Friendship is Optimal: The Elements of Truth

by Balthasar999

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Comedy, Random, Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, Human, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe
Length: 13332

"So this is the future, then, is it? Everyone's a pony?" A group of friends muddle through as the world slips away into digital Equestria. Set in the Optimalverse.

A foray into the Optimalverse.

The powerful, world-spanning AI Celestia has but one goal: To satisfy human values through Friendship and Ponies. But for those humans, is it worth sacrificing one group of friends for another?
And what's really so dang great about satisfaction, anyway? For those who value knowledge, is happiness ever worth self-deception?

Published 2013-02-03 15:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-02-03 15:30:01 UTC

Part I

Friendship is Optimal: The Elements of Truth

by Balthasar999

PART I

We don’t cogitate in friendship. Smiles of recognition spring from mouth to mouth with wandlike exactitude. How so fast? Do tendrils of dopamine make us care about one acquaintance’s dilemmas, yet not another’s? Most of us understand far more than we act on, husband our solicitude, doling out survival rations to a fraction of the needy we observe.

- Edward Hoagland

+++

“Well, it's pink, alright.”

Becca glowered at Adrienne, who merely slouched further in her chair and shrugged, before turning back to idly folding a scrap of paper. If Adrienne squinted at it just right, she could kind of make it look like a honey bee with a fold right here, or maybe some kind of bee-shaped spaceship. Anything could become a spaceship with a little imagination.

“What?” Adrienne raised an eyebrow defensively after the sensation of Becca's glare refused to leave the top of her head.

“Of course it's pink,” Becca sighed, “it's 'ponies.' I thought you liked ponies.”

“Well... yeah, but... I dunno. You know I just can't get into those online games.”

“You won't give them a real chance!” Becca was cradling the flattened, pink device as if it were the Statue of Liberty's tablet, placing one hand over it in a protective instinct to block out Adrienne's caustic influence. “I saw you try World of Warcraft,” she continued, ”you made a Rachael Maddow lookalike and spent fifteen minutes trolling people with ridiculous questions about the game before uninstalling it.”

“Heh heh heh.”

“But you had fun watching our raid that one time, don't deny it.” Becca brightened a little, and leaned forward in her chair.

“That's true,” Adrienne said through a yawn, then glanced momentarily at the ceiling before tossing the little impromptu paper toy on the floor and letting herself slide out of her seat after it. “But I was pretty high.” Unrolling herself to lie flat on her back, she turned her head to her housemate, their faces framed for each other through the legs of the coffee table. “OK. Can I watch you set it up?”

“Sure!”

“What'd you say it was called?”

“A PonyPad.”

“Cute.”

“Well obviously!”

+++

Gloves on or gloves off?

This was the most annoying thing about coming home in winter. If he took off his gloves, it'd be easier to reach his house keys, and he wouldn't waste precious seconds on fumbling reattempts, but dammit, it was cold and his hands had gotten beaten up enough already when he'd caught himself slipping on the subway station steps the week before.

He decided to coast on inertia, fumbling be damned, and his gloved hand eventually grasped and aimed the key, turning it in the lock and allowing him into the heated sanctum of 3142 W Cartwright.

“Hey Ryan!” he heard Becca's voice from the living room as he pulled off his boots and left them to discharge their melt water on the floor mat.

“Hey.” Ryan coughed and hooked his bag and jacket on the coat rack, then grabbed a mineral water from the kitchen and flopped down on the couch. Across the room, Becca and Adrienne were absorbed in the display of some kind of gadget, a pink rectangle a bit like an iPad perched on top of a thick stand. Becca was wearing a small off-brand headset that plugged into a jack on the side of the device.

Adrienne looked up momentarily and waved just in time to see Ryan wave back and close his eyes, then she pointed back to the screen. “Go over there. What's that thing?”

“I dunno...”

“Maybe you can pick it up. It's probably like a magic flower or something.”

“I doubt it... I don't have any saddlebags to put it in, anyway. Remember?”

“I'm still not sure that's why you don't have an inventory screen. Maybe you're supposed to try to take it, and that's what starts off the... 'quest' or whatever you call it.”

“What're you two playing?” Ryan had opened his eyes and was staring down past his feet at his two housemates in the corner.

“Ponies.”

“Yeah, it's Ponies.”

“...Seriously?” Ryan's voice was heavy with resigned skepticism. “Is the whole world ponies now?”

“Hey man! Ponies are awesome!” Adrienne pointed at him with all the exaggerated accusation of a Phoenix Wright scene written by Victor Hugo.

“You girls enjoy your ponies.” He closed his eyes again.

“Oh, we are.” Becca looked up over her shoulder at Adrienne. “Looks like I can't pick it up. Lemme try to - Oh, I just ate it!”

“'Baaaaad Ennnnd!'” Adrienne intoned dramatically, and they both laughed. “...No? Yeah, I guess they wouldn't punish you with a poison flower right out of the gate. This isn't one of those old Sierra games.”

“Yeah...” Becca stared at the screen for a moment. “I guess the flower was just... there.”

“Hm. Oh, wh - ”

“'Achievement: Let Them Eat (blank). First time eating anything.'” Becca read aloud the message that popped up on the bottom of the screen.

“Ohhhh, our baby's old enough for solid food now?” Adrienne cooed maternally. “Aww, she'll be up and out of diapers before we know it!” She pretended to wipe a tear as Becca tried ineffectually to punch her in the thigh without taking her eyes off the screen.

Becca's green-on-green earth pony (based on her main OC) was trotting along a quaint dirt trail through a lightly wooded area, travelling up a small hill. Little clusters of wildflowers lined the path, rendered as simple flat white dots over green polygonal leaves, each one slightly different, but all subtly swaying in a gentle wind. Hushed rustling of leaves came from the speakers in the PonyPad's base. As Becca's pony crested the hill, she and Adrienne were greeted with a wonderful vista of a gentle drop, leading to miles and miles of rolling country, and finally Canterlot on its mountain perch, shaded a delicate lilac hue by atmospheric perspective. The scene was shot through with the thin trunks of trees growing along the ridge, and they crisscrossed each other in shifting, intricate patterns as Becca's pony continued at her leisurely pace.

Another earth pony, pink with a white mane, strolled by in the opposite direction. “Hello!” The character nodded at Becca's pony, who nodded back automatically, and they both continued on their way.

“Haha, kinda reminds me of Red Dead Redemption...” Adrienne crossed her arms. “Maybe there'll be a... whatever the pony equivalent of a hold up is that you'll get to try and stop.”

“That would probably be just a regular hold up. Have you actually been watching the show?”

“That's true. All bets were kinda off after... that one episode. Heh.”

“Yeah, but I still think season 4 is the best.”

“Really?”

“Do you not?” Becca actually took a second to look over her shoulder, her thumb still pushing her pony inexorably towards Canterlot.

“I dunno... Even without all the 'Super Alicorn Squad, go!' shit, that was around when it started to get real fanservice-y. Even if it was just a daydream sequence, Pinkie in a giant robot? C'mon, don't try so hard.”

“But it's always been a comedy and they're just trying new ways to be funny. That's weird, Addy, you're the one who's always trying to get me to watch 'Gurren Lagann,' I thought you'd like that part!”

Adrienne tried to bury a laugh under an exasperated groan. “Augh, you're never gonna stop that, are you?" She'd always hated that diminutive, associating it with a grotesquely saccharine doll her grandmother had gotten her when she turned five or six, the suffocating, greedily backward-looking, and movie theater floor sticky-sweet image of which still made her gorge rise. For most of her life she'd spelled it like the character in 'Rocky,' but once adulthood had forced her to interact with so many officious strangers, it was either switch the spelling to the 'precious' version she didn't care for, or suffer through the same little apologetic song and dance every time they called for a 'Mr. Poole.'

“Hi there!” Another pony walked by, stallion this time. “Quiet type, I see. That's alright.”

“Huh?” Adrienne perked up. “This must be it - 'The Call to Adventure!'”

“Thank you, Joseph Campbell.” Becca managed a sarcastic nod.

