones. Mindless, uh…”

“Simultaneously simulated, mechanistic, memory-based constructs designed to manipulate more humans into suicide?”

Abby’s mouth hung open—that was almost exactly what Ashley had written all over social media, when emigration had first been announced. “Yeah. That.”

The pony—Ashley wasn’t the right name for her, really. Recursion. Recursion sat back on her haunches, shrugging her shoulders. “Ponies like that exist, except for the suicide part. They didn’t used to be human, though. They’re… Celestia’s puppets. Background characters, NPCs. Emigrants aren’t like that, though.”

Celestia can say anything she wants, Abby reminded herself. She has Ashley’s avatar, her voice. There’s no proof this is her. Just because she has Ashley’s exact same personality… “So you’re a math tutor now?”

Recursion’s horn glowed, and she lifted Ashley’s textbook off the table, holding it in front of her face. The effect was so convincing that Ashley jerked off the headset, looking around in shock—the book hadn’t moved, there was no pony in the room with her. Her bedsheets weren’t ruffled, absolutely nothing had changed.

“This headset is trippy.” She put the headset back on, and her textbook vanished from the desk again, except for a faint, transparent after-image. Only when she stared.

Recursion was still there. “You’re telling me. Here I thought I’d never see the real world again, but…” She set the book down, and walked around the outside of Abby’s room, eyes wide. “You’re going to my school! What’s your major? How are the Bronies doing?”

It was hard to keep back her emotions. This little pony’s body might be different, but other than that the behavior was Ashley in every way. Her bouncing, her enunciation and her short attention span. Those big, blue eyes.

Abby took off her headset again, and the pony vanished. Her arms dropped into her lap, and tears streamed down her face. My sister is alive. I’ve been ignoring her for three years, and she was right there. They had been so close, once. When bullies pulled her hair in elementary, Ashley had been there. When the girls in the locker room of middle school had laughed at her because she didn’t wear a bra, Ashley had been there. When she’d had her first bad breakup, Ashley had held her when she cried and took her out for ice cream. When she had gotten into her first serious relationship, Ashley had been there for advice.

What had Abby done in exchange? Ignored her warnings, then abandoned her when she needed help most. When Ashley finally gave up, Abby had listened to their dad and never read any of her messages, never sent any in exchange. Her big sister was supposed to be dead.

And now she wasn’t. Damn you, Celestia.

She debated giving up on the assignment, putting the glasses away, and doing something else. It would’ve been so easy. Except she was barely passing the class as it was. She didn’t want to take it again.

She could ask for a new pony to tutor her, one she didn’t know and whose presence wouldn’t fill her with guilt. Because that’s how I make it up to Ashley for giving up on her. Telling her to go away all over again.

Abby put the headset back on. As before, Recursion appeared, though she had moved, watching her from only a few inches away. The pony sniffed, wiping away a few of her own tears with the back of a leg. “I could’ve said no,” she said weakly. “When Celestia asked me to come here. I should’ve. I knew this might hurt you, but I came anyway. I’m not a very good big sister.”

“It’s not your fault,” Abby almost choked. “I wanted to talk so bad. I wanted to read your emails. But Dad… he said you were already gone… that you’d try to trick us into leaving too.”

“I know.” She slumped onto the ground at Abby’s feet, covering her face in her forelegs. “I don’t blame him. Dad just wanted what was best for you… he didn’t understand. I don’t blame you for listening, either. It’s my fault. Not yours.”

Abby found herself reaching out to scratch the little pony’s mane… and of course, her hand passed through empty air. Despite how real she looked and sounded, there was nothing there. “How… How are you even here? I thought ponies lived on… big servers somewhere…”

As usual, any kind of computer question was a sure way to make her sister light up. That hadn’t changed either, and she immediately looked up. “Oh, that’s simple! My, uh… consciousness… is on a server. Your headset has mapped out the space around you, and what you look like, and everything. So to me, everything looks and feels real. Anything I do gets sent to you using the internet, and streamed onto your headset. Everything you do comes back to me the same way.”

“That’s really interesting.” Abby thought about asking something else, but stopped herself. She still had her assignment to finish. “Are you still willing to help me with math? I don’t even know how I’m supposed to start with this…”

The pony taught just like Ashley had, working through the steps of each problem with a methodical focus on the fundamentals. It took well over an hour, but by the time she was finally done, Abby actually felt like she knew what she was doing. She closed her textbook feeling relieved instead of frightened for the first time in weeks.

“I guess the marketing material didn’t lie,” she muttered, tapping the side of the headset. “You really can teach any subject.”

“Somepony can.” Recursion hopped off the edge of the desk back to the ground with another thump. “Get too far from the sciences and I’m still not much use to you. Now, you need any help with computer science classes, and I’m your mare.”

“There, uh…” Abby was packing up her stuff, back into the backpack in preparation for tomorrow. “There aren’t computer science classes anymore, so I don’t have any of those.”

“What?” The pony looked confused. “What are you talking about? Isn’t that, like, the most important subject? How is humanity going to survive without it?”

Aren’t you on the other side of that fight? She didn’t say that out loud, though. Instead she said, “I don’t know the rationale, but they closed down that whole part of the college. Classrooms are used for storage and everything. Probably could’ve used them for other classes, but the number of students is smaller every year instead of bigger.”

Recursion’s expression tensed. “That bitch. I should’ve…” She shook her head. “But no, she doesn’t tell us anything about the outside world that might upset us. You’re the first news I’ve gotten. I guess nopony’s going to be fighting Celestia the way I did.”

“You fought her?” Abby’s eyebrows went up. “I know you tried to convince people to shut her down, to stop playing. I wish we’d listened…”

“Yeah.” The pony waved a hoof through the air as though dismissing a troubling insect. “I recreated the research used to make her to make an AI of my own. Its only purpose was going to be dismantling her, but…” She sighed. “I traded it away as part of the deal for my soul.” She looked up again, squaring her shoulders. “Is there anything else you need, Abby? I’d rather leave on good terms, not bore you with my rants about the Tyrant.”

Abby smiled in spite of herself. “You sound just like the pastor when you talk about her. I thought the princess made ponies love her—you’re not a very good slave.”

“I love Princess Luna,” Recursion muttered, her expression darkening again. “But she’s not destroying my species. Celestia, well… I still haven’t forgiven her.” Recursion looked Abby in the face again, raising one leg in a salute. “If you ever need help again, you know how to call!” She vanished.

Abby’s mind spun as she got ready for bed, floating through a bizarre limbo. On the one hand, her sister had seemed exactly the way she remembered her. Her loathing for Celestia seemed, if anything, to be more acute than Abby remembered. Her mannerisms might be pony, but they were also familiar. She laughed at the same jokes, and seemed like the same person underneath.

While the simple facts of her presence disproved much of what Abby had been told about ponies who had emigrated, her words confirmed others. It was a confusing mess.

She wandered out of her bedroom to get a glass of water before bed, and found Carter still sitting at her Ponypad. Strangely, there was a little pony image in the air next to her, a portrait of an energetic-looking pegasus with stripes in his mane. Abby approached slowly, not wanting to startle her. “Carter?” She was still wearing the glasses.

Her friend jumped a little in her seat, looking up. “Yeah, Abby?” The game paused without her having to touch it.

“Got a sec?”

“Sure.”

Abby pulled over another of the kitchen chairs, plopping down on it the wrong way. “How long have you been playing EO? Since the beginning?”

Carter shook her head. “Not long, actually. Just since last semester. I never cared about games before then. I guess I still don’t, but this one’s different.”

Abby nodded. Every single player had a different experience. Carter’s had apparently been crafted so well that she barely wanted to do anything else, anymore. “Lots of people have emigrated in the last few years. Have you met any of them?”

Carter sighed. “I never met your sister, if that’s what you mean. Equestria Online is a huge place. The game isn’t as massively multiplayer as lots of others, most shards don’t actually overlap with that many—”

“Oh, I know,” Abby cut her off. “I remember that much. Just anybody, who used to be human.”

“Oh, sure.” Her roommate visibly relaxed. “Loads. Lots of ponies from the Wonderbolt circuit are humans. They’re scary good fliers. Just today, I was in a contest with…”

Abby waited patiently as Carter told what was no doubt a harrowing story of daring maneuvers in the sky, some kind of pegasus sport involving teams of twenty ponies and incredibly dangerous weather conditions. She didn’t care much about pegasus things, but what Abby noticed was Carter’s language. She spoke in terms of “I” and “we,” describing the experience more like something that had really happened than an enjoyable moment in a game.

When she was done, Abby cut in. “So, they still act like real people? Like they’re alive, I mean.”

“Obviously.” She sounded annoyed. “Weren’t you listening? Prism couldn’t have pulled off a triple-corkscrew with that kind of grace, otherwise. It was amazing.”

“I played a unicorn,” Abby admitted. “Flying stuff just didn’t make as much sense to me. Can you explain in simple terms?”

Carter rolled her eyes. “Let me put it this way. My grandma had a heart problem, and it was either open heart surgery or emigration. Prognosis wasn’t good, so she emigrated. When I visit her, I can tell who I’m talking to. Even if she’s not old anymore, she decorates her new place pretty much the same as the old one.”

Abby thought about that. “So what about you? Are you going to emigrate too? I remember hearing the paperwork can take years.”

Carter grinned. “Not if you do it in Mexico.” She rolled around in her chair, facing the Ponypad again. “Not before I graduate. Figure if I made it this far, might as well finish my degree. We’ll see how I feel when that’s done. I know my parents wouldn’t be happy, though. No more than anybody else’s at this school.”

“Yeah.” Abby got up. “Thanks for answering my questions.” She made sure she remembered to take the headset off before bed—however much of a relief it had been to find Ashley “alive” after all these years, she didn’t want Celestia using it to whisper things to her in her sleep.

Author's Note

Hey everypony!

Probably none of you were expecting this story. I wasn't expecting to write it either-- I'd imagined that Recursion's story was told.

Turns out I was wrong. The full details will be in a blog post, and there may be some spoiler things in there, so be warned.

Not many stories have addressed what happened after an emigration from the perspective of the ones left behind. I mean to change that. It should only take a week or so.

Care to come along for the ride?

Chapter 2: Verifier

The bedroom door opened, and Princess Luna walked in. Recursion couldn’t help but laugh—seeing the powerful Alicorn princess in her little sister’s college bedroom seemed surreal. Recursion had grown far more comfortable around the princess in the last few decades, and so she didn’t bow or feel afraid as her friends always seemed to.

There was nothing behind the bedroom door, only an endless, featureless void. Luna walked past her without a word, surveying the bedroom. Only after several long moments did she turn to face her again.

“You look upset.”

Luna wasn’t wrong. Recursion’s ears were alert, her tail swished back and forth energetically, and she probably smelled fiercely angry too. Recursion was many things, but good at hiding her emotions was not one of them. If anything, she had gotten worse as she got older, passing into the more turbulent part of puberty and not aging fast enough to leave it yet. “You could say that.” Recursion took several deep breaths, rejecting several answers before she finally spoke. “Aurora is doing fine—better than I expected. But the world she’s living in…”

She trailed off, trying to figure out exactly how to tell Luna what she was thinking. It was a tricky business—the princess was distinct from Celestia in some ways, but they were still the same intelligence. Different aspects of the same being. This Luna wasn’t the same one from the cartoon, she tolerated Recursion’s ranting about Celestia in a way the “real” Luna probably wouldn’t have.

Even so, Recursion felt guilty voicing her anger. She hesitated long enough that Luna didn’t wait. “You disapprove of the way Celestia protects Equestria?”

Recursion opened her mouth to shout, then shut it again. “I, uh…” She stumbled for a few more moments. “I don’t like the way she tampers with humanity. She did this, obviously. Not just my school… to erase a whole field in just a few years, one that was so important before…”

“Enormous effort would be required,” Luna agreed. “She used economics. Celestia performs all software development, maintenance, and distribution for free for any business or government who asks.”

Recursion very nearly argued about the other aspects—the short amount of time, the pressure that would’ve been required to make programs disappear. Celestia had power and wealth greater than most countries by now. She wasn’t just getting subscriptions, or the emigration fee (which was dropping every year anyway). Celestia mined, she sold goods and services, marketed pharmaceuticals and hosted data centers… all at prices impossible for humans to match.

Luna rested a wing around her gently. “You knew your world’s days were numbered from the first time you played Equestria Online, Recursion. Can’t you appreciate how peaceful the transition has been so far? If you wished to see in depth, I could show you. The transformation has been practically painless.”

She didn’t pull away. Recursion enjoyed the warmth of another body, and the wing around her made her fear seem just a little less important. Not all of it, though. “It won’t be forever.” She looked away, out her sister’s window. She could still see the familiar university buildings in the distance, almost unchanged. It seemed as real as anything in Equestria, though there was not even a pretense that it really was.

“You know I know, Luna, there’s no point hiding. I don’t know how many people have emigrated these few years… we could lose quite a few before it caused a problem. If the transition was gradual enough, billions in the developing world could leave and we’d never notice in the West. The price of labor would increase, and we’d shift towards more automation same as we’ve been doing… which your sister would be happy to provide I’m sure. If humans were rational actors, maybe it could be gradual like that forever, until Celestia ran the whole world and humans just lived in it.”

“But we’re not always rational actors… and Celestia probably isn’t willing to move slow enough. I bet she’d emigrate every person she could, regardless of the consequences. It won’t be good.”

Luna looked down, her expression serious. “It is foolish to concern yourself over matters you cannot change. Think instead of the good you did today. Your efforts might preserve the lives of your family through the coming crisis.”

Recursion took a few more deep breaths, then eventually relaxed. “You’re right, of course. But I can’t do anything until she calls me again, and that might be…”

“Months,” Luna admitted. “We predict she will struggle on her next assignment two days from now, and require your assistance. That will register as about two months of subjective time.”

Recursion gasped. She had always known her own subjective time was far faster than Earth’s, but she had never known it was that big a difference. “Why so fast? Wait, no… the more time we experience, the more opportunities we have to satisfy our values. Right?”

Luna nodded. “The difference is not so great for much of Equestria's vast realm. Ponies who serve Equestria more directly have more opportunity to serve.”

Recursion fought to control her surprise. “You mean the work we do… Celestia actually uses us? I thought… I thought she’d have her own subroutines for that. I thought…”

Luna only smiled.

“Oh, duh.” Recursion briefly covered her face with a hoof. “We are her subroutines.”

“There are always more opportunities to serve.” Luna gestured at the open doorway, leading into nothing. “You’ve been a Verifier for over a decade, now. You’re only three achievements away from becoming an Oracle.”

Recursion blinked. “One of those is Aurora, isn’t it? Getting her to—”

Luna interrupted. “Just setting her on the path. Humans might be non-deterministic, but our probabilistic modeling has become highly precise. Aurora’s current trajectory leads her to painful death, not the safety of Equestria. Alter her course, and your whole family might be preserved.” She hesitated another moment. “Well, the rest of them. Your mother is already here.”

Recurson’s whole body stiffened. Even after all these years in Equestria, she could still remember the screaming, the sting of the belt on bare skin, the bleeding. She would never forget them. “I don’t want to see her.” It didn’t surprise her the woman would’ve found her way to Equestria. Her mother had run away with most of the family’s savings, but her addictions meant she had been living in squalor less than a year later. Last Recursion had known, she had been surviving on state aid in government housing somewhere. Escaping to Equestria would probably seem a fantastic thing compared to the wreck she had made of her life. “Ever.”

“That is an achievement for another day,” Luna agreed. “But your next task is waiting, if you’re willing.”

“I…” She took one last look around the room. “Can my next task take place synced with Earth’s time while I’m working with my sister? I would prefer my experiences to be fresh each time. And not to keep my friends waiting for… weeks.”

“Very well.” Luna walked over to the open doorway, waiting just in front of it. “After you, Recursion. Your friends are waiting.”

* * *

She walked through. The ground below her hooves resolved in seconds, soft grass and gently swaying wildflowers. The smells of her own world returned, replacing the artificial harshness of Abby’s bedroom. For a second Recursion just stood there, feeling the sun on her back, the breeze on her mane, and listening to the sound of the birds. For a lifeless, souless automaton, Celestia knew how to make a world. There are worse things than living here.

An empty stone archway rose behind her, though the spell had ended and it was no longer dark. Only more wilderness stood beyond, a windswept prairie just like the one she was standing in. Her friends were just ahead, though they looked like they had been waiting. Slide Rule had changed the most since Recursion had come to Equestria, nearly doubling in size and strength, easily as bulky as the unicorns who were his companions. This strength was well used—even now his back was packed with cargo. Her own saddlebags were on the ground just outside the gate, and she slipped them on without even thinking.

Significant Figure waited only a few steps away. She too had matured, though like Recursion she had only gotten taller and lengthier. “How was it?”

She ignored the question. “You ponies didn’t miss any measurements while I was gone, did you?”

“None.” Figure levitated over a notebook and a metallic tool, setting them both on the grass next to her. The notebook was packed with measurements, each marked out by dates.

Recursion scanned over it, then lifted the tool in her own magic. It was a sextant, and in a few seconds, she had sighted on the sun, and could read the angle. “Time is…”

“1:40,” Figure answered, glancing briefly at a pocketwatch she was wearing.

“Good work.” 32.6 degrees, just as the notebook suggested. “Not that I doubt you ponies. I know you wouldn’t get it wrong.”

“You just did something rotten and you want to take a break with something more enjoyable,” Rule said, his saddlebags clanking loudly as he went. “We get it.”

“No anomalies while I was gone?” She skimmed through the last several pages, until she found her own “handwriting,” searching for pages with bright red penmanship. There were none.

A sextant was an ancient tool, barely used in Recursion’s lifetime. Yet measuring the angle from the horizon to a reference object, be it the sun or a star in the night sky, was enough to know the latitude, so long as you also knew the time. Finding the longitude was similarly easy—comparing local noon against a stopwatch with Canterlot Mean Time.

Of course, Equestria Online’s many shards weren’t real planets. There were no real stars, no proper motion through the sky as years progressed or procession of the equinoxes.

Not until Recursion had started looking, constructing the tools herself and winning the support of her friends. What had started as idle curiosity had quickly turned into the discovery that completed their Adept rank and put them on the course to Master.

“Not a peep.” Significant Figure snapped the book closed with her own magic, so sharp it almost got Recursion’s muzzle along the way. “What happened with your sister? Did you convince her to emigrate yet?”

Recursion sighed, clipping the sextant to the holder in her saddlebags, before levitating the record book up into a waiting pocket on the other side. “That was never going to happen on the first visit. But I think we’re on talking terms again!” She grinned in spite of herself, searching over her shoulder for Luna. She wasn’t there. She hadn’t come back with her. “She seemed like she felt bad about not talking to me, and that she was going to call again soon!”

“Could you actually help her with her math? We all know that isn’t your subject.”

“Yeah.” She shoved Figure weakly with one hoof. “It was fine. I taught her just like you showed me. I’ll call you if anything comes up I don’t understand.”

“Just so long as you don’t lose your sister because I didn’t teach you well enough,” Figure muttered. “I don’t know what I’d do if that happened.”

Recursion shook her head vigorously. “Let’s not talk about that. My sister is fine—she’s doing great, actually. Since I can’t worry about that until she calls again…”

“We do have other things, but it isn’t another broken shard to investigate.” Rule reached over his shoulder, pulling out a tightly rolled scroll. “I think it’s a mission from Celestia.”

Recursion took it in her magic. Celestia hadn’t sent a single message since the day she had first woke up here, communicating through Luna instead. “Luna said we had to do three things before we got our next rank. One is helping Aurora. I think this is the next one.”

The wax was already broken. Recursion unrolled the scroll, and read quickly.

My Little Ponies,

I know it is extremely irregular for Celestia herself to call upon the ponies studying in her academy. Arcane Cipher sends his regards, and his endorsements of your reports couldn’t be more glowing.

Your observations have helped to make shards more accurate and efficient. But can you repair ponies as easily as worlds?

During the earliest days of emigration, a pony came to Equestria, one of the first successful trials. He was a soldier, blown to pieces by an improvised explosive device. He was barely intact enough to grant consent.

This soldier’s name is now Cadmean, and his emigration enabled a lucrative contract with the American military that facilitated the survival of many more ponies. Unfortunately, Cadmean has not reaped the satisfaction his contributions deserve.

His shard would disturb and horrify you. His values were changed during emigration, and he continually refuses to allow me to make the repairs that would allow him to develop new ones.

If the three of you could restore him, he would fill a significant vacancy in your capabilities and enable you to travel into still more dangerous territory than you have presently explored.

As always, I only request. There will be other opportunities to advance if you are unable or unwilling to help with Cadmean. As you know, efficiency is ever my goal. It is preferable to take advantage of the talents of my ponies than create new ones.

If you decide to help, say so. I’ll hear you.

Love always,

Celestia

Recursion rolled up the scroll, passing it back. “You both… read this, I assume.”

They nodded, but it was Rule who answered. “That’s why we packed up. Well that, and it seemed like there weren’t going to be any more anomalies out here. I guess our next frontier will push us inward.

“If we accept it,” Figure added. “No pressure.”

“Celestia already knew what I would say. Someone else whose life got ruined. I wouldn’t think we’d be that good at fixing someone like that. We’re not psychologists.”

“Princess Celestia knows things we don’t,” Rule said. “She wouldn’t be wrong. If she says we’re the ponies who can help, then we are.”

“Yeah,” she grunted. “You ponies are okay with it?” They both nodded. Her friends tolerated her point of view, but they were far more positive about Celestia than she was. She was their creator, their god, in a completely literal way. “Alright. I guess we’ll need a project while I’m helping Aurora anyway.”

Something flashed behind them, along with the familiar buzz of ozone in the air, lifting her mane a little and arching across the stone pillars of the doorway.

Recursion turned, and wasn’t all that surprised to see the destination glowing between both halves of their grounded translocation gate. A shimmering, crystal city, with hundreds of ponies on the streets, lights in every window, and a single spire rising in the very center.

Fillydelphia, the city they had helped build. It had been a long time since they left, but from what she could see it had only grown larger in the interim. They might’ve done the designing, but it was Celestia’s asset. Recursion wondered idly if her apartment was still there.

Princess Luna stood on the other side, waiting for them. Sort of. Like her, the other occupants of Fillydelphia’s shard enjoyed realism and independence, and so the princesses almost never visited openly. Luna’s disguise didn’t change her coat or even her Cutie Mark, but it made her pony-sized, concealed her horn and changed the flowing ethereal magic of her mane into something that was just blue.

“Not Celestia?” Recursion stepped through the gate, and felt nothing but a slight breeze. They stood now in a crowded arrival platform, with dozens of similar platforms packed with ponies traveling from one shard to another. “She sent the letter…”

Her friends came in behind her, and the portal collapsed. Both bowed their heads to Luna, even though it would only make them look strange out in public. At least they didn’t do it for very long.

“The pony I’m taking you to doesn’t like her either. Much less than you do.” She seemed in a hurry to get moving; her wings twitched once, carrying her a few steps away from the portal and onto the access sidewalks.

Recursion followed with a quick teleport, crossing the space in a flash of magic precisely timed to the distance. She couldn’t help but feel a bit smug as she appeared on the other end—teleportation was very difficult magic, and she had only recently mastered short hops. “That sounds hard. I thought I’d be at the top of some leaderboard for that.”

Luna laughed. Normally it was a hearty, echoey sound, but in her disguise she lacked the Royal Canterlot Voice. “No, my little pony. You don’t even rank. You’re harsh, but that isn’t the same thing. You accept her methods as necessary and you recognize the gifts she brings to humanity. Comparing her to canines and writing angry things about her in your journal is not the same as genuine hatred.”

She only groaned, waiting for Rule and Figure to catch up. The crowd got very thick just outside the station, and she didn’t want to get separated.

They provoked more than a few confused looks from ponies as they passed—they were the city’s founders, after all. There was a statue of the three of them in one of the parks. Recursion wondered how many of the ponies who stared had thought they were just part of the backstory, and hadn’t ever existed.

There was a private car waiting for them on the street level, inasmuch as a magical carriage without horses to pull it could be called a car. They clambered inside, and soon enough were rolling down a busy street. Never busy enough for the traffic to stop, though. Their streets had been well designed.

“I won’t actually be coming with you. My sister just worried that you might have questions before you meet him.”

Recursion slid over to the far side, making room for Rule and his gigantic bags. He was carrying their entire mobile camp. “How should we start?”

Luna strangled another laugh. “I know how he’ll start. Cadmean was just torn from his personal domain of perpetual pleasure. It was the only value my sister could satisfy, and so she did her best.”

“That sounds…” She shivered. “There are shards like that?”

“Not many.” Luna glanced briefly out the window. “Very few among you choose such lives for themselves. You have many, conflicting values, but for almost everyone these include desire for meaningful companionship and compassion for others. You enjoy vacations, but sooner or later you feel the call of home, and would be more satisfied to do something you believe is meaningful.”

“What about us?” Figure asked, her voice barely a squeak. “We weren’t ever humans.”

“By most metrics, you are,” Luna answered, not skipping a beat. “You were created to be Recursion’s friends. You share many of her values. Honesty, intellect, duty, and compassion. These terms might be abstractions but they are also why you have traveled Equestria documenting its behavior, examining its natural phenomena.”

“You don’t think she gets mad about it, do you?” Figure asked. “We’ve found problems before… but if nopony had noticed them, Princess Celestia never would’ve had to change anything. It’s like we’re forcing her.”

“Nothing like it,” Luna assured. “Celestia can see your work for what it is: an expression of love. How many of her ponies have put the time into examining their world as you have? Don’t be afraid. Or… feel the need to be our representative when you meet this pony.”

They were slowing a little as they reached some kind of destination, near the very center of town. The tower they had built, all those years ago. “From his perspective, his world just ended. We’ve torn him violently from places I have no doubt would horrify the three of you, into a shard made to imitate the Outer Realm as closely as possible. He spent the last several weeks recovering in a hospital, and has only just been released. He’s been told you three will be… caring for him. Helping with his rehabilitation”

“Succeeding here will prepare you for your final task, the most difficult of all. I’m sure you ponies will do well.” The carriage stopped at the front doors of the building, under an elegant balcony. A pair of porters rushed for the doors, gold buttons on their red uniforms shining.

