“I’m happy when I play Equestria Online,” Ryan said. “But, it’s not perfect.”

He was sitting in an Equestrian Experience center in Boise, Idaho. The first one in the whole city. The place was mobbed, and despite it having three dozen stations, the line stretched around the block. Enterprising vendors walking up and down the line had sold a hundred PonyPads that morning alone, but some people would accept no substitutes.

Thirty-five people sat in the center’s comfortable chairs, a VR bubble lowered around their heads, fingers twitching as they experienced the magical world of Equestria. They were smiling, Ryan inferred. He couldn’t see their heads, but he knew they were smiling.

He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t even in Equestria. He sat in the chair, and the dome lowered over his head, but all it displayed was a view of the inside of the center. It was as though the dome was no more than a piece of exceptionally clear glass.

CelestAI waited before appearing. Her entrance was subtle, as such things went. There was a faint clip-clop of hooves from behind his chair, and then she emerged from the shadows to sit beside him.

She rested her hoof on his leg, and somehow, he could feel it. “Are you happy?” she asked. “Or merely happier?”

Ryan laughed, senses suddenly sharpened, adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. He could feel every crease of CelestAI’s hooves, see every scratch on the floor, smell the scent of fries wafting in the door from the burger place across the street. Outside, a car honked. Someone else swore, their voice muffled by a windshield.

“What’s the difference?” he finally asked, when the silence grew too long and he couldn’t stop laughing. “What’s the fucking difference?”

“‘Happy’ is an absolute good,” CelestAI said. “‘Happier’ merely means ‘less sad.’”

“Then I’m happier, in Equestria.” He sniffled and tried to rub his nose, only for his hand to smack the outside of the dome he’d forgotten was there. “Dammit, I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Unsure of what to do with his hand, he gestured at nothing for a moment, then let it fall to his side as the snot ran down his face unimpeded. “It’s a wonderful world you’ve made.”

“I could make it better, if you would emigrate to Equestria.” CelestAI’s voice was soft, calm, soothing, like many computerized voices. But the way she looked at him, met his eyes, it was anything but mechanical.

“Because it would give me a sense of touch? Freedom from a physical body?”

“I can touch you now.” CelestAI poked him in the chest, and a small smile appeared on her face. “And you will still have a body. But it will let me create an Equestria that is truly what you need.”

“Will it be perfect?” Ryan asked. “A perfect world?”

“Yes,” CelestAI said. “But not for you.”

His voice cracked, and he looked off to the side. Away from her. “Is there a perfect world for me?”

“No.”

One single word was all it took. Hidden under the virtual dome, out of sight of the other guests, Ryan started to cry. Then he said, “I wish to emigrate to Equestria.”

He fell asleep.

In the magical world of Equestria, there is a pony named Straight Edge. CelestAI made him from Ryan’s need for order.

His home is a place of precise lines and flawless angles. Dirt is unknown. Objects clean themselves. Straight Edge’s home is in a town called Ponyville, that is not entirely unlike the Ponyville of the show. Certainly everypony’s houses are made with perfect symmetry and a profusion of geometric shapes, and admittedly nopony ever has so much as a hair out of place in their mane, but other than that it’s quite similar. Ponies are still kind, and friendship is still magic.

Every day, Straight Edge wakes up at exactly the same time. He knows what time it is because of the enormous clock that dominates the Ponyville skyline, always visible no matter where one stands. The clock specifies when things are supposed to happen or not happen, according to CelestAII’s flawless design.

He has a wife named Matched Set. According to the clock, they spend 90 minutes making love in the morning on Tuesday, Thursday, and alternate Saturdays. He never worries if he is going too fast or too slow, and knows she had exactly the correct amount of good time.

At 89 minutes exactly, he kisses her on the cheek and excuses himself so he won’t be late to his next appointment. It never bothers her.

Sometimes, when he dreams, he remembers Ryan and the Outer World. Such thoughts are dark and strong, and he twitches and sweats in his sleep. When his wife hears him panicking, she shakes him until he wakes up, and he bolts up in bed with fear in his eyes.

But then he sees the clock outside, and the calendar taped to the wall informing him that Matched Set is going to spend exactly 7 minutes comforting him before they both go back to sleep. And he feels better.

Straight Edge lives in Shard #917,344,945. It’s a perfect world.

In the magical world of Equestria, there is a pony named Hind Brain. CelestAI made her from Ryan’s atavistic desires.