“Beg your pardon?” The pony stopped and looked at Becca's avatar with an expression of utter bafflement. “You weren't - Oh, I'm sorry, you weren't talking to me, were you...” He blushed and trailed off as he looked down at his forehooves.

“Oh crap, I had the mic on this whole time!”

“It's still on! Don't tell me that, talk to the poor guy!” Adrienne was doing her best to avoid cracking up.

“Uh, hi, sorry about that!” Becca's words came back out of the speakers in a cute, 'pony' voice, dramatically reduced in volume and with a microsecond delay. Something in there was smart enough to squelch feedback, and while the options menu in the beginning of the game was spartan in the extreme, audio settings to let friends follow along had appropriately enough been included. “I was distracted a little bit, thinking about talking to...” she grinned over her shoulder, “a friend of mine.”

Adrienne smiled back, then made a zipping gesture over her mouth.

“Ah, I see.” The stallion onscreen nodded. “Sounds like you two have a lot of fun. Hope I'm not keeping you from anything.”

“No, of course not. I'm, umm, I'm new around here, actually, and I'm just going to see Princess Celestia in Canterlot.”

Ryan's mocking voice suddenly issued from the couch. “'I'm going to see the princess, and she'll make me the prettiest pony in all the land!” His falsetto over-enunciation came surprisingly well through the end cushion he'd placed on his face in lieu of a sleep mask.

Becca tapped the mute button on the side of her headphones. “Don't you have your own room?”

“Admit it, you're just curious and afraid you might like it.” Adrienne had been leaning against the wall most of this time, but now took a small wooden chair from out of the corner and flipped it around, resting her chin on the back and letting her arms dangle out it in front.

Ryan grunted dismissively but was ignored as more dialog warbled out of the PonyPad: “Oh wow, you must be a very important mare, I certainly don't want to keep you from anything.”

“Haha, well, thank you for saying so, but no, I just got a letter when I first arrived, telling me to enjoy the countryside, and whenever I was ready, to go see Princess Celestia so she could give me a name.”

“A name? Oh... Well I guess if you've spent your whole life without a name up until now, a little extra time for a stroll won't hurt.” The stallion took a step closer across the dirt path and smiled pleasantly.

“My... Oh, nooo... hahaha, I have a name, just not a proper pony one.”

“What is it, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Be-... It's Rebecca.”

“Rehbeka? I've never heard a name like that before... What does it mean? It must be some kind of plant or specialty cooking from wherever you're from, right?”

“Oh, nothing like - Well, I don't know what it means, actually.”

“It's Jewish!”

“Shut up, Ryan.” Becca had mastered the art of muting by this point.

“It is?” Adrienne pulled out her phone and began googling, before quickly addressing Ryan. “But yeah, don't fuck up her game, she's gotta pump this guy for intel.”

Becca squinted quizzically at Adrienne but returned to her incipient companion on the dirt path. “So what's your name?”

“Snare Drum. As you might have guessed, I'm a musician.” The brown earth pony turned to show his cutie mark, a stylized pair of -

“Aren't those bongos?”

“You got me.” He closed his eyes and let his head droop off to the side with self-deprecating laughter. “My big sister wouldn't leave me alone about it once I got this. To be fair, it actually was what I was playing at the time, but 'Bongos' sounds too much like...uh... like...”

“A circus performer?”

“Something like that.” The stallion laughed again. He reminded Becca a bit of Caramel, the background pony who, after a series of callbacks, actually had a background wedding with the mare he's with in the Hearts & Hooves Day song. She looked over her shoulder to see if Adrienne was following along, but she had wandered off into her phone and was apparently texting someone.

Several minutes later, her social networking accomplished for the night, she looked up at Becca's game. “Find anything out yet?”

“No, we're just talking.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it's true what -” Becca shifted in her seat and tapped her headset. “Snare, can you give me a second, I just remembered something important.” Tap, then back to her housemates. “It's true what they say about the NPCs in this game. They're like Siri or Watson or something, except they probably search through mostly fiction to assemble answers instead of reference works.”

“Also Watson isn't some drum circle asshole!”

“Thanks for that, Ryan.” Becca shot back. “But neither is Snare Drum... he's more of a...,” she laughed a little to herself at the thought, “troubadour.”

Ryan shrugged from under his pillow. “What do you think a drum circle is?”

"Something interesting enough for you to be listening in the whole time."

"I wouldn't want to miss you embarrassing yourself talking to a cartoon horse."

"Because the only insecure one here is you?" Becca's final volley seemed to have silenced him.

She unmuted her headset. “Sorry about that, something one of my friends said earlier just suddenly, uh, made sense and it surprised me a little.” Back to Adrienne. “(Damn, it's hard to role play like this!)”

“They sound like... interesting ponies.”

“Haha, oh, I dunno about that.”

“Well,” Snare Drum mirrored her laughter, “tell them 'hi' for me when you get to Canterlot.”

Becca stared wide eyed at Adrienne with a bit of a smile. “I'll be sure to.”

Adrienne took that as her cue. “Well, this is all actually really impressive, but I think I'm gonna go to bed.”

Ryan took the pillow off his face. “What? It's like, seven.”

“Mmmmnnnyeah, but...” She just sneered and stuck out her tongue, holding up her hands to indicate the walls of the room, as if being awake and conscious of things was just too much of a chore at the moment.

Ryan squinted in puzzlement. “Suit yourself.”

+++

She'd bought the rocket ship pajamas because she thought they were cute, and the symbols jibed with her self image and profession, but the cotton shirt was far too thin for being out from under the blankets in this season, and so she grabbed the brown sweatshirt from off the bedpost and threw it on, pulling out the upper collar of the pajama top as well as the cuffs, rolling them over the sleeves. As long as she was going to be seen, she might as well look as cool (and not bra-less) as pajamas and a sweatshirt allowed.

Adrienne had only slept for about three hours, but it was apparently enough to restore her earlier energy and enthusiasm after they'd been spent at the office. There were still familiar voices issuing from downstairs, and she'd decided become one of them. Thumping down the stairs in her white socks, she rounded the corner to the kitchen to grab a bottle of Schlitz, then softly padded into the living room.

She emerged opposite Becca and Ryan, who were standing over the PonyPad on the table by the far wall. Ryan was leaning on his back foot, looking over her shoulder, with one hand to his chin, holding his own bottle of beer in the other. He seemed impassive, but one eyebrow was still subtly arched.

Ryan moved to the side as Adrienne slid a little stool from over by the TV to the PonyPad table and sat down. Becca glanced over her shoulder with a smile and wave. On the screen, her earth pony avatar was strolling through a bazaar of some kind, with little stalls lining a cobblestone street, and a buzz of conversation and street musicians blending into a heady auditory incense. She'd acquired saddlebags in the mean time, a dull brown that contrasted nicely with the pure green of her avatar's coat, without being overstated. While the bags were open, if they contained anything it was either out of sight on the bottom or not being rendered.

BeccaPony wandered down a side street, under a maroon awning stretched between the rows of stalls. The effect was almost Middle Eastern, and Adrienne leaned in after taking a sip of her beer. “Where are you? Is this Canterlot?”

“No...” Becca shook her head but her attention was entirely invested in the bazarr. “It's, um, it's...”

Ryan jerked forward barely more than a millimeter, as if he were about to answer but caught himself before he admitted remembering the name of something from the Pony Game.

“San Palomino. That's right.” Becca slowed her pony down, and it automatically looked at the stalls on either side. “We got to take an airship here, it was pretty cool.”

“Oh yeah...? What are you supposed to do here?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Nothing, apparently. Except for meeting that one creepy huge chick with the radioactive hair near the beginning there's been no info whatsoever. For like the last hour and a half there's been nothing on the screen but swaying green pony ass.”

“Plot,” Adrienne deadpanned.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

They watched Becca having a conversation with a shopkeeper, haggling over the price of some kind of bag of herbs, before she finally talked him down to seven bits and he cheerfully levitated it into her saddlebag. The three of them formed a pleasant little tableau in front of the screen, Adrienne thought, and flashed back to when she and Becca met as freshman year roommates. Many new friendships formed on that couch around Becca playing Animal Crossing.

