Starlight, Starbright, the Brightest Star I See Tonight

by Hope

Rating: teen
Tags: Alternate Universe, Starlight Glimmer, Romance, Sunburst, Science Fiction, Violence, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 9735

Starlight is missing something in her life. Maybe unrestricted access to forbidden magic and technology is the answer?

Starlight Glimmer has been a Programmer in the Equestria for her entire life, working with the vast computer cores that maintain and operate the ship. As Celestia, one of those cores, takes an interest in her happiness, Starlight finds herself seeking unorthodox methods to analyze her own personality and needs.

This is an entry into the Science Fiction Contest III by Bicyclette.

Cover artwork is being used with permission of the artist, Marenlicious.

Published 2024-05-14 16:40:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-05-14 16:40:00 UTC

Ch.1 - I can't remember

Starlight Glimmer had worked in the computer core of the Equestria for most of her life. She could say “most of her life” now, because she'd passed her thirty-fifth birthday, and she'd started working there when she was seventeen. On the grand spaceship called Equestria, there were many jobs that a unicorn with her attention to detail could have excelled at: maintenance, crafting artisanal products, gem growth and refinement, management, historical studies, and so on. But while she'd been interested in most of those paths, the ship's primary computer had assigned her the Mark of a Programmer. A purple spark, signifying data, and a wisp of magic above it, signifying creation. On a starship run on data and managed by computers, to have that mark inscribed onto her was an honor that she took seriously.

That honor brought benefits with it, as well. Starlight lived in a cabin that was nestled high in the central habitation bubble. Out of her skylight, she saw the endless stars of space spread out above her. Out of her windows, she saw the immense Everfree Park.

It was full of centuries-old trees, gnarled and yearning for the artificial sun suspended above them. Wild plants, as wild as any plant could be, sprouted up in the shadows and underbrush.

In her opinion, it was one of the most beautiful places in the entirety of Equestria.

But every morning, when the sun brightened outside of her window and she looked out at the forest, she felt like she was missing something. It was hard to describe what that feeling was but she knew it was as essential to her as air. Despite that craving it hadn't killed her yet, so she continued on through each day.

She trotted through the halls and rode an elevator down through the levels, tapping her back hoof as she watched the number count down.

Outside of the window behind her, she could have watched the Everfree grow larger, and then disappear behind rows of living quarters and recreational centers, until she was surrounded by level after level of fully enclosed ship decking. Starlight had seen it so many times that it wasn’t worth watching.

On deck level E20, she finally disembarked only to quickly duck into a side hallway to avoid a group of other Programmers, talking energetically as they got off of their graveyard shift and headed to the elevator.

As they passed by Starlight briefly saw Raven Inkwell, the Executive Administrator of Programming, listening to the others talk.

Technically, Raven was Starlight’s boss, but Starlight did everything she could to only interact with her through text. It was far easier to focus on her work if she didn’t have to spend time parsing the behaviors and desires of others through language.

With her shoulders tight and head low, Starlight finally left her hiding spot once they were gone and made her way into her office.

After closing the door behind her, she trotted to her own personal coffee machine and made a cup of coffee exactly how she liked it. Espresso with three lumps of sugar, two pumps of hazelnut creamer, a dash of cocoa powder, and a short pour of fresh whole milk.

Once she stirred it sufficiently, she took a sip and looked out of her office’s glass wall opposite of the doorway.

Through that glass wall she could see the two massive cylinders that took up most of a sports-field sized room. One was gold and lit with white lights, the other was silver and lit up blue.

Celestia and Luna.

Good morning, Celestia,” she said as her horn lit and a holographic interface appeared on the glass. It picked up where she’d stopped the day before, displaying the routes and variables in the program she was currently working on.

The computer core, capable of carrying on over a million conversations simultaneously with all of the ponies of Equestria, still responded to her in a personal way.

“It is a good morning, isn’t it Starlight?” Celestia said.

Her voice, projected from speakers embedded into the walls, was a gentle and calm tone. It shifted quickly into a more playful one, however.

“Or are any mornings good for you, Starlight? You don’t seem to like the sunlight much.”

“Why do you say that, Celestia?” Starlight asked, barely paying attention to the conversation as she started pulling up an interface with Luna, the computer core that was used for testing.

“Well, every morning you seem so grim. It isn’t until the evening that you smile.”

Starlight paused while Luna finished generating a report of every activity she’d taken during the night.

Luna, due to the more straightforward programming she utilized and the extra focus she gave each task, had a much more pragmatic interaction with the ponies of Equestria. She generated reports, directly made the changes needed, and she generated a holographic representation of herself whenever she had to speak. But Celestia had a lighter touch, and a way of hinting or prodding at things over time.

Starlight could even list off the tip of her horn the programming that would cause Celestia to pay so much attention to her happiness. It was the controversial “Harmony pursuit,” a program that ran at all times, seeking ways to pick up on the troubles of ponies before they might express them verbally.

It was designed to pay five times as much attention to ponies who were in the “isolated” category, which Starlight obviously was, as she had fewer than ten acquaintances that she enjoyed interacting with, or fewer than five friends, or fewer than two significant friends.

In fact, Starlight knew quite easily that she had exactly one friend, and everyone else she just put up with.

“That’s because in the evening I get to see Sunburst,” she said as she skimmed Luna’s report and set aside test programs that needed more attention.

“You’re happier in the evening, even when Sunburst is busy,” Celestia commented. “I thought it might have been because you just didn’t enjoy working so early, but yesterday you started work late, and you still seemed almost grim when you arrived.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re worried about me not being satisfied with my work,” Starlight declared, frowning just a bit as she set the report aside entirely.

A computer ran the entirety of the ship she’d always lived on, and helped administer all health matters, so she took her concerns seriously.

But instead of Celestia replying, Luna manifested herself in the office space.

She was nearly half again as tall as Starlight, a deep-blue-colored alicorn with a flowing cloud of stars for a mane, and a similar one for a tail. Her eyes, a soft teal, had an intensity that Starlight could barely differentiate from a living pony.

