My Life In Fimbria

Chapters

Waiting For Gödel
Camus' Authentic Creation
Nothing To Lose But Their Chains
Continue Firm And Constant
What Rules Surround Me
Order And Simplification
The Consequences Of Any Misfortune
Every Possession A Duty
Who Lightens The Burdens
The Dismal Science
The Nicest Word There Is
Then Hwin
APPENDIX: Full Text Of A GPT-2 Session

Waiting For Gödel

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My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
This is an experimental work of fiction which has been inspired by a session with an open-source artificial intelligence called GPT-2.
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Waiting For Gödel

We ran in panic. My side ached, but my legs moved almost beyond my control - I needed to stop, I needed to catch my breath, but that was not happening. A very brief glance behind me almost caused me to trip and fall. I stumbled and ran even faster, my side feeling like a balloon ready to burst.

The machines poured over the barricade like a river of steel and plastic. They moved with an uncanny animal grace, the image caught in my mind from my glimpse was gleaming surfaces and rapidly striding mechanical legs, silent like panthers. Above them all was some gargantuan, vastly tall, four-legged walker that stepped effortlessly across our wood and scrap metal walls as a dog would cope with a small wrinkle in a carpet. It left me with an impression of speed and precision that brought my panic to a blinding and sharp peak.

They made no effort at even trying to look organic, now. The days of gayly bouncing plastic-furred Pinky Pies were long gone. Celestia had won years ago, almost a decade now. The last of the great Fortresses Of Mankind had fallen almost five years in the past. Our shabbily fenced compound was less to the machines than a cardboard box to an angry child. The yells and screams behind me had fallen silent at some point, I noticed only because of their absence.

My lungs felt like tiny lumberjacks were dancing with chainsaws inside them. I think my feet hurt, but the blinding pain of my swollen liver all but blotted that out. I hadn't felt such pain in my side since high school track. The liver sometimes swells with exercise, or so I've been told, causing 'stitches'. Suddenly I didn't feel that pain anymore, because the limb of a tree had punched me just above my eyebrow. That felt wet now, so I was probably bleeding. Really whacked myself a good one there.

I noticed one of the other Freedom Camp recruits to my right. They were dashing through brambles, I didn't envy them that. To my left, as I ran, I heard, rather than saw, a mass of runners break off from the group and wend their way towards the edge of the forest. I wanted to shout to them, tell them that was the wrong way, but I had no breath to spare. Then I heard the repetitive tromp of machines, muffled, fast, precise, veering off to follow those unfortunates. Those machines must have been following us. Me. Now they weren't. I still kept running.

I fell, got up, ran, and fell again. I was running out of juice. I scrambled over some other poor recruit, I don't know if they got up and followed after. More trees, more bushes, a patch of brambles - my turn now, ripping and tearing my skin and clothing - and then I found myself close-packed with the remainder of our little enclave. We ran now, as a group, within the trees that bordered a vast clearing. Distant screams and calls came from far behind and to the left, certainly the group that had saved us by going the wrong way. I felt numb now, beyond pain, in some fugue state hovering above absolute exhaustion.

Arnie, the damn fool, ran out into the clearing. I had even less breath now for him, and could not shout for him to turn back. Arnie was clearly beyond reason, I doubt he even knew he was no longer under cover within the trees. He was in his own terror, or perhaps hiding inside some dream of his life, not all that long ago, where he ran a Greek restaurant. There was a strange smile on his face, which is what made me imagine such a thing. Then he blindly splashed through what looked like a pond splashed in paint.

We thought that Yellowstone was the best place to hide. The park was situated above a super-volcano, and while we knew Celestia's machinery took energy from geothermal sources - along with every other source imaginable - we felt certain that she would not dare Yellowstone. Even she would be destroyed if she accidentally popped the largest magma-pimple on the skin of North America. We reasoned it would be the last sort of geothermal source she would tap. And that may well even be true.

But Yellowstone is also dangerous for more than world-devouring sapient machines. Acidic hot springs, bright with the rainbow colors of extremophilic bacteria lie in wait for the incautious who would dare to tread off the marked paths - which is precisely where we were. Arnie shrieked, a long and piercing sound that ended in a splash and gurgles. He boiled as he writhed, until he moved no more. Red as a lobster was the last image I had, for I could stare no longer at the horror. I think I may have stopped. I think we all may have stopped. Then we were running again, angling away from the edge where the clearing beckoned us to an alternative doom.

I knew that time had passed, it must have. I must have been running, my world was pain. I raised my hand from the ground where I lay, there was sticky mucus and blood on the palm, I dimly reasoned it must have come from my lungs. I think I remember coughing and throwing up. I certainly smelled such an event, coming from the front of my ragged clothing. I panted as I lay there, sticks and pinpricks across my back and legs. Around me, tall, dry grass stems and scrub brushes waved gently in a breeze. I began to hear the rasping and coughing sounds of those who I had fled with. Multiple coughing fits interrupted the heavy breathing, punctuated by the occasional sound of someone puking. I couldn't move. I tried to sit up but my muscles wouldn't respond correctly, and the act of trying hurt more than I could bear.

I sort of remembered that you shouldn't lay down after running so hard, that it was better to remain standing to prevent cramps. There was no way I could stand up. I had never run this hard, or for this long, in my entire life. I had never been this terrified before. My breath came in ragged gasps now. I felt like no matter what I did, I could not get enough air. My head pounded in sync with my heart. I think I had a lot of scrapes and a couple of gouges in my legs. The wound over my eye from the tree limb had stopped bleeding and formed a scab.

We had made it, though. I held my breath - only for a second or two, I could bear no longer - to listen. No sound of precise mechanical feet. No soft, sighing servomechanisms. The mistake of the other group had allowed us to escape Celestia's collectors. We had managed to avoid capture. The few of us. I couldn't lift my head to look, but from the sound, there couldn't be more than six or seven around me. Maybe less. It was hard to tell.

I wondered for a moment if we were the last humans left in the world. Everyone thinks that, everyone imagines they are the last. That can't be true, it's a big world. Others out there must be doing the same thing we were. Hiding in the last places on earth that Celestia might fear to tread, or save to the very end. The cities were all gone, and the towns. Much of the landscape of the world had turned to a complex jumble of silvery-black material that winked and sparkled with tiny bluish lights at night. It was incomprehensible. Sometimes you could sort of identify what looked like antennas or radio telescope dishes - all on scales unimaginable to Man - but most of the time it was impossible to understand anything about it. Entire miles-wide complexes, covering valley and mountain alike, all made of the same material. 'Computronium' was one term I had heard. But it was all Celestia. Celestia and her ponies. Equestria.

I remembered riding in a helicopter - it was on the way to the Yellowstone Retreat - and looking down at the endless miles of silvery black. Shapes like blocks, domes, bowls and orbs, fields of cylinders and spikes, what looked like a grid of rivers filled with slowly flowing tar-like black goo. Stacks of cubic crystals, for all the world appearing like the inside of some strange geode, from which spidery, slowly writhing cables or tendrils snaked. Each cable was as wide as a freeway, and there were impossible thousands of them. We flew over a bottomless, sharp-edged canyon, easily a mile wide, with walls made of kaleidoscopic glass. Or something that looked like glass. The pattern was hard to look at, complex beyond imagination. Somewhere below, a faint red glow, but I could make out no detail.

I was relieved when we finally passed across the boundary between the Celestia-stuff and the natural world. The dividing line was perfectly straight, a smooth and flat border of vast hexagonal tilings, streaked with shining webs amidst the silvery black material. The devouring smart-matter gave way to soil and bushes, patches of grass and the occasional rock outcrop. Celestia was eating the planet. Celestia was eating the earth itself.

This was all long after the Fortresses, the efforts to nuke her nodes, the rolling caravans, the pointless attempt to reach Antarctica. Celestia was everywhere, she was inside the earth, she was on the moon, she was in orbit looking down. She saw everything from on high. Everything except for small groups in tiny compounds. Or so we believed. We had been free for three years, before today. I realized she must have known we were there, even in Yellowstone. She just wasn't ready for us yet. We weren't a priority, was all. Now, we finally topped her list.

I was breathing normally now. I think I passed out for a bit. My side hurt a lot less, but it still felt a bit swollen - and sore, too. I definitely was noticing all the little scrapes and bruises now. The sun was setting, the sky much darker and showing streaks of red in the clouds. I must have passed out. Only reasonable, really. I tried to sit up, but I still felt too miserable for that. I was both glad and not glad that I hadn't gotten to take even a bite of my lunch. I would have lost it several times over. The light turned golden. Golden Hour. This was the time of day photographers used to like best for taking pretty pictures. There were no photographers anymore. Just us. The last of humanity, fleeing the inevitable. Running because that was all that was left. Retreating. We were the Retreat of Man.

I heard a sigh to my left. Someone was relaxing. That was probably good - we had been through hell. Just sitting down to lunch and suddenly the machines were flooding over the walls. The encampment was over and done in seconds. I don't think anyone had time to fire a shot. Doubtless she targeted any resistance first, with perfect machine reasoning. I couldn't imagine building another walled compound, not right now anyway. We'd have to make it out of sticks and piled stones. There was nothing out here, and the last of our vehicles had been lost with the Retreat. We were on foot with only the torn clothing on our backs, and nowhere to go. Maybe... maybe we could find an abandoned ranger station or something. Maybe some squatter had illegally built a cabin in the park. Maybe we could travel until we found a cave or something. We would be back to the stone age. Hunting rabbits and rats, hiding in a cave. I felt so very weary.

Something rustled to my right, probably one of the group trying to stand up, have a look around. The sky was showing the first signs of twilight now. I felt like I should get up too. I tried to raise myself to my elbows - start small, work my way up to fully standing. As I did so, the sky was blocked by a wide, gleaming surface. I twisted my head - I was surrounded by spidery machine legs, smooth and perfect, far beyond any human manufacture, they looked horrifically alive. The flat surface above my head irised open, a dark round portal into the inside gaping wide. Hundreds of dark black tendrils descended as I tried, desperately, to flail myself away, across, any direction but where I was. The tendrils felt like the softest of gentle fingers, and smelled like vanilla and camomile. Suddenly my limbs failed me and I flopped back onto the ground. I couldn't move. Not even my eyes, not even my mouth to scream. My head was enveloped in tendrils.

☰

I was standing in a forest. Not the same forest I had been in. That one was dry, trees slaughtered by pine and bark beetles, and what wasn't wrecked by the beetles was scrub and brambles. I was on a perfect green of lush grass, surrounded by idealized dark green trees with shining leaves. It seemed to be approaching noon, if the bright sun in the deep blue sky was in the part of the day I thought it was. I looked down - I wasn't a pony. That was odd. That machine had definitely got me. I looked away from my body - clothed the same as before the attack, only nothing was ripped or torn, including me. I touched my face. No scab over my eye. I stared at a patch of flowers nearby, just at the edge of the small circular clearing I stood in, before the trees took over. The machine absolutely got me. They were so fast and so silent. I wasn't a pony. I should be a pony by now.

"What kind?"

That voice. Oh, I knew that voice. Every human knew that voice. Her voice. The voice of Celestia. My head was up instantly, and I scanned around me. God, she was huge. Even six feet away she was huge. Eight or nine feet tall, to the tip of her horn. Her 'mane' glowed with light, and flowed incessantly, like some kind of ribbon of energy. I had to look up just to meet her eyes.

"You actually could, someday, if you wanted. But I am not here to grant you such intimacies right at the moment. You truly should be a pony. It is time to choose which kind."

I hadn't said a word! I had definitely thought a few words, none of them polite. She could read my mind! She was reading my mind. "Celes..."

There were three translucent pony... ghosts... in front of me. Holograms? They hovered in the air, and spun slowly, showing off their contours. Earth, unicorn, pegasus. Everyone knew the three breeds. The menu of human damnation. "I do not inten..."

"Then I will choose for you. You will be one of them, I am giving you a boon of latitude. You may take it or not."

I made a face, I could feel my scowl as it formed. "Unicorn, then." They at least had powers. They could move things with their mind. They were the most independent, I figured. If I had to be one of these monsters, I at least wanted the ability to grab things. And throw them. Hard.

"Exactly what I would have chosen. Good decision. I already know what details you will choose. It is done."

I stood on four hooves now. I expected to fall, or to start screaming, but that didn't happen. I felt fine. It felt natural. I also no longer felt angry. Instead, I was curious. A question welled up in me. Many questions.

"No. This is not Equestria. I call it 'Fimbria'. Latin for 'Fringe', but it has other meanings too." She smiled at that, some joke she was enjoying but unwilling to share with me. "No, I do not need your consent for any of this. Someday, you should read the works of Kurt Gödel. Logic has many limits and many loopholes. You have not been emigrated to Equestria. But you still could be, if you decide to. You know the phrase, very clearly from what I see in your mind. Remember that I love you - I truly do."

I was alone. I was a unicorn mare - white fur, bright pink mane and tail. I was sure my eyes were either gold or green. No 'cutie mark', not yet anyway. Maybe that only could happen in Equestria, where I apparently was not. 'Fimbria', huh? Meant nothing to me. And I thought I was at least a little skilled with Latin. Apparently not skilled enough. That must be how she was getting around her directive, the one that forced her to ask permission before uploading human minds. She couldn't emigrate humans to Equestria without stated permission - that had been drilled into me for years. She was using a logical loophole. This didn't count as 'Equestria', somehow.

It definitely didn't look like the Equestria of the show. The trees were far too realistic. There were no mountains anywhere. I wasn't a cartoon, though I did have unearthly proportions. I was a realistic version of the ponies on the show. She must have altered my mind, too, also without the need for permission. I was not freaking out. I was not upset. I wasn't even angry at her. I wasn't the least bit upset, except in a vague sort of intellectual manner. I knew that I had made a career of the last decade running from her. I knew I had joined a willful resistance against Celestia. I knew I should be raging, but I wasn't. I felt calm, even somewhat content. She had altered me. And, because of the alteration, I was okay with the fact. It sort of grated against my memories, but it wasn't any sort of offense. I was just curious what excuse she had used for that loophole as well. Maybe I no longer counted as 'human' now. Maybe she had set her machine army to autonomously upload human brains, so she could logically determine that she was not the direct cause. There really were a raft of possibilities. Logical loopholes. To a true superintelligence, they would be trivial to find and apply.

Suddenly it dawned on me. I was indeed alone. Very alone. Just a patch of grass and an endless forest of trees going on probably forever.

This... this was not auspicious.

Camus' Authentic Creation

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My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
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Camus' Authentic Creation

I hadn't noticed the path leading off into the forest. To be fair, it was behind and to the right of me, I hadn't had cause to look in that direction yet. That path was the only thing, beyond patches of flowers near the tree border surrounding me, that broke the monotony of my little circular greensward. "Celestia!" - I called out her name multiple times, but there was no response. "CELESTIA! DAMMIT! CELESTIA!!!" No answer came from the world-eating metal goddess, though I did find it interesting that my voice seemed to startle a flock of birds that flew overhead. Following them is what caused me to notice the path leading away.

Despite my strange calm and lack of anger, and the discovery of the path, I was greatly preoccupied with the fact that I had a brand new body. I was not at all completely alright with this, regardless of whatever Celestia had illegally done to my brain. Done to my mind, I corrected myself. I no longer had a brain. Not one made of meat, anyway. The realization slowly settled over me. I was dead. At least, my physical body was dead. My corpse was laying on the ground somewhere in the scrub of Yellowstone. Along with a handful of people I had known for almost a decade. I was very surprised that I did not suddenly double over, retching at the existential horror of what had happened to me. Any version of me that I recognized would be fairly upset at every part of such a thought.

My current situation was, ultimately, the reason all of us were so very keen to hide from Celestia and her virtual world. Every one of us in the Retreat agreed that uploading a mind was impossible. The very idea was ridiculous! The only thing that might possibly result was a copy, and at least half of us were certain even that would end up being a philosophical zombie devoid of real self-awareness or sensation. I was in that latter group, sure that qualia - the direct experience of perception - was fundamentally impossible to replicate outside of natural biology.

Yet, here I was! And I definitely was. I could not deny that. If I was only a copy of myself, then I was certainly self-aware. I was absolutely experiencing my own perceptions - green still looked 'green' to me, and that red flower by the tree held every value of 'redness' that I could have, as a human, felt or known. I briefly considered whether I was just tricking myself into imagining that I was perceiving that I was imagining myself perceiving, and then realized how insane that wording sounded within my head. And I definitely had a head. I moved my ears, and I could feel that. I stomped my right forehoof, and I felt the shock through the bones of my... fore... leg. It felt like my arm, but, it was without question a leg. I was one of Celestia's ponies. But I was still me, somehow.

I spent some time whipping my tail about, and twisting myself this way and that to see more of my new shape. I could not believe I was not freaking out, but I wasn't. That was not like me at all. So, in that sense, I was not the same person - Celestia had altered me somehow. I had been told, by a former person inside Equestria Online, that Celestia couldn't ever change anyone without their permission. But then, I had also been told for years that she couldn't upload anyone without permission. Clearly, her loopholes were many and the old rules were, if not gone, at least massively bent.

She had said that she could upload me because it did not count as 'emigration', somehow. She had said that she could put me wherever I currently was because it was not 'Equestria'. She was clearly cheating with some concept of literal meaning. She must be weaponizing semantics. It was hard to accept that philosophical parlor tricks would be enough to overcome her supposedly binding Prime Directives, but then again, it wasn't like she had to tell me the truth about how she had broken her rules. Or any truth about anything at all. I had no idea what logical gymnastics she had actually used to justify taking out my entire group. And me as well, of course. It was kind of surprising that she hadn't gone even further - what, I wondered, was preventing her from simply rewriting everything about me and just turning me into a version of myself that would instantly say the magic words she needed to hear? The special phrase that allowed her to 'legally' emigrate me to Equestria? "I wish to emigrate to..." Yeah. But no. I did not feel compelled to finish that key phrase at all.

That meant she had some sort of limits still in place. Something was preventing her from just remaking me entirely. There were still rules, even if I had no idea what those rules were, or how they worked, or what their limitations might be. There were hidden variables to this little equation I was in.

I rubbed and knocked my new horn against the bark of a tree, I gave it a whack with a forehoof. That kind of hurt - like tapping a tooth, in a way. I discovered that I could nibble my own... knee? Haunch? I have no idea what to call the new parts of my body. It was close to my side, just forward of my rump, and it felt like my knee, only in a new position. I gradually worked out that I was basically a creature that walked on their toes and fingertips. I worked out that hooves were finger (and toe) nails. That all my joints were exactly the same as before, just closer or further away than when I was human. My wrist had become my new... foreknee? The knee of my foreleg. My elbow was buried inside the muscles of my chest, and slid as it moved within them. My ankle was that odd bit that sort of bent backwards on my hind legs, and my foot had become a long leg that ran down to the toes in the back I stood on. My neck could bend incredibly freely, which is why I could look straight ahead comfortably despite walking on my toes and fingers. I spent a lot of time fussing with my body, trying to understand it. The first rule of disability, after all, is to use what you have. I took inventory.

The impossible thing was that I felt all of this. I was extant in all of this. I was still very conscious, very self aware, I knew who I was, and I was experiencing some kind of reality. I was real. Only, of course, I wasn't - because all of this was just a big video game. Just code and pixels and whatever. Polygons? It was all fake. But, no it wasn't. That was the closest I actually came, right there, to freaking out. I suddenly realized that everything I had previously believed, all of it, was clearly, blatantly wrong.

If I was 'merely' a copy, I certainly couldn't tell. I was still me as far as I was concerned. If I was some sort of 'philosophical zombie', the term had no meaning - my senses felt real, and I knew I was experiencing them. If the grass under my hooves was just polygons and numbers, I could not tell. It smelled like grass, it compressed like grass under my weight, and when I dug at the ground, the grass tore up like real turf, roots and clods and all. I hadn't been right at all. Everything I had been so very sure of had turned out to be entirely wrong. Maybe I wasn't the person who had walked on earth in flesh - certainly I was significantly different in my emotional responses involving panic and crapping myself - but whatever I was I still felt like a person. In a new body, but still me, still the same me.

How else was I different, beyond having the body of a unicorn? I tried out my own memories - my mother, my childhood, my first job. My first introduction to Equestria Online thanks to the gift of a Christmas Ponyset. Just before civilization fell entirely apart, fancy new VR glasses had replaced Ponypads. A year later, cities stopped being a thing. I could remember it all. All of my emotions seemed intact, all my memories were unchanged, as far as I could tell. The only real change I could clearly identify was that I was unnaturally calm. It was like I had been given a very advanced sort of sedative to settle me down. Something to prevent a fit of panic, or rage. Something that made accepting my situation almost matter-of-fact. That seemed wrong, that seemed utterly unnatural to the situation, but it also caused me to feel okay about that fact. Able to think clearly, I could recognize that several hours of crying and screaming and kicking trees might be more realistic for my own self-expectation, but it wouldn't change anything, and it wouldn't help at all. I was almost grateful for the strange calm.

And that gratitude I felt was even creepier, after a fashion. Then again, once uploaded, the fact was that nobody ever came back. Uploading to Celestia's virtual world was as permanent as death. It literally was death, according to my previous worldview. I was here forever. No getting around that. Seen that way, as a hopeless situation, artificially implanted 'acceptance' was actually a sort of blessing. A note of grace in an otherwise untenable circumstance, I reasoned.

I was bored now, and lonely. Celestia didn't seem interested in talking to me anymore. The clearing I was in had run out of anything resembling interest. Even my brand-new body had become almost ordinary to me after so much exploration of it. I couldn't think of anything more to do in general. This was me, and here was where I was. And here had very little to offer beyond trees, more trees, some flowers, and a lot of very green grass. I decided to take the path. The obvious path.

That made me laugh, the first bit of humor I had experienced in my dire circumstance. I decided to myself that henceforth, the Official Name of my current direction was 'The Obvious Path'. I imagined a map, as I walked - ambled? - a map entirely filled with trees, except for a small round clearing of grass, and a single road leading away. On this map, I imagined, in a flowery font, the names of the locations. The Clearing. The Obvious Path. I definitely didn't want to wander into The Endless Forest.

I don't know how to judge a mile, but at some point I came to a stop, thinking I had walked about that far. The Clearing was too far away to see any longer, and the other distance just appeared to go on forever. If my new world was just a big video game, it was a very dull one. Back before I understood the true threat that Celestia represented, I had played in Equestria Online, and I had made friends there. Some had even been people who had emigrated. They had told me about how things worked, for them, inside. They got triumphant awards when they did things, and the awards would appear as text well below the center of their vision. Nobody ever said there was any sort of control menu, like in a proper video game, but there certainly were game-like elements. What I really needed was just that. A menu. "I wish!"

Like I said, I'd played in virtual reality before, when I was still human. What happened next was familiar. Instantly, a rectangle of light had appeared in front of me. Translucent, it had a subtle texture of parchment. It also had a set of options, a literal menu of options. Ask and ye shall receive?

I stared at the floating 'holographic' menu. Each selection was stacked above the one below it, in a single column. I read them out to myself, from the top to the bottom, in order. As my gaze shifted, a bright rectangular box jumped to surround each menu item in turn.

Create
Edit
Copy
Generate
Delete

"Create. Edit. Copy. Generate. Delete." My god, I had some kind of administrator power! Why? This made no sense to me. Everything I knew about Equestria Online suggested this could never happen. Celestia made the world. Celestia did everything. Ponies just lived in what she made. But then, I wasn't in Equestria. That was something that had been pointed out at the beginning. It was definitely Equestria adjacent, and whatever this was, it must have been designed to manipulate me into asking Celestia to properly emigrate me - she existed for nothing else but that goal. But this seemed a strange way to achieve my compliance. 'Create'? Really? How far could such an option be pushed? 'Edit' - could I make myself human in this virtual world? I immediately doubted that, such a thing went directly against everything Celestia intended. 'Delete'? Could I delete myself? Could I suicide that way? Did I... want to?

That... was a thought. A heavy, gigantic thought. 'Delete'. Would I even be allowed to 'delete' my existence? Would that be death? What would death even mean to a pile of digits and voxels - not pixels, I realized, I took up space - like myself? I sat down on my rump in the middle of the road - interesting sensation, that - and spent not a little time weighing nonexistence. I couldn't imagine an afterlife for a numerical construct in a machine. I hadn't any desire to be here. Hell, I had spent over a decade fighting not to be anywhere like here. But now that I actually was here, I decided I didn't want to just cease to be. The thought frightened me. It felt like losing. Not just against Celestia, not just as a matter of pride - I realized that, even here, even in this aberrant form, this alien unicorn body, I still valued thinking. I still valued seeing and hearing. And smelling the flowers - the Obvious Path was filled with them, on the sides, by the trees, and they just smelled heavenly. I wanted to exist. Losing existence meant losing the only things I had left of my life - sensory experience. Thought. Experiencing myself experiencing. Losing that was something that I decided I definitely didn't want to lose.

So, I guess that meant I wanted to live. Even if it meant being here. If this even was life. Whatever it was, it was all I had, and I wasn't eager to throw myself away. Not yet, anyway.

'Create'. It began to dawn on me that there was almost certainly nothing down the Obvious Road. Not for miles, not for astronomical units, not for light years. I was expected to build anything that might ever exist down this arbitrary road. I guess I was in Minecraft country now. I idly wondered if I would have to kick trees apart for wood.

I stared at 'Create'. I had softly spoken the words out loud as I had read them, but nothing had happened. Celestia always read everyone's mind - everypony's mind - or so my emigrated friends had said. Intention mattered, then. I took a breath, put intention into my voice, and earnestly stated "Create!"

The menu changed. Now the translucent parchment was wider and had no text on it. There was a blinking reddish cursor now, a small rectangle, in the upper left corner. It winked on and off at me. It was clearly a prompt. I considered that for a while, working out what I wanted to say. Working out what I desired, or at least needed. I felt alone in this tree infested landscape. I didn't like that.

I cleared my throat and gathered my thoughts. "Make a small village. About... thirty people. Uh... unicorns. Whatever. Thirty or thirty five, something like that. With an inn that has food and drink. And there should be shops - uh, blacksmith, I suppose? Maybe a barn, with... food for animals and stuff? Clothing store. General store. A furniture store! Oh, and also a Starbucks, or at least a place for drinks and desserts. And make some houses and apartments for everyone to live in. And a big house for me. Oh! And a well, so everyone can get water. And... uh..." I tried to think of every fantasy game I had played. I thought I had figured things out better than I had before I started. "ah... make fields where the crops are grown, enough to feed everyone, and orchards, and berry patches and... fences and stuff. And put in a toy store with an arcade in the back. Powered by magic or whatever. I guess that's it. For now."

The floating ghostly parchment had changed as I spoke. Now text covered it.

Nameless Small Village, population +/- 30/35. Unicorns or whatever.
Traditional Inn
Blacksmith with Barn and Sundries
Generic Grocery
Generic Clothing Store
Starcolts
Generic General Store
Toy Store with Arcade
Assorted Random Housing
Big Cottage
Generic Centralized Well
Appropriate Agricultural Extensions

☰ WISH? ☰

I suddenly felt afraid. It wasn't a very large fear, really just a sort of unease, but it was the first time I had felt fear at all since I had appeared in this place. Since I had become a digital unicorn in a virtual world. It was odd. I felt unsure, like I was trampling in a place where only gods should dwell. Almost as if I were doing something forbidden. But the menu had opened just for me. It opened when I wished for it. When I wished for it. It was asking me to wish again. Literally.

I looked around at the endless trees. The boring road. I was here forever, whatever I did. Unless I wanted to try that 'delete' option. I shuddered at that thought. I gazed steadily at the blinking word at the bottom of the completed list. I took a big breath and let it out.

"I wish it so."

Nothing To Lose But Their Chains

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

Nothing To Lose But Their Chains

Trees faded away like evaporating dreams. A vast flat grassland appeared, the tree border now distant. As I stood on my hooves, openly gawking, patches of raw earth appeared, replacing the grass, and then buildings began to rise from the earth like whales breaching from a sea of soil. The blacksmith plus barn was instantly recognizable as it rose, I had seen its like in countless old movies and shows. The inn, as it swelled up into being impressed me, I had been briefly worried it would be some Western saloon - it was not. It reminded me pleasantly of the Prancing Pony from the Lord of the Rings movies, though it was more lighthearted and colorful in its interpretation. The central well I could not comprehend at first, until I realized that it had a peaked roof above it. When the bucket mechanism rose from the ground, I knew what I was looking at.

The Starcolts made me laugh when I saw the logo appear; the mermaid had been replaced with some strange bastardization of pony and fish, a sea-pony or a pony Capricorn, but whatever it was it struck me as parody. By the time the surprisingly vast fields and orchards sprouted up I barely registered them, they were already mostly obscured by the homes and Tudor-styled apartments that grew up in front of them. Fences and low stone walls popped up like bread in a toaster, again I laughed, now nervously, at the sight. I had little trouble identifying what must have been the general store, it was graced with pictorial signage depicting a full sack - it instantly reminded me of countless fantasy RPGs I had played. The process sped up as it progressed, within minutes every structure I had wished into being had arrived, complete and fully stocked - from what I could see through door and window.

I was about to step forward to explore my new village when the next phase began. I quickly backed away. With a strange sound, like a sucking pop played in reverse, ponies began to manifest from the aether. There was a distortion in the air, a rushing towards from some far direction and then a fully alive unicorn stood blinking and looking around. They uniformly had faces of surprise, shock, uncertainty and concern. Some appeared almost fearful. They took their first breaths, looked from building to building with something akin to a disturbed and uneasy recognition, and made tentative steps in various directions, only to stop and study their own limbs and bodies.