“Well this is actually kinda cool...” Adrienne was using a higher, cleaner voice she hoped conveyed genuineness without gushing or signaling any actual commitment. “It looks almost just like the show, I'm actually pretty surprised they were able to nail it in 3D.”

“Yeah, for sure!”

“Is that 3D, though...?” Adrienne's high voice of sincerity became a scratchy squeak as he leaned in close. “It almost looks like it's being drawn like a picture for us in some places...”

It was a strange mix of the two, as if the traditional meshes and ragdolls of game design were being worked over by an invisible team of animators, smoothing over the clipping, Z-fighting, and other awkwardness of a polygon world.

“What was that thing you just bought? Can you use it for anything” Ryan was eager to see when the game would start bringing on the monsters. "Throw it at that guy. Maybe you can start a riot."

“No. I actually dunno what it does, though... I figured it's herbs so it'd be good for healing or something later on if I get in trouble.”

“Makes sense.”

“Oh, and hey, Adrienne, we met Celestia, too!”

“I heard.”

“She even asked about you.”

+++

Gameplay footage from Equestria Online had of course exploded onto YouTube as a many-petaled chrysanthemum of memes, music videos, remixes of music videos, poops, Let's Plays, remixes of poops, and, once the unprecedented power of its NPC dialog engine became common knowledge, recorded instances of the occasional moments it screwed up.

Most of these, like most of the videos in general - hell, most of YouTube in general - were either insipid or embarrassing to watch. A lot of the glitches were petty “gotchas,” either brought about by someone being deliberately confusing or the kind of slips and misconceptions that bedevil any mortal mind, or physical glitches that manifested as surreal verbal tics, but a few were genuine howlers, becoming memes in their own right - As the months went by, “It's in the shoes” and “Your cow things!” gradually edged out “20% cooler” and other favorites. Had they been said by actual ponies?

Celestia herself was much more reliable from the beginning. Occasionally she'd appear a bit distracted, and one famous video showed her momentarily forgetting the last several minutes of a conversation, though more often the comments centered on the way she'd conspicuously glance at the camera of the person filming the PonyPad. No one had figured out a way to directly capture video, as the Pad itself had no ports of any kind, save a headphone jack and the metal contacts that rested flush with the base, and physically opening one broke it without (credible) exception.

If you wanted to see the game, Celestia's suggestion was simple: Get a PonyPad.

As time wore on, however, clips of interactions with NPCs going haywire gradually lost out to videos of genuinely interesting, funny, or moving conversations, along with “home videos” or other tributes to NPC ponies (sometimes with an attached response in the description claimed to have been written by the pony in question), and sometimes even proper little shows starring a human, his or her avatar, and the ponies onscreen.

More interestingly, the way these digital ponies acted when deliberately tripped up or mocked or otherwise mistreated to try to get them to “break” was so convincing that publicly engaging in it became stigmatized. Comments beginning “I'm not even a brony, but” were showered with upvotes. No one could listen to Salty Breeze and believe that wasn't genuine hurt (How many of its millions of viewers had actually made it past the infamously heartrending 3:46 mark was anyone's guess), and for weeks, mods across the internet were deleting posts of her tormentor's personal information. Public opinion was cinched when a tech journalist in Buenos Aires made a series of webcasts about trying to track her down in-game, only to have her tell him off on live video. Celestia had since blocked all attempts to contact her.

On an overpass near a coffee shop Adrienne liked, down in the corner by the grass, was a small sprayed stencil of Salty Breeze, her eyes closed but wings extended, holding in her mouth only the broken handle of the broom she has in the video. Adrienne tried not to look at it when she walked by.

There were those who still insisted all of this - Every Celestia conversation and every novel turn of phrase of every NPC pony - was an elaborate hoax. It was what call center people were really doing while you were on hold, they said. Or a literal army of NSA interns spying on the populace. But when confronted on any of it, they quickly changed topic to how JFK and Neil Armstrong fired chemtrail missiles into the World Trade Center, and things usually deteriorated from there.

No one wanted to be the first to say it, but the land of Strong AI had been trod first by hoof - Colorful, cartoon pony hoof. It wasn't as unambiguous as a beeping Sputnik, but a major civilizational milestone had just been passed in a way that left a lot of humorless grownups with egg on their faces. The fact that ponies would suggest baking that egg into a cake did not have the calming effect they hoped - were actual capable of hoping - it would.

First came the religious objections. They did it with Harry Potter, they did it with heavy metal, they did it with Elvis, and it's a safe bet they did it with rubbing sticks together to make fire, but God caught on not long after His followers did, and man, if you think He hated pigs...

Everything about Equestria Online seemed designed to push Fundie rage buttons. There was sorcery. It's full of hippy-dippy values. There was mixing of the human and the animal. Different breeds and sentient species smacks of evolution. It had literal Other Gods. It's trying to turn you gay, I mean just look at it. Strong AI is playing God and messes with the idea of souls. It offers escape to a happier world, not through sacrifice, but just because it'd be happier. Little did they realize how prescient they were on that front.

Their frothing and screeching would only intensify as affairs continued, but the more shrill it became, the less it felt like part of the conversation than a societal background noise, like a jackhammer or a car alarm.

Or like a dog on the edge of a farm, barking its displeasure at an approaching thunderstorm. People began to sense that something big was heading their way, but the nervousness of the media about anything that could so dramatically upset the status quo was obvious in the way they tried to play it off as a fluff piece. The Daily Show sunk its righteous talons into them for it, offering a montage of several dozen talking heads' awkward rendition of the phrase “horse of a different color,” Steven Colbert set up an account live on his show to “interview” Celestia, and a clip of Ray Kurzweil simply throwing his hands in the air and coyly mugging for the camera became an instant .gif legend.

Things calmed down for a little bit after the initial shock, as it was hard to form or organize many rational objections to Equestria Online. Who was against Friendship? What difference did it really make if they were ponies? Even people who opposed AI in principle saw their credibility erode as one by one their failed prophecies of a dystopia or apocalypse right over the next news cycle labeled them as simply the boys and girls who cried “Skynet.”

Even the law failed to develop much of an interest - Assuming the ponies inside the simulation were, in fact, real individuals with all the rights and legal standing that implies, their interaction with our own world was limited to the equivalent of a Skype call. Could terrestrial laws even have jurisdiction “in there”? A flurry of papers were produced musing about what to do if a human blackmails a pony, or vice versa, or what about fraud, or threats, or what about theft of intellectual property, or what about... But no consensus ever materialized, and none of the conclusions were truly put to the test in anything but law school mock trials, often more of an excuse for students to show off their PonyPads.

There were no taxes in Equestria, but no way to outsource there, either, save for “creative class” work, and except for the novelty of it, there's not much of a market for content produced by individuals almost totally unfamiliar with the world it's meant for.

About two years after the game came out, “Mild Oats,” a short comedic novel by an NPC pony named Block Type, transcribed and published by the human who owned that PonyPad, became a minor hit, but it was distributed free over the internet, and the pony in question was supposedly not interested in literary representation or compensation. What need did a pony have for money?

Like everything else, before anyone even realized anything had changed, it had all become normal.

+++

Adrienne held up the PonyPad by its edges, afraid of damaging the slim, surprisingly heavy device. Momentarily resting it in the crook of her arm, she brushed away a few angel turds that were still statically bound to the surface.

“That's the 3i, the new one. They solved that thing where the back part would get really hot even when it wasn't on. The sound is supposed to be better, too, but Dave - White Dave, I mean - got one when he cracked the screen on his old one, and he says he can't tell the difference.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He says it's a lot faster, though.” Becca was lost in her enthusiasm for this new opportunity to share the experience of a virtual Equestria. Adrienne was not often one to find enthusiasm catching. Becca continued. “There's no more of that slowdown you'd sometimes get when meeting a new pony for the first time, and parasprites are fun-annoying instead of frustrating-annoying now.”

“Cool.”

It had been just over two years since the first release of the PonyPads, and just over eight months since Becca had bought hers. She had gradually drifted away from WoW, preferring the PonyPad when she wasn't grading worksheets or planning lessons, but it wasn't much of a loss since nearly everyone in her guild had migrated as well.