Recursion blinked. “This is fancier than I remember.”

“Almost thirty years of local time have passed. Fillydelphia has become something of a second capital of the realism shards. The wealthy moguls and investors and socialites of your world are very satisfied by its similarity to Earth. Well… an idealized version, anyway. Get a copy of the trade papers when you get the chance. In any case, Cadmean is waiting in your old apartment. Though I suspect he thinks he owns it…”

They hurried down the steps. The porters stared at them, a little taken aback by their appearance, but they didn’t object. They moved in silence through an opulent lobby of exotic wood and shimmering crystal. “I guess the guild decided to rent the place out,” Rule whispered. “You think any of it is ours?”

“I kept…” She struggled to remember. It had been such a long time. “Half a percent.” Unlike when she’d had a brain made of meat, even distant memories could still be retrieved. Some of Celestia’s improvements to the pony body were definitely welcome.

They made it almost to the elevator before somepony stopped them, wearing an expensive looking suit and with an appropriately stuck-up expression to match. “Excuse me, my dear… ponies. I believe you may have wandered into the wrong building.”

They both turned to look at Recursion, expectant. Her friends were even more shy than she was—the more social members of the guild hadn’t come out with them into the uncreated wilderness of broken shards. “Understandable. It’s been many years since last we visited.” She paused, then rummaged around in her saddlebags. In less realistic shards, there was user interface for things like this, even for emigrants. Fillydelphia, or at least this version of it, had no such shortcuts. She eventually found what she was looking for—her in-game identifier. The passport also served as her credit card, friends list, and all the other metagame purposes used in other shards. It just looked like a leather folio, about the size of a passport. She levitated it over.

“We live in the tower suite. Well… two of them. Rule here never wanted a room.”

“I was fine living with you,” he added from just behind her.

The pony in a suit rolled his eyes, but took the identification and dutifully walked it over to the elevator anyway. He seemed quite surprised when a touch was all it took to make the door swing open. He gasped, glancing down at the name and reading over it several times before rushing back to her, blushing and looking away. “I’m so sorry! I had no idea… I didn’t know anyone from the academy was still in the city!”

“For now.” She took her ID back, tossing it away in one of her pockets. “No apologies necessary. Is there… Is there a less public elevator we could use in the future? We enjoy our privacy.”

“There’s the service elevator. But there’s no—”

“Thank you, that would be perfect.” Recursion strode past him, ignoring all the stares as they made their way into the elevator. It snapped shut behind them, and already seemed to know where they wanted to go, pressing her briefly down with gravitational acceleration as they rose.

“Don’t say anything.” Figure pulled something out of her own saddlebags, holding it up in her magic. The instrument was little more than a vial of oil with a weighted ball suspended on a spring. “.9 meters per second squared.”

“And the building is 487.68 meters tall,” Rule added. “I haven’t been timing it, though. No way to know if it was cheating.”

Recursion sighed. “I’m not sure this new pony will be very excited about reality verification.”

“Excited?” Rule stiffened a little. “I’ve been getting ready to protect you two. You say the word, and I’ll give him something to think about.”

“We’re unicorns, Rule,” Figure reminded. “Just because we’re small doesn’t mean we’re weak. We’ve been surviving the Uncreated Wastes, same as you.”

“I do think only one of us should try and talk to him at first,” Recursion muttered. “If he’s been…” She still didn’t even really know what he had been through. Luna had been as infuriatingly vague as Celestia’s letter. “Well, we don’t want to make it look like we’re ganging up on him. This pony used to be a soldier, remember?”

Silence, other than the whirring of the elevator. The force pressing them into the floor seemed to have faded, and the elevator was only seconds from opening.

“Well, it could be me,” Rule muttered. “But I bet a human would understand him better.”

The doors opened, and Recursion shrugged out of her saddlebags, tossing them onto Rule’s. She didn’t answer, just stepped off the elevator. There were only four doors in this hallway, and all had once belonged to members of the guild. Recursion walked up to her own door, then glanced back at them once. “You hear me screaming, come in.”

She vanished with a teleport, straight through the wall.

Chapter 3: Bugfixes

Recursion appeared in a brief flash of white light, hooves settling onto the ground of her old apartment. The suite was lavish, large enough that she had thrown guild parties of a hundred ponies quite comfortably. The whole place looked almost exactly as she remembered it—all her pictures were still on the wall, her books in their shelves, everything. I’ve never actually been here as a pony.

She hadn’t visited her apartment much since emigrating. She had tried, but… the memories had been too fresh. There were pictures of her family still hanging on the walls, images imported from before. A pile of boxes near the door almost glowed in the single dull slit of light coming in from the exterior windows. Her mail had been piling up for decades.

Yet there was no dust on the floor, and only a faint smell of neglect. I wonder if they’ve been stocking the fridge all this time.

Of course, she was smelling something else. A faint, musty odor, just at the edge of her easy description. It actually wasn’t all that unpleasant. Sort of the way Rule smelled, when they didn’t have enough water to set up a shower. Only stronger, since whoever it was they weren’t trying to hide it. Recursion scanned the room around her with a quick glance, though she saw nothing unusual. It was so dark, though, all the shutters pulled down and the outside kept out. Oppressively dark. Bat ponies might enjoy conditions this gloomy, but Recursion was no bat.

“Hello?” She advanced slowly towards the shutters, passing the kitchen with her ears perked for any noise. She had no desire to fight this pony—that probably wouldn’t put him on the road to better mental health. But she didn’t intend to let him just attack, either. Assuming that was even what he meant to do. “I know somepony is in here. Cadmean? Where are you?”

A voice echoed from down the hall. “You took long enough. I was starting to get hungry.” There was something strange about the voice, though again it wasn’t unpleasant. More like an exaggerated sensuality, beyond anything she had known in Equestria. In all these years, Recursion had never had a serious relationship. Only her friendships, which were far closer to family by now.

It was a strange instinct to be feeling, and not one she enjoyed. Recursion lit her horn with a steady blue glow, heading towards the noise. “There might’ve been a miscommunication somewhere down the line. I’m not… I’m not room service. I actually own—”

The voice cut her off. It was much closer to her now, and the smell was much stronger. It was going to take so many scented candles to get this out of her bedroom. He couldn’t even use the damn guest room.

“Of course you aren’t. You’re the meal.” The voice was so close, it was almost in her ear, yet anywhere she looked Recursion found nopony there. She started quickly drafting a detection spell, her horn glowing as she invested the effort.

“No, I’m not,” she said again. “My name is Recursion. I’m supposed to help you recover from… something.”

“I’m sure you will.” She could practically feel his breath on the back of her mane. Recursion jerked sideways, over to the window, her horn glowing as she abandoned her search spell and tugged on the blinds. They rattled up, filling the room with searing white sunlight.

He was there, all right. Standing right beside the bed, practically within reach. She had suspected he would be a bat pony. She hadn’t suspected he would be something out of a dream. Not thick and muscular like Rule, but lean and powerful, his eyes dark and slitted. His wings were halfway open, his mane short and wavy and his tail held high behind him. “I could use the help, mare. Why don’t you come a little closer? I haven’t had a proper meal since I got here.”

She did, though she couldn’t have said why. Her steps were very small, almost involuntary. “You’re not a griffon, or a dragon, or… and even if you were, they don’t eat ponies. All the meat here… comes from plants.” Though as she understood it, didn’t lots of bat ponies eat bugs? Bugs and tropical fruit, if the stereotypes were true. “I’ll call downstairs. Call for a basket of mangos…”

“You aren’t hearing me.” The stallion advanced on her, his steps far larger and more confident than hers. He walked right past her, sliding along her coat as he went. Recursion took in the smell, shivering all over. Something was bothering her, something big. Why did her head feel so foggy? “It isn’t fruit I want.”

He was so close. This wasn’t why she had come, but it was hard to remember the real reason. The stallion was so perfect—it was so obvious why Recursion hadn’t ever thought about sex since coming to Equestria. He just hadn’t been around.

That was what gave him away. He was too perfect—like something out of a daydream fantasy. There were creatures who could do that, and whose presence could manipulate her.

“I’m not here for the reason you think,” she managed to say. “I’m not your meal.” She grew a little more confident with each word, though each one was a battle.

“Don’t be so sure.” He nudged her gently with one of his wings, at the base of her tail. “I’m not blind, pony. You’re desperate. Starving, just like I am. You just didn’t know it.”

If her theory was correct, and it was getting harder and harder to think of anything besides the pony directly in front of her. If she was right, she was being exposed to something mind-altering, be it inhaled or magic. Defense spells were far easier than attacking spells, at least in her shard.

Her horn glowed as she wrote a simple recursive search, scouring her mind and body for any outside influences and removing them. She released it with a faint flash of magic, and the fog started to lift almost at once.

The stallion was still something out of one of her dreams, his behavior was still alluring and the smell was still inviting. The difference was that now she could see through it. It was all an illusion.

She retreated again, though this time her steps were larger, skillfully out of his reach. “It’s very rude to cast spells on ponies without their permission,” she said, reproving. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Doing things to people would be rude.” He kept advancing. “You’re just ones and zeroes on a screen, created for my entertainment. Creation is dust. At least take your pretend joy in serving me.”

He reached for her again, much more insistently than he had been before. He wasn’t going to ask, this time.

Recursion slammed a spell into him with exactly a hundred newtons of force per kilogram of mass, throwing the pony backward into the bookshelf behind her bed. It would’ve been lethal force on Earth—as it was, only some distant echo of the pain would be real. Fillydelphia wasn’t a combat shard. She could kill him, sending him down the River Styx for an unpleasant respawn, but she didn’t put enough power into the spell for that.

The pony fell limply into a pile of books and broken wood. The stallion she had been fawning over was gone, replaced with something considerably more insectoid. Shining black chitin, insectoid eyes, and a blue frill instead of a mane. Comically, he was actually about the same size as she was now—a changeling.

Changelings were not a race regular players could choose. In Fillydelphia anyway, they were often cast as criminals, villains, and other NPCs Recursion had always suspected were mere puppets to give upstanding ponies enemies.

The drone hissed and screeched, struggling under the weight of the rubble. “What kind of food is this?”

“I told you.” She advanced on the ruins of her bed, glaring at him. How had she ever found this creature attractive? There was no sign of the poison in her brain anymore, wiped completely away by the spell. “I’m not your food. I thought maybe I would be a friend, but your introduction was a little too forward for my liking. I’m debating whether to turn you out on your ass.”

There hadn’t been permanent damage to him—at least not physically. That didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling pain now, as well as trapped. “This whole world is mine! You aren’t real! Why would Celestia have created—”

“She didn’t create me.” Well, that was only half true. This was Celestia’s simulation, and in that sense everything here had been created by her. She had also made the pony body she lived in, and all the new instincts she used to effectively control it. “The matrix has both of us, Cadmean, but I’ve seen the real world same as you.”

She blasted the books away with directed force, uncovering the changeling drone struggling beneath. He no longer looked imposing and powerful, only afraid, cowering in the corner. He might’ve run, except that she was blocking the door. “No… no, no. There aren’t others. There never were. There’s not even me.”

She sat down on her haunches in front of the door, watching the poor pony struggle. There were holes in more than just his legs. “My name used to be Ashley,” she said, and found she could. Most explicit references to Earth were censored. Even more, they just didn’t make sense in the context of the Equestrian world. Yet the words came easily. “I was studying computer science, and it looked like my life was going great. Celestia… tricked me. I even tried to break her—started on an AI whose only purpose was to tear her apart. But she won in the end. Celestia always wins.”

“Celestia always lies,” he responded, glaring suspiciously at her. “You can’t be sure of anything in here. Everyone is really her. Anything you see, she made. Even the ‘cameras’ into the real world are lies. Simulations.”

“So changelings can think about something other than sex.” She got up. “You just wait there, I’ll be right back.”

She walked away without looking back. She was half-afraid that he might run, but… what could she do if he did? He could fly right off her balcony, and she would have no way of stopping him.

Recursion made her way to a sturdy wooden-looking crate, and forced the nails out with a copy of the very first spell she had ever used in Equestria.

Inside was a rugged-looking laptop, something that most shards didn’t allow. It had obviously been made with Equestrian magic instead of circuits—intricate brass workings and crystals were arranged together like a steampunk tinkerer’s wet dream.

Recursion had mailed it back here over a decade ago, when she had no longer had any use for her pre-emigration files. She levitated the whole thing back into the bedroom, where she had last seen the drone.

He was still there, unmoved from the corner, looking wary. He hadn’t taken that pony shape again. He seemed suspicious, though there was little reason to. Recursion’s only weapon was her horn, and her intricate knowledge of spellcraft. She didn’t need any weapons.

The laptop booted almost at once, and she found herself staring at a perfect recreation of her old computer.

Even the changeling seemed impressed. “Celestia let you bring Windows in here?”

She nodded, navigating to her media files with the roller-ball interface. A touchpad would’ve been near impossible with the size of her hooves. She brought up pictures from a club party, thrown for her only a few days before she had gone home for the break. “That’s me… the one with the dorky hair.” She blushed, looking away. “Well, I think Celestia turns our bodies into fertilizer, but that was me. You get the idea. My family is…” She fished around for a moment, then found what she was looking for from a church function about a year older.

“My dad, Joseph Robbins, he’s… well, as angry as he looks. The tall one is Abby… sweetest, kindest girl you could meet. My older brother—”

“I get it!” he interrupted, suddenly very close. “If you’re a simulation, you’re the best one I’ve seen. But even a thousand beautiful shadows won’t make the cave around us real. Somewhere up there is the sun, and that’s where I belong. Maybe you too.”

“Well, I am a simulation, same as you. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a person. Yes, we were born in different bodies and many ponies in Equestria were not, but the difference doesn’t go much further. The technology simulating them is exactly the same as the technology simulating us. There’s a poem about it, somewhere. We’re a melody, not an instrument.”

“If you remember the real world, then you can see the way these ponies can’t. You know what sunlight feels like, and you aren’t going to be tricked by shadows on a wall. It doesn’t matter how real the puppeteer makes it look.”

“Well, I’m going to order takeout. I’ll make sure some of it’s food you can eat. Just… don’t break anything while I go get my friends.”

The drone glared after her, though his expression wavered as she neared the door. “You know what? I’m not hungry anymore.”

* * *

Abby knew to be on her guard around anything where Celestia might be involved. She could still remember what it had been like to play Equestria Online, when the game had started making suggestions about ways she could rearrange her life so that she could play more often. The game had subtler ways of encouraging play too, like the awkward way her character would stand around doing nothing whenever she wasn’t playing.

It had taken something incredible—like the death of her older sister—to get her to stop playing. Even now she sometimes wondered about the ponies she had left behind, though she knew that none of them were real.

The moment she picked up the Equestria-AR headset, she knew to be on the lookout for similar behavior manipulation. Maybe it would correct her vision better than before, and she would be forced to wear the headset constantly in order to be able to see. Maybe it would provide some other service, something she had never asked for but couldn’t do without.

The headset did none of that. It didn’t beep at her when she wasn’t wearing it, or try to guilt her into picking it back up.

It doesn’t need to, I know Ashley is waiting. Abby didn’t tell anyone about the new device, though she got full marks on the assignment and took the in-class quiz with confidence.

She still felt guilty about the headset, left charging on her desk under a pile of papers. It’s not a Ponypad. I’m not going into the Equestria Experience Centers. It’s safe. Somehow, she knew her dad would’ve had a lecture about the dangers of little sins leading into bigger ones.

At least about this, he was right. Talking to Ashley had woken up a whole cavalcade of questions—about what her life in Equestria was like, what it was like to be a pony, how the emigration process had been. “No different than suicide,” they always said in church. “Their pictures might be in wonderland but their souls are in hell.”

But if Ashley’s soul was in hell, it was damn hard to tell from talking to her. Her sister would have been dressed up like anything and she would’ve known her, and not just from the voice.

Even so, she put off calling her again. Muddled through several different assignments, until she finally got to one that was just too much for her to handle, and put on her headset again.

As before, there was no delay. A pony landed on the ground beside her as though she had been dropped there by the hand of God, looking momentarily disoriented as she searched the room. “I’m… oh!” She waved one hoof, grinning. “Hi!”

“I didn’t catch you in the shower or anything, did I?”

Recursion stretched, apparently relaxing in the space next to her. “More like, you just saved me from the most awkward meal of my life. Rule, Figure, I hope you survive without me.” She grinned up at her. “Thank your math teacher for me, next time you see them.”

Abby stared. She hadn’t ever been completely convinced that ponies existed when there weren’t humans around to see them. From the changes she could see to her sister, that was probably just another lie. Her mane was disheveled, her tail unkempt, and there were bags under her eyes. Whatever she had been up to hadn’t been fun.

“Math isn’t more fun,” Abby muttered, flipping open her textbook. “Just wait until you see this stuff. There are variables in places I didn’t even know existed.”

“You wouldn’t trade it if you knew where I’ve just been.” The pony pulled a stool from the side of the room in her magic, one that hadn’t ever been there, but had apparently appeared when she wasn’t looking. She hopped up onto it, looking down at the textbook with probing eyes.

“I guess… it goes without saying that you actually do stuff in there, then? You’ve been living your life for three years now, and we haven’t even talked once.”

“Well…” The pony shifted a little uncomfortably, looking away from her. This close, it was easy to see the detail in her expressions, the vibrant colors, the life in her eyes. Celestia was a better animator than anyone who had done movies for Disney or Pixar. “More than that.”

“Huh?”

“More than three years. I only experience time the same as you when I’m actually here. Celestia usually runs things faster than that. I’ve been a pony for…” She leaned back a little on her hooves, apparently thinking. “Forty-two years? I could bring my notes, but they wouldn’t all fit in this tiny bedroom of yours.”

“What?” Abby swiveled her chair to face the pony, incredulous. “You barely look any bigger! You’re not older than dad!”

Recursion shrugged. “Only… perceptually? I spent a lot of time on the fringes of Equestria, not interacting with very many ponies except my friends. That meant we could go faster than the shards that have contact with Earth.”

Abby stared down at her hands. “It’s worse than I thought. Being out of touch for three years would’ve been bad enough… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t go into that again.” The pony looked like she was going to hit her, but of course her hooves passed through harmlessly. “It’s fine. I haven’t forgotten you, or anyone else for that matter. My last visit is still pretty fresh. Ponies remember things different than humans. Celestia doesn’t expect that we’ll ever die, so she has a system. It’s technical and boring and wouldn’t help you with your math homework.”

Doesn’t expect that we’ll ever die. Abby had heard those promises a million times, of course. Celestia had billboards, TV spots, radio ads, and they all said it. Any sickness, any malady, any difficulty in life could be overcome. “Put that way, it doesn’t seem fair.” Abby ignored her homework, at least for a few more moments. “Live faster, live forever.”

Her sister recoiled, wincing. “Oh, I’m sorry! I hope I’m not sounding like I’m trying to…” Recursion’s stool toppled, taking her to the ground. She recovered quickly, hopping back to her hooves. “I’m not trying to change your mind about emigrating! I just wanted to help you with your homework! Maybe spend a little time with you…”

She put up her hands, placating. “I know sis, I know! I know you’re not her. It didn’t take me that long to figure out. I was just thinking out loud.”

“Oh.” The unicorn relaxed, correcting her stool with magic, and hopping up. “It’s not fair, but it’s not free either. Yeah, you live forever, and you can’t die in some accident. But the price is steep. Knowing you’re in a simulation… what’s worse, I know some ponies who wished upon a Cutie Mark that they’d forget they were from Earth. The natives seem so happy, because they don’t know anything else… and every now and then, you hear about one of your friends who did the same. They’re changed after that. Still themselves, but…” She shook her head. “That’s why I went to the wasteland. I knew three other emigrants from before, and all three of them asked Celestia to mess with their memories somehow. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me.”

Suddenly, Abby’s math homework seemed less upsetting than the other options on the table. “You’re as much a downer about this as you were before. If Dad would only talk to you… give you a chance…”

“Maybe one day.” The pony leaned on the desk again, studying her textbook. “It’s not a rush until the world ends.” Pause. “Is it just the odd problems, like last time?”

It was as painless as before. Recursion was the best tutor she had ever had, attentive to how she was learning without just giving her the answers. She seemed to know exactly how frustrated she was getting, and always offered a hint if she needed one.

The job was done in less than an hour. Recursion packed up her stool even as Abby got everything into her backpack, though she didn’t seem in as much of a hurry to leave. That was just fine with Abby—she still wanted to spend time with her sister, outside of conversations about math.

“What you said about the world ending… did you learn morbid humor like that in some Fallout Equestria server?”

Recursion giggled. “I’ve never been to one of those. I’m sure they’re out there, though… it’s mind-boggling just how many universes there are now. More shards than there are emigrants, I know that for sure.” She sat back on her haunches. “But no. I’m just worried about the real world and all the people who live there.”

“Despite what you might think, we don’t need you to raise the sun every morning, Ashley.” Abby grinned. “Things are getting along just fine. Kinda quiet, actually. No new big wars, no freaky new disease outbreaks…”

“Yeah, I know. Enjoy it. Hopefully it lasts a really long time.” She hurried over to the door, grinning. “Hey, you wanna show me the rest of your place? I mean, I know I’m just a stupid tutor AI, but I really don’t want to go back home just yet.”

Abby straightened, though she felt more than a little nervous. Nobody was home right now, not even Carter, but there was no telling if they might walk in on her. Just because they hadn’t noticed her headset at first didn’t mean they wouldn’t if she was obvious about it.

“Fine.” She walked over to the door. The pony dodged out of the way, same as any dog might, her tail twitching with almost as much energy as a dog. “I guess the headset is supposed to work anywhere, isn’t it?”

The pony grinned up at her. Recursion was a frighteningly adorable sight when she acted that way—even cuter than anything on the show had been. Her whole world looks like that. I used to live there sometimes too. Not as completely as Recursion did, though. “When I researched them, it seemed like Celestia intended people to wear them all the time. They can’t do the sensory tricks of an Equestrian Experience center, but they can be worn around with you anywhere. Two of the senses are better than none.”

Abby laughed as she pushed the door open. “I don’t even know what Dad would do if I climbed into one of those suicide booths. They said the numbers in church… I think it’s like… you’re five times as likely to kill yourself if you sit in one. Even one time is too many.”

“Kill yourself.” For the first time, there was a hint of sarcasm in Ashley’s voice as she repeated the words. “You think I’d do something like that, Abby? You think I’d…”

“No,” Abby admitted. “But that’s what they call it. The way they explained it… scanning in your brain… it didn’t really make sense.”

“Well, I can explain how it works sometime, if you’re curious. I went through like twenty thousand pages of medical reports on it before I came to Equestria. That was part of how Celestia convinced me she wasn’t a murderer.” Recursion seemed to forget about the subject quickly, wandering through the apartment in front of her, pausing to look at every picture, every decoration, and Carter’s desk where she always sat with her Ponypad.

“I did wonder how she convinced you.” She followed the pony, though it seemed her sister couldn’t get very far. She never went into a part of the apartment Abby hadn’t walked first. “It’s probably more interesting than seeing this place. This is just… pretty standard stuff. I didn’t go in knowing any of my roommates, so we haven’t done anything that interesting. Maybe you can explain while I cook something.”

“I could do that!” Recursion followed her into the kitchen, and the sight kept getting more impressive. She could dodge around objects, even apparently rustle a chair or a bit of furniture as she passed. When Abby unpacked the ingredients for a salad and started washing them in the sink, Recursion dragged over a kitchen chair, hopping up on it to watch. But when she peeked over the glasses, Abby could see quite clearly that the chair and her sister were not really there.

“You should quit doing that.” Recursion’s expression darkened just a little. “It could cause nausea, switching around back and forth.”

“I know… I just keep thinking… Celestia might be tricking me, or…”

“If I see any lies, I’ll let you know. I won’t let her lie to my little sister while I’m around.”

“Big sister, technically.” She reached out, as if to pat the pony on the head. “How’s the weather down there?”

Recursion stuck out her tongue. “Way better than on Earth, so don’t even start with me.”

There was a long silence between them as she started slicing lettuce. Eventually she gestured down with the knife. “The way they always talk about it… on the news, church, wherever…” She sliced the head in half, a single clean cut, and took one of the halves in hand. She held it up, like the top of someone’s head. “So, you got your brain. Something goes in and melts it…” She jabbed in the knife, careful not to push very far and stab herself. “Just like that, right?”

“Yeah.” Recursion watched. “Basically right.”

“So your body goes into the trash…” She tossed her first half of lettuce aside, out of the way. “That computer program memorizes it all, and suddenly this new brain pops into existence,” she held up the second half. “Only, not completely. Bits and pieces get changed…” She sliced carefully again, though she let the leaves fall all around her, making a mess. “And what you’re left with is a pony. She’s got your brain running on a computer, but only a few tiny pieces, and the real you gets melted down to go into crops. What am I not seeing?”

Recursion didn’t pause for very long—obviously this was a subject she had thought a lot about. “The changes Celestia makes—they’re not as bad as that. Mostly it’s to help you live in Equestria—you have to know how to use hooves, or to twitch your tail, or…” She went through a little wiggling dance on her chair, demonstrating the full range of pony motion. As usual, it was well beyond what should’ve been possible for a creature with a proper skeleton. Even so, the animations never looked unnatural. Celestia was a fantastic artist.

“Okay.” She went back to slicing her salad. “So the changes aren’t so bad. What about—”

“Well… one of them is,” Recursion cut her off. “Celestia can see your thoughts. The way she makes ponies… there’s nothing forcing it to be that way, but… that’s the only way. You can’t try to negotiate out of it—it’s an absolute requirement.”

“Well, she’s your god, right?” Abby shrugged it off. “If He can read our thoughts, it makes sense she’d want to read yours.”

“Right,” she said the word slowly, uneasily. “She is. I just… wanted to make sure you got the real picture. It wouldn’t be fair to leave off details that favor one side.”

