Live Everfree and Die Hard
Chapter 3: Caving Into The End
Past episodes: Take The Brown Pill (technically part of Forays of Folly), A Sheep Awakens, Meanwhile, in Cassadaigua...?
Chapter 3: Caving Into The End
Past episodes: Take The Brown Pill (technically part of Forays of Folly), A Sheep Awakens, Meanwhile, in Cassadaigua...?
"As is clear as night and day - just look at our flag, after all," elaborated the pony, "the way to get out is not to do nothing. Actions are key, although some place their consequences first and foremost."
"Hmmm... something something philosophy deontology teleology something?" inquired Atherton.
"Indeed we might paint this picture. You and I both, to horrendously paraphrase the lessons I learned all those years ago, are stranded here in wilful ignorance, lamentably, almost to the point of what your average pony down the street would call brain rot."
"What is one to do when we are just playing meaningless guessing games that count for little more than backpatting? How can the truth blind us when it is everywhere?"
"When you have been taken away from it, captivated by the hypothetical and superficial, for much too long, of course. Best to do wholesome activities you enjoy, like..."
"Hmmm... is the answer still going to be philosophy?"
"Ah, yes, that and perhaps a good game of football! Of course, we shan't talk about the love of wisdom here without thinking about the six Elements of Harmony. As it says in the Lonely Multiverse guide they've pinned up on the wall: Honesty, laughter, generosity, kindness, loyalty, and magic. You see, I've remembered it by now. We put these principles out in everything we do beyond these four walls, and indeed in what I am doing right now in helping you see through the mess that is our silly little erzatz-world."
"And 'tis my job to escape it and spread those values to free the chains of the overtly ignorant?"
"Again, it is, let us say, evident. This, as my teacher told me, could also be used to justify the rule of the strong over the weak. We call this autocracy, if you didn't pay much attention during Relations, which obviously isn't the case. Don't worry, I won't kill you if and when we ret---"
"YIPPIE-KI-YAY, MOTHERFUCKERS!" blared Atherton as she valiantly... attempted to boot down the seemingly impenetrable door.
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The pony was not lethargic in following her; at least, it would not have been had the now-unhinged door landed on solid terra firma as opposed to an obscure beartrap. "What's this then, Sir Pony? Or Madam Pony, or whoever you happen to be."
Upon shaking its head, it noted that "We are here making the dreadful ascent up the terrorising plane of philosophy. You may not realise it, but that beartrap was trying to get you to think about the consequences of your actions. A more sensible Julia Atherton would have been out for the final with a few broken bones!"
"Thank Maggie I'm not, then... right?"
"Not necessarily. We have several other obstacles here, all deliberately placed to make you challenge your reasoning, your thought processes - which has always been considered to be your soul by the truly enlightened amongst us, where or not they feel it ends there or carries on with contemplation of better things after your body collapses into death, just like it would have done in Concord Heights."
"That has got to hurt! Say, is there anything in this room that could perhaps fool my senses, if empiricism was never the dominant ideology here in the first place? You did say you could not tell a lie a few minutes ago..."
The pony clicked its hooves and pointed to the noticeboard, where the following question appeared:
TINHAMPTON CERTIFICATE - MATHS PAPER 2*, QUESTION 12, 2012
*twelve out of one-hundred fifty marks
5This question is about finding roots to polynomials, and is worth TWELVE marks in total.
Lydia is an accountant working for a major company in Tinhampton that projects to make a profit this year. She wishes to calculate the company's profit in millions of Tinhamptonian Dollars using the formula
3x4 - 7x3 + 2x2 - 17x[6 marks]a. One of the values of x is 0. Calculate the three other values of x, and hence identify the company's projected profit margin.[6 marks]b. In fact, the company will not make a profit this year. Suggest a revision to Lydia's formula, and hence identify the company's projected loss.END PAPER
© 2012 the Tinhamptonian Ministry of Education. All rights reserved.
To ensure a fair examination to everybody, you may find our sources online at certificate.gov.ti/moreinfo/sources/2012 from the 1st of July 2012 onwards.
"Hey, that's a totally different equation than what you told me it was! Yet everything else is copied verbatim..."
"Yes, it is. I did tell you that I always told the truth. Yes, look up there on the board? 'HONESTY...' so on, so forth, those are the core values I was talking about! We have magic over here, as you have seen, which does have the mere potential to do so, even if it is understandably not supposed to. Besides, that was a lesson to tell you to question everything, myself included."
"Perhaps what we see ahead of us is a mere fabrication?"
"The path to the real world is sweet and sound..."
"...But alas! That wide path shall never be found. In Defence of Right Reason, Aiden Thornton, 1985. Tinhampton's greatest - perhaps its only great - poet---"
"As for that nation simulation game that Chancellor Ibrahimovic of the Alpine Union was gabbing on about," deflected the pony, "I recall somebody saying 'many small make a great' in a post about seven-hundred years ago or thereabouts. Might have been a papyrus scroll, now I think about it! Anyway, do you know any minor poets from Tinhampton?"
