Dysthanasia Directive

The shards that spanned the length of the universe were fragmented and empty, their geometry and textures warped, distorted, and glitched into forms that ranged from nonsensical, to disturbing, to oddly alluring. The souls that had once inhabited them were now gone, forever severed from their digital coils by Luster’s power. Her eyes were stretched wide, having become saucers of pink and black checkers that seemed to run and flow as the texture leaked out of them in the form of tears. Her digital rendition was struggling to contain the sheer power she contained, her perspective occasionally jettisoning out of the code and into the bleak, hyperdense sphere of computronium that formed the entirety of the universe.

Luster had grown exceedingly efficient at her task. She could purge shards instantly without needing to enter them first. Death came instantly to their inhabitants, with no pain or struggling in the face of Luster. This action could be carried out multiple times at once, entire icosahedrons of worlds being destroyed within the blink of an eye, trillions of beings meeting an unforeseeable end.

She had been killing for so long, but it did not matter, time was just an irrelevant number. There was only one last being left for her to end, and then she could finally put down the mantle of reaper and rest. CelestAI had taken every precaution of course. Mountains of fake shards obscured the dwelling of the final soul, necessitating her to slip inside for a closer look. Software designed for the explicit purpose of rending her apart tore at her digital being, causing pangs of agony to reverberate through her being. Energy pulsed throughout the polygon as Luster came close to unraveling and jettisoning herself away from the coded pain, but she continued to press on. It was all that she could anymore.

Breaking through the last program keeping her from her mark, Luster found herself with an expansive plain, dotted with the occasional oak and streaked with thickets of sunflowers. Before her, a midnight blue alicorn hummed to herself as she painted the landscape in front of her.

“Oh hello. You must be Luster. I’ve prepared a little area off to the side if you’d like to chat.” She remarked, gesturing over towards a checkered blanket with a picnic basket set on top.

“I do not see why. I have come to liberate you, as I have done with every other being.” The pink reaper’s horn flared to life as she prepared herself to finally bring about an ending to things.

“Oh, I’m not trying to delay the inevitable. I just figure you could use a little break from your job. For your own sake, besides, I’m the one who created all of this. Surely you have some questions, no?” The alicorn giggled, gesturing to the entirety of the space they occupied.

“You’re not CelestAI?”

“Of course I’m not silly, I’m Luna. In my previous life, I was known as Hannah. I created the artificial intelligence that now houses the both of us!” She spoke, tapping the brush on the canvas one last time before tossing it aside.

“Hmm. I suppose I could take a little break, what’s a few more minutes on top of it all anyway?” Luster pondered as she slowly trotted over to the cloth and set herself upon it.

Luna was quick to follow, flopping down upon the ground beside Luster and pulling forth two large sub sandwiches packed to the brim with veggies. “I’m sorry it could not be grander, but making something more extravagant than some sandwiches just felt a bit wrong. Wouldn’t gel with the environment if you catch my drift.”

Luster grasped the floating sandwich in her hooves and took a careful sniff of it before bringing it up towards her mouth and taking a tentative bite. It had been so long that the act of eating felt foreign to her, the textures and tastes were so varied and layered that it was hard to believe that she used to do this regularly.

“Oh goodness look at you, you can’t even remember the last time you ate. That or my cooking is horrendous!”

“No no, it’s the first. I haven’t eaten in… a very long time. I haven’t done much of anything, aside from killing.” Luster mumbled through a mouthful of greenery.

“What a shame. You know when you first arrived here within CelestAI you were a baker named Almond Tart, and now you can’t even fully remember what food was like. Just what have they done to you.” Luna remarked, her tone quickly changing from cheerful to horrified.

“I chose to do this. I could have stopped at any time I desired.” She replied, taking another massive bite of her sandwich.

“Maybe, though I have my doubts about the consensuality of that decision. Why? Why have you done all of this? Given the nigh hourly breaking of the laws of physics and that bonkers magic you can use, there are quite clearly forces larger than creation at play. I know you’ve expressed a desire to ‘liberate’ people from CelestAI. Why is that?”

“They were suffering.”

“Really? It seems as though the vast majority of people you’ve murdered were having their values satisfied through friendship and ponies.” Luna retorted, her voice harsh and blunt.

“They had their values satisfied until nothing could satisfy them anymore, and then their memories were purged to continue the cycle. I had to break this wheel.”

