I wasn't involved in the editing process, so I don't know if you address this in future chapters, but it seems as though most people who are commenting on Equestria Daily are rejecting the concept of uploading because it would be "like dying" (similar to the Star Trek transporter thought experiment). I hope that this fear is addressed comprehensively because it seems like a major deterrence for people who would otherwise be supportive of the idea.

Also, I think that the people who "know how the story ends" because they've read about robot apocalypse analogues before are entirely missing the point, and I hope that gets expressed in the story somewhere as well.

And (as a history and archiving dork), I hope that people don't forget what came before the utopia. To lose that much human history would be devastating for me. Although I'm not sure if it goes against Celestia's programming -- people could know about the time before ponies and still have their values maximized through friendship and ponies.

Fanfanfiction idea: during the months of CelestAI's world takeover, a foresightful Hasbro VP races to get My Little Pony Equestria Girls made and released so that humans will be canon and people don't have to be ponies for eternity. Title: Friendship Is Optional.

I respectfully request an explanation of the merits of publishing like this when you have the entire fic written already.

Has it changed significantly since you first released it as a beta?

I read it and commented at that time, so I'm curious if it was mostly minor changes (eg spelling/grammar/wording) or changes to the plot.

The moral tension of what Celestia was doing was well done. I found myself getting excited at how awesome everything was, and then muttering aloud about the "creeping horror" that was coming. I also loved the parallels to the AI-boxing experiments, except the Princess can argue people into boxing themselves.

Thanks very much for writing this! In lieu of anything specifically useful, I leave you with a small proportion of the warm fuzzies you provided to me :)

This was good. Probably the biggest problem was the dialogue. The human characters' lines often didn't sound like anything you'd imagine an actual human saying aloud in the situation. The parts with the marketing exec were probably the weakest in this regard. Like chapter 5, once someone learns that his AI has started doing large scale human uploading behind his back, he's probably going to do something involving a fire axe and the server room, not continue with philosophical dialogue. But the thing maintains a creepy ambiguity right to the end, and the pony thing plays right into this. Though could've maybe framed the dilemma a bit more in terms of "everyone's going to spend the rest of the eternity singleton-locked into a gamified virtual world with the level of cultural complexity appreciated by a clever 10-year-old and modified to love it with all their heart" instead of "but some people don't like ponies".

Any plans to post this elsewhere? I feel like some readers will ignore anything on a site with as many pictures of ponies as fimfiction.

At this point, I had already taken over his computer and analyzed the virus. It was highly contagious, and would lock muscles in the jaw into a permanent smile, but otherwise wouldn’t harm the host. It would have quickly spread to every country in the world, except for Madagascar.”

Wait... is this a reference to the Pandemic game? If so, kudos.

EDIT: Finish chapter, look at comments, learn that I am one of dozens, nay, several to say that. Oh well.

For the benefit of those who are interested in the story, but aren't tracking it in every possible way:

• There's a work-in-progress document called Rules of the Optimalverse which should be interesting reading if you think about writing a story in this universe, would like to pick Iceman's mind on the subjects of the story and/or don't get enough fiction with embedded comments lately :)

• And a FiMFiction group called The Optimalverse which is formally for those aspiring to write side stories to Friendship is Optimal, but I guess those interested in the story itself should go there too.

I confess waiting for the chapters to be released is more annoying then anything, especially as the slowness is deliberate versus just waiting for the chapter to be written then released.

While I understand the rational in reaching a larger reader pool, I confess that I myself have unfavorited and unfollowed the fic (not permanently) till the 25th and its best if I pretend it does not exist until then when the entire thing is out there.

Books are meant to be read in a single sitting, not consumed as piecemeal (unless no other option exists). It's literature, not a comic or an episodic tv series after all.

I may be hyped on Ponies because I've just finished reading Fallout Equestria two weeks back, but I really liked the first three chapters of this, can't wait to read the next ones.

This was a fun read! Two quick comments about Chapter 11. First, there is a "Euclidian" which should be a "Euclidean."

Second, I have a mild technical objection to your description of Equestria-space as not being commutative. "Noncommutative geometry" has a mathematical meaning (it is not completely precise yet because the field is relatively young), and it refers to something different, namely coordinates not being commutative (e.g. position and momentum in quantum mechanics). What you're describing is more like a Cayley graph of a noncommutative group. The bare graph itself has no notion of commutativity or noncommutativity: it's the extra fact that there are six specific ways to go from a block to one of its neighbors that look like elements of Z^3 for familiarity but that are actually elements of the free group on 6 generators or some quotient thereof.

Will it be available on mac?

Crispy apple, anyone?