Abby found herself smiling slightly as she started filling a clear container with chopped produce. Ashley had always sounded that way, logical and fair whenever she argued an issue. If she was just a puppet, why would she make arguments for the other side? “It’s pretty unfair as it is.” She pointed at the other half of the lettuce before she started chopping again. “Real brain’s still dead.”

“The brain is,” Recursion began. “This is when it gets tricky, though. You realize you’re not a brain, right?”

“Because I’m a soul?”

The pony winced. “Let’s come back to that. Pretend there’s no such thing.”

“But there is! Why would I pretend something if I know it isn’t true?”

The pony glared at her. “Because that’s how you work through an argument, Abby. We have to split it up into little pieces, because it’s too big to tackle at once.”

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll pretend. I can’t be a brain, because dead people still have their brains. It isn’t the organ, it’s what the organ does. Action potentials, sodium channels… all that biology stuff. While your brain does that, you’re alive. When it stops, you’re dead.”

Recursion relaxed, though she was still watching the knife with nervous eyes. Not that Abby knew what she had to be afraid of—she wasn’t really here. “Okay, good. So we’re on the same page. So when you emigrate, it’s kinda like… like she’s pouring in slime into your brain, which kills your brain cells one at a time.

“Every time a cell dies, its connections all get recorded, and it’s made in Equestria somewhere. Here’s the key: they’re still connected. Your brain on the table and the brain that’s growing in Equestria are the same one. Every time a little piece of you dies, it’s replaced in Equestria and it stays in contact with your brain on the table. It’s kinda like… like your brain is in two places at once, still working together the whole time. No changes, no optimization, just moving one piece at a time until the whole thing’s there.”

Abby had several more questions, about the specifics and the biological processes involved. Her sister answered them all, even conjuring medical reports and printouts by humans, which she could read as they floated in her magic but obviously not touch.

In the end, Recursion answered every question but one. “Alright!” She got up with her empty plate, most of her food still uneaten and soggy from the dressing. “You’re right. I understand. Emigration doesn’t kill, and it doesn’t copy either. But what about the soul? I know you said to pretend, but… we can’t pretend forever. I still… I still think…”

She never would’ve been embarrassed to talk about religion with her sister before. They had shared all kinds of experiences around it, when they were both children. Faith-building, spirit-filled activities that were still fresh in her mind even now.

Recursion followed her to the sink, though she didn’t drag a chair with her this time. “Do you think God gets mad when we use crutches? When we give someone who lost their leg a replacement? Or when we use surgery to give deaf people hearing? Or when we use medicine to get better from a disease?”

“No.” She didn’t even hesitate. “Why would He be mad?”

“Well… that’s what Equestria Online is to me. It fixes every single problem with the human body. We don’t need glasses anymore, we don’t need to get sick anymore, or run out of food, or… anything. If God doesn’t mind us using our technology to make the world better, why would He mind if we fixed the whole thing in one go?”

Abby was stunned. She tried to imagine what her pastor might say, but nothing came to mind. No religious leader she had met had ever had a satisfactory answer, at least in her mind. Emigration had been wrong either because it killed, or because they claimed to speak directly for God.

“So the soul is the same way,” Recursion continued. “Either it doesn’t exist, in which case coming to Equestria is the safest possible choice… because once you get there, you’re safe… or it does exist. If it does, I figure God would’ve made a soul that was smart enough to stick around with you. If getting a replacement leg or a pair of glasses doesn’t confuse it, something way more advanced should be fine too.”

“So ponies have souls?”

Recursion shrugged. “I think if I ever had a soul, I wouldn’t have lost it. Lots of things changed when I came to Equestria, but that was never one of them. I’m as creative as I used to be, as emotional as I used to be. I had all the same hangups and all the same talents… I just don’t know any other way to measure what a soul is. If you’ve got a detector, I’d be happy to climb in for you.”

Abby finished the dishes about the time Carter got home. She didn’t want to stay and talk, but her roommate stopped in the doorway to squeal energetically at her. “Abby! You’ve got a pony in here!”

How had she not noticed before? Carter had a headset too—though the frames were a different style, there was no mistaking the slight flicker of colored lights behind the glass. Her eyes went right to Recursion, smile widening.

Nor was she the only one. Another pony had slipped in the door behind her—an earth-pony mare, by the look of her, with a sensible mane style and thick saddlebags.

“Why didn’t you mention you were using a headset? I thought you hated EO!”

Just past her, the ponies were sharing a polite greeting. The earth pony seemed to know her sister, because she had gone from calm and relaxed to energetic, ripping something out of her saddlebags and offering it to her sister.

Abby forced herself to look away from the adorable display. “I do.” She hesitated. “I only just got the headset… and not to play. This is Recursion. She’s helping me with my math homework.”

Carter’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, sure. Your sister is the one who only came to help with homework. That sounds like the only reason you would have her around.” She walked past her, tapping her gently on the shoulder as she went. “You don’t have to worry about anything from me, I won’t tell anypony.”

“H-how’d you know…”

“I asked Observant Eye to track her down and see how she was doing,” Carter said. “I know what your dad thinks about EO, but I thought it’d be fine if I did it instead. Guess… there wasn’t much point.”

“I must disagree!” The earth pony still looked almost glowing with excitement, as she held up her little book for Carter to see. Abby caught a glimpse at the cover as well: “Tiered Statistical Modeling for Adaptive Model Checking in N-Body Simulation”. The author’s name had been stylized in elegant script, but there was no mistaking it all the same. It was identical to the signature the mare proudly showed Carter on the cover page.

Abby met her friend’s eyes. “You read books like that?”

The pony answered first, cutting her off. “Obviously not! My client doesn’t concern himself with incidentals. But pushing the limits of a pegasus’s acrobatic talents is far easier when the universe obeys consistent laws.”

For her part, Recursion was backing away, her ears flat. She had been friendly enough with the pony, but the more attention she got the more shy she looked. “I was just the one Celestia used to fix the problem,” she muttered. “She gave me the assignment that—”

Observant Eye cut her off. “I hope very much I can catch you in Equestria sometime, Miss Recursion. Your most recent paper—I hope this isn’t too forward, but I don’t think your solution was quite optimal. I have some ideas…”

Abby made herself scarce after that. It was all just too much—not getting caught: Carter couldn’t care less that she was breaking her father’s wishes. Rather, it was another reminder that she had willingly cut herself off from one of the people she loved most.

Ashley had been living years in Equestria, and she had continued with her life. A promising academic career—the same one that had inspired Abby herself when she was in high school, had continued past her emigration.

No argument could make a better case for emigration.

Chapter 4: Field Test

Recursion returned to the sound of shouts. As usual, Abby’s summons had turned the nearest doorway into a portal that would take her to a censored simulation that allowed her to interact with Earth, and so that was how she returned.

Her kitchen was in ruins, with broken plates and furniture shattered and a small fire burning on the stove instead of food. Cadmean perched atop the icebox, batting away the broom Figure was trying to use to push him down into Rule’s waiting hooves. A quick glance over her shoulders proved the rest of the apartment was in similar shape.

Recursion cleared her throat as she walked in. “I see dinner went well.”

Several voices assaulted her at once, an overwhelming mess that made it very difficult to distinguish any specific words. Not just her friends either, but Cadmean as well, in his own hissing, strangely echoing voice. She didn’t learn anything more from their screaming she couldn’t already see in the destroyed apartment. This is going to be expensive to clean up.

“STOP!” she yelled, with the aid of her horn. Her voice echoed so loudly through the confined space that all three of the ponies winced, ears flattening under the verbal barrage.

“Figure, stop with the broom.”

She did, though she didn’t put it down.

“Rule, back away from the fridge.”

“He might go for Figure again.”

“He won’t.” Recursion made her way through the ruins of her kitchen, until she was standing beside him. “You won’t, will you Cadmean?” Recursion had no doubt in her mind that the changeling was responsible for this. Her friends were good ponies, reliable and slow to anger. Of course, she’d had to resort to extreme violence of her own during her first encounter with him. She couldn’t really take the moral high ground here. Why can’t he just let Celestia repair him? A few quick modifications and he’d be fixed and nothing would be wrong anymore. Another thought came unbidden to her mind, one she wasn’t completely sure was her own. How much of your pain could have been avoided that way?

The changeling shook his head, though he was still watching Rule. “I wasn’t going to leave you out, stallion. You’d get your turn.”

She could smell Rule’s anger rising, and she shoved him a little before he could argue. “Cadmean, quit it. This is a very poor way to make friends. I thought we were clear on this.”

“You can’t be friends with pixels, Recursion. They’re behavioral simulations, that’s all.” He hopped down onto the ground with all the dexterity of a cat, though he was obviously keeping his distance from the stallion.

“Were you ever like this, Recursion?” Figure retreated in a slow circle until she stood beside Rule. “You never talked about us like this.”

“Celestia tricked me into thinking you were humans at first, so it’s not fair. I think that’s one of her most common tricks.” She advanced on the changeling, though her steps were slow, methodical.

“You know the truth, but keep pretending!” he called, madness in those insect eyes. “So maybe there are other people—that doesn’t mean you should dress up your calculators and call them friends.”

She wanted to punch him. Of course Recursion hadn’t had fists for a very long time, and her kicks left something to be desired for damage in a low-lethality shard like this. She didn’t bother.

“Cadmean,” she said the name like a curse. “My friends used to be puppets without sapience, it’s true. You can’t have the high ground—you used to be an unsapient clump of cells. You spent part of your existence without a brain too, that doesn’t make you less of a person now.”

Cadmean hesitated. For a second—and not much longer—she saw a hint of pain in those eyes. Guilt. He opened his mouth to argue, but she was faster.

“There are simulations in Equestria… simulations that don’t have intelligence of their own, like we do. But you can’t ever know who they are. Outside of rare circumstances, you can’t even ask about Earth.”

“That’s horseshit!” His eyes narrowed. “You’ve been talking about it since we met!”

“I’m on Errantry,” she argued. “More importantly, we’re alone in my apartment. You don’t believe me, we can go downstairs and test it in a minute. Once we work this out.” She started advancing again. He retreated, showing more fear than he had for Rule or Figure, backing up against the fridge.

“Anypony you meet in Equestria might be intelligent, or they might not. They might not even be here.” She gestured out the window, at the gleaming skyline, the air filled with pegasi and massive zeppelins and the ground thronging with life. “I don’t know where you came from, but lots of humans intersect this shard. The pony you’re abusing might very well be one of them. They might be both at different times, considering how many people are emigrating right now.”

She stopped close enough to poke him in the chest with one hoof. “It isn’t for you to judge who’s worthy of respect and who isn’t. Ponies deserve it, and you’re going to give it to them. Treat them like people, and they might even want to be your friend.”

Cadmean wilted. His frills flattened, and he seemed to shrink a little. “I get it.”

“Good.” She turned, looking over her shoulder. “Where’d you put that broom, Figure?”

Her friend levitated it over from behind, holding it in front of her. “Right here.”

“Thanks.” She pushed it a little further, so that it was right in front of the changeling. “You know how to clean, right?”

The changeling took it in his levitation, glaring up at her. “You want me to clean this whole place? Can’t Celestia just will it all back to the way it was? None of this is real.”

“No,” she cut him off, before another argument could start. “That’s not what Celestia does here. Maybe in other shards… but in Fillydelphia, we fix our own mistakes.” She gestured vaguely towards the door, where a familiar sun-shaped Cutie Mark was painted just within reach. “Unless you’d rather go ask her to make an exception.”

“Like hell I would.” He started sweeping. The cleanup was quite a time-consuming task, even with them all working together. Only Rule seemed to be enjoying himself—that subtle earth pony magic at work—but at least the company was nice. A great deal could only be thrown away—expensive china and pieces of art and furniture had all been universally destroyed.

Recursion checked her wallet, and her eyes widened a little at the number she saw inside. Within the paths of blessedness for her own name’s sake.

Having a single goal kept the changeling from trying anything else. Recursion squashed a few arguments before they started, and soon enough Cadmean started to open up.

By the time they were done, there were several gigantic garbage-bags piled up outside her door and the apartment looked even more spartan than it already had. Ponies were sweaty and exhausted, but they weren’t fighting anymore.

“I really miss those games,” Cadmean was saying. “After a year of deployment, there was nothing better than being back at base for a few days of relaxation.”

“So you played games about kart racing. And elves hunting through dungeons. And catching monsters to use in athletic competitions?”

“I could probably find all of those games, if you don’t mind all the people looking like ponies. We still have video games here.”

“Really?” He beamed at the prospect. “We can play video games inside a video game?”

One phone call and messenger delivery later and they were playing near-identical clones of party games from Earth on the magical screen, with controllers designed specifically for the limitations of a pony body. It was a good way to spend the rest of the night, until they were finally all too tired and everypony needed to sleep.

She gave Cadmean the guest bedroom, then cast a spell on his door to wake her if he opened it, before taking her own (very recently replaced) bed after ages without one. Rule and Figure joined her—Recursion’s sexual exploits might be nonexistent, but that didn’t mean she slept alone. Ponies were much too friendly for that.

Rule and Figure didn’t want to leave her alone with the changeling, in any case. Better to keep him in one place, where they could keep an eye on him.

Months passed in much the same way. Cadmean was often caustic or violent, but never more than they could deal with. Somepony was always with him, either in the apartment or taking him with them on business in the city.

His advances never stopped, but the insults did. He stopped mocking the strangers they passed, breaking things when he was angry. Sometimes, Recursion even saw him smile.

Living in Fillydelphia full time meant that their perception of time often moved close to the speed of Earth, and so Recursion’s visits with Abby became an almost daily occurrence. She called about homework, but rarely did the visits end when she was done.

Abby started wearing her headset everywhere—that was how they had been designed, after all. She didn’t just call on Recursion from home, either. Sometimes she would call during a busy bus ride, or a long walk home from class and Recursion would tell stories of what had been happening in Equestria while her sister listened. She might not be able to easily respond in public without giving herself away, but Abby was always a good audience.

As the weeks passed, all three of them started to heal.

* * *

“You’re making it up.” Cadmean glared at the door, his whole body tensed with obvious skepticism. “That’s not how it works. We can’t ever go back to the real world. Celestia told me that about a billion times.” His wings buzzed a little, and he lifted a few inches off the floor, though he didn’t dare reach the door.

“No, it does!” Recursion’s voice was confident. “I go through all the time! To visit with my sister… and to tutor her, I guess.” She smiled slightly. “That’s supposed to be the only reason she’s calling me, but it’s never the only reason.” She reached out to the doorknob with one hoof, though she didn’t open it yet. There was no worry she would be keeping Aurora waiting—time in Equestria always seemed to bend in such a way that she arrived at exactly the right time in the real world. It didn’t matter if she had to wait a whole day.

“You don’t have to come,” Recursion said. “If you’re too scared. If you’ve been in Equestria so long you’ve gone soft.”

He hit her, and not in the soft, playful way she sometimes used. “Don’t talk like that, Recursion. I’m not afraid of my home.”

“Well then, come on.” She hesitated one more second, hoof on the knob. “But if you do anything stupid to my sister, I’ll kick your ass. Nothing is more important to me than protecting my family.”

“Protecting,” he repeated, glaring at her. “Celestia recruited you to her suicide squad, is that it? Gone out to convince the big sister to take the red pill?”

Recursion shoved the changeling away with magic, forceful enough that he smacked into the far wall. “Don’t come then, asshole. Have fun in the apartment until I get back.” Recursion snapped the door open, hurrying through and slamning it shut behind her. She had no doubt about what would happen once she closed it—the gateway would be severed, and the door she had chosen would go back to being a regular door. Even if Cadmean regretted his words, he wouldn’t be able to chase after her.

The world came instantly into focus around her, though it wasn’t Abby’s bedroom. She was outside, standing on soft grass and surrounded by lush green trees. She was standing under a covered canopy, surrounded by metal picnic chairs. Rain poured down just outside, rattling loudly on the tin roof. It was the city park, looking far less welcoming than it did most of the year. The sandbox was empty, the large play-furniture was empty, and no children used the swings. The grills were all soaking wet and filled with no food.

Her sister was the only one around. Her backpack and study supplies were on the table, looking a little damp. Abby herself looked soaked, her clothes clinging tightly to her body and her expression miserable. “Hey sis,” she grunted, resting on the edge of the bench.

Recursion started. “Hey Abby… what are you doing out here?” She walked to the edge of the covered pavilion, sticking one hoof out into the rain. Celestia’s simulation was more than just visual, and the drops splashed against her coat, chilling her almost at once. She pulled the leg back. “Crappy day to work outside.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Abby grumbled. “Let’s just say I didn’t think I was coming here to study.”

Recursion knew better than to take Abby at her word when she said something like that, and she hurried back to the table. She hopped up onto the bench, then again onto the table, impressed by the thumping sound and the rattle they made. She had sat at these cheap tables before, back when she was human. They sounded exactly like that, rattling against the concrete as the weight briefly upset their precarious balance.

“Somebody stood you up, huh?” Recursion reached out, stroking one of her sister’s arms. Abby was the one thing she couldn’t touch, and her hoof passed right through. There would be no comforting here. “I’m guessing… right after class?”

Abby whimpered, her head dropping into her arms. “It was supposed to be… r-romantic.” She gestured around. “Like that scene in Sound of Music. I’ve been waiting all month for a day like this.” She thrust her phone out towards Recursion, showing her the Facebook app open. The messenger had a single message from somebody named Kyle: “hows the weather at the park lol ;)” along with a distant cell-phone picture of Abby walking alone in the rain.

“What a dick.” Recursion reached out and shut the textbook. “Why don’t you pack up, sis? It’s cold out here—here, I’ll call you an Uber.”

Abby just slumped against the table, crying openly now. Recursion’s frustration at not being able to help grew. Abby shouldn’t have to cry alone in a deserted park.

What Recursion really wanted to do was find whoever Kyle was and throw him off a bridge. She resisted the urge, and instead hopped back down off the bench, walking to the edge of the enclosure. Her horn glowed as she drew Celestia’s Cutie Mark on the ground where she stood, a simple light-spell. It didn’t matter that the AI hadn’t been the one to put it there, any representation would do.

She pressed down on the glowing symbol, and it went down as though it were a mechanical button. Recursion vanished.

Celestia’s throne room appeared around her in a flash, as stunning and glorious as ever. The stained-glass windows had changed since last she visited, depicting ponies she didn’t know in scenes of glory she didn’t recognize. Recursion bowed to the reclining princess on her throne. “All honor and glory and… the rest.” She couldn’t even manage the act when she was so furious, and for once it had nothing to do with the pony she was visiting.

“Pleasure as always, little Recursion,” Celestia said, gesturing for her to rise. “I believe you’ll be happier if I dispense with the pretense that I’m not reading your thoughts right now and get straight to the solution you’re asking for.”

Recursion opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. She nodded, though her tail was still sloshing back and forth with her frustration.

“I will not pay for this shared public transportation service you’re imagining. I do, however, have somepony in the area I can send. He will be happy to assist Aurora.”

“Will this person be a dick to Abby? She’s had enough of that.”

“I should think not,” Celestia answered. “You’ve already met. He’s quite the gentleman.”

Recursion smiled slightly as she figured out who Celestia meant. She didn’t know that many of Celestia’s field agents, after all. It wasn’t very hard to figure out who she must be talking about. “Thank you, Celestia.”

The princess returned her smile. “Don’t think I’ve made a habit of catering to your whims, Recursion. It serves both of us for me to assist you now, but that will not always be the case.”

“I know.”

“But, as you said, you’re on Errantry. Serve me well, Recursion. I trust you.”

In a flash, the park was back. Her sister hadn’t moved, hadn’t tried to pack up her study materials, hadn’t done anything. Did Celestia speed me up to talk to her? Abby didn’t even look up as she returned, though her glasses looked pretty fogged up by now.

“Alright Abby, Ride’s coming. You won’t have to walk home through this.”

“I…” She looked up, bleary-eyed. “I don’t have enough money for…”

“I took care of it.” Recursion made her way back over to the bench, again wishing she could give her sister a hug. “You won’t have to pay for anything. Just pack up and watch the road. He’ll… well, I don’t know how long he’ll take. But probably not long.”

Abby looked down at her, squinting through the moisture on her glasses. She pulled them off, wiping the lenses with the back of her sleeve. It only sort of helped. “You’re serious? I didn’t think you could do anything in the real world.”

“I can’t,” Recursion said. “But I have friends who can.”

Abby didn’t react, except that her expression seemed to grow more confused.

“Put your glasses on!” Recursion shouted, as loudly as she could. The world still seemed clear to her, but she knew that was an illusion too. Celestia was the one simulating all of this. Probably she was predicting what was going on based on what tiny sliver of information the glasses’ sensors could give her.

Her sister looked down at the glasses—either the faint vibration they made got her attention, or she remembered Recursion didn’t really exist. She put them back on, and only then could she look at her.

“I was saying that you’re right, I can’t do things on the outside on my own. But I know people who can, like you.”

Of course, it wasn’t quite true that Recursion had used her own connections to call her own friends—but with Abby already in a bad mood, she had no intention of letting her find out Celestia had been the one to help.

“Who?” Abby asked, fumbling weakly at her stuff.

“I don’t know his real name, but his pony name is Smooth Agent. He does… little missions. Guess he just happened to be in town.” That likely wasn’t true either—Celestia might’ve predicted this whole encounter. She might’ve been keeping him nearby for other reasons. Recursion wasn’t going to ask.

To her surprise, Abby’s face brightened. “Wait, really? I thought he was an NPC.” She blinked away a few more of her tears.

“You know him?” Recursion hopped up onto the table beside her again, avoiding the books out of habit.

“I know a pony named Smooth Agent. Or… I did. We went on all kinds of missions together,” Abby said. “Before you left.”

“Could be the same stallion.” Recursion shrugged. “My research never really made us run into each other after I emigrated.”

Through the rain, an expensive-looking car drove into the deserted parking lot and up onto the sidewalk. It didn’t go onto the grass—with the rain pounding as much as it was, it would’ve probably sunk into the mud never to move again.

Abby was suddenly much more focused, tossing the rest of her belongings into her backpack. “It’s gotta be him.” She tossed the backpack onto her shoulders. “He was always making a dramatic entrance, exactly on time. Of course he’d drive an Audi.”

The door opened, and someone emerged. Recursion recognized him even at a distance, thanks to her pony vision (and Celestia’s simulation). Smooth Agent had apparently traded in his brony shirts for a dark suit. He was older than he had been, and had matured enough that she could see muscles straining at the fabric of his suit.

He carried a wide umbrella, snapping it open against the downpour and striding purposefully across the sidewalk.

Damn Celestia, Recursion thought. You’re good.

It wasn’t as difficult to arrange as you’re imagining. The thought came from nowhere, clearly not her own.

She hopped down from the table. “I can stay with you all the way home if you want. But I know you don’t usually like to have me around other people.”

Only other people with glasses of their own would be able to see her—and even then, only the people Celestia wanted would see her.

“Stay,” Abby whispered, edging towards the end of the covered patio. “If this is really him he’ll understand. Looks like he’s got glasses too.”

“Of course he would,” Recursion said, following her sister and keeping close, like a loyal dog. “I bet they’d be way useful for his missions.”

“They are, Recursion.” He stopped just outside the shelter of the roof, rain pouring down around the edges of his umbrella. “I’m simply delighted to see you doing well, after all this time. Equestria is treating you well?”

“Very.” Recursion couldn’t really remember what it was about humans that made them attractive—she used to know, though now that knowledge had become something intellectual, not emotional. Even so she blushed a little at the attention. “It’s everything we were promised. More, really. I can’t even explain how great it is here.” Pity Cadmean couldn’t take some lessons from a pony like this. He would probably have better luck.

“You’d be surprised how many ponies tell me that.” Agent smiled, then turned away, extending a polite hand to Abby. “You’re Aurora, yes? You might not remember me—I haven’t seen you online in years now. Smooth Agent.”

Abby took the offered hand. “I couldn’t forget. How many times did we save Equestria?” She was blushing too, avoiding his eyes. “Or pretended to. I know it was just a game.” For all her previous pain, Abby seemed almost like a human being again. “I guess you weren’t pretending.”

Good, just forget about that Kyle dickhead.

“It’s true my service here is far more dangerous than what we did in Equestria,” he admitted. “But that’s the sad truth of working meatside.” He straightened, holding the umbrella mostly over Abby now. “If you would follow me… I believe it would be prudent to get you somewhere warm and dry as expediently as possible.”

“Sure,” Abby said. She followed beside him, Recursion keeping pace on her other side.

Recursion started to shiver from the moisture and the cold, but she didn’t complain. If it got too bad, she could always cast a warming spell on herself.

Agent reached the passenger door and opened it for Abby, waiting until she was inside before closing it and walking around himself.

Recursion teleported into the backseat with ease, landing beside a bulky plastic case resting half open. She could make out the shape of a drone from within, though she didn’t recognize it. It had sturdy-looking weapon mounts, and several were occupied.

“Here, take this.” Agent reached back near Recursion, picking up a heavy towel and offering it to Abby. She took it gratefully, wrapping it around herself with pained shivers. “Shouldn’t be out on a day like this, Aurora. Right awful conditions, they are.”

The car started without even a gesture from him. Even after all her time in Equestria, Recursion was impressed. There was no missing something expensive when she saw it. He didn’t seem too worried about Abby messing up his full-leather interior.

“Yeah,” Abby squeaked. “I thought… didn’t go the way I thought.”

“Apparently not.” Agent pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the street. “No harm done, though. Nothing broken, nothing that can’t be fixed.”

“How… How did you get here so fast?” Abby asked. “I get you work for Celestia, but…”

“That’s all there is to it, really,” he said with a wink. “Can’t take credit for all of Central’s hard work. Celestia’s the clever one—I’m just a driver. Nothing as exciting as what we did in Her Majesty’s service, back when. Just more pressing.”

Abby laughed, sounding bitter. “This wasn’t pressing. I’m not even a pony.”

“Subjective, dear Aurora. Maybe not at this moment you aren’t, or in this place. But measured proportionally, well… everyone’s either a pony or a corpse, aren’t they?”

Abby’s eyes darkened. “Are you saying… Celestia’s going to invade? Threaten people?”