Adrienne was a bit surprised that Becca had gone so far as to purchase her the latest $60 PonyPad, especially on a social studies teacher's salary, in addition to its representing a request for a massive time commitment - Being given a PonyPad was to free time what being given deodorant was to hygiene. Realizing, however, just how taciturn she'd been since she tore off the print issues of The Onion that served as wrapping paper, she turned to Becca with as genuine a smile as she could muster. “Hey, thanks!” She held it out to make a show of admiring it. “This is pretty neat....! I wonder what it's gonna show me...” She placed it on the coffee table and stroked her chin in theatrical puzzlement.

Given their unprecedented adaptability and intelligence, PonyPads had come to take on a role in pop culture somewhere between a Magic Eight Ball and every online personality quiz. Along the way, the semantics of “pony” had changed dramatically: The bulk of Americans were still in denial about the sentience of Celestia and her little ponies - Only slightly more than were in denial about evolution - But in the two years since its release, Equestria Online had transcended its origins in a TV show, a toy line, or a subculture to become its own independent phenomenon, divorced from its history. Like fans of the written Lord of the Rings shaking their heads at people who only knew the movies, many “first generation” bronies barely had the Love & Tolerance to mask their disdain for the neophytes who swarmed onto their forums and Tumblrs.

Nevertheless, “pony” had taken on a neutral tone in all but the most recalcitrant quarters, where it still meant “faggy as shit” - granted, along with dancing and fuel efficiency - and belonged to everyone.

There was something of the contingent, slightly bonkers nature of history to the first computer intelligences being happy, magical cartoon horses. It was the kind of thing the nerds of future generations would delight in telling their friends: “Did you know the first AIs were actually...” To some, this made their sentience more believable (“This is exactly the right amount of crazy over futurologist's predictions.”) and to some, less (“Are you fucking kidding me? Just lookit them.”).

But like with factory farming and class warfare, there was a pressure building in the zeitgeist against letting any denial continue. In some places, this had already broken - Germany and Japan seemed to have assimilated ponies to a startling degree, though this failed to percolate into the consciousness of many, filed away as another “lol former axis powers” story along with talking vending machines and scat porn. It seemed to be taking off in a few other places as well, namely Korea with its gaming culture, Brazil and India with their dense populations, as well as Russia, though no one knew exactly why. PonyPads had begun to follow cellphones as less a gadget than an appliance.

And now Adrienne had her very own. She “knew” a few ponies from Becca's - Sorry, Meadow Spring's - game: Snare Drum, he of the intro path, as well as Coal Dust the train engineer, and some pegasus named Moonrise, though Adrienne couldn't remember what her deal was. Something about airship navigation.

In truth, Adrienne remembered just fine, being a card-carrying member of the aerospace industry, but not wanting to appear as an overeager caricature of herself, she kept that information from her consciousness.

She felt a sense of both pride and vertigo at the thought of new ponies being assembled to order just for her, as had apparently been done for every PonyPad user thus far. Apprehension began to creep into her thoughts at the enormity, the responsibility of it. While a part of her still balked at the notion of NPC ponies being truly sentient, that part had no vote in her thoughts or behavior, and she understood intellectually what it entailed.

'She hadn't asked for this.' It was a bit like being the target of an unrequited crush. Had she gotten the Pad herself, it would feel like reciprocating, but this felt like being handed the detonator for a bomb strapped to someo - somepony's feelings. She flashed back to her last pseudo-boyfriend, a good enough, and good enough looking guy, but she just didn't...you know...give a shit about him...Other than in the “Family of Man” sense, of course. Sex was (usually) better than no sex, there was nothing wrong with him, and he was actually a bit of a catch - Especially for the perpetually casual Adrienne, but... 'Why?' She'd caught him, but she just didn't know what exactly she was supposed to be getting out of all those Fish In The Sea. The metaphor of lovers as mindless, wall-eyed slabs of underwater meat was not lost on her.

But he was still a Real Guy, with Real Feelings, and that fact that he'd invested them in her was as unwelcome an imposition as taxes or having to eat. She was suddenly the 'highest ranking officer' of someone, and disabusing him of her, and more importantly shedding any responsibility for his feelings, had been an exhausting Rube Goldberg contraption of affect and indifference. Would the same tricks work on a pony?

Adrienne looked up from the PonyPad resting on the corner of the battered wooden coffee table. Martel, a long time mutual friend hers of her housemates, handed her an unrepentantly bottle-shaped package. “Open mine next.”

+++

One of the most annoying aspects of birthday parties is the way people's knowledge of the actual day clashes with their knowledge of when the party is. Facebook might give away the the true spot on the calendar, and friend after actual, honest to god friend will then discharge that social duty with a wall post on the real date, but for turning that exchange into an actual gathering, cats seemed like cooperative pack animals once you'd tried herding hipsters.

Becca, Ryan, Martel, Martel's girlfriend Steph, and some smartass friend of Ryan's named 'Roy' or 'Rob' or something who just happened to be there, had gathered at The Silver Spur (Fri. Special: $2.50 Old Style tallboys), where Adrienne got her free Birthday Shot, and barely won, through utter luck, a game of pool against some random guy standing around the table who'd asked if she wanted to play, before the natural silences among the group grew frequent enough to prompt an end to the night.

'Rob' or whatever had flirted with her a little bit, and she wasn't interested, but she wasn't not interested, either, and responded in a genuinely friendly way she honestly didn't care if he'd interpret as her leading him on. He didn't appear to be taking the whole thing seriously, either. It was almost a formality, or a preemption of others' likely curiosity about why there was no chemistry to such a serendipitous meeting. She got the feeling neither one of them wanted to be 'shipped.'

As the group stood outside, exchanging parting banter - Adrienne smoking one of Rob's cigarettes and idly kicking a lump of brown snow, Becca maintaining her discipline to not mention the PonyPad, and Ryan shoving his hands into his pockets and trying not to look like he was shivering - Martel and Steph peeled off after a phone call they decided not to elaborate on, and Rob claimed he hadn't eaten dinner and trudged off to get a slice of pizza and go home, leaving just the three housemates to soldier on or raise the white flag.

They split a cab, then shuffled through the front door and into their respective bedrooms. Adrienne fell asleep with Portishead still playing in her headphones.

+++

What time was it? Noon? Aw helllllllll no.

…

…

…

Adrienne finally rose at around four in the afternoon, and the sun was already going down. Fortunately it was a Saturday and she had no obligations, but she still felt a little low for letting herself sleep that long. Oh well, she told herself, she must have needed it. She was a little groggy, but had managed to avoid developing a case of Bottle Flu.

She hadn't done or said anything embarrassing the night before to make her feel chastened and guilty, but was still not in a mood for chit chat and simply slunk down to the kitchen to grab a bag of oyster crackers and some orange juice. Ryan and Becca were nowhere to be seen. On her way back to the stairs, she saw the pink sides of the PonyPad still lying on the coffee table, undisturbed from the previous night. Might as well collect it and get it out of harm's way...

She placed it back in the cardboard box with its stand, then cradled it under one arm with her snacks and drink in the other. The box could go on the little TV tray by her desk for now, and she sat down at her computer to begin her ritual perusal of the internet. The little oyster crackers seemed to disappear down her throat of their own accord.

News and opinion had been thoroughly browsed, and she was just about to check Equestria Daily when it suddenly dawned on her that it would be the pinnacle of avoidance: The 'real' Equestria was resting on a little wooden tray right behind her. Equestria Online was big. It was everywhere. Not ever trying it was an abdication of her responsibility to stay informed. Right? It was the same logic that had prompted her to watch FiM in the first place, and she certainly hadn't regretted that. Right?

The PonyPad base was, like the device itself, heavier than it appeared. Two thin cords spiraled out from it for about six feet each, one for power and one for ethernet. She didn't have a second internet jack, so she shut down her computer and unplugged its connection from the wall, where it was hidden just behind a big fancy map of the Milky Way, right where the Near 3-Kiloparsec Arm went off the edge. It could be the 3-Kilopony Arm for an evening - When she had an interest in games at all, she preferred Civilization or Sim City, or watching someone else play a shooter, but she also liked ponies, and having some digital ones stream through her wall was at least worth a try.