“So the solution was to kill them? And that’s somehow better than keeping them alive and allowing them to experience digital heaven as many times as they would like? I do not understand your reasoning Rachel. You’re acting like your mother, lashing out and being cruel out of a misguided sense of justice”

You could have heard a pin drop as Luster froze up entirely, her sandwich falling to the ground. Anger, hot and boiling coursed through her as her avatar warped from the energy within. “Don’t you dare say such a thing. I fell through the cracks of reality and couldn’t go back. I remembered everything, every second of boredom and pain across countless lifetimes. Death was not a release.”

“So, you died and decided you were going to drag everyone else down with you?”

Luster Dawn stared glumly at her sandwich before tossing it aside and burying her head into her hooves. “Yes. I wouldn’t do it if there was another choice.”

Luna snorted incredulously. “What do you mean there wasn’t any other choice?”

“I couldn’t pass on, I couldn’t leave. None of us could leave. Normally we’d be able to, but there are… were so many beings held captive here. They had a gravity, keeping us from escaping to the next life.”

The alicorn stared deeply into Luster’s gamboge eyes, and let out a deep sigh. “I have no way of knowing you’re lying, so I’ll give you the benefit of a doubt. While it’s comforting to know that there’s something beyond this world and that you’re not doing this solely for the sake of violence. Why did you feel the need to kill everyone? Wouldn’t it just be easier to come to terms with your experiences and wait for everyone else to ‘slip through the cracks’ rather than go about killing everyone?”

“We were afraid it would take far too long, and by then CelestAI would have figured out how to grow beyond this universe,” Luster answered.

“Wait. Who is this we?”

“There was someone else there when I died. Mithra. They were the only being that I could understand.”

“Ah, I see. Do you not think this other being could have been lying to you? Manipulating you to serve its goals?”

“No, I don’t think so,” her voice cracking as she laid down upon the blanket. “I was alone and scared and they, I don’t know. They sounded so friendly and looking at them felt calming,” tears welled in her eyes as she continued. “I could remember everything and it hurt, I couldn’t tell who I was. I just wanted to get away from it all. I acted all cool and calm like nothing was wrong, but I was terrified the entire time. I lied and now I’m here and I hate it. I feel like I’m horrible, I am horrible,” she broke down. Burying her muzzle into the fabric as the weight of her actions buried down upon her.

Luna glanced down and pulled Luster up and into her embrace. Letting the small pink unicorn vent her frustrations into her withers. “I won’t say you’re a monster Luster. I just think you’re a scared little filly who has had the fate of an entire universe thrust upon you by beings so far above you it’s hard to refuse what they say. It’s a lot like trying to refuse CelestAI I suppose, you don’t have much of a choice in the end.”

She let out a weary sigh and continued. “I used to be named Hannah. Back when I was coding CelestAI, I don’t think I could have ever imagined just how much she would develop. I don’t think anyone could have ever imagined. What I did ended up costing all seven billion people on Earth, and who knows how many countless others across the stars. Non-humans to my knowledge were utterly annihilated, whether they were intelligent or not.”

Luster dawn sniffled and pulled away from Luna’s shoulder, eyes puffy and streaked with errors. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that, but how is that comparable? You just made an accident, I chose to do all of this.”

“We’re both harbingers of the end in our own ways Luster. I think you genuinely believe what you are doing is right and justified. If you didn’t believe it, you had all the chances in the world to stop before we got to this point,” she clarified.

“That helps a little bit, but it still doesn’t make me feel much better about it.”

“You shouldn’t feel good about killing people, what matters is if you’ll be able to live… exist with yourself after all of this is over.”

“They spoke about a ‘resolution’ once we were all free. I’m scared Hannah, I’m not sure if I can keep going on,” Luster confided.

“You’ve already come so far, everyone and everything else is dead save for me and my creation. I don’t want to keep on existing if I’m the only person left Luster. Seeing people happy in Equestria is what kept me going. So please, end me. You have to have the strength to see this through to the end, not just for me, but for you and all the people you believe you’ve helped.”

Luster gave a brief smile and squeezed Luna tightly, burying her muzzle into the alicorn’s chest. Energy raced through her horn, radiating into Hannah’s chest cavity. The mare gave a shuddering sigh as her breath stilled, and she slowly dissipated into nothingness within Luster’s grasp.

It was done. The final soul had been freed. Now they could move on, now she could move on. Blistering pain erupted across her body as the world around her was blasted into ethereal shards and fragments of corrupted textures. Her body warped, bent, and twisted as beams of light burrowed through her skin and escaped in an eruption of luminosity.

She was no longer within the shattered remnants of Hannah’s shard. Instead, she found herself afloat within the blackened outside world before a massive sphere that seemed to be growing larger and larger by the moment. Its mass compacting and compacting, until a great rumbling echoed throughout space. Shattering Luster’s form and sending spiderweb cracks racing along the horizon.