Wayne Gray

They are quirky - both of them are. You're right. And I think that makes them weird and fun. So I'm glad you are enjoying them. And quarts of blueberries are not bad things to have in the freezer. Lucky you. Yes. Standon has dirt, and he can (and is) making more of it. He started with a bit of dirt from Earth blueberry fields. So he has all of the what they might need already. He just has to allow time for the Earth dirt to "infect" the Cerean material with life, and turn raw ammonia and other nitrogen compounds into stuff that's bioavailable to those plants. And his worms... And it's working! Thanks for commenting. There will be more to come next week.

Miri is inferring something from what she has observed. She knew Naren had never used an Extractor Arm before. So, her comment about kinesthetic tasks is based on observational evidence. In other words, she believes Naren can probably learn just about anything requiring coordination through a set of controls. And that's thanks to his deep connection to Aster. She has Nina, her own AI. And they work great together, too. But in this particular case, she recognizes that Naren/Aster have a weird feedback mechanism going for them that she doesn't. It's not magic. But... it's different. Thanks for reading and for the comment. More is coming next week.

You sound so suspicious, Dave. I love that. 😛 Our respective duos have done well so far. But nothing is magical. Vacumine is still a program reliant on incomplete data. AIs are not perfect. People are absolutely not perfect. That just means there's opportunity for interesting things down the line. And you know I do love interesting things in stories. 🤌 Thanks, Dave. More to come.

Me too! And so will fruit-starved Asteroid residents/workers. Thanks for reading, Chris. More coming soon.

You got it. The blueberries are great. But dirt? Worms? Millions of miles from Earth? That's worth something more, because it's the bottom level of a system Ceres needs. So, we'll see how that turns out. Naren and Aster have been paired a long time, and that integration happened while Naren's brain was still developing. All AIs start the same apart from periodic upgrades that everyone gets. So it's not like Aster was special in that sense. It's their time together, the particular way Aster has come to understand Naren, and how Naren allows Aster to sort of... be what Aster wants to be. You'll see more of that soon. Though Aster often asks permission for some things, you'll notice that Naren has yet to say no to anything. That's not necessarily typical. So the combination of a fairly free AI, length of integration, and age at which integration started have formed their pairing into something unique. I rather like how they compliment one another. Thanks for reading and for the comment. More to come.

There's a lot of study on farming in closed systems. It is possible to farm that way. Though, turning asteroid regolith into dirt is something nobody on the planet has yet tried, we know it's possible. And Standon/Wendell are, at least in my little world, proving it. We've not seen the last time Aster and Naren have to flex their odd skill born from their pairing. Personally, I think it's fun to imagine it. What if a system could change around how WE work? That's what Aster does for Naren. Aster already knows how Naren moves, behaves, thinks, and act. It knows his reflexes. His time needed to process information. And it tailors the HUD to Naren, so that the feedback given pushes Naren to accomplish the stated goal - whatever that might be. Yeah, it's fun. Thanks for reading and commenting. More is on the way.

It's okay to be a snob concerning certain things. I don't like cheap ketchup, while I can go generic/cheap on yellow mustard; all yellow mustard tastes the same to me, but ketchup varies wildly. So yeah, I get it. I'm glad you liked the scene with the Extractor Arm. It shows something interesting about Naren/Aster, and it also shows how observant and confident Miri is. Someone else might feel threatened by a rookie walking in the door and doing something that took her years to learn, but not Miri. She knows her worth is beyond what she can do with the arm. And she also knows a great opportunity to leverage someone else when she sees it. Thanks, tim. More soon.

Chapter 3: Integration On my last day before we shipped back out, I found myself standing beside a prospective blueberry farmer on Ceres. He wanted to show off his dome, so I followed him into the main lift, and we were whisked up through the core of the hab to the rim of Occator Crater. Then we took a transport to his dome and entered through the pressure door to the sealed enclosure. "See?" He grinned as he squatted next to a trough made of some Ceres regolith-based cement. These tro

I see an apple. No, I see a pile of them. Because our little tree is loaded down, and the table currently has a basket full of the little freckled things. But yes... I had a friend once who had the same experience as you. This was in high-school, and we didn't have the words for it. So we thought he was just a little different, and that was that. He was also one of the smartest people I knew. To the degree that his parents had him tested, and he was somewhere north of 140 IQ. He just processed the world differently. You do as well. And differences are what make the world interesting.

Most winners are the male bears. But... once, a female won. The reason given was hilarious. "She had not mated, so she was cubless. She could concentrate on job number one, and that was getting fat. And boy, did she pull that off. She had a single-girl summer, living her best life."

Glad you’re curious! Aster does seem to like chatting with Wendell, and Wendell didn’t have to tell Standon that Naren had returned. So… it seems both AIs want their people to keep interacting. It may be something as simple as wanting to have a friend close by. We’ll see. And while Naren wasn’t abused as a kid, he grew up in a strange situation. Different guardians. Always knowing he had nobody. Always looking for a way to be on his own. That really would do something to a kid. Thanks for reading and commenting. I appreciate it!

It did go very well. Vacumine had a hand in that, too. These guys had been making it work without the program, but it sure didn't hurt anything. And yes. Aster told Wendell they were heading back to port as soon as they hit Occator's network. Which... is a little funny. It's almost like Aster wants Naren to keep interacting with Standon. And then Aster was nice and warm as the guys socialized after screwing around. What's that little AI up to? Thanks for reading and commenting. More to come. 🤖

I think it's the vodka you should be asking.

