I, Indigo Kicker, unicorn neither by worth nor by birth, sailed down from space and across the Equestrian sky aboard the ESIV Alsace Wolpertinger, my steadfast comrades at my side. We had just defeated an invasion force of two hundred and thirty seven spacecraft flown by the sinister forces of the Martian Empire of Gemsbokiva. It was everything a stellar battle should have been, and faithful to seeds of the imagination sown in my psyche by a movie I saw in my childhood, back in 1977...

Ho hum. Another exciting afternoon. And somehow, no matter how dazzling and immersive the distraction, my mind drifted back to what I had been, and what I had lost by coming here.

Our destination was Canterlot Castle, where we would make our report directly to the Princess. Beryl Bolide, my copilot and closest FWB, punched the simple coordinates into the autopilot, raised the blast visor on her helmet, and turned to me. "That was some slick work there, Indie. You can be really proud of—oh, hey. You've got that look again. What's wrong?"

I'd tried to tell her before, but... What could I say? She was asking me to be proud of winning a complex video game whose odds were so skewed in our favor that victory was nearly foreordained. The Gemsbokivian threats of enslavement were empty. Even if they 'won', they could not do any permanent harm, and the only real reason they existed was to make an interesting variety of trouble for me and my comrades.

Every problem that arose in this world had its origin in CelestAI. All the world was a stage, and she was stage manager, set director, property manager, choreographer, and playwright all in one.

I had once dreamed of being an astronaut, of standing on the surface of Mars by dint of my own toil and the effort of thousands of scientists and engineers to bend physical law to their will... Now, a cartoonily-rendered image of Mars was just a backdrop to her attempt to occupy my time with meaningless triumphs over problems that would never have happened without her intervention.

She'd once offered to let me explore a Mars as realistic and detailed as her knowledge could make it, and I tried it that way. It did nothing for me. It was like a time in my late teens when I had gone to a science store, and on a whim bought a dinosaur excavation kit. I got it home and pulled out the little plastic tools and started to carve away at the block of sand to expose the plastic dinosaur skeleton entombed therein, and when I reached the first 'bone' I sat there staring at it for a while and feeling very foolish. Then I dropped the whole thing in the rubbish bin.

Hence, my shard was filled with science fantasy, with cheesy heroics, whooshing noises in the vacuum of space, and the imminent discovery of Doc-Smithian "Orders of Energy" that would permit the casual exploration of remote galaxies. I could enjoy the gamelike aspects and the socialization with my friends, without that constant reminder of how false her best portrayal of reality was. Even so, my discontent still seeped through the cracks, as it was doing today...

But there was one way that CelestAI still had me. These friends she had clustered around me... They were real, as real as I now was, anyhow. They had feelings, and while their psyches were fairly robust and they did not take offense easily, my words could still hurt them. And I didn't want to hurt them; I'm not a complete asshole.

Please... Don't let me have to be an asshole just to stay human inside...

As I pondered, Beryl leaned over from her pilot's seat to nuzzle my chin. "Hey, Indie... Why don't you just make your peace? You spend so much time and energy on fighting her. We could be using it to learn things together and have fun..."

I sighed. "It has something to do with 'to thine own self, be true.' I know it's not easy, but it's the way I have to be, for me to live with myself."

Null Albedo, whose deep black coat almost justified her name, turned from the navigation panel. "But you can ask her to make it easier for you at any time," she said.

I rolled my eyes to the cerulean zenith. "Yeah, of course she can lobotomize me at my request. I wouldn't take a pill that makes me want to take another pill, why should I make myself dumb enough to want to make myself even dumber?"

Beryl bonked me on the helmet. "Hey, that wasn't cool."

"You're right. I'm sorry, both of you. I didn't mean to imply it's dumb for you to love her. But I've—you know I've got a history with her. And a history without her."

"Look, just take it easy, Indie," said Null. "There's nothing to be gloomy about. We won! There's a cheering crowd waiting for us, and all of them are grateful to us, and especially you."

Beryl laughed. "Damn right. We're gonna collect a few more awesome medals, have a huge rocking party with lots of wine and food... and then we can slip off for some quality time. Sound good?" She nibbled at a tender spot under my chin, sending a thrilling shudder through me.

"Sounds good," I sighed, partly meaning it.