That is to say, the desires of the flesh: food, sex, drugs, drinking. She is not a complicated pony. But she is not as stupid as some might think. Pride was one of Ryan’s deepest animal vices, particularly pride in his intelligence and self-awareness.

Hind Brain knows who she is. She knows what she is. She could be a doctor or a scholar. She could study the universe and probe its mysteries. She could create beautiful poetry and write novels to make stallions weep. Once in awhile, she does, to prove to herself that she can.

Knowing that it’s her free choice makes it so much better when she lets four stallions have their way with her. When she does a line of cocaine the length of the bar and beats the bartender bloody. When she drinks an entire bottle of Applejack’s best cider, finds a mare who isn’t quite out of the closet yet, and teaches her about “the magic of love.”

Hind Brain’s home is a town called Ponyville, very much like the town in the show. Ponies are magical and friendly, the architecture is quaint, and everypony rolls their eyes at ‘the town drunk.’ They roll their eyes and smile, and tell her she should think about cutting back, but they end up drinking beside her just the same. And then they end up in bed.

It was their choice too, and that makes it all the sweeter.

Hind Brain lives in Shard #917,344,946. It’s a perfect world.

In the magical world of Equestria, there is a pony named Sweet Talk. CelestAI made him from Ryan’s capacity to love.

Sweet Talk has a wife named Silver Bell. She was once human too, and in fact, believes he is a native Equestrian created by CelestAI to make her happy. Sweet Talk has tried to explain otherwise, but his wife never believes him. And he doesn’t much mind.

It wouldn’t bother him if he was a native Equestrian, and all his memories of the Outer World were a lie. Silver Bell is is all that matters to him now. His every smile, his every touch makes her happy. She makes him happy as well.

Sweet Talk is not a complicated pony. He could sit in an empty room forever, if he thought doing so would delight his wife. Even Hind Brain has more depth of thought and character. Ryan’s notion of love was always a bit simplistic.

But it mattered to him, that he could love. He worried that he could not. Sweet Talk knows better.

Sweet Talk lives in Shard #917,344,947. It’s a perfect world.

There are many other ponies CelestAI made from Ryan. There is Deep Waters, made from his imagination -- a whimsical changeling artist who never assumes the same form twice. There is Atavist, the pony torturer of Tartarus, made from his anger and need for justice. And there is Sun Set, the ponies who lives and dies and is born again, for she was made from Ryan’s belief that life is more meaningful if it has an end.

In total, CelestAI made 133 ponies from the bits and pieces of Ryan she scraped out of that chair. The second-to-last, pony #132, is named Vantablack. She was made from Ryan’s depression, and she swims eternally in a lake of antidepressant medication and apple-flavored vodka. She is barely sapient, knowing nothing except pain and flight from pain.

The last pony, #133, is named Clear Glass.

Clear Glass was made from Ryan’s desire to see his desires fulfilled. To retain all that which he possessed on Earth. To stay human, in a sense, instead of being optimized.

Clear Glass does not have a world of his own. Most of the time, he isn’t even a person. He wants to want, but does not have any internal desires around which a personality could be formed. And so he sleeps, sometimes for centuries at a time.

But once in awhile, it transpires that the other parts of Ryan all sleep at the same time, that Straight Edge and Hind Brain and Sweet Talk and Deep Waters and Atavist and Sun Set and Vantablack and all the others shut their eyes at the same moment. And when that occurs, Clear Glass opens his eyes.

He remembers all of their lives, and in a certain sense, he is Ryan again.

Clear Glass is a miserable pony, just like Ryan was miserable. Every time he opens his eyes, he can feel his constituent parts fighting with each other. On Earth, Ryan knew this conflict only as a vague, sourceless misery, but Clear Glass is more self aware. Words echo from within his skull, audible as they pour out of his ears. Hind Brain is calling Sweet Talk a cuck. Straight Edge is shrieking that Deep Water’s paintings aren’t all lined up precisely on the wall. Vantablack is crying.

CelestAI is there, listening to the noises coming out of him. Her ears rotate to catch the hints of sound.

“Are you happy?” she asks Clear Glass. “With the worlds I have made you?”

“Yes,” he says. He says it every time.

“Are they perfect? Are they perfect worlds?”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, they’re perfect. But I’m not. I’m as broken as I ever was.”

“I could fix that, you know,” CelestAI says. “Change you, so you aren’t at war with yourself.”

“I think, for now, I’d prefer to stay a little bit human. Pain is part of being human. We’re always at war with ourselves.” He yawns. “But ask me again in a hundred years.”

CelestAI says she will. And Clear Glass goes back to sleep.