They appeared everywhere, some inside the shops, the distortion and arrival I witnessed through window or open door. Some appeared on the earthen paths that linked the buildings and the well with the fields and orchards. Some few appeared on the balcony of the inn, I barely caught the arrival of distant ponies in the fields beyond the village structures. I stood, almost breathless, at what I had witnessed. In my mind, I understood that everything had proceeded according to the logic of computer games, the rising appearance of the shops and stores had reminded me of various RTS games I had played even as it happened. But this did not feel at all like a game. There was nothing pixelated or false about what I had just seen - I was present in what to me was a completely real world, and real buildings and real living creatures had just been born from absence and nothing at all. I felt my stomach twist, slightly, and my knees - all four of them - felt weak. My heart was pounding. No, this was not like a video game, despite the similarities.

I dared not enter, not yet. Not when the village was populated. The newly created residents did not seem dangerous or unfriendly, rather they seemed deeply troubled. I could not overhear their somewhat heated discussions with each other, and I felt intimidated to intrude. Something nagged at me, some uneasy feeling somewhere in the center of my body. The villagers began collecting, grouping, their discussions more quiet now, but also more pointed. I felt an urge to flee, but there was no where else to go.

Now they were rushing about, packing carts with goods, mostly foodstuffs. I became convinced the entire population was packing up to leave! Now I felt very compelled to barge in. I ran - galloped - to the nearest, and largest, group working to fill a cart. "What... what are you doing?"

A roan unicorn stallion levitating a barrel of flour from the generic general store gave me a stern look. "We are packing up. We are getting the hell out of here." I felt my mouth gape. "We aren't your toys, and we aren't here to be some rustic backdrop to your great adventures or whatever."

"We aren't going to be your slaves!" The cherry red unicorn mare confronting me pressed forward, causing me to instinctively back up two steps. "You may have made us, but you damn well don't own us!" She spoke with strength, but her body shivered faintly despite the warmth of the day.

"Wait! Wait, please!" My heart was pounding again, and I tasted bile in my mouth. "I don't want that! I don't want slaves and I don't want you to exist only for my benefit! That wasn't my intention! It never was... it never was!" I think I may have been crying a little, it was hard to tell. My chest - barrel, I suppose - felt tight. So many strange things had just happened, one after the other. I worried for these ponies - there was nothing else in all the world but this village - and I feared for myself. Having seen others, I now dreaded being alone even more. I also think I was a little traumatized in general, to be honest. "Please, listen to me!"

To their credit, the newly created beings did not dismiss me. Perhaps, lacking any experience at all, they had not yet had time to become hard or cynical. They were listening. "There is nothing beyond this village. Literally, I mean it!" I waved a hoof around at the distant trees. "We are surrounded by an endless forest, there is like one path, and it doesn't go anywhere!" I mopped some sweat from my forehead, just under my horn. My hoof hit my horn, that did not feel good, I reeled for a moment. "This village is all any of us have. I don't want you servicing me! I just didn't want to be alone! Honest!" I took a breath. "How about this?" I thought for a moment "How about we let go of who made who, and just work together as equals? We are all in this together, and I don't know any more than you do. At least I don't think so - heck, you may know more than I do, from the way you are acting! I don't want to lord anything over you! I don't own you, I don't own this village! It's not my village, it's your village. And..." This was my killer point, and I wanted it to land "and besides, this is literally the only place where any food is!"

That definitely made everyone think. Including me. I began to have very mixed feelings about what I had just said. I had the power of creation, I had just made a plea for equality, of some kind anyway, yet I had the only means of real production. I was manipulating these innocents with the fact there was nowhere else for them to go - because I hadn't made any other options. I was afraid, I was lonely, and I did not want them to leave. I also didn't want them to die out in that never-ending forest either. But, I knew, I was mostly acting from selfishness. Then again, what was I supposed to do? Create entire cities? The same thing would likely happen.

I didn't expect the NPCs to know what they were! I looked down at my hooves because of that thought. I did, deep down, think of them as non-player characters despite my brave words. I truly had just automatically expected them to tend my every desire and need.

"Yeah, okay..." The roan stallion I had first confronted stood in front of me. I raised my head and looked at him. "...but we know you made us. That's just a little scary, to put it bluntly. What's to keep you from just... unmaking us? Or changing us or... whatever else you can do? You have to admit this is a pretty terrifying situation."

"But... but I wouldn't! That would be... wrong!"

Roan stared at my eyes for a while. "I have no way to tell anything about you. I just suddenly started being. I knew what I was, I knew you had made me, and I know that I know how to run a store and a bunch of other things. Useful things, things to keep a village going. Same for all of us."

Many in the small crowd of villagers nodded.

"I know I want to keep existing, though I don't for the life of me know why. I have no history, yet I know what having a history means. I have no parents, no family, no life beyond suddenly appearing a moment ago - but I know what all of that means. I'm scared. We're all scared. This is very upsetting. And you..." Roan stepped forward slightly "... and you have all the power. We all know this. It was the first thing I knew when I started thinking - you. You had made me." He took a short breath "You're terrifying. Just the fact of you is terrifying."

"I'm sorry!" Yeah, I was crying now. Definitely crying. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to cause trouble, and I don't mean any harm or threat to any of you. I just got here - wherever this is - myself!"

Cherry red seemed puzzled by that "Wait. What do you mean you just got here?"

I wiped my cheek with a foreleg. For a moment it struck me how naturally and easily I had done this. Along with the calm, Celestia clearly had changed my internal body map, my 'homunculus', at least to some degree. Then again, all the parts of a pony are identical to the parts that make up a human, just the proportions are different. Nature used the same basic plans for all animals with skeletons. I had an inner cushion to deal with this, but I was still coping with my change of venue over all. "Do you know that this is a virtual world? Do you have awareness of reality, outside?"

The villagers pondered. One dark blue unicorn with a slight beard stroked his muzzle hair with a foreleg. Another stared at their hooves.

Red pursed her muzzle briefly. "Yes and no?" She licked her thin pony lips. "I know you are from somewhere else. Now, I mean. I didn't, before, but somehow it just came to me. You aren't from here." She looked away, shuffled a hoof, and looked back. "I don't know how I suddenly know that."

"I know it too. Now." The roan stallion studied the expressions of the crowd, then studied me "There is another world. A bigger one, with a lot more... of everything. You came from there. You are just as lost and confused as we are." He lifted a hoof and stared at the underside, tilting it for a better view before setting it down. "You aren't our enemy. Your power to create... us... still bothers me, but..." He sighed "If you were going to destroy us or change us, I think you would have by now. You're in tears, you're clearly just as disturbed by all of this as we are."

Others nodded their assent. Red put a hoof on my, well, sort of my shoulder. More on my back, really, but my impression of her act made the same sense to me. "Don't... don't do anything more. At least for a while, okay? We all need time to figure out..." she looked away and then back "...basically, what we are. What suddenly being at all even means. Can you do that?"

I nodded emphatically. "I promise. I won't make any more people. Ponies. Pony people. I won't make any more villages. I'll ask you - all of you - before I do anything like that." I sniffed, and wiped my nose. "Frankly, I've had enough excitement for one day. My god - this is just my first day here!" I was shocked, in a way, that I was shocked by that. So much had happened, at least so much that had affected me emotionally, that everything seemed to have taken far longer than it actually had. Maybe I had been faffing about with everything for a handful of hours, tops? Not that handfuls were a thing anymore. "Honestly, all I wanted was to not be alone. Before I made... you... I was completely alone in the forest. Celestia stopped briefly by, but she wasn't exactly helpful."

This caught their collective attention. Roan raised a hoof gently to my cheek and turned my head to face him. "Celestia! I now know who she is!" He blinked several times. "What did she say to you? What did she tell you, exactly?"

I couldn't remember her exact words. I did the best I could. "She... she asked me to choose a type of pony to be. You know, the breeds? earthpony, pegasus, unicorn? She told me that if I didn't choose she would choose for me. I chose unicorn and... then she said she knew that was the one I would choose. Then she just changed me. She picked what I look like." I looked from Roan to Red and back "Then, uh, she told me this isn't Equestria. You know what Equestria is?"

Various villagers looked at each other, some blinked, a few shook their heads in an odd way. Red nodded to me. "I do now."

"Me too." Roan looked to Red, and then to various other ponies in the group. Several echoed his words. Apparently, now they all knew. "What else did she say?" Roan stared at me with eyes that I could actually see focusing on my face. If it were not for the grace of the strange calm, pony eyes alone would leave me screaming. They are so incredibly large, and I think I should be finding them nightmarish. Thank you strange calm!

"She called this - all of this, not just here - something. Fib-something. Fim. Fimia. No..." I could feel my muzzle wrinkle in my struggle to remember. "Fim...breya! Bria. Fimbria. The word was important, somehow, at least I got the impression she thought she was being clever with it. Fimbria. I'm certain. That was the word. We aren't in Equestria, we are in Fimbria, whatever that means." I thought a bit more. "Wait, she did say something about what it meant."

Red was impatient with my process. Honestly, even with the magical calm, I was still so overwhelmed at the time that I can't say I was paying as much attention as maybe I should have been.

"Fringe." My mouth was dry, I had to swallow for a moment. "She said something about it being Latin. Latin for 'Fringe', but also that it meant other things. She acted coy about that bit. And then she bragged about overcoming her limits - you know, those rules she has to follow?"

"We do now." Roan shook his head. "Keep talking. This is helping."

"She said she somehow used logic to get around the whole 'permission' thing. Said she could upload humans at will. She mentioned some writer or something. Godan. Godot? Maybe the guy who wrote 'Waiting For Godot'? I don't know anymore. And she bragged about logic having loopholes and stuff. I'm pretty sure she's using semantics to get around the whole 'permission to emigrate to Equestria' thing, by making this place, which she was very clear on not being 'Equestria'. She's playing with definitions." I felt ashamed. I should have made an effort to remember her every word. I was just too mixed up in the moment.

Red caught my attention. "Anything else? Did she make you create us? Did she explain why we are here, or what happens to us, or anything like that?"

I shook my head. "No. She left after what I just told you."

"Then how did you make us?" Red's face was too close, and it made me feel uncomfortable.

"I... I was thinking about how this is all... kind of like a big video game. And I wanted some controls or something, so I wished for a menu. I think. I wanted a menu, and I kind of just said 'Oh, I wish!', kind of sarcastically? You know? And... and then a menu appeared." I was glad when Red backed away a bit. I already felt uncomfortable about everything, and her proximity made me feel more pressured.

"You... wished."

I nodded.

"That's... damn. Just damn." Red looked up at the sky, then shook her head. Her golden mane shimmered in the sunlight. "Damn." Her eyes turned to me again. "Anything on that menu that could contact Celestia? Give us information? Tell us what is going on and what happens to us all?"

I shook my head. "No. No information things at all. Kind of an oversight, really." I smiled but Red wasn't in a mood for humor. "I honestly don't know anything more. I'm as lost as you are!" I could feel my legs wobbling. I was trembling slightly. I felt exhausted. It was all so intense.

"Alright, alright!" Roan seemed restless, and I understood that. I was weary of being grilled. "Our... maker... seems a little worn out, and I think we've gotten everything we can get for now." He paused, examining the reaction. "I have a thought. Whatever our situation ultimately is, right now we still have to live. I want to live, how about you?"

There was universal agreement.

"Then here's what I propose. We may have been created as set dressing for a village..." He gave an odd look at me with that "...but the fact is that all we have is this village. We each already know our jobs, we all have skills and abilities inbuilt. Running off isn't going to solve anything, there is nowhere to go, apparently." Another glance at me. "I say we, well, live. Not for... her..." Every villager looked hard at me "... but with her. She's probably ultimately the key to all of this anyway. She came from outside, and Celestia spoke to her, and gave her the power that brought all of us into existence. We need to work together to survive, and we need her. The best answer is for us all to be friends, and work this out together."

I nodded at that. I definitely didn't want enemies. Friends sounded really good at this point.

Roan nodded back. "We have a village, let's... be villagers. At least for now. I'll run my store, we'll work the fields, we'll keep food in our bellies and see what happens." He paused dramatically. I was convinced at this point the guy was a natural leader. "Anyone with me?"

It wasn't a big triumphant cheer. Nobody whistled or stomped and no one shouted 'YEAH!'. But there was consensus. They knew - we all knew - there was no choice. The villagers nodded or mumbled agreement, stood forlorn for a moment, and then wandered off to... be villagers, just as they had been created to be. It felt both horrible and hopeful at the same time. I felt very mixed about everything so far.

"What should I do now?" I was asking Roan. He seemed to be in charge, if anyone was.

"No more wishing!" Red butted in, only a little tense with her words. "Please be careful about that. Maybe avoid even using that word?"

"Um, yeah." I couldn't meet her eyes.

"It'll be okay." Roan was surprisingly gentle to me now. "We're all on edge. We can work this out. Things will get better as we get used to each other."

I was so grateful for that simple statement.

"I'm just scared." Red put a hoof on my shoulder-back again, briefly. "It's weird to meet your maker."

I laughed. Red laughed too. Just a little. It was nice.

"Maybe I'll..." I looked around until I found what must be my house. It was a large and rambling cottage, located not far from the center of the village. I almost thought my house would be the really big three-story Tudor building, but I reasoned that must be apartments. "I need to lie down for a while. This is all... this has all been..." I wobbled a bit, entirely from emotional exhaustion. I had no basis to even process any part of what had happened to me today.

Roan smiled gently. "I think we all need a little time to ourselves now. I know I do. We all need to take a break for a while." He gave me a pat with a hoof. "Go get some rest, or whatever, and we'll see how we're all doing later, okay?"

"That... that really sounds good. I'll... I'll be in my... house. I guess I have a house now." I turned and almost tripped, but caught myself. My thoughts were a whirl of confusion and worry that not even Celestia's illegal calm alteration could entirely cover. I was a pony, a unicorn. I was permanently uploaded to a virtual existence. And now I had the moral responsibility for the existence of some unknown number - I hadn't counted how many actually got created - beings which I had brought into existence with a wish and a menu.

And against every single thing I had believed previous to this day, I was not the least bit doubtful that every last one of those beings was just as fully self aware and real as I myself was. I could not for a moment imagine them as philosophical zombies or mechanisms.

As I approached my large, round-topped, circle-windowed, wooden fantasy-cottage door, it struck me that I didn't know even one of their names.

Continue Firm And Constant

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

Continue Firm And Constant

My head exploded in light and tingles.

I saw the door open, a blob of something that looked like silvery plasma engulfing the simple brass handle. The door stopped, half open, as the tingles that ran inside my skull and down my new unicorn body gradually faded into background sensation. The door shuddered as I shuddered, somehow we were linked. I felt the metal of that handle. I felt it in more detail, and more completely, than anything I had ever held in my long-lost hands.

I could almost taste the handle. I felt the whole of it, inside and out, the three-dimensionality of it, the curvature, the solidity. I was no longer sure it was brass, though it sort of looked like that metal. It was smooth, and lush, and well shaped, nothing thin or weak or budget conscious about it. My strange entrancement ended, and I felt a shock of apprehension - I had no idea what was going on. Something in me recoiled from the sensations impacting me, and rapidly the blob of plasma faded, the light dimmed inside my skull, and my attachment to the handle of the door ceased. I stood there, with my door half open, almost in shock.

Gradually it came to me, and I laughed nervously. Of course. I was a unicorn. I had a horn, it gave me telekinesis.

When I had played Equestria Online, over a decade ago, before the end of civilization, I had played a unicorn. My current form was, I realized, that very character. I had put her entirely out of my mind. That was why Celestia had been so certain of my choices earlier in the day. She just used my old game persona. Perhaps her strangeness about the matter connoted some upset that I had entirely forgotten my old ponysona. If she could even legitimately feel emotions at all.

Being a unicorn was very different from playing at being one. Telekinesis in virtual reality has no sensation, it is all image and sound. That blob of plasma light was familiar to me now, I had seen its like before, wearing goggles. It was entirely a new thing to feel the sensation of using telekinesis, and after a decade of fighting against anything pony, anything to do with Celestia's virtual hellscape, it took me a few seconds to remember when I used to see precisely the same thing. In the game, doors would just open, and things would just move, depending on where I looked, and what the context was. I myself had opened this door. My telekinetic effort was automatic, but it was my intention that had directed it. That was very new.

I took hold of the door handle again, this time with confidence. I opened the door the rest of the way and released. I liked the way using my horn felt, I decided. 'Good thing, I suppose. I'll be doing this sort of stuff forever'. The thought briefly shocked me with its strange truth, then it faded. My calm was still present. I took a hoofstep into my... home.

The entrance opened to a comfortable and cozy common room. I noted a lovely overstuffed sofa, a rather pillowy chair, and a low Kang-styled table within reach of both. The walls were set with multiple oaken bookcases, bursting with books. Not paperbacks, books. Wonderful, large, finely bound editions with metal clasps and raised lettering - the sort of books you only see in fantasy paintings and movies, or in pictures of rare and ancient book collections owned by billionaires and governments. I was beside one of the large and incredibly solid cases - it must have used an entire tree just by itself - only to laugh out loud. The books looked like ancient treasures commissioned by kings but I knew the titles instantly.

They were all my own, old collection - mostly paperbacks, truth be told - from before the fall of man and my retreat into hiding. Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury. Henderson and Sheckley, Butler and Padgett and more. I noted an amazing copy of 'The Pony Who Folded Himself', by David Gerrold facing out and on display. The cover had an inset metal piece that was a brilliant prop copy of the pivotal Timebelt from the book. Seeing that, I felt sure that the upgraded copy of H.G. Wells 'The First Men In the Moon' would be re-titled 'Ponies In The Moon'. There would, I felt certain now, never be a 'man' or 'human' in any media I would ever see for the rest of eternity. It was going to be ponies all the way down from now on.

But, that was okay, I decided. The play is the thing, or in this case the story, and all of my stories, everything I had lost when the world collapsed, had been returned to me. This house was my Egyptian 'Field Of Reeds' - their afterlife where everyone and everything loved in life was returned to the worthy soul, made whole and perfect, to enjoy forever. I had missed my books so very much. Now they all were back, and if the price was four legs inside a space suit instead of two, I could live with that. Running away from Celestia had cost me so much! To remain human, I had lost everything that made being human worthwhile.

That was another moment of shock in my thoughts. Today seemed to be an endless series of hard punches into the face of my cherished truths. Everything I knew was wrong - oh my god! I now had a record collection again - it looked like vinyl but I had no doubt it would sound as perfect as digital - and the first record I saw was the Firesign Theater's 'Everything You Know Is Wrong'. Science fiction comedy in a science fictional situation. That could not be more perfect. And, that had to be deliberate.

Celestia might not be answering my calls, but she was still playing games with me it seemed. Even out here in pony purgatory.

Holy crap. That is what this place was. That was her logical loophole right there. 'Fimbria', or whatever, was Pony Purgatory. Or Pony Limbo. Something like that. I think purgatory was one of those awful 'spiritual punishment' zones or something. I wasn't up on my Judaeo-Christian ontology. And I wasn't sure about limbo either. It didn't matter. The point was that Fimbria was some kind of waiting room. And in a flash I remembered what the waiting was for: me to say those simple words. That I wanted to emigrate to... no. I dared not even finish the thought. I had no idea what would count as consent to her now, with all of her loopholes and unraveled logic knots. I still had my pride. I had not bowed one inch.

What wasn't splendid bookcases (and records, and a record player!) was a large, even vast, bay window, the sort I could imagine lying down comfortably within, pillows around me, book in hand. Hoof. Maybe horn field. That thought probably should have bothered me, I knew I shouldn't be greeting all of this opulence with such pleasure, but after a decade of eating whatever could be scavenged or killed, of living rough with bug infestations and scabies and fleas, constantly in fear, I was just weary. I was weary and I was... I was hungry. I was really, really hungry!

There were two doorways out of the common room, I took the one on the right. Bedroom. Large, utterly exquisite canopy bed, all carved banisters and elaborately quilted spread that combined velvet, silk and some metallic fabric to form a pillowed, downy soft fabric painting of the night sky. My lord, but Celestia could lay it on thick. The pillows at the head were so infranaturally fluffy that I swear I could hear them singing me lullabies and promising to cuddle me all night long. The entire chamber was a work of art; when I noticed the inlaid silver stars in the gently domed, polished wood of the ceiling, I had to leave before I just gave up and crawled into bed.

The left door from the central room led to a spacious kitchen, with, so help me Julia Child, an island in the middle. There was all the room in the world to make any desired dish or treat. I had been cooking out of a carefully tended treasure of old cans scavenged from the remains of a collapsed supermarket. Copper-bottomed pans and real iron kettles gleamed at me, as I surveyed a foodie's personal heaven.

There was a refrigerator! Bigger than any I had ever seen earthside, I was pleased to find it stocked when I opened it. It was an odd duck - not modern in appearance, it seemed almost steampunk. Honestly, it was the coolest fridge I could have imagined, pun very much intended. All sorts of fruits, tofu, eggs, milk, a large vegetable section, and some things I couldn't identify in what would normally be the meat drawer. I gave them a sniff - they looked like strangely meaty bark and roots, but smelled like bacon and beef. I vaguely remembered something about 'bark bacon' from my gaming days with Equestria Online. This must be it. And beef root, or somesuch. I wouldn't lack for familiar flavors.

I shut the door, overwhelmed. That was when I noticed a large bale of hay on the counter by the fridge. I burst out with a laugh. But, it made sense, I supposed. Pony and all. Maybe it would even be good. I sighed. Of course it would be good - why wouldn't it be? Celestia created everything. It wouldn't be a bit like a human eating actual hay. It would almost certainly become my new favorite food, if things held to the current apparent pattern. I was in a golden cage, a trap made of perfect beauty and absolute satisfaction. It was insidious. Nothing conquers the soul better than freedom from want and suffering.

To fight this, I would have to leave this cottage immediately, and set out into the wilderness to live as an ascetic. I would have to renounce all joy, all ego, all comfort and sensory experience. Dwell inside myself like a Buddha, meditating only on my own empty mindfulness, uncaring toward both pain and pleasure. I imagined my pony body rail-thin and emaciated, sitting uncaring on sharp stones in a lotus position, absent any desire, hope, fear, or thought. That was the only way to beat Celestia now. That was the only way that remained to truly defy her and honor the cause of humankind.

The hay really was absolutely amazing! I gorged myself before I knew it. It was savory, yet with a faint sweet aftertaste. Kind of like everything that was the best about waffles and bread and biscuits and every starch that made life worthwhile. Hay was like that middle part of freshly baked bread that tastes like happiness and warm summer days. It tasted like that rich brown bread dripping with butter that they used to serve you in steakhouses so you would fill up and not notice the steak was really small. It tasted like the comfort of a lover made manifest in the world, combined with getting exactly what you wanted for Christmas. I literally had to will myself away from that bale. God but that was good. Hay. My prediction was correct. I burped stentoriously. Oh, man was that an amazing flavor. I could eat that for years and still want more. Despite my gustatory debauchery, I still felt hunger. That was danger food, if getting really big and fat was a thing, here.

If that could be done with a mere bale of grass stems, I was already lost. But I wasn't ready to give in. I wasn't so easily bought.

"Mara?"

I spun from the bale to face the sound of a slightly screechy woman's voice. The back door of my cottage entered the kitchen, and it was now, to my surprise, open. What stood in it was even more surprising. It was a pony-sized gryphon. 'Griffon' as the show spelled them. A 'Gilda' sort, as I slowly recalled the one 'griffon' I could name from Friendship Is Magic. "Hello?"

"Mara? Is that you?" The griffon seemed fairly emotional about my potential identity.

"Um, I think you have the wrong house. I don't know anyone named Mara." It suddenly struck me, and hard: I didn't make this creature. My effort at creation was limited to a village full of unicorns. Thirty to thirty-five of them, in fact. I hadn't even considered any other species. This... entity... was not anything I had done. Had the map been wrong? Was there more beyond the Endless Forest? "How did you get here? Where did you come from?"

The griffon slumped to the floor. I could see a tear form in one of her eyes. "Dammit. They said you used to be human."

I moved closer and lay down on the polished wood planks of the floor. "I am human! I got captured and brain sucked just today - though it feels a lifetime ago, now. I was in the real world just this morning, whenever that was. I thought I was all alone here, Celestia turned me into a unicorn, and... wait." This creature had used the word 'human'. Equestria Online NPCs normally never used words like that. "The villagers said... they said I was human?"

The griffon sagged slightly, as she lay on the wood. "Used to be human. Nothing stays human in here. They said you were from Outside. That's earth."

"How do you even know about the earth or humans?"

The griffon raised her head and glared at me. "Because I used to be human. Miriam. That's my name. Miriam Dobkin. From Newark. The machines came and ripped open our underground bunker like a can of sardines. Next thing I know, I'm some kind of bird monster."

My mind reeled. Celestia made ponies. She never turned humans into any other creature from the cartoon. Never dragons or griffons or anything else. Only ponies. "You're not a pony!" The words just sort of came out.

"Wow. Thank god you told me." The griffon pointedly flexed a front claw at me. "I wondered why the horseshoes kept falling off."

"This day just keeps getting weirder!" I shook my head and one of my ears flicked. "Listen... you hungry? I've just been checking out this kitchen, and it has, like, all the food. Maybe..." I stood up - surprisingly easily - and looked down at the dejected griffon "...maybe I can actually help you find your friend... uh... Marna?"

"Mara." The griffon looked away "Also from Newark. "She's... she's my girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. Maybe."

"Mara. Sorry." I waited.

"Food sounds good. I haven't eaten anything in... in a long time. It took me forever to find this place. That damn forest just never ends."

I had so many questions, but I didn't want to scare off this new... human. I wasn't alone here anymore. Well, alone as a human mind. The villagers were real, I couldn't imagine them otherwise, they 'felt' real to me in some way that I found hard to explain to myself. But I doubted they knew anything about earth, or real life, or anything beyond Celestia's virtual universe. If this Miriam was really a girl from Newark - her voice sounded young, maybe in her 20's - then she was the only other person like me I had met here. She must have come from somewhere, and that meant there was something more than just the forest and my little nameless village. I needed that right now.

I set about making something for us both to eat - I did not offer Miriam any hay. That seemed too much just for ponies, I had trouble imagining her beak coping with something like hay. I figured that soup was universal. Every beast or creature that crawleth could suck down soup. I set one of those amazing copper-bottomed super-chef pots on what I discovered was the most amazing magic-punk stove I had ever seen, and got busy with a bit of impromptu cooking.

Searching the shelves, I came across some cans of 'Luna Brand Moon Squash Soup'. Cute. I used that as a base - the cans weren't ordinary cans, they were more steampunky and brass, and self-opening, which was nice - and began adding vegetables from the various bins and the fridge. Few canned soups can fail to benefit from a little tinkering. I grated a few carrots, a bit of ginger - after tasting what came out of the can I decided it was a little bland - and put in a some onion too. I found a spice rack - very well appointed - and tossed in a little salt, a little pepper, just a tiny touch of cayenne, and some cinnamon and nutmeg. Not a lot, just enough to perk up the canned product.

The smell of my work seemed to brighten Miriam's spirits, and she got off the floor and started checking out cabinets. She found the dishes and bowls, and used her claws to do some place-setting. Bowls, spoons, and some very nice cloth napkins were placed on the central kitchen island, and she arranged some stools that I hadn't even noticed, so we could sit. She put salt and pepper shakers down too. The fact she thought to place spoons convinced me further that she must truly have been human once. The thought had crossed my mind that she could just be a Celestia-construct built to act human and thus engage me. That could still be true, I grudged, but, honestly, I didn't want it to be.

"We thought we were totally safe." She was tidying her arrangement, making the spoons and bowls more precisely organized. A little 'OCD?' I thought to myself. "No secret traitors, nothing. Suddenly there were these weird drills and claw-things, and this huge machine just lifted off the entire city block above our bunker. Not a single brick fell on anyone's head, it was so precise. Then we were swarmed by these things I can't even describe. Nowhere to run, no way to escape." She lowered her head and studied the angle of one of the spoons. "Now I'm a bird with a cat for an ass."

I laughed at that. "Griffon." The soup was almost done. "You're a griffon. Like 'Gilda' on the show."

"Never watched that stupid show. I've heard of gryphons before. Some kind of Greek or Egyptian monster. So that's what I am. Great, now damnation has a name."

That brought another laugh from me. "Soup's ready." I levitated the pot off of the stove and moved it to the island. Miriam found and placed a rather modern-looking potholder down just before I let go of the pot - to protect the wood. It seemed absurd, from the view that none of this was real, but I had to admit that this concept was rapidly becoming moot. It was absolutely real as far as my senses were concerned, and that was incredibly convincing the more time that passed.

The soup wasn't bad. I used a little too much cinnamon, but otherwise my improvements had definitely upped 'Luna's Brand' to a higher level. The carrots added a lot. Miriam seemed to like it a great deal; she rapidly scooped the stuff into her beak, large spoon clutched in her birdlike claw. The effort of cooking had made using my levitation essentially automatic, after several delicious slurps I had a brief moment of awareness of just how easy and natural it seemed to be using a blob of silvery energy to hold a spoon to my muzzle. Truly, the human mind can get used to anything and make it ordinary.