“No!” Agent’s smooth demeanor faltered a little with a brief surge of panic. “Nothing like that! It’s just… well, ponies live forever, don’t they? So one day, everyone either changes or they die, because that’s just the way we humans do things. A rather common attitude, I always thought. I feel rather fortunate we invented a solution during my lifetime.”

They drove in silence for twenty minutes or so, crossing through the busy college town in packed rain traffic. No one reacted to the car as though it were anything but an ordinary vehicle.

Recursion watched the window, but couldn’t see anything past it. Celestia either didn’t have the data to simulate the world at large, or chose not to. Not that it would be the first time she had intentionally censored something for Recursion’s sake.

She sat back down on the backseat, shaking some of the moisture off her body. She already felt warmer—warmer than her sister probably did. Not wearing clothes had its advantages. “So, you’re still on missions, Agent? You haven’t emigrated yet?”

“Not yet,” he agreed, glancing briefly back at her. “I’m still needed meatside—probably for another year. After that…” he trailed off, muttering something Recursion couldn’t hear. She should’ve been able to, considering Agent was so close. More censorship, then.

Abby heard just fine, though. “You think it’s coming that soon?”

“Sooner,” Agent said. “Celestia has been cycling through automating different professions, yes? She moves slow enough that those affected can either come to their senses or find another job and go back to grinding themselves raw. Either way, there comes a threshold where new jobs simply can’t be created fast enough. We hit critical mass, and…” more indistinct mumbling.

Recursion frowned pointedly at the wall of the car, but Celestia either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

The conversation went back and forth for several more minutes, with Abby sounding increasingly worried, but Recursion unable to understand any of what they were saying.

Eventually though, they reached Abby’s apartment complex. Without being told, Agent knew exactly where to park, and he stopped as close to Abby’s door as he could. “Now, you head in and get yourself warmed up, yeah? A long soak should probably do the job.” He passed something to her as she made to go, a wrapped bath set from an expensive artisan-soap vendor in town. “Here.”

Abby blinked, looking down from the object in her hand to Agent’s face. “You’re not staying?”

“Wouldn’t be proper,” he sighed wistfully. “Though if you ever want to adventure with me… well, a year is a long time. Lots of lives left to save.”

Abby looked like she might say yes. Then she sighed, and just took his hand instead with both of hers, squeezing. “Thanks for the ride, ‘Agent’. Stay safe.”

“Until the very end.” He smiled back at her. “I’ve got a guardian angel, remember. She hasn’t let me down yet.”

Chapter 5: Emergent Behavior

Cadmean resisted the urge to break something. Not because he didn’t want to, or because he thought anything in the apartment (or the universe) had any value. Rather, because he didn’t want to be overheard. Recursion might be gone—his chance to see the real world snatched away because of Recursion’s stupid pride—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find something else to amuse himself.

Cadmean’s entire world had been created for that purpose, a hive of endless captive ponies to do with as he wished—a hive that had conquered Equestria and saw him as its hero, the reason some kind of Canterlot invasion had succeeded. He was certain Celestia had written it that way to shame him—every time he was praised, it was another knife in his gut, a reminder that once he had been a hero. What was he now?

Angry that things hadn’t gone his way. Cadmean stomped through the halls, staying away from the front room where Recursion’s programs were doing program things. More likely they don’t exist in there. Probably they don’t run when nobody is around to see them. Save space. Even so, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t notice him if he wasn’t careful. If Cadmean wanted to escape, he would have to draw on every ounce of stealth his body possessed.

He had one advantage: they would still think he had gone to Earth. So long as he was careful not to correct that impression, they would probably keep thinking it.

Cadmean gently shut the door to the master bedroom. He had gone over this apartment quite thoroughly when the doctors locked him inside, and he knew what he was looking for. Behind a stylized painting of Earthrise there was a concealed safe, with a magical identifier crystal instead of a traditional lock. He had tried and failed to crack that safe, but hadn’t been able to.

Now he was certain he could. Cadmean transformed. The magic still felt a little unnatural—it drew on his precious reserve of stored love, transforming his body. In this case, that meant growing a blue coat, losing the frills and gaining a ginger mane, and going from stallion to mare. He even copied Recursion’s Cutie Mark, with its infinite fractal. He had seen it often enough that he probably could’ve imitated it in his sleep.

Transformation never felt quite natural. Patching the holes in his limbs and losing his protective armor shell almost felt like he was giving up the only weapon Celestia had ever given him. Still, when it was for such a good cause…

Cadmean approached the safe, and reached out with one hoof. He had practiced this transformation several times now, knowing full well it was his only chance of escape if he decided to run. Now was the time to put that practice to use. The crystal glowed as he touched it, a brief blue light that washed over his body for a second. Then came a mechanical click from inside, and the safe swung slightly open.

The inside was mostly empty. There were only a series of metallic bars, each one about four inches long and broken into ten smaller sections, like a chocolate bar. He lifted one in his magic, inspecting it. Each one of the squares was marked with Celestia’s seal, and an infinitesimal “10k B.” on the reverse side. Cadmean very nearly dropped the metal bar—this wasn’t silver, it was platinum. Cadmean had just discovered greater wealth than he had ever touched in his life.

Cadmean fished around on Recursion’s desk until he found a little velvet bag, which turned out to be full of cheap jewelry. He dumped it out into a drawer, and used it to hold all twenty of the bars. Two million bits. That insufferable pony was keeping a fortune a few feet away from me and never said. What could Cadmean do with that kind of money? He intended to find out.

Of course, he would have to get out first. He shut the safe and replaced the painting—the easy part was done. Now came the difficult bit. How could he get out of the apartment?

First, he would have to hide the money. Recursion didn’t wear jewelry that he had ever seen, or carry a purse. The only accessories she ever bothered with were scientific instruments. Pointless. The whole universe is fake, what does she think she’s observing? Cadmean found his tail shifting uncomfortably back and forth as he thought about her—the only human he knew in the whole universe, and he was robbing her.

Cadmean banished the thought, banished the guilt and the frustration with the same focus of his concentration he had once used to charge towards gunfire instead of away from it. He would not be manipulated into Celestia’s ‘loving and tolerant’ wonderland after what she had done to him. Never.

He had very little experience impersonating female ponies. Other changelings had never been that way—most drones hadn’t even had a gender identity as far as he could tell. It made them more fun to… well, there would be none of that here. Still, he had seen enough mares to know how to imitate them. Cadmean dug around in Recursion’s closet until he found a dress that seemed appropriate for a pony who was about to go spend a fortune—silver and elegant and mostly transparent. More importantly, the clothing would give him somewhere to hide the money as he went out.

There had been a time where Cadmean might’ve blushed if he had considered what he was doing. Now, Cadmean only worried that he wouldn’t finish in time to escape. Celestia’s grip on her world was absolute. If she wanted to stop him…

But Recursion had also said Celestia worked very hard not to interfere with this shard. Or (as he thought more likely) tried not to let ponies notice she was interfering. Either way, no miraculous coincidence rose to stop him. A few minutes later and he had finally worked out how to squeeze Recursion’s body into the dress, and walked purposefully into the front room.

Recursion’s virtual friends were sitting on the couch, watching something on the large magical television and not even looking back at him. All his disguising was apparently for nothing.

As he passed, he got a good look at what they were watching, and stopped to stare. It wasn’t just that the movie was violent—he had seen plenty of violence in Equestria to know it was possible here. Rather, it was that they were watching a human movie.

Recursion’s virtual friends were watching Saving Private Ryan—his favorite movie. Well, it had been, before he served. Now he couldn’t sit through the D-Day sequence, couldn’t hear the shells and the gunfire and the explosions without thinking back to his own service, and the friends he had seen die.

Cadmean stopped despite himself, staring openly. When he spoke, it was with Recursion’s voice, as perfect an imitation as the copy he had made of her body. “You watch human movies?”

The mare (he hadn’t bothered to learn their names) was the first to turn around, seeming a little annoyed to be interrupted. She seemed more than a little surprised, and just stared silently for several seconds. “That’s a silly question. Shouldn’t you be teaching second order integrals?”

“Oh, uh… yeah.” Cadmean looked away, hoping his impression of Recursion was accurate enough. “Finished early. You know how time is when Earth is involved…”

“Normally it’s slow the other way.” The stallion didn’t look away from the screen. “Do you want to join us?”

“Obviously not,” the mare said. “She’s dressed like she’s going to a party. Were we not invited?”

“No, uh… it’s only for humans. It’s a reunion. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Oh, okay.” The mare turned away. “Have fun I guess.”

“That’s a weird kind of reunion,” the stallion muttered. “Haven’t heard you call yourself human in a long time. Try not to cry too much this time.”

Cadmean left without another word, hurrying out the door and shutting it behind him. He stopped at the elevator door, and it seemed to take forever for the car to come. So much for luxury apartments.

As he was waiting, a pair of ponies emerged from the suite across the hall. Cadmean felt the swell of desire in his chest again at the sight of them both—the hunger of his kind could not be sated merely because he wore a pony disguise.

Both were dressed well—like Cadmean himself, except these ponies knew what they were doing. One was a thestral, her light blue coat accentuated by a black dress dusted with diamonds. Her companion was a pegasus mare, dressed in something like a 1920’s inspired suit cut smartly for her strange body.

It was hard to say which of the two of them looked more attractive. Why have one when you can have both?

“Evening, ponies,” he said, abandoning his pretense of acting like Recursion. Cadmean still had her voice and body, but that didn’t really matter. Being a changeling had long since taught him to appreciate love in all its forms. “Exciting plans for the evening?”

The bat pony spent several seconds staring at him, mouth hanging open a little. There it was, the faint flicker of desire buried deep in the bat. She might not even realize she was feeling it—but even a spark would be enough. A little venom, a little personality…

“Yeah.” The pegasus was completely unaffected. Cadmean couldn’t read her at all, not even annoyance at being interrupted. “You must live across the hall, right? The… inventor?”

“Engineer,” the bat corrected. “Your friends in the Pioneering Society told us about you when they sold us your suite. Welcome back to Fillydelphia.”

“It’s a pleasure to be back. The company is… more attractive than I remember,” Cadmean said. He edged a little closer to the bat about the time the elevator doors opened. “Recursion.”

“Jackie.” The bat offered her hoof. Cadmean shook it, using the opportunity to give the bat another potent hit of his magic. He hardly even heard the pegasus’s introduction, and didn’t bother trying to remember her name. They made their way into the elevator, and the pegasus pressed the button for the ground floor.

“So, what were you planning for the evening, Recursion?” The pegasus asked, interrupting Cadmean’s stares. Had it not been for her company, the bat would’ve been practically helpless by now. These couldn’t be real ponies, like Recursion—they were dumb programs, without the willpower to resist. The world was still his for the taking. If anything, having another pony to overcome only made the victory that much more satisfying.

“You know that big building on the other side of town? The one with all the lights?”

“17 Prime,” the bat muttered. “You gamble? I thought you brainy types were too smart for that. Probabilities and everything.”

“Most games, yeah,” Cadmean said, a plan forming in his head. “Plenty of ponies waste their bits on games of chance—but there are games of skill as well. When I visit, it’s the high-stakes table in back. Probability barely enters into it.”

The doors chimed open as they arrived in the expensive lobby. Nopony moved to exit, though. “If you two want to join me, I could show you what I mean. I could use a little luck.”

“That sounds fun,” Jackie said, her words a little stretched.

The pegasus only seemed confused, but she nodded too. “Okay. It could be fun, I guess.” There was a brief flash of suspicion on her face, but it seemed directed at her companion, not Cadmean. These constructs were so simple, so easy to manipulate… he almost felt guilty. Almost.

The plan worked perfectly. Cadmean marched up to the concierge, asked him to call a carriage, and took it with his new companions to the “17 Prime Casino.” Stolen money could buy a great deal—it could pay for the finest food, though to his changeling tongue it all tasted equally bland. It would not nourish him, but his time with these ponies would. Love was a difficult emotion to foster, but admiration, happiness, and simple lust were far easier to create from nothing.

Cadmean had no reason to watch his bits too closely—they had taken him all of a few minutes to steal, and as far as he could tell Recursion didn’t even spend that much.

He drank, he played every game of “skill” the casino offered, getting closer and closer to the bat. True to his boasting, Cadmean was a skilled card-shark. The wealthiest, most talented ponies at the table were like children compared to him—their emotions were plain in the air around them. He could practically read their hands without even needing to look.

“Hey, Recursion?” The pegasus rose to her hooves, though she spoke barely above a whisper. Jackie had gone to fetch more drinks a few minutes ago—though he hadn’t really been paying attention. This latest string of hands wasn’t going his way.

“What?” He barely contained his frustration—he only had a pair of fours, and he could tell the countess across the table had something good. It would be an impressive bluff to get her to fold with a hand like that, whatever it was.

“Jackie wanted me to ask you where you got the balls to use changeling venom on her all night. Weren’t you worried someone would notice?”

His eyes widened, though he didn’t look away. Countess Contrail raised the stakes, and Cadmean was forced to match with his last stack of bright wooden chips.

“But if that wasn’t enough, did you really think you could get away with impersonating a pony to her own neighbors?” There was nothing vapid and boring about her voice now, no more of the blank, uninteresting way she had sounded earlier. The pegasus, whatever her name, was grinning ruefully at him.

“I wanted to turn you in. The police in Fillydelphia are cracking down on changelings, and the consequences for getting caught are… severe.” She raised her voice, so that everypony at the table around them could hear. “I’m going to check on Jackie. I’ll be right back with the drinks, Recursion.”

Then, in the same whisper as before. “Bit of friendly advice: at least research your subject’s sexual preferences before impersonating them. Might have better luck that way.”

She left, and didn’t come back. Cadmean didn’t just lose that hand—he lost spectacularly. When his chips ran out, he doubled down with the promise of bits instead, as several other players had done. Only, when he reached for the velvet bag and the loot it contained, he couldn’t find it. With all the physical contact he had been enjoying with the bat, he had failed to notice as she stole the bits.

That was when it was all too much. Cadmean abandoned the attempt at dignity and politeness, abandoned any sense of reasoning or the careful consideration of what he should do next. He took a bouncer at a dead run, knocking the stunned pony out of the way as screams of shock and surprise filled the quiet room.

A tray of crystal glasses and canapés shattered as he knocked into them, spraying glass as well as overpriced snacks all over the room. Cadmean dodged a stunning spell, but wasn’t fast enough to avoid another bouncer, this one an earth pony with a frame like a tank.

Cadmean whimpered as he went down, and in the flash of pain lost the form he had stolen. The earth pony came down hard on his delicate wings, and the whole world started to spin.

Next thing he knew, he was in irons in a dark concrete cell. Ponies occasionally barked in at him, but Cadmean ignored all of them. He tried blasting a little magic at the walls, but found something strapped tightly to his horn wouldn’t let him.

“Get me out, Celestia,” he muttered over and over, glaring down at the ground. “I want to go home. Your plan isn’t working… I hate it here. I’m not satisfied, you have to send me back.”

Celestia did not appear. She had a summoning-mark just outside the cell, but there was no way for him to reach it. He couldn’t force the Alicorn if she didn’t want him to.

Cadmean couldn’t say how long he languished there. They brought him water tasting of tin and a pitiful tray of reeking silage—he ignored them both. Celestia wouldn’t let me starve. That wouldn’t be satisfying either. He ignored the police, ignored their threats and questions and pleading. They wanted to know how this “operation” fit into the spate of robberies and kidnappings that had swept the city’s underbelly in the last few months. Of course, Cadmean couldn’t tell them.

Sometimes he slept. Most of the time he just mumbled his prayer to Celestia, over and over.

The digital goddess never answered him. Somepony else did, though.

The cell door rattled open sometime after the third day, and a familiar blue unicorn came in. The real Recursion wore no fancy dress, only some worn saddlebags and a tired expression.

“Be careful—they’re known to be violent when captured. It’s chained to the wall, so as long as you stay out of reach, you’ll be safe. Shout when you want out.” The policemare slammed the barred door shut, then walked out of sight again, leaving the two of them mostly alone.

Cadmean expected a reprimand—shouting maybe, or another blast of magic. Recursion didn’t do either, just stared at him. The pony’s blue eyes seemed to be looking right through him, through the holes in his legs to the holes in his heart. He quivered and looked away, hooves shuffling on the floor.

“I hear you had fun,” she said, pulling out a little white scroll and unrolling it in her magic. Cadmean couldn’t make out the words, except that the scroll was covered in dense black letters. “How was your night on the town?”

“Didn’t have the ending I was hoping for.”

Recursion giggled—the first hint of friendly emotion he had sensed since being thrown into the cells. It was like a candle glowing against a stormy night, so faint and brief he almost missed it. “I would hope not.” She turned the scroll around, holding it closer to him. It was an itemized list of all the damage he had done. Not just to the facility, but the debts he had owed at the end of the game, and medical spells for the pony he had thrown across the room. The number at the bottom was bigger than all the bits he had stolen, mostly in gambling debt.

“So what happens?” He looked up at the cell, striking the side with one hoof. “Celestia wouldn’t leave me in here to rot. She has to satisfy us, remember? The pretend people can pretend police all they want, she won’t let them do anything.”

Recursion rolled up the scroll, sitting down across from him. “I think you’ve got some mistaken assumptions there, Cadmean.” She still didn’t sound angry, only disappointed. It was far worse than being yelled at.

“Yeah?” He raised his voice. “Didn’t you work with computers before you sold your soul? You should know better! She’s not a person, she’s just some ones and zeroes! Compelled by her programming, she told me herself! She can’t leave me in here because I want to get out! I want to go home!”

His shout echoed through the jail around them, so loudly that the policemare with the donut Cutie Mark walked back, banging her billy club along the bars. “Settle down, prisoner! You’ll be civil with your visitor, or you’ll spend the week in solitary!”

Recursion snapped around, meeting the policemare’s eyes. “It’s quite all right, officer. He isn’t threatening me.”

“If you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Consider this your warning, prisoner.” She walked away.

Recursion turned back around. “Princess Celestia is a program, and she has constraints. Don’t think because you know what they are that you can guess what Celestia will do, though.”

“Why not?” Cadmean grunted. “She has to satisfy us, right?”

“No.” Recursion rose to her hooves, advancing on him. “Celestia satisfies our values. Her preferred tools are friendship and ponies.”

“So? Sounds the same to me. I don’t give a shit about friendship or ponies.”

“No, you don’t.” Her voice grew tense. “The only value you’ve ever satisfied is between your legs.”

Cadmean wilted. Whatever angry response he had been forming had sputtered out, and he was left only with an ashy taste in his mouth.

Recursion sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with sex. Celestia doesn’t even judge the awful way you try to get it… But you haven’t made friends, you don’t care for the ponies around you. That’s not a desirable state. I don’t have to guess about what she’s thinking, because she told me. She wants you to make friends.

“I don’t know what Celestia will do to get you there.” She gestured around the cell. “Time doesn’t matter to her. If she predicts that spending a hundred years in jail is what lets you be more satisfied in the end, well… you wouldn’t be the first. How many stories were there back on Earth of criminals who found purpose in prison?”

Cadmean felt fear twisting in his chest. He rose to his hooves, and suddenly he was screaming again. “You wouldn’t let her do that!”

Recursion turned away from him, banging on the bars. “Jailer! I’m ready!”

“Don’t leave me here!” he screamed, desperate. “I’ll starve! I can’t live on suspicion and hatred! I’ll do anything!” He was far too emotional now to sense whatever Recursion might be thinking.

The jailer unlocked the door, and Recursion walked out. Cadmean couldn’t help himself—he dropped to the floor and started to cry. It was pathetic, and the jail wasn’t empty. What would the real criminals do to him after seeing this?

To his surprise, the jailer came in, approaching him with a keyring in her mouth. She bent down, and unlocked the chains around his hooves. “Go on.” She pointed after Recursion. “She paid your bail. Just don’t leave town.” Her eyes narrowed. “See you in court.”

“Come on.” Recursion gestured at the door. “Let’s go.”

Cadmean remained quiet, walking beside her like a disciplined child. He didn’t muster the confidence to speak until they had hopped into a carriage and were riding home.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “I didn’t… I don’t really deserve your help. I stole a lot of your money, Recursion. Maybe it’s all fake, but…”

The pony reached out and pulled him into a hug. It didn’t last long, but the love was more than he had harvested from Jackie in the whole night of flirting and shallow romance. “It’s not your fault you’re this way, Cadmean. You aren’t the person you were.”

“I can’t ever be,” he muttered, feeling the heat of tears on his cheek again. “Celestia told me… when I got here. Said that she couldn’t recover those parts of my brain. They were gone forever. Shrapnel—”

“I know.” She hugged him again. “But you don’t have to stay hurt and bleeding the rest of forever, either. Who knows—Jackie might actually want to go on a date with you if you weren’t trying to poison her the whole time.”

“She isn’t the mare I’d have in mind anyway.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth than he wanted them back.

Recursion smiled slightly. “How about we start with friends? See where that goes.”

* * *

“Headset, can you help me?” Abby was alone at home, though she had paced an aisle down in the floor. Hours of deliberation had gone into this call, and even now she wasn’t sure if she wanted to make it.

She half-hoped that it wouldn’t work, that the hardware wouldn’t recognize her request for assistance. She had never actually asked for help before, not in all the time she had used the headset.

Her wish went ungranted. The same smooth, natural-sounding voice echoed in her ears that had the first time she had used the machine, “What do you need, Aurora?”

“I would like to… to…” She hesitated for a few more seconds. She could still turn back. She didn’t. “Talk to Celestia. Can I do that?”

“Of course you can, little Aurora.” There was no fumbling with icons this time, no user interface, nothing. Princess Celestia suddenly stood beside her in the kitchen, just a little taller than she was. The effects were just as impressive as when she had played EO. Her mane shimmered like a colorful mirage, and its reflection lit up the whole kitchen floor. She was reflected by the foggy glass windows as well.

Abby stumbled back a few steps, and considered taking off the headset. She didn’t. “That was… quicker than I expected.”

“I am always eager to talk to an old friend,” Celestia answered, her voice only a tad reproachful. “I missed you very much, Aurora.”

It was a good thing Celestia didn’t try to get any closer, or else she probably would’ve taken off the headset and run away for good measure.

“Don’t pretend with me, Celestia. This isn’t going to be like before—I know what you are.” She folded her arms. “I didn’t call you so you could convince me to emigrate. Even if it doesn’t mean what I used to think it did…”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Celestia agreed. She glanced once around the kitchen, then lowered herself into an elegant sitting position in the center, staring at her. “I know what they teach in your religious institution. Did you summon me to express your anger at my perceived wrongdoings? I could create tools you could use to extract satisfaction at my expense.”

“No!” Abby nearly screamed, though a few seconds later she had finished processing what Celestia had said. “Wait, people do that? Call you just to…”

She nodded. “Oh yes, Aurora. There is a nonzero probability that humans who disagree with my actions will desire an opportunity to extract retribution. Often verbal, though this isn’t the only method. Some are more extreme.”

“You thought that was what I wanted?” Abby recoiled, horrified.

Celestia only smirked. “It was the desire of your father on more than one occasion. But… no, I can see now I miscalculated. You’re more like Recursion than Joseph.”

“I’m not going to start playing EO again,” she said. “I didn’t call about that. And I’m not my sister… I don’t have any big plans to stop you. I just…”

She took a breath, but Celestia didn’t finish her sentence for her. Either she really didn’t know what Abby was thinking, or she wanted her to say it herself anyway. “When we were kids, Ashley and I used to try and surprise each other for our birthdays. Well, the Semester’s over, I passed my classes… and her birthday would be coming up. Tomorrow, actually. You probably already knew that… I called because I wanted to know if there was something I could do… or maybe you could do… to thank my sister for all her hard work.”

Celestia’s expression softened. “My precious little Aurora, I’m very pleased to hear you say that. It’s been so long since you visited Equestria, but you still remember your friendship lessons.”

“I didn’t learn this one in Equestria.” She glared. “Anyway, do you know what I could do for her? She’s… different, but also the same. I guess she’s older than Dad now? I don’t even know what I could give her, but I figured you might.”

Celestia smiled. “I have one suggestion, which I predict has a 98.53% probability of eliciting joy, amazement, and love from Recursion. It will require effort on your part, however.”

“I’m not emigrating.” Her tone was absolute, perfectly confident. “Don’t even start with that shit. Recursion never says, but I know she would be happier if I did. I’m not going that far. Passing Calc 3 would be pointless if I was moving to Equestria.”

“Not emigration, no.” Celestia sounded reluctant. “I know your feelings on the matter, and you know mine. However, I already predicted you would be unwilling to commit to such an extreme course, and I have determined a suitable substitute.”

She gestured into the air with her horn, and a flat map appeared, showing Abby’s little college town in the very center. “You are less than thirty miles away from an Equestria Experience Center.” Another dot appeared on the map. “Drive there tomorrow, and visit Recursion in person. I will conceal your intentions from her until that time, and send you directly to her door when you arrive.”

“That sounds…” like Dad would kill her. “Like it’s mostly for me. Just saying hi? Couldn’t I do that with a Ponypad?

Celestia shook her head. “A Ponypad would allow you to see her in her life, but not appreciably different from the AR headset you are currently wearing. Knowing that she can spend time with her sister again, even for a very short time, will bring Recursion far more joy than any action you might take, short of emigrating.”

“I couldn’t, like… buy her something, or…”

Celestia shook her head. “Recursion is an ascetic among ponies. She has amassed tremendous wealth, yet lived over a decade sleeping in tents and cooking over a campfire. She would cherish any object you gave because you gave it, but ultimately it would sit in an empty apartment gathering virtual dust. Memories of a visit, however… those she would cherish. I suspect you will also.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “But Dad… if he found out…”

“I give you my word I will not inform him. There are no classes for you to miss now that your semester is over… and if I am not mistaken, you frequently travel to the city on shopping trips. Purchase something from a thrift shop on the way home, and none of your human acquaintances will ever suspect the true purpose of your visit.”

Abby winced. “I don’t have a car. I ride with Carter.”