Naren is different from most in a few ways. He integrated with Aster very young. These AIs grow more and more useful as integration goes on. But they also become more capable of predicting behavior, mistakes, and desires before their host becomes conscious of them. Makes for some interesting thought experiments there. And he was a ward of a corporation. That doesn't mean he "lived" in the corporate headquarters. But, rather, corporate employees literally raised him, and that was a part of their duties. Corporations are paid by government to do this until a kid is... you guessed it... thirteen. At that point, the kid either becomes emancipated, or they go into government foster care until they're an adult (sixteen in my future). Since government doesn't want that cost, they offer incentives to corporations for getting kids emancipated. And they offer incentives to the kids to want that. Adult Naren knows he was shoved out the door because nobody wanted the responsibility for him. Yeah, it was state sponsored, but... still. That does something to a guy.

People mature quickly when they can get any question answered within seconds. And when they have a logical, steady companion in their own mind. I tried to imagine what that would do to a kid, and I think it'd do a lot. We'll see more of the effect that long-time integration has had on Naren soon.

We'll have to see how things go with Naren and Standon. Both men are on Ceres to try and make their own way. Will their paths line up enough to become something more than handy fuck-buddies? I guess we'll find out. Sex with the captain... that could be a fun scene.

Yeah. Even though emancipation can happen as early as thirteen, it's not typical. Corps bend all kinds of rules in my future. Money, power, etc, all serve to make that possible. But they're not all powerful. And they curry favor from governments by getting people off-world. The Earth is crowded, so there are all kinds of incentives to get folks off the planet. One of those, is free hardware and an AI companion installed on it - along with upgrades to both hardware and software every year you stay off planet. In fact, everyone intending to travel anyplace other than Mars must have an AI installed. They're ubiquitous in space. It's how people interact with their surroundings and do things. Standon and Naren are a fun pair of guys, I think. Pretty different people, but both on Ceres. Both taking a risk. I like their willingness to leap into the void... as it were. Now, why would Aster be warm? Well... there's something going on there. What, we don't know. And that's just delightful, isn't it? haha. Thanks for reading and commenting. More to come.

Confidence, and a rather nice payday. Both are pretty nice. We'll see how Naren's luck hold down the line, though. Thanks for reading and for the comment, Chris.

That clever little AI is thinking about something... or talking about something. Or both. Naren was emancipated at 13 years old, and shortly after Aster and hardware were installed. That was twenty years ago, so Naren is 33 now. I don't really spell it out, but people are in better shape related to age-related issues, than we are at similar ages. They have regular gene therapy that undoes many of the problems we run into with aging. It's just an injection people get annually, and they stay younger longer. Not immortal by any means, but Naren looks like a guy in his mid-20s. Standon is a similar age, though he has had Wendell for less time. He got Wendell around 18, same as most others who choose to go off-world in this version of the future. And yes. Aster and Wendell do seem chatty. Thanks for reading and commenting, Dave. More to come.

Hey, maybe Aster is the top in the Wendell/Aster pairing. You never know. LOL Your vodka fueled questions are absolutely important. Thank you for asking them. Yeah, Naren has seemingly found a little place where he fits. And he fits well enough that the man in charge has hired him on for another month. Then there's Standon. Naren likes the guy. He's attracted to him, sure, but... he can find that pretty easily and is not above paying for it. So... we'll have to see how that shakes out. Thanks for the entertainment.

Yeah. I have to use Grammarly. Commas, man. Commas. Urgh. But yes, I reject lots of wording suggestions. And some of it's not even right, and it'll correct itself after you accept it. LOL

Indeed. Naren had a very successful trip out on his first try. That has to do something to a guy's sense of self-worth. As an aside, a "Bar" is equal to about ten US dollars. So they had a truly substantial haul. Yes, it's split seven ways (Del, as captain gets a full share while everyone else gets a half), but still. It was a lot of cash. And now Naren has almost $60,000 in the bank for about nine days of work. These guys are doing risky work, and they're paid very well for it. But there are also runs when they end up with busts. So Del spends money and they all spend time on something that didn't pan out. And that's why Naren was so relieved when his program helped Miri pick their target and it turned out to be lucrative. Standon and Naren are a fun dynamic. Maybe we'll see more of that. Thanks for reading and commenting. I appreciate it!

I don't understand the point of doing that. Like... why bother? Any words of encouragement or appreciation would be hollow to me if I'd done that because it'd not belong to me.

I get why - it's very different for me. And... I literally have AI characters in a story on a site where people are "writing" with AI and passing it off as their own work. So... yeah. A little weird. But I'm glad you're giving it a shot. I like how the characters (human and not) interact, so I hope people enjoy this one. Thanks for reading and commenting. More to come next week.

I do find it a little funny that I'm writing one of the most creative things I've done and it heavily involves AI characters. you did this as well. I've used AI to fact check something I've written (Curing Humanity - the brain stuff). But now that I know more about it, I realize it doesn't fact check itself, really. It will list references for the information cited, then get the information wrong. So... I'm not sure there's a point. And AI writing is just weird. Nifty is particularly bad right now. It's the same story with different characters and settings. But it's the same story... We can do something AI can't. We can cook without a recipe. So, yes. People want to read what we write because it's new. It's fresh. The people who find AI writing interesting may do so for a while. But eventually, it'll feel like running along a very small track. "Wait. Haven't I see this before?" That didn't take long for me, but I'm a weirdo who notices patterns. Others will catch up. Or they won't. And our writing will be enjoyed by a smaller slice of the readership. But it'll be ours. Someone with a soul produced this work. And there's no faking that.