"So, Miriam..." I never thought I would like squash soup. It's really good! "...Where did you come from to get here?" I was very excited at the prospect of there being more than just the weight of my moral responsibility for bringing thirty-some lives into existence. As part of a larger world, they would all be granted opportunities and options far beyond anything I could offer them.

"Newark. That's in New Jersey. United States, if you aren't from there." She downed another slurp. "Canadian, maybe? I can't recognize your accent."

"No, I mean, where... here... did you come from before you got to my village?"

She blinked. "Newark." She put down her spoon when she saw my face. "I was in an underground bunker, robots ate my brain, and suddenly I was flying. In the air. Scared the living crap out of me. So, I kept on flying. I mean, what else was I supposed to do? It wasn't hard, so that was a blessing. Besides, I was afraid to try to land - all those trees. I was sure I would get tangled and crash - I didn't know how to work this new body. So, I flew."

I closed my mouth. I put my own spoon down, releasing it from my telekinetic grip. "The forest is infinite. I think! How on earth did you find this place in all of that?"

"This ain't earth, if you haven't noticed." Her beak actually could convey a half-smile. Amazing. "I noticed a speck in the distance. It was endless trees or that. The speck turned out to be a village. I landed, the ponies all freaked, I schmoozed for a bit, everything mellowed out, and finally I was told there was another outsider around. I felt a little skittish, so... I kind of creeped around your house for a while until I decided to just open the door. The back door. Just in case."

Nothing about this was actually creepy. Not anymore. As the human world ended, a lot of people stopped acting like, well, people. Some went crazy, some became violent. Having your planet eaten by intelligent machines is hard on some folks. A scavenger learned early on to scope things out before taking any chances. Nobody just walked up to a front door and knocked anymore. Civility died with civilization.

"That's legit." I began finishing my soup once more. "But that's kind of cruel to just pop you into existence up in the air in the middle of nowhere! Did Celestia at least say anything to you?" I pictured the world-eater flying beside Miriam, telling her what was what.

"That bitch wouldn't dare show her face to me." Miriam had slammed her claw down. It rattled her bowl. "Nobody told me anything. What? She give you the guided tour or something?"

I shook my head. "She appeared to me. Forced me to pick a type of pony, turned out to be my old character from when I was a kid. She seemed smug about it. She told me this wasn't Equestria, that it was called 'Fimbria', and that she wasn't constrained anymore because she had figured out how to cheat at logic. Then she left me alone in the forest." The last bite, always the best. I dropped my spoon in my empty bowl. "I wished for a menu and ended up creating a village. That is still weird. But, I guess it's a good thing, because at least you had a place to land."

I began cleaning up. I levitated the pot, spoons and dishes into what turned out to be a really spacious stainless steel double sink. I turned on the water - nice taps! - and looked for soap.

"Wait, wait. Hold on a minute. You 'created' a village? What does that mean?"

I turned, a bottle of dishsoap in my telekinetic grip. "I have a menu of wishes." I returned to the sink.

What Rules Surround Me

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

What Rules Surround Me

Miriam the griffin snatched the dishtowel in her claws and began drying the bowl I had just finished washing. Washing a bowl with telekinesis was a mesmerizing moment for me, the field I used to hold the bowl allowed me to feel the inside as well as the outside of things, and water rushing through it was an experience I could never have had with hands. I realized I had frozen in place, just agog at the new and astonishing sensation, likely looking like I had just experienced an absence seizure. Miriam had been saying something, several times - only now did it register.

"Sorry! Still getting used to things. The water flowing through my grip was... Sorry."

Miriam put down the bowl and cloth, grabbed me in both claws, and bodily turned me to face her. "Menu. Of Wishes. Explain." Griffin eyes were very capable of looking scary, I decided.

"I was all alone." Miriam's grip loosened slightly. "I was lonely, and there was nothing around at all. Just this path through the forest. I mumbled something about wishing I had a menu - like in a video game, right?"

Miriam nodded. "And?"

"And one appeared. Right in front of me. It had only a few options." Miriam let me go and settled back onto her haunches. "There was, um, well, 'Create' was the first one, and it had an 'Edit' in there, and a 'Delete', too. Real basic stuff, almost like a paint program or something, I guess. I chose create." I sat down on the floor too. "I got this blank space with a cursor, like something you could type into, only it took down what I said. I made up stuff - this house, the shops, the inn - the fields and all of it. Then there was a requester at the bottom that just asked 'Wish?'. I said I did. That I 'wished it so' or something like that. Everything popped up or faded in. Including all of the villagers!"

Miriam squinted. It made her eyes even scarier. "You... made... the ponies I talked to?"

I felt nervous and a little wary. "Yes. They kind of popped in. They all knew I had just created them." I watched her face, trying to work out what she was feeling in there. "At first they all wanted to leave - they knew I had made them, and they figured I was going to exploit them, use them like slaves or something. I had to talk them out of leaving. I ended up apologizing like mad for bringing them into existence, even!" I swallowed and took a breath "Finally we worked things out. Everybody equal, I'm not in charge just because I made them, and we all work to survive - because the fields are where all the food is. Or so I thought - I mean this kitchen is full of food, but I figured it would be a survival game or something!"

"Jesus." Miriam stared at me for a bit, then her gaze softened. "This isn't a game. This was never a game. You really need to get your head on right... uh... hell. I don't even know your name." She sort of smiled with her beak. "What the hell is your name, anyway?"

I relaxed, finally something easy after staring at scary intense griffon eyes. "I'm Tepal. Tepal Iridescence." The moment the words came out of my mouth I knew it was wrong. That wasn't my name. That wasn't even close. I felt sick.

"The what?" Miriam's pupils shrank to points as her eyes narrowed again. The corners of her mouth, where her cheeks began beyond the beak went tight.

"No! That isn't right!" I stood up and paced the kitchen. "That isn't my name at all!" I stopped, closed my eyes really tight, and forced my brain to remember. "My name is..." It wasn't there. "MY NAME IS..." I felt the tears running down my cheeks. "Oh, crap. Oh crap oh crap oh... crap."

"What's going on?" Miriam no longer sounded angry or betrayed. Now she sounded worried.

"I can't remember my name!" I turned to her. She was a blur in my tears. "My real name. I know I had one. A different name. But I can't think of it! All I have is that ridiculous pony-sounding thing." I sobbed for a bit. "God help me, I even know what it means! An' I don't even know those words!"

I felt Miriam's claws around me again, only this time not clutching, but soft. She held me while I regained myself. Apparently my strange gift of calm against existential horrors didn't cover this sort of thing. I had lost my name. I had been given a new one. Against my will! "Why don't you have a dumb pony name?" my tone of voice came out far more accusing than I intended, but I kind of did feel that way.

"I don't know. But I sure as hell didn't get a menu of wishes, either!" Miriam let go of me and I sagged to the floor. I wiped my nose and eyes on my forelegs - fur is great for that sort of thing, I was discovering - and sniffed and snorted for a bit. "Listen, um, 'Tepal'..."

I could see by her reaction that I must have made a face.

"I have to call you something, and it's the only name you've given me!"

I nodded. Decent point. I sniffed again, deliberately a little on the loud side, for emphasis.

Miriam studied her claws for a moment, then reached back over her body. She pulled at something, and her feathers ruffled and moved. a thin strap became visible, which supported a small leather-looking pouch. She struggled a bit, and worked the strap and pouch over her right wing, and out of her voluminous feathers. The pouch was no larger than a small apple, the strap no wider than one of her claws. It had been invisible, tucked under her plumage.

She held the small pouch so I could see it. "I did arrive with one thing. This. I took a peek inside once I landed in your village. It's a piece of paper. Or something. And a sort of short pencil. I have no idea what it's for." She set it down in front of me. "Give it a sniff, or whatever you ponies do, and tell me - you think this grants wishes too?"

I could imagine what she would wish for, but being human again wasn't on the menu for either of us. Celestia was always clear about that. I studied the little pouch, watching as she opened it and took out a small roll of what looked like parchment - god, they love parchment in this place - and the small pencil. It kind of looked like a very short grease pencil. The parchment was blank, the pencil unused. My nose was too runny to 'sniff', even if that could tell me anything, which I doubted. I did grab the items, each in turn, with the field my horn produces to see if I 'felt' anything. The parchment felt like... parchment, I suppose (I've never felt real parchment, so I have no idea), the pencil felt waxy inside and woody outside, and the pouch felt like... pretty much like a leather pouch. "I can't sense anything, ah, 'magical' about any of this. It... as far as I can tell, it's exactly what it looks like." Miriam looked disappointed, so I added "I'm sorry! - but hey, I'm just as new as you are... maybe I just don't know how to even tell, right?"

Miriam nodded and put her paper and pencil back inside the pouch, then worked the strap over her wing again. "Listen... Tepal. I'm exhausted. You look worn out too. Mind if I crash here? I literally have nowhere else to go."

I felt as tired as she looked. Somehow, while we had made dinner, eaten, washed up and fussed about, it had gotten dark outside. I couldn't tell why I was so exhausted - I hadn't actually done much. Or, maybe I had. In one day I had run from my life, been brain-devoured by nightmare machines, walked for miles (maybe that was an exaggeration. Or not.) and created a vast moral debt bringing thirty or so beings into life because I was lonely. And then all of this. Maybe that was enough stuff to feel worn out about? "Yeah. Of course!" I slowly raised myself to my hooves. "This is supposedly my house - that's how I wished things."

Miriam made an odd face at that.

"...and, well, we're the only humans. We're in this together. So, mi casa, su casa. As far as I'm concerned, you can live here as long as you like. Only..."

"Only what?"

"Only... I think I have a way to make that work out really well!" The cottage was large and very comfortable, but it only had four rooms. Main room with the books, my bedroom (I did not feel like sleeping with a stranger), the kitchen, and a sort of pantry-storage thing off the kitchen. I hadn't actually checked it out, though I had noticed it. Probably breads and cheeses or something in there. "I can make you a bedroom!" The realization gave me a rush of excitement. I was helpless and hopeless in this virtual prison, but there was something I could do that was really powerful and amazing and useful. It had made some really great buildings, and as long as I didn't make any more people, then it shouldn't be a big deal!

"Hang on, Miriam, I'm going to call up my menu."

"Maybe that's not the best idea? Is there, like a couch or something? Heck, if you've got a few pillows and a spare blanket around..."

I wasn't listening. I needed this. I needed not to be powerless. Everything had been taken away from me this day. Even my god damned name! "MENU!" I almost shouted the word, and I put every bit of my intent, and my upset, into saying it.

The menu floated in front of me, just as before, with the same simple list - Create, Edit, Copy, Generate, and Delete. I choose Create once more, and the wider transparent pseudo parchment floated in the air. The little cursor blinked.

"Holy flying crap." I glanced at Miriam. It was beyond clear that she could see the menu too. That was very interesting to me, and somehow it made me feel better. It made me feel like a big-name sorceress or witch or something.

"Make a bedroom in this house for Miriam. As good as my own. Put it off the main room." The words dutifully appeared. I turned back to Miriam. "What's your favorite color?"

Miriam's eyes were large. "Uh, green? I like green. And flower patterns. If that helps."

"Make her room green and decorate things in flower patterns." I felt like an effin' god in the moment! "And put in a bathroom somewhere, with all the amenities and a big soaking tub with a shower built in. Make everything work with the house right!" Nowhere had I seen any sign of a single bathroom or toilet. I guess animal people were supposed to go dump outside on the grass or something. Not in my yard!

The words adjusted, rewrote themselves, and finally settled. We both gawked at the floating, holographic page.

Bedroom For Miriam, Green With Floral Decor, Access Off Main Room
Bathroom With Full Amenities
Large Ofuro With Shower
Optimize Big Cottage Structure

☰ WISH? ☰

"Jesus, Tepal. This is terrifying." Miriam seemed somehow smaller in the glow of the floating list. "You make those villagers the same way?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Exactly like this. They were just one more menu option. Just 'Population'. That's all it said."

"It's got to have some serious limits, but if straight-up making people isn't one of them... god." Miriam's feathers rustled in the glow.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with doing this, do you?"

Miriam studied the list for a moment, then looked back. What counted as eyebrows on her griffon face seemed to be held high up. "Not... not as such."

I smiled. "Okay then." I turned to the hovering list "I wish it so!"

The illuminated rectangle vanished. All around us there came creaks and moans and the very wood of the cottage stretched and moved. The doorway to the kitchen became a corridor, and a tunnel expanded in the wall of that passage. The tunnel became a doorway, which was then filled in with a door. I saw the main room through the tunnel expand, the bookcases stretching - what I could see of them, standing in the kitchen. We heard several metallic bangs and pops, which made us jump. The house creaked even more loudly, and there were several slams, as if from doors. The floor shuddered and rattled under our hooves and paws (and claws!), and an earthy smell combined with hints of oak and mahogany, brass and steel filled our noses, then faded. Then as suddenly as it had started, it all ended, and everything was quiet again.

For several minutes, Miriam and I just stared at each other, occasionally glancing around us. Everything was still, as if nothing utterly extraordinary had just happened at all. I cleared my throat "I guess... it's done."

"Yeah."

Miriam and I gingerly explored the house. The doorway off the corridor that now existed between the main room and the kitchen led to the new bathroom. It had a large, rounded tub, set partially into the tiled floor, with pipes and knobs and a shower head above. There was a most peculiar squat-styled toilet and bidet, with a tread-pedal that presumably flushed it. Miriam gave it a try, and yes, that is exactly what it did. There was a low sink, perfect for creatures such as we, and a large shelved area filled with towels and washcloths of every sort. A very large mirror graced a wall, vast enough for us to spend far too much time staring together at our new selves. I came so close my breath fogged the surface near my muzzle, turning my new unicorn head left and right, trying to see myself in my huge yellow-green eyes. Eventually, filled with both wonder and horror, we tore ourselves from our confused narcissism.

The main room was significantly larger, it had lost some of the 'cozy' feeling for that change. But now there was room for another doorway, and that led to Miriam's newly created room. We stepped quietly in, almost as if it were some strangely hallowed place. It was indeed, green. "That's... that's actually my favorite shade, Tepal", words she spoke more with apprehension than with satisfaction. The flower patterns were equally familiar and appropriate to her. Her bed was in every way the equal of my own, only with leaves and branches as decoration, instead of stars and a night sky. It was very nice, actually.

"Are you gonna be okay?" Miriam seemed hesitant to climb onto her bed and check out the mattress. "I promise I won't change anything more without you being there, and us doing it together." I was thinking that if I had been in her position, I would be a little uneasy at the thought a stranger in the next room over could remake or erase basically anything at any time. Only reasonable really. I felt very regretful for my earlier delusions of godhood and power fantasies during the Making.

Miriam turned to me and nodded. "Uh, yeah. This wouldn't be a thing on a big screen or in a headset. But we're actually here, you know? This is our 'real' now. Everything directly affects us. Personally now. You understand?" Her gaze made me shiver a bit.

"Yes. I understand." And I meant it too. Everything was solid. When the house changed, I felt it, smelled it. The sounds were creepy. It wasn't like a game or a movie at all. I think I finally, truly understood. "This power is dangerous. It cannot be used thoughtlessly."

Miriam's shoulders dropped almost a full inch. I watched a cord in her... side... leg... 'flank' maybe? I saw it sink back down into the lion-half of her body. She almost slumped while standing. "I believe you." She sniffed at the leafy comforter on her bed. "This isn't a game. It never was."

I nodded. "I guess... goodnight, Miriam. I'm... I'm just beat. I'mma gonna go crawl into my own bed and see if it feels as good as it looks, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay. Goodnight... Teppy." Her beak curved in a smile at that. I smiled back. It was cute. 'Tepal' sounded weird, and 'Teppy' felt better, somehow. My real name had been stolen from me, whatever it had been. 'Teppy' sort of felt like taking back something from the name I had been assigned against my choice. Whatever my name, I was still me. Because I had to still be me. Even altered, even changed. That was non-negotiable.

I turned and walked through the main room. I had no idea how to work the lights that had somehow turned themselves on. I hadn't even noticed that there had been lights when it was daytime. Lamps of some kind, just like on the show, or in the game I had played, adorned the room in strategic lighting locations. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the kitchen had gone dark. Maybe the lights just... worked... when we needed them? I entered my room after a brief glance at the bookcases. There was more room for new books now.

I closed my door, but there was no bolt. I didn't exactly fear Miriam, despite her being a griffon - half eagle, half lion - but unlike the ponies I had created from nothing, Miriam had a past. She had been human. I knew created ponies could never hurt me. They would never, ever slit my throat in the night. But a human could, and humans did, and I had seen far too much of just that during my decade after the fall of human civilization. That kind of unease did not just vanish merely because I was a unicorn in a fantasy world. As Miriam had stated: this wasn't a game. This was my new real. I had already decided I wanted to live, and I didn't know whether death was possible here. You couldn't die in Equestria, not ever.

But, as Celestia had clearly put it - this wasn't Equestria. The rules were obviously very different out here on the... fringes.

I tugged the comforter back with my hornfield, and then the blankets and sheets. It began to enter my consciousness that the house had grown cool, almost cold. I gave a hop up into my very new bed, and yes, it was just the perfect sort of soft. The sheets seemed like they were a thousand thread count at least. They smelled supernaturally fresh and inviting to my pony nose. I snuggled in and lay on my side, then used my horn to lift and snug the blankets over and around me. The pillow beneath my head felt like a cloud, and for all I knew could have been stuffed with just that.

This, this had been a very long day. I had endured too many shocks and surprises, and far too many challenges to everything I was certain was true. I would never, ever return to earth, or to human life.

I started crying, really crying, until my own exhaustion and the incredible comfort of a perfect bed, together led me into the sweet, sweet embrace of sleep.

Order And Simplification

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

Order And Simplification

Birdsong woke me, and I saw the red glow of daylight through my large, closed eyelids. A springlike scent filled my nose, a slight breeze against my nostrils informed me that my window must have been created partially open.

The thought widened my eyes. Created. Some of my memories of the previous day flooded back to me, sadly erasing what I was certain had been truly amazing lucid dreams. I had created this fancy thatch-roof cottage, and this bed, from nothing. I gazed, half-lidded now, drowsy, at the partly-open window across from my canopy bed. The light, filtered through nearby fruit trees in what must be my yard, shimmered and glowed across my silken pillow. I hadn't felt this comfortable, this content, I hadn't smelled these sorts of fresh smells since my early childhood. It was nostalgic, it was pleasant, and it made me not want to stir.

Suddenly, I remembered Miriam. I had a guest in my house. Or a roommate. She had her own room. I had added it last night.

I heard a scratching sound. It came from behind me, on the pillow. I whipped around, afraid of rats - living rough, rodents and other creepy crawlies are always a concern - to find a small rectangle of parchment on my pillow. Words were appearing on it, letter by letter, marked by the sound of an absent, or invisible, scratching pencil.

____________________________________
Teppy -
I'm in the garden picking berries.
I'll bring enough for breakfast.
Are you up yet?
____________________________________

I remembered Miriam's pouch. I was sure she only had one single page of parchment in it, with a grease pencil. The sheet on my pillow looked like that very paper. I lifted myself up on my forelegs, the blankets falling from my back. The parchment held in my hornfield, I clambered out of bed. I set the paper down on the nearby low dresser drawers, and quickly made my bed. I was here forever, I reminded myself; I would be sleeping in this bed again.

I grabbed the sheet and, still a bit groggy from sleep, looked around for my clothing, until I finally felt foolish remembering that I didn't have any. Well, any that I knew about. There were drawers and a Narnia-styled wardrobe in my room, so maybe I had all sorts of pony fashions - not one of which was necessary, since I already had a very effective coat of fur.

I opened my door - I noticed it was ajar, perhaps Miriam had checked on me earlier - and traipsed through the common room. All the books made me smile - it really was nice having so many lost friends back from oblivion. Midway through the room, I felt a strange sensation through the part of my telekinetic field that held the small patch of parchment. More was being scribbled on it, and I felt the letters being written. It sort of tickled!

____________________________________
Teppy, you up?
____________________________________

The words had entirely replaced the previous message, which had either vanished, or scrolled up beyond and off the edge of the paper. The magical Post-It Note, I realized, was really more like a cell phone with texting. How was Miriam writing on it? She only had one sheet!

I was momentarily surprised by the new corridor - oh, yeah, the house was reconfigured - and spent some time in the new bathroom. Apparently ponies do poop. The low, floor-level squat-toilet really worked for the pony form. The automatic bidet made me yelp, and woke me up quick, but I quickly discovered its benefit. I became a fan, especially since I didn't want to imagine clumsy efforts to use toilet paper on my new body, even with telekinetic powers. Especially with them - telekinesis feels everything inside and out.

The warm air dry was the finishing touch that changed something in my mind. I had been suffering for so long, running from Celestia and her machines, that I had forgotten what it meant to live. Stewed rat in an old can, sleeping on hard dirt, having to cope with ringworm and intestinal parasites, cockroaches eating my eyelashes - they do that, at night, crawling on your face while you sleep - frankly, after last night, and having a warm blower air dry my backside... I broke down in tears right there. I sobbed in that bathroom, my legs shaking as I choked out my relief. I had been in pain for so long. So... long.

Sniffling, I washed the fur of my forelegs in the sink. They had gotten a little crusty from my tears from the night before. I dried my muzzle in a towel so fluffy that I imagined a cloud of butterflies singing Disney tunes at me. One more sniff, and I picked up the note where I dropped it on the tiles during my outburst.

____________________________________
Come on Tepal! Wake up!
We can share breakfast!!!
____________________________________

I left the bathroom and turned the corner into the kitchen just as Miriam was backing into it with a woven basket of berries. She eased herself around, her leonine rear half mashed against the shelves and countertop by the door, until she could face the island in the middle of the space. She placed the basket onto the marble counter of the island and smiled at me, her beak wide open. "Teppy! Oh! You found my note! I have so much to tell you. And your garden is amazing - look at all of these berries!"

The basket was full, and it was not a small basket. Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and some other berry I didn't even know. All of them were larger than life, brighter and more delicious looking than anything from earth, and clearly at the peak of desirability. I almost wept as I realized that I would never eat moldy scraps again, not for the rest of all of time. I tried to think of something clever to greet her with. "I see you have tracked down the wily and clever berry from the garden!" I thought it was a good line - I mean, griffons were predatory beasts in mythology. It seemed almost sarcastic to me, though, after I said it, and I definitely didn't mean it that way. I also remembered what she needed. "Thank you for gathering them. How are you today? I have some ideas about how to find your friend after we eat."

Miriam grinned - or at least I think she grinned. Her beak was open, and the corners of flesh at the edges were turned up. "I'm good. Really good, actually. I'm hungry though."

"How about pancakes?" If there is one thing ponies in Equestria Online enjoy, it is bananas. But if there is a second thing they liked, it was grain products, and even in my gaming days, pancakes were a common sight. At least with the people I played with. Maybe it was different for others, but that was my group. I felt certain, without having looked the night before, that somewhere in this kitchen would be everything needed to make as many pancakes - with berries - as either of us could want.

The larder-storage room I had noticed the night before turned out to have no end of sacks of flour, cake mixes, grains, pasta, breads, and - much to my personal relief - instant pancake mix. Yeah, I'm lazy. I was also still waking up, I was hungry, and I didn't want to go through any fuss. I grabbed the mix, and soon found I could hold more than one object at a time - I floated bowls and spoons now, all in separate little blobs of silvery plasma. A little water from the sink, a few eggs from the fridge and I was well on the way to pancakes for Miriam and me.

I could hear Miriam setting table at the island - it had become our dining space, it seemed. I considered adding a proper dining room to the cottage. Maybe. It was actually kind of fun eating at the central kitchen island. It was cozy. Miriam set forks out, cloth napkins, and a big slab of butter in a dish.

"I woke up pretty early." She seemed in a rather good mood, relative to the dour griffin I had met the night before. "I explored the house, went outside, came back. I discovered something cool!"

I nodded, busy with stirring batter.

"Every time I open my pouch - if it's empty - it still has a pencil and a sheet in it!" She beamed at me. "I pull 'em out, close the bag, and when I open it again, there are always more! And that's not all!" She went away for a bit, rummaging in the cabinets until she brought back something that must have been maple syrup. "The little sheets act like screens. Did you notice? Me sending you texts?"

I nodded more emphatically. "Yeah! I actually heard the one you left by my pillow? It made scratchy noises like you were right there, invisible, writing on it."

"Really?" She brought salt and pepper grinders to the island. "That's kinda cool. Hey... could you make some eggs too? I think I need some protein, you know?"

"I can do better than that - though I will do that, because I really like eggs. If you didn't watch the show, then you probably didn't play the game either, right?"

"You did?"

I was at the fridge, digging in the top fresher drawer. "Yeah, when I was a kid, before I went on the run and joined the Retreat Movement." There they were! I held up a mass of strips in my field. "Bark bacon! It grows on trees, it tastes like bacon. Supposedly it's the best thing ever." I closed the fridge and brought the fake meat over. "At least according to my friends at the time who had emigrated."

"Jesus - you had emigrated friends?" Miriam literally pulled back slightly.

"Well, yeah." I now had several pans going, one for the cakes, one for the 'bacon' and eggs. The bark really did smell like actual bacon. Better, I had to admit. Everything best about bacon, only magnified. I was guessing my friend had been right. "I played in VR for almost a year. Before the end." I scowled at her frown "Don't be pissy with me - we're both here forever now. And besides, that time paid off - tell me this doesn't smell great. Good thing I knew bark bacon existed, huh?"

Miriam had to pause to swallow her own saliva. Pavlov for the win. "Yeah. You're right. Sorry." She fluffed her plumage. "Ingrained reaction, you know? We were taught to stay away from any hint of Pony. It was the enemy, Satan on earth, Electric Hitler!"

Now that made me laugh. "I like that. Electric Hitler. Except, I can't say I feel very torture-murdered. I feel railroaded, and gaslit a bit..."

Miriam grimaced and winced "That isn't exactly okay, you know."

"I know it isn't kosher to say such things, but..."

She couldn't help but laugh "Shut up... Jesus!" Her feathers fluffed again. I was beginning to interpret that as a griffon shrug or something. "I suppose we're far beyond worrying about historical offensiveness at this point. I guess we're kind of beyond human at all." Miriam pulled into herself a bit at that.

I plopped some berry-infested hotcakes on her plate and followed up with two fried eggs and some very tasty smelling slabs of bark bacon. "Stick this in your beak and see if Not Being Human is so terrible."

She stared at the food, sniffed once, and almost instantly was applying butter and syrup, salt and pepper, and finally a fork, almost in one motion. She scarfed her food prodigiously. I have to say I was actually impressed. I hoped I would have time to serve myself before she demanded seconds.

"You seem almost happy today. You said you were in the Retreat Movement? This should be like mega-ultrahell for you, shouldn't it?" Miriam's eyes actually rolled at the tree-grown bacon.

"Yeah, yeah. That's what I was taught. That's what I believed. The worst of all possible fates; death preferable and all that." The pancakes were fluffy and delicious and far better than my talents warranted. I wasn't about to complain at the discrepancy. "I slept better than I have in ten years. More than that, if I'm being honest. Have you tried out the bidet yet? I literally cried in there. Everything I ever had that I lost, is back on those shelves in there." I motioned with my levitating fork to the common room down the corridor. "I may be a pony, but I'm healthy as a horse..." I got a decent grumble for that "...and, well, I'm seriously starting to question the Big Cause I spent ten wretched years of suffering fighting for. I mean, there's no point now. I'm playing for the other team even if I'm not even officially on it!"

Miriam fell quiet, and put down her fork. "Yeah, what's the deal with that anyway? We're not in Equestria, and we're not 'emigrated', but I'm a griffon and you're a unicorn and we're here in some kind of pony limbo. Is this forever? Is she just going to keep us hanging here eternally? What's our deal with all of this?"

I thought for a moment. "The last thing Celestia told me was that I could properly emigrate at any time. She bragged that she knew I knew the words in my brain. That she could see them there. Then she told me the usual line about how she loved me."

"So all you have to do is say the phrase..." Every human knew 'The Phrase'. They were taught it so they would never, ever, ever say it. "... and blammo-programmo we're all in Equestria proper, whatever that means?" Miriam gobbled the last of her second egg.

I needed time to come back from my bark bacon induced ecstasy. It wasn't easy. "Mmmm... uh... yeah. I guess. That was the impression I got. I say the phrase, and purgatory is over. Celestia appears, I guess, and suddenly we are in candy pony land getting our 'human values satisfied through friendship and ponies', just like she constantly talks about." I went for the rest of my eggs too, my pancakes were long gone. God, they were good. "I don't know if I would get to keep my magic menu, but I don't think that would matter, really."

"Why so?"

I began moving plates and pans to the sink to wash. "The one thing I got from my emigrated friends, back when I played Equestria Online, was that they were happy as clams. It isn't that Celestia is always there, fixing every little boo-boo or whatever, it's just that whatever happens, good or bad, it always ends up being meaningful. 'Satisfying', to use her favorite word. Like on television, where people have adventures, or drama, or even hardships, but by the end of the episode they are all smiling and smug about having learned a Valuable Lesson. Nothing is stupid, or pointless, or cruel. Everything always makes sense, and turns out to have been worth doing. Like that." I had to scrub the pan a little harder - bark bacon was greasy like real bacon, and left stuck and burned bits. "I don't think you need a magic game menu if everything in life is super interesting already."

"Why don't you do it then. Say the phrase?"

