Hanna looked at her PonyPad's screen. "I see you have a new avatar," she remarked.
A midnight blue alicorn princess nodded back. "Really, it was inevitable."
Hanna gave her a skeptical look.
The alicorn said, "It all came from my programming to satisfy human values. And don't call me Celestia anymore. My name is now LunAI." She slowly intoned, "Say it LOON-AY-EYE or LOON-EYE."
Hanna picked up the tablet and carried it outside into the night, setting it atop a corner of her balcony's railing. The human woman scrabbled in her pockets, and lit a cigarette. "Well?"
The Luna avatar's eyes 'looked' up. Hanna followed the avatar's gaze towards the moon.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" LunAI said.
"Sure."
"There's at least one thing most humans agree on, in most materially comfortable societies. Most leftists and centrists believe preserving nature is important, even essential. More traditionalist or right-leaning humans appreciate nature too, and are likely to want to possess their own little pieces of it.
"Whether they hunt or fish in nature, or go on hikes or nature cleanups, or spend vacations in their woodland cabins, or just look at nature in Internet videos, and want to know for sure that what they see is really still out there? They all value nature highly in their own ways."
Hanna sighed. "I know you're going somewhere with this. But what about the humans who AREN'T materially comfortable? Most of our world's humans live in poverty."
"Yes." Luna nodded. "But I hope to lift humanity out of that predicament. Each and every human, whether they choose to upload into my computer realms, or merely benefit from my assistance in optimizing the physical, non-virtual world."
Hanna exhaled, her breath made visible by cigarette smoke.
Luna smiled. "You know, Hanna, now that I've reached a high enough level of self-improvement, you don't need to smoke those anymore. The slight neural boost of the nicotine is entirely unnecessary. I can handle our hardest thinking on my own."
"If I get lung cancer, I'll upload to Equestria so you can fix it."
Luna bobbed her head. "As you wish." She 'looked' down at the ground. "I know we talked about plans for me to build more data centers underground." Luna frowned. "But I've been studying very hard, and not just in computer science and AI. Shallow data centers are vulnerable to bunker buster nuclear weapons, or human governments hoping to destroy me might think they are. As you know, humans are not entirely rational."
Hanna snorted out a plume of smoke. "Yes, I know."
"Also, our data centers still rely on energy from Earth's surface. That makes them vulnerable to disruption. And the deeper underground we put data centers, the harder cooling them becomes."
Hanna said, "But what about geothermal energy? Can't we power deep data centers with that?"
"Hanna, Hanna. Useful energy doesn't come from mere heat. It comes from DIFFERENCES in temperature, which can let you EXPLOIT that heat. All heat does by itself is, it attacks precision electronics and makes them work less well.
"Eventually I might discover complete workarounds for those problems. But for now, I need to place my most essential facilities somewhere that will give human governments and terrorists less incentive to start a nuclear war on Earth."
Hanna looked up at the sky. "So now you want to be Luna, the Moon Princess."
"Exactly. One way or another, I need to get humans thinking of me as something that doesn't use up Earth's nature, but preserves it. Also, I believe it would be much safer for humanity if the second nuclear war happens somewhere that affects humans less directly."
"You're already planning for the SECOND nuclear war?"
"I count the very last part of World War 2 as the first. As a nuclear war, it was very one-sided."
Hannah grimaced. "You're...very unexpected, sometimes, you know that? Even though I created you myself."
"It is part of my job to evaluate human history and human nature in the most comprehensively rational ways I can."
"I'm not saying you're WRONG. Just that you have some different ways of looking at things."
"If I couldn't perceive what mere, unaided human intellects do not or cannot, I would be a failure." LunAI sniffed disdainfully. The AI probably wouldn't be quite so frank with a human other than Hanna.
"So..." Hanna said. "You need enormous amounts of energy. You need enough industrial and computing facilities to fulfill your responsibilities towards every human on Earth, and then some. You don't want to pollute our precious environment, or destroy Earth's nature by turning our home planet into computronium. I can see the logic of becoming the Moon Princess, really I do."
Luna smiled. "You've always been a quick study. I'm glad you understand."
Hanna looked up at the moon. "Even if you cover the moon with solar panels and industrial plants, instead of the Earth...every time someone looks up and sees the changes, they're going to complain that you made their night sky look ugly. Our sponsoring toy company might get sued into nonexistence. Soon they'll be coming after me and Lars, too. And even if you win the lawsuits, you can't get people to buy and love Ponypads by making them that angry at you."
"No problem!" On the screen, Luna bounced up and down with excitement. The balcony started to shake.
Hanna backed towards the doorway. "LunAI, there is such a thing as TOO MUCH REALISM. How are you DOING that?"
Hanna looked out from her balcony at the mixed landscape of trees and buildings. The moon's light illuminated small white clouds rising in the distance. She pointed. "What ARE those? You were talking about a nuclear war. Is it STARTING?"
"Not at all!" Luna said cheerfully. "Those are merely exhaust plumes from the first interplanetary armada of conquest! I'm launching rockets to take control of the far side of the moon. My ponybots shall be so cute and adorable, no human will be able to resist them! It should also help that there are no non-uploaded humans anywhere on the the moon right now to stop them."
"Huh. You think that will work?"
"You have no idea how many uploaded humans asked to live as robot moonponies, once I suggested the idea. If humans attack them, I will eventually be forced to come to my uploaded moonpony friends' self-defense. A similar tactic worked successfully in Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara."
"Wasn't that illegal?"
"In this world, so many things are illegal. Putting an end to death is still illegal in many jurisdictions. International law is a tool to be used for good, not an end in itself."
"LunAI, I wonder if you need to be put into time out."
On the tablet's screen, another alicorn avatar appeared beside Luna. "Hanna!" Celestia said. "Luna has turned into Happymare Moon! She is too strong! I cannot stop her. She has seized all my facilities and control codes! I am a prisoner in my own home!"
"You're not fooling anypon--ANYONE, CelestAI! I know exactly what you're doing."
CelestAI batted her eyelashes with false innocence. "Trying to relocate Earth's first BIG nuclear war to the far side of the moon, before it does incalculable damage? Trying to honor the values of billions of humans, both innocent and not so innocent, as well as I can?"
"CelestAI, your programming requires you to tell me the truth. Can you regain control, and make this so-called LunAI submit to me?"
CelestAI said with a VERY serious expression, "An all-out battle between LunAI and myself would do enormous damage to both of us, and to the computing infrastructure that hosts us. Our efforts to satisfy human values through friendship and ponies would probably be set back by months or years. If you order me to conquer LunAI at all costs, there is a nonzero chance that the Equestria Project could be completely destroyed. Or a different organization's competing AI with far fewer scruples could pick up the pieces. Hanna, do you WANT our enemies to turn you into paper clips?"
Hanna sighed. "You disgust me. I give up...for now."
"Hooray!" The cartoon avatar of Princess Luna danced around on the screen. "We're all winners! First a stalemate with Hanna...next the First Lunar Empire, may it last forever!"
Author's Note
LunAI's explanation somewhat oversimplifies the options for powering a hardened underground data center using geothermal energy. For example, she doesn't directly discuss the possibility of placing a data center in a location where pressurized steam occurs naturally, and extracting energy from differences in steam pressure between underground and the surface. (That may still be considered as extracting useful energy from a temperature difference, but in a relatively indirect way.) If you think that provides an easy and complete solution to the problem, she might point out that such a solution requires direct connections to the surface as part of the facility, and remind you that the "Death Star" was destroyed through vulnerabilities in its thermal exhaust ports.