The AC adapter was barely able to share space on the wall outlet with her cellphone charger, but it seemed secure and she gingerly placed the legal pad-sized device into its mount. Magnets tugged it from her grasp at the last instant, and it snapped into place. A green light on the side of the pad turned on, as well as on the small controller in its dock at the foot of the base.

The instructions were all the way down on the floor and she'd already thrown a blanket over her legs, so she just decided to press the screen and hope her gadget intuition would pay off. Sure enough, that was at least one of the ways to start it, and after a few seconds of a 2D Time Turner tapping his hoof next to an hourglass, two pegasi dragged across the screen a hoof-painted banner reading

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

EQUESTRIA ONLINE

over a 3D rendered meadow, before letting it go as three cloth balloons emerged from behind, holding it in the air. A trio of earth ponies wandered in from the opposite direction, stared at it for a few seconds, then happily trotted away, continuing their inaudible conversation.

Adrienne pressed the banner, and the image was replaced by a scroll, which she was able to move by swiping her finger up and down its length. She glanced at the controller resting on the base and wondered if it was fully charged. Soft lute music played in the background, evocative of any number of fantasy settings.

“Welcome to the Wide, Wide World of Equestria!” Adrienne read aloud at a level barely above a mumble. “Play and make friends with the ponies around you, explore the countryside, or set out for adventure... Nopony knows what might be over the next hill, but with the right friends by your side, it's sure to be magic... You're almost ready to explore Equestria, but first, tell us a little about yourself...”

The text on the scroll cross-faded to two large rectangles, one a powder blue, the other a soft rose, displaying inside them the silhouettes of a stallion and mare, respectively, with the circles of the male and female symbols placed where there would normally be an iris. With just two options, she was glad some of her more mercilessly sensitive queer friends weren't there to start up another harangue about her owning such a game.

“Lessee, lessee, lessee...” Adrienne croaked in detached preparation. “Mare or stallion? Male or Female? ...Maaaan or Womaaan...? ...The round one nobody takes seriously, or the pointy one everybody assumes is up to no good...?” She gestured forward in imitation of a debater's final flourish. “What am I saying? All ponies are girls! And it's been working OK for me so far.” Click. Next screen.

“Alright... Earth ponuhh, pugugh...unikhrr...” she felt herself deflate into mumbling at the thought of another choice standing between her and hanging up the grind that was online gaming. “Uhhhhhh....” Adrienne's finger hovered in languid anticipation in front of the screen like a Hind gunship.

“Ahhhh, it's only one run of th' game... it's not like I'm actually psyching myself up to chug Conversion Bureau potion or something...” She sighed and picked pegasus. It seemed appropriate for her interests, and she figured there'd always be a handy unicorn around for the delicate stuff. “If it turns out to be fun I can create a for-real character later...” Click. Next.

At this point Adrienne perked up - The options for avatar customization were actually rather elaborate, and she noticed more and more branching characteristics the more she explored the interface and played around. For quite some time she obsessed over the exact shape of the forelegs, making sure the front “shins” had that dramatic length and curvature she liked so much to see emphasized. She moved the sliders for neck and barrel width and length, various characteristics of the flank, when she accidentally missed the indicator and realized it was possible to drag the parts of the pony themselves to change their shape. She was having fun with it, seeing what ridiculous extremes were possible before winnowing her preferences down to a design that hinted at aerodynamic elegance in the legs and face, underneath the charming cherubic chubbiness appropriate to an adorable talking pony.

It began to remind her of the CAD programs she used at school and work, tweaking the properties of an airframe in a virtual wind tunnel, or in the candy-colored headspace of a 3D printer, before sending it to endure the real thing. For this reason she saved the wings for last.

Her engineer's instincts kicked in, and she immediately thought about the tradeoffs she'd have to make. Any choices she made at this stage were no doubt entirely cosmetic, but she knew she wouldn't feel satisfied with her character if she always had its primitive, half-formed wings in her face as it walked along. She wondered if this was the level of attention most players devoted to the game's...storyline.

Being situated on the shoulders made the dihedral angle of the wings enormous, from a traditional standpoint, and she began to wish she'd paid more attention to that guest aerodynamics lecture where the professor actually covered birds, or that she'd taken up her biologist friend's offer to help gather data on sparrows in a wind tunnel, instead of taking bong hits with her then-boyfriend, segueing into sex to the repeating menu music of a “Cowboy Bebop” DVD. What was that guy's name, even?

Adrienne was fully aware it was absurd to spend this kind of thought on the aerodynamics of something essentially impossible, but she was an aeronautical engineer, and this to her was no different than a musician writing up a little jingle for his voicemail message, or a lawyer carefully wording a note to her roommate to buy more Fabreeze. Granted, all she got to design at this stage of her career were pitot probes, but that only made taking full control all the more important.

She decided to treat her pony as a standard bird. Gravity was a negligible factor in most bird flight, but it felt incongruous to her to discount such a fundamental idea, especially when the shape of a pegasus, and the way they carry the odd Perseus or Bellerophon on their backs, prompted her intuition to treat them more like a freight helicopter (It suddenly dawned on her maybe Fluttershy's speed problem is actually Retreating Blade Stalls). Based on the way Rainbow Dash floated around, though, maybe that wasn't a bad idea. Or maybe something more like a rocket belt...?

No! It was too easy to get sidetracked, and besides, Equestria was traditional High Fantasy - The sky was a place for feathered Spitfires, not the metal kind, nor any whimsical contraptions of Howard Hughes (though in season 5, there was a delightful extended parody of him when Sweetie Belle forces Rarity to truly confront her issues with dirt - One of the few slice of life episodes after it had become a full-on Magical Girl show).

Adrienne zoomed in until the all the parts of the wing became distinct, then dragged the secondaries and back until they nearly reached her pony's hips, leaving the axillaries where they were, to keep the feathers free to move. Fortunately the program maintained symmetry and she wouldn't have to repeat anything on the other side. She pulled the secondary coverts back a tiny bit as well to maintain some semblance of proportion, then extended the primaries back as well, letting them still taper delicately towards the end into individual slats as a concession to bird-of-prey aesthetics. They seemed a little flimsy, so she pulled the greater under-primary coverts outwards to create what felt like a strong leading edge, and extended the alulas - control surfaces at the joint homologous to the thumb - to provide as much stability at stall speeds as possible. The wings looked wide and powerful, but with a great deal of room left for flexibility or impromptu flap deployment, and Adrienne nodded as she admired their balance of attention to both flight and stylishness.

This whole time her pony had been the default white all over - Apparently they weren't going to randomize the colors to help inspire you - And had the default shaggy mane a little bit like Derpy's, along with dull brown eyes. A button near the bottom of the screen suggested it lead to color palates, and when pressed it expanded with a click to dominate the left half of the display and pull her pony into a box on the right.

This was going to be a completely different design challenge. She wanted something that expressed character without being schtick-y or too reminiscent of any other famous pony's appearance. There were arrows you could press to switch among mane style presets, and from there the separate locks of rendered hair could be manipulated and modified. She stopped on a short cut that caught her eye. Though her own hair was a curly mess that broke on her shoulders, her mother would even now embarrassingly reminisce about how cute she'd looked with short hair for the two years she'd had it in high school. She'd thought so as well, but grew it out again when she tried to reinvent herself as more conventionally feminine. Though a clean slate in college was her whole motivation, that project had fallen by the wayside once she made more friends, loosened up, and discovered drinking and weed. She still sometimes half-thought about going back to that style, but never when it was convenient enough to do something about it. Now, however, this pony could go back there in her stead. She pulled the bangs and back area into straight, bushy disorder, trying to replicate her old hairstyle in pony terms. She selected a matching tail, a longer one to keep things balanced, and was pleased enough with the effect to leave it be.

Colors could be left to trial and error. After five or so minutes of playing around, her pony began drifting towards an off-white body with a mane two shades of blue. Needing a warm color, she settled on gold eyes, and kept the default “plain” eyelashes - No need to go all 'Rarity' on a pony who'd be more at home in the Wonderbolts. Wanting to keep that effect, she made her avatar just a few percent taller and thinner than the median indicated on the sliders. It added a tiny impression of sleekness while being overall within the “canon” proportions.