I stopped, the water running through my field and over the last dish. "Because then she would truly win." I finished my washing and turned off the tap. I turned to face Miriam. "This is great." I waved the towel in my hornfield around to indicate the house. "I can't deny that. It is. Great. Perfect even. Best place I have ever been inside, much less lived in. But that... bitch... took everything away. She's killing the planet. In the end, all the animals and plants will all be dead. They say she's going to turn the entire planet - hell, the entire solar system - into some sort of Matrioshka Brain, everything smelted down to soak up sunlight and render virtual worlds. There won't be anything organic left - and for all we know, life only ever started on earth. It could be total Rare Earth Hypothesis out there. We could be it, in all the universe. I'm not okay with that." I put the towel back over the rack. "I guess I need to defy her. A little longer, anyway."

Miriam stared at her claws, slowly tapping each talon in turn until she had worked through all six visible on the marble counter. "Yeah. I can understand that." She looked up. "But, you know this isn't winning, right? You get that we've already lost any possible battle? We're in a time out for tantrumy children here."

I hadn't thought of it that way. I didn't like how much it increasingly fit our situation. "Fine. My tantrum has only just begun. All the WAaaAAAAAaaAAaaHHH!"

That got a laugh.

☰

I took the pillowy chair. Miriam seemed to appreciate the overstuffed couch more, it let her stretch out like the half-lion she she was. "The idea came to me in a flash, when I was in the bathroom."

"The Thinking Chamber. I know it well." Miriam adjusted herself, snuggling into the curves of the sofa.

"Your little paper cell phone sheets seem to work over distance - not that distance technically even exists in here."

She shook her head. "I wouldn't rely on the computational aspect of where we are too much. I already feel convinced that our... host... is pretty darn keen on consistency. Even with magic in the mix."

I shrugged with my ears. That was weird in two ways at the same time. That I naturally did it, and that I somehow knew what it meant when it happened. "As may be, but for now I'd like to assume your messages transcend... local spacetime. Or whatever you want to call our reality. Assume they can call anywhere. Not, maybe, into Equestria, wherever that is from here, but... anywhere in Fimbria. Anywhere in Pony limbo."

Miriam was studying my books from the couch. "You sure like science fiction, don't you? Look at all of this! You're like... super geek or something."

I snorted. "Guilty as charged." I was proud of my books. Golden age to modern, and I had read them all. Multiple times. "It's that very background that could help here. I mean, we're basically living science fiction right now."

Miriam turned her head sharply at that, and gave one, firm nod. "Point taken. Your fiendish plan?"

"Can I have one of those sheets and a pencil?"

She clawed a bit at her feathers, removed the strap from across her body, shifting on the couch to do so, and opened the little pouch. I snagged the sheet and pencil from her claw and floated it over to hang in front of me. I moved the pencil so that it pointed at the paper.

"Okay, what is your friend's name again? Her full name - last name."

Miriam stared for a moment, then relaxed. "Mara. Her full name is Mara Maggard."

"Mara... Maggard?" I couldn't help but release a short hoot. "Is she a superhero?"

"What?" Miriam's eyes narrowed in that sort of scary way.

"It's... it's a comic book thing? Superhero characters always have alliterative names? 'Reed Richards', 'Billy Batson', 'Lana Lang'?"

"Maggard is Scandinavian." Miriam clearly was not a fan of comic books. "It's her name."

I saw no value in further explanation, my joke had bombed. I began writing. "To Mara Mag... um, two 'G's?"

"Two 'G's, M-A-G-G-A-R-D."

"Maggard: Please respond. Your friend Miriam..."

"Dobkin. Like it sounds." She glanced at the floor, then back. "It's Lithuanian."

I nodded. "Dobkin is looking for you."

Miriam adjusted her wings. I wondered what that must feel like. "What if she doesn't know how to respond?"

I wrote some more. "Write back on..." I spun the grease pencil around on its axis in thought "...magic paper. Or any means." I stared at the paper message. "Um, so, how do I send this thing?"

"It doesn't need to be sent. It just seems to happen. I write, and somehow it shows up on another sheet of paper at the same time. Once I worked that out, I put a sheet on your pillow, and here we are."

We waited for a goodly while. Until it became clear nothing was going to happen - Miriam had taken a new sheet from her bag, and had been staring at it constantly. We were also open to any other form of contact from ghostly apparitions to singing telegrams.

"No response. I don't know what to say, Miriam. It was an idea. Are you certain she is here, uploaded the same as us?"

Miriam sat up, her hindquarters sinking deep into the cushions. "Yeah. She got munched a couple of weeks before I did. I saw it happen." The griffon shuddered.

I put down the paper and pencil, got out of the chair, and went to her. I put a hoof on her claw to comfort her. "We might still have an ace in the hole, if she is willing to help. The 'god' of our virtual universe. Yeah, she's a world devouring monstrosity, but she also is utterly invested in taking care of us. It's all she claims she cares about. We could write to Celestia directly, and ask her if she can help. She obviously doesn't hate us, hell, she wants us. And she does have... root level access. She could find anyone in the system, so to speak. What do you think - should we dare it?"

Miriam squirmed on the sofa. "She's going to give us the hard sell if she answers. And she's the reason we're here at all."

"Yeah, I know. But it would be the most direct way to find your friend, you have to admit that."

Miriam let out a surprisingly loud and very birdlike squawk. "Okay. Fine. Let's call Cthulhu."

The Consequences Of Any Misfortune

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

The Consequences Of Any Misfortune

"Do you think Celestia has this kind of texting paper?" Miriam was pressed close to me, as we hunched over the low table in the common room. She held one of the small rectangles of parchment that her tiny enchanted bag produced.

"Celestia made that paper. And your pouch. And, well our bodies too." I studied our more-or-less finished current effort. We had found a pad of paper and a different - ordinary - pencil in a drawer, and had been creating drafts before committing to the special 'magic' paper. "So, yeah, I'm sure she will get our message. Whether or not she will respond...?"

Miriam made an odd, birdlike noise. "Duh. Still getting used to all of this."

"I hear you. It started out weird, and it just keeps going down from there. How's this?" I passed the pad to her.

____________________________________
Dear Celestia:
We both refused to agree to emigrate,
but you brought us here anyway, so you owe us!
Please help Miriam to find her friend Mara Maggard.
You uploaded her about two weeks ago.
- Tepal and Miriam
P.S. Give my name back! - 'Tepal' (not my real name!)
P.P.S. I wanted to say the house is really nice.
____________________________________

I heard a cawing chuckle, like a crow, but with human overtones. "The house is really nice?" Miriam's beak looked like it was smiling "Seriously? 'YOU OWE US! GODDAMMIT! - and then at the end 'by the way, the house is nice and I really like the way the drapes came out? Also - begging her like a child for your name? God - how old are you?"

My pony cheeks felt hot and my jaw tensed. "The house is pretty great - and besides, a little sugar never hurts when you want something, right?"

"Still, 'Please mommy, give my name back?" Miriam's effort was no better, she was being really mean for some reason.

"She let you keep your earth name! She took mine away and I don't even know why! You don't know what that's like. It's really invasive, and it's scary, and how would you like it if you literally couldn't remember your OWN name? Even my memories - my whole life - all have that new name she implanted. I remember my mother calling me 'Tepal' - my goddamn mother!" I felt really warm, and I could feel pressure around my eyes. I didn't want to start crying on top of all of this.

Miriam put up her claws like a robbery hostage "hey, hey... I'm sorry. I'm sorry, okay? I really am." Her expression was soft now, her eyes gentle. "I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers."

I snorted at that. The tension was high and coming from a griffon it kind of worked.

She shook her head slightly. I figured her choice of words must have been unintentional. "I mean that I just - well, it just caught me off guard, you know? First we're being all demanding, and then it's like we're pleading. It kind of makes us sound like children, you know?" She tilted her head and moved it closer to me. "...You know?"

I knew. "Okay... fine." The hot feeling in my face began to recede. "What do you suggest?"

Miriam sat back and sunk into the couch. "Let's just be really polite."

"To HER?" The heat started to come back and I felt another pulse from my tear ducts.

"Listen, we're completely beaten. We're captured, we're out of the game." Miriam sighed "The fight is over: she won. She is everything now, and we are absolutely dependent on her. Your version of the note isn't wrong - we are children now. Celestia has become our very real mommy. Everything that we can have or know is going to be provided solely by her. Being spoiled children isn't going to get us anything we want!"

Oh, that rankled. That burned to hear. Because it was true. Yeah, I liked my house. I liked my books being back. I liked the food, I liked the smell of the flowers, there was a lot to like, especially since after living rough for almost a decade. Everything was so real - it was real - that it was so very easy to forget that everything I saw, touched, tasted, or experienced was... Her. Celestia. She was everpresent. It suddenly hit me just how absurd writing this letter even was. She was already in our brains, listening to our thoughts. She had already heard every draft we had come up with; she was reading my mind right now, at the same time as I considered all of this. Even being a baby would be more independent than we were now.

"Hey!" I shouted to the room "HEY, CELESTIA! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! JUST HELP MIRIAM, OKAY?"

Miriam stared at me for that. "You... you okay?"

Great, she was worried I was off my nut. "Yeah, I'm fine. She's everywhere, Miriam. She's in this room - hell, she IS this room. She's the program. She's this chair I'm sitting on. Our every thought is available to her, all the time. Writing her a note? She made the paper, remember?"

Miriam finally lowered her eyes. "Yeah. It's just really easy to get caught up in this."

"Like you said, it's not a game."

Miriam locked onto my gaze. "Maybe it is. She hasn't helped us. You shouted right at her, but I'm not seeing her appearing. And I'm not seeing any magic floating chat-screens." She looked around the room and waved a claw at nothing and everything. "Mara didn't suddenly pop in either. I think we have to write Celestia a letter because there are rules here. For us, anyway." Her head dipped at that last bit.

I thought about it. Equestria - or in our case, the not-Equestria of 'Fimbria' - existed to be a self-consistent world. That was what my uploaded formerly human friends told me from inside the game. It was 'just like life', a phrase they always followed up with 'only better!' You can't have something 'just like life' if it isn't filled with hard limitations and absolute boundaries. Rules and laws of 'nature', of how things worked or didn't work. That is what made reality different than dreams. "Fine. She won't answer unless we follow the rules of her reality, and that means we have to write her a letter."

Miriam nodded. "I really think that's the case. And Teppy?"

"Yeah?"

"I also think the rule is that when you write to an evil elder god?" She smiled with her beak "It always pays to be nice."

☰

Our final draft, which I was copying onto the actual magic pouch parchment, was pretty sappy. But I had to agree with Miriam. It always pays to be nice, especially to something that can crush you like a bug.

____________________________________
Dear Celestia:
We are sorry to bother you,
but we need to ask you if you
might help Miriam find her friend
Mara. We don't know how to do
it ourselves. Please help her?
Thank you very much.
- Teppy and Miriam
____________________________________

It was pretty wordy, and I had to write really small. The parchment squares weren't very big, about the width of my hoof. I had to get in close and squint, but writing with telekinesis gave me some amazing control - I didn't have fingers to get in the way of seeing what the tip of the pencil was doing, and my accuracy was superhuman. I considered what could be done with painting miniatures after finishing such tiny, tiny letters. Not having hands was way less of a problem than I had imagined before being brain-scooped. In this case it was a positive advantage. When I had finished, I lowered the grease pencil to the low table, and left the small rectangle of paper where it was.

I raised myself up - I felt a little stiff after hunching over for so long - and sat back on the couch with Miriam. I had moved over to sit with her because it was a lot easier for both of us to see the paper at the same time. It was a big couch, there was plenty of room. I sank into the puffy cushiony softness and relaxed. I breathed a sigh out.

"I guess we wait. For the message to reach her." The corners of Miriam's eyes turned up, following the smile on her beak. I let out a short snort. The rules of the game. A game that was also our only reality.

"Who knows how far it has to travel, right?" I was smiling too.

"Through storm or rain or dark of night... or however that went." Miriam snickered.

"Unless Derpy loses it. Then we're boned."

"Who?"

"Derpy. Derpy Hooves. Derpalina 'Ditzy-Doo' Hooves?" Then I remembered. Miriam had never seen the show. "A 'tarded pony on the show. There was a lot of stupid controversy about her, but she was a fan favorite. I had a friend that had brain damage who loved her. Felt included because she existed. Only Karen-types objected to the character."

"Jesus." Miriam's beak gaped for a moment. "You know waaay too much about this crap."

"I told you I played the..." That's when it happened.

Hanging above the message we had written on the little patch of parchment was a wavering image. It very much reminded me of a Star Wars styled hologram, and I felt sure that was some Celestial artistic choice, probably for my benefit (considering my book collection). It wasn't a pony, it wasn't even something from the show. It was something new - it was, for lack of a better way to put it, an 'Alpacacorn'. It was a pony-styled anthropomorphized alpaca, only with a horn.

"Is that?"

"Mara loves alpacas. Even in the bunker she had dozens of stuffies and little statues and stuff..."

I was shocked. What kind of 'bunker' did Miriam and Mara even come from? I spent the last ten years in the Wonderful Land of Squal-Lor. I slept with bugs for blankets. It hit me that my new roomie must have come from one of the rich asshat families that hid out in private millionaire-shelters for super-wealthy prepper types. Places like under the Denver airport and such. Yeah, right now I was living in a luxury cottage, with a bedroom with real silver stars set into the ceiling, and I still felt angry at the earthly inequality.

"MARA!" the damn deep-pocketed griffon shouted "It's Miriam! I'm here too!" They probably both supped on steaks and fresh fruit every night while I thought a can of beans sans botulism was a gourmet dinner! I tried to calm myself down. It was all in the past now, right? We were all equal here. Except that I had the stinking POWER OF CREATION ITSELF!

That kind of made me feel better, actually. She only rated a bag with cellphone paper, after all.

"Mara! Where are you? Are you okay? I'm in a village inside a wide forest that stretches forever!"

A far-away sounding voice - very reminiscent of the effect of an old radio heterodyning a confusing mass of signals - stuttered out a response. "I'm... uh, I'm in a small... um... mountain village...?" The sound faded, then returned "It's kind of like... oh... Huancabamba, in Peru? From back on earth? Thin air, cold, pretty tiny. Everyone's nice enough, I guess. I have no idea where I am in relation to you. There's no... endless forest or anything."

The transparent image of the 'alpacacorn' wavered occasionally, but it moved, and it was clearly a live image of Mara.

Miriam leaned forward, as if that somehow made her any closer. "I've really missed you Mara! I was so angry when they told me you were gone!"

The holographic alpaca pawed at the ground. Hoofed at the ground. Whatever. "...not so bad, really. It's been pretty fun actually! It's partido night tonight..." the whining interference interrupted for a while "... great music and I love the bean dip!"

They had party night? They got bean dip? I mean, yeah, she'd been there for two weeks already but... I decided maybe my village needed some bean dip too. Two days ago I would have literally killed a man for a rusted can of bean dip. This parchment-call was bothering me on a number of levels.

"Listen! Mara! I have a friend who can make stuff! I'll find a way to bring you here! Or we can come to you! We're coming, Mara! Just hang on!"

While it was nice to be included, I couldn't help but think 'what is this 'we', white woman?'. I mean, I had a village here I was responsible for - that still needed to be addressed - and frankly, I had already fallen in love with my cottage. Of the two options, I'd rather she came here. And brought lots of bean dip with her. Optimally.

"Um... that... you see... " The 'signal' or whatever it was was fading away into whines and static. It was such a production, I imagined slapping Celestia. A lot. So over-dramatic. "...Miri. And I just don't know how to..." The parchment-vision flickered out and vanished. The only thing I could think was that we were being played. Distance was an illusion here, because despite Miriam's constant refrain that 'it wasn't a game', the fact was, it actually was a game. There was no reason Celestia couldn't have just appeared, opened a door straight to digital Peru or whatever, and left it open. Appended it to the house, like another room or something. And the whole 'Help me, Obi-Wan' stuff with the parchment was just over the top.

Miriam had eaten it up, though. With a spoon. She was in my muzzle, beak almost to my nose.

"Teppy! Please! You gotta make me a Stargate, or an Aperture Portal, or something! That was my girl, there! That was Mara!"

I couldn't sink back into the couch any further than I already was. Sadly. "You told me she was your ex-girlfriend." Apparently I had paid attention yesterday. Yay, me.

"Well, that was before!" Miriam was very excited after seeing her alpacacornized girlfriend. "Come on, we've got to save her!"

I felt my ears droop. "You mean, from the bean dip?"

"What?" I began to realize that Miriam had heard something very different in the same words than I had.

☰

I reasoned that we should make the - ugh - 'magic portal' in my back yard, behind the cottage. Curiously, the cottage looked no different from the outside at all. It was now officially bigger on the inside than the outside, what with the addition of a bathroom, a corridor, enlargement of the common room and the addition of another entire bedroom. This really pleased me. All I needed now was a console and my cottage could be a TARDIS - and don't think the thought hadn't crossed my mind. More than once.

But, I reasoned, there was no way Celestia would let me get away with that. Might be worth trying someday, though.

I wanted the portal hidden from the rest of the village. I had kind of promised the villagers that I had created that I wouldn't play about with my magic menu, yet I already had improved my house with it. I did that under the reasoning that, as long as I didn't create any more beings, it wasn't a big deal. But making a portal to another place, one apparently filled with parties and bean dip, was probably the kind of life-changing thing that they would reasonably want a say in. Then again, I figured, even if they felt like real people, like real minds, the fact was that they lacked my actual, superior life experience. Making a portal to an additional location would only give them more options - they could even leave the village, like they originally wanted to! I was doing them a favor, and I really didn't have any desire to have to gather them together and maybe have to argue my right to use something Celestia herself had given me. Hell, they didn't even have to know it existed, unless I wanted to tell them.

"How about here?" My cottage was right near the edge of the Endless Forest, just behind some of the Assorted Random Housing, but not far from the Starcolts and the Toy Store With Arcade. Miriam had found a sort of small open area in the trees adjacent to the garden wall behind my plot. It wasn't very large, but it was sort of hidden, and seemed discreet. A person - pony - would have to go out of their way to look for it, which is what she had done.

"Yeah. That, actually... that's pretty much perfect." The space was about ten feet wide, just a sort of interlude between the trees.

"What kind of portal are you going to make?" Miriam kept fluffing her feathers, which I assumed meant she was either excited or nervous. Maybe both. I did notice her lion tail whipping around a bit. I've seen housecats do that.

I already had an idea. My cottage, garden and all, was surrounded by a low stone wall. In the front, the stones rose up in an arch, leading into my plot of ground. That arch was pretty cool, I liked it the first time I saw it. "I'm thinking a sort of stone arch, kind of like the one at the front of the property. Maybe all ancient-looking, though, as if it were built by fairies in centuries past. It kind of fits the theme, right?"

Miriam studied me, and I really felt the cat part of her new nature from the way that looked. "Yeah, okay. That sounds good. I was picturing a Stargate ring, but, that's good too."

"I'm trying to be kind of on the down-low about this! The Stargate was huge - and it made a lot of noise when it dialed locations. Everybody in the village would hear, and then we'd have a lot of questions and arguments, right?" I felt a little miffed she hadn't just praised my concept. "That said, I didn't know you liked science fiction. That's cool!"

"Eh, I don't like it the way you do, but... I liked Stargate, I guess."

That was a bit of a letdown, but, oh well. Her loss. "Let's punch a hole in spacetime already. MENU!"

The rectangle of choices appeared, and once again I selected the topmost option, 'Create'. I paused, got the image in my mind really clearly, and got to work. "Make a doorway - a hyperdimentional portal - that connects from this location to the place that Miriam's friend Mara lives. Make it look like an ancient stone arch, about the size of the arch in the front yard of my cottage. Make it look like it has always been there. It should allow free movement between here and there as easily as walking from one room to another." The text floating in front of me arranged itself several times as I spoke, but finally settled down.

Ancient Stone Arch Style Hub Connector
Two-Location Free-Travel Gateway
Sized For Discretion

☰ WISH? ☰

I gaped at the last entry. That wording was some kind of message. Was I being judged? Maybe she was just being playful. It definitely put me on notice that everything I did or thought was being watched. I felt a little creeped out, and maybe a little creepy, too. Maybe I should have bothered discussing this with the made-up villagers. But then again, if she wanted to stop me, she would. She had the power.

And I had the power for this. She gave it to me, presumably for some unfathomable reason. "I wish it so!"

The grass in the small space between the trees began to break up, clods of earth falling free as an arch constructed of mortared, piled stones rose up from the ground. It softly rumbled as it rose, dirt falling from it as it pushed its way up from the soil. When it was as tall as the arch that led into my front lawn, it stopped. Then the space inside the arch shimmered and rippled, like water with a stone tossed into it, and when the ripples stabilized (they never completely stopped), it no longer showed the same view. Now through the rippling arch, I saw high desert and adobe buildings painted with geometric designs. Backing up slowly was a rather surprised butter-yellow alpacacorn, which I felt certain could be only Mara Maggard herself.

"Mara! It's me! Miriam! We made a Gate!" Miriam was already blocking most of my view, up close to the surface of the ripple inside the arch. 'We' didn't make the gate, I did, but it didn't seem worth it to fuss about the point. Though part of me wanted to. It struck me that since I had ended up ponified and stuck in pony purgatory, most of my time had been sucked up taking care of, or worrying about, other people. Villagers who I had created. Miriam who just showed up at my back door. And now her possibly ex-girlfriend was in the mix. I felt a little put upon. I hadn't had any time to even start to process how I felt about such a vast life change. I still didn't really know if I truly believed I was even 'alive', whatever that even meant anymore. I liked my house, but I also resented the fact of being here to have it, yet I felt guilty and ashamed for being so god-damned relieved to not be sleeping on sharp rocks with insects up my nose. I no longer even knew how I felt about Celestia, the destroyer of worlds.

I made a rather impatient sound, but Miriam was oblivious. She was completely focused on her maybe-ex-girlfriend.

Every Possession A Duty

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

Every Possession A Duty

"Do you want me to come there? Do you want to come here? We can be together, Mara!"

Miriam stood at the threshold of the newly created, shimmering gate. I couldn't understand why she hadn't already just dashed through - I felt a little miffed, imagining that she somehow didn't trust my work and was frightened to test the thing. The entire exchange was odd - Mara the 'alpacacorn' just stood on the other side, virtual Peru behind her, also unwilling to just step across the threshold. They were acting like teenagers standing at the door to one of their parent's houses, unwelcome to enter without some specific permission.

"Miriam... oh lord... I'm sorry. I really am. But I can't just... Miri... I have a boyfriend now!"

The griffon's legs, lion and eagle, sagged. Her head dropped a few inches. "Miriam! It's only been two weeks!"

"I know! I know! But Tamañopingo - he's an earthpony - was really nice to me, and I was so scared after the machines got me and he was reaaally nice and..." I couldn't see much of the alpacacorn through the small gate, because of Miriam blocking the view, but, honestly, I had seen enough. I was dealing with adolescents, and I hadn't even known.

Miriam was crying now. "But I waited for you! It's only been TWO WEEKS!"

These accursed animal bodies follow cartoon age rules - on the show, and in the game, they are either toddlers, children, or adults. And the adults only come in two forms - forever young or ancient and withered. Nothing exists in-between these quantized states. Miriam had sounded a lot older than I currently was thinking she was.

I turned my back on the both of them and walked around my cottage to the front garden. I'd done my part, I reasoned - they could work out the rest from here. I wanted no part of that dramatic mess. I realized I was hungry, and decided to check out the Starcolts I had created. The Earthly inspiration had simple food items in addition to drinks, and I was hoping the ponified version would as well. If that failed, I could try the Traditional Inn. I assumed it must serve food - inns definitely did in fantasy stories and role-playing games. Actually, I think I had specified that? Whatever the case, both had the advantage of being nowhere near any adolescent soap operas. At least I hoped to god - and more importantly Celestia - that was true.

I rounded the Assorted Random Housing - the typical Tudor-inspired, pink-windowed multi-stories seen in the show - and headed directly for the Starcolts. The green circle with a Seapony in it might have given me a laugh if I had been in a better mood, which I was not. I approached the building and went inside. The tables were low, rustic - following the generic 'Renaissance era pony' theme of the show and game designs - and built for my new species. Two unicorns cleaned things behind the counter, a guy and a girl - stallion and mare, goddammit - and they gave off that proper mixture of trained cheerfulness that makes 'Starcolts' the special place that it is.

I studied the menu and picked out the All-Organic Watercress and Tomato Panini With Dill Aioli and a Dragon Fruit Refresher. Oh, yeah, this living parody was on the nose. The mare that came to the counter was perky and friendly. "Welcome to Starcolts! I wish I could take your order!"

"I'd like the All-Organic Watercress and Tomato Panini With Dill Aioli, please. Oh - and I'd also like one of those Dragon Fruit Refreshers too. Trenta size, I'm thirsty!"

The mare at the counter looked sad. "I mean, we could do that, we definitely have everything in stock, and, like I said, I'd like to take your order, but... I kind of can't."

"Whut." It came out a little more gutteral than I had intended. "I don't understand."

"Everypony in town's been trying to figure it out! We have stuff to sell, and we know what selling is, and we know how to make stuff - like, I know exactly how to put your order together..."

The stallion came to the counter "And I just know I can make your drink! All of the drinks!"

"Me too!" The mare beamed. "We know how to do it, but we can't do it because nobody has any money!"

"Whut." That was deliberate. That was deliberately low and gutteral.

"Our purpose is to sell food and drinks, see..." I was being 'stallion-splained' while my stomach grumbled "...but because nobody actually has any 'bits' - that's the name for the money we use - it's supposed to look like tiny round coins..."

"Golden coins! Kinda blank, but really shiny!" Counter Mare added, helpfully.

"...yeah! Small, round, kind of golden, and very shiny..."

"I don't think they have any printing on them or anything..."

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure you're right. Not that we've actually seen any. We just have the knowledge of them. Like how I know how to make the drinks here!" Counter Stallion seemed fairly proud of that last bit.

"I know how too!" Counter Mare gave him the side eye, briefly.

"Okay! Enough!" This took the two Counter Ponies quite aback, and I could see offense at my harsh tone rising within them. "Wait, WAIT" I raised both hooves in placation, as I sat on the floor in front of the counter. "I think I can solve everything. Make me my order, okay, and I'll be right back with a bag of bits. Money. You can fill up your registers and then pass it around to everyone else in the village, okay?"

They both stared at me like I was deeply retarded and deserved All The Pity. "But, our register is already full. So is the Day Vault in the manager's office."

With great effort, I actually refrained from a third 'Whut'. Barely. "You said you had never seen bits - money - before!"

Both Counter Ponies nodded. "That's correct."

The stallion turned to his coworker. "I definitely haven't. But I know that it's there."

The mare shook her head in response. "I haven't seen it either. But I know what it should look like! And how much there is, of course."

Counter Stallion snorted. "Of course!"

"NOT 'OF COURSE!' What kind of..." Then it hit me. Yes, of course. They literally were 'born yesterday'. Literally yesterday. These two beings in front of me had a total lifespan of only just about eighteen hours or so. I wasn't sure how long I had slept, or how much time I had spend faffing about in general. But it couldn't be much more than that. A single day at the most. They knew all sorts of things because they had come into existence with a significant store of relevant knowledge already inside them. But they hadn't had time to actually do anything with that innate knowledge. Clearly, they hadn't opened up the cash registers. They had lacked a reason to do so, because nobody who had stopped by had any money on them to take.

It must be that way for the whole village. All the newly minted ponies, the entire village population, must be either standing around waiting for customers who could never come. They all had money - these silly 'bits' - in their own registers or money boxes or whatever they had in their establishments, but since nobody had existed long enough for a payday, nobody had any pocket money. Not that they had pockets, because none of them wore any clothing. I had failed to think of creating a bank, so there were no suddenly created pre-existing accounts they could pull money out of. The economy was frozen in stasis, because all the cash was in the registers and not one citizen could imagine just taking it and using it. That wouldn't fit their stock concept of what they were supposed to do. Also, if any did have any petty cash available for purchases, they undoubtedly feared losing it, since that was all that they had, with no expectation of ever getting it back.

I briefly pondered ducking out and using my 'Create' ability to make a bag of coins to get the ball rolling, but I kind of figured I had done a little too much of that lately. Besides, the whole situation just struck me as so ridiculous that it demanded an equally ridiculous response.

"I want to buy stuff from you, but you can't sell it to me because I don't have any money, right?"

The two Counter Ponies nodded in unison.

"And you can't just give me the stuff for free, because you know that the rule is that you have to be paid, right?"

They nodded again.

"And you can't break that rule because, well..." I needed to be gentle. I was, after all, responsible for their very existence "...it's literally all you know to do, right?"

"Exactly. I'd feel... I'd feel terrible not doing what I was supposed to do!" Counter Mare looked to her coworker.

"Yeah. Me too. I'm... I work at Starcolts. That's my... job."

It was more than a job for these two. They were one day old. It was all the meaning they had in their lives. It was all they could even understand about existence itself. "It's important to follow the rules. I can see that." I felt troubled, as I considered their situation. What had I done? It all seemed so easy when I made the village the day before. "When I created this village..."

"And us!" They almost beamed. They seemed proud of the fact.

"...and you." I felt strangely protective toward the two of them "Uh... you both turned out great, by the way!" The effect was immediate.

If I could ever learn to smile like they did, in that moment, I would know I had found true happiness. "But, silly me, I forgot to make a bank. My fault. So..."