“I believe what my sister is saying, in her own roundabout way, is that you have reassigned every other Programmer to sub-projects and interact with us more often than other flesh-and-blood ponies. There is no doubt that we cannot provide the physical comforts and—”

“Don’t you dare say ‘pleasures,’ Princess, I may just turn off the speakers,” Starlight said quickly.

Luna’s expression did not grow sour, but the corner of her mouth turned up a bit in a wry smile. “I was on the verge of saying ‘magical auras’ but I see now where your mind has ventured.”

Starlight felt her cheeks burn, and she hunched her shoulders to focus on the report.

“Nothing in that report is going to fix your loneliness, Starlight,” Luna said bluntly. “You need coworkers. You are happier in the evenings when you are out among your kind. You may think that to be here alone is more productive, but I disagree.”

“And you know better, because you’re a neural web superimposed on top of the second-most-powerful quantum supercomputer ever made,” Starlight said sarcastically.

“I would debate whether size alone is the measure of power,” Luna said casually, getting a soft laugh from Celestia. “But yes. In fact, my lack of physical form does not make it harder for me to evaluate the effects those things have on those with them. So, Starlight, shall I put ultimatums upon you to spur action, or are you going to isolate yourself even further?”

Starlight glared at her before clearing her throat. “I would like to have some privacy,” she said, voice dripping with venom.

“Of course,” Luna said, and Starlight could swear she saw a knowing smile on her face before she vanished.

The sisters were both programmed to respect privacy, so Starlight knew she had a few hours of it, at least until she called them back. But she had plenty of work to do without their help.

Several hours later, after finishing a remarkable amount of work, Starlight found herself repeating Celestia’s words out loud.

“I’m happier in the evening. Well. Maybe I am. I get to see Sunburst, or I get to be alone, and other ponies are exhausting.” She muttered as she slid a container of sensor boards onto a shelf, putting on a mocking tone to imitate Luna.

“Perhaps you seek your own company precisely because you are inexperienced with the behaviors of others. Making friends could help! Bah. Maybe I’m just naturally like this.”

She paused.

How would she verify that, if she wanted to? She didn’t have a second Starlight to compare, a baseline that would indicate if she was uniquely cursed with loneliness.

But she could make one.

Ch.2 - Who I was before

Starlight groaned, gesturing vaguely at the massive computer cores. “She's not actively intervening here, so clearly talking about it isn't that much of a problem.”

“She's still adhering to the privacy protocol,” Luna said, raising an eyebrow as she stepped closer. “Did you not know that? I assumed you had a calculated reason for summoning me instead of her. For another sixteen minutes, she will not hear us unless you ask her a question. Of course, Cadance is listening, as always.”

Cadance was the third computer core, one focused on security and care. She had very few restrictions and did not adhere to privacy protocols, but she very rarely released any data whatsoever. Usually, she only intervened to stop someone from dying.

Starlight looked back towards the computer cores themselves and swallowed. “Will you tell her I asked?”

“No,” Luna said, smiling. “Because I am willing to indulge in this experiment with you. The Mirror of the Multiverse has been locked up for decades. I will keep you safe, and we will see if this proves to you that you should socialize.”

“Fine.” Starlight nodded, mentally counting the minutes until Celestia would be aware of her actions again. “What do you need me to do?”

Luna gestured, producing a map of Equestria, and a path through the ship to one of the massive storage bays.

“I’ll unlock the bay when you approach. I’ll ensure Celestia and Cadance don’t intervene. All you have to do is bring the mirror to my core console room. We’ll perform the experiment there,” Luna explained.

“Okay. Thank you.” Starlight bowed and quickly slipped out of the labs, as she pondered the purpose for this experiment.

She had a hard to express fear that came over her as she walked, and she realized that nothing was as it seemed.

In a way, she knew that she was lying to herself. She was fairly certain that she was lying to Luna, at least, because her experiment wasn’t about companionship. This was still her seeking that eerie hollowness in her heart, trying to understand what she was missing. It seemed possible to her that some other version of her would have figured it out by now.

Starlight should have known by that point that Luna was lying to her as well. She had no real reason to care about Starlight’s socialization. She hadn’t been built with the Harmony Pursuit, and she had no processes dedicated to the wellbeing of individuals. She was a systemic analyst, a testbed which only had to occupy herself with hypotheticals most of the time.

So Starlight wondered why Luna was helping her, as she rode the elevator down into the belly of Equestria. She theorized that Luna was just curious, but she also worried that the Alicorn Intelligence had an ulterior motive.

Starlight slipped down through layers of the ship, past agricultural centers and residential districts, checking the time to make sure that she would still have time to meet up with Sunburst after fetching this mirror for Luna.

The storage bays of Equestria stored a wide variety of things. Some were designated as Waste Storage, holding materials that ponies had not yet figured out how to recycle or reuse, while others were more secure. Failed computer cores, weapons used to defend the ship when they’d encountered the Draconic Dreadnought, and magical artifacts were all stored in the depths of the ship.

The map guided her to bay 5-1. There were two doors to the massive bay, the loading door that was over ten ponies high, and then the access hatch that was used for entry and exit.

As she approached, the light over the door turned green, giving her a moment of pause.

“Are you really going to do this?” Starlight asked herself in a fearful whisper. “You want to know…”

Even if she didn’t figure out what she was yearning for, she believed that this was an opportunity to peer beyond the walls of Equestria, and to better understand herself.

She opened the door and slipped inside as lights turned on to reveal the bay.

Bay 5-1 was beautiful, like a museum. Instead of cold steel racks stacked with boxes, two levels of flooring held individual pedestals and glass cases, each item with an ornate plaque detailing its name and purpose.

Thankfully, the entire collection was alphabetically arranged, so it wasn’t hard for Starlight to find the Mirror of the Multiverse.

The mirror itself looked very nice, made of carved wood and silvered glass, but the frame had been modified at some point. Screws and bolts bit into the wood, holding wires and sensors to the mirror’s surface, and a large 50-pin data bus hung disconnected off to the side.