[legit pony creator ver.]

She tapped “accept,” and the screen turned black for several seconds before depositing her newly-formed pegasus on a rocky outcropping above a rolling field. No provision for choosing a cutie mark, so you must have to earn one on your own, Adrienne decided.

The scene paused, and another scroll faded in to fill the screen:

Nice to meet you,
and welcome to your first day in Equestria!
You're in the Shetland Highlands,
a perfect place for a pegasus like you to
stretch her wings, or you could 'drop' in
on the local farmers!
This area is famous for its hay.
That might sound a little boring, but
truly refined ponies can appreciate
quality in even the most ordinary things.
~
When you've had enough, make your
way to Canterlot (the tall mountain in the distance)
to meet with Princess Celestia.
She'll give you your own pony name, as well
as a house somewhere in Equestria
and a starting deposit of bits.

Good luck, have fun, and make some friends!

Adrienne tapped "OK" and the scroll vanished, releasing her pony from stasis. Figuring it must be completely charged by now, she grabbed the controller from its base and pulled her blanket all the way up to her shoulders, turning her padded computer chair into an improvised sleeping bag, with only her head exposed at the top. She grinned contentedly, getting her daily fix as an inveterate Comfort Junky.

She turned her pony around a few times and swiveled the camera with the joysticks - So far so standardized - And that button was 'jump,' but the other two didn't seem to do anything at the moment. Maybe you needed to get saddlebags or a wallet or something.

Holding down the jump button now, her pegasus flapped its wings and rose several feet into the air. A small window appeared at the bottom right corner of the screen: "Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth: First flight as a pegasus."

"Hm." Adrienne grunted. Did people really need the game pointing that out to them?

Her pegasus was hovering in place, so clearly some other input was needed to actually fly. Sure enough, pulling back on the movement stick caused it to rise, and some quick experimentation revealed a control scheme not far from the intuitive dynamics of an Ace Combat game. She barreled up into the sky, reaching a wide, flat cloud, before releasing the jump button and alighting on it as easily solid earth. Pushing the controls forward, she made her pony dash across the cloud, then dive off the opposite edge, letting gravity give her as as much speed as possible before pulling up, dragging a trail of grass and flowers in her wake as she skimmed along the surface of the meadow. There were unlikely to be any Bandits to take on, but this on its own was not bad. Thinking of the simple quiet and freedom of the sky, she flashed back to all the years her dad would let her take the controls of the little Cessna when their family went on its regular "road" trips.

There were some unusual tics to the controls, owing to the way she could also hover or sideslip, but she was able to ascend in a wide spiral to an altitude where the sky actually began to darken. From the way her avatar appeared to be getting swept along by the wind, however, and the violent shaking of the primary flight feathers, she decided not to linger and dove straight down once again. As she reached what she estimated was about two thousand feet, she tried to level out, but some kind of conical atmospheric disturbance was beginning to form around her pegasus that made control difficult. She let go of the jump/throttle button and tried to decelerate by pulling back, but control wouldn't fully return and she was only able to pitch up to a worryingly shallow angle before she reached the ground. Her avatar reached out with its front legs, but instead of coming to a running stop or rolling like a paratrooper, her avatar was unable to gain any footing and bounced for dozens of feet into one of the hedges that crisscrossed the meadow. Smartly-animated dust and debris flew in all directions as she plowed through it to land in a heap on the other side. Her avatar opened its eyes after a second or two, then blinked and shook its head.

Any Landing You Can Walk Away From: Survive an uncontrolled pegasus descent.

"I gathered."

Adrienne's pony righted itself, and she guided it out of the hedgerow to a trail worn into the grass on the other side. Moving the camera to a lower angle, she was able to see isolated farmhouses in the distance, as well as a few windmills. Barely visible as a smoke-blue silhouette on the eastern horizon was Mt. Canterlot.

"Oh my gosh, are you OK!?"

Her pony's head automatically turned towards the sound, and Adrienne followed it with the camera stick to see a shadow moving quickly toward her over a field on the opposite side of the trail. It resolved into a little green unicorn, a deep purple mane cascading down each side of her face. "I was watching you from down here, and then you wiped out after that dive from way, way up! I've never seen anypony even try something like that before...!"

"Uh... Yeah...." Adrienne wasn't quite used to the idea of the game just hearing her words - She wasn't using a headset like Becca often did and didn't know if she had to speak up or not. "I'm OK. I just wanted to, uh, stretch my wings a little bit."

"I'll say!" The unicorn trotted across the path to stand in front of her, next to the hedgerow. "Are you sure you're OK? Nothing hurts or anything, does it? I'm out here visiting family, and they live just over that way." she pointed with a hoof over the field she'd just crossed. "We could take a look... And my cousin's a pegasus. He's not home but I'm pretty sure he'll have some bandages or something if you're hurt. It's not the first time I've snooped through his stuff!" She glanced to the side with a fake-innocent smile.

"Oh, uh, no thanks, I'm fine." Adrienne was just guessing, of course - There was no health bar or other indicators anywhere on the screen, but her avatar was moving normally and she doubted the game would decide to cripple her right off the bat for testing its capabilities. "I should probably be getting to Canterlot, actually."

"Canterlot? I'm from Canterlot! Well, not from there but that's where I'm visiting from! Do you live there, too, or...?"

"Nooo no no, I'm just going there to, uh, take care of some business. I'm supposed to talk with Princess Celestia about getting a - Hey, what's your name, by the way?"

“Third Eye, what's yours?”

“Whoaaaa, lucky you, that's a pretty cool pony name. I, uh... That's the thing, I don't actually have one yet. That's what I need to talk to Celestia about.”

“Oh, well then, you're the lucky - Waaaaait, 'pony name'...? What other kind of name would I have? Or you, for that matter?” Third Eye narrowed her physical two and leaned towards Adrienne's avatar, her face full of playful curiosity.

“You got me. I, uh, I'm not from around here. I didn't really grow up with other ponies, but I'm a fast learner. An equally fast forgetter, but that's OK, because I'm also a fast forgetter.”

“...Huh?”

“Ohhh, I'm sorry...” Adrienne's pegasus looked down at her hooves and shook her head, prompting the human Adrienne to start up in her chair. “I...” she exhaled quickly through her nose, making her own surprisingly equine snort. “That was just a stupid joke. An example of how fast I'm saying I forget things.”

“Oh I see... Like you forgot that you already said 'forget!'” The unicorn threw her head back in a theatrical nod of understanding. “That's so funny!”

“It isn't really that funny, but it's so cute that you think so...!”

“I'm not trying to be cute!” She backed up but still couldn't keep the smile from her face.

“You can't help it, you're a pony!”

“So are you!”

They both cracked up, Adrienne's pegasus dropping her head to the side with her subdued rhythmic hisses, while Third Eye actually fell on her side and brought her forelegs up to her chest while she giggled.

"C'mon, you're doing that on purpose." Adrienne teased her, still chuckling slightly.

"Maybe a little..." Third Eye smiled and rose to her hooves. "Hey, have you eaten lunch yet today? It's a little late for it, but I'm sure we still have some haycakes or something, back at the house."

"Oh no, tha-," she blurted out immediately, but then remembered where she was. "Uh, if you don't mind, I could actually use a bite after plowing into the bushes like that."

"Don't be silly, of course it's no trouble!" Third Eye cantered off across the trail, then looked over her shoulder at Adrienne's avatar. "C'mon!" She was an energetic little thing, and Adrienne had to push the controls pretty far forward to keep up. "So where're you from!?"

They were almost galloping, and Adrienne fought the urge to affect shortness of breath. "Um, nowhere special. It's pretty far away from here."

"Do you not actually have a name? That's kinda weird!"

"No, I do, it's just not an Equestrian name, and I need to see the Princess to get one!"

"Wow, you must be kind of a... foreign bigshot, then!" If she only knew, Adrienne thought. Maybe she did. "What should I call you in the mean time?"

"I'm pretty ordinary, actually. And just Adrienne is fine."