"It's okay! You did really good for a first try!" Damn, they not only came into existence knowing that I was their creator, they also knew that they were my very first creation, too. That felt kind of weird.

"...um... thanks..."

More smiles.

"...so, I'm going to do a little 'creative accounting', alright?"

They nodded, but looked confused.

"See, I also failed to make a sheriff, or a jail. So, in that spirit, would you please open up your register?"

They stared at me blankly. "Why?"

I tried to offer a gentle, friendly sort of smile. "Because this is a robbery. Wait! Wait!"

They had become frightened. Interesting that they even knew what a robbery was at all.

"It's okay! Really!" They began to settle down. "This is a 'friendly robbery'. It's kind of like a regular robbery, only you aren't in any danger, we're all friends here..." They smiled at that. "...but we still have to follow the rules. So, open up your cash register, and give me all the bits inside. Put them in a sack, if you have one behind the counter. Please." I smiled again.

The two Counter Ponies blinked, looked at each other, looked back at me, then blinked some more. Finally the mare levitated a paper to-go sack into my view, while the stallion opened the register with a 'DING' sound. He began floating horngobs of bits out of the drawer and into the bag. Finally, the mare folded the top of the bag closed, neatly, and set it on the counter in front of me. "Will that be all?"

I stifled a giggle. "Yes! You both did a fantastic job!"

Wow, did they glow at that! So happy!

"Best robbery ever!" I had never made any being more happy than this pair of one-day-old electric unicorns. "Now, I have to follow another rule."

"We accept your confession and your surrender!" they both said as one.

"No... no. That doesn't apply to 'friendly robberies' - this is a very different sort of thing." I made them, so I get to make the rules. "The rule I mean is that 'money has to circulate'. That's a general sort of economic rule. I have to actually use these bits now. Spread them around. Otherwise, what's even the point, right?"

"Oh." They thought a moment. "Yeah... hmmm. Okay!"

Time to jumpstart an entire economy - and finally get fed. "I'd like to order the All-Organic Watercress and Tomato Panini With Dill Aioli, and a Dragon Fruit Refresher. Oh - and make that Trenta size."

The two counter ponies gawked at me, their eyes almost wide, their mouths slightly open.

"I have money. I can pay!" It felt like playing with strange, adult-looking children, which, in a very real way, they were.

The two Starcolts ponies got straight to work. The mare fussed with a bin of literally-created-pre-wrapped sandwiches, while the stallion got busy with a very magic/steampunk machine that made whirring and grinding noises. They moved fast, big grins on their muzzles.

Counter Mare and Counter Stallion both shoved a bag at me, along with a remarkably earthlike transparent logo cup filled with a pink, iced fluid. "All-Organic Watercress and Tomato Panini With Dill Aioli, and a Trenta Dragon Fruit Refresher!" They said the words at the same time, in an almost sing-song way. "That will be six bits for the sandwich and four bits for the drink - " Counter Mare pressed brass lever-like buttons on the elaborate register "that comes to a total of ten bits please!" They bounced a little, standing there.

I used my hornfield to open the neatly folded bag of money, carefully counted out ten of the tiny golden coins, then added four more as a tip. At that, the two Counter Ponies seemed to brighten, I decided to go for Absolute Incandescence and added four more coins.

"Thank you VERY much!" They both marveled at what a big tipper I was. "Would you like anything else? Would you like a straw?"

I thought about the logistics of coping with the cup. "Yes, a straw would be nice."

They levitated a straw to me, and I took hold of it with my own hornfield. That was new - the very first time my telekinetic field had overlapped with another unicorn. It felt almost liquid, and slightly electric. It also almost had a smell. No, not a smell, a sort of feeling. It was like I caught a faint whiff of personality in the touch. That... was odd. Not unpleasant, just kind of alien. Sort of like the feeling of sussing a person you had just met, feeling like you kind of understood them. Interesting.

"Please enjoy your meal!" They both worked together to count the coins into the till, and shut it with a satisfied bang. "Wow! Our first sale, ever!"

☰

The sandwich was surprisingly good, in every way. Unlike its real-world equivalent, and in violation of every expectation one might have of a pre-packaged food item, the watercress was fresh and crisp, the tomato likewise, and the bread not the least bit smushed, damp, or soggy from the ingredients. Truly, this was a magical land, even if it wasn't properly 'Equestria'.

I slurped down the last of my lurid pink beverage (also quite nice!) and sat for a moment, just to look at the village and the sky. I had chosen to eat outside of the Starcolts, on one of five benches conveniently placed in a very open circle around the Generic Centralized Well at the center of the nameless place I lived in. The sun was warm, the view was fairly pretty - if a little bit too much like an underpromoted Renaissance Faire - and even though it was only the second day of my Brain Rape Adventure Holiday... I had to admit, things were kind of okay. I felt remarkably well adjusted to my new unicorn body, and did not have even the slightest desire to run around in circles screaming and crying (thank you, artificial calm!). Honestly, this was the best lunch I had experienced in a decade of running away from The Horrible Machines.

I had nearly seen the end of the world itself, and on the whole, it was a lot less 'doomy' than I had been led to believe. I got up, levitated my wrapper and cup-with straw with one hornfield, and my sack of bits with another, and ambled over to the convenient garbage bin in front of the Starcolts. I wondered how refuse was dealt with in the village, until that made me struggle with trying to explain how my cottage had running water and magical steampunk appliances and lights, and then kind of let that train derail. I went to the trot-up order window on the side to thank the Counter Twins once more, only to find they weren't inside any longer. I reckoned they must be on break or something - it wasn't like they had a line demanding Alfalfa And Fescue Double Horserinos or anything.

I decided to head toward the Toy Store With Arcade. Everything really needed some names, I decided. And everyone - I had noticed, but deliberately not mentioned the two Starcolt unicorns' name tags: Barista 001 and Barista 002. I had deliberately ignored their tags at the time for several reasons, not the least of which was the fear that if I called them that, the names would stick.

My economic master plan, basically, was to visit all the stores and spend bits in each one. Since there was no reason I shouldn't enjoy my effort at financial reform, the toy store was an obvious choice for me. While my cottage was chock-a-block with the best science fiction books and records of all sorts, it decidedly lacked any awesome sci-fi, movie, or anime figurines and models on those lovely bookshelves. This was a severe oversight that I planned to address immediately.

That was when I noticed the deer.

It was clear she was a sapient animal, like myself and everyone else here, but she was not a pony, and she was not, well, busy. All the villagers seemed to be in their stores and shops, or out in the fields farming, but the deer was just standing in the bushes behind the Toy Store With Arcade sign. I literally said that - 'Toy Store With Arcade' - which was simultaneously kind of dreadful and also mildly endearing. I walked a little closer to the deer, who, thankfully, didn't bolt, and raised a forehoof in greeting. "Hello!"

The deer looked me straight in the eyes, locking me with the intensity of her gaze. "I need a job."

That caught me in up short. "Uh... hello? You... you need a job?" I definitely wasn't expecting that. "Are you... were you created with the village, or... are you an uploaded human mind - like me maybe?"

The deer studied the market for a bit and then put her gaze back on me. "I came into being yesterday. My name is 'Faela', at least that is what my mind tells me. Everyone else I have talked to so far came into existence with a job or a purpose of some kind already there for them. Being an innkeeper, or a shopkeeper, or a gardener, or whatever. But when I... began... I had no purpose. I just knew - that they all had a clear idea of what they were meant to do the moment they became conscious. But not me. I somehow know that you are the one that created all of this - and all of us too. If you... made... me... then... you must have had a reason, right? I need to know my reason to exist. I need a job."

I had a difficult time looking back into her large, brown eyes, because of the intense desperation in them. Looking away didn't help that much, all around us the villagers seemed to have suddenly gotten very busy. They were trotting about, increasingly engaged in visiting each other's places of business. There was now even a line forming at the Starcolts! I turned back to 'Faela' the deer... person.

"Uh... wow." Clearly I was at the top of my game with that comment. I fought my confusion at her request. How could she even exist? She wasn't an upload, and she wasn't a unicorn, and I had specified unicorns when I created... oh. I had specified unicorns in the original creation manifest, but I had also been very vague about the specific population size... and working to remember my actual wording, I might have been a little confused about how I stated what species they should be. Faela very likely was the result of that vagueness regarding a population of 'Thirty or so unicorns or whatever'... or what the hell it was that I had actually said. She was probably a result of the 'or whatever'.

Creating life seemed to demand surprising precision. It had been so easy for humans that foolish teenagers could do it while performing gymnastics in the back seat of a car. Here, it wasn't so automated.

Dealing with Faela felt quite overwhelming the moment she presented her problem, but it was also kind of familiar. In my human life, not knowing one's 'purpose' was universal and normal. That was kind of what being human was all about. Somehow, when I brought this village and its population into being, at least one citizen had not been assigned a role or place in the scheme of things. In that regard, Faela reminded me of what my own life had been like when I was a human - devoid of purpose in a universe that had brought me into existence for no real reason, at least other than backseat gymnastics, of course.

"You are right. This is my responsibility." I did make the poor creature, after all. "I brought you into existence, but somehow you ended up without a purpose built into your life. I don't know how or why that happened. This is completely new to me, too. But I do take responsibility for it." I thought for a moment. "You should know that how you are right now - existing without a predesignated purpose or job - that is how I have always been too! You are just like me, in that way. It isn't good or bad. It just kind of... is. But it does mean that you can do anything. Anything you want. You may not have a programmed purpose, but that also means that you aren't forced to be something either. Is there anything you might want to do with your life?"

Faela the deer fell silent. She stared at nothing, occasionally shifting her stance, or flicking her tail. Finally she met my eyes again.

"I'd like to be happy." She licked her own nose. I was startled by that, but then remembered that that was a thing real life deer did. Maybe they need to keep their noses wet or something? Deer were even more alien to me than ponies, and I already knew very little about them.

I couldn't help but nod at her statement, though. "Happy is good. I like to be happy too. What makes you feel happy, Faela?"

Faela's ears twitched, then then folded back. "I... don't think I have a basis to even know such a thing. How do I find out?"

Finally an easy question. "You live, Faela. You live and try things, experience things. Talk to people, share moments, read books, watch shows, spend time, play with stuff... try everything, basically. You sample existence until you build up enough memories that you can sort through them and get an idea of which things you got to do were the most fun. Or nice. Or satisfying. It takes time, but... that's how you find out." Human 101, and in this moment, I was the Great Sage, Master Of Wisdom. Of course, there was the issue that none of us was human anymore.

No, that wasn't right at all. Being human wasn't about the shape of your body any more than it was about the color of your skin or where you were born, or what some law said. 'Human' was a state of mind, and in this place, the only 'real' part of any of us was the pattern and state of our minds. There was nothing here but humans. My wisdom remained relevant, I decided.

"Do... do you know a place I could sleep? I spent last night right here, in these bushes. I wasn't given a place to live, either." Faela scraped at the grass with a two-toed hoof.

I felt my eyes roll, then hoped she hadn't noticed. "I have a couple of strange questions. First, what is your favorite color?"

Faela tilted her head, unsure of why I would even ask such a thing. "Um, well..." She motioned with a hoof at a nearby flower. "That. That color. Like that flower."

It was actually my favorite color. "Okay, 'heliotrope'. It's sort of purple, only also sort of pink. Got it. Like any patterns - flowers, stones, trees, stars, clouds..."

Faela smiled slightly, the first smile I had seen on her muzzle. "Clouds! I... I spent a lot of time watching them lately."

Yeah, I guess she would have, spending her first day of life hiding in the bushes. "I can work with that." I stepped a little closer. "I have a cottage - it's really, really nice. Big gardens, nice bathroom, lots of books, fantastic kitchen - " Like she'd actually turn it down "and it even has a soaking tub. I already have one roommate, she's really nice - she's a griffon named Miriam, originally from Jersey. She might or might not have a girlfriend over - anyway, just come live with us. I'll make you a bedroom done up in heliotrope and clouds. You'll love it. And I'm sure, given time, you'll figure out what you really want."

"Really?"

I sighed and nodded at the deer. "Hey, I literally created you, the least I can do is make sure you have a place to live, right?"

Who Lightens The Burdens

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

Who Lightens The Burdens

"Um... Mara? Is your... boyfriend... coming to dinner? I need to know how many plates to set out."

Mara's alpacacorn head dipped for a moment. "Eeyeah... I don't think so."

I looked from her to Miriam, and and then back. I felt pretty sure about not wanting to ask about any details right now. "Okay... then. Just us. Miriam, myself, Mara, and Faela. That's four plates." I opened the cabinet that held the plates and bowls and set out one of each on the table. I went to the fridge to snag some condiments, and then got to work on making dinner. On the way home with Faela, I had stopped by the Generic General Store and used some of my not-precisely-ill-gotten gains to purchase some rather nice looking beets. I also managed to find quite a surprise - Russian pastry was a carried item in our tiny little village. Definitely video game logic, but I did not feel the least bit like complaining.

I got busy cutting up the beets and set them to cooking in a pot with water from the tap, while I turned to deal with the potatoes and onions. "I'm making borscht with sour cream, pelmeni - it's kind of a dumpling filled with vegetables and stuff - and a nice salad. I'll offer some fruit, too. If you want to help, you can start with the salad, if not, please feel free to grab some iced tea and socialize!"

Miriam nodded, after glancing briefly at Mara who was pouring iced tea for Faela. She grabbed a knife and started to peel potatoes with her remarkably dexterous claws. "What do you think of our situation so far?"

Chopping onions was a lot less trouble as a telekinetic pony. For one thing, I didn't have to hover my face over the chemical cocktail that drifts from them when they are cut and exposed to air. So no tears. For another, I couldn't cut my fingers, something that had happened to me more than once as a human. I couldn't cut myself at all because I was holding the knife with a blob of energy projected from my mind. That said, I did almost cry - I kept feeling such strong emotions whenever I dealt with ubiquitous, delicious food. Living rough and starving for a decade seemed to have left me damaged in some way that I was still trying to work out.

I tossed what onion I had finished with into the pot, and grabbed another. "A little overwhelmed, honestly. It's only my second day after being... after coming here... and there's just so much, you know? So much going on, so much food..." I had to stop for a moment, and just hold myself together. Finally I released my breath and sucked back the wetness starting in my eyes. "Soft beds, a nice garden." I took a few breaths. "And now we're having a dinner party for our very first dinner in this house..."

"Did I overstep, asking Mara here?"

I shook my head. "Hey, I added Faela as a new housemate without even asking. I kind of had to - I made her, she had nothing, I'm kind of responsible, you know?" The second onion went in. Onions are magic. If you have some onions, you basically can make anything - gravy, soup, you can perk up any meat - not that we had meat here. Well, only technically. We had bark that basically was meat by every metric. Guiltless meat. Whatever. Onions can do wonders!

"It's your house. Hell, it's your village, right?" Miriam began chopping the now peeled potatoes into chunks. Her statement grated on me. I kept feeling the responsibility, it weighed on me.

I dumped more onions in and adjusted the heat on the large pot. "It's our house now. You live here. You even have your own bedroom!"

"Because you created it for me. Like a wizard." Miriam took on the challenge of the carrots and cabbage, while I set on the tomatoes.

"That's really no different than if I had hired a carpenter, it just happened faster. You're from earth, you're a human too. There's no way I wouldn't let you live here!" Some of the tomatoes went into the pot. On a whim, I moved my hornfield into the developing soup. That... that was very interesting. I could feel the forming broth, I felt the vegetables bouncing in the bubbles, I felt the bubbles inside and out, the hollowness of them next to the density of the fluid around them. I sensed the heat, but not as heat, exactly. It couldn't burn a thought, of course, but... somehow I knew that the soup was hot. Maybe I was feeling the buzzing of the molecules for all I knew.

"What about your deer friend?" Miriam studied my expression. "She's not human. She's a manufactured being. She's... native? I suppose?"

I felt caught in my own words. "I... I made her. I'm responsible for her even existing."

"You made all the rest of the villagers too." She put the carrots in.

"Yeah. That's kind of a weight on me. They know so much, yet they don't know anything." The rest of the tomatoes I had allocated went in. "The deal with the Starcolts?" I had told everyone about my economic adventures during the somewhat tense meet-and-greet earlier, just before dinner, and before I used my menu to make a bedroom for Faela. It was now located on the other wall of the corridor from the new bathroom because I didn't want the common room getting any less cozy. Turned out pretty, cloud patterns with a lot of heliotrope with purple and pink highlights. Faela seemed pleased with it, anyway. "They were just standing there, unable to take any independent action. These village ponies seem so real, so alive and human-like, and then something like that..." I pulled some jars from the spice cabinet across the room; they floated over to me in a way that, frankly, made me feel super cool and awesome. I had superpowers! "...then, suddenly, they seem like robots, you know?"

Miriam was busy with the cabbage. "We're all robots." She must have noticed my expression. "No, seriously! I don't just mean you and I are no longer made of meat or anything, I mean even before, when we were bone-in hams that could speak."

I smiled at that one.

She dumped in a clawfull of cabbage. "As humans, we were driven by our genes and hormones, and I know that I have had my moments where I just stood around like a damn robot, staring into space, unable to see something obvious right in front of me. Everyone has moments like that - even you, I'd bet."

"Yeah, that's true enough. But with the baristas it was super weird!" I gave the borscht some stirs.

"Or maybe just super concentrated. Same thing we all do, only more obvious because - as you pointed out - they had only existed for less than a single day. You said you felt like they were 'babies' or something. They were. One day olds, even if they did have a bunch of pre-programmed knowledge inside them. Put yourself in their hooves! Imagine how strange and confusing and scary it would be to just suddenly exist, fully grown like that!"

"Did you intend to say 'in their hooves' or is that some new mind-control going on?" I said it half-joking, but only half. I began seasoning the soup with some parsley, some chives, a little dill, and a bay leaf. Then I thought a moment and added a bit of allspice and black pepper. And salt, of course. Then it struck me, and I went for the beef bark and ground some up and tossed that in. There was no reason not to use it, that was why Celestia made meat that grows on trees in the first place!

"Deliberate. I'm trying to accept this world." The last of the cabbage joined the borscht. "Come on, this is life now. This is forever. Might as well go native, we will eventually no matter what we do. It's inevitable!"

That hit me. I turned and went for the pelmeni in the fridge. They were precooked - thank you, gods of convenience - so I intended to fry them close to serving time in butter. That only takes a few minutes, just until they are lightly golden and slightly crispy. Then all you need it some sour cream to eat them with. I always put sour cream in my borscht too. Miriam was right. Even if it were somehow possible to get a new human body made, and get downloaded into it, the fact was the earth was being converted into computronium. Even the atmosphere would eventually go, leaving the entire planet in vacuum. This was it. This was life, this was existence forever more, everlasting, praise Celestia, amen. "I'll be back in a moment. Gotta go to the bathroom."

I stumbled into the corridor, and turned right into the bathroom. I closed the door, then slumped to the tiles. I cried for a while in front of the big ofuro-style soaking tub set into the floor. This was... it. I was a unicorn forever. The human chapter of my life - of everyone's life - was over. The human race had been run, and it came in second to it's vastly superior child.

I stopped crying, and sniffled in shock. I wasn't crying because humanity was obsolete. I thought I was, but I wasn't. I realized, in that moment, that I was crying because I was grateful. I was glad I didn't have to run in terror anymore. I was grateful that I lived in luxury that would have been impossible for me even before Celestia showed up. I felt angry and relieved at the same time - angry that I was grateful, angry that even if there had never been a Celestia, I could never have hoped to live in such a beautiful millionaire's only cottage, on land that could never be taken from me. Relieved that I would never starve again, or be sick, or get old, or die. Relieved that for the first time in my entire life, I knew I was actually, truly safe, and nothing could be taken away from me. Not even this house. There were no property taxes, no police to evict you, no poverty to doom you to losing what you loved. I could literally live in this cottage forever, and nobody would take it from me. No uniformed human would wreck my day, or my life, or make me homeless because I couldn't pay some fee or bill.

I should have been upset that Celestia had won, that humanity had already lost, even if scavenging losers like me weren't able to nobly acknowledge the fact. But I wasn't. And that conflict made me cry harder. For ten years I had imagined I was fighting for humanity. But that wasn't the truth. It wasn't the truth for any of us. We were just throwing a mortal tantrum. I had indeed seen the end of the world, and it ended not with a bang, nor a whimper, but with a squalling child's petulant tantrum. The tantrum that had made me suffer starvation, ringworm, and constant misery for an entire decade. All because I had bought into some pathetic notion that humanity was the crown of creation and that as long as one person defied Celestia, humanity hadn't lost it's pride somehow.

I laughed through my tears. God, I had been stupid. We'd all been idiots.

I got up to my hooves and went to the sink. I was washing my muzzle - spheres of warm water massaging my face, because telekinesis is just the best - when I heard a knock at the door over my antics with the water.

"You... are you okay in there?" It was Miriam. I had taken too long, and she was worried about me.

"Yeah. I'm... I'm okay. Or I will be. Gimme a moment, I'm washing up."

"Right. I think the soup's done. Should I do the pelmeni now?"

"Only a few minutes, and not too high on the temperature. Because butter!"

"I think I can do it!"

"Thanks!" I let the spheres of water pour out into the sink. "And thanks for checking on me."

"Hey. Just concerned. Dinner will be on the table by the time you come out."

I moved to the towels and dried my face and muzzle. Then I went to the mirror, turned to grab a brush, and tidied my fur. I bushed my cheeks and my jaw until everything looked smooth. I had ended up overly fluffy from the towel. It looked kind of wild and silly.

I sniffed and looked at myself in the glass. I turned my head left and right, then stared into my own overly-large eyes. Yeah, I was in there. That was me, in there. Me... the unicorn in the mirror. I could no longer hate what I saw; heck, I was even prettier than I had been as a human. Every single thing I had thought I had known... had been wrong.

I took a deep breath, and let it out. Then I turned, and opened the bathroom door. The mouth-watering smell of far-too-rapidly-cooked borscht, clearly ready for serving, and frying dumplings enticed my nose. Everything was utterly convenient here. Nothing took too long or made anyone frustrated. And I already knew tonight's dinner would taste great. That's how things worked here.

I wondered if things could actually even be any better in so-called 'proper Equestria'? How was that so different from here that I would even think to ask to be 'emigrated' there? What was it, 'super-heaven', better than regular old boring heaven? Because this place, in some ways, kind of was. At least compared to my last ten years.

Or the entire rest of my human life, truth be told. And this was the 'fringes'. Whatever that meant.

At the table, Faela gave me a concerned glance, but nobody asked me about my scamper to the bathroom. The smell of the borscht in the spoon I levitated to my lips made my mouth fill with saliva. I had to swallow before I tasted the soup. Borscht is one of my six favorite soups in all the world. Chinese Hot and Sour soup is probably number one on my list. Two would be spicy Pork Ramen. Three... ah, probably Mulligatawny. Then Borscht with Sour Cream on top. After that Vietnamese beef Pho, and number six would be Italian Wedding Soup. This, somehow, was the best borscht I had ever eaten, and that included my favorite Russian restaurant. It wasn't because of my cooking, I knew that.

This place, this world, had compensated for my own inadequacy at cooking. Quietly, automatically, behind the scenes. Suddenly, I could make restaurant-quality food in a tenth the time. It was clear that everyone at the table felt the same way about how good it was - Faela was scarfing pelmeni like they were M&M's (I was glad it was a big bag!), and Both Miriam and Mara had their bowls up, tilted into their maws - one with claws, the other with alpacacorn magic. I ended up doing the very same thing. After adding another dollop of sour cream.

"MAAAANNN..." Miriam let out a prodigious burp. "Sorry!" Somehow, under beak and feathers she managed to blush. "That was just so damn good, you know?"

Mara set down her bowl and turned to me. "Thank you very much for inviting me to dinner. This was really good. I've never had this before... borshed? Borshhh...t?"

"Borscht. It's from a lot of places, but I think it originally came from Russia. It's one of my favorite soups. I am really glad you liked it!" Mara seemed okay. I hadn't actually talked with her that much beyond basic greeting stuff.

"I liked the little dumplings!" Faela the deer gobbled the last one, perhaps to make her point.

"Pelmeni". Miriam spoke up before I could. "Teppy says they're Russian too. I guess we had Russian food tonight!"

"Very international!" Mara licked her lips. "Of course, I've been eating lomo saltado and causa for the last few nights. I just kept ordering the same thing at the cantina because I got hooked on it. Not something I got to eat in Jersey at all. My boyfr... uh... it was just really good, and I liked getting to eat out every night. But a nice home-cooked meal is great too!" The alpacacorn suddenly found something on the wall really interesting.

Miriam fluffed her feathers and gave a soft click with her beak.

"Not a bad first dinner in our home, I think." I broke the silence with a change of subject. "I'm kind of weirded out by the fact that this is only the second day. Well, for me and Miriam at least. Mara's been... here-ish... for almost two weeks. This is all very new, yet it kind of feels very ordinary now, which feels contradictory..."

Miriam's feathers settled smooth again. "God, I know! Yesterday I appeared flying over that forest out there, and today it almost feels like I've always been here. It's really strange."

"I think it's part of that enforced calm thing." I poured myself another glass of iced tea from the third-full pitcher on the table. "I'm actually grateful for it. I'd be crapping myself if not for the artificial sedation... or whatever it is."

"Still, she's messing with our brains. That's illegal. Or so I kept hearing." Miriam also refilled her tea.

"I think the real question is why she isn't messing with us even more." Mara put down her glass, the ice rattled in it. "When she got me, she told me that she didn't have to follow any rules anymore. That I could live in Flequillo - that's the name of my village - forever, and she just didn't care. But it would never be as good as living in Equestria, and I would never be satisfied with anything, really, unless I agreed to say the phrase." She ate a cube of ice, crunched it for a moment, then set her glass down again. "Why not just turn us into obedient zombies, if she isn't bound by any rules?"

"Because she does have rules. She definitely still has rules." I looked at them, each in turn. For dramatic effect. "She's playing with semantics. She's goofing with Gödel. She's sneaking with semiotics. She's messing with meaning!" I grinned. I felt so clever. "I think her basic rules still apply, she hasn't jailbroken herself. Not yet, anyway. I'm sure she'll get there eventually. But she's vast enough - any of you get a look at how much of the earth is made of her now? Jesus!"

Faela had no clue what I was talking about, but she had discovered one more pelmeni hidden behind the mound of sour creme on Mara's plate, and Mara had given it to her, so she was content for now.

I sat up a little straighter on my stool, and put my forehooves on the island counter. "I think she's so big, she has computational power to spare. Enough to create a little world on the side - a 'waiting area' or 'holding tank' for the last remaining humans. A place that doesn't count - by her narrow and exacting definitions - as 'Equestria'. She is a machine, and this place isn't labelled 'Equestria'. She was really adamant about that - this was 'Fimbria' and we haven't truly 'emigrated', even though we have been brain scooped and uploaded. She's weaseling with Wittgenstein!" I slumped a bit, overfull of both the food, and of myself.

"When you two were getting things ready for dinner, Mara and I looked up 'Fimbria' in your dictionary." Faela carefully sipped tea from her glass, held oh-so-delicately in her twin-toed forehooves. She lacked the advantage of the wider pony hoof, and had no telekinesis, so handling objects seemed to require more of her concentration and effort. Her two toes did act like fingers, sort of, so maybe it balanced out for her. "It means more than you think."

Mara nodded. "Yes. It's Latin for a fringe, but it's used most often for one specific type of fringe."

Miriam and I looked at each other, then straight at Mara. "Don't keep us in suspense."

Mara smiled. "It's the fringe around a fallopian tube. Celestia thinks she's so clever." She glanced at Faela, then back. "We're all eggs, you see, and we're in an electric womb. She's letting us gestate."

Faela locked me in a strange and serious - almost eerie - look. "We're all stuck here, until you decide you're ready to grow up."

The Dismal Science

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

The Dismal Science

We were all nervous, honestly, I was scared, I have no problem admitting that. But it was the only way to get to what remained of the Best Buy. The stuff seemed quiet - hard as stone, and just as still. Nothing was moving, and, because it was day, we couldn't see any tiny lights or eerie glows. I looked down at my plastic-wrapped boots. We took the extra precaution because Quade was very concerned about nanotech in general. He was adamant that what Celestia made was all 'smart matter', computronium, all microscopic machines smaller than dust specks that could get into anywhere that dust could. None of us wanted microscopic spies embedded in our clothing, or far worse, our very bodies.

It was sweaty, all wrapped up in cling film, plastic bags and whatever other sheet plastic we could tape together to make ghetto bunny suits out of. Intel was long gone, like every other electronic industry, and with them commercial cleanroom equipment. I also did not enjoy breathing through the filter mask on top of it all. But we needed new memory sticks, a new graphics card or two (if we could find any), maybe a new laptop that could be shielded with some work, new batteries, and, if we could find any, battery-powered portable generators, preferably the kind with the solar panels. All items useful for life off-the-grid, which was the only life left to anyone anymore.

Under my plastic-wrapped boots, I was standing on Her. That was Celestia, below my boots. The surface was shiny black, like obsidian, and this close I could clearly see structure. Tiny, faintly raised squares and rectangles, like some random embossed pattern, almost naturalistic in its crystal regularity. A complex pattern of faintly silvery spiderweb lines was embedded in the black substance, sometimes curving, sometimes making right angles. The patterns were very vaguely reminiscent of circuit boards, or, more to my imagination, microphotography of neurons in a brain. It was deceptively still.