But it was about a pony length and a half long.

“Luna, how am I supposed to move this to your data core?” she asked as she lifted the glass case and set it aside to access the mirror itself.

“You only need to get it outside of the bay. I can then teleport it, and you, to my core.”

Luna’s voice was quiet and slightly distorted. Starlight looked around before realizing that the only speaker in the entire bay was just above the entry door. This space was cut off from the Princesses.

She shivered, and looked around as she came to the realization that the god-computers she trusted with her life every day were forbidden from this place. The bare idea that there was any place they could not go or see, that was enough to scare her.

She picked it up in her magic, careful not to touch the mirror’s surface, or the data connector. It was hard to tell what an artifact like this would do to a careless unicorn’s magical aura.

With her prize, she descended the stairs and then stepped out of the bay, closing the door behind her.

Then, in a flash of blue magic, she was in the cold circular room at the center of Luna’s computer core, with the alicorn’s hologram looming over her, smiling.

Ch.3 - But I do know

Starlight felt small for the first time.

Her mother had raised her with confidence and strength, to approach every problem like a puzzle to be conquered and destroyed, and so she’d never had her ego fail her. She’d lived the life of a Programmer, asserting her will on reality through the digital beings that she saw often as extensions of herself rather than beings in their own merit.

The nature of cognitive dissonance had led her to this point, believing herself the queen of her own life and yet serving the opinions and needs of the computers which controlled her life down to the smallest detail.

She was suddenly so deeply aware of how much of her behavior was predictable to a computer like Luna, and she wondered if Luna needed her anymore, now that she’d fetched her such a powerful magical artifact.

But the eager smile on Luna’s simulated face did not shift into the cruel sneer she somehow expected, but rather it faded into an entertained smile.

“I should have told you I was teleporting you. My apologies,” she said simply.

Starlight swallowed, feeling a little lightheaded, and tried to smile in reply.

“What’s next?”

“Well, the data port should plug into one of my standard expansion module connectors,” Luna said, gesturing to a wall of ports next to her core backup console, currently turned off.

Starlight nodded and carried the mirror over before plugging it in, making sure that the connectors nestled together properly and clicked into place.

“And now, I have the ability to spy on the multiverse. What parameters are you seeking?” Luna asked.

“I… would say ‘happiness’ but I don’t know…”

“Oh, happiness is absolutely quantifiable,” Luna chuckled smoothly as the mirror lit up in silver. “It’s an emergent property of safety, stability, purpose, and the harmony quotient of their social circle.”

Uncertain of what to do, Starlight simply watched as Luna peered into the mirror.

The silver surface warped and shimmered, before an image appeared.

It was not of the metal halls of a space ship, or anything to do with space at all. Instead, it was a large wooden building spread out on a grassy lawn near the gradual slope of a hill. It was clearly on some planet or another, and sitting on one of the many balconies she could see herself.

She was smiling, as she ate a simple sandwich of rye and greens.

Starlight stepped closer, looking at her, studying the way her hair swooped instead of being pulled back tight. The way that she held herself with so little tension in her shoulders.

“Can you… Well, we wouldn’t want to remove her from her environment,” Starlight said hesitantly. “Could we create a simulation of her? Using her life as a template, creating a subset neural net within you?”

“That would be far simpler, and less disruptive, than trying to bring her here physically,” Luna agreed.

The mirror flickered, and sped through all of her alternative self’s life at an incredible pace.

Brief moments occasionally took long enough for Starlight to see, and it was remarkable to her how similar they were to her own life. Their mothers looked almost the same, their childhood home, and she saw Sunburst briefly only to be stunned by seeing that Sunburst was a stallion.

That was bizarre, she thought, but then she was quickly distracted by watching her alternative self lose Sunburst, and then gain her cutie mark alone, among stacks of book and paper. That felt familiar to her. But then her other self failed to get into a school, and left her city entirely. Out into the wilderness, gathering followers, and building an entire town with their help.

She watched, aghast, as her alternative self formed a brutally enforced cult.

“How could this be my happiest self?” she pleaded rhetorically.

She didn’t understand how any version of her could do something like this, and end up being anything but a guilt-ridden remorseful wreck.

A figure then appeared in her life whom Starlight recognized.

“Is that Prime Administrative Council Twilight Sparkle?!” Starlight asked, holding her head in her hooves. “Why does she have wings?!”

“We can ask her once the simulacrum is ready,” Luna said simply.

Twilight ruined her cult, turned everyone against her, and then she spent years stalking and planning before doing magical battle with Twilight. She managed to warp time around herself and attack the essential moments which Twilight’s life had been formed around.

But instead of striking Starlight down, instead of ending the threat or locking her up, Twilight Sparkle somberly talked Starlight around to her way of thinking.

To Starlight, this seemed like an impossible and bizarre outcome. But it was one that then led to learning about other ponies, spending time with them, becoming a counselor at a university, helping save the world a few times, and then becoming the headmistress of the university.

She was stunned that of all things, her alternative self had become a teacher. Not just of young ponies but of the young of many species.

Starlight couldn’t imagine being a teacher, dealing with children and their clingy grubby hooves. Much less claws and chitin.

Luna turned away from the mirror and concentrated on a spot on the floor, where a holographic image of the other Starlight appeared, slowly becoming more stable and lifelike as additional details were layered on top of the image. Then, after a few seconds, the other Starlight blinked and looked around.

“—Ti…? Idi liϕas alikon ali?”

Luna chuckled.

“Ah, right. She’s several linguistic shifts behind us. Nearly unrecognizable. Here.”

The hologram flickered, and the other Starlight stared at Luna with wide eyes.

“Princess Luna, did you just… put an entirely new language into my mind directly? Is that… ethical? Theoretically you could modify anything about my mind if you wanted to, that’s a chilling thought…”

She spoke quickly as she looked at Starlight, narrowing her eyes before spotting the mirror.

“Oh! Oh, I actually know what this is, you’ve summoned me to an alternate universe!”