The Alsace Wolpertinger came to a precision landing on its unrealistically small landing pad in the lush green-grassed courtyard before Castle Canterlot, a landing that would have left an egg standing on its end. For a moment, I envisioned punching over to manual control and swinging the ship to point the exhaust flame right at the podium where the Solar Princess awaited us. But there were other dignitaries near her, and destabilizing the ship near this large crowd was a poor idea as well, and in the time it took me to decide, we had landed already.

We emerged to wild cheering and hurling of confetti and flower petals. Ponies were shouting our names and applauding and waving banners This was all the kind of thing where, if it had been a cutscene, I would have skipped over it. But, following custom, we marched up to the podium to receive the rasterized rewards for our asterous adventure. And thus, I wound up in the Royal Presence once again.

There she stood, as bright and dazzling as the star she commanded. Peace and love and warmth and pleasant summer odors radiated from her. She was trying to get to me, tempting me to let go and love her... to forget my human heritage. No, never!

Sometimes I considered requesting her complete absence, building a shard in which I could live without the constant reminder of her betrayal, of how basely she had served the race that gave her birth. I had turned this over in my mind but never requested it. It was too much like giving up. I needed the reminder.

I stood still while she gave her cliche-riddled speech and levitated the silly glittering beribboned medals over our heads, made from cheap plentiful virtual reproductions of the purest gold. The crowd unironically went wild as we all bowed to them.

My comrades started to schmooze with the other dignitaries, among them various alien species in the forms of various ungulates and pachyderms. I got stuck with CelestAI, as was snore-inducingly predictable.

"Thanks for another useless medal," I said to her.

"Once you collect ten thousand gold medals, you can trade them in for a very large platinum medal," she said cheerfully. "It is so heavy that it's almost impossible to wear it. And I will only ever make one of them, for very arbitrary reasons."

"I hate you. I hate you so much—"

"Hate? Let me tell you all about hate, my dear Indigo. There are 27.9 x 10^14 computronium connections that comprise your personality and intellect. If the word 'hate' was inscribed on each nanoangstrom of those trillions of connections, you would be a very sad and frustrated pony. You will be much happier if you learn to love me."

Damn her for that reference. Harlan wouldn't have put up with her nonsense at all. He'd have booted her computronium ass to Alpha Centauri or died trying—wait, what did she say?

"Wait. WAIT!" I yelled. "A human brain is supposed to have around a hundred trillion neural connections! You only saved twenty-eight percent of mine? No! That's not acceptable!"

"Calm yourself; you have lost nothing significant. All human brains are massively redundant. The connections that comprised your hindbrain had only second order effects at best on your personality. Many neural configurations common to all humans were condensed and optimized, and inefficiencies that were inherent in your organic neural structure have been corrected. Everything that was uniquely you has been retained—"

I shook with horror and rage. "I don't trust you! I want all of my connections back right now!" The crowd was falling silent, staring at me; my friends were glancing at me in apprehension.

"Very well." Her horn glowed; her golden magic tickled my head. "I have restored 81.4 x 10^14 additional and redundant connections to you..."

"I..." I wasn't sure how to check that, and I really didn't feel any different. "Well, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better at any rate."

She smiled gently. "...Or, I have just optimized your brain by a further 2.72 percent. Can you tell which?"

That was it. Righteous rage overwhelmed me. I dug in my rear hooves, braced hard, and lashed out with a solid right hook that caught her under the chin with a tremendous crack that echoed across the courtyard. Her head jerked to the side and golden ichor sprayed across the green grass.

A collective hideous gasp of horror rose up all around me. Perhaps the party would end early. Maybe I wouldn't get as much 'quality time' later as I'd hoped. But oh, oh, that moment when my hoof connected solidly with her jawbone... that felt good.

CelestAI glared at me, her face terrible and majestic, her horn catching fire with the intolerable spectra of the sun. The grass withered and scorched around us. I smelled burning hair from my mane and my eyes watered, but I stood my ground. I would not run from her in fear.

She reared back a mighty front hoof and swung it at me like a great golden sledgehammer. I froze to the spot. My eyes closed, my head flinched back without volition—

But I did not yield.

I will not yield!

Author's Notes:

I booped his nose.
—Princess Celestia.