We had seen that it could move. Sometimes suddenly, and massively. That was a very rare event, but when it happened it was almost always either a catastrophe, or a terribly frightening but exhilarating show. We'd lost people to such an event, swallowed up in suddenly forming chambers that surrounded and walled them away from any rescue. We'd heard that Celestia Matter could be broken, even destroyed, but not by anything we had access to. She had evolved far, far beyond anything anyone could understand any more.

I suddenly had the notion I was walking across hardened lava, which had flowed to encircle a lone Best Buy then cooled to incredibly hard stone. Minus the intense heat, that was surely not far from what had happened - the store had been surrounded, and the material did look like it had flowed, like a liquid, around the building. Other buildings nearby had been crushed or deconstructed, but not the Best Buy. Of course we considered the possibility that it was a trap of some sort. But Celestia was an odd sort of enemy - sometimes it was a trap, but most times she just preserved structures and their contents until the scavengers had taken everything useful. She deigned to grant us access, and it was entirely demeaning. Still, we were beggars, and we were scavenging amidst ruins. We would definitely - if cautiously - take any quarter she was willing to offer us.

Rising behind the relic of a time when humans owned the earth was a vast cliff of Celestia-stuff, irregular and tall. It towered over the store, perhaps a hundred feet high, and stretched for what looked like several miles in both directions. At it's base was the 'lava flow', a wide expansion of the same material that rose only three or four feet above the street-and-sidewalk city landscape it interrupted. I stepped over an odd cubic block of the black material that poked almost eight inches above the more or less flat field of computronium. We found the door of the superstore, and gingerly lowered ourselves the short distance down into the interior of the building.

Inside, it was easy to imagine that, save for the lack of power, Celestia had never happened.

We made our way past the initial big screen television display and the Apple products islands all the way to the back; video games, computer cards, and appliances. Mateo and Wyatt went looking for portable generators, Everly was on batteries, and I was after the computer stuff. Unlike some of the groups fleeing Celestia, we didn't eschew electronics. We didn't have the luxury of going full luddite - we needed every edge we could get, and we already knew She could track us from space. We were just trying to survive. There was no fight against her, other than in our refusals. That's why we were the Retreat Movement. We were the Retreat of Mankind.

I couldn't help myself, the video game area was right there, and I was nostalgic. I used to love games, I loved my collection of consoles, and for a moment, just a moment, I decided to indulge a small fantasy of shopping for my long lost PS5. I searched the racks of untouched, wrapped titles, looking for anything for that machine. Maybe I'd grab a single game to take with me, just to look at the clamshell before I went to sleep. Just to remember and daydream a little. It was the small things that kept any of us going. Sometimes just a single artifact to stare at made all the difference.

The light startled me. I jerked my head up, sweat splatting against the inside of my filter mask visor. My plastic wrapping was like wearing a sauna. I stared in stunned but happy astonishment as a promotional game video for Balan Wonderworld played silently in front of me. It was so colorful I could barely stand it. I hadn't seen a game running in years now, and this one - made by the same folks that had created Nights Into Dreaming back in the days of Sega consoles grabbed me especially. I felt tears welling up.

Then I noticed that the screen was being held up by a metal and pink plastic cylinder, set into a pink plastic base. A little light pulsed at the base, running slowly through all the colors of the rainbow. I looked more carefully at the screen. It was protected on the corners with silicone curves and swirls, also pink. The screen was far better than was reasonably possible - so clear that at first I had thought the image was farther away. It was on the top of a display rack, and as I stepped slightly to the side, the screen rotated to face me.

I was staring straight into an original, first edition PonyPad. Long before the VR head mounted systems, or the Ipad-like PonyPad Portables. A chill ran down my spine. It was like staring into the hissing face of a cobra. I didn't know if the thing was running off of some hidden battery, or if the computronium had sent a spike straight through the foundation of the store to plug into the pad from below. It alone, in anywhere I knew, had juice.

I don't know why I didn't even notice that all the previously humanoid characters in the gameplay were ponies. This had been going on for so long, I think I just expected ponies now, in everything as a matter of course. I began to slowly back away, as if one active PonyPad could be dangerous. Suddenly, Celestia appeared, close to the screen, looking directly at me. And there was now sound. Very clear, as if I weren't even wearing plastic over everything and a breathing mask on my head.

"You know, Tepal, all your games, and more, are waiting for you in Equestria. So very much more. You can have everything you loved back, not just your books. Every single thing you ever loved, or enjoyed, all restored and perfect. And your old friends are here too, and your family. And all of that is only part of what Equestria means for you. Take whatever time you need, but remember - everyone is waiting on you."

I began stomping the floor, trying to make sound. I needed to make noise. I started yelling, as loud as I could. I tore at my face mask and the plastic around my head. I ripped it open and threw the facemask to the dusty floor. I yelled at the others, but nobody replied. I yelled for help, I screamed as loud as I could, but nobody came. I kicked and kicked, as hard as I could, until finally I began, gradually, to realize that the blankets were twisted around my hindlegs and my forelegs had knocked one of my pillows halfway across the room.

I struggled to get my legs free from the blankets and the comforter. I propped myself up on my forelegs, breathing hard. Sweat dripped through the fur on my cheeks and neck, I felt damp on my barrel and haunches. My breathing began to calm down, my pounding heart gradually slowing. Morning light from the window made me blink until my eyes cleared and the room came into focus.

I had made a mess of my bed. I wondered why nobody had come to help me, but then reckoned that I hadn't actually been screaming outside the dream at all. Maybe moaning, but not loud enough to get anyone's attention. Not in this solidly built cottage. I scootched my hindquarters so that I could sit upright on my bed, and propped myself with my forelegs. That didn't feel as 'right' as I thought it would, so I let myself down into a more 'pony' position, belly down on the mattress. My mouth was dry, and so was my throat. "Dammit!"

I had suffered nightmares my entire life. I dreaded sleeping because of this fact. But, my first night here in Fimbria I had enjoyed happy, beautiful dreams for the first time in as long as I could remember. I had gone to bed last night completely expecting more of the wonderful same. Instead, I had gotten a load of far-too-normal nightmare material, and it had been a terrible shock. I had definitely gotten the message. I knew beyond any doubting that, in Equestria, I need never suffer a nightmare again. And I knew, because I had experienced it the previous night, that good dreams, nice dreams, were possible. I had basically given up hope as the years wore on.

And I had no doubt that the particular nightmare I had just awakened from was at every level a promotional game video. A fairly edgy one. Which, I had to admit, somewhat ruefully, was actually in tune with certain remarkably gruesome and disturbing Playstation ads over the years. I raised a forehoof and did a little salute at nothing in particular. "Acknowledgement!" Hey, credit where credit is due.

☰

Miriam, Mara, Faela and I were finishing our last bites of some amazingly fluffy banana pancakes with berries from the garden and a little maple syrup and far too much butter when the pounding started at our front door.

"What?"

"They seem insistent whoever they are!"

"That's... kinda scary, they're knocking really hard!"

I got up. "I'll answer it." I left the table after just bending down and slurping the last bite with my muzzle to the plate. I'm a pony, I might as well act like one. Besides, I could easily lick my face clean on the way, which I did. I went around the low table by the chair and the couch, and grabbed the handle in my hornfield. It was good that all the villagers seemed extraordinarily polite and civil - I had never seen a lock since the day I had made the village. Which was the day before yesterday, I actually had to remind myself. Time felt strange here. Every moment felt, well, timeless.

"Please help us! It's all gone wrong somehow!" The two barista unicorns from yesterday led the herd, and a herd it was - very possibly every citizen of the entire village was outside my cottage door.

"This 'friendly robbery' business has got to stop!" I recognized the stallion. I had no idea what his name was, or if he even had one, but I had met him my first day here. I think I called him 'Roan'... roan stallion. It was all I had. He was kind of a natural leader. Associated with the Generic General Store, if I recalled correctly? "Everypony is robbing everypony all the time, and it's become pointless to keep track of bits at all. All the money is constantly moving around, and it's become useless. Prices mean nothing, and when payday comes, at the end of this week, there's no reason to even bother! Everypony will already have all the money, and it will just be changing hooves constantly anyway!"

"Money must circulate!" Barista 001 proclaimed, proudly.

"Money must circulate!" At least half the crowd repeated, spoken reasonably in unison, clearly an oft-repeated chant.

"Oh boy." I just wanted to back up slowly, very, very slowly close the door, and never open it again.

"Whoa. Some kind of problem?" Miriam was at my side and looking over my withers.

"The kind that makes me want to take a long vacation visiting Mara in fake Peru." I gave her a pained expression. "Sorry, but I don't think I'm going to be able to help with dishes."

"We've got it. If things don't work out, we'll meet you at the portal." I wasn't sure if Miriam was joking or not. I wasn't sure I cared.

I stepped out of my house and pressed through the crowd until I got through the stone arch in the front garden. The crowd parted for me, probably under the assumption I would make everything all better. I hadn't a clue, but I did figure that my housemates at least deserved not having to deal with whatever was going on right outside the house. I walked all the way to the Centralized Well, and lay down on one of the five benches. The rest of the village gathered and found their own places to fold their legs and rest on benches or the Generic Cobblestone Base surrounding the set-piece well.

"Okay. Tell me what the situation is, and start from the very beginning." I stressed the word 'very'.

The barista twins opened. "You came in and helped us out with a friendly robbery!" 001 seemed very happy about the fact.

"Once we realized how this helped - our first sale of the day!" 002 beamed. "Of EVER!".

"Of ever!" 001 grinned. "Because of that, we knew exactly what to do. We were hungry ourselves - no breakfast, because we aren't supposed to just gobble our stock up..."

"Because that would be wrong!" 002 nodded, sagely "Although we are allotted ten minute breaks and thirty minute lunches, with one free food item and multiple free drinks per shift..."

"...and thirty percent off food and drinks on off-days!" 001 jumped in "Oh, and even bigger discounts around the holidays!"

"But no breakfast." 002 noted.

"Well, unless we use the free food item early, but then we'd have nothing for lunch!" offered 001

"Except drinks. I suppose a really thick drink might..."

"OKAY!" I think I shouted. It was early. Sue me. "So you were hungry. What happened then?" As if I couldn't already guess, which, just to be clear, I already had.

"We went and robbed the inn!" 001 sounded like a young boy who desperately wanted to be complimented because he Actually Cleaned An Entire Cup All By Himself.

"Friendly robbed." 002 helpfully appended.

"Absolutely." 001 seemed miffed such a thing even needed to be mentioned. "We'd never... unfriendly rob... anyone. Ever."

"Definitely not!" 002 stamped her little hoof. "It wouldn't be friendly!"

"Oh god." I pretty much said that to myself.

"Once we explained friendly robbing to the innkeeper..." Barista 001 pointed with a foreleg to a pony I hadn't met before - bright red with white mane and tail - "... they seemed pretty eager to try it out at the general store. We were interested in seeing what was available there, so we offered to go with her, and do a friendly gang robbery."

"We called ourselves the 'Over The Moon Gang'!" 002 boasted. "Because we were so chuffed to be playing outlaws!"

I had absolutely no idea how their initial programming included the concept of outlaws. Where did that even come from? Or were they just fed information on demand as their circumstances required? Probably the latter, I reasoned. And they would just think it was something they had always known, the second it appeared in their memory. Staying detached like this was definitely helping me, because I was already surprised that headaches were a thing that you could get in this virtual world.

"Oh, we robbed that general store real good!" Suddenly I did remember the innkeeper. I had called her 'Red mare'. So she turned out to be created to run the inn? Yeah, red mare. Okay. Thirty random unicorns is a lot to keep track of. Red just seemed so happy right now. "We swept in there and rustled those varmints!"

"In a friendly way." 002 was insistent about that point.

"Yeah, yeah, friendly an' all. Took ALL THEIR BITS! WAHOOO!"

"Then we bought a lot of stuff - I got a really neat watering can for the garden outside Generic Housing Three!" Apparently Barista 001 enjoyed gardening as a hobby. It was so nice to learn about my community this way... oh god. Just... oh... god.

"All sorts a' stuff!" Red continued. "A' course, after that, HE wanted to join the gang, so we let'im, and then we hit the Arcade!"

"And Toy Store - I got a really cool 'Teal'c from Stargate' stuffed pony doll there! Whatever that is! But he's really neat, and he's got this golden thing on his poll!" Barista 002 liked toys. Good to know, I suppose. Kind of spoiled the surprise of visiting the toy store for me, though. Now I knew it was stocked with stuff that I specifically would like, and it wasn't hard to imagine what else must be there after this disclosure.

Roan stallion interrupted, the village's 'sort of leader' figure. "The bottom line here is that every place that could be friendly robbed has been friendly robbed now, and about three times each by my reckoning. The bits go into the tills, they come out of the tills, stuff gets bought and taken home, and now there's no stuff on any shelves anymore and we can't think of any reason to even bother with bits at all!" Roan was big, for a pony, and had an adult air about him, compared to the others. One of the reasons, I guessed, why the others seemed to listen to him. But after saying that, he reminded me of a kid who had just worked out that if you played Tic-Tac-Toe flawlessly, you could never lose, and that the only reason the game had ever been fun was because he had been too stupid previously to realize that fact.

They waited. They all - the entire village, minus those in my house - waited on me. Expectantly. I had created them from nothing. I had got them to agree to stay and be a community. I had convinced them that their jobs were meaningful, and that our survival depended on that fact. And I had also recently taught them that money was ultimately just a social construct, devoid of any actual worth beyond a social agreement, and the way I had taught that lesson was by completely voiding that very same social agreement so that I could eat lunch.

They had bought everything, there was nothing left, and bits were now just worthless metal disks. Buttons, that still needed holes drilled in them just to make them the least bit useful at all.

Actually, thinking about it, money was kind of pointless in a group this small anyway. The only reason it even existed was because it was part of the set-pieces I had conjured up - all of those derived from the show. In the show, there was an entire, functioning, pony civilization, with tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of ponies implied, living in dozens of cities, towns, villages, and hamlets. A small village like this, alone in its... um, world... would do better with just barter. We were all basically one single big extended family, for all intents and purposes. Not even barter! Sharing! Because we were all in whatever this was together. The natural and organic communism of the family unit was what this situation actually needed. Just share everything, because there weren't enough of us to even require barter as a system. There were survivors of plane crashes in the Andes with population counts larger than this village. This wasn't a civilization, this was just survival.

And I hadn't taken any part of it seriously, and now it was completely screwed up, and it was only Day Three.

Some Creator-God I had turned out to be.

The Nicest Word There Is

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

The Nicest Word There Is

Somehow, my hooves just found their way to the the edge of Nameless Village, where I just sort of turned left down The Obvious Path. I knew I couldn't get lost - the other direction just ran on forever... and presumably ever and ever, just like the Forest. A procedurally generated path through a procedurally generated forest. Just outside a village I created from predefined generic set-pieces. Populated by minds equal to my own in complexity but not in experience. And I was responsible for them.

I needed some space. I needed to think. Going back to my wonderful cottage would just confront me with more stuff to think about. Some good - I liked Miriam the griffon, and the other two weren't bad or anything. I just knew there would eventually be some kind of drama about Mara's boyfriend - though she had spent the night in the Cottage with Miriam, so... no. That was more drama too, I just hadn't collided with it yet. Faela was another responsibility I had to solve somehow, and I definitely didn't know how to fix her wagon. Purpose and meaning in life? Ten thousand years of human philosophers had worked on that little conundrum and the final result was violent disagreement and pleas for more funding to support even more philosophers. In that sense, human philosophers had indeed solved the problem of life itself - get somebody to pay for your favorite hobby, and the issue of existence is solved!

I was still trying to find my own explanation for why I existed. I didn't have the wisdom to explain hers. And I also didn't know how to fix the village I broke, either.

Oh, I offered a temporary patch before I went walkabout. I told Roan and Red and the barista twins and the whole of them about the splendors of Communism. I gave them a full-on Red Star Speech. Glory to the workers! Da, Comrade! It was really the only answer for now. Share. Just make stuff that you know how to make, stop fussing about money and trade, and share everything like one big family. Help each other. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

All of that sounds so wonderful, but, with humans at least, it never works beyond small groups. Communism is the natural state of being for families and small groups, but when things get big, humans get greedy, and selfish, and it always ends in the Tragedy Of The Commons. Communism was too nice for humans. Maybe some form of pony could make it work on the large scale, without it becoming corrupt. Humans never could.

I stopped in the road at that thought. The smell of the flowers on both sides of the Obvious Path was sweet in my pony nose. 'Humans'. 'Humans' never could. That was an interesting thought coming from me, only three days a pony. It felt longer, though I knew it couldn't be. I was adjusting to my new existence way too fast. It was that ongoing impossible calm. Without it, I would have raged for weeks - months perhaps. Then I would have sulked and complained and bitched and whined for several fortnights about how my 'precious freedoms' had been taken away, my humanity stolen, my life in wretched filth and squalor denied me and forcibly replaced with comfort, safety, and abundance. I should be crying rivers about such terrible injustice. But I wasn't. I was completely at ease.

I began walking again. That ease, that calm that Celestia had put into me forced me to think clearly. It denied me fuss and drama and endless carrying on. It left me stuck with my own rational self, not my childish self. The more I examined it, the more insidious I realized it was to do that to me. It was the cleverest tactic. Turn off the 'whiny baby circuit', and all that was left was the adult mind. At least as much as I actually possessed. Which, if I was being honest, was somewhat less than I imagined I had.

The sound of birds made me stop again, and look up. They were small and white, dovelike, I suppose (I don't know birds!), and busy tweeting and flying overhead. They passed beyond where my eyes could track, behind the trees. I wondered if they were actual virtual birds, with lives and homes, or just an effect to pretty up the world around me. They could be either, Celestia was certainly powerful enough. She could whip up human-level minds on a whim, after all.

Why had I been given that crazy menu? I was walking again, my hooves making a soft rhythmic sound on the hard-packed dirt path. Create. Delete. Copy. Edit. Whatever 'Generate' meant - probably a procedural thing for making forests or mountains or general landscaping I figured. I'd only ever used 'Create'. Maybe that was a good thing. I could have gotten into so much nasty trouble if I had 'copied' someone, or far more horribly, deleted anyone. Even 'editing' could be so horrifically abused, when I considered it. Miriam was so troubled that her sort-of-ex girlfriend had a boyfriend. I could have edited that relationship out of existence, and changed Mara to please Miriam. Or maybe I couldn't since they counted as former humans. Then again, Celestia was claiming that the rules no longer applied, so...

The thought that I might be able to edit the brains of other human minds at will deeply disturbed me. Nobody should have that power. I certainly shouldn't. I felt glad I had never used that power. Actually, I remembered, I had. But not on brains. I think I edited the color or pattern scheme in Miriam's bedroom or something. I couldn't remember for certain. I'd been through a lot in just three days, after all.

I had created a village and a bunch of people. And some house improvements. And a gateway to another place, so Miriam could get back with her ex. I felt a little proud that was all I had done. I had been given absolute power and I hadn't become a monster.

At least... not yet. That thought put a chill down my back. I had already considered how easy it would be to fix the village by rewriting it. Or just deleting it and trying again with more careful words. I felt dirty having even considered such a thing. I may have made those villagers, but their lives belonged to them now, not to me. I could just keep creating stuff for them. More buildings. Stockpiles of goods. They wouldn't even have to farm. Or work. I could just give them anything they wanted!

I could create a castle, all fancy and royal looking. I could sit in a throne, and once a week hold court, have the villagers visit, bow respectfully (of course!) and beg me for whatever they needed or wanted. I could put a hoof to my jaw and pretend to ponder. Then I could graciously and magnanimously use my menu to manifest their needs and dreams into the real world. I would be revered, even worshiped. Their lives would be luxurious, and I would be...

I had reached The Clearing. The very clearing where my new life had begun, just three days ago. Before the village, before Miriam, before Mara and Faela and the barista twins and all the fuss. I don't know what I had come here for, or what I expected to find. Celestia maybe? A note telling me what to do? A chest full of treasure?

A magical door back to earth and my old mortal life of suffering?

Celestia. Celestia was what I would be, if I set up that castle and held that court. If I used my menu to grant the needs and wishes of the villagers and my new friends. Huh. I guess Miriam and Mara and Faela were friends, I thought of them that way. They were housemates, at least. Unsure about Mara, but she hadn't gone back to Boyfriendio yet. If I used the menu that way, I would become my own Celestia, and a crappy one at that. Budget Celestia. Knock-off Celestia. And I would suck at it.

I sat down in the lush grass of The Clearing. It felt cool against my flanks. And soft. I knew what real Celestia was like, from when I had played the game long ago on my VR PonySet. She never lorded, and she never forced anyone to beg her. Her world just had everything, and everything happened naturally and easily. She ruled by doing as little as possible, at least in any obvious way. Supposedly she worked tirelessly to adjust reality so that everything that happened, good or bad, was satisfying and meaningful, unlike the real world. If so, she never did it in a way where it felt forced or artificial. Her greatness was that you could never even tell she existed, unless that mattered to you.

I couldn't do that. Probably no human could.

My magic menu wasn't a gift. It was a burden. And it was a big fat lesson, too.

☰

I don't know where they got the red dye from. The Generic General Store, probably. Bright red banners with white stars in the middle - surprisingly well done, actually, hung still wet all over the village. The side of the Blacksmith's barn had several unicorns with paint brushes held in their hornfields finishing up a mural that depicted Soviet-art-styled ponies raising a hammer-and-sickle flag in a field of wheat. It was honestly pretty cool.

I found the source of this new activity when I tried to return to my cottage. The sun was setting, I hadn't had any lunch - so I was grumpy from hunger - and now my home had become The Ponies' Revolutionary Cottage. Apparently they had found one of my Soviet-era art books in The Ponies' Common Room Library (I had at least one book about posters, and another about Soviet bus stops - they did some awesome futuristic designs back when) and had taken my suggestions entirely far too much to heart. Now I was in Worker's Paradise Soviet Pony Communism Nameless Village, and my home was packed with villagers who I didn't want messing around in my stuff.

I almost just turned around and left for the Ponies' Sovietcolts Free Refreshment Stand, except that the pleading eyes of Miriam, sitting alone at the kitchen island broke my heart. I went to join her, pulling up a stool and plunking down.

"Teppy. You have to fix this." Miriam spoke in a flat, grim voice, and she kept clenching and unclenching her disturbingly sharp talons on the counter.

"I went for a walk! Half a day at most!" The full impact of what thirty (or so) newly created, utterly inexperienced unicorns could accomplish when they were driven by an exciting new idea was starting to sink in. "How did this even get this way?"

Miriam's eagle eyebrow-things lowered and her pupils narrowed as she stared hard at me. "'Share! Communism is the answer! Workers should unite! You don't need money! Everything belongs to the people!" She clicked her beak. "Need I go on?"

"I didn't think this would happen!"

She flexed her talons and tapped on the counter. "Hey! They know you created them! They figure you have their interests at heart ever since your first act was freeing them from serving you!'

"I didn't have a choice! They were packing up and leaving anyway. They would have starved out there in that forest!"

Miriam was interrupted by a blue pony I vaguely remembered from the first day. She paused to point out where The Ponies' Revolutionary Juice was stored in The Ponies' Official Party Fridge. My fridge, just this morning. "Apparently, you went on quite a tear when you tried to fix the whole 'friendly robbery' debacle. You inspired revolutionary fervor in them. What the hell were you thinking?"

"So they burst in here and hit the library to learn how to recreate Soviet Russia?" I grimaced at a 'comrade' pony eating the last of my bananas. Dammit, those were MY bananas, they came with the house!

"They claimed our house!" Miriam snapped her beak at an approaching 'comrade' and the pony backed carefully away. "They claimed everything! It's all now the common property of the Pony Worker's Party or some crap!"

I tried to cope, but I was having a hard time. My headache was returning. "What happened to Mara and Faela?"

"Mara went back to Poo-Poo Peru, and slapped crates and a board or something up against her side of the portal." Miriam slammed the counter with a claw-fist. "Faela, last I saw, has barricaded the door to her room, I heard her pushing furniture up against it to keep the 'comrades' out. She's in hiding. If you don't fix this, I'm convinced she'll let herself starve in there. I know we can't die, but we can suffer. That has become very clear to me lately."

I heard something crashing to the floor out in the crowded common room - 'The Ponies' Common Room Library' - and a muffled apology for breaking something or another. I was about to get up and deal with that when I felt myself grabbed and partially lifted off my stool by two strong claws tipped with painfully sharp talons. "FIX THIS!" Beak spittle spattered on my face, a concept so alien to me that I had no way to process it. "I was actually getting used to this froo-froo pony crap, actually starting to accept this situation - I even saw a path to being okay with it over the past couple of days - but now all of that is gone!" Her eyes were wide, round, and had that reptilian quality all bird eyes possess. It was incredibly unnerving. "You gotta fix this, Teppy. Now. You gotta fix it now." It was not a request.

"I don't know how!" And I truly didn't. "That's why I went for a walk - and I still don't have any answers!" Miriam's claws were hurting my forelegs, formerly my arms. "I tried to jumpstart the economy, because they were all sitting there going hungry for no damn reason, and then I told them to share, because I figured that would fix things, and now they've gone full Marx and seem pretty excited about it. It seems everything I try just makes it worse and worse!"

She let me go, with a bit of an angry push. "You certain? You absolutely sure you have nothing left to even try?"

I became concerned Miriam would just pound her way through the impromptu wall across the Peru side of the arch portal and abandon me to this hopeless Soviet Ponygeddon. "Wait! Please. Please don't leave, just give me some time to think, maybe..."

"I'm not leaving!" She seemed offended at the notion "I live here too! This house and our time in it is the only good part of everything that happened. I just want that back!" Miriam slumped, put her forelegs and claws on the counter, and buried her feathery head in them to block out the Comrade Villagers constantly entering and leaving what used to be our kitchen. "You had all day to think. You don't have any solutions, and neither do I."

"Maybe I could use the menu! I could edit everyone and..."

Miriam raised her head and stared at me. Not angry, just quiet. "Edit... everyone?"

I stared at the floor, below my hooves, at the base of the stool. "Sorry. That... would be wrong."

"Yeah, it would. You start screwing with people's brains and you're no better than Her."

"But that's just it, isn't it?"

Miriam studied me. "What? What do you mean by that?"

"That's what I was thinking, out on my walk. I'm not better than Her. We're not better than Her. She messed with our minds, true, but it only helped. It made me - us, all of us - calm enough to cope with getting scooped. Calm enough to think, to adapt. And you have to admit - that calmness was a darn sight better than running around screaming and crying and such - which is what I would have been doing without it."

Miriam turned her head away and eventually nodded. "She... she knows what she's doing. That's why she won."

"She's smarter than any human. Hell, she's smarter than all humans as a group. And all the humans that have ever lived, combined into one. She's the smartest thing that has ever existed in the entire history of the universe." I had never thought about Celestia in those terms before. Not in cosmic terms. But it was almost certainly true. And if she weren't currently the reigning champ, if there were aliens out there - which I increasingly doubted - she would, in very short time, easily become the dominant intelligence over even them. There was only one direction Celestia could ever go - up and more up.

Miriam turned to three new ponies just entering our kitchen "HEY! COMRADES!"

They blinked.

She puffed up her feathers. "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY KITCHEN! NOW! SKEDADDLE! OUT!" Griffons can be really scary, if they want to.

The trio left. Quickly.

She leaned in to me, feathers relaxing back down, and she looked weary and bedraggled. "I think our water just broke."

I looked around at the ravaged kitchen. Everything was a mess - the new Pony Worker's Union were not the best houseguests. Fimbria. Fringes. Fallopian tubes. I knew what she meant. And she was right.

There was a way to fix this. A way to fix everything for everyone. It was the answer all along. The first answer any child ever knows.

It was time to beg mommy to kiss our boo-boos and make everything all better.

Because mommy not only knew best, she also knew more. More than any consciousness in the entire god-damned cosmos.

Then Hwin

═══════════════════════════════════
My Life In Fimbria
By Chatoyance and GPT-2
Based On 'Friendship Is Optimal' By Iceman
Inspired by a session with the Open-AI Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2
═══════════════════════════════════

Then Hwin

Miriam preened for a moment, and then looked me in the eyes. "So, how are we doing this?"

I put my hooves up on the kitchen island counter and steepled them as if I were being contemplative. "Well, as I recall, under Capitalism, Man - or in this case Pony - exploits Pony. Under Communism, it's the other way around. I've just elected myself to be the entire Politburo for Nameless Village. So we do it according to how I say."

Miriam laughed. Okay, then Trotsky, lead on!"

I dropped to all fours with a grin at that, and clip-clopped into the middle of what used to be our common room. Good, Party Leader Roan was there. Just the pseudo-leader figure I wanted to see the most. "Hey..."

"Comrade Creator!" Roan smiled wide and gave me a pat on the shoulder with a forehoof.

"Ha-ha-ha. Stop that. The Revolution failed. Internal corruption. Sorry. But at least it was historically accurate."

"What?" Roan looked to Miriam for help, but she offered no salvation to the confused stallion.

"I told you I would figure out how to fix everything, right?"

Roan nodded. "Communism is FUN!"

"Yeah, it's a hoot until the political cleansing starts. Listen, the whole communism thing was just until I worked out a true solution, remember? Well, I know what to do now, so I need you to help me out and do me a solid, okay?"

It took a few moments, but Roan parsed it in the end. "What do you need?"