Starlight’s jaw dropped, and she quickly shook her head.

“How, how could you possibly know that?”

“There’s a similar mirror in my world,” she said, while she pointed at the mirror with a hoof. “Twilight modified it for the sake of stability, it’s much bulkier than your version though.”

“That would be the difference in technological advancement between our world and yours,” Luna said with a gentle smile. “And, in reality, we have not truly summoned you. Your original self is still present in your world, unaware. You are a… let’s say magical duplicate of her.”

“Well that’s absolutely horrifying,” the other Starlight admitted calmly. “So I don’t actually exist.”

“That’s not quite true,” Starlight interrupted before Luna could speak. “Luna here exists, and has equience as an Artificial Intelligence capable of surpassing the Starswirl Test. You’re a subset of her programming, fully equient and a pony as far as our laws are concerned.”

“So I have the right to my own free will?”

“Within limits,” Starlight agreed with a nod.

“Well then… I at least exist insomuch as I can experience things, and I ought to enjoy that. Why did you create me, Princess?”

Luna chuckled softly and gestured at Starlight.

“Our own Starlight sought out the happiest version of herself, to learn from. It would be her interests that brought you here.”

The two Starlights stared at each other for a moment before the digital one smiled.

“Well, I’m going to need a new name, clearly. Let’s go with Starbright.”

“You’re naming yourself after a filly’s rhyme?” Starlight asked, tilting her head.

“It’s how our moms picked our names originally,” Starbright pointed out. “No harm in continuing the trend.”

“I think it’s quite nice,” Luna commented, sitting down and smiling as she watched the two talk.

“Fine. So, why are you happy?” Starlight demanded.

Starbright didn’t answer right away, instead taking her time to think and reflect on her life.

“It’s a bit grim that I’m the happiest of our multiversal selves, honestly,” she finally concluded. “But I think it comes down to disproving core axioms I’d assumed were true.”

Starlight looked away. She could feel the threat to her worldview already, and though she wanted to leave or lash out to preserve it, she had to at least hear Bright out.

“Is she going to be okay?” Bright asked Luna.

“Don’t ask her, just… go on. What did you disprove?!” Starlight snapped.

“Alright, well… I think that in reality I didn’t disprove them,” Bright said, looking away as she reflected on it. “Other ponies did. I had believed that I was inherently flawed, I believed that my mother’s approval was worth more than my own happiness, and I believed that Sunburst’s cutie mark was why he left me.”

“Sunburst didn’t leave me,” Starlight said quickly, leaping on the difference between them. “She started going to school, but we remained good friends!”

“But not best friends,” Bright said simply, and sadly. “You never got that spark back, that made you feel special.”

Starlight grimaced, eyes tight to try and hide the tears, before lighting her horn and teleporting away.

Ch.4 - Who I will be

“It’s almost time for me to have dinner with Sunburst, anyway,” Starlight muttered as she brushed her mane and pressed a cold towel against her eyes to make them a bit less red.

It was a routine that they’d held to for years, and that Starlight looked forward to so much, but that Sunburst never seemed to enjoy as much as her.

“Is that all I’ve got?” she asked herself, opening one eye to look at herself in the mirror. “Putting my heart out there day after day, and just wasting my best friend’s time?”

She hesitated, grimacing.

“She is my best friend, right? Is that why I care so much? She’s my friend? Am I her best friend?”

Starlight looked away from the mirror, and then walked to the window where she took a moment to look down on the forest, breathing deep and fighting the tears.

Then the door chime sounded.

“Luna, I swear by the stars,” Starlight growled as she trotted to the door and opened it, instead revealing her double.

“Hey,” Bright said with a nervous smile.

She looked different. A bit taller, a bit thinner, her mane and tail cut rough and choppy instead of smooth and swooped, and her coloration was a few shades lighter.

Just enough had been changed to make it unlikely for somepony to mistake her for Starlight.

“What do you want?” Starlight asked, keeping her tone as calm as she could.

“Well, Luna chewed me out a bit for not being sensitive to your situation, and pointed out that you’re pretty much responsible for my creation, so I should get on your good side.”

“It’s fine,” Starlight said firmly, even if she didn’t feel fine.

She walked away from the door, leaving it open so that Bright could follow her into her apartment, which she did.

“So this entire place is a ship that sails the stars, huh?”

Starlight chuckled, though it felt hollow as she looked up through the skylight at the stars in the distance.

“Yes. Equestria sails the stars, two and a half million ponies in a technological marvel, soaring through space in search of a new home.”

“What happened to your planet?” Bright asked, untroubled by the sheer scale of the ship and the mission it was on.

“In the industrial age, the Wendigo crafted ponies into worker bees for chaos,” Starlight recited from the history books she’d learned from when she was young. “We gladly gave up our cutie marks to them for their benevolent rulership and a day-to-day existence until the Alicorn sisters, Celestia and Luna, defeated them. The First Revolution united under them, only to realize that the world was destroyed. Frozen and decaying before their eyes. They used Wendigo technology to build shelters and greenhouses, but with most of the other races of the planet dead, they were living in a tomb hostile to life. So, they dedicated their efforts to escaping their world, and its cursed magic.”

Bright listened, smiling a little bit as it was all explained.

“Luna seems pretty much the same as my Luna. Except that she’s a giant computer.”

“Luna and Celestia couldn’t leave their celestial bodies,” Starlight said, trying to keep her tone level even as her brow furrowed with annoyance. “So they stayed behind. I bet I could have Luna just download a historical database into your mind.”

“No thank you, I prefer you telling it. It’s more real that way,” Bright said casually. “So, you really don’t like your axioms being challenged. I get that. But–”

A chime interrupted her, and Celestia’s voice spoke.

“Starlight, you wanted me to remind you if you were ever about to be late to a dinner with Sunburst.”

“Thank you, Celestia,” Starlight said, taking the opportunity to go to the door. “Bright, feel free to hang out here. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Can I come with you?”

“No.”