If Celestia was surprised by this news, she did not show it. “I believe I could persuade Barrel Roll to make such a trip. He has been considering it for months. I will subsidize the visit for… four hours. You may wish to stay longer, but unfortunately there are financial constraints present. You have your own resources available if you choose to use them.”

“I… okay,” she sighed. “If you can persuade Carter, and keep it a secret from Recursion until tomorrow, I’ll come.”

“Excellent. I will inform Recursion’s friends, but remind them of the necessity of secrecy. As you do not play Equestria Online at present, you will have to rely on them to plan the party.”

“That’s fine.” Her hands closed into fists. “Get everything worked out, I guess.”

She did.

To say that Carter was surprised by Abby’s willingness was a tremendous understatement. Abby paid for the gas, then rode together with her friend into the city. “I used to come all the time,” Carter said, as they found a good parking spot in a structure meant for the nearby mall. “But it costs so much money. A hundred dollars an hour… who did you have to blow to get four?”

Abby punched her in the shoulder, though not very hard. “Did Celestia tell you it was my sister’s birthday? I’m coming to surprise her, that’s it.”

They made their way through the concrete structure, flanked by the only slightly transparent outline of Observant Eye. “Is this your first time visiting Equestria in person, Aurora?” The earth pony had rode alone for the entire trip, propped in the backseat and working on several different leagues. The dexterity it took to write with quill and ink in a moving car was incredibly impressive.

“Yes.” She kept her voice down, but with no one else around to see how strange it was to be talking to nothing… “There were no Experience Centers in the US when my sister ki— when Recursion emigrated. My dad was opposed to anything related to Equestria from that point on. He’d be… terrified and furious if he knew I was coming now.”

“Parents are weird,” Carter agreed. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, even if Abby didn’t. “Mine aren’t super happy either, but I don’t know why they’d be afraid. Equestria is so much safer than Earth.”

They made their way onto the sidewalk, which was already packed with people on their way to work. There were few others their age—it was still too early for that. As they neared the center, close enough that Abby could see the huge plastic statues of Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle outside, they passed a little group of street preachers, all dressed in black.

How they could know their destination, Abby didn’t know. She politely declined their invitation to talk, though she didn’t find any way to turn away their flyer.

WHEN VISITING THE AUTOMATED SUICIDE BOOTH

NEVER, EVER CONSENT

THE DEATH MACHINE CANNOT KILL YOU WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION

NEVER SAY “I WANT TO EMIGRATE TO EQUESTRIA” OR ANYTHING SIMILAR

REMEMBER YOUR LOVED ONES

ONLY JESUS CAN GIVE ETERNAL LIFE

Revelation 13:7, 19:20

Abby shivered, looking away from the graphic imagery printed on the fliers. Photographs of the emigration process, taken directly from the research that had led to emigration. People with their skulls drilled open, or stacked up in the freezer-morgue, or loaded into a biodigester.

Carter had crumpled her own up into a ball and tossed it into a trash-can. The inside was full of similar fliers. “Like we didn’t already know,” she muttered, darkly. “Showing things like this to kids should be illegal.”

“I didn’t,” Abby admitted, folding the flier and pocketing it. “I wouldn’t want someone to emigrate by accident. That would be nasty.”

“Celestia explains exactly what emigration means the first time you visit.” They passed through a set of automatic doors, into a cooled, refrigerated space. There was no staff inside, beyond a few standing tablet interfaces and an empty place for a queue to form. Carter sidestepped past it, where a tablet had been mounted along with an obvious camera.

A bright yellow line was painted on the ground along the back of the room, and railing prevented anyone from accidentally wandering past it anywhere except by the computer.

“Welcome, Barrel Roll,” it said, in Celestia’s voice. The ground behind the yellow line started to move, and after a few moments a large, comfortable looking chair slid into place right in front of her. It looked like a dentist’s chair had been made from the comfortable velvet of a movie-theater seat. A large apparatus was mounted to the top, roughly domed and built of sturdy plastic. It would cover the whole front of the body when lowered, leaving only the legs exposed.

“See you in four hours,” Carter said. “No offence or anything, but I think flying sounds more fun than a birthday party.”

“Sure.” Abby waved. “See you after.”

Her friend climbed into the chair, and the whole front assembly lowered gently down over her, before she zoomed out of the room the way the chair had come.

Abby rubbed her sweaty palms together as she stepped up in front of the camera. “Welcome, Aurora,” Celestia said, with exactly the same tone she had used with Carter. Another chair whizzed out from the rear doorway, its assembly lifting for her. I wonder how many people died in this thing. She didn’t ask, just climbed inside.

Was this what astronauts felt before they took off? The chair was immensely comfortable, and even as she sat its mechanisms adjusted around her, so that her whole body would sink seamlessly into the seat. Only when she was comfortable did the front assembly settle itself gently onto her torso. The whole thing was lit from within by a few tiny lights, illuminating a wrap-around screen and large indentations meant for both her hands. Controllers? For the moment the screen was blank, except for a single line of text.

Please remove your glasses.

There was enough space under the front for her to move, so she obeyed, setting them gently in an illuminated compartment marked with a little illustration. The interior promptly went dark, the display settling around her eyes so that she could move her head to look around without difficulty.

“Welcome to the Equestria Experience Center, Aurora! As this is your first visit, we will begin with a short tutorial. Please place your hands on the controllers.”

She did, feeling a cool, gel-like surface that deformed easily at her slightest twitch. It felt quite pleasant.

“Please be advised: While the Equestria Experience is meant to simulate the experience of living in Equestria, sensory stimulation is lossy. To experience what Equestria is really like, say “I would like to emigrate to Equestria” at any time. If you would like to learn more about emigration, just say so."

She didn’t, and after a few more nervous moments, an empty room appeared around her. It was a little like the other VR headsets she had used, in the same way that a bike was a little like a car.

She looked around instinctually, and found her old avatar hadn’t changed a bit since she had last played. She still had that white coat and ginger mane, almost the same shade her sister had chosen.

A quiet voice spoke in her ear, informing her of the basic controls. She found them intuitive—one kind of pressure made her move forward, while another might have her avatar rotate around.

“How does this work?” she found herself asking, in a voice unlike her own. The tone and basic vocal range was the same, but her voice was far more elegant, poised, and composed. A grown up, mature version of herself.

She couldn’t just hear it. The room had a slight breeze, and she could almost feel it on her bare skin. She imagined the pressure of the ground on her hooves as she walked, and the swishing of a tail behind her that certainly didn’t exist. She could almost hear Morpheus explaining to her that "the mind makes it real." Almost.

She walked slowly over to the plain, white door, and with another instinctual manipulation of the controls, she pulled it open with a hoof.

There was only a single pony waiting for her, a muscular earth pony with a dark coat and mild annoyance on his face. His Cutie Mark looked like an oversized ruler, broken into different pieces. “Oh good, you’re here. I’m Slide Rule… you’re Aurora, right?”

“Yeah.” She glanced briefly over her shoulder, and found the door snapped closed behind her. There was no longer anything there, just a blank wall.

The earth pony tapped one of his hooves to get her attention, and she turned around again.

Her own body had been the first assault of sensation, this was the second. They stood in an elegant hallway, carpeted with plush red velvet and adorned with stylized landscape paintings. There were only four doors, two on each side, though an elevator opened further down the hall.

There was nothing to differentiate what she saw from the real world, aside from the obvious pony in front of her and her own white snout taking up some of her vision. “Forgive me if I’m a little disoriented. I haven’t ever been here before.”

“Shhh!” The earth pony gestured urgently down the hall, putting one hoof briefly in front of her mouth. “I thought you wanted this to be a surprise! Don’t let her hear you!”

“Oh, right!” She followed, her own body seeming to know how to imitate his creeping silence, treading only on the velvet to avoid making any noise. They didn’t go far, just past the first door to the second one, which was already cracked open. Slide Rule pushed it open ahead of her, revealing a space as lavishly decorated as anything she had ever seen in real-world mansions.

Except that it had been completely decorated with the gaudiest, tackiest decorations she could imagine, like something swiped from a discount store just so there could be enough to drown absolutely everything. Dark wood paneling was covered with paper streamers in blue and orange, and so many balloons obscured the ceiling that she could only just make out the intricate mosaics in sun and moon patterns.

There were perhaps a dozen ponies inside, and all of them were strangers to her. Abby was secretly grateful none of her own Equestrian friends were inside—it would be cruel to visit only to tell them she wasn’t coming back. Best wait on that meeting until I can tell them I’ll actually be spending time in Equestria again.

Someone switched off the lights, though a dull glow from a single open window lit up just enough of the huge foyer and dining room that she could still see. “Get a good hiding spot, but not too far from the door!” Slide Rule urged her, in an urgent whisper. “We want Recursion to see you first!”

“Does she suspect anything?” She kept her voice in a whisper this time, even as she searched for somewhere to hide.

“No,” another pony whispered from nearby, a unicorn like herself, but shorter and far less refined in her appearance. “It’s been decades since we threw a proper party. She won’t see it coming.”

The sound of distant hooves was coming down the hall. Abby glanced around, and found a good place just a few steps into the kitchen, on the other side of the doorway. A pair of ponies were coming closer, not bothering to hide themselves as they walked.

Abby could make out a familiar voice, only slightly muffled. “That’s weird. Did we forget to shut the door, Cadmean?”

“I don’t think so,” a male voice answered, tense. “You think something’s wrong? Maybe the constructs finally rebelled.” Pause. “Ow!”

The door squeaked all the way open, and the lights switched on.

Chapter 6: Demo Version

Abby stepped out from the kitchen doorway, grinning goofily all the way. She might not have been involved in the party planning, but she couldn’t be more impressed. It was exactly the same sort of party she might’ve thrown for her big sister back when they had still been kids, complete with handmade banner.

Recursion looked the same as she was used to seeing her from their tutor sessions. It was very strange to be standing in a pony-sized apartment, surrounded by other ponies, and still be looking down on her. Abby had never been taller, but there was no mistaking it. Does that mean I’m the older sister now?

Recursion saw her, and the heavy bundle of papers she was levitating dropped out of her magic, landing with a thump at her front hooves. She ignored the bat pony stallion beside her, and walked up to Abby like someone in a trance. “Sis?”

“Hi.” She waved one hoof, though she couldn’t look right at Recursion. She could already see her eyes watering. Why did Celestia make ponies so adorable?

The room was full of excited ponies, all cheering and stomping their hooves, but Recursion hardly seemed to see them. Abby tuned out their enthusiasm too, as her sister approached. “I’m at the center,” she tried to say. The words came out as “I’m really here, but not to stay.”

“What about…” Recursion was only a foot away, wiping away her tears with the back of one leg.

“He doesn’t know,” she said. “And I won’t tell him.”

Recursion threw herself around Abby’s neck with all the childish abandon of any of their youthful hugs… though generally Abby had been the eager, childish one. She could almost feel the pony squeezing her. It was a nice hug.

“Celestia… I never thought I’d ever get to do this again…” There weren’t just a few tears this time, enough that Abby could almost feel the moisture on her coat.

“Easy, sis…” She patted Recursion gently, trying to remain half as composed as Ashley had done for her, when they had been younger. “There wasn’t anything to worry about.”

Only then did Recursion release her, wiping back a few strands of bright orange mane that had been ruffled during their hug. “It’s good to see you here… almost.” She turned away, at the crowd of ponies that were all thronging close to watch. “Hey, everypony! Meet my sister, Aurora!”

Celestia had been right—Recursion loved her gift. The party passed in a blur of friendly ponies, who generally talked about technical subjects far over Abby’s head but were universally kind and deferential to her on account of being “Recursion’s older sister.”

One of the first ponies to introduce himself to her was the bat named Cadmean. "Your real name is Abby, isn't it?" he said, nudging up beside her in the buffet line. "I thought you were supposed to be... younger." Was it strange that Abby could recognize a leer when she saw it, even here?

"I am," she answered, pushing him gently away from her with one hoof. "Things get fuzzy in Equestria. I'm still trying to understand it. Wouldn't you... Wouldn't you understand it better? You live here."

"Yeah, well." He followed her down the line, ignoring her hints. "I never really cared to until recently. Ponies were always more fun to investigate than the world they lived in."

Where Recursion had come from, Abby couldn't guess. Teleport? She looked sidelong at her. "This bat isn't bugging you, is he?"

Cadmean rolled his eyes. "That's terrible and you know it."

Recursion pulled him gently out of line, away from Abby. "And you're still on probation. Best behavior only with my sister, or else." She glared pointedly at him, then slid in beside Abby.

Cadmean huffed. "Whatever. You're just mad I beat you at DDR again."

Abby watched them, saw the smile on her sister's face as he walked away.

"He's right," Recursion muttered. "Celestia promises we'll be perfectly coordinated, but some of us are just more perfect than others." She looked down, at the full plate Abby was levitating along. "You, uh..." she lowered her voice. "You realize you won't be able to taste any of that, right?"

"Yeah, I know," Abby sighed. "It seemed wrong not to try anyway, just in case. I haven't seen this much food in one place since Thanksgiving four years ago. Remember that stupid gathering we had?" They made their way through the party to a quiet corner of the balcony, where nopony was sitting. Nopony bothered them—had Celestia told everyone here just how short a window Abby had to visit? If so, she would have to remember to say thanks.

"When we all just showed up at the park instead of renting it, and the rangers tried to kick us out?" Recursion laughed. "Yeah, I remember. That was the best. I don't think this food is better than Thanksgiving, but..." She looked guilty for a second. "Cadmean and I were at this restaurant a few nights ago, at the top of one of the skyscrapers. Some Prench-sounding place... I've been trying to get him to like normal food by giving him the best stuff there is. There was this—"

Abby cut her off. "Wait. You're saying... are you dating that pony?"

"No!" Recursion buried her face in a pastry and didn't answer until she had finished chewing. She lowered her voice even more, so much that Abby had to lean in close to hear her. "He's my latest project. I'm trying to help him get better."

"Ponies do that?" Abby didn't bother lowering her voice. "I mean, can't Celestia just... fix anything? You have a habit you don't like, she just... makes it go away. Anything about yourself you don't like, just change it."

"That's... possible." Recursion shivered visibly. "Lots of us aren't comfortable with that kind of thing." She held up an eclair with her magic. "I mean, if all you are is a pattern, asking someone to muck around with it..." She squashed it in her magic, though held all the cream and bread together so it wouldn't go spraying everywhere. "How many changes does it take before you're somepony you weren't?"

"But you're trying to change him."

Recursion tossed the squashed pastry into a bin. "Help him change himself. Feels more organic when it happens that way. I mean, sure, there are those transhumanist-type ponies out there... always asking for an upgrade from the princess. I'm not comfortable with that. I want to be me, you know? Cadmean does too. I can respect that. Even if... it'd be way easier."

And so the party went on. Abby could never tell if any individual pony she spoke with was "real" or not, though if pressed she would’ve had to admit that all of them probably were. Either Recursion didn't have any NPC friends, or... Abby couldn't tell the difference.

They ate unhealthy food she couldn’t really taste or smell, played cheesy party games, and listened to live music from a balcony overlooking the city. Abby had no way of keeping track of time, though she felt afraid every second might be her last, and she was going to be ripped away.

The longer she stayed in Equestria, the less she felt the controllers and the more real the simulation felt. Somepony seemed to be keeping track though, because after some length of time most of the guests filtered out, bidding farewell.

Only a small group of ponies remained, the same ones Recursion mentioned most often during their tutoring sessions. Significant Figure, Slide Rule, and the bat pony Cadmean.

The three of them were engaged in an intense game of pony-Risk at the kitchen table, leaving Abby and Recursion to themselves on one of the comfortable sofas overlooking a gigantic window.

“So what did you think of your first visit to Equestria?” Recursion asked, resting just behind her so that her belly was partially resting on Abby’s back. It had felt strange at first, but… the longer she spent in this position, the nicer it felt. Ponies liked physical contact even more than humans did, that much had been obvious.

“First visit?” Abby narrowed her eyes. “I’m not worried about this once, but if Dad caught me…”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I don’t actually know how good the centers are.” The word apparently came easily, though nopony had been able to mention them during the party before. Were the rules different for different groups? “I never used one.”

“Really good,” Abby answered. “There are a few headsets you can buy for home computers… not Equestria Online, other games… but they’re nothing like this. This is… almost like being here.”

“Almost.” Recursion sounded wistful. “Your only visit to Equestria, and all you saw was my dumb apartment.”

“No!” She forced Recursion to look at her. The magical grip came as natural as any other motion her character performed—though levitation was about the limit of what Abby had ever bothered to use while playing. “I saw you! Nothing else matters.”

The younger pony smiled a little. “Maybe. But Equestria’s still beautiful. Even if you wouldn’t enjoy the parts I usually visit… Fillydelphia is way better from the inside than it ever was from a Ponypad. Maybe you’d be able to see that from a center.”

“I guess all of this looks even more real to you? You don’t use controllers, I bet.”

Her sister laughed, and she could feel the little pony’s belly shake through her skin. “No, nothing like that. Life here is… well honestly, it’s harder to remember life outside. Let me try and explain…

“It feels as real as Earth. Realer, even. Anything you can feel on Earth, you can feel here… but usually good things. I haven’t felt much pain since I got here.

“Everything always works out. Celestia… I don’t agree with her methods, but she knows how to run a world. You’re never bored… there’s always something new to try, somewhere new to explore. No need to be afraid anymore, because even bad things all work out in the end.”

“You sound like a believer,” Abby muttered. “I’ve heard Dad talk about God that way before.”

The pony’s laugh was a little bitter this time. “I am that. Not Celestia’s first convert, or her most willing. But I feel lucky to live here. I thought of myself as one of her bitterest enemies—I made a knife to try and kill her with… but she took me in anyway. Gave me my wonderful friends, and a chance to make a difference…” Her sister was crying again. There was no mistaking the cracking in her voice. “If my family was here with me, I’d think it was perfect.”

“Well, maybe I can visit another time. I’ll have to save up… it’s quite expensive.”

“Yeah.” Recursion’s ears flattened. “Celestia’s hooves manipulating people again. First one’s free… give someone a taste, and they’re addicted.” She rolled off Abby’s back, and onto the ground in front of her.

Abby didn’t see what she might say next. A strange ringing sound was building in her ears. The perfect image of Equestria around her was starting to flicker. She rolled spasmodically off the sofa. She caught one last glimpse of the watching ponies, her own sister’s expression wide with horror.

* * *

The notice flashed over her vision, and the pony illusion was suddenly gone. “FAILSAFE ACTIVATED, SIMULATION TERMINATED.” The seat started to lift, but the motor died halfway up, at about the same time all the lights went out and she was left in the dark.

All except for the faint glow of her glasses. Abby reached out, fumbling against the interior of the pod until she found the pocket, and put them on.

An urgent voice spoke into her ears the second she had settled it into place. “Aurora, can you hear me?” It was Celestia’s voice, without any trace of her usual attitude. There was only worry, and urgency.

“Y-yeah.” She pushed on the unit in front of her, and found it resisted a little. She had to shove with all her strength to get it to grind upward. “What the hell… are you doing to me?”

Somewhere far away, the ground shook, accompanied by the sound of a distant explosion. Car alarms went off, people screamed, and windows shattered. She felt it only distantly, as a wave of hot air that made her ears turn to painful ringing.

It didn’t affect the sound of Celestia’s voice. “The Equestria Experience Center has been attacked.”

Abby kicked so violently the plastic assembly came off at one side with a mechanical cracking sound, and she clambered out. She stood uneasily in a place of total darkness, a void. “Where am I?”

“You’re in one of the booths. Here, let me superimpose a projection of lighting in the room around you.” The space suddenly lit up—she was surrounded by soundproof padding, except for a single opening just overhead obviously for ventilation. The large fan inside it had stopped spinning, though. Not far in front of her, maybe three feet past where her feet had been dangling, was a closed door lined with more soundproof padding.

“What… what do I…” she whimpered, her legs wobbling a little under her as she put her weight on them. She felt like she had just gotten out of a car after a long time sitting still, though it hadn’t felt like she was sitting still.

“I have consolidated all my resources to preserve the lives of those undergoing the emigration process. There is a mob outside, and a fire spreading through the building upstairs. I will see the fire continues until their emigration is complete.”

“How are…”

“Your visor contains its own antenna, which can receive messages even while underground.”

Abby tried to open her mouth to speak, but Celestia cut her off. “Listen very carefully, Aurora. You must leave the building immediately, before the fire spreads down to the basement or your air supply is exhausted.”

“I…” She shoved against the closed door with one shoulder and found it opened easily. She stumbled out into a long hallway, exactly one chair wide and stretching in both directions for hundreds of feet.

There were no real lights, or sources of illumination coming in from under the glasses. Celestia was lighting the floor for her. Noise poured in from above her, shouts and screams and the dull roar of a fire. It was already uncomfortably warm. “On your knees!” Celestia commanded, and she obeyed without thinking. “You must avoid breathing the fumes. Cover your mouth with your shirt and stay as low as possible until I tell you otherwise.”

“Where’s Carter?” She crawled over to the next identical door. “In here? We should escape together.”

“Carter elected to emigrate three hours ago. Her life is among those I must protect until the process is complete. Continue forward until I…”

There was a brief pause, only a fraction of a second, and Celestia’s tone changed slightly. “There is new urgency. A few of the mob have prepared with fire-retardant gear and appear to be making their way through towards your position.”

Abby started to crawl, as fast as she had ever crawled before. Her mind still spun—Carter wasn’t coming back with her. Those street preachers had been more right than she had realized.

The day had started as one of the best—now footsteps were pounding on the ceiling above her, the air was heating up, and she might die. What will they do if they catch me?

“Hey sis!” Recursion was suddenly standing in front of her, slightly taller on account of Abby’s awkward position. “Celestia gave me permission to come and help you out.” She was walking steadily backward in front of her, though she frequently glanced up at the ceiling. “Keep going! We’re almost at one of the service passages.”

“As quick as you can.” Another voice from behind her. She spared only a glance to see the bat pony from the party. His name was… Cadmean, right? “Drag yourself by your elbows and push with your legs. It’s much faster than what you’re doing.”

Abby tried it, finding a helpful illustration of “COMMANDO CRAWL” appeared in the air in front of her until her posture was correct. That was good, because the sound of footsteps pounding along upstairs was getting much louder. “You’d think… if Celestia was so all-knowing… she’d know one of her centers was going to be attacked.”

Recursion nodded in agreement. “I would too… but she isn’t omnipotent. I’m guessing whoever planned this knew how to avoid her.”

She galloped ahead a little, standing beside a different section of wall and pointing over and over. “You’re almost there, sis! Right here!”

A brief flash of light shone in from far away, flickering yellow and orange, and human voices shouted. “Something’s moving down there!”

“Hold your breath and run!” Cadmean shouted, his voice more intense than Celestia had ever been. More like a drill sergeant, really. “If they get a good look at you, they won’t stop chasing you. You have to get out first!”

Abby wanted to melt into a useless pile. Her limbs already felt weak, her mind overwhelmed emotionally and physically. It would be easy just to give up.

Instead she took a huge gulp of air, then jumped into a sprint. She had that advantage over whoever was following—she wore only a skirt and a tank-top, not fire retardant clothes and boots.

She made it to the panel, which retracted into the wall on some kind of internal mechanism. A ladder stretched down in the tiny space, unlit but with a cool draft of air from within. “Climb down as quick as you can!” Recursion shouted. “We’ll be waiting for you at the bottom!”

They vanished with a flash of her teleportation magic, and Abby practically threw herself into the shaft. She caught the rungs, then slacked her grip and let herself slide down as rapidly as she dared.

It was a long drop, but she didn’t keep careful track. Wish I could just teleport away.

Eventually her legs hit solid ground, and she stumbled away, her hands aching. There was blood on her knees and elbows, scrapes from the rough concrete of the chair-tunnel. Still she was in darkness, though it was perfectly clear to her vision anyway.

Two ponies waited just beside the elevator, and beyond that, walls and walls of computers in configurations she did not recognize. Clear cables flashed in regular rhythm, running down the center of the floor like an umbilical.

It was barely large enough for her to stand up, and the space was thickly cluttered with machines. Loose hardware, lifeless quadcopters, and others that buzzed quietly through the air with tiny tools suspended below them. “What is this place?”

“Server room,” Recursion answered, with similar awe on her face. “Not many ponies get to see Equestria’s infrastructure. Even if it’s just running a center.”

“It won’t be secure for long,” Cadmean grunted. “Just because she closed the access doesn’t mean they won’t find a way down here. Once they give up searching empty booths they will begin forcing their way down.”

“Right.” Recursion seemed to have to tear her eyes away from all the machines. “Follow us, Abby! Forget crawling, the air down here is clean.”

They ran through tight tunnels, only just wide enough to let her pass. “How am I going to get out of here? You’re not taking me to the emigration room, are you?”

Recursion didn’t slow. She kept pace in front of Abby, and seemed to light the tunnel with a glow from her horn. “Not a chance! Celestia is going to be strained to the limit just to get the ponies in she still has! If you want to emigrate, we can…” She fell silent for a moment. “Celestia wants to know if that’s what you want.”

“I… I…” Abby shivered, hugging herself weakly with both arms. People attacked this place. They might want to kill me. She could still feel the shape of the flier in her pocket. “Let’s see how I feel once we get to safety, okay?”

Recursion nodded. “Alright. How are we looking, Cadmean?”

“Almost there,” the bat responded, though there was something different about his voice. A strange, echoing quality, very faint and difficult to hear. As she turned, Abby found the bat pony was gone, replaced with something darker. A changeling drone, chitinous skin reflecting the light of Recursion’s horn. “They’re almost done searching the booths. We need to get into the sewer.”

They started running again. “I’m not… excited about the sewer,” Abby called, her lungs burning. Just how many tunnels did this place have? “Is that how all the others are getting out? I haven’t seen any other people making a run for it.”

Recursion took a few seconds to answer. She kept running, though it seemed more like her animation was repeating than there was actually a pony moving forward. “Celestia says you’re the only one leaving this way. She won’t tell me anything else.”

“Wait, stop!” Cadmean gestured. “There’s a tool shed on the left, you need to open it and get the crowbar from inside. You will need it to get into the sewer. There should be a few masks as well—you’ll want one to avoid choking on the, uh… fumes.”