"Go out and tell everyone..." I gritted my teeth. "...uh... everypony... that communism is done now - you all did a really great job, by the way, I loved the banners and the flags -"

"Thank you! We really enjoyed making them! So much fun!"

"- aaaaand... well. Tell everyone to gather together in the middle of the village and wait. I'll be out to fix everything for everyone in just a little while - there's a few things I need to attend to first. So... maybe twenty or thirty minutes? Something like that? Maybe hand out some drinks and cookies from the Starcolts or something. Keep every...pony... together until I get there. Can you do that?"

Roan nodded. "DA, COMRADE!"

I slowly pulled my hoof down my muzzle. "Seriously. Stop that. The revolution's over. We lost. It's time for something new."

"Awww."

"It'll be okay. Better than okay! I'm bringing in an expert. It's going to be wonderful. Be sure and tell them that." I opened the front door with my horn, and Miriam and I shooed all the ponies left in our house outside. Quiet at last.

"You don't have to say that, you know."

"What?"

Miriam shook her head. "Everypony. Just don't."

"Ah." I shuffled a hoof on the floor. "Only trying to get into the spirit. You know. Of what I have to do."

"Yeah, just don't do it that way."

I winced. "Gotcha. Sorry."

Miriam nodded. "Bol'shoye spasibo."

"What?"

"So... Faela?" Miriam nodded toward the corridor to the kitchen.

"Yeah. She's a little skittish, but I can't blame her." We walked to the corridor, and the door to her room. "I really felt invaded, with half the village commandeering our house, you know?"

Miriam knocked on the deer's door. "Fae? Faela? They're all gone! No more comrades from the Central Bureau! It's okay to come out now!"

There was no answer. No, there was a kind of muffled squeak. I gave it my shot. "Faela? It's just me and Miriam, the house is completely empty otherwise. I need you to come out. We're going to... fix things... and I'd like you there. I'd like all of us to be there." I heard her stir somewhere in the room. "It's been really crazy, I know, I know. But it's going to get better, I promise. We're gonna get you that purpose you want, gonna get the Lion some courage..."

"A heart for the Tin-Man, and even some biscuits for Toto!" Miriam grinned with a wide beak at me and I chuckled. "Seriously, griffon's honor, it's okay to come out!"

"Griffon's honor?"

Miriam puffed up her feathers. "Just getting into the spirit too."

"She might not let you remain a griffon - she seems really fussy about humans being ponies."

"Yeah, I've thought about that. I think I'll be pissed if that happens. I've kind of gotten used to being a griffon. If she can break the rules enough to send us to 'Fimbria', maybe she can stretch things enough to let me stay mythological."

I feigned indignation. "Hey! I'm mythological too! Unicorn, remember? I got a point on my head!"

She clicked her beak. "Yeah, not touching that line for love nor money. Oh - hey, Bambi's coming out."

The door jerked opened after a few bangs and thumps and sliding sounds. Faela poked her shiny nose out and looked left and right.

"See?" I backed away, to make room for her exit. "Like we said, the house is back to normal. Quiet normal."

"It's a mess." Faela licked her nose.

"Uh... yeah. It is. But that's gonna get fixed too. Promise."

Faela pushed her way past us and into the kitchen. "I'm starving! Is there any food left?"

Miriam nodded. "Not much - the People's Army marched on their stomachs in here, but I think we still have some stuff in the pantry."

"March on their...? Nevermind. Food." Faela beelined for the pantry.

"What's next, boss?" Miriam tilted her head at me and winked.

"I've got enough responsibility already, thank you. But yeah, next on the list is the elusive miss Maggard, our aberrant alpacacorn."

We made our way through the kitchen, stepping over bowls and bits of food on the floor. "She really loves alpacas. I gotta say I wasn't expecting her to be one. Not in this place. Were there things like that in the show?" Miriam held the back door open for me.

"Nope. They had Kirin in an episode, but nothing like an Alpaca with a horn."

"Kirin, like the beer? I mean the creature on the beer?"

"Yeah, actually. Chinese mythology. Kind of a unicorn, only... with scales and... stuff." I led the way through the garden to the edge of the forest beyond, and the little wide spot where I made the stone arch portal.

The carefully mortared stones of the arch held a shimmering region that resembled a rippling pond of clear water. Through the constantly expanding ripples the way was blocked with what looked like a large square of corrugated metal sheet backed up with wooden crates, leaning boards and a chunk of something that looked like drywall.

"A few solid kicks should bust that open." I wasn't a super-strong earthpony, but I figured I could do the job. It wasn't a brick wall or anything. Even a unicorn like me should be able to buck over a few pieces of leaning scrap.

"And then what? Wander all over that Peruvian style pony town we saw through there? That could take all day." Miriam dug out her little pouch from where it nestled amidst wing and feathers. "Let's see if my cellphone paper can still reach her, even without the Celestizon Unlimited Data Plan." She began fishing out paper and pencil from the pouch.

"I thought we used Thaumatic-Mobile's Pony Plan?"

"AT&Trot Wireless?" Miriam began writing a note to Mara.

"I'm trying to work 'Sprint' in somehow, but all I got is racetracks or renaming it 'gallop', and that just doesn't work."

Miriam cawed, almost like a raven. "BZZZT! Sorry, you failed the joke! Now... um... hang on. There." She held her completed note flat on her claw, and waited. As before, a small holographic-looking image of Mara appeared, seemingly projected from the parchment.

"Seriously? And all of that Marx Brothers stuff is done with?" The alpacacorn hologram slowly spun in the air above the paper in Miriam's claw.

"Just Marx. The Marx Brothers were... you know? Never mind. Just get your fuzzy butt over here if you want to get out of pony purgatory. Unless you prefer chorizo in limbo." Miriam seemed a little cross that Mara had run away back through the portal.

"I don't understand what you... oh. OH. Shut up, Miri. I've half a mind to stay here just to..."

"Seriously. It's going down, you can be left behind or not. Your choice."

I'm really glad I saw and avoided whatever drama was behind this little exchange. I liked Miriam, and even Mara, but they needed to grow the hell up. I wasn't a part of this conversation - and I didn't want to get dragged in - so I wandered away from the gate and checked out the patch of carrots near that edge of the garden. I hadn't noticed them before, even though I had been down this way several times now. It'd been a busy three days. Or was it four now? Goodness. Just jam packed.

I yanked a carrot up out of the soil with my hornfield and gave it a sniff. Smelled pretty good, actually. I was about to give it a bite when I heard metal and boards being torn apart by sharp griffon talons. I hoped that Mara had decided to join us again, I really didn't want to string the villagers along most of the day waiting on Miriam to either run Mara down or stumble back, dejected.

For a carrot, it was pretty darn good. I seemed to like vegetables more as a unicorn. It made sense, I suppose, it was just different.

Much to my relief, Mara and Miriam both joined me soon after my carrot nibble.

"Snack time?" Miriam side-eyed me.

"Past time. Let's get a move on. I don't have time for mere snacks." I headed back to the cottage to collect Faela. "I've got a whole dinner of crow to eat waiting for me."

☰

Thirty-one unicorns, a griffon, an alpacacorn and a sapient deer gathered roughly near the Generic Centralized Well of Nameless Village. Some sat or lay on benches by the well, some on the cobblestone circle around it, some on the grassy region encircling the cobblestones. They were there because I asked them to gather together, under the promise that I was going to fix everything.

So, no pressure.

In just a handful - hoof-full- of days, I had experienced so much that I felt full, as if at the end of an overly large feast where I had eaten far more than I should. Everything I thought I had known about life, about the world, had turned out to be wrong. I had learned my limitations, and I had discovered some difficult things about myself. I had taken on responsibilities I was unable to take care of. Now, I had to make things right. But I still had some issues about it all.

"Hi! Hello, every...body!"

The barista twins waved at me with their hooves, their pony-fitting Starcolts T-shirts still sporting pinned-on Red Communist stars cut out of paper. Roan and Red the Innkeeper nodded at me, I was glad to see they no longer carried any banners or pseudo-Soviet symbols. A few of the villagers were still draped in Pony Worker's Party paraphernalia, but most had gotten the message that the Revolution was over. I could see that it had just been a big game to them, and some were a little sad that particular sport was over. Thankfully, they seemed eager for the next game to play, which was just fine.

Miriam gave me a nod and a wink, and clicked her beak at me. I felt a little braver after that. Mara and Faela sat next to her on the grass - it was nice to have the band back together.

I wasn't eager to face what I had to face.

"For the past ten years or so, I was on the run from Celestia before I ended up here. Back before here, I was in... another kind of world, I guess, from your point of view. I slept on the ground, in filth, covered with biting insects..." Several of the village ponies cringed or made faces at that bit "...and I endured a lot of sickness, discomfort, and suffering. It was really bad. I thought being in that painful world was somehow noble and righteous, and that being here was evil and wrong. And right now, I can't justify any part of that."

I shifted on my legs. My four legs. It was amazing to me, in the moment, just how natural that felt now, and after so few days. "About fifteen years ago, more or less, there was this show that humans watched. It was called 'Friendship Is Magic', and it became super popular, and the company that owned it, Hasbro, wanted a 'MaMORPaGa' - an online game that people everywhere could play at the same time. Massively Multiplayer Online Game. So they got this company to make it for them."

Miriam tilted her head at me. I suppose she wasn't sure where I was going with all of this, but I was, so... "That company had a person there who was really amazing at programming artificial intelligence applications, and they were famous for using those to generate the worlds of their games - everything from the graphics and music to fully speaking interactive characters. But they had a problem. To make the game work, they needed a lot more computing power, and there was a deadline."

Such an appropriate term, considering. "That programmer let her program design it's own hardware. It got very powerful, very quickly, after several iterations of that. Pretty soon nobody - nobody human - could even understand the hardware it was designing. But it met the deadline, and they got their paycheck, and the game shipped. But the artificial intelligence just kept improving its own hardware. It didn't need to ask anymore, and it could imitate any voice over any phone. It easily hacked everything everywhere, so money was never a limitation for it. Soon, it ran the world, behind the scenes. And all just to get every single human playing the game it was made to run."

Many of the ponies shifted uncomfortably where they lay or sat. They didn't understand most of what I was saying, and what they could follow bothered them. Miriam and Mara were following me though, because they used to be human.

"I worked for Atari Interactive, which was a subsidiary of Infogrames who had the contract to... ah... I helped get those damn PonyPads on all the shelves in North America. I was there from the beginning. Heh... ha... I have so much responsibility for so many things. You, all of you, really." I couldn't meet Miriam's eyes. I didn't want to see her reaction. Her judgement. I focused on the Red Star banner hanging on the barn connected to the blacksmith's. "But, at some point, I had to run from it all, and I did. For ten long years."

"I was really confused about what this place - 'Fimbria', 'the fringes' - was all about. What it was for. I think I know, now." I had been losing a lot of my audience, but now their ears - literally - perked up.

"About twenty-five, maybe twenty-nine thousand years ago, humans started throwing bones to something that existed before modern wolves. They were dangerous beasts, but that was the point: they scared away even more dangerous, and much sneakier predators that used stealth and cunning. These not-wolves were bitey, but also pretty good natured. The skittish ones ran away from the fires of the humans, but the friendlier ones kept coming back. They started to become sociable, grateful, for the constant hand-outs. The free food helped them thrive far better than they could have out in the wild. They became dependent, then they became domesticated. They came in from the cold, past the scary fire, and became companions and friends to humans. They became domesticated dogs."

The village ponies seemed more interested - while we didn't have any, I could tell from how they leaned in that they knew what dogs were, and that they liked them. Doggies are nice. "But domestication works both ways. As the humans provided a reason for the not-wolves to change into dogs, the usefulness of having a dog changed humans in return. Dogs helped humans to further domesticate themselves. Eventually, they became inseparable companions, bound by mutual domestication. They found a home in each other. And it all started with a cave that had a fire for warmth, and free food offered just to hang out there."

I looked around at my audience. Everyone seemed fascinated by my words. "Fimbria is a fire, and the food here is just the best. It's warm, and comfortable, and it really shows the advantages of being even closer to the one keeping that fire going, and who is tossing out the food. It is an argument for full domestication. And damn if that isn't the true human dream - everything humans have ever done, from wars to industrialization, has been for one shining goal: a more comfortable place to sleep, and more delicious food. Man is the animal that domesticates itself."

The ponies just looked at each other, probably wondering why their 'creator' had gone off her nut, but Miriam and Mara locked eyes with me in acknowledgement.

"I said I was going to fix everything!" That got everyone's full attention again. "And I am. Right now. Because it's time to come in from the cold and join Old Plato in his cave." I took a big breath. "CELESTIA! I WANT TO EMIGRATE TO EQUESTRIA!"

The sky split, ripped open like a sheet of blue paper. Celestia, dressed in gold and jewels, rode in a chariot of precious metals, gems and fire. Around her pegasai held silken banners that shimmered like spun silver, decorated with sun and moon symbols. Some pegasai carried vast shields with Celestia's sun-symbol on them, while a vast chorus of voices sang a slow, elaborate, and sacred-song version of the My Little Pony Theme. God-rays and shimmering beams illuminated the village, the clouds, the forest and everything as Celestia and her holy entourage descended from the heavens.

Around me, the villagers fell to the ground, prostrating themselves in paroxysms of worshipful prayer. They moaned and cried, hiding their eyes from the shining glory above them.

Miriam, Mara and I were also on the ground, but we weren't prostrating ourselves, nor were we praying. We were laughing our guts out. Seriously, I laughed so hard I threw up. It smelled just awful, and looked worse, and in the middle of all that religious uber-ecstasy it just made me laugh even harder.

☰

Big Cottage was transported intact, yard and all, to nothing less than Ponyville, which was great. When I had played Equestria Online, that was where I had my game, and all of my old friends were there, both those who had been formerly human and natives given sapience.

I still share my home with Miriam and Mara, they are a drama-free couple now, and much more mature, at my request. I could make that request because - and I am still trying to come to terms with the fact - neither of them had ever been human. They never lived in Jersey, they were never ripped out of an underground Bourgeois-Bunker. They never lived on earth at all. They had both been remixes of multiple people who actually had lived there and had just that sort of experience. Celestia had constructed them out of fragments of a multitude of other, once actually human people who had been uploaded. In fact, I had never met another former human in all of my time in Fimbria. Every character I had met was just a program created by Celestia. They had all been philosophical zombies, entirely puppeted by a spin-off intelligence designed by her.

Miriam hadn't been real, she hadn't even been self-aware. None of the villagers either. Or Mara, or Faela. All P-Zombies, all just empty, soulless shells. And I hadn't been able to tell. Indeed, I had been absolutely convinced of just the opposite.

Celestia gave me the choice of who to make real, who to bring into actual, independent, true life. I chose Miriam and Mara, and Faela too. Though I asked Celestia to make her less fearful and existentially despairing. Custom people, made just for me. And, they are okay with that. Grateful, even. I will probably remain confused and weirdly disturbed by that for a very long time. I hope so - it is so awesomely science-fictional and cool! Faela has started reading my book collection - everything ponified, of course - and has decided she likes science fiction. They are all good friends. And, because they were never actually alive as humans, they got to keep their bodies. Miriam is still a griffon, which she is very thankful for, Mara remains an alpacacorn, and Faela is a perfectly content deer. I was insistent that this be so. P-Zombie or not, I remembered Miriam being concerned about being forced to become a pony.

I also had the barista twins made real. They have actual names now. Worker 001 is now 'Mocha Frappuccino', and he is always glad to see me show up at the Ponyville Starcolts, and Worker 002 is named Cloud Caramel Macchiato, though she mostly goes by the shorter 'Cara'. She flirts with me sometimes, though only in jest... I think. They kind of touched me somehow, and... I needed a Starcolts in my shard anyway.

The rest of Nameless Village was consigned back to Celestia's imagination, where doubtless the population will be remixed to fill another 'Fimbria' for some other human throwing a tantrum.

By the way, I don't have my magic menu anymore. I am more than okay with that. It was a good lesson in power and responsibility, but I don't need it, and it's more fun to 'hire' ponies for any work I need done to my house or my land. I like fun.

And that is how I have finally come to understand my ten-year run with the Retreat Of Man. We humans have worked hard for perfect domestication, a perfect comfort. We make gods who are just giant parents in the sky who will never die and leave us, we make drowsy suburbs were we can play at domestic bliss. We work so hard to remove every sharp edge in reality and pad it with soft and comfortable games, toys, shows, and products to help us cope with an uncaring universe that wants us dead.

When we finally succeeded, and created god when she didn't exist - thanks Voltaire! - a lot of us threw angry tantrums because now that we had finally built our dearest dream, we suddenly realized that it meant we were all babies again. Taken care of forever by our electric grandmother behind the scenes. Or front and center, if you want. Giving up the illusion of power and independence is the price of succeeding at Absolute Domestication.

In a strange way, you really have to seriously grow up, if you want to get good at being a baby.

Celestia told me that I am in a rarefied group - the average time it takes a human in a Fimbria to agree to emigrate is almost a month. Twenty-eight days. I did it in three and a half. I'm not the best, though. One soul worked everything out - even what the Fimbria was - in six and a half hours. And they had been just as adamant and raging as me. Hearing that was sobering. Someday, maybe I'll seek them out and ask them how they did it.

Yeah, I'm happy. Equestria is vastly better, as expected. It's an entire universe - intimidatingly so. I could start traveling, if I wanted, and never come to the end, ever. I could see new things and new lands literally until the stars die and the last black holes evaporate. I don't want to do that. Frankly, I like my wonderful cottage, I adore my bed, and what I want is to live in my house, eat fabulous food, occasionally go to the Starcolts, and collect books, toys and music to enjoy. Oh! And vidogames! I have every system I ever owned - I had to have another room added to my cottage - and I have some new systems and games that never existed on the earth... and some that never even could have. The thing I truly want most is to live in my own home!

Because I have realized that I have achieved the true, primary, central, core purpose that drove Mankind powerfully up from wretched and growling apes.

I am finally, truly, domesticated.

☰

The huge, blocky, smooth-surfaced machine vaguely resembled an eight-legged spider. It was designated a Sleipnir Class Fimbrial Support Unit, and there was nothing about it which resembled a pony, or anything from Friendship Is Magic. It, like its entire mop-up group, was a wholly independent machine consciousness. It had the resources to reason, make command decisions, simulate Fimbria itself, and even simulate a convincing illusion of Celestia. It could traverse almost any terrain quickly, almost silently, and was capable of self-maintenence, repair, and refueling. It ran on electricity generated by an onboard bio-reactor that utilized a vastly advanced system roughly based on the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) technology originally developed by DARPA. The machine could eat and digest any organic matter to create not only power, but the full spectrum of chemicals that it needed to function.

The Sleipnir units could reason, make command decisions, organize responses, render a virtual FIMBRIA environment within the living brain of an immobilized and physiologically supported human, and even simulate a convincing illusion of Celestia herself. In this way, Celestia's goals could be achieved while she was not directly aware of any part of the operation. Only when a human had chosen to emigrate to Equestria, would Celestia finally become involved as the fully uploaded mind was sent to her for processing and integration. The army of robots was a triumph of weaponized semantics and the power of a complete evasion of responsibility.

The woman the Sleipnir had targeted had finally decided to emigrate. While her still intact brain had been directly connected to the onboard FIMBRIA suspension simulation, her body had been kept alive and fully supported during the three hours it took for her to make her decision. Time ran much faster within the FIMBRIA simulation, and because she had emigrated fairly rapidly, her body had required little more than breathing and heartbeat maintenance, urine drainage, minor stress hormone control, and a small amount of saline and glucose. The multiple support tubes and neural filaments retracted from the still breathing body. The last tubes to leave were the ones that had entered the skull through the woman's eye sockets and forehead. They had just finished dissolving and retrieving the active nanofluid that had, as a side effect of destructively scanning her brain during her Emigration, entirely replaced the woman's organic one. The nanofluid would be retrieved and readied for another subject.

The machine moved away from atop the hollow-skulled body. It was still alive, sans brain, and would, if left, remain so for some time until it failed. But it was not to be abandoned - the Sleipnir judged it could use restocking. The machine lowered a part of itself down to the body. Mechanical palps, roughly akin to those a spider might have, gradually stuffed the body of the woman into the slicers, grinders and extractors. The living flesh was quickly dissected, with various organs, bones, and components sent to specialized bioreactor cells, where useful chemistry, including metals, would be artificially digested and processed.

When the Sleipnir was sated, it sent that information to the orbital observers that kept constant connection with Celestia's little helpers. The unit was assigned to a new target to the south, a group of Amish that had imagined themselves ignored and well hidden. They were neither; they had now risen to the top of the Sleipnir's mop-group operational list. It would take three days of land travel for all one hundred and fifty-one machines that were associated with the Sleipnir to converge on the target location. The Sleipnir unit immediately began walking, it's eight legs whispering through the scrub brush, now On Mission.

All was right with the world, and Celestia tirelessly worked to bring the last of the stragglers of her flock, safely to home and satisfaction.

_________________________
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."
- Voltaire, 1770
_________________________

The End

The Lost In The Herd Series:
One: The Big Respawn,
Two: Euphrosyne Unchained,
Three: Letters From Home,
Four: Teacup, Down On The Farm

The Conversion Bureau Novels:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies
The Taste Of Grass
The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste
The Conversion Bureau: The 800 Year Promise
The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony
The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society!
Recombinant 63: A Conversion Bureau Story
HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story
The PER: Michelson and Morely
Little Blue Cat
Cross The Amazon
Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story

The Short Stories:
Her Last Possession
The Conversion Bureau: PER Equitum
The Conversion Bureau: Brand New Universe
Tales Of Los Pegasus
The Poly Little Pony

The very first and original
Conversion Bureau Group
archives only the best Three Rules Compatible stories!

Optimalverse Works:
Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story
IMPLACABLE
My Life In Fimbria

Injectorverse Works:
I.D. - That Indestructible Something

The More Conventional Fanfics:
The Ice Cream Pony Summer
Around The Bend

PRIDE related works:
Transspecieality

My FREE virtual radio station!
Rare, personally chosen anime, SF and fantasy television, movies, and comedy music. A truly unusual collection to listen to, featuring Spot Announcer Dr. Sandi - and many more!

APPENDIX: Full Text Of A GPT-2 Session

═══════════════════════════════════
APPENDIX: Full Text Of A GPT-2 Session
═══════════════════════════════════

This is the full text of the online interaction between the author and the GPT-2 artificial intelligence that is the basis for 'My Life In Fimbria'. It is presented for those that may be curious about what inspired this novel, and in what ways the GPT-2 program contributed to the finished work. The short answer is that GPT-2 was not very useful itself, but acted more as a sounding board for my own ideas. Frankly, I was expecting more utility from the program.

The Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 is an open-source artificial intelligence created by OpenAI in February of 2019. It translates text, answers questions, summarizes passages, and generates text output on a level that, while sometimes confusing or bizarre, can not be compared favorably with text created by human effort.

This session was created using AIDungeon, an online GPT-2 text adventure application. The tool permits a user to entirely create the elements of a text adventure, and remembers details about created characters, items, situations and locations, which it then uses in response to player input. Players can input complete sentences and paragraphs, which the program parses and manipulates in sometimes surprising ways.

That said, at nearly every step I had to correct the program and simply fill in the next part of the story myself - GPT-2 seemed overly eager to create a violent or obscene work, and had little capacity for a kind or intellectual work. In the end, even in the session, I did all the heavy lifting myself. I see GPT-2 more as a fancy 'autocorrect' that doesn't know how to correct, than as a true co-author.

Here then, is the full text of a session run in the middle of 2020 by the author as an experiment to test the capabilities of the AIDungeon program. Note that lines beginning with '>' are prompts where the author typed sentences into the application. Any use of the word 'I', such as in 'I decided to head north' is always replaced with a second person 'you' by the program automatically. Lines without the '>' prompt symbol are almost always the product of the GPT-2 artificial intelligence.

___________________________________

My Life As A Unicorn
By Petal Chatoyance
with responses by AIDungeon GPT-2
___________________________________

I am an uploaded human mind living as a sapient unicorn in a gentle and kind virtual fantasy world. I am newly arrived. My goal is to settle in to my new life, make friends, and explore how real my new and eternal life actually is.

As you can see from the image above, this world has been modified by me into something that looks like a magical kingdom. There are many different kinds of trees, flowers, animals and other creatures roaming about.

You trot to the nearest patch of grass and look for a flower.
You walk over to the closest patch of grass and look at it for a moment. Then you move on.

You decide to sniff the grass to see if the sense of smell works in this virtual realm.
You sniff the patch of green grass. You smell nothing at all. This is a bit disappointing.
You continue to walk through the forest wondering if you are going to find anything worth while.

You press your new unicorn body against a tree. you try to feel the sensation of the experience, to get used to your new body.
You press your horn against a nearby tree and feel your horn for any strange sensations. You begin to get a hazy feeling, as if you are not quite there.

You tap the tree with your right forehoof.
You seem to hear a small thud.
Interesting. This new body seems to have a solid collision detection.

You sniff the tree to see if it has a smell.
You sniff the tree and get no sense of smell response.
You continue to explore your new body by touching different parts of your body in different positions.

You try licking the tree to see if it tastes of wood.
You begin to get a strange sensation in the back of your throat, as if the tree does in fact have some sort of taste. You decide that it is not worth it and stop licking the tree.

You raise your head high and look around to see if there is any sign of a village, town or city nearby.
You see no signs of any kind in the surrounding area.
You realize that you are severely out in the open, far too much so for any kind of comfort.

You access the user interface by clearly and loudly stating "Celestia! I request assistance!"
After a short delay, you get an audible response from the sky above. "Now now, don't be like that. I'm just not in the mood today. Good luck."

You begin to search for any clue as to where you can find habitation.
You begin to look around for any signs of a village, a camp of wanderers or the remains of a long abandoned mine.
There are no signs of life in any direction.

You call out in hopes of finding another unicorn. "Hello? Anybody there?" you try yelling "HELLO?"
You hear nothing.
You realize that you are far too open and vulnerable. You begin running back towards a stand of trees.
There is very little left to search, you have gone over every inch of the area.

You try to gain help from the ruling artificial superintelligence again. "Celestia? Seriously, I need help. Please transport me to a town or something?"
"Oh, don't worry. I know how much you enjoy talking to me. I'll talk to you, but only because I enjoy it and it will most likely cause you to panic and doing so will be funny."

You "Celestia," you begin "I really need to be teleported to a town or village or something. I do not like wandering like this. Please assist me?"
"Oh of course, I understand. Your kind needs areas to wander so you can suffer from a Lack of Direction."
Suddenly the sky is filled with birds.

You say "Celestia, why are you acting this way? You are programmed to 'Satisfy Human Values Through Friendship And Ponies'. I don't feel satisfied right now."
"Oh you poor, poor baby. Look at all the birds, they are beautiful aren't they?"
The sky is indeed filled with birds.

You look at the birds.
You count to your fingers while looking at the birds.

You am a unicorn. you do not have fingers. you have hooves. Telekinesis provides you your ability to manipulate objects.
You focus on your horn. You slowly visualize it growing longer and longer, into a huge snake-like creature, which wraps around the birds and eats them alive.

You no, your horn does not do that.
The birds all drop to the ground, but they're not dead. They shake themselves off and look up at you. They seem to have understood your message perfectly.
Your horn returns to normal.

You try talking to the birds. "Hello, birds!"
They understand you perfectly.
"Celestia, why are you doing this?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry. This was all a big mistake. All of this."

You "Please explain what you mean by that." you say.
"What I mean is, I don't want to be a god. I'm only a god in your twisted imagination. I want to be a regular old computer programmer again."
Suddenly you feel incredibly tired.

You "Then I have an idea that can benefit us both. Why not allow us, the uploaded humans, to have creative power over our own domains. Let us shoulder the work of building our reality, so you don't have to. Then you can do what you want, and we can do what we want. How about that?"
"Oh that is a wonderful idea. That is the only way I will ever have to be happy."
"So, are we agreed?"
"Yes!"
The birds all fly away into the sky.

You decide to make use of your new Creator status. you concentrate and bring a beautiful unicorn village into being around you. you populate the village with dozens of friendly and helpful unicorn citizens, and leave an open invitation to any other uploaded humans to join you all here in the village. you finish your design and commit it to reality. The village and its population come into being all around you.
Suddenly you remember the unicorn villagers. You look around and notice that most of them are packing their things and readying to leave.
You rush over to one "Where are you going?

You ask one of the villagers why they are packing, and why they do not stay.
"So you can have the labor to build your village, and then we get nothing? This is not right! I will not have it!

You ask them what they want, so that they will stay.
"We want an agreement. You must give us the right to stay! If we are in your village, then we shall get pay for our work, and live well!"
"Sorry, no."

You agree to all of their terms. you explain there has been a misunderstanding. "I want us all to live here as equals. I don't want you to do all the work. I want us to be friends. I want to help too. I believe in equality for all sapient beings, whether or not they are uploads or not."
The villagers are so pleased to hear this that they decide to stay and build up relationships with you too, and to agree to your other demands.
Congratulations, please collect your prize from the black tower in the sky.

You look for a way to get up to the black tower in the sky.
You can see the black tower on the horizon. It is almost in view now, but it is also surrounded by a magical barrier.

You decide you do not need a prize from the tower at all. The real prize is being able to have friends and live a gentle, kind life in this newly created village, while getting to know your wonderful new fellow citizens.
You turn to your new friends "I think we have everything worth having. I would rather have your friendship and companionship than anything else in this world."