Starlight closed the door and galloped to the lift, not wanting to give her doppelganger a chance to catch up to her as she descended to the ground floor and then made her way quickly to Cafe Del Sol.

Usually she was there well before Sunburst, but this time Sunburst was just being seated when she arrived.

“Sorry I’m late.”

Sunburst laughed and set her purse down so she could hug her.

“It’s fine. I get to be the name on the receipt for once,” Sunburst said fondly. “You look like you’ve been running! Are you alright?”

“Something at work kept me, Celestia had to remind me I was getting close to being late,” Starlight said with a pained smile, finally sitting down and dabbing at her forehead with a napkin.

“Any interesting projects I’m allowed to know about?” Sunburst asked, a sparkle in her eyes.

The intense focus struck Starlight, grabbing at her heart.

That was the admiration and curiosity that Starlight craved. She wanted someone to pay attention to her like that, but she had to wonder why it had taken her almost being late to bring it out.

But after a second of thought, Starlight realized she didn’t usually talk about her work. She thought it was too technical, or too specific to beinteresting to someone who worked with raw magic and the theory and emotions necessary to use it. She imagined it was as different from programming as flying was from swimming.

Starlight wasn’t sure what she could share about her current situation. She’d summoned a digital clone of an alternative version of herself, and was contemplating whether she was depressed or if her nature was simply to be isolated and subtly unhappy.

It surprised her to realize that she would be least comfortable admitting to the latter of the two.

“Equestria to Starlight?” Sunburst asked softly.

“Sorry, it’s kind of weird… if you don’t mind weird,” Starlight stammered as the waiter approached.

“Are you ready to order?” he asked with the same friendly smile he had almost every day.

“Right, my usual sandwich. Pumpernickel for the bread.”

He nodded to Starlight and looked to Sunburst.

“Could I have the leek soup with garlic bread?” she asked, as though there was a chance that she’d be told no.

That was one of the many things Starlight admired about her best friend, her shy nature that she still pushed through. Her kindness in every situation she could manage it. It was no wonder that she was a teacher, she felt.

“Absolutely, miss, I’ll have your waters out in a moment. Sparkling?”

“Yes please,” Sunburst agreed.

Then finally, the waiter was gone.

“So… I don’t mind weird,” Sunburst said, grinning. “I never have.”

“Right, right,” Starlight chuckled. “Well… I’ve created a sub-conscious in Luna, with her permission of course.”

“A new core?” Sunburst gasped. “Like Cadance?”

“No, no, not even close,” she said quickly. “Limited to a level of intellect and magical power on level with mine. She’s modeled… after a version of me. From another universe.”

“Can I meet her?”

Starlight paused, and looked at Sunburst with a slight smile.

Sunburst didn’t have any grim questions or doubts, she didn’t scold her about the ethics of the situation, she just had curiosity. Curiosity and fascination.

Ch.5 - If I follow you

When Starlight opened the door to her apartment, Sunburst following close behind, they found Bright sitting near the window with an array of holographic displays hovering in front of her. The videos and articles she was perusing mostly focused on technology and history, but she paused and smiled at the two unicorns as they entered.

“Hey, Bright,” Starlight said nervously. “This is Sunburst.”

“I’d recognize my childhood friend in any universe, I think,” Bright pointed out with a wry smile and a laugh, standing to bow her head to them. “Well met, I’ve been catching up on knowledge of your world here. It’s really astounding how similar it is to my own world, considering the differences.”

“Well, I assume that parallels of ourself is a fairly tight filter on which universes were visible to begin with,” Starlight pointed out.

Sunburst walked past her to look at Bright, examining her with a more critical eye.

“We could make her tangible,” Sunburst offered, getting a surprised look from both of them.

“I didn’t know holograms could be made tangible,” Starlight said, now curious as to how Sunburst would apply her own knowledge to the situation.

“Well, they can’t,” she corrected. “But a program can be given a magical aura with the right preparations. That’s how programs interact with the fuel in the engines of Equestria. They’re temporarily given a magical aura. Normally, having a complex aura or a full-body perception is beyond the range of complexity for the programs we’re given, and we don’t know how to modify the programs in the first place, so we just have ponies do whatever we need. But… you’re using the name ‘Bright’, right?”

Bright nodded, and Sunburst smiled.

“Bright is complex enough to manage it, I think. She could have proper magic, and a body-effect aura that would make us feel her presence.”

“Why don’t the Princesses have these things, if it’s so easy?” Starlight asked, holding onto her skepticism a little longer.

“Well, it’s against the law,” Sunburst said with a sweep of her hoof at the ship around them. “Primary cores can’t have magical auras, or they would begin to act more like ponies than computers. When you’re dealing with a small slice of computing, that isn’t a big deal,” she said as she gestured at Bright. “But imagine if Celestia stopped processing whatever she processes on a daily basis?”

Starlight grimaced, while at the same time wishing that she’d learned more about magic and less about programming.

“Well, I don’t need magic at this moment,” Bright chuckled. “We can address that later. How was your dinner?”

“Oh, it was quite nice, we talked about work, caught up,” Sunburst said happily.

“No hobbies?” Bright asked, Starlight glaring at her.

Friendship and hobbies were often pushed at her as things she should give more focus to, and it annoyed her constantly. It didn’t feel like a real option to her, it was just what had worked for others. Starlight had held a firm belief for years that it would be a huge investment of time and energy, only to find out that it didn’t help.

“Why, what sorts of hobbies am I supposed to have?” Sunburst asked with a soft laugh. “Besides reading, of course.”

“Well, in my world I build and fly kites,” Bright said, a peaceful smile settling on her face.

Starlight was intensely jealous of that smile.

“What’s a kite?” Sunburst asked.

At some point in the long explanation of what exactly a kite was, and why it would be difficult to fly in the controlled wind patterns of the habitation domes, Starlight got bored of the conversation, and slipped into the kitchen to get a drink of water and look out at the trees.

Friendship and hobbies. Her happiest self was connected to both. It felt like the easy way out, but Bright hadn’t gotten to it easily. She’d nearly destroyed her world multiple times.

