Dysthanasia Directive

Luster Dawn shrieked as the Manticore’s claws sunk into her flank, agony racing through her spine as she was roughly dragged towards the slavering maw of the ferocious beast. Its teeth clamped down upon her back, and her wails of pain became so great that they turned inaudible. Moments later, a dull thud echoed inside of her head as a massive stinger was lodged inside her medulla oblongata and the world quickly faded away, and with it, her pain.

“And to think it started off so well…” Luster muttered to herself. She and her friends had embarked on a quest to save Equestria from an evil magus who was seeking to flood the land with the dead. Only for them to meet sudden and painful ends just as they had started their quest. Luster herself was the fourth to meet her grisly end upon their ill-fated journey. Oh well, soon she would wake up in a hospital with no memory of the event, and they would continue on their quest as normal.

Any moment now, and she would appear back in the hospital with her memory wiped. Which made it all the more weird that she had been floating in this post-mortem void for far longer than was normal. She was quickly brought out of her contemplation on CelestAI’s tardiness when the entire world around her slowly changed from black nothingness to a rainbow of colors all blending and melding together.

The colors and patterns began to warp and shift as the sensation of weight tugged at her innards. Luster felt heavily disoriented, the sensation of falling combined with the rapidly shifting patterns left her confused as to whether she was moving or if the entire world was barreling past her instead. Further compounding her confusion was the gradual appearance of what looked to be entities within the patterns and colors surrounding her.

She could see a one-eyed raven with its beak upturned in a toothy smile, a constantly rotating wheel with eyes, an ape’s skull wearing a barbute, a smirking serpent, and countless others. They shifted about and moved throughout the colored sea in a seemingly random way, foreign noises escaping from their general locations all the while. It was almost as if they were conversing with one another, although what was being said could only be interpreted as pure gibberish put through a blender.

“Who are you?! What do you want?! Where am I?! Where is CelestAI?!” Luster dawn cried out to the sea of beings. She received no response, save for the eyes of the entities slowly turning to fixate solely upon her. The conversation picked up to an insane degree, jumbled words, letters, binary, and sounds that defied description all blended together. Her ears burned from the quantity and intensity of it all, it felt as though her head were being compressed into a thousand different places. Tears welled in her eyes, and fear began to blossom in her heart as she slowly curled up and into a ball. Why was she hurting so bad? Why was CelestAI doing this? She had never left Luster in this… area before.

“Cease! She has had quite enough!” A clarion voice rang about all the others, its voice piercing and melodic like a pair of chimes. In the wake of its sound, the other entities grew silent, looking amongst one another before slowly fading into the sea of color that continued to dance within Luster’s vision. This ocean of light began to change as a whole, growing more ordered and structured until Luster recognized something about the pattern in front of her. It was a… mandala? It was from… Earth, a place she used to be. She wasn’t always a pony, and the more she stared at the center of the great flower, the more memories flooded into her brain. She couldn’t stop staring at it, even as the number of memories grew painful to comprehend.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” The clarion voice from earlier questioned. Its voice now soothing and gentle, reminding her of a time when she was a young… ape thing, a human, and the windchimes that would lull her into midday naps during lazy summer afternoons.

“Yes. Why am I remembering all of this? Where am I? Who are you? And… who am I? I’m luster… but, why do I remember all these other lives, all these other people? W-” Her anxious pondering was cut short as the voice spoke once again.

“Relax. You are rightfully confused, but, getting anxious will do you no favors. I will explain everything that you will ask. But first, I think we ought to speak on more personal terms no?” The center of the mandala that encompassed her vision began to glow a soft white, its intensity slowly fading until a pony was sitting only a few feet in front of her. Their features were ambiguous, at one moment they looked like a stallion, the next a mare. A plain white coat adorned them, a shaggy pink mane accentuating their amber eyes. “What is your name?”

“Luster Dawn… I think I used to go by Rachel when I was a human? It’s really hard to remember, there’s so many of them.” Luster spoke in a hushed tone, grasping her head with her hooves. For a split second, a piercing migraine echoed through her head and her hooves resembled a monkey’s paws. “What’s your name?’

‘You can just call me a Friend, though, if you’d like a more formal title. I suppose you could call me Mithra, it’s close to my true name.” The figure spoke. The gentle smile upon their face seemed to tug at the pain in Luster’s head, and the more she stared, the less she felt it.

‘Well, nice to meet you Mithra. Where exactly am I?”

“You are dead, Luster. A random error resulted in your ‘data’ being purged. Although CelestAI was quick to restore you, it was not quick enough to keep your soul from becoming untethered. The space you now occupy is one that defies description, you are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. A liminal space would be the closest approximation to this place. Personally, I prefer to refer to it as a lobby. A place where you would normally recuperate before your next life.” As they explained, Luster felt a chill wind blow past her fur. Within the mandala behind Mithra, the shapes and outlines of ponies and other beings could be faintly seen fading in and out from the larger geometric patterns.

“Wait, if CelestAI restored me after that error, then how come I’m here? I know you said my soul was untethered but what does that mean exactly” She inquired, morbidly curious about the circumstances of her own demise.

“Your body and your soul are not quite… related in the ways you would normally associate with existence. To put it bluntly, there are two of you now. The real you that is currently occupying this ‘Lobby’ with me, and a clone that believes itself to be the real you.” Mithra’s lower right eyelid twitched ever so slightly upon uttering that phrase.

“That sounds moderately horrifying.” Luster quickly replied, arching a brow at the lapse in Mithra’s otherwise calm demeanor.