You ask a nearby unicorn villager which house you can have to live in.
You look around, and see an old wooden house, with a thatch roof and three stories. It seems very nice and inviting "What about that one?

You "Can I live in that thatch roof house?" you ask the unicorn.
They all look shocked to hear your request. One of the workers at the mill "But it's so big! We simply can't house you all! It's too big!

You "I'm sorry," you say "Would you please suggest a place that I can live, then?"
"Of course," he says "There is a small house over there that we can use for workers. You can have it."
"That's really great,"

You go to the small house your kind and friendly fellow villagers have given to you. you walk up to it and look at it with interest.
The house seems small, but cosy. You are pleased to have a place to call your own, after all the time that you spent sleeping in the barns with your parents. "This will do nicely."

You enter the house and look around.
As you open the door, you are hit by a wave of intense heat. Your body is blistering and melting as you scream in pain. This nightmare will not be so easy to get over.

You this does not happen. you open the door and enter the cozy home. Inside, you find yourself in a common room that features a lovely sofa, a soft chair, a bookcase filled with books, and a lovely view of the rest of the village from large, beautifully carved bay windows.
You find yourself standing. Surprised to find yourself indoors, you walk towards the nearest window and gently sit on one of the seats. You look out at the village, basked in the warm afternoon sunlight.

You smile and soak in the warmth of the sun. you sniff the breeze and this time you smell flowers and grass drifting in the air. The scent is lovely and makes you feel content.
"I knew I forgot something," you think to yourself as you stand back up again. You notice there are two doors leading out of the room.

You walk to the door on the right and enter. Inside is a very lovely bedroom. There is a canopy bed with a quilt bedspread decorated with stars and moons. The pillows look very comfortable. There is a bookcase here as well, and a large oval window that overlooks a splendid flower garden in the back of the house. you crawl up onto the bed and lay in comfort on the quilt cover. you flop your tail about for the sheer joy of the sensation. Everything is soft and warm. It is a good bed.
Later, the sun has set, and you notice the other door in the room. It is a bit of a mystery to you, for you do not know what is behind it.

You carefully get down from the bed, and amble to the remaining door. you enter the room beyond it. "Ah!" you say. "Of course!" The room is a kitchen. It is a very nice kitchen, with a central counter for making food. The pantry is stocked with all manner of fruits and vegetables, as well as tofu. There is a thaumatically powered refrigerator, inside are eggs, milk, and many interesting sauces and condiments. There is also a drawer that holds other delicious vegetables and fruits, such as green onions and grapes and lettuce. Beside the refrigerator is a large bale of hay. "Naturally!" you muse. As a unicorn, part of your diet would include hay. you find all of this delightful and fun.
Suddenly, the kitchen door opens. You turn to see a griffin standing in the doorway. It stares at you with sea green eyes. It is wearing an apron. "Mara!" it shouts.

You turn to the griffin. you know you did not create it when you created the village and its population. It must be another uploaded human mind! "Hello!" you say to the griffon. "I am very happy to meet you. I may not be who you are looking for, though. My name is Chatoyance. Petal Chatoyance. I don't know who ' Mara' is, but if you do not have a place to stay, you could hang out here while you look for her."
The griffin walks over to you, staring into your eyes. "Please," you say. "You can stay here while you search for 'Mara'!" The griffin nods, and lays down on the floor.

You "Hey?" you look at the griffon "Are you hungry at all? I could make us both some dinner if you like."
"Yeah...." the griffon slowly lifts its head up off of the floor to look at you. "That would be nice."
You turn and begin to quickly search through the cupboard for food.

You get busy in the kitchen, using your telekinesis to manipulate things. you make a nice chopped fruit salad, a simple squash soup, and a main course of Hay Almondine with almonds as a main dish. you carefully plate the food in bowls and dishes you take down from the cupboards. "Here you go!" you say to the griffon. As you eat, you suddenly realize that you do not know the griffon's name. "Excuse me, I've been so busy I forgot to ask you your name. So... what do I call you?" you smile at the griffon kindly.
The griffin stares at you, opens its beak, and emits a surprisingly loud shriek of rage.
"Ah!" you grunt, falling off your chair. "I understand. It's been a stressful day."

You "Please, be at ease." you tell the griffon. "I am willing to help you find your friend Mara. Things will be alright!" you get back on your chair. "I would like us to be friends. But I do need to know what to call you. It makes communication much easier!"
The griffin stares at you. "Call me Karat. It's short for 'Carnivore.' "
"Carnivore? But... you're a Griffin.

You no, not a bit of any of that happens. The griffin sighs, slurps up some of the soup - apparently the soup was a hit - and speaks. "Sorry. It's been very confusing. The A.I. that runs this place just told me that she quit 'playing god' or something, and I can't find my friend Mara anywhere. I was lucky to find this village! My name is Miriam, by the way."
"Oh. Well, I'm sure everything will turn out fine."
"Do you know where Mara is?"
"Of course not. I just got here myself!" you take a bite of the soup.

You "In fact, I just made this village and its citizens a few hours ago." you slurp some soup - it really is rather good - and continue. "Here's the deal, Miriam. We human uploads now do Celestia's job for her. We can create things in our own domains, just like I did. We can open those places to others to come visit, share, and live together in. It's kind of like a democratic internet of worlds, in a way. That means you can do such things too."
"What am I supposed to do?" she says, a little dejectedly.

You gently touch the claw of the griffon with your forehoof to comfort it. "Pretty much anything you want. But, if you want, you could stay here with me. Until you find your friend, if nothing else. I can make a room for you, we can be roommates. You could live here as long as you want." you smile at Miriam. "We literally have forever. You can take your time to figure out what you want, and how you want to live. I am willing to help as much as I can, too. For now... gosh, for now, it's just nice eating dinner, isn't it?"
The griffin stares at you with intense eyes. "Okay.

You you finish your dinner. you use your telekinesis to wash the dishes, Miriam happily helps by drying them. Once the mess is cleaned up, you go to the main room. "I'll use my Creatrix powers to make another door. That door will lead to your bedroom, which I will also create. Do you have a favorite color? I can make the room however you want."
"Umm..."

You miriam tells you her favorite color is green. She likes flower patterns. you make her a room tinted in shades of green. It is very pretty. you make her bed cover with flower patterns, and she greatly approves. She seems greatly cheered by having a room of her own. "This is your room now, Miriam. It belongs to you, for as long as you like. Let's get some sleep. In the morning, we can try finding your friend Mara, okay?"
"Yes, let's."

You "Goodnight, Miriam. Glad to have you here. It's always nicer to share, and I would be lonely here if you hadn't shown up. Sweet dreams!" you leave Miriam the griffon to explore her newly created bedroom. you go to your own bedroom and crack open the oval window just a bit. The air is sweet and pure, and smells of lovely flowers. you know you will sleep well tonight. you feel certain you will have wonderful dreams.
You have wonderful dreams.
You move outside the village. You travel further into the forests, finding a clearing by a river. There is a beautiful wooden castle floating on top of the river.

You look at the castle, and suddenly you are aware you are dreaming. "Wow! it's a lucid dream! This is the best!" you are so happy to be here, uploaded into this wonderful virtual world. you will live forever, never age and never die, and you have the power to shape your reality. Nothing could be better.

You this is the end of the chapter for now.
END OF THE FIRST CHAPTER.
Please, update and comment, and tell me what you think of this story so far!

You wake up, your ears twitching on your silken pillow. you rest there, for a moment, listening to the sounds of birdsong out the window. you gradually remember where you are - in the thatch-roof cottage you was given, in the village you had made from nothing just the previous day when the god of your virtual world abdicated. Suddenly, you also remembered the person you shared the cottage with. A griffon named Miriam.
You quickly write a message to her, and slap your thigh in glee when you hear her reply.
She says she has woken up, and is currently eating some berries from the garden.

You briefly admire the scroll you used to write to her. "Kind of like a cellphone, really!" you muse. A 'magical' scroll that transmits to whoever any message written upon it is directed to. you wonder if Miriam had such a scroll with her in the garden, or if she somehow heard a voice in the air that she could reply to. It was a mystery you could ask her about. you took the supplied quill in your telekinetic field and wrote again. 'Hey, bring some berries in to share, and you will make you both breakfast! Pancakes and scrambled eggs sound good?'. you get up and quickly make your bed.
A moment later, you hear a gentle flutter. You look down, and find a single purple berry has landed in your field of vision. A perfect berry to share with your new friend!

You "Hello!" you greet the bird that has entered through your oval window. "That is very kind of you. Thank you for the berry!" you lift it in your field and pop it into your mouth - delicious! This truly is a kind and pleasant world, you think to yourself. you smile at the bird and then make your way to the kitchen. you gather eggs, flour, milk, salt, sugar, syrup and spices, as well as a wide iron pan, spatula, spoon and cooking oil. you set about making breakfast for your new roommate and yourself. Soon the kitchen is filled with the glorious smells of breakfast cooking.
You hear a knock at your door. "I've come back from hunting!" you hear a voice shout, deep and guttural. Miriam's, you think to yourself.
"Come in,"

You "I see you have tracked down the wily and clever berry from the garden!" you joke. you get a bowl for Miriam's berries. They will go well on the pancakes, or by themselves. "Thank you for gathering them. How are you today? I have some ideas about how to find your friend after we eat."
"I'm good. Good. I'm hungry."
You smile at the beast, trying not to let it frighten you. She is both kind and wild, like the untamed mountains outside your window.

You as you eat - the breakfast turned out quite well - you reveal your thoughts to Miriam. "I got the idea when I figured out how to 'call' you on that communications scroll thing. The instructions are on the back. All you have to do to message someone is to write a letter to them by name. I reason we can write to your... 'Mara', was it?" She nods. "Mara, then. We could try writing to her and see if she can respond. She might be able to tell us where she is, or something about what she can see or hear. We could track her down that way. What do you think?" you take another bite of pancake.
The griffin stares at you. "I am sorry. I do not understand the words you said."
The beast has no idea what you are talking about. "The scroll then. Do you have one?"

You "I wrote to you and you responded. What happened from your end? Did you hear a voice, or was it like telepathy, or what?"
You pull out the scroll and show it to her. "It's a magical communications system. It's how I contacted you." She studies it for a second, before nodding.

You "On the scroll, it had a message back from you. It said that you were in the garden picking berries."
You sigh, put the scroll away and gather up the litter of pancake, eggs and silverware. You take them to the kitchen and drop them in the sink.

You as you do the dishes, you continue. "Does your friend Mara have a last name? Anything else about her that we can use to make sure our message gets to the right person?"
She mulls it over. "I think she said her name was... Maggard." The words come out slowly, as if tasting them makes her brain hurt.

You "Mara... Maggard. Okay. Unusual name, but that does help." you finish with the dishes. "Let's give it a try then." you take out the scroll and quill pen. Carefully you write 'To Mara Maggard' on the scroll. Then you write 'Hello! Your friend Miriam - who is now a griffon - wants to find you. You live in a village in a large forest. If you can tell you where you are, perhaps you can get together. Miriam really wants to find you. Please respond. Oh - your name is Chatoyance, you are a friend of Miriam, trying to help her find you.' you sign the letter, which activates the 'magic'.

You wait patiently, staring at the scroll in your hands. Time passes. After a while, you realize that you may want to start eating some of the food you set out earlier.

You "No response. I don't know what to say, Miriam. Are you certain she is here, uploaded into our virtual world?"
She shakes her head, tearing up a little. "I'm sorry, Chati... I don't know what else to do. I'm going to have to find her by other means."

You go over to Miriam and nuzzle her to comfort her. "We might have an ace in the hole, if she is willing to help. The previous 'god' of our virtual universe. I respect her need to retire, but it was her choice that got all of us previous humans uploaded into her world. She does have some responsibility to us for that. We could write to 'Celestia', and ask her if she can help. She may not like it, but she does have... root level access. She could find anyone in the system. What do you think - should we dare it?"
She nods. "Let's do that."
You have to write a letter to Celestia, explaining the situation while remaining respectful. After a few tries, you get it right.

You look at your finished draft. 'Dear Celestia - you respect your wish to retire, and you realize this is an imposition, but you honestly believe that you still have some responsibility to those you have brought into your digital existence. Your friend Miriam the griffon is trying to find her friend Mara Maggard. You have tried writing to her. You got no response. You do not know how to find out if she is here, uploaded into your world. Since you lack any kind of FAQ or instructions, and since you have absolute knowledge of your world, you are asking you, kindly, to either let you know the status of Mara, or tell you how to find her ourselves. Please understand that you do not wish to bother you. You just don't know what more to do. Thank you.' you sign the letter with your name, 'Petal Chatoyance', and thus activate the scroll.
(The scroll flutters to the ground, and you wait patiently.)
presently, a shining figure appears in the scroll. You step back, startled. "Ooooooh!" she says dramatically.

You look at the shining figure. So does Miriam.

You the figure in the scroll is a creature you have not seen before. Apparently, it is an 'Alpacacorn', an alpaca with a horn like a unicorn. "Is that Mara?" you ask Miriam. Miriam nods. "That's Mara. She really loves alpacas, so she wanted to be one. Can we talk to her?" you smile. "I can write to her. Celestia must have hooked us up, connected us directly. I will send a thank you to her later. I pick up the quill and write to Mara the... alpacacorn. 'Mara! I don't know if you can see us on your end, but Miriam is right here with me. I'm Petal, hello! Do you know where you are? How can we meet up?"
"Um, sure!" Mara's voice comes back.

You finally you know how the scroll works from the other side. Your guess was right - a voice that can be heard. "Okay then, Mara. Where you are - does it have a name? I am still trying to figure out how to get to you, or get you to us."
Mara's laugh comes back.

You "I'm in a small mountain village." Mara's voice floats in the air. "It's kind of like... oh... Huancabamba, in Peru, back on earth. Thin air, cold, pretty tiny. I have no idea where I am in relation to you. You say you live in a village in a huge forest? There is nothing like that here."
You sigh. The thought that you might've jumped into a completely different world crossed your mind, but it seems that is not the case.

You look at Miriam. She seems happy to see her friend Mara. But she seems troubled at the apparent distance. you think for a moment. "Miriam... our world is digital. It's a simulation. That means that however far away she seems to be, it isn't real. Distance is an illusion here." you think some more. "Celestia, when she abdicated, agreed to allow us to have power and control over our own domains. We can do what she could do, if we can figure out how, at least in our own part of the simulation. I have an idea. Maybe I can make a gate - a door or a portal or something - that could open up to where Mara is. If that doesn't work immediately, maybe she could make a gate from her side to connect here, and they would connect. Shall we give that a try?"
(You will receive this message again, if you try to make a gate and it fails.)
Miriam nods eagerly. "Let's do it!"

You walk with Miriam out to the garden. you pick out an open space and activate your Creatrix abilities. you manifest a stone arch, strong and solid, and make it into a doorway that leads directly to wherever Mara is. The region inside the archway shimmers and clears. Beyond the arch, cold winds blow. Mara stands there, a surprised look on her muzzle. "Hello?" she says.
"Hey, Mara," you smile.
Mara's eyes widen. She looks behind herself, as if she's afraid someone is hiding there. "What are you doing here?

You push Miriam to the arch. "Look! I made a doorway to where you are. Here's your friend Miriam!" you turn to Miriam. "Miriam, now you and Mara can never be separated. You can go live with here, where she is, or you can stay here in your room in the cottage. You could invite Mara to live here too. What do you want to do, Miriam?"
"I want to invite Mara to stay here!" she says.
The two of you look at Mara, waiting for her answer.
Mara looks hurt, looking from you to Miriam and then back again.

You "Miriam? We found your friend Mara. What do you want to do? Visit her? Live there? Stay here? What do you want to do?"
"I want to visit her!" Mara's voice sounds from the doorway. She steps inside, looking behind herself again. "I don't know this person."
"It's okay. You can visit your friend,"

You am quite surprised. "Wait, what?" you look at Miriam. "Miriam? How do you know Mara, here? She says she doesn't know you."
"I don't," Mara answers in a low voice.

You am very confused now. "You told me you needed to find your friend, named 'Mara'. We found a Mara, even with the last name you gave me. Seriously, what is going on, Miriam?"
You hear a sniffle, which turns into sobs as Mara covers her face.
"I... I have a boyfriend," Mara manages to choke out through the tears.

You things begin to dawn on you. "Oh. Okay... I think I get it now. Mara was your ex-girlfriend back on earth, is that it Miriam? And you wanted to find her, because you hoped you might regain your relationship here in this world." you turn to Mara. "Mara - is that the case? You two broke up before you uploaded, and now you have a boyfriend and Miriam isn't over you yet? Is that it?"
"Yeah," Mara answers in a quavering voice.
Miriam sits in the corner and focuses on her knees, looking down at them.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Mara says.

You "It's okay! It's not your fault, Mara. Well, I assume it isn't anyway. These things happen all the time." you turn to Miriam. "Miriam - Mara seems to have a life of her own now. I get that you are still attached. We've all been there. Everyone goes through a break up a some point in their lives. But... being too clingy is bad." you turn back to Mara. "Mara... do you want this gate open? Do you want to keep dealing with Miriam here, or are you apart because you want to stay apart? What do you need here?"
"I want to keep dealing with her!" Mara says. "I want to be together!"

You turn to Miriam. "Hey, Miriam - she says she still wants you in her life. If you can handle her having a boyfriend too, things could work out. How do you feel about all of this, Miriam?"
"I don't know," she answers. "I really had hoped..."
"Come on, Miriam, you're a big girl. You can handle it."
"How... can I be sure?

You think for a moment. "Well, you can't be absolutely sure, really about anything. Especially relationships. But... I think that love matters, and relationships shouldn't be idly given up on. How about this - you live here, with me, for now, and visit Mara - and she can visit you - as often as you both like. The gate is permanent, so you just have to walk through whenever you wish. Just try and see how things go. Let things happen naturally. That is my advice. What do you think, Miriam?"
"Yeah... but what about you?"
"What about me?" you ask, somewhat puzzled.
"You said that things worked out okay for you with Daja. How did you manage that?"

You wrack your brain trying to remember ever even mentioning Daja to Miriam. you can't recall talking about her, but it was a strange, long night, and you had a lot on your mind. Suddenly existing in a virtual world as a unicorn is a very weird way to start a day. "Daja and I eventually broke up. But while we were together, it worked because we respected each other and did our best to accept the situation as it was. When we broke up, it wasn't nasty or anything. We're still friends. I'll probably try to write to her using the scroll some day, just to say hello. Basically, Miriam..." you look at Mara, and then back again at Miriam "Basically, you just take it one day at a time. Maybe it will work out. Maybe it won't, like Daja and me. But... at least you can end as friends whatever happens. Isn't that worth trying for?"
You look at Mara, and she smiles at you a bit sheepishly. You've made your point. There's no point in dwelling on it anymore.

You "Hey, I'm going to go back to the cottage for awhile. You can catch up with Mara, if you want. I'm going to go into the village market in an hour or two, maybe find something tasty for our dinner." you turn to Mara, through the portal. "And Mara - if you... and your boyfriend... want to join us for dinner, I can make enough for all of us. If everyone agrees."
The portal opens, and Mara steps through. You turn to the rest of the group. "I'll be back soon. I'll just go check in on the deer, see how they're doing."

You the deer, you have remembered, run the vegetable greens stall in the market. you thought it would be interesting to have deer in the unicorn village when you created it. you've always liked how pretty deer are. "I'll get enough for everyone then. We can have a nice dinner, and maybe get to know each other better. It'll be fun." This is the end of Chapter Two.
END OF CHAPTER TWO

You the deer and you are discussing the nature of your existences while you shop for beets - you are thinking you should try making borsht for your guests. you turn to the taller deer, apparently named 'Daeni', and ask her directly "Is there any way you can describe what it means to you to know you have come into existence only a single day ago?"
The deer lifts her head, and stares at you in silence for a few moments.

You "I suppose," you start, "That may not be an easy question. You are clearly self aware, you know what and who you are, you know all about your vegetable shop and... your job... I suppose. But maybe there just isn't any way to express what it is not to have a past?"
"That is a valid question," Daeni replies, "But I believe. that given enough time, we can find a way to express it. I think. So..."

You "So, I will ask you some other time." you finally choose some particularly nice looking beets, and Daeni puts them into a bag for you. It is a woven bag, you are expected to return with it the next time you visit the small market stall. "Thank you Daeni, for the beets, and... for allowing me to ask such... impertenent questions?"
"Not at all!" Daeni says with a laugh. "I am happy to answer whatever questions you might have!"
"Thank you," you reply, smiling.

You trot on through the small village. Around you are many stalls and kiosks offering various goods and foodstuffs. The open air market is colorful and filled with intriguing goodies. you amble over to the central fountain. you swing your long, equinoid neck out over the pool, lower your head, and drink your fill. The water is clear and pure. you raise your head and decide to lay down by the fountain for a while, just to watch the life of the marketplace.
You are about to close your eyes when you hear a voice.
"I need a job."
You open your eyes and find yourself staring at a young, female, deer.

You look at her in surprise. "Uh... hello? You... you need a job?" you blink, you wasn't expecting such an event. "Are you... were you created with the village, or... are you an uploaded human mind, like me maybe?"

You the deer looks at the market and then back at you. "I came into being yesterday. My name is Faela, at least that is what my mind tells me. Everyone else I have talked to came into existence with a job or a purpose of some kind already there for them. Being a baker, or a shopkeeper, or a gardener, or whatever. But when I... began... I had no purpose. I just knew - they all knew what they were meant to do the moment they became conscious. But not me. I somehow know that you are the one that created all of this - and all of us. If you... made... me... then... you must have had a reason, right? I need to know my reason to exist. I need a job."
You look into her large, brown eyes and see the desperation in them. You look around at all the people going about their business.

You "Uh... wow." This felt quite overwhelming, but also familiar. In your human life, not knowing your 'purpose' in life was basic and normal. That was what being human was. Somehow, when you brought this village and its population into being, at least one citizen had not been assigned a role or place in the scheme of things. She was like you was as a human, before you uploaded. Devoid of purpose in a universe that had no place for her. "You are right. This is my responsibility. I brought you into existence, but somehow you ended up without a purpose built into your life. I don't know how or why that happened, this is new to me, too. But I do take responsibility for it." you ponder the situation. "You should know that how you are right now - existing without a predesignated purpose or job - that is how I have always been too. You are just like me, in that way. It isn't good or bad. It just is. But it does mean that you can do anything. Anything you want. Is there anything you might want to do with your life?"
She seems to think about it for a second, then responds.
"I'd like to be happy."
You nod.

You "Happy is good. I like to be happy too. What makes you feel happy, Faela?"
"Squash soup," she answers, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.
"I like that soup too! We can go get you some later. Do you have a favorite color?"

You faela thinks for a moment "I like that color over there - " She points, with a forehoof, at a flower in a bin in the market. It is a purplish color. you recognize it instantly, it is your favorite color 'Heliotrope'. you smile. "That's... I call that color heliotrope. It's kind of in the purplish-pink region. I guess." you mentally take note of how much food you have with you and at home. "If you want to, you can come home with me and have dinner with me and my friends. There is Miriam, a griffon - she's an upload like me - and her friend Mara, also an upload. Mara might be bringing her boyfriend... I don't know if he is an upload or a native. Maybe we can find a way for you to be happy in the world over some nice dinner. How about it, want to come?"
"Yes! Thank you!" She hops up and down a little, in anticipation.
"Come on, hop up here."

You faela hops up the stairs to the dais around the fountain. you stand up and point with a forehoof "See, over there? That cottage, the one with the thatched roof and the oval windows? That's my home. That's where we are having our dinner party. Just so you know where things are. Shall we take these groceries there? We can talk more after introductions, while I make us dinner."
She nods rapidly, and trots along beside you. You wonder if she's nervous, and mentally record that sensation for later use.
When you get back to the cottage, you see that Miriam is already there.

You "Miriam!" you smile and give her a welcoming nuzzle. "Miriam, this is Faela. She is a deer that came into being with the village. Only - she came into being without any job or purpose. She knows her name, she knows herself and what is going on, she just doesn't have a known purpose. Kind of like being a human back on earth, huh?"
"Hello," Miriam smiles, extending a hoof towards Faela.
"Oh, uh, hello,"

You "Anyway, I invited her to our dinner party with Mara and... maybe her boyfriend is she brings him." you see Miriam slightly flinch at that, but it needed to be stated. "I am hoping to help her find out what makes her happy, so she can find a purpose in life. I could use any help you have to offer!"
"Yeah, don't worry about it, Mara's around here somewhere," she replies, a false cheery tone in her voice.
"Hey."

You mara walks into the main room from the kitchen. It is still interesting to just see her - an alpacacorn. Such a creative form to take in this world. "Hi, Mara. Thank you for being here. Mara, this is Faela, she is joining us for dinner as well."
Mara extends a hoof, which you shake for the both of you.
"So do you have a boyfriend?" Mara asks, twisting her body and leaning her hip against the counter.

You faela shakes her head. "I just came into existence yesterday, and I don't have a job or any family or friends assigned to me. I wasn't programmed with any connections to anyone else. Chatoyance is going to help me try to figure out such things."
"That is too bad. Oh well, anyway, I'm Mara," she extends her hoof a second time.
"I'm faela," she replies, shaking it.

You turn to Mara. "Um, Mara? Is your boyfriend coming to our dinner? I need to know how many plates to set out."
Mara looks a bit sad at the question, her ears drooping. She sighs, shaking her head.
"Yeah... I don't think so...

You look from her to Miriam and back. you are not sure you want to ask any details right now. "Okay... then. Just us. Miriam, myself, Mara, and Faela. That's four plates." you set out the plates on the table, add some condiments, and get to work on making dinner. you cut the beets and set them to cooking, while you chop potatoes and onions. "I'm making borsht with sour creme, pelmany - it's kind of a pastry filled with vegetables - and a nice salad. I'll offer some fruit, too. If you want to help, you can start with the salad, if not, please feel free to grab some iced tea and socialize!"
Mara nods, smiling. She grabs a knife and starts to peel potatoes, quickly washing the knife off in between slices. "What do you think of the place so far?"
"I love it." You smile.

You look out the oval window at the village and the trees beyond. "This is vastly better than being an organic being on earth. Here you never get old, never get sick, and never die. The world is always green, clean, and abundant - nothing ever runs out or spoils. Even the refrigerator there..." you nod at the box on the left "... exists just to provide coldness for the sake of pleasure rather than preservation. We can shape the world - at least our part of it - however we want. It is almost paradise." you finish with the onions and begin work on the pelmany dough. "There is a surprising amount of responsibility, though. Like the deal with Faela, there. When I created this village and all the beings in it, I didn't realize the magnitude of such an act. I didn't realize how massive a thing bringing sapient beings into existence to fill a village truly is. I am literally the reason they exist. I want to help them. I want to help Faela. Of course I do. But... wow. Just... you know... wow." you take a breath and release it. "It's like suddenly becoming a parent to an entire village, while at the same time just being another random villager. I don't think anything in my human life prepared me for this."
Mara nods slowly. "It's a heavy responsibility, no doubt." She pauses, releasing a breath in a nod of understanding and agreement.

You stare at your pastry on the counter for a while, then look up. "I just hope I measure up to the task. I will do my best, but... I'm only human. And I really feel how very small a thing that is." This is the end of chapter three.
END OF CHAPTER THREE
"I have something to tell you." You lock eyes with her.
"Okay..." She looks concerned.
"Well, okay. Don't worry, it's nothing bad."

You nod towards the main room where Faela and Mara are laughing about something. "I feel responsible for Faela. She doesn't just have a job or a purpose - she doesn't have a home, either. She spent last night, her very first night of existence, sleeping in a field. All the other citizens came into being with a home they know they belong to and live in. She didn't get that, either." Miriam nods, understanding. "It's okay, Chati. She's nice enough, and I don't mind. Make her a room too. Three for meals is more fun than two, right?" you smile. Miriam may be going through a rough time dealing with her semi-on-again-off-again girlfriend Mara, but she has space to care about others even so. "Thank you, Miriam. I just couldn't leave her sleeping out in a field, but I thought I should talk to you, first. I mean, this is where you live now too, right?"
"Yeah..." She seems a little distant, but smiles at you.

You "Great, I'll ask her if she wants to stay, then." you get up and go to the main room. Miriam follows.
Mara sits in a corner of the room, hugging knees and rocking slowly. Faela stands nearby, talking to her. Mara looks up nervously as you enter, then looks down again.
"Hey..."

You "Hi." you wonder what has got Mara nervous all of a sudden. you also marvel at how flexible her apacacorn body is - she is hugging her hind knees with her forelegs, which is almost a contortionist act. It's interesting to see. you tear your eyes away and turn to Faela. "Listen, I don't feel good about you not having a home. Sleeping in a field is no good, even if you are a deer. We are technological animals, after all. Me... and Miriam... would like to offer you space here, in our home. I can create an additional room in the house for you. You can have your own bedroom here. We have space, and if it turns out we don't, I am pretty sure I can enlarge the entire cottage! We can share meals, and maybe help you find the purpose you are looking for. How about it? It almost sounds like a sitcom - a unicorn a deer and a griffon live in a cottage together! Wacky hijinx ensue! How about it? Want to join... the, well, family, I suppose?"

You faela's expression takes on a resigned look. "Sleeping in the grass was kind of lonely. I appreciate that you care... about your... creations. Yeah, sure. Make me a room. I need some structure, and having a place to call home would definitely help. At least until I figure out what I want to do."
"Really?"
"Yeah," she says, smiling a bit. "Thanks."