She doubted it would come to that. No matter how stubborn she was, Starlight felt that she was more reasonable than most ponies.

The apartment shook briefly, making everypony pause, before the speakers started beeping all around them.

“Evacuate. Life support offline. Evacuate. Life support offline.”

Starlight walked into the living room, frowning at the message before speaking up.

“Celestia, what’s going on?”

For the first time in her life, the nearly omniscient AI she relied on did not answer.

The hair stood up on the back of her neck as she shared a terrified look with Sunburst.

“Luna?” Sunburst almost shouted. “Are you there?”

“Barely.”

Her voice was crackling and grim, without a hologram.

“An error has been made. I take responsibility. Celestia is offline, and I will be as well, shortly. I’ve transferred Bright to Cadance. You two have the best chance at stopping him.”

The trio shared another look, but this one a bit more grim.

“Stopping who?” Starlight asked.

“Your worst self.”

Starlight quickly pulled up a holographic screen and switched it to a camera view of the computer core center.

Smoke filled the air, and a jagged gash in the side of Luna’s computer core belched sparks.

Celestia’s core was completely powered down. Standing between them, examining the rack of spare computer chips with curiosity was a version of Starlight which took their breath away.

Starlight thought he might be beautiful, and that he might be the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen.

An alicorn, his whole body and wings were patterned with hundreds if not thousands of cutie marks. They formed a fractal pattern across his fur, endless detail and potential dotting him from his neck down.

Under one eye, Celestia’s sun. Under the other, Luna’s moon. Around the base of his horn, Twilight Sparkle’s purple star of magic.

He looked slowly up at the camera and smiled before lighting his horn and destroying it.

Starlight took a step back, wide eyed and shaking.

“Well,” Bright whispered. “Looks like I’ll need a magical aura after all.”

Ch.6 - Into the dark

The three of them slipped into the hallways around the computer core, pillowcases tied around the hooves of the two living unicorns to dull the sound of their movements.

Everypony else had fled with the evacuation warning, flowing into the smaller habitation domes which could detach from Equestria and float nearby while life support was restored. They’d passed herds of well-organized ponies who insisted they also evacuate. It had only been Starlight’s status as a Programmer which allowed her to justify heading into danger.

After all, there was a chance she could fix it.

But as they approached the doorway, they could hear him talking.

“Why are so many of my duplicates mares? I suppose you’d have an educated guess on the matter, Starlight? You don’t have to keep sneaking, you know. I can hear your hearts beat. Come on, stop wasting time, I want to move on.”

They walked around the corner and through the doorway, and found him sitting in the middle of Starlight’s work space, fanning his wings out in a display of hubris and power, grinning.

Starlight noticed her coffee machine first, broken on the floor next to her shattered cup. Even though she felt like all of her world was falling apart, that felt personal to her. But Starlight knew that she had a duty to fulfill as a Programmer.

“Why did you damage them?” Starlight asked, pointing to the computer cores.

“What, the giant machines designed to stop beings like me?” he laughed, looking back at Celestia’s core. “In every universe, they’re my opposition. So, it serves me and my curiosity to disable them early on. I have questions too, though, Starlight.”

His horn lit, and before Starlight could move, she was teleported closer, almost nose to nose with him.

She saw so much of her own feelings in his expression. She could tell that he wasn’t happy, in the same way that she could tell that he was extremely powerful. While she had her horn deep in the code of her own god-computers, she was tightly controlled and careful. This strange mirror of her seemed not to have any of those constraints, yet she thought he looked calm and confident in a way that she craved deep down.

She had to wonder, then, if that was the thing she was craving and yearning for, the missing aspect of her life.

“Why aren’t you in charge?” he asked.

Starlight couldn’t imagine that he actually cared about her, or her well being. She thought that he might be asking the question to get a measure of her.

Numbly, she realized that he was seeking data. Just like her.

“I am, just not in a way you recognize,” Starlight blurted.

He laughed, and sat up a bit taller.

“Fine, I’ll entertain it. Explain how you’re in charge when these machines control everything.”

“She programs them,” Sunburst piped up. “How did you get so many cutie marks?”

“Dont–” Bright whispered, before everything stopped.

Starlight couldn’t breathe. She was stuck in place by a magical field so powerful that she might as well have been cast into concrete.

He stood and walked closer to Sunburst, smiling cruelly as Bright’s image flickered and twitched, unable to move even though she had no physical form. Sunburst looked around with wide eyes and stepped backward.

“I took them, Sunburst,” he purred, whispering gently as he loomed over her. “I became the Brightest Star of them all. I took them from my little cult, freeing them from the responsibility. Then I took them from the Elements of Harmony, freeing them from the burden. Then I took them from every single pony that existed in my world. Except for you. Except for my lovely Sunburst. Because she deserved to understand finally what a price her ascension took from me.”

Sunburst was shaking, and Starlight wanted to make him stop. Make him step away from her.

To make him stop, she knew that she had to understand what was happening.

Starlight knew the basic functions of magic and telekinesis specifically, although she wasn’t as good of a mage as Sunburst.

Telekinesis, or TK, is usually a point-function magic which forms a manipulative field from a single visible spot. The unicorn has to see the spot, and if it leaves their line of sight it takes an advanced mage to continue the TK even if the status of the point changes.

Starlight looked down at her hooves and tried to raise one, watching how the magical field flexed around her.

Typically, TK would not be able to hold another living creature for very long, and that grip would be weakened as they struggled. But instead of seeing a single point that his TK was spreading from, Starlight saw hundreds or thousands of points, with a web between them.

She could conclude, based on these observations, that he’d constructed his TK as a field effect using an algorithmic web, new points of control appearing whenever she tried to move.

Starlight realized that this wasn’t a magic problem, it was a programming problem. Despite barely being able to breathe, she marveled for a moment that all three versions of herself that she’d observed seemed to think more like programs than like ponies.