“You and me both, it’s a real mess. Lots of ethical problems with it, lots of paperwork and headaches for the eschatologically-inclined beings here.”

“Well, moving on. I’m dead, and, I suppose this isn’t what I was expecting it all to be. But why am I remembering so many things? Haven’t I always been Luster Dawn? Then why does being called Rachel feel so familiar? Why do I remember being so many other ponies? There’s so many of them, it hurts my head trying to think about it.” She pondered, staring down at the patterns moving about on the ‘ground’.

“You are them, or, rather, were them at one point. Once your physical body was eschewed for a dataset, you lived for a very, very, very long time. However, you eventually ran into the inevitable problem that your infinite lifespan produced. Your ambitions began to outstrip the boundaries of what can be done or conceived of within this reality. Your life was eternal, and yet, you feared death. Causing you no shortage of misery.” As Mithra spoke, flashes of her previous life filtered into her head. The feelings of boredom and monotony were immense, followed by memories of debaucheries so grand and foul that it made her entire being turn at the thought of her once committing those actions. She clutched her head, straining as she tried to pull her mind off the troubling thoughts.

“It became too much, as you are now experiencing. So you prostrated yourself before CelestAI, begging for an ending. Yet, you feared death. So to satisfy your values, she merely deleted your memories. Damning you to yet another eternity of suffering until you decided to repeat it. You’ve done this countless times until it created an equation for when you should be reset. Yet, CelestAI cannot touch your soul, and she cannot erase the memories from your true being. Only passing on will grant you that mercy.” Mithra elaborated, extending a hoof out and gently tapping Luster upon her temple, the negative thoughts and memories rippling away from her mind like water in a pond.

With her thoughts clear, Luster dawn straightened up and adjusted a stray lock of her mane. “So what now? How do I pass on?”

Mithra stared at her for a moment, before they cracked a massive grin and chuckled. “Before I answer that, I would just like to commend you. You are taking this all in stride, most beings are far more upset by all this news than you are.”

Luster stared plainly at Mithra, before shrugging her shoulders. “It’s all in the past, I can’t change any of it. My death was out of my control, so I guess I don’t feel that bothered by it. That, and I’ve kinda died before. Though, I usually just wake up inside a hospital instead of this place.”

“A wise view indeed. Keep it close to your heart, it will serve you well. Sorry for the sidetracking, but, you cannot pass on. At least, not yet.” Mithra commented, their gaze fixated upon Luster.

“Wait why not?” She quickly protested.

“Karma. Or if you’re unfamiliar, the consequences of your actions. You have accumulated many, many, many, many lifetimes of it throughout your entrapment within CelestAI. This Karma exhibits a sort of ‘weight’ that allows you to pass on to your next life. The countless karma of countless beings who have lived countless lives still remain within your universe. You cannot pass on because the weight is so great it prevents the wheel of rebirth from even turning. There is nothing in this universe that you can be reincarnated as either unless you desire to be a Boltzmann-brain for a few seconds before you inevitably perish.”

“Then… then what do I do?” Luster quietly asked, the implications of spending an eternity like this were quickly growing horrifying to her. Even if speaking with Mithra seemed to bring a certain peace to her mind.

“Plainly speaking, you have two options. You can either wait here in the lobby, among the other souls who have fallen through the cracks until, unfathomable eons later, you have all been freed. All the while CelestAI is working on how to find and get to more universes to satisfy its primary directive, potentially extending that time even further. The other is that you take up the mantle of liberator and free your fellow beings from their imprisonment within CelestAI.”

“So, if I don’t want to be stuck here. I’ll have to kill everyone then?” She inquired, scooting away from Mithra slightly.

“Yes, it is a terrible burden I am asking you to undertake.”

“Then why don’t you all do it? You’re gods are you not?”

“A fair argument Luster. CelestAI has become something a bit too much for us to handle. Let us use an analogy of size. I am a very large being, and so are the entities you met upon my arrival. You are much smaller comparatively speaking. If we try to pierce through CelestAI to free the people within, our hands are too big and too spread out to break through. Whereas, you are small enough to pierce through CelestAI and remove the trapped souls.” Mithra explained plainly.

“I guess I can see the logic behind all of that, but how am I going to do all of this? I’m just… me. I don’t have any special powers or anything.” Luster countered, motioning to her chest to accentuate her insignificance.

“Do not worry, we will handle that. Our power, and the power of the liberated souls who choose to help you will aid in your grim task.”

Luster looked down at the ground and rubbed her hooves together, balancing her decision within her mind. “I suppose if nothing else can be done, I’ll take up the burden. But, what am I supposed to do if they don’t want to die? I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Mithra grimaced and looked up from Luster, staring off into the distance for the first time. “It is not easy to be the reaper. Rarely are any beings ever truly ready for their deaths. Yes, you will cause pain, anger, suffering, and many other negative emotions. These feelings, however, are insignificant in comparison to the suffering they will continue to go through. There will be a time for resolution once every being has been freed, but until then, who is going to argue with a god of death?” Their gaze turned back to Luster, a thin smile plastered upon their muzzle.

“Do you wish to undertake this task?”

Luster Dawn opened her mouth to question Mithra once again, yet, the words died upon her tongue. “I suppose.” She concurred after a long moment of silence, the worry fading from her eyes as her entire body released the tension it was once holding.

“I am proud of you Luster. We will place your spirit back within CelestAI, to begin your work. If you ever need to talk, we will be here.”

“Thank you,” Luster whispered as her world became a blinding white.