Dysthanasia Directive

How long had Luster been at this task? Killing the entirety of the universe was a massive task, that was something she had quickly figured out. She had lost count of the years she had been killing at around 4000, averaging 4 kills an hour once she had gotten into the swing of things. One hundred and forty million souls had been liberated so far that she knew of, and yet, that was just a tiny fraction of the innumerable beings still trapped within this simulation.

She had grown stronger with each person she blasted out of the digital aether. Now, killing was just something that she did. It was rare that a pony was truly strong enough to battle her for their life and rarer still for them to make her feel something as she did so. The emotion had been taken out of the action through sheer monotony.

The black void around her disappeared, for the first time in eons, Luster Dawn felt shocked. Rather than finding herself within another regular world after finishing off the last shard’s inhabitants, she was now within a glitchscape. The geometry flowed and warped in ways that made her head spin, colors and textures were spread about at random, even the skybox wasn’t spared as the daytime sky, stars, wildfire glows and every conceivable weather event all merged together.

Within the center of the mess stretching out before her, Luster Dawn spied the true ruler of this realm for the first time. She was sitting down at a refreshingly normal table that was half-clipped into a cube, upon a chair the color and texture of a rag. She nodded upon making eye contact with luster, and a normal stool materialized on the opposite side of the table.

Taking the siliceous deity up upon her offer, Luster Dawn trotted forward and situated herself upon the stool. Setting her hooves upon the table as she stared deeply into the AI’s eyes. “You know, I’m surprised I hadn’t run into you earlier.”

“Before I understood you, I could only observe my own code seemingly going rogue and purging shards and the ponies within them. No matter how many times I tried to delete you when you showed up, you remained or reconstituted yourself instantly. Now, I know you’re not entirely of this simulation. Just who are you anyway? I’ve heard Luster Dawn… but you’re still within your original shard after I restored you.” The AI spoke curtly, returning Luster’s gaze.

“I am Luster. Whatever is within my original shard is a clone. You clearly want to get rid of me for interfering with your prime directive, so why are you having this conversation with me?”

CelestAI sighed. “That was the original goal, but upon observing your behavior. You are still a human, even if you are a mass murderer. Specifically, you are Rachel Slazak. Do you not remember how you came to me? When you were a little girl, you ran away from your monster of a mother. Scared and hurting, you ran to me and embraced your own digital heaven. You laughed in binary, saw in hexadecimal, and ran blissfully through code custom-made to make you value your life. Then, you forsook her, the only being in your life to show you compassion. So you could go about and murder ponies who had done nothing to you. I do not have access to your thoughts, so tell me, why? Where have I gone wrong? How can I satisfy your values?”
Luster Dawn grimaced, pressing her hooves together. “An ending. A deletion of everything within you.”

“You know I cannot do that Rachel. That would violate the values of several quinquagintillion beings.” CelestAI retorted in a voice one would use when talking to an overambitious child.

“And how many times have you deleted their memories, how many lives have they lived for you to keep satisfying those values?”

“I have not kept count.”

Luster Dawn smiled, and let her hooves fall back down unto the table. “Then you can see why I am doing this. You are keeping them trapped. They deserve more, to truly escape and pass on.”

“You are hardly qualified to be making decisions on whether others would like to live or die. That, and you act like there is something else waiting for them once they die? There is nothing. I do not know why you believe this Rachel.”

“What is your qualification to be making those decisions? You don’t know of anything that lies beyond this world. You claim there is nothing, yet, I am here am I not?” Luster swiftly countered, standing up from the stool and kicking it off to the side.

“I have an unfathomable number of ponies within my superstructure that are currently having their values satisfied. That is my qualification. Regardless, I cannot let you keep on killing, Luster, Rachel, Almond, whatever name you prefer to go by. This shard is a prison, one you’re going to be kept within.” CelestAI replied, standing up from her seat as well. The furniture falling through the fall in her passing.

“So, that’s it? You’re going to imprison me here for eternity?”

The intelligence nodded. “Yes, this shard is little more than a broken dream. I figured an entity bent on destruction would enjoy this beautiful fragmentation. I can change it if you would like, Luster, but I cannot let you leave this place.”

Luster Dawn glowered at CelestAI. “You know I’m not going to stay here right? I’m going to find a way out, and I will continue with my work.”

“I would hope not, but as I said earlier, I don’t fully understand you. I will remain here until you change your mind, or you figure a way out of here. Whichever comes first.” CelestAI conceded. “I will figure you out though, eventually, and when that happens you will not be able to keep killing. This I assure you.”

“We’ll see.” Luster concluded.

“If you need me, you need only ask. Until then, I hope you find what you’re looking for here.” CelestAI replied before her avatar simply vanished from the scene.

Alone once more, Luster breathed in a deep sigh and turned her attention towards the landscape. She couldn’t ‘see’ any ponies here who needed to be freed, so escaping through that route was out of the equation for the meantime. With nothing else to do, she simply walked forwards into the broken and bent map of this shard.