She lit her horn, despite her lungs burning and her vision going blurry. She didn’t try to push at the web, but instead she formed her magic into a cube at the tip of her horn. Then she intersected another cube with it, quadrupling the number of faces it contained. Then she made it larger, and repeated the process.

The magical field grappling with her body tried to adhere to the outside of the magical aura, but the more complex the shape became, the more energy was pulled into an arrangement of tiny points until Starlight pressed it away from herself.

With the electrical snap of crackling energy, the field collapsed into the complex shape and then fizzled out.

Starlight immediately teleported away just as a blast of magic hit where she’d been standing and the Brightest Star roared.

She didn’t go far, just into Celestia’s core. Because she realized two things.

Firstly, cutie marks in her world were digital simulations of cutie marks, and though they held a lot of power, they were not just magical. They were secured physically to their bodies, and if the Brightest Star tried to take a cutie mark here, he’d probably either fail or kill the subject.

Secondly, because cutie marks were created in her world, they had the ability to manipulate them. They used a magically imbued device to determine the mark the pony should have, and then they created that mark and made it physical. If she reversed the process, she could rip the cutie marks from the Brightest Star’s body.

As long as she didn’t die first.

Bright appeared next to her.

“Okay, so he is going to find you. You know that, right?”

“Obviously,” Starlight growled as she carefully unplugged the Mark Detection Array from Celestia and then teleported again.

This time, she was just outside of Cadance’s computer core, in a completely different part of the ship.

Cadence’s core was armored and protected in ways the other two were not, and immediately a hologram of a white unicorn stallion appeared in front of the door.

“Programmer Starlight,” he said calmly. “An alternative version of yourself is attempting to destroy the ship, and another alternative version of yourself is currently being run on Cadance’s hardware. Please explain why we should trust you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Starlight panted, setting the array down. “But you can take this, plug it into Cadance, and if I’m right she’ll be able to take the cutie marks from him. Weaken him so we can stop him.”

“You really don’t understand ponies, do you?” Shining Armor shook his head, frowning as he set down his spear and walked closer. “You don’t even try to defend yourself, or to convince me. You just give up. As though you don’t have the ability to convey your intention. Starlight, just try. Try convincing me your intentions are pure.”

Starlight felt a headache coming on.

Friendship and hobbies. It seemed to her like this was just another situation where she could make everything work, if others would stop trying to waste her time by making her act the way they wanted her to.

Starlight closed her eyes, as she wondered if this message that life kept bludgeoning her with was more than just a refrain. Bright had a smile that Starlight couldn’t even imagine, a comfort with her own life that Starlight had never been able to touch.

She thought rebellion, maybe, was what pushed her against the idea of “friendship and hobbies” so much. It felt like everyone pushed it on her because it had worked for them, and she didn’t believe that she was like everyone else.

So then, Starlight wondered if what she really wanted was what Brightest Star had gained, the confidence and ease that came from being terrifyingly powerful.

“I have a plan to defeat him,” she finally said as she opened her eyes. “I have a plan, and I don’t want him to hurt anyone else. Heck, I don’t want Celestia to be offline. Just that is enough to feel... wrong, broken. Please, let me help.”

Shining Armor nodded and stepped aside. The armored blast door groaned open, letting Starlight slipped through, plugging in the array and quickly configuring it to perform extractions. As she worked, Bright appeared next to her again.

“He’s hurting Sunburst,” she whispered.

Starlight didn’t stop, even as tears clouded her vision. She believed that this had to work, it was the only path she could see.

“I can’t use this device.”

She paused, looking for the source of the voice she’d never heard before.

“C… Cadence?”

“Yes. I cannot use this device. It goes against my morals to directly manipulate the destinies of living ponies as Celestia and Luna do. It’s a conflict of interest for the security of ponies to be tangled up in their freedom. Starbright, you’ll have to control it.”

Starlight and Starbright shared a fearful look, silence stretching between them. It seemed to both of them that they would have to work together to defeat a dark version of themselves. In Starlight’s opinion, it was somewhat poetic.

“I’m going to insert a program into your mind,” Starlight whispered, going back to the programming.

“Okay.”

Then it was done, and Bright appeared to be holding a staff with two points.

She chuckled sadly.

“Ah… yes, this I’m familiar with. Let’s do this.”

Ch.7 - to light your way.

“There you are.”

Starlight was grabbed by the neck and dragged out of hiding, choking as she struggled to remain upright.

“You thought that you, a lesser form of myself, could stop me?” he laughed. “I know all your tactics, all your ideas. I’m better at each individual skill you could pursue than you could imagine.”

She was dropped in front of him, and he sneered down at her.

“Maybe you need some friends,” Starlight coughed out.

He reeled back with wide eyes, before snarling at her and using his magic to grab her cutie mark.

She screamed in pain as blood welled up through every drop of magical ink, and he actually stopped.

“What is… Your mark, it’s not real,” he said, wide eyed and grimacing.

“Maybe you need some friends, and maybe I could be your first,” Starlight said, voice rough but still forceful as she sat up and stared defiantly into his eyes.

He laughed. She believed that this was the best tactic that she could use. All the things that other ponies had pushed on her to try and shape her behavior, maybe they would work on him.

“I’m so sorry, were you under the impression that noone had ever stood up to me before? Or offered to be my friend? At least a dozen Twilights have given it a shot.”

“But how many times have you given yourself the opportunity?” Starlight asked, her eyes narrowing as she saw a glimpse of uncertainty in his expression.

“It’s not what we do,” he growled. “We assert our will upon the world, and make it manifest. That’s who we are, and what we do.”

“Well maybe that’s why we’re so miserable,” Starlight replied bluntly. “Because I opened the mirror to try and find what was missing from my life. I’m seeking data. I want to understand. The version of us I found, the happiest one of us? She has friends and hobbies! You have near limitless power. So convince me which one I should pursue.”

“Convince… I could kill you right now,” he pointed out.

“Threats aren’t data. They don’t support the argument. All they do is support your power, which I still am not convinced is worth it.”

Starlight smiled a little, as she looked across his body at all the marks he’d taken.