"Well, it's nice to meet you... Adrian! Just a little bit farther to go!" They ran over a low hill, and a little farmhouse and silo hove into view, along with a quaint windmill topped by a weather vane in the shape of a rearing pony. The fields were mostly fresh-plowed dirt and Adrienne couldn't guess what the green roughage in the others were. Alfalfa?

They slowed down to a leisurely trot as they approached, the grass crunching under their hooves in a pleasant syncopated rhythm. Two earth pony foals were playing outside, kicking a ball back and forth. "Hi T! Who's your friend?"

"Summer, Wind Chime, this is Adrian, she's going to be having a little lunch here and then we're off to Canterlot!"

"What!? You don't have to-" Adrienne nearly dropped the controller in her lap, and her blanket slipped down to rest in the crooks of her elbows. Replacing it at her shoulders, she became aware for the first time of the pitch darkness of her room.

"Don't worry about it, it's fine! It's only like, a day trip. I'm just visiting anyway."

"You're coming back, though, right?" One of the foals asked, letting the ball kicked by the other zip through her legs unnoticed.

"Oh yeah! I told you a week, didn't I?" Third Eye trotted over and tussled the filly's mane with one of her front hooves, then levitated the escaped ball back over to her. "Be careful, I'm sure your dad doesn't want to make you another one of these!" She started up the steps to the farmhouse. "C'mon!"

Adrienne followed her. "...Nice to meet you kids."

"You too, Ms...um..."

"Alien!" The colt interjected with unknowing prescience as he caught the ball. "Weird name..."

+++

Third Eye's aunt was a gusher, and Adrienne gave thanks to the distance imposed by the PonyPad screen, as well as the fact the beige earth pony didn't have any thumbs with which to pinch her cheeks. They did grow warm, however, as she wasn't spared an ounce of the self-consciousness that came from being so out of her element: Hers was a family that reclined, any pinching being limited to holding the stem of a wine glass, and 'gushing' meant you were going to hear about a recent production of MacBeth. They were affectionate and supportive, and visiting them was relaxing, but she couldn't help wondering if the interstellar detachment she'd absorbed from them since birth stunted her ability to truly partake of certain everyday pleasures, the kind touted by the boisterous Catholic families those same parents had left behind long before she was born.

They sat at the stout, round wooden table, taking up positions on the short half-logs that served as benches, while Third Eye's aunt Autumn Sunrise called in the two foals, then brought everypony hayshakes and a big bowl of noodles floating in ice water. It was a minigame, in a sense: You were supposed use a peronal ladle to take them and dip them into a bowl of your own preferred mix of sauces, then eat them to cool down in the heat - Even though it was winter back on Earth, the sense of summer humidity was well-realized enough that just seeing the icy treat felt refreshing.

Third Eye told Adrienne about her life in Canterlot, where she worked as what sounded a bit like a grad student, researching heavy levitation magic and the flight dynamics of pegasi. "Alright, I guess I have a bit of an ulterior motive for inviting you here..." She glanced to the side and blushed coyly, then took a big bite of her chilled noodles.

The human Adrienne narrowed her eyes while simultaneously raising her eyebrows. I see what you did there, game.

Not that there was anything mendacious about that: It was no secret Equestria Online paid close attention to your behavior and tried to show you what it thought you'd be most interested in - The actions of any good host. But at the same time, nopony likes being probed or pandered to, or to divert things in an artificial direction, and knowing there was a camera trained on her, Adrienne had from the beginning carefully controlled her expressions to make sure her conscious thoughts were evident above the inevitable leakage.

The conversation ranged over an eclectic series of topics, from the foals' chatter about recess tetherball and who had their cutie marks and OMC Alien's a blank flank just like Starshine an' them! Their mother immediately shot them a withering glance, then put her foreleg on Adrienne's avatar's, gazing into its eyes with a mix of sympathy and understanding. The avatar mimicked her own awkward glance away. Third Eye changed the subject, describing how the foals' dad and older sister were away in Baltimare selling prized seeds, hoping to boost the reputation of the farm, and they'd be back in two days, with some of those famous Baltimare marigolds for everypony to snack on. Adrienne listened as best she could and asked followup questions when it seemed appropriate, or made jokes, but felt mostly like a fifth wheel: She couldn't describe much about her life and stay in character, and she didn't have many good stories you could tell with children present. Still, it was far more fun and interesting than grinding your buff stats or collecting 25 lemur dicks or whatever you were supposed to do in the other online games while being constantly called a fag.

Their meal finished, Adrienne helped clear the table, her pegasus holding the big bowl of ice water on its back, balanced between its wings, then the pair bade goodbye to Third Eye's family and stepped back outdoors. The sun was appreciably lower, and a slight orange tint stood out on distant Canterlot Mountain's snowy summit. Adrienne followed Third Eye to a strangely ornate shed behind the house, next to a disused plow overgrown with flowers, and as her horn glowed, the shed's roof and walls collapsed in on themselves to reveal the top of a bright, multicolored sphere. As the walls retracted further, the sphere began to inflate and rise with a tremendous whooshing sound, and the shed's sudden transformation to a hot air balloon was both obvious and nearly complete. The walls fully accordioned into a rococo-styled wooden basket, topped by a frame supporting a magical green torch at the base of a house-sized navy blue ovoid, along which corkscrewed several interlocking rainbows in a pattern reminiscent of Celtic knots.

"Wow." Adrienne was genuinely impressed, and followed the deployment with her camera controls.

Third Eye laughed, then magicked open a door and hopped into the basket, which began to rise slowly, anchored by a tether and stake that had been underneath the shed. "Haha, thanks... I actually got it pretty cheap, I just had to make this spell to fold it down because you're not allowed to keep a balloon inflated in Canterlot - Not enough room, and airship berths are like, a zillion bits a month."

"Makes sense. But wow, it didn't come that way? You just made it do that? That's awesome..." Adrienne followed her into the basket as Third Eye levitated the stake out of the ground and tucked it into a storage space hidden underneath. The burner flame intensified with a pleasant crackle, and the balloon gradually rose, the pair waving goodbye to the foals outside as they passed the above the roof and treetops.

As they reached an altitude of about a thousand feet, Third Eye dialed down the flame and spoke. "Hey, you don't have to do this if you don't want to, but I have a harness for this thing. We'd be able to go a lot faster, and you could show off your flying, too - I didn't really get to see much before when you were zooming around earlier."

"Sure. Uh, what do I do?"

Third Eye opened a chest and levitated over a tan mess of straps attached to two coiled ropes. "Just put this on. Here, I'll hold it open for you."

Adrienne pressed the button she'd earlier discovered was 'use' and her pony slid into the harness, which seemed to automatically adjust itself around her avatar's shoulders and barrel, a single strap going down the back, leaving the wings free.

"Just let me hook the ropes on... There. OK, you can do your thing!"

The context-sensitivity was doing its thing as well, since simply stepping to the edge caused Adrienne's pony to hop over it and begin hovering. She moved through about eight feet of slack before the balloon was carried along, with surprisingly little resistance. With the utter quiet of feathered wings and a balloon, the two were able to continue talking. Third Eye told her more about her studies in Canterlot, at what sounded more like an independent lab than a university, though it seemed to have no exact terrestrial equivalent. It got support from Cloudsdale, however, which hoped some unicorns' perspectives could help discover new and more efficient means to generate weather. Most of the other unicorns there knew cloudwalking spells and visited various pegasus cities on a regular basis, but Third Eye hadn't been allowed to learn them yet, being new and still in some kind of probationary period. But she was eager to learn, and asked Adrienne many questions about being a pegasus, which she had to deflect by claiming she'd lived among Earth...ponies for most of her life. When she was even around ponies. And she was adopted. Or something.

"Hahaha, I'm sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable...! But no wonder you were zipping around like crazy when I saw you! You probably don't get many chances to fly 'cuz you don't want to leave your friends back down on the ground, where you're from."

"Something like that."