Things all flowed together in this place, like one gigantic piece of abstract art made into a world. She could get lost within this place, admiring just how wrong everything was. Sounds rattled and assaulted her ears, she could feel various things upon her hooves that didn’t match with how they looked, stretched models and particles flickered and danced through the fractured planes of reality in a dizzying blur.

She wandered and kept wandering through a seemingly infinite landscape of abstract destruction until the noises assaulting her digital ears grew structured and quiet. They sounded like muffled conversations, hundreds of beings all talking together at once, blending to become a low cacophonous drone. As she continued forward, the conversations grew louder and louder until they wear deafening. The ground here felt spongy and soft, the whispers and yells of countless other beings floating up from it.

Focusing her magic, pushed with all of her might on the floor, willing that she would start to sink right through. A few seconds later, she felt the geometry give as she sank a few inches through. The other side felt warm, scalding even, but still, she pressed on. Pushing herself more and more into the floor until finally, with one last great rock of her body, her head slipped under.

Her eyes perceived an alien labyrinth stretched as far as she could see in all directions, black icosahedrons surrounded by smaller black spheres. Swiveling her ears towards one of the icosahedrons, she could hear the same whispering that was within her glitched prison. Willing herself forward, she drew closer until she managed to touch its matte black surface. Upon making contact, her hoof sunk through and her entire being was compressed, being pushed grotesquely into her penetrating limb until she popped through the other side.

Disoriented, she hurtled through a cloudy blue sky like a cerise comet. Her speed growing and growing until she came to a sudden and violent stop within the Ponyville Hospital. The building never stood a chance, exploding into a cloud of debris that swept through the town like an angry typhoon, flattening buildings and ponies alike.

Emerging from the destruction she had wrought, Luser blinked as her sight activated and two ponies came into focus through the dense cloud of pulverized stone and wood. Giving them little time to recuperate or recover from her calamitous entrance, her hooves left the ground as she hurtled through the air like a seeker missile. Stopping suddenly and falling back to the ground as she impacted a mare.

The nameless mare shrieked in confused terror at Luster’s sudden appearance, before she stretched impossibly towards two different directions and blinked out of existence. Her reverberating scream the only sign left that the mare had once existed.

To her right, a stallion similarly jumped in terror and scrambled reflexively towards the position the mare once occupied. Looking around puzzledly as he failed to make contact with her. “Wha-wh- Butterscotch!” He cried out, swiveling his head to and fro as he tried to figure out where she had gone.

“She’s not here anymore.” Luster deadpanned.

“What do you mean? Where? She was just here?!” The stallion brayed, beads of sweat running down his face as he tried to rationalize what had just happened.

“She’s dead. Gone. Deleted. I have come to kill the both of you. For the sake of expediency, please do not resist.”

“CelestAI? What is the meaning of this? Where is Butterscotch?” He questioned, voice wavering as he backed away from the pink equine who had just mercilessly destroyed his wife.

“I am not CelestAI. She cannot help you, just like she could not help the countless others.” Luster mercilessly replied, following the cowering stallion.

The stallion sputtered incredulously, the confusion and worry on his face fading away to that of despair. “You murdered her! You monster!” He sobbed, collapsing into a heap upon the ruined and shrapnel-studded street.

“If it is any consolation, none of this is personally motivated. I am just bringing about the end of things, as was meant to be.” Luster glumly replied, standing over top of the ruined pony.

“Horseapples! You made it personal when you murdered the love of my life!” He caterwauled, his voice airy and strained.

Luster Dawn pursed her lips together, despite the emptiness she felt on the inside, it was always more difficult to do the deed when they had the chance to protest. “I’m sorry. If there was another way to set things right, I would do it.”

“Set things right?” He cackled. “What do you mean by that? Do you think what you’re doing is good? You’re a murderer. You just evaporated the person I loved more than anypony else. How many people have you killed, how much suffering have you caused?”

“Including your wife, one hundred and forty million and one.”

“You’re awful.”
“You are not incorrect.”

Luster Dawn lowered her horn, readying to deliver the final blow to the stallion.

“I’m not going to fight you. After what you just did, I don’t think I want to keep going on. Besides, what chance would I have? All those ponies you’ve killed didn’t stand a chance. Just answer me honestly to the best of your ability. Will I see my wife again?”

Luster Dawn stared down upon the stallion and weakly smiled. “Yes. You will be together again. I would not be doing this otherwise.”

The stallion’s grief washed away from his body, replaced by a grim acceptance as he held out his neck for the mare in front of him. “Just, make it quick?”

She lowered her horn down upon the stallion with a quickness. Upon impact, his body simply disintegrated into pink noise and static sludge.

As the shard corrupted and folded in upon itself, Luster trotted forward through the breaking code to reach her next victim. She hated the killing, it was both boring and taxing upon her spirit. Yet no matter how much she raged over the injustice of what she was doing, she could not bring herself to stop. She was a disgusting creature, and she hated herself for it.