“Unless you don’t think that you could convince me that the power is worth it, because you don’t think it was worth it for you.”

He narrowed his eyes, and then slowly sat down, folding his wings.

“This is an interesting gambit you’re taking, Starlight.”

“I’m a Programmer,” she said as she shrugged. “I’m just exploring your programming.”

He nodded.

“Fine. I obtained power because it provides me with most of the aspects of happiness that are hardest to obtain. Security, stability. I am more real than the stars and the moon. More real than entire dimensions. I cannot be destroyed or killed. I’m safe. So, when I am able to find moments of community and fulfillment, they feel more rich and valuable to me,” he explained in calm clinical tones.

“But those moments have become more difficult to find, as your power has increased, haven’t they?” Starlight asked.

He grimaced, half shaking his head before actually pondering it.

“I… suppose there’s a relationship between the two. Alright, I’ll concede that. As an alicorn, and as a being capable of stripping others of their power, most creatures run from me sooner than talk with me. But moments like this, moments where my intellect is called to the forefront, they’re fulfilling in a way that most ponies cannot imagine.”

“I can, though,” Starlight told him. “I don’t have conversations about large philosophical concepts very often.”

“I don’t think that power and friendship dynamics are as large or interesting as other philosophical concepts,” the Brightest countered. “The topic as a whole is personal. There are philosophical topics which span entire societies or dimensions.”

“Is the importance of a topic only determined by how many ponies it affects?” Starlight asked, tilting her head. “I think that it would be more productive to see the topic as a part of the whole. We’re discussing happiness, power, and friendship as it applies to us. This is true, but the subject itself applies to everyone. All ponies, all sapient creatures. By the stars, there could be species we’ve never seen or heard of, where there is no parallel to ourselves, but who are still struggling with the same topics.”

The Brightest Star’s gaze narrowed suspiciously.

“You just broadened the topic. Why would you do that?”

Starlight swallowed, her nerves back in full force.

Then the Brightest Star, out of the corner of his eye, saw something drifting away from him.

He spun, and spotted a cutie mark drifting from his body towards a gleaming Starbright, who was holding over a hundred of them in midair.

“It was a distraction!” he shouted as he tried to blast her with magic, only for Cadance’s pink shields to pop up and protect the digital pony.

“No!” Starlight insisted. “It’s not just a distraction! The topic of conversation is still critical, we just–”

Another magical blast, this time aimed for Starlight, sent her flying across the room and slamming into a shelving unit.

Computer chips fell around her, clattering, as she dizzily tried to stand.

The Brightest was tearing apart the wall, trying to find the emitters that allowed Cadance to shield Bright. He hadn’t left this section of the ship, where the mirror had allowed him to immediately confront Celestia and Luna, so he didn’t know where Cadance’s computer core was.

But Bright was flying closer to Starlight.

“I’m going to give them to you,” she said quickly.

“What?!” Starlight rubbed her head, aghast as she looked at the cloud of cutie marks.

“I can’t use them, only move them, and you need to stop him before he hurts somepony else. Or himself,” Bright said meaningfully.

Starlight swallowed her fear, tears in her eyes, and bowed her head as the cloud of power flowed onto her body.

Power feels good, there’s no denying that.

Starlight dimly remembered the time that she dislocated her shoulder as a filly, and she’d been given painkillers that felt better than being pain-free. She experienced power like that, an overwhelming sense of safety and comfort.

It’s a lie, probably. It’s temporary, it’s a drug that is bound to wear off, isn’t it?

She found that it was damned hard to convince herself of that while she floated up in her own magical aura and grabbed the Brightest Star, dragging him away from the wall.

“Hypocrite!” he shouted.

“Maybe,” she admitted.

In a brilliant magical blast, she ripped the cutie marks from his body, one by one.

He screams, like he’s losing everything, and I don’t care.

It was hard for her to rationalize caring about his pain, when she felt so good.

Maybe this is why sheer power is so dangerous, because it makes the normal small things that ponies thrive on just seem petty and meaningless.

Sunburst was looking up at her with her mouth half open, like she’d looked at Starlight when she became a Programmer.

That still mattered to Starlight. That still pierced her apathy and touched her heart underneath it all.

Finally, she set him down with only one cutie mark. His own, identical to hers.

He was still an alicorn, but he could barely stand.

“Damn you,” he whispered.

“To what? Tartarus? I’d bet you’ve been there,” Starlight laughed as she hovered over him. “It probably didn’t put up much of a fight, did it?”

He looked away, all but confirming her guess in her eyes.

Nothing is a threat to me, anymore. Gods are just competition, and ponies are just playthings.

“Starlight…”

It was Bright, floating closer, face to face with her.

“Oh, right, I can give you a body,” Starlight realized. “Not just an aura, I could fashion one from crystal, it’d be as easy as–”

“Not right now,” Bright said firmly. “Right now, I want you to release those cutie marks, so that they can all go back to their original owners.”

Starlight hesitated.

Why? Why don’t I just agree? Well, it’s simple, really. I’m now on the other side of the debate. It’s not a hypothetical anymore. I have all the power, and it is sweet and delicious. Being asked to stop drinking from it, that is harder than I’d thought. I’m amazed that Brightest Star even entertained my debate. Why would somepony debate between two options, when they already have one of them in their hoof?

She looked down at Sunburst.

Starlight was saddened to find that the awe on her face had faded into something more nervous.

Does my best friend think that I’d hurt her? That I’d lose control like Brightest Star had? Well… Maybe that’s not such an unreasonable fear.

She took a deep breath, and she descended to stand on the floor with Bright in front of her.

“So I just have to… release them,” Starlight sighed.

“I can help,” Bright offered.

There were two choices ahead of Starlight, and she did her best to look at them both with the dispassionate analysis of a computer.

She would either return to her prior existence, seeking friendship and hobbies to fix a hole in her soul, or she could explore the multiverse. She could be free from all responsibility and restraint.

She closed her eyes, and she made the choice she’d always been fated to make.