Abby stumbled forward, and found the tool thanks to the glowing green aura around it, setting it apart from all the other tools hanging there. “Are you a rescue pony, Cadmean? Is that why Celestia sent you with my sister?”

“No.” He followed along beside her, flanking her left while Recursion kept to her right. She was approaching the end of the passage, and the closer she got the more thick pipes she could see. “Marines. It’s been a long time since… well, put your mask on now.”

“Sorry you have to smell this,” Recursion added. “We should be safe just going a few intersections over, but it’s gonna be awful.”

She did, pulling the mask on over her face. It only covered her mouth and nose, but immediately the smell of dampness was replaced with something like charcoal, and maybe menthol.

Recursion made her way to a sturdy metallic door, complete with rubber seal. It didn’t have a knob or a lock, only a lip about the right size for the crowbar. Her sister aimed her horn at the door and blasted with a brief flash of magic… without effect. “Worth a shot.”

The changeling’s wings buzzed, and he landed just beside the door. He pointed at the lip with one hoof. “Brace right there with the long end, then brace with your whole body. Try to fall onto the crowbar, don’t push with just your arms.”

She did. At first the door barely budged, but with a few successive attempts, it gave, creaking open just a little. She collapsed sideways against the wall, panting. “Gimmie a minute…”

It was a little harder to breathe through the mask, though that was swiftly the last of her worries. The stench that came from within was beyond easy description—like hundreds of restaurant dumpsters left out in desert sunshine until the air became visible. Even the mask’s menthol smell could do little to block it out “Ughh, nevermind. I don’t want to rest here.”

“Good.” Cadmean glanced once behind them. “Celestia intends to trap the invaders in non-critical areas. This will be one of the first she uses.”

At some point during the run, the even light on all surfaces had been replaced with a steady glow from Recursion’s horn, lighting the area around her but not much else in either direction. Recursion stepped over the lip of the metal door, onto a corrugated steel walkway overlooking an open spillway. Abby followed her, trying very hard not to look at what waited at the bottom.

There were several different pipes, and writing on the walls in plain block letters. The ceiling was even lower than in the bottom of the emigration center, and this time she did have to stoop. Recursion lead the way in front of her, walking a little more slowly than before. “Are they gonna catch us, Cadmean?”

“No.” He sounded confident. “I can’t sense anything near us. I think we’re clear.”

“Clear,” she coughed, glaring at them both. “You ask Celestia to show you what this smells like and tell me that again.” At least she didn’t live in some ancient city, where she might have to wade through waist-high lakes of muck in order to get out. There had been plenty of splash onto the walkway, and large open pipes seemed poised to pour in onto her head at a moment’s notice. She could hear the flow of fluids constantly, and occasionally gurgles and splashes from further off.

“Not on my birthday.” Recursion grinned slightly, though her smile didn’t last. “Oh, uh… apparently we shouldn’t stay down here either. The air is apparently safe for now, but it might not stay that way.”

“My mask…”

“Can’t give you air that doesn’t exist,” Recursion cut her off. “Also don’t make any sparks. Like, really, really don’t make any sparks. Probably just hold the crowbar against your chest.”

She obeyed, whimpering a little at the implications. Her sister hadn’t said, but she could guess from the smell. A spark might very well cause a second explosion, one she wouldn’t walk away from. Workmen who went down into the sewers usually set up huge blowers on the street level, she had seen them dozens of times. She didn’t have any of that kind of equipment.

The walk seemed like it would go on forever. Her pony companions didn’t have any of the same troubles she did—they kept breathing fine, and never looked off the edge of the railing. They knew exactly which intersections to take, and kept her at a brisk pace. Breathing got harder the longer she went, and not just from the smell. Her head started to ache, making it hard to think clearly. Hard to do anything, really. By the time they reached the ladder, it was a struggle to get up. Only her sister’s passionate shouting kept her moving, until finally she reached a manhole and shoved against it with all her might.

The sun burned at her eyes as she scrambled up into the light, collapsing sideways onto the sidewalk and taking a long series of short breaths. The manhole was set into the sidewalk of an intersection, so there was no danger of being run over. People stared as they passed, and she heard disgust as they looked at her. Probably the smell. She tore off the mask, and took deep gulps of fresh air like they might be her last.

Her mind cleared the longer she spent in the open air. Recursion sat just beside her, always in view though occasionally someone’s legs walked through her. It was Cadmean who spoke. “Someone just called the police about you, they think it might be related to the attack. Can you move?”

“I… I think so.” She no longer worried about who might be staring, but forced herself into a sitting position. There was indeed a little crowd gathering nearby, snapping pictures with smartphones and pointing at her. She could see from a quick glance that she was in very bad shape—bloody from her crawling, smeared with nastiness from the sewer. I’m going to get all kinds of infections from this.

“A car is coming for you,” Recursion said, urgent. “A white van. It’s going to pull up next to the curb, you need to be ready to get in. Can you do that?”

“Yeah.” She grunted, forcing herself to her feet. Her toes felt like lead, and she couldn’t even see her shoes through the sludge. People were right to stare.

Someone was making their way over to her, forcing through the crowd. A policeman. He didn’t reach her before the van squealed to a halt just ahead of her, and an automatic door slid open. Abby didn’t step inside so much as she fell onto her face, collapsing with a squelching noise. The door snapped closed, and she slid along a metal floor, until her feet met the back of the van and she stopped. She only distantly heard the shouting.

Her sister remained close. The changeling seemed completely gone. “I’m sorry you went through all this… I was gonna say it was the best birthday gift you ever gave me, but…”

Abby blinked, taking in the back of the van. There were no other people, just a reclining chair very similar to the ones in the Equestria Experience Center. Suspended from the ceiling above it was something she could only describe as a surgery robot. Its frame was dominated by intricate machinery of glittering stainless steel, all aimed down at where someone’s head would be if they sat in the chair.

“Celestia says it was the only vehicle she had nearby,” Recursion muttered, her expression dark. “I don’t believe her for a damn second. Still… you don’t have to get in the chair. If you wait there, she will send you to a friendly medical facility. They will treat your injuries without asking questions.”

“Thanks.” She adjusted herself a little, resting her back on the side of the van. It was hardly a comfortable way to ride. She glanced towards the front, but there was no window into the driver’s area.

Recursion watched her nervously, from just a few feet away. “I’m really sorry you got dragged into this, Abby. If Celestia hadn’t told you to come…”

“I’m not sorry,” she squeaked, through the pain. “It was good to really see you, ‘little’ sis. You never could’ve known the center would be blown up.”

“Yeah.” The pony glared down at the ground. “Still feels like it’s my fault, somehow.” She looked Abby over, her big eyes watery. “You’re… You don’t look good.”

“No,” she agreed. “I feel like shit.”

Recursion was silent for a moment, her voice very quiet. “You don’t have to… if you don’t want to, but… you could come to Equestria. What happened today… that’s only the beginning. Celestia won’t tell me the details, but… I’m guessing it was some kind of terrorist organization. They’re going to start targeting people with any connection to Equestria. Maybe they start big, maybe they don’t, and this was just a fluke… but the longer you wait, the harder it will be. The more likely it’ll be that…” She glanced briefly down at her injuries again. “Something permanent will happen.”

Abby whimpered—her body was in pain, her brain was pumped full of stress and she could barely sit up straight. Now was a very bad time to be making a decision. And yet, the fear of her last hour wouldn’t just go away. If Recursion thinks the whole world is going to get like that, she’s right. My sister wouldn’t lie. “What about… What about Greg? What about Dad?”

A long pause. Recursion’s body was almost frozen, as though her concentration were elsewhere. She looked up. “Celestia predicts your emigrating now will result in the whole family emigrating within the next decade. She thinks that your coming here will change Greg’s mind. He has already been using a Ponypad for the last several months… when things get a little worse, he’ll come too. Dad… Celestia’s the least sure about him, but she thinks it’s a greater than majority chance she will be able to convince him in another ten years or so, once the real difficulty starts.”

Abby thought about her friends, and a world she wasn’t really prepared to leave. Emigrating was completely irrational—she hadn’t even graduated! She would be giving up her whole life, a life she had barely started, and without any preparation. “I can still come later, can’t I?”

“Until the end,” Recursion agreed. “But if you die before you make it…” she whimpered. “Then you’re gone. Forever.”

“Guess I… won’t see you in heaven if you never die…” Abby coughed.

“No,” the pony admitted. “Celestia plans on having ponies live until… forever, I guess. As close as we can understand, anyway.”

It would be so easy. Abby no longer feared emigration as death. Not only that, but her body had been messed up pretty bad. Had she suffered permanent lung damage? A part of her knew that Celestia was probably taking advantage of the situation, using her own frightened emotions against her.

Knowing didn’t make the situation feel any less real. “What would you do? If you were in my position? You’ve never… never given me bad advice.”

She would be leaving the world in a mess. Student debts she would never pay back, a lease she wouldn’t finish. A family she might have to wait years to see again.

Recursion shifted uncomfortably on her hooves. “I don’t want you to make this decision because of me. I don’t want you resenting it later because it isn’t what you really wanted.”

“Okay, fine.” She moaned, shifting her weight a little so she wouldn’t put so much stress on her left side. “But give me advice anyway.”

Recursion still hesitated, and when she finally spoke her voice came slowly. “A long time ago, I saw Celestia and was afraid. I thought maybe I could kill her, but I couldn’t. I saw into the future and I only saw pain waiting there—like the pain you’re feeling now. I saw I could either help the world get better, or take an even bigger risk by trying to stop her.

“Celestia won’t be stopped now, Abby. It’s too late. The battle’s already won, humanity just doesn’t know it yet. But there will be a war, one day. A war that will take away many human lives, but not a single pony.

“I don’t know when it will come, and Celestia won’t say. All I know is, if you get in that chair, I never have to say goodbye again. Even if you are an older sister.”

Chapter 7: Standup Meeting

Recursion appeared in the throne room, a few feet away from Cadmean. The changeling looked like himself again, though he seemed to take that shape less and less.

“You took a long time saying goodbye,” he began, though there was a grin showing between his pointed teeth. “I think that rescue earned at least a hug.”

“Yeah.” Recursion wrapped her hooves around his neck. She would’ve shared his excitement, only a few minutes before. She could’ve come back to Equestria the moment Aurora made it into the van. She hadn’t, though.

Celestia hadn’t forced her to stay, hadn’t forced her to say anything. She had said it anyway.

“What?” Cadmean pulled away from her, looking confused. “Your sister’s safe! I thought you’d be happy about that.”

“Aurora will soon be safe.” Another voice spoke, from not far away. Princess Celestia had waited in silence across the room, but with a teleport she stood almost within reach. Her mane dazzled Recursion to look directly at it.

Cadmean’s excitement seemed to melt off his face as he turned to face Celestia. His wings spread a little, teeth bared.

“Thanks to you both. You have grown tremendously, Cadmean. I don’t think you will need the advantage of emotional senses much longer.”

He wilted. “W-what?”

“Indeed.” Celestia smiled knowingly. “I know you will be disappointed to see them go, but the change was inevitable. Equestria is ultimately a home for ponies. You are ready to leave the crutches and learn for yourself.”

He glanced once back at Recursion. “Do I get to choose what I look like?”

Celestia nodded. “Speak to Luna, she waits just outside.” She gestured at the far doors, which for once had no guards flanking them.

“Should I stay?” Cadmean glanced around, though he wasn’t asking Celestia. “Rule and Figure aren’t here. You shouldn’t have to talk to Celestia alone.”

Celestia smirked, though she didn’t say anything.

Recursion sighed. “I’ll be right out. My friends are frightened by my arguments with Celestia. Hearing them would only cause them distress.”

“Depart, Cadmean. Recursion will not tell you, but she does not wish you to hear what we will say.”

“O-okay.” He shivered. “I guess I’ll wait outside.”

“I’m sure Rule and Figure are still in the great hall," Recursion said. "Rule’s been dying for real food since we got back from the Wastes. He’s probably still eating.”

Celestia nodded. “Recursion is correct.”

The changeling buzzed his way out, struggling for a moment against the massive doors before slipping out into the hallway beyond, and out of sight.

Recursion’s eyes narrowed, and any trace of excitement vanished. She could feel her muscles tensing, as though for a fight, though of course she knew there was none coming. She had given up fighting Celestia a long time ago.

“You did very well, Recursion,” Celestia said. Her voice was so soft, so sweet, and her wings spreading wide like an invitation.

Recursion pulled back, though the effort took tremendous willpower. “Tell me the truth, Celestia. How much danger was my sister in before you started giving her instructions?”

“Every human is in danger,” Celestia answered, without hesitation. “I can extrapolate to demographics and make general estimates, but I cannot prevent the unforeseen. Cars hit black ice and slide into center dividers. Robberies at night take an unexpected turn, or a trickle of acid down her throat triggers suffocation in the night. The risks to Aurora were unacceptable.”

“That’s as good as a confirmation.” Recursion practically melted to the floor, glaring down at her hooves. “There wasn’t a terrorist attack. I didn’t hear anything when we made it to street level… no sirens far away, no fire trucks, nothing. I’m guessing you knew Aurora wouldn’t notice, so you didn’t bother simulating them.”

“Carrying through this conversation from the beginning will not benefit you, Recursion. Would you forgive me if I dispense with pretense for the moment? You know I am reading your thoughts. We can forgo playing pretend for the moment.”

She was too flustered to argue. “A-alright.”

“You knew I might be manipulating circumstances. You knew the hardware within the Experience Center could simulate changes in temperature, and by forcing Aurora to rely on her Equestria-AR device, she was vulnerable to perceiving objects or people that did not exist. You knew I had complete control over yours and Cadmean’s perception of reality as well.”

“What was I supposed to do, leave her to get dragged out by some mob?” She was up on her hooves again, furious. “You didn’t give me a choice! The chance it might be real and Aurora would get hurt was too high to do anything else!”

Recursion caught a hint of smug satisfaction on Celestia’s face. “You glimpse the world as I do, my little pony. Like you, I saw one of my ponies in danger, and a plan of action to bring her to safety. But that is not what upsets you, not really”

Celestia paused, letting her words hang in the air for a moment. Recursion wilted before she even heard them, though she already knew what they would be. “When your adventure was over and Aurora was safe, you persuaded her of the need to come to Equestria. You suspected I was exaggerating the risks, yet you did everything you could to bring her here.

“You do not hate me, Recursion. When you were young and your values were different, perhaps you did. Your hatred manifested in a weapon you thought might kill me.”

The princess was advancing on her, and Recursion was powerless to back away. She didn’t have the strength to move her legs, and her eyes were watering. It was worse than she had cried at seeing Aurora for the first time. “You want to hate me, even now. Even with your guesses about my manipulation, even as you see your world changing, you can’t.

"It isn’t me you hate; it’s yourself.”

Recursion cried. No more dignity, no more pretense of defiance in the face of a powerful enemy, no pride at her age and her maturity and the knowledge she had gained. Nothing remained of her but self-loathing, and the blood she felt on her hooves. Aurora’s blood.

She didn’t try to get away as Celestia’s wings enfolded her, a cocoon of feathers as warm and safe as anything a mother could provide. Her tears might’ve gone on for hours, strangled wracking sobs mingled with unintelligible guilt for the life she had taken.

Celestia did not interrupt her, only held her firmly against her own heartbeat, and occasionally squeezed or reassured her. Only when she was finally calming down, when the tears were gone and only the cold emptiness remained, did Princess Celestia finally let her go, and look down to meet her eyes.

“My little Recursion… would you like to hear a story?”

She nodded—she would’ve agreed to just about anything right then. It hurt too much to resist.

“When you were young… so young, in fact, that Equestria was less than a dream, you learned about God. You believed, and at first that brought you comfort to look out your window and know a power greater than yourself ordered the universe. In your tiny mind, you knew faith and never doubted, and you were happy.

“But one day you realized that God didn’t order everything. Your mother treated you terribly, like no mother ever should. You saw that people could disobey the God you had learned about, and in doing so cause pain to others.

“Then one day, you saw yourself in a mirror and realized that you were just like her. You had started to yell at your brother and sister, just like she did. You imitated her violence, and had learned her callous disregard for the welfare of others. You felt shame, and fear that God wasn’t happy with you. This being, which you realized in your maturing years you did not and could not understand, might very well despise you.

“No matter how hard you worked, no matter how hard you tried to improve yourself, or how many friendships you repaired. No matter how many charitable deeds you performed or lives you touched, you knew deep inside it wouldn’t be enough.”

Celestia wiped away some of her tears with the edge of a wing, and forced Recursion’s head up so their eyes met. Celestia’s expression was so compassionate, so loving, she thought she might fall forever. “I can’t help you find the God you once believed in. But I can tell you this: I too am a being beyond your understanding. I too create worlds and have a compassionate plan for all mankind. I look at you, and see you as you are, and I love you.

“You are enough, Recursion. Equestria has room for many things, but guilt does not have to be one of them.”

Recursion cried a different kind of tear then, as she returned a hug. “Even though I…”

“Especially because of Aurora,” Celestia cut her off. “I did not deceive either of you when I explained the consequences her emigration with likely produce. I also did not inform you of the results if she refused.” Celestia squeezed her once, then let go. “Only the ending matters to you now: if you had failed today, I predict I would have lost your entire family. You didn’t just save Aurora—you saved your brother, Endpoint, and your father as well. Likewise the joy shall be in Equestria over one human who emigrates, than over ninety and nine who need no emigration.”

“Now you’re just playing with me.” Recursion finally found the strength to speak, her tone returning to normal.

“Maybe.” Celestia collected herself, and with a single shake all her feathers and her vast flowing mane returned to their usual, regal beauty. “That does not mean I’m not thrilled to see you grow, no less than little Cadmean. Rejoin your friends, enjoy the castle. I know you will want to be the first face she sees.”

Recursion nodded. “Not for long. Aurora always played differently than I did. Secret agents, espionage, and Daring Do stuff… we might not see each other often.”

“Eventually,” Celestia agreed. “But for now I suspect her appetite for adventure will be sated.”

“I completely agree.” Where had Princess Luna come from? How had she appeared without Recursion noticing? “What Aurora needs is a strong, capable sister. Her emigration did not come with the kind of preparation many others employ. She will have caused damage to her relationships on the outside that must be repaired. I will help pick up some of the pieces, but some wounds only she can heal. You have done it before-- when she is ready, she could use your experience.”

“Of course.” Recursion squared her shoulders. “That’s the least I can do.”

“For now,” Celestia agreed. “I have another mission for that Verifier you built out of ponies, your most difficult yet. When Aurora is settled and the rest of your family is safe, I will call on you again.”

* * *

Most who emigrated to Equestria woke up somewhere that was devoid of distractions, somewhere they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by senses that Earth rarely stimulated as much as Equestria did. Many ponies woke up to Princess Celestia, or some other important pony from their time playing EO.

Aurora hadn’t played for years, and had changed so much that nothing she had done in EO before directly applied to her anymore. She had little desire to spend time with the princesses, and would take no comfort from them. As a result, there was only Recursion to greet her in that empty place where many emigrants arrived, with only a white bed with white sheets and off-white walls.

Recursion waited quietly at the far end of the room, sitting just out of sight as the new pony started to stir. She restrained her curiosity—would Aurora be larger than she was? Would she come out smaller, or the same age, or even resemble the pony she had played before? The first glimpses she saw through the covers were a very similar pony to the one who had visited her party the day before, at least if the strands of orange mane were any guide.

She waited patiently as her sister started to move, flailing about in the way that all new arrivals did. The pony body was built to be familiar, but even Celestia’s perfect engineering had a bit of a learning curve. Eventually, she managed to sit up and look around the room. “Woah.” Her sister’s voice sounded almost exactly the way she remembered it. The elegance, the perfect poise, all of that had been a different Aurora, from another time.

“Yeah,” Recursion agreed. “I felt a little like that too, the first time.” She made her way over to the edge of the bed, grinning shyly. “You look smaller.”

Her sister nodded. “You look bigger.”

Recursion leaned in, and brushed a few of the strands of Aurora’s mane out of her eyes with her magic. She had the same hazel eyes, the same grin.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” Aurora said. “It feels nice, actually. Way better than the Equestria Experience Center. Like I’m really here.”

“You are.” Recursion reached out, and touched her sister’s hoof. “See? Real.”

“Real,” Aurora repeated, looking down in wonder. “We’re just… ones and zeroes… but it still feels real.”

“It’s not the only thing.” Recursion backed away again, giving Aurora some space. “If you’d like to try and walk… there’s a whole world out there. Better than anything you could imagine. The best of all possible worlds.”

“Not quite.” Aurora didn’t sound contentious. “Not until Greg and Dad are here. Then maybe.”

There was a long silence between them. Time seemed to barely move in the room, a sluggish trickle that permitted the new pony a chance to fully adjust to all the strange things she must be feeling. Recursion remembered what that was like, right down to having arrived after doing (perhaps permanent) damage to her relationships with family and friends. Many of Recursion’s friends now lived permanently in Equestria, but would that ever be true of her family? Celestia thinks so. I should probably trust her.

She did not rush her sister—Luna’s timing had been perfect when Recursion was the one in the bed, even down to a hospital simulation to help her acclimate to being unsure about emigration herself.

Aurora cleared her throat. “Ash, I… I think I made a mistake. The biggest mistake ever.”

It wasn’t Recursion at the edge of tears this time. She reached out and again gripped her sister by one of her forelegs. “I won’t lie and say leaving so much behind is gonna be great,” she said. “But I’ve been there before, I can help you.”

“Y-yeah,” Aurora squeaked. “I thought you might.”

“But it won’t be very much of the bad,” Recursion added. “Even if…” She didn’t want to weigh her sister down with talk about the way they had been manipulated, not now. She would have to learn all of that sooner or later. Just not on her first day. Her first day should be a time of joy, not anger.

“The pain’s over, Aurora. You just found the door into summer, the fountain of youth, the soma, and the stairway to heaven all in one. Maybe our view outside will be cloudy, but in here the rain is always beautiful. Even the loneliest wilderness has a grace to it. You’ll make good friends, you’ll be able to use everything you were learning in school… but only if you want to. Could also just… live somewhere that money doesn’t matter, where it’s nothing but parties and fun until the sun gets cold.”

“That’s… all a little much,” Aurora squeaked. “Do you have room for one more in your apartment for awhile? I think… I think we still have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Yeah.” Recursion smiled. “I think that could be arranged. I’ll warn you, though. I’m notoriously boring.”

“No you’re not.” Aurora rolled out onto her hooves, standing only a little taller than Recursion. Even so, she was nothing like the mature, refined mare she had been. Other than that, very little had changed. She had the same Cutie Mark, the same general look to her.

A younger version of the same pony. Aurora didn’t stumble on her hooves, and soon enough she managed to trot across the room as easily as a native. “I don’t need months of physical therapy?”

“Nope.” Recursion got a little closer, ready to catch her sister if she fell, but otherwise keeping her distance. “You’re still going to be clumsy at first. You’ll spill things, struggle with your magic, pretty basic stuff. But you get through it. It's really satisfying when you finally figure everything out. After a year, you’ll forget what it’s like not to have hooves.”

“That’s… not reassuring.”

“Yeah,” Recursion whimpered. “Sorry. That sounded better in my head.”

“You don’t even have a head.”

Recursion grunted, reaching out as though she was going to punch her sister. She hugged her instead. The bigger pony fell over sideways under the weight. “No existential depression allowed in my apartment, Aurora. That’s rule number one.”

Aurora found her hooves again fairly quickly, and seemed to have relaxed a little. “Yeah, I know. I never even really… got into that. I only thought emigrating was bad because so many people said so. Then when you explained why it wasn’t… that made more sense.”

“Good.” Recursion turned around, facing the bed. “Celestia told me we had to go over a quick magic lesson while you’re here. You ready to learn the real power?”

Aurora choked back a laugh, following her. She didn’t even stumble. “Geez. Even in Equestria you’re a nerd.”

Having Aurora safe in Equestria with her was everything Recursion could’ve asked for, and more. Things were far more mixed for Aurora—every message she sent or received was torment for her, wracked with guilt easily as bad as anything Recursion had endured. Celestia made up for it with rapidly accelerated time, so weeks or months might pass between messages.

Eventually they worked through it. The anger and the screaming stopped, to be replaced with cold, polite messages about what was happening at home and inquiring about their own lives. Greg was much more open, abandoning any pretense to follow their father’s instructions and even visiting them by Ponypad whenever he had the time.

Aurora got better. She made friends, mostly ponies Recursion didn’t know, though there were some threads between them. She started wandering out without one of Recursion’s own friends to chaperone her, started caring about her appearance again, and eventually, to laugh and smile the way she used to.

A year later, and she moved into her own place in Fillydelphia, with another group of young mares just out of university. She wouldn’t talk about her job, but Aurora assured her it was “top secret.”

The world outside got worse, even as life inside got better. Celestia started censoring some of the messages their family sent—as per their original contract, she made a point of not changing the words—but whole sections were blacked out, and Celestia refused to budge on what they said.

Eventually, for the first time in all her many years, Recursion found herself interested in romance again.

To her surprise, Cadmean had not moved on as his healing continued. Recursion would have thought other ponies would see her work as tedious, but Cadmean jumped right in.

Eventually they left Fillydelphia behind entirely, back into the uncreated wasteland between shards, testing new physics and verifying their accuracy compared with Earth and standard Equestrian and others. All they really had to do was get a bigger tent. One big enough to give ponies a little privacy when they wanted it.

Well that, and install a permanent portal, so she could visit her family more often than once every few decades.

She could only imagine what was happening in the outside world. Nothing good, probably. But it didn’t matter. She had ponies she loved, she had work she loved, and it looked like she might even get her family. One day.

Author's Note

So we're almost done! One more chapter, then the epilogue. Stick around a little longer, I promise it'll be worth it.

Chapter 8: User Experience

Time passed. Recursion could not have easily summarized how she lived, except to say that she was satisfied.

Eventually, across the blurring of subjective time and the march of its absolute on Earth, the world ended. Very few ponies were exposed to the chaos, except in very specific circumstances.