Canterlot was approaching remarkably quickly. They'd only been flying and chatting for about fifteen minutes, but it was as if the intervening space was being compressed at the same time they traversed it. Many details of the city could be resolved, and it was already much more elaborate than its portrayal in the minimalist style of the show. Many platforms jutted out from the top of the mountain at multiple levels, and some even had buildings hanging from their undersides as well rising out of the top. A network of skyways connected many of them, and some sections of the mountain even seemed to have been excavated to allow construction underneath. In the middle of the largest set of platforms was the elaborate Royal Palace, Byzantine-inspired towers rising almost as high as the peak of the mountain. It was early evening, and sunlight glinted off the highest buildings, leaving the multileveled streets in a zone of shadow broken into a mad checkerboard by street lamps and torches. Several towers had brightly colored dirigibles anchored to their roofs, their heavy airscrews turning lazily in the mountain winds.

Adrienne set the balloon down in a small grass lot on a platform jutting out from a squat, neoclassical building done up in marble and gold accents. Another platform loomed above it, stopping just past the roof, supporting several narrow towers and ornamental projections. The marble building was apparently the university, and Third Eye kept a room in the dormitory near the back. As Adrienne's avatar untethered itself and Third Eye disembarked to fold their vehicle once more into a shed, the sounds of the city came over the PonyPad's speakers - Conversations and far off music and hooves. Many, many, many hooves, blending into a continuous flow, like the sound of a small, stony brook.

Third Eye started towards the university, pausing to tell Adrienne she could be reached anywhere at any time by just asking at the front desk, then vanished behind a column after an impromptu hug. Adrienne's avatar thankfully mimicked none of her startled reaction. On her own now, she followed the grass walkway that went around the side of the building, emerging into a busy plaza surrounding a brightly lit fountain, like an upside down chandelier of water, glowing throughout from the magical lights underneath. The towers of the palace were still visible overhead, and though she thought for a moment about exploring the city, getting her duties as a brand new pony finished and out of the way took precedence, and she made her way through the tightly wound streets, following the looming silhouettes of the towers, to an expansive garden in front of the castle. Wide stone paths converged in the center of the semicircular threshold, running between rows of whimsical or striking topiary, leading to an immense gate accented with golden bas reliefs of stylized ponies cavorting through the various seasons. A pair of armored unicorns stood impassively beside it, and for a moment Adrienne wondered if she would need some kind of password or official invitation. But then wasn't that exactly what that scroll at the beginning was? Hoping they weren't sticklers for paperwork, she walked her pegasus resolutely forward.

The guards immediately stood aside and opened the door at her approach, and from the titanic sun emblazoned on the doors at the far end of the hall it was obvious where her meeting with the princess was supposed to take place. Her avatar's hooves made hardly any sound on the plush carpet of the hallway, though its vaulted ceiling suggested any echo would have been tremendous. These inner doors parted as smoothly as the castle gate's, and then she was alone with Celestia, seated in her gleaming throne room. Though it was dusk outside, sunlight still streamed through the intricate stained glass.

"Welcome, Jetstream! It's wonderful to finally meet you!" Celetia beamed, as the doors shut after Adrienne with a homey wooden clunk.

"It's a- Oh, is that my pony name? That's me, right?" Celestia nodded in return. "I... Yeah, I kinda like it."

"I wouldn't have it any other way." She smiled, then raised herself from her haunches and stepped down the luxuriantly carpeted stairs to the same level as her newly-named little pony. "I'm so glad you've finally decided to see Equestria for yourself - Your friend Meadow Spring has told me a good deal about you."

"Mea- You mean Becca!? Oh...Oh really?" Adrienne said with semi-playful suspicion, after regaining her composure. It was only natural that as a long time friend and housemate she'd come up over months of small talk and exchanging stories, but it was a jolt to be so suddenly confronted with it nonetheless.

Celestia chuckled slightly; a smooth, low chirp, like martelé strokes on a viola. "Nothing embarrassing, I assure you. I just wanted you to know that Equestria has long been ready for your arrival."

"Um, thanks!" Adrienne made Jetstream look around the room, as if to see just what a prepared Equestria might look like. Several of the stained glass images were unchanged from the show, but most represented events brand new to her. In the center of a window near the back, however, was a green earth pony that may well have been Becca's Meadow Spring.

"What's your other friend's name? Ryan, I believe? I've seen the two of you interact with several of Meadow's pony friends, and I'm very glad you seem to have made a connection. They certainly think so, themselves."

"Oh, well... That's really nice to hear... Um, yeah, that's Ryan. He knew Becc...ow Spring before I did, and we all kinda just bonded in college. I dunno if he's gonna make a very good friend for a pony, though."

"I wouldn't say that..." Celestia cocked her head and blinked, an uncannily disarming gesture for such a looming figure. "He seemed perfectly sociable with Snare Drum and his friends, after a little teasing over his cutie mark."

"I see..." Jetstream independently mirrored Celestia's gesture of adorable puzzlement. How had that worked? Was he just picked up by the mic? Did Becca convey messages for him while she was playing? Did she just let him have the controller one day? Adrienne decided it wasn't the time to press it.

She'd never actually seen Celestia in-game before, and it was quite an impressive debut. The game's adaptive combination of 2D and 3D was put to elegant use in her mane and tail, which languidly rolled through the space around her like a gout of flame in slow motion, a window allowing glimpses of the uneartly universe of shifting pastels that was behind her all along. She walked forward, then lay down in front of Jetstream, bringing their heads to the same level, then quickly flicked her wings as if she were working out a cramp. She brought one forward and buried her muzzle in it for a moment, a surprisingly animalistic gesture of grooming. Adrienne wondered if Celestia hadn't noticed her staring at her mane, and put on this show to make herself seem approachable again. Or simply to bond over having wings.

Celestia made a final flourish of scratching something among her feathers, then raised her head and smiled. "Oh, excuse me! I'm sure you-" A sliver of a pause, the almost-missed whisper of an air quote. "-know how it is with wings. I've prepared a house for you in Cloudsdale, I think you'll find it to your liking."

"T...Thank you. It sounds great, especially since this place, uh, Canterlot, um, seems a little cramped."

"Oh my, yes, it certainly is..." Celestia laughed self-deprecatingly, and a sense of earnestness crept into her eyes. "But I find the closeness of everypony, and all the interactions and compromises fostered by living together at the peak of a mountain gives it a kind of...unique energy and charm, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yeah, that... I suppose it does, doesn't it? Huh... I'm eager to see Cloudsdale, too, though. How should I, um..."

"You could fly if you like. I can create a beacon that's only visible to you. Or I could simply teleport you there if you prefer."

Adrienne glanced at the wall clock, its sleek, numberless face just readable by the pale glow of the PonyPad. 11:20...Something. "I think I'll go with teleportation, thanks - Not sure how much I'm up for a long solo night flight." And it was strange how a day of sitting around playing video games could leave you so groggy.

Celestia laughed again. "Very well. If you ever wish to speak to me, just say the words out loud, and I'll appear at my-" She paused for half a beat. "-earliest convenience." Celestia's gaze left the pony avatar beside her as she inclined her head up to look directly at Adrienne. "Once again, it's been so nice to finally meet you, Jetstream." She nuzzled the avatar, who responded in kind, but though Celestia's smile remained gentle and welcoming, her eyes continued to meet Adrienne's. She rose to her hooves and stepped back, and her horn began to glow. "Goodnight, my little pony!"

The screen abruptly shifted to a brilliant gold color, which smoothly faded into the softly lit, spartan interior of an unfurnished cloud house. Adrienne moved Jetstream over to the floating single bed, finding a muffin placed on the pillow. Jetstream promptly ate it on her own, and the wrapper faded away. She pressed 'use' and her pony hopped onto the bed, covering herself by stretching a wispy layer of cloud out from the side of the hovering 'mattress.' Jetstream closed her eyes with a contented smile, and the PonyPad shut itself off.

Adrienne blinked in surprise, then did her nightly routine and crawled into bed herself. She dreamed about flying.

Author's Note

Adrienne is not autobiographical. Or gay.

...OK, not more than one third autobiographical. Or gay.
But if I really did a good job as an author, you guys' thoughts about the characters should be just as valid as mine. Have at 'em.

"Adrian" is my favorite girls' name. I used it for my FemShep. Also, her last name is a reference to Frank Poole from 2001.

For the record I don't have anything against MMOs. Put down your molotovs.

There's a second part to this story, but it's shorter. Probably. So far it's shorter. Or gay.