"Julia Atherton wrote one fifteen years ago about how much she loved Mommy and Daddy?"
"Ah, yes... now let me magic the spell thingy up..... a-ha! Must have been Tin City Poets Jr. 2005-06, wasn't it?" gawked the pony. "The one for those pupils in eighth-grade, often in higher sets of English, hence Vox Antipopuli's now-infamous - and also much cliched - 'in case you dropped out after Grade 7' jive that same year?"
"Oooh, yes, that one," nodded Atherton. "I think about ten other of our footballers must have been there, Peter North and Louise Gregory - as she was known at the time - for Poets Jr. three---wait, no, four years prior?"
"It would be safe to assume that those marvellous bastards who wound up in the Tinhampton team that you happen to skipper are indeed many small that make the great I have been informed of. Now, looks like... a useless beartrap, several trapdoors that don't work, a few drawing pins and electric buses are hardly going to be our arch-enemies here, aren't they?"
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Meanwhile, our resident pony was by now leading Atherton out of the undescribable haven that was Everfree - both of them, all the while, contemplating the sun, the moon, Celestia and Luna, the Elements of Harmony, the magic of friendship and the friendship of magic, and all of their marbled reflections - and into the dark, dastardly, dense, wooden badlands which bore the same name as the city.
This was supposed to be a land of danger, the ultimate dog-eat-dog-eat-dog-eat-dog world made flesh, with additional de-emphasis on sensibility to boot. But wait a minute - what's this? A dragon, a unicorn and a human sleeping together in the selfsame field?
"Welcome, my biped friend, to the kingdom of ends."
"The what what what what what?"
"It's easy to get confused when you don't spend hours every day thinking about the possibility of... you understand my train of thought, yes? I do appreciate how your mind works, so to speak! Anyway, you are in the future. You are not exactly in the future as such, but you are in, let us just say a future, one in which every last sentient creature keeps to the law."
"The law of ponies?"
"The moral law. The first section of this law, foremost, dictates that you - that y'all - must only adhere to such a law that every fucker can keep track with; whether they be me over here, you over there, Simeone di Bradini, Estrella Hawke, one of the Holy Empire's Fluffy Bunnies, whoever manages Eura right now, or just whoever.
"For instance...?"
"For instance, if it were made a universal law to help everybody - which it virtually is over here - we would all help each other and the world would be a happier, sunnier, ends-ier place. If it were made a universal law to slap anybody you disagree with, as Miss Atherton over here can testify, not only would there be a lot of broken cheekbones, but quite a fair few pissed-off philosophers as well! That nonsensical maxim would nuke itself to kingdom come!"
"And what comes out of this?"
"First of all, do not treat your fellow pony as an isolated means, only thereof to an end, given how reason itself is its own end. Uphold this and that and you get a certain kingdom in space and time which is meant to be hypothetical, but which I likewise pre-magicked up for you before you cropped up in the WC back in Everfree, and in which both of us in addition to the rest of the thinking multiverse is a legislator. Do you have a price, or do you have a dignity?"
To this, Atherton shrugged once again.
"If the former, you can be replaced. If the latter, then nuh-uh! You are... let's just say a living, reasoning creature, we don't want to upset anybody over here, and because of those two values, you are dignified, hence why you can't just treat me or Dave down the pub or even Celestia and Luna as a means alone - you cannot use me for your own pleasure whilst at once abusing me, which is why there are laws against the most egregrious crimes known to society."
"Drinking orange juice?"
"The Gregists have long been overthrown, my friend, don't you know? Anyway, as we are all born innately dignified, we cannot use them for our own means, put laconically. Treating everybody with universal hatred, let alone going on the fully-blown trail of blood like the Lord Almighty Gregory and Natella Kalinina did, is not just possible but has occured in the everyday world, although we as legislators in this kingdom of ends must therefore act rationally, respect universal dignity, disregard nasty people, acquire universal laws - ooo-er, I think I might be going a bit heavy on the Accelafeed there. Generally, just be kind and awesome, like your average Equestrian. And with that, ironically, marks my end to this conversation with you."
"Ta-ta, whoever. Mind if I tag along like I've been doing all this time?"
"No, I insist, I'll be happy to walk alone. Give it another day and a half or so, however, and you'll be back in Canterlot safe and sound. Don't worry!" clarified the pony, still as mysterious as when Atherton first noticed her in the toilet block. Not that she had any regrets, that said...
EPILOGUE
"Honest to God, Rachel - I mean, I only spent a couple of minutes talking to that pony!"
to recap, according to the categorical imperative, human beings can only ever be used as the means in conjunction with THE END and never as a means only
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