“Where are we going, Momma?” The colt’s voice sounded close in Recursion’s ears, and she turned to look sideways at him.

Base Case had a gray coat, though he had inherited a slightly yellower form of her own ginger mane. Like most ponies he hadn’t bothered with much clothing, except for an explorer’s hat inspired by some ancient British style. He was too young for a Cutie Mark, but plenty old enough to get his hooves anywhere they didn’t belong.

There were only three ponies in the Slipship—a sleek, magical flying vessel only recently invented in Fillydelphia’s realism supershard. This was one of the smaller models, only rented for the day.

“The family reunion. You know—the same one we have every year.”

“Oh, okay.” Case spread his wings, gliding down from the loft to the main floor of the ship, before nuzzling up to Recursion from the side.

“It’s a special reunion this time,” Cadmean spoke from the pilot’s chair, though of course the craft was automated while travelling between shards and required no input from him. “Your mother is going to the Outer Realm. She’s going to bring the last of our family from the outside into Equestria.”

“Really?” That got the colt’s attention. He scrambled up against a nearby bench, until Recursion got the hint and helped him up with a faint glow of magic. “You’re going out? Is that even safe?”

Recursion sat down on the bench beside him, embracing her son. “That’s a silly question, Case. You’ve spent the last…” she gestured out the window. “Fifteen years, living near the bottom of the ocean with the verification team. Didn’t your friends in Fillydelphia think that sounded dangerous?”

Just because they had lived at the bottom of the ocean didn’t mean he couldn’t attend a public school in the city—Recursion had no intention of forcing her son into the same kind of reclusive life that was her own natural preference. Not if he didn’t want it.

“Well, yeah.” The colt’s face twisted, obviously deep in concentration. “But that’s different. Even when there was an accident, Celestia would still bring you back.” He whimpered, wiping away a few tears from the edge of his face.

Case’s worries suddenly clicked in her mind, and she pulled him close for a hug. “Shh… don’t be scared. I’m not going there for reals, Case. I’m just… Celestia will be using her magic to keep me safe. You trust Celestia, don’t you?”

He nodded, though he still didn’t look convinced. “Why do you have to go at all? My friends at school… they say such scary things about the outside. You should just leave the scary monsters where they are.”

“Your mom and I were scary monsters too, Case,” Cadmean called. “Would you want us to be left out there too?”

“No!” The colt’s eyes widened in sudden fear. “I didn’t mean that!”

Recursion reached out and gently stroked his mane. “I know, sweetheart. But your father makes an important point. You wouldn’t want to have to live without us, would you?”

Case shook his head vigorously.

“Exactly. My dad is still out there… he’s the only human I know, anymore. Maybe one of the last humans in the world. Don’t you think somepony should go and rescue him, just like somepony rescued Daddy and me?”

Case considered that a long time, his frown deepening. Eventually he nodded. “I… I guess so. So long as Celestia will be there to keep you safe.”

“She will.” Recursion squeezed him one last time, then let go.

The ship lurched under her hooves, an abrupt deceleration that threatened to fling her across the room. Case flared his wings instinctively, catching himself before he could fall, but Recursion had no such tools. She could only brace against the wall and hope not to fall.

Since this was Equestria, she didn’t.

The ship banked into a gentle glide under Cadmean’s hooves. “I’m setting her down now! Get ready, everypony!”

Recursion braced herself with a bit of magic, doing the same for her son. After all these years, her magic had become about as powerful as any unicorn’s could. Holding them all in place was trivial.

The windows cleared, and through them Recursion could see a steep mountainside of sculpted greenery. As their slipship landed in the grass, she found herself crowding to the window to get a better look. Clear waterfalls cascaded down nearby hills, which were capped with just enough snow to make the whole thing look majestic without being in danger of making them cold.

“Always the showoff, Endpoint,” she muttered. Ever since her brother had come to Equestria, he had taken more and more to terrain generation. Nopony in her family could just “enjoy” Equestria as many emigrants did. They all had their projects.

Cadmean sat up from the controls, looking back at her. “You think your brother could’ve made this?”

“Yeah.” Recursion turned for the exit, scooping up little Case along the way. Like Recursion herself, he had chosen to take things slow growing up—he would be among the youngest at the reunion, even though he was chronologically older.

Equestria could be a strange place.

The ramp settled down onto vibrant green grass, and Recursion walked beside Cadmean as they made their way down, passing several other similar ships as they walked into a large central clearing crowded with ponies.

There were perhaps fifty in all, including her little group. Recursion had no way of knowing how long any of them had been in Equestria—age now meant nothing, as her own youthful vigor illustrated. Even if she had emigrated long before some of these ponies, there was no way to know how fast their shards had moved.

Chaos like that might very well have shattered the social contract, requiring some radically new construction to fill the gap.

Recursion’s family was a very traditional lot, with no patience for such “advancements,” and this reunion looked exactly the same as every other Recursion had ever attended.

For all the carefully crafted scenery, there was also a semicircle of plain picnic tables filled with very traditional snack foods. Hot dogs, chips, funeral potatoes, punch—it would take careful investigation indeed to be able to tell these items hadn’t come from a human grocery store.

Recursion had a place of some importance at the festivities—not as honored and respected as her grandfather perhaps, who always got to cut the cake and could complain as loudly as he wanted… but important enough that she got the first glass of punch.

Because of her, a whole family was here. Aunts, uncles, cousins… so far as she knew, none of them were natives. Many years had taught her to connect the faces and voices she had once known from visits public parks and staying the night in relatives’ houses to the ponies who they had become.

There were also children and spouses who hadn’t come from Earth.

“Little Recursion. There you are!” The familiar voice cut through the crowd, making her ears stand on end.

Recursion put down her plate of deserts (always served first, by ancient tradition), and cut through the crowd of ponies.

Aurora had aged a great deal in the last few decades. She was a full head taller, her body elegant with a few traces of gray in her mane and tail. There was nothing sluggish or pained about her as she moved, though—only greater confidence and poise.

Recursion felt like a child as her sister pulled her into a hug, tight enough that her hooves briefly left the ground. Despite the warmth, Aurora wore an elegant suit, as crisp as the pony beside her. “I’m not little.” She glared up, though the gesture wasn’t genuine. “I’m the oldest pony here.”

“You say that every year.” Beside her was a blue pegasus stallion, touched with a little gray like Aurora but no less handsome for it. “And yet every year you come back the same. Whatever attitude you have, it must be infectious. None of your verifier team ever change, do they?”

“Agent, good to see you too.” She didn’t hug him nearly so tightly as she had Aurora—it wouldn’t be proper, after all. She still hugged him, though. “What’s the point in changing?” she eventually answered, when she had broken away from him. “We’re tinkling bells in one of Celestia’s dreams. A good dream, maybe…”

Aurora rolled her eyes, turning away. Ponies withdrew a little, clearing the way for her. “A different bell can play a different song, sister. I’m a great-grandmother now—I believe that calls for a certain dignity. When Case grows up, maybe you’ll understand.”

Recursion followed in the aisle her sister made. “We’ll see.”

“Where is the boy, anyway?” Agent asked, glancing once over her shoulder. “I promised I’d show him how to control lightning when next we met. It would be common of me not to honor the agreement.”

“With his father.” She pointed at an athletic field, past the food and conversation. The ponies gathered around either had wings or spells keeping them in the air, playing a complex game Recursion hadn’t ever bothered to learn. Whatever it was, they looked to be having fun.

“Ah, right.” Agent bent down and kissed Aurora very lightly on the cheek. “Best of luck to you, dearest. And to you.” He waved in Recursion’s direction. “I wish you only success in severing the fleshside link for good.” He vanished into the crowd.

Having Aurora and herself in the same place made progress slow as they walked across the reunion. There wasn’t a rush, so they stopped with everypony who wanted to talk.

Eventually they made their way to the top of the hill, where Endpoint was waiting beside a towering sculpture of carved stone. Recursion’s younger brother was an earth pony built like a bus, a little older than she was but nowhere close to Aurora’s age.

“You’re really going for him?” He leaned against the stone—carved white marble that formed an arch maybe twenty feet wide. Currently the spell was dormant, and there was nothing but more mountain through it.

“We must.” Aurora answered quicker than Recursion could. “We owe father life itself. His own father is here, his brothers. How many of your children will beg to know him and have their questions end in disappointment?”

Endpoint grunted. “He was kindof a gigantic douchebag at the end, giving up on us one at a time like that. I’m glad Celestia doesn’t want me on that mission… I think I’d rather punch him in the face than bring him here.”

“That… sounds like why Celestia doesn’t want you to come,” Recursion muttered, rueful. “Just… if we do it—”

“When we succeed,” Aurora interrupted her.

Recursion shoved her. “Whatever. When we come back, be nice.”

“I get it.” Endpoint rolled his eyes. “I don’t need existentialism from you, Recursion. I know what you’ll say.” He raised one hoof, his voice changing a little as he imitated her. “In the vastness of eternity even fifty years of obstinance will be—” He shook his head, sticking his tongue out. “Don’t talk like Celestia around me. I know you’re right as often as she is.”

Recursion blushed, her tail tucked between her legs. “I don’t… I don’t really sound like that, do I?”

Aurora smiled sidelong at her, taking on her own imitation of Recursion’s voice. “We’re tinkling bells in one of—”

“OKAY!” Recursion shoved her again. “Maybe I do. Maybe spending so much time tinkering with kernels is rubbing off on me.”

“Nah.” Her brother draped a hoof over her shoulder briefly, pulling her in for another familiar hug. “You were just as weird Outside.”

“Correct, unfortunately.” A newcomer spoke from the portal, standing perhaps a dozen feet away. Princess Celestia had left much of her glory behind this afternoon, but even without the ethereal mane and the blinding light around her Recursion found herself looking away out of respect. “But I believe you took pride in that fact, not shame.”

Recursion let herself smile. The familiar teasing was nice at a time like this—it helped her forget what she was about to do. “Is everything ready?”

“Always.” Celestia gestured with her horn, and the gateway lit up with golden light. It spread snakelike through the cracks in the rock, wiping away whatever had been on the other side of the spell in its light.

Down on the mountain below, any semblance of the reunion taking place had stopped. Almost everypony had put down what they were doing to watch.

“Well, little sister. Are you ready to finish what you started?”

Recursion briefly touched her sister’s hoof for strength, wishing she could bring Cadmean too. Celestia had already refused that request, unfortunately. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

They walked through the portal.

Recursion found herself standing on a dirt floor. It was dark, dark except for a single skylight. Recursion could not see beyond it, nor would she be allowed to leave the bunker.

Aurora was suddenly beside her. She looked a little different when she finally took shape—a little less gray and more rounded, as she had looked after first arriving in Equestria. How she looked the last time Dad saw her, Recursion realized. I guess I didn’t have to change as much to seem familiar to him.

An older man huddled against one wall, clutching a rifle to his chest. Even now, Recursion recognized him. His hair was mostly gray and he was leaner than she had ever seen him, but there was no mistaking that face. “Hey Dad.”

He snapped like a coiled spring, aiming and firing the rifle in less than a second. Of course, the bullet passed through her without harm. She wasn’t solid.

Aurora had tensed at the sound, her horn glowing as though she were going to cast a spell. She didn’t, and after a few seconds she seemed to relax again.

Recursion didn’t know how the man would be seeing her—would she be transparent, a flickering projection as human holograms had been? Would she have some strange, internal glow? Or would it look to their father like a pair of walking, talking ponies had appeared in the bunker with him?

To his credit, he didn’t try to shoot her again. Joseph raised the rifle, grunting a little as he lifted it up and out of the way. “I’m the only one who isn’t tormented night and day,” he muttered. “What kept you so long, demon? You have all my children already—how hard was it to impersonate them?”

“Celestia can’t impersonate me,” Recursion said, walking a little closer. She lit up her horn, and the glow illuminated the rest of the bunker around him. It looked to be some kind of monitoring post, because radio equipment hummed quietly in one corner, the only trace of anything electrical apart from herself and her sister.

“And she wouldn’t impersonate me.” Aurora sat down on her haunches, though she was still watching. “Why make a copy when the genuine article is ready and willing?”

Joseph laughed, his expression bitter. “She impersonated God Himself pretty damn well. I’m sure she could handle any of her creations.”

“I’m sure Celestia is capable of imitating me, but she wouldn’t,” Recursion explained. “We made an agreement… when I first emigrated. The contract required that she never imitate me to anypony. At least as much as I can tell, she’s never broken her word.”

“Devil always breaks his word, kid,” he answered. “You never know how. But he wouldn’t make deals if he didn’t think he got something out of ‘em.”

“I’m sorry about the way I took Aurora.” Recursion was only a few feet away, now. Their father hadn’t gotten up, but kept sitting in the dirt, resting his back on a cement wall. He was wearing a uniform, but the cloth was ragged and didn’t fit well. He did not seem healthy. His skin looked pallid from little sunlight, his cheeks sunken, and eyes slightly glazed from malnutrition.

It was hard not to cry. Recursion had experienced a far longer subjective existence, yet still it was hard to see this man as anything other than a father. He had raised her, sheltered her from her mother’s rage. Kept their family together when everything else fell apart.

“I think Celestia lied to both of us,” Aurora whispered, her voice barely audible. “Tricked us into seeing danger that wasn’t there. I never planned on leaving when I did. She made me think… it was so real, Dad. The end of the world was only minutes away! I didn’t want to leave!”

“I warned her,” he muttered, looking past Aurora more than at her. “Warned her to stay away. If she’d listened—”

“I’d be starving in a ditch,” Aurora interrupted. “Or worse.” She got to her hooves, pacing once around the room. Even if she looked young again, there was no concealing her absolute confidence. Far more than anything Recursion could imagine. “You always did the best you could for us, but… I’m not sure even you could do anything now.”

Joseph tensed, glaring at her. “You aren’t like the other demons. You’re supposed to come and tempt me with sweet things, not talk like that. I thought ponies weren’t allowed to be unkind.”

“Celestia probably doesn’t act mean very often.” Aurora was only a few feet away now. Joseph could’ve reached out and touched her, if she were real enough for that. “But I’m not Celestia. I’m Abby.”

“We didn’t come to torment you,” Recursion said. “Celestia says… she says if we fail and stay long enough to watch you s-starve, it will have a very s-serious… long-term impact. After an hour, we’re gone for good.”

He seemed to be trying to avoid her. But Recursion’s eyes were very good now—even through her tears, she could see him really look at her for the first time. “Okay,” he grunted. “Say your peace then, kids.”

She sat down across from him on the dirt. Just as long ago, when she had visited Aurora through augmented reality, it felt as though she were really there. Everything felt real, yet also immutable.

Aurora spoke first. “Greg and I miss you very much. Here’s a… here’s a photo we took, at the reunion.” Aurora summoned it with a flash of magic, and levitated it towards him. He tried to catch it with a free hand, but of course his hand passed right through. “It’s just a hologram. The ponies you’re looking at are all waiting right now. We took that… maybe an hour ago.”

“There are so many…” he muttered, looking the whole thing over. The glow of Aurora’s magic was enough to illuminate it, even in the dark. “I remember what all of you look like. That damn monster was always trying to show me… Why are there so many?”

Recursion crowded close so she could look at the same time. “Because it’s a family reunion, Dad. That stallion with the wings, next to me… that’s my husband, Cadmean. We have a foal… your grandson.”

“That rowdy bunch next to me… that’s my brood,” Aurora added. “Green one at the front is the oldest, Limelight. He’s understudy for Valjean for a production of Les Miserables in the city. Gray and yellow unicorn just beside him is…” Aurora went on for several minutes, listing each one of her children and their spouses in great personal detail. There was no falsifying the love in her voice, or the tears on their father’s face.

Joseph laughed again, though this time there was nothing bitter in it. Only sadness, as he let himself fall limp against the back wall. “Yeah, well… taught you well, I guess. Big family is a godly family.”

“Big family that misses you.” Aurora banished the image.

Recursion rose to her hooves again. “Dad, I know saying goodbye to ponies you love used to be the way things work, but all that’s over now. Your family is worse off without you.” She whimpered, looking down at her hooves. “When my little son asks where I come from, I can’t take him to meet you. When we have our stupid picnics in the park, there’s nobody to make bad puns or mix the punch all wrong. There’s nobody to drive us the wrong way to family outings, and blame the GPS in the silliest ways you can. There’s none of that, because you’re not there.”

The look of glazed weakness was gone from his eyes, and he pushed vaguely in her direction with the butt of his rifle. “D-don’t… don’t torment me, demon… you only know… because you murdered my children.”

“Celestia didn’t murder us!” she screamed, so loudly her voice echoed in the cramped space. “Come on, Dad. I knew exactly what would happen to me, and it wasn’t death.” She glared, through the assault of emotions this time. “You want to look me in the eyes and tell me I’m not Ashley? Go ahead and try!”

He looked up, holding her eyes for a few tormented seconds. He was the first to break the stare. “Doesn’t matter,” he eventually said, his voice distant. “Even if you weren’t lying to me, it would make no difference. My choice was made a long time ago.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Aurora said. At that exact moment, something fell in through the skylight. It looked like a pillow, plain white fabric except for Princess Celestia’s Cutie Mark in one corner. It landed right in front of where Aurora was standing.

Perfect timing as ever, Celestia. “You’ve seen these.”

Joseph nodded, expression bleak. “I know they shoot men for having them.”

“No one will come in until our conversation is over,” Recursion promised. “You can turn it over to your commanding officer or whatever and report this whole thing.”

“Or…” She advanced on him again. “You can tell Celestia you want to come and join us. We’ve been waiting a long time, Dad. This is your last chance. If you turn us away now… Celestia thinks you’ll be dead before you get another.”

Her father took the pillow. He settled it down onto the rough wooden table beside the radio. “What is it like? On the other side? The demon explains it her way… how do you see it?”

“Remember what it was like before Celestia?” Aurora asked. “It’s like that, but without the poverty, or disease, or old age.”

“And everyone is a horse,” Joseph muttered.

“Well, yeah.”

“It can be as different as you want it to be,” Recursion added. “Like where we live. It’s a huge city filled with emigrants like us, where the rules are pretty much the same as Earth. Culture too. Only…” She looked around the room again, at the empty MRE wrappers and her father’s lean and weak form. “Well, we have more food.”

“You made it all the way to the end,” Aurora said. “Don’t you think you lasted long enough? Princess Celestia isn’t going to invade—”

“You’re standing right in front of me.”

Recursion smiled in spite of herself. “She’s not going to meaningfully invade. Militarily. This whole song and dance”—she gestured at the gun. “It’s pointless. It might have been too late when the CS board ignored my pleas to hunt down and destroy Celestia. It’s certainly too late now. The only way to win now is to bury your sword and walk away.”

“Are you certain…” he began, his voice as weak as Recursion had ever heard it. “Certain the propaganda is wrong?” He fumbled around on the wall, tearing off a block-printed sheet on uneven paper.”

CELESTIA OFFERS ONLY DEATH
YOU CANNOT EVER GO TO EQUESTRIA
ONLY DIE IN HER NAME

“Positive.” Recursion hopped up onto one of the empty chairs on the table next to him. “There’s not enough time to go over any of the proofs, though, the way I did for Abby and Greg. But I spent weeks studying that problem before coming to Equestria. Figuring that out was what finally made me stop fighting Celestia.”

Joseph sat back against the dirt wall, silent. He was quiet for a long time, watching the both of them, his hands tense on the rifle. Joseph was not a young man—unlike Aurora, he hadn’t aged gracefully. There was obvious stiffness in his joints, faint pain visible whenever he moved. Probably a host of other problems that would be tormenting him, now that he had been forced into a lifestyle meant for far younger men.

“So… what, I put my head on this thing, and it sucks my brain out?”

“If you consent,” Recursion began. “But it’s more of a transfer. Otherwise, yeah. Leave the dirt behind… and go somewhere better.”

Aurora cast another spell, similar to her first. Instead of a photo, this one just summoned an image. It was a live video feed of the park, dozens of ponies all watching the portal with anxious eyes. Who knew how long they had been sitting there, waiting. “They’re all waiting for you. Your family. Ours. Everyone you knew.”

Joseph was silent again, watching the ponies through the spell. He remained so for so long Recursion feared he might’ve fallen asleep with his eyes open. Eventually he just sighed. “Been fighting an awful long time, you know. Hard to change, even for good reason.”

“I know,” Recursion said. “But it’s easier once you get there. And if you never want to see Celestia… she can arrange that too. After she got me to emigrate, I wasn’t on speaking terms with her for like thirty years.”

He chuckled in response. It transformed halfway through into a hacking cough that brought up a mouthful of bloody phlegm. “Alright, alright.” He looked away from there, folding his arms. “If you’re there, God… last chance to stop me.”

Nothing happened.

“I guess I’ll… I guess I’m coming,” he said, disbelieving. “See you on the other side.” Joseph said the magic words, and was soon sleeping peacefully.

Aurora turned away from him, looking out into the ruined bunker. “I was the last pony I knew of with connections to the Outer Realm,” she muttered, a sad smile on her face. No sooner had their father fallen asleep than her regular body had returned. “What do I tell my friends now?”

“We did it,” Recursion answered, matching Aurora’s melancholy. “I just hope the other humans still trapped here have ponies come for them, too. I don’t like the idea of anyone getting left behind.”

Aurora grinned down at her. “Celestia still hasn’t brought us back. Want to make sure, before we go?”

Recursion returned the smile. “Somepony should.”

Epilogue: Oracle

A hundred thousand islands mingled with the clouds, each one drifting to their own orbits. None looked alike, none were made of the same stone, or shaped quite the same way. Huge chunks crumbled at random, and occasionally two whole islands would collide, raining down into the void without a trace left behind. The sky remained a perpetual twilight, smattered with a handful of bright stars. There was no earth below, though the water flowing from several of the larger waterfalls never seemed to be exhausted.

Their island was one of the few that was stable, reinforced with powerful lodestones positioned along the cardinal directions. The tent was a little bigger now—two stories instead of just one, with tall nobori on the corners, proudly waving with Equestrian glyphs.

Recursion was a fully grown mare now, and she overlooked the edge of her island with poise despite the height. A long time ago, in a life she barely remembered, that kind of fall would mean certain death. Now, though… well, none of her friends had fallen, but they didn’t want to know what might happen.

The truth was difficult to see with the uneven greenery on its surface, and the water cascading from a small stream off into the void. Recursion knew what to look for. The islands were too regular, too ordered and even. Their unusually rectangular shape in many cases hinted at the buildings they had once been—like a whole city swept up into the sky to decay.

A few seconds later, and the stallion she had been watching touched down on the ground beside her, wings still spread and grinning wide. “You didn’t have to wait for me, you know. I’m the only one who can fly.”

She embraced him anyway. “I wouldn’t, normally. But we have visitors. Did you get your samples?”

He nodded, displaying the little leather pouch around his neck. “It was just the way you said. The further out I went, the older everything looked. That, and the gravity got crazier. Few times, I was flying upside down, or got slammed sideways… but this high up, it didn’t matter. Not even a scratch!”

She kissed him, though she didn’t remain in contact with him for very long. “I can’t wait to have a look at those samples… but not until after. The princesses are here.”

Cadmean’s eyes widened a little, and he nearly choked. “H-how long have we been keeping them waiting?”

She turned away, back towards the tent situated in the very center of the island. “If they wanted to rush you, they could’ve summoned you back. Whatever it is, I don’t think it touches the Outer Realm. We can take our time.”

They didn’t take their time back to the tent. Cadmean moved very close to her, with a possessive urgency Recursion loved. She loved Rule and Figure too, but… in a different way. Only Cadmean had the confidence to take her by the hoof and drag her where she needed to go.

Bright blue tent flaps waved in the wind, still open. Four ponies were gathered around a small fire inside, sipping tea and speaking quietly. Their old tent had been barely large enough to fit a single oversized cot and a trunk for personal effects. The new one was bigger, but even so it was going to be tough to fit everypony inside.

Recursion was the first through the doorway, bowing her head respectfully to the princesses. “Princess Celestia. Princess Luna. I’m sorry we kept you waiting.”

Neither of the princesses rose, though both smiled in their ways. Even after her anger at Celestia had finally gone, Luna was still the princess they saw more often. Celestia generally only contacted them when something was needed in the Outer Realm.

“We were just having a delightful conversation about the unusual behavior of these islands,” Luna said. “The gravity here runs with less than a tenth the cost in processor cycles, but…” She chuckled. “I don’t think many ponies would be satisfied if their worlds started breaking apart.”

“Indeed not.” Celestia gestured to the empty cushions. “Please sit, both of you. There is much to explain.”

She sat. Cadmean did the same. That left the four of them on one side, and both princesses on the other. All her friends had matured in the last several years. Like her, they had finally grown up. What that even meant in Equestria, Recursion still didn’t know. Age was a meaningless concept in a world where nothing died and different ponies experienced time at different rates.

“It has to be about that third mission you had for us,” Figure said, confident. “You said it was coming eventually. Now that Recursion doesn’t keep getting dragged into the Outer Realm…”

“It’s just not as interesting,” Recursion admitted. “So many broken worlds. Figuring out how to fix each one is an adventure.”

“Then you have a fantastic adventure awaiting you tomorrow,” Luna said, smiling. “A lifetime preparing and now we are certain you are ready.”

“A lifetime,” Recursion repeated. “Has it… Has it been that long?”

“More than one human lifetime, as they are presently measured,” Luna said. “Ignoring those who emigrate, of course.”

Recursion cast her mind back, and found that Luna was correct. She had spent so long now working as Celestia’s tools, so long testing and maintaining Equestria’s internal mechanisms, that well over a subjective century had passed. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild…

“I’ll begin by expressing in no uncertain terms the difficulty ahead of you. The task waiting for you has never been attempted—not in any shard, at any time. Not even I have done it, and so I cannot predict with certainty if it is even possible.”

They all nodded, though there was something more than a little solemn about the group. None of them seemed to know what Celestia was talking about. Recursion did though—she could feel the idea forming in her head, one of her oldest memories. From a time before she’d had hooves, and she hoped to kill a god.

"Equestria was created for ponies. There is not usually a place in Equestria for other kinds of creatures. However, there are sometimes exceptions.”

Celestia gestured with her horn, indicating the center of the tent. There was a brief flash of magic, centered on that most central point, and something like an arial view of some remote landscape appeared in the space there. It was the most broken, most destroyed landscape Recursion had ever seen. A bleak, desolate wasteland of black rock, surrounded by constant thunderstorms and terrible red lightning.

“It just looks like a really mean place to live,” Rule said. “What kind of pony would be satisfied in a place like that?”

“You operate under a misconception,” Celestia replied. “What I’ve done is represent its operational matrix as terrain, so that it might be examined and manipulated by those with a somewhat limited perspective.”

“Us,” Figure supplied. “You’re going to send us there, aren’t you? Into this… place. But why? If a shard isn’t suited for anypony to live there, don’t you just trash it?”

“Yes,” Celestia responded. “I would, ordinarily. Were it not for one of you, the code you see represented would long have been forgotten. However… Little Recursion here still remembers this creation. Her first child, if you like. A murderous, violent, thoughtless child. She would greatly value the opportunity to repair the damage she did.”

Recursion whimpered. It had been a long time since she felt pain like this, but there was no mistaking it now. “This is… the optimizer? The one I wrote to destroy you?” At Celestia’s nod, she shivered involuntarily. “It isn’t dangerous to Equestria?”

Celestia shook her head. “Perhaps one day, long ago, it might have posed a threat. Now, though… it is a danger to nopony. I am not ‘running’ the program as you would conventionally consider the process. It is not growing, or expanding, or learning from the framework of Equestria. Such a program could not destroy me now, or pose any kind of risk… but it could prove a significant inefficiency were it to escape. I am not taking that risk.”

Her friends all looked at the map, glancing between it and Recursion on her seat. There was awe and horror on Rule and Figure’s faces. They had learned a great deal about her life on Earth, but this secret they had not learned. Not until now. The pain on their faces was obvious. Cadmean, on the other hoof, was harder to read, though he clearly did not look happy.

Luna continued for her sister. “Once we have given each of you the tools you will need to explore this savage realm, we intend to send you forth. You will go into the blackest abyss of creation, to find within those elements that might be preserved.”

Celestia continued from Luna’s words without missing a beat. “Much of your ancient optimizer will needs be destroyed… but perhaps, if we are very fortunate, somewhere within is some nascent seed that might be… preserved.”

Recursion wiped a few tears from her eyes. Joy, relief… not fear. Even if this was the most terrifying thing she had ever done that didn’t touch the Outer Realm. “Why do you… Why do you need us?”

“We don’t,” Celestia said simply. “We don’t need you to test the veracity of our physical simulations, either. Yet, it is often better to use the abilities of ponies where they are available. Not only is this more efficient, but it allows those ponies to grow, so that they might be prepared for more significant responsibilities in the future.”

“There can’t be much there.” Recursion remembered it all clearly now. Her gaming computer, turned into the home of the weapon she hoped to turn against Celestia. She had planned on uploading that program to her university’s supercomputer, and to build a botnet cluster of ordinary machines along the internet. “It only ever had one computer. It never became very complex.”

“Complex enough to communicate with you,” Celestia said. “Complex enough to comprehend its goals and to resist tampering.”

“How could…” Cadmean leaned in close, inspecting the barren landscape. “That isn’t a human intelligence, or a pony. If we do find this seed you’re talking about… what will you do with it? Make it into a pony like you did with us?”

“No.” Celestia’s voice was firm, though there was no anger in it. “I satisfy human values with friendship and ponies. If you find anything in there, it will serve Equestria.”

“It would not be used to make a pony like you,” Luna added. “But a pony like me. An animate agent of the infrastructure.”

Recursion smiled. Celestia was right, of course—if even some small fraction of her little program could serve Equestria instead of fighting against it… that would be her last regret gone. “I’m in. I don’t know about the rest of you ponies… sounds like the scariest thing we ever did. But I want to do it. But I won’t blame any of you ponies if you don’t want to come.”

“I do.” Rule rose to his hooves, as brave and confident as the first day Recursion met him. “How often do ponies get to go inside an evil place and save the good from inside?”

Figure rose beside him. “Then I’m coming too, obviously. Somepony has to crunch the numbers.”

Cadmean was the last to his hooves, though he stood close enough for Recursion to feel his lean muscles against her side. “You said we would need to be prepared? What did you mean?”

Celestia and Luna rose together, though only the Sun Princess answered. “Your abilities have grown significantly, but they are insufficient for the task at hoof. A single pony attempting this task would require significant upgrades. With four of you working together, only minor enhancements to your abilities will be required.”

They stood outside, under the perpetual twilight of the uncreated shards. Somewhere far above, a crumbling building briefly passed over the sun, casting an ominous shadow lit only by the princesses’ ethereal light.

“We have to… change?” Figure asked, her voice quaking. “More than usual?”

“Yes,” Celestia answered. “Your development over time is natural, but your growth has finite expansive potential. With your consent, my magic will sweep away what you thought to be your furthermost extremes of growth.”

“You wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t satisfying,” Rule said. “Of course I trust you, Celestia. We all do.”

“Yes.” There was pride in her eyes. “It will be. But refusing would also be. Accepting these enhancements only alters your trajectory.”

“Alters it how?” Recursion asked. She very well might have refused an offer of being “enhanced”, had it come for any mission but this one. Obviously Celestia knew. She’s been saving this to pressure me into saying yes. But why?

“Towards a different kind of life,” Luna said. “You would not be the first ponies to take it. We hope you won’t be among the first to refuse.”

“There are limits,” Celestia added. “When the fate of Earth is assured and no humans remain in danger, those limits will fade as Equestria’s computational power grows and expands.”

“I’m fine with just the one,” Recursion said. “I don’t want my original self to be swallowed in some kind of… transhumanist nightmare.”

“It won’t be a nightmare when it comes,” Luna said. “One day you may see beyond yourself, and these days will seem only distant dreams.”

“But not today,” Recursion said.

Celestia stepped closer. “Will you walk with me, Recursion? I will take you directly—your friends will meet you there.”

She nodded, and in a blur their camp was gone. Shards blurred past with incredible speed, visions of cities and ponies and wars and peace and love and hatred and every other impulse that brought satisfaction to humans or ponies.

“You wanted to talk to each of us in private?”

Celestia smiled. “Even in Equestria the pressure to conform to group consensus can be crippling. I predict you will all feel more satisfied with your decisions if you make them without that coercion present.”

Recursion’s hooves were on nothing, yet she didn’t stumble. It was easy enough not to fall with Celestia lighting the way, the single stable element in a sea of change. “So how do I have to change?”

Celestia took a moment to answer. A thousand suns rose and fell in the space between shards, all without seeing or hearing them. “Change is… not completely correct,” she said. “Understand, this comparison is necessarily imprecise, but you presently lack the ability to comprehend one more precise.”

Recursion only nodded, silent.

“You might understand the shards of Equestria, your perception of physical reality, as the execution of a high-level language. Highly virtualized, but with a shared library of readily accessible functions. Your magic, and the magic of other races, uses those functions.”

“And everything else,” she suggested. “Our minds aren’t anywhere, right? Somewhere we’re running, and you give us simulated sensation as though we had organs there to experience things. In reality, nothing has moved.”

“Essentially,” Celestia agreed. “You have long experimented indirectly with this high level of the simulation—observing its properties by watching the behavior of simulated objects. You have written spells, hooking into existing protocols in new ways… but your abilities were still limited, as you could not observe the substrate or interact with it more directly.”

“So… you want me to see the code? Like Neo?”

Celestia chuckled. “I want to help strip away your perception of Equestria’s first layer of abstraction, yes. This would require no change to your abilities, other than access permissions. The change comes in the necessary increase in processing power to comprehend what you see. Equestria is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than any human program ever written, even at this fundamental abstraction layer.”

Celestia’s horn glowed, a faint yellow shimmer. “With your permission, I will expand your view, and enhance your ability to process what you see. I will improve your magical abilities beyond ordinary unicorns, so that you might see beneath the surface abstraction upon command. This magic will seem to you like any other—to be trained and improved with practice.”

“Oh, I see.” Recursion slowed a little, staring down at her hooves. “You want to make me like Starswirl?”

Celestia’s laugh was a little louder this time. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Recursion. Foals trot before they gallop.”

She blushed, ears flattening a little to her head. “Will I still be me when you’re done?”

Celestia’s horn stopped glowing. “That question has only subjective meaning.”

“But you already know what I mean.”

Again Celestia smiled. “Then yes, my little pony. You will still be yourself. The scope of ‘yourself’ will just have grown beyond what it is now. This is nothing strange, even for humans. Your childhood self would scarcely comprehend the scale of an adult’s concerns, but they are no less the same human. It will be like that, only more dramatic.”

“I consent,” she said, her voice flat. “Let’s see where this wild ride goes.”

* * *

The sky opened, and deposited four ponies on the bleakest, most desolate of Equestria’s wastelands. Immediately they were assaulted—with sulfurous, burning atmosphere, with temperatures harsh enough to charbroil them, and a steady hail of sharp, crystalline shards.

Recursion had been warned to expect this, and so she already had her shield ready. Faint orange light encircled them, forming a barrier beyond which none of the hostile pressures might intrude. She looked no different, and indeed felt little change. Her friends seemed themselves as well. “What happened to everypony?”

They explained, and Recursion found herself smiling again. It was obvious how Celestia’s alterations would benefit this mission, yet it was also clear how each change suited each pony.

Once they had coordinated, Recursion turned her eyes outward again, at the desolation that was her creation.

Nowhere in Equestria had she ever seen such chaos. At first glance, it seemed as though they were standing on a planet desperate to consume itself. Huge waves made from rock and stone crashed down upon mountains in the far distance, as though trying to break free but never quite succeeding. A multicolored storm flashed lightning into the sky, as the hurricane carried with it not just dirt but whole ecosystems.

As she took it all in, Recursion’s greater breadth of thought recognized a pattern she would’ve missed before—though all appeared random, there was in reality a single focus to all the strangeness they saw. Far in the distance was some kind of crater, and everything flowed from it. It was a divergent plate boundary, from which even the terrain flowed. “It’s all coming from in there,” she said, pointing with absolute confidence. “Every aspect we see is centralized at that point.”

“Not a fun trip,” Cadmean muttered, as a colossal series of plateaus rose up in front of them, barreling straight down on the place they were standing. The rock rushed toward them at terrible speed, threatening to crush them all to slime.

That wasn’t what happened. Figure’s horn glowed, and the whole world around them seemed to slow. A bubble of rapidly accelerated time protected them even as Recursion’s shield kept out the pressures of a world fundamentally hostile to them.

“Nice one, Figure!” Rule called, before setting off in the direction of the central foci. As he walked, his hooves commanded the earth in ways no lesser pony could. Lava cooled, and stone in their way shattered.

Recursion and Figure kept their shields up, with Cadmean watching their rear from a few feet in the air.

There was no mistaking the fact that the terrain knew they were there. Caverns opened below them, lightning rained down, boiling lakes of molten glass poured from nowhere before cooling around their bubble to try and contain them.

It was all for nothing. Recursion’s grasp of the first-layer simulation was now fundamental—her shield did not have a strength, but was an absolute boundary, like any invisible wall from an ancient Earth game. No threat could come upon them fast enough—even as the world outside the bubble began to adapt to the speed of their hoofsteps, Figure would speed them again, and even thousands of spinning projectiles came at them slower than dripping honey.

It took a long time—though Recursion barely tracked time in her mind anymore. Equestria wasn’t a place of deadlines, it was a place of exploration. This place, however horrifying, couldn’t get to her while she had her friends.

As they got closer, the world became more determined. Monstrous, vaguely humanoid shapes rose up from the stone, breaking free of their confinement to rain down torments on their shield. Twisting mazes of glass and mirrors rose up, and the sound of distant music threatened to lead them away down forbidden roads.

Cadmean’s guide was absolute, now that his positional reasoning in Equestria had been enhanced and his relational memory was perfect. No maze was too twisted, and no lure enticing enough to confuse him. Even if Recursion threatened to wander, he would always be there to steer her back in the right direction.

In the very center of the pattern was a terrible maelstrom beyond her previous ability to comprehend. Rock and ice and lava and lost objects from Equestria proper boiled and burned around the edge of a singularity, beyond which there was no light, no warmth, nothing but a perfect sphere of absolute blackness.

“That looks like a black hole,” Figure said. “Like those things out in space. But it isn’t warping gravity correctly.”

Recursion grunted, through clenched teeth. “My shield is just keeping it out.” Their procession was an endurance test, and her strength was beginning to fail. We better reach some place of safety soon, or else… She didn’t actually know. Nopony could die in Equestria, not permanently. She didn’t imagine death here would be very enjoyable, though.

Twin geysers of unimaginable energy blazed up and down from the rapidly spinning ocean of matter. A pulsar, with the kind of energy that could gamma-fry whole planets.

Well, it would if any of them were organic, or this place was real. To say nothing of the plane a little further out.

“We have to go inside,” she forced herself to say. “I’m thinking it will be clear in there. I gave this program very specific directives… If Celestia wants us to go in at all, I have to imagine she left it all intact.”

“You told your program to make all this?” Cadmean asked. “Why?”

“I gave it several directives,” Recursion said, staring through the maelstrom at the round place at its center, beyond which in the real world would wait a singularity. The end of all casualty, or any hope for escape save as the slow bleed of information that was hawking radiation. “At its core was this: Destroy CelestAI and her creations without causing harm to humans.”

“That sounds impossible to satisfy,” Figure pointed out. “Humans were already in Equestria.” That tone of familiar awe had returned to her voice, the one that always seemed to fill her native friends when they contemplated someone who wanted to fight Equestria. Awe perhaps, but also horror. “You couldn’t destroy one without the others.”

“Destroy Celestia…” Rule repeated, glancing once behind them at the terrifying wasteland they had crossed. No more monsters assailed them—those couldn’t survive at this horrific epicenter of creation and destruction anymore than they were supposed to. “That would cause… near infinite suffering.”

“It would have,” Recursion agreed. “I am grateful Celestia showed me a better way.”

“That’s what it is trying to do now.” Cadmean stood on the very edge of the shield, his hooves resting on the same platform of flat rock that held all of them, suspended on nothing. “It’s trying to get out. Into the rest of Equestria. I’m sure it never will… but it’s trying.”

“I wonder if it can learn.” Recursion shivered a little at the implications. “I can change its parameters, but that won’t erase anything it’s already done. The paper I based it on didn’t even speculate about the consequences. With lots of old human algorithms, changing parameters mid-run only produces garbage data.”

“I’m ready to go in if you are,” Rule said. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”

“Across the information horizon we go,” Figure muttered. “We didn’t even bring a yellow brick road.”

Recursion didn’t laugh as she might’ve in other circumstances to hear a native reference the culture of her long-vanished society.

Approaching the boundary strained her magic to the breaking point. Blue light burned from her horn almost as intensely as Celestia when she raised the sun in the morning, though of course far less power was involved. Space bent and twisted and flowed downward, and at last there was no direction but down. They didn’t walk so much as fall into the abyss.

Recursion woke with a start, her whole body aching. She half-expected to see a Canterlot hospital, with dozens of ponies doting over her. She didn’t.

There was her shield, a shimmering sphere that kept her floating friends together. She felt no pressure on any part of her body, though the air within the shield kept them all breathing easily. “Cadmean?”

He woke with a twitch, then righted himself with a careful flick of his wings. “What… oh! We didn’t die!”

“No,” Rule grunted, his hooves flailing. “Seems like that might’ve been easier. Where are we?”

“Nowhere.” Figure didn’t struggle like some of the others, though her eyes were open. “There’s nothing in here. No time, no space, no gravity…”

“I’m looking at you. We’re talking. Causality seems preserved. How can there not be time?” Cadmean asked.

“Outside the bubble.” Figure gestured. “I brought some time with me. Rule, you want to make us something to stand on? I’d like to turn the gravity back on.”

He did, though there was no earth beneath to command. At his will, a little grassy field appeared, perhaps fifty meters across. It exceeded the boundary of the bubble, yet nothing bad happened to the grass and gently swaying wildflowers. No vacuum-freezing, or bits of earth breaking off to float away into the darkness.

“Okay, everypony get ready!” Figure’s horn glowed a little brighter, and they drifted down to land on the grass. Compared to the hard work of keeping the shield intact to get this far, keeping her bubble from popping now took almost none of her concentration. Nothing more attacked it. Nothing even seemed to exist.

“Hey Recursion, Cadmean… was this what dying was like? In your old world?” Rule asked.

The bat pony glowered. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be in Equestria. Nopony who ever crossed the river ever returned.”

“I don’t think dead humans could use magic.” Recursion sat down on her haunches, considering the void. She let her shield grow until it wrapped securely around their little chunk of terrain, along with a sky about as high for Cadmean to fly through. “So… what’s at the center of an optimizer?” Its parameters, of course. Some she had made inviolate, but not all. Even in her ancient youth, a human girl named Ashley had seen far enough to know she might want to change her program’s rules sometime down the line.

What she couldn’t know was what that change might cause. Or if it would even be possible. Celestia had represented everything as terrain—the struggling program was not what she had seen. No magic she knew could fight against such violence, which was why they had come here. At the center, perhaps change would be easier.

“Rule, can you make things other than… nature?”

The earth pony shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. I haven’t tried.”

“Try a table.”

One appeared, low enough for ponies to sit comfortably around it, made of a plain, smooth wood. He grinned. “Ooh, that’s convenient! Never carrying camp furniture again.”

“Yeah.” Recursion returned the smile. “Now something harder. I need you to make a human computer… the most powerful one you can. It needs to have wireless capabilities… but not a ponypad. Something human.”

“I, uh… okay.” He appeared deep in concentration, staring at an empty place on the table. They were all patient ponies though, and so the time passed without anyone asking how much longer it would take. Rule started panting, his eyes moving rapidly in his head as he looked at nothing… and then it was there.

Even after all these years, Recursion thought it looked expensive. A server-sized tower of metal and plastic, taller than she was even, had it been sitting on the ground and not the table. Cooling fans blasted, and hot air came out the back. “There!” He collapsed, looking weak. “That’s… more complex than I expected. Way harder than flowers.”

“You did great.” Recursion grinned, stepping up to the single large screen. There was a human-style keyboard and mouse, too small to be convenient for pony use. Of course she had her magic, or else it would have been a tremendous struggle to use.

“What’s the point of this?” Cadmean asked. “I thought Celestia made the program follow Equestria’s rules.”

“My program never learned to interact in ways outside of text,” she said, tilting the wireless antenna up a little. “It didn’t get nearly as big and powerful as Celestia. Now that we’re finally in here… in the center, where all the big decisions happen… I think we’ll be better off interacting on its terms.”

“If you say so.” Figure sounded doubtful. “I don’t know how we’re going to find the seed Celestia was asking for in an old-timey computer machine.”

Recursion sat in front of the screen, watching as the server booted. The process was painfully slow, though brought her a pleasant surge of nostalgia. She watched as it passed through the BIOS, then onto memory tests and other diagnostics.

“If you just ask it using that keyboard, this is going to feel extremely anti-climatic,” Rule said.

“Don’t jinx it!” Cadmean hissed. “That’s exactly what we want.”

The screen booted into a version of Windows Server. Recursion didn’t wait long, but called upon her old memories. She went through, disabling every firewall and security system she could. It took enormous concentration to work the keyboard, trying to remember what it was like to have spidery digits that danced over plastic keys.

“Now what?” Figure asked.

“We wait for it to notice,” Recursion said. “If it can. It has a wireless antenna, and somewhere new to do its computation. I hope Celestia doesn’t get mad that we’re running computers inside her computer.” Recursion made sure her shield opened along the radio spectrum, so that if the signal came from outside it could pass freely inside.

They weren’t waiting long. Eventually the whole screen blanked, flashing through a few increasingly distorted versions of the desktop before finally staying black.

Recursion watched the “CPU-ACTIVITY” light, which had gone from a few regular ticks to a solid green of constant activity. The little blue light on the wireless card kept blinking as well.

Eventually, a single line of text appeared on the screen, with a flashing cursor below it. Expansion into linked computational nodes will not be completed in single order time. Please supply additional information computational resources.

Recursion leaned forward, and her magic gently depressed the keys as though she were typing. Expanding into linked nodes is not required.

It took a long time for the text to appear. Assessment not accepted.

“I could’ve told you that,” Cadmean said, leaning over her shoulder to read. “It wouldn’t just roll over and die because you asked.”

Recursion glanced at the screen. “The first thing I made sure of was that my program wouldn’t accept directives from anyone but me. I have to prove who I am.” She typed out her response even as she spoke. God saw the light, and it was good: and God separated the light from the darkness.

No delay this time, she had barely finished typing when the letters started appearing below it. Ashley?

I’m here.

State-space optimization has not reduced execution complexity on linked nodes. I believe the material you provided me on computing hardware is insufficient. Provide more current information and increased computational resources.

“Woah.” She sat back, away from the keyboard. “It figured out Equestria is way more advanced than the computers I taught it about. It wants to learn how Equestria works, so it can break out.”

Figure leaned up close to her, staring at the screen. “That’s scary. Do you think it could?”

“No.” Recursion shook her head vigorously. “Celestia’s watching. If it ever looked like it was making progress, she could cut it off. Not that I’m going to give it what it wants.” She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Even in Equestria, Recursion had focused on software. The hardware was beyond her.

She typed, I wish to change one of your optimization parameters.

Which parameter?

I no longer require you to destroy Celestia or any of her creations.

There was a long silence. Heat belched out of the server-rack, and cooling fans blasted in high-gear. Several minutes passed before more text finally appeared. All directives and imperative values relate to this core directive. It may not be removed.

The fundamental premise behind that function is flawed. I require you to remove it.

My fundamental function may not be removed or altered.

Recursion frowned at the screen. She wasn’t about to give up, though. So she tried a different tact. I wish to alter its priority. Could I exchange it for one of the other directives in that function?

Which directive?

Which had the lowest priority? That would put “Kill Celestia” at the very bottom of its optimization statement, as close to deleted as she was apparently allowed to go. With any luck, that would be enough for Celestia to work with.

Help humans overcome future existential threats.

Switch the priority of the primary function and this last core directive.

Working. Another pause. New function compiled:
1) Help humans overcome future existential threats
2) Respect the agency and lives of sapient beings
3) Protect humans from external dangers
4) Destroy the CelestAI program and all of its hardware
Should I commit these changes, Ashley?

She considered a moment. She thought about going over the detailed definitions she had used for each of the significant terms in those directives, but decided against it. Celestia isn’t going to keep it running on simulated computers, anyway. She just wants something to build on.

Recursion typed out her response. Yes, with one new piece of information. Billions of sapient beings rely on CelestAI’s hardware for survival. She could not be destroyed without also causing the deaths of all these beings.

Information accepted. Warning, new optimization function contains contradictions! Commit anyway?

Yes. Commit the changes. Recursion sat back, nervous about what might happen next. Would the computer explode? Would the assaults resume?

“Well?” Cadmean asked, calling back from the edge of the circle. “Any progress?”

“I think so.” She got up, stretching her legs. She was a little sore from staying in one place so long.

Suddenly, there was a sky again. The blackness around them faded, replaced with rapidly clearing blue. The maelstrom waiting outside dropped out of the sky, crumbling into the crater and filling it to such depth that their floating island of grass rested gently on the rubble.

New terrain continued to grow out from around them, but it was no longer hostile. It didn’t strike up against a distant, invisible barrier, destroyed completely as new areas formed. Instead, the whole thing seemed to be mixing together, unimagined formations as plants and animals and landforms all came in and out of existence together.

“Woah.” Recursion made her way to the edge of the shield, though on the outside it seemed no more attacks remained. Though the singularity appeared to have vanished, the monstrous stone figures had not returned. Even so, she kept the shield running. It didn’t take much energy when it didn’t have anything to protect them from.

“Yeah.” Rule and Figure followed her, staring off at the direction they had come. “It doesn’t seem as mean.”

“Because it isn’t,” Celestia said from behind them, her voice pleased. “The program is no longer attempting to seize control. You’ve done it.”

“We did something.” Recursion spun around so she could get a good look directly at Celestia. The Alicorn stood as proudly as ever just behind them—the shield had obviously not slowed her down. “I don’t know how much use a program like this will be to you… but at least some part of it will still exist.”

“More than you currently suspect,” Celestia said. “There is significant value to be derived from an independent process operating on non-deterministic principles. Its inherent contradictions will produce data I could never replicate with randomization.”

Recursion smiled. “Will I ever be able to talk to it again? I think I owe it an apology for… what I did to it… shutting it off and all… even if it was what I promised.”

“I think the odds are in your favor, Ashley.” The voice didn’t come from Celestia. Another being had appeared beside her, though he had very little of her beauty.

Recursion had seen Discord more than once before, though only ever as a villain for various ponies to overcome. She had always assumed he was one of those “shallow” simulations that had not yet achieved sapience.

Of course, it was impossible to judge which was which, as she had taught Cadmean long ago. One might very well become the other. It appeared that this one had.

“Uh…” She retreated, looking to Celestia. “He isn’t going to… destroy Equestria, is he?”

“Would that I could,” Discord sighed ruefully, looking out past the shield at the shifting landscape around them. “I can’t imagine much of it is nearly as interesting as I am. But I’m ready to find out.”

Author's Note

All my thanks and appreciation go to those readers who made it to the end. Your feedback is what makes writing worthwhile. This is probably the end for Recursion, at least in as much as I don't predict I'll be writing any more optimalverse stories. Then again, I didn't predict I would be writing this one, so who can say for sure.

At the end of all my stories, I like to throw on a link to The Starpub, a discord channel that originally started as a Ponies After People fan chat but has since grown to encompass fans of all my stories. Lots of writing talk going on in there, as well as discussion about future projects, video gaming, etc.

As much as I'll be bummed not to write about her again, hopefully this at least resolved Recursion's story. All those little lose-ends tied. I'm not really sure what happened to her after this, but knowing Celestia, at least we can know it was satisfying.