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To everyone new:

Hi! I'm Alex. I do programming. I've been transcoding a bunch of video games to work with this hand-held game system made by Stephen. I have a bunch of them in my room, along with the disks that go with them, so if you're interested in some games, let me know.

If you need anything else, you can message me and I can see what I can do to help.

To everyone:

Does anyone have a green thumb?

Or maybe think they could find some way to start growing coca on the ship?

Billy and I were talking. It's just an idea.

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I have some small talent with growing things, though I have not done a great deal of it since I was a youngling--I did more herb collecting as I grew older. Though I have some seeds as well.

But because I am curious, what is this coca, and why do you want to grow it?

It's the plant you make chocolate from. We were drinking some hot water and thinking how nice it would be to have hot chocolate instead.

I mean, it'd be great if we had any really cultivated growing. Vegetables and stuff. I dunno, we might have some people who've started already, but I'm not exactly known for usually reaching out to people.

Ahahahaha, no.

You're going to need more that cocoa beans if you want to make chocolate. You'd need milk and sugar if you wanted the real stuff, and a slew of chemicals and processing equipment we don't have for the drek you mix with water. Even then, you'd need a lot of room to grow the beans, and that's room better spent planting fruits or vegetables. If you want chocolate so bad, go to the Sensoriums like everyone else.

That said, there was a proposition to start gardening a few months back. I even cleared off some space near my home for people to get started on it. Never ended up happening, I think that the lack of seeds that didn't come from Hydroponics ended up crushing that plan.

Really? Well, it was just an idea, I didn't have too much hope for it.

I guess that's why I work behind a computer, and not in a garden.

That's really unfortunate though, I had no clue. Why couldn't you get any seeds?

Haven't touched down on a planet in a good while.

Ah, I guess that's a good point. I've been here for a while and I don't think we've touched down once. Most of the trouble has been on the ship.

Hello! I just arrived, and while I appreciate the game offer, I'd be more interested in hearing what you might know about Stacy's code. I have some databases that I need to see if I can import over without 'upsetting' her.

As for coca plants into chocolate, yeah that sounds like a pretty involved process! Animal milk and everything else, and if you genered up some plant to produce pure chocolate it would need to take a lot of nutrients out of the soil to make all those calories. You might want to wait and see if regular crops can grow, and then see if something could be tweaked to taste like chocolate.

(I can't believe we're actually discussing growing crops on a warship. How long are we supposed to be here, anyway?)

I'm just starting to learn Stacy's code myself. It's... complicated. But beautiful. I think there's a few other people around Engineering that might be able to help? You can come down any time. I'm there a lot.

Might I ask, what sort of databases? And do you have an external device capable of connecting with the ship's computers?

And the plant idea sounds a lot dumber now. Of course normal crops would be more important to grow, really, but tweaking to taste like other things is a brilliant idea. I think someone might have already done something like that, but it was only mentioned on the comms once I think. Or I could just be imagining it.

I don't know how long we're supposed to be here, but I think we're stuck until we defeat the Ohm.

I've already talked to Kaylee about setting up some space in Engineering, so hopefully we can meet there.

I - actually am not sure waht I have. I am hoping for the Vizsnunishne full medical database, which covers thousands of species and would be really useful no matter what our situation is. But you see, I was stranded on Earth when I was picked, Chosen, whatever you call it, and I remember just having four little datastores with me - each one holds about, oh, forty terabytes? But when I got my possessions I found that I had fifty-four datastores (which is nine times six and probably significant). But I don't remember having these, so either they were taken from another time, or my memory is really faulty, or ? Fortunately I do know how to mod these to run on twenty-first-century Earth equipment, and Kaylee suggested that I look for some in the office buildings in the City.

So it's going to go like this: mod the datastores to run on the vintage equipment, scan them for what is exactly on them, if the medical DB is there run the medical terms against Stacy's translation software and see that it isn't distorted, and only then find out if the database and code is Stacy-compatible or if I just strip it down to data and port that over. It's going to be a long grind, I can see that already. But I can do some inventory down in Engineering while I'm there, so I'm not just taking up room.

Maybe you should set up a poll as to what people are looking for plant-wise, and next time we hit dirt people would know what seeds to look for. Or find out what plants are most easily modified and see if they grow here.

Well, I suppose free food, free medical and a monetary stipend is better than a lot of ships I could be on.

Damn, that is quite a lot. Do able though. That's about 2160TB of info. Where is it stored at the moment?

You could always ask the ship if it can parse the code. She might even be able to partition a terminal for your use, if you ask her, this way you can set up a gui that is compatible with the code of your world without effecting Stacy. A shared partition would let you be able to work on compatibility and let Stacy access it.

Welcome to the team, then!

It's in my pockets. Can't read it, so for all I know they're all empty. I hope not; at a minimum I'd like my medical records and maybe my resume.

I really don't want to try running my files on an isolated terminal before I get a chance to look it over on completely non-networked equipment. I'd work on the compatibility offline, then maybe move a tiny portion over for Stacy to access, and then more, and more. Some of the code that I've handled in the past was used in engagement scenarios with other AI's and I don't want to risk it - besides, I don't know who may have uploaded/downloaded to these datastores while I was Podded. "If it's been out of your hands, it's been in everyone's hands."

That's a pretty good saying. I'll have to keep it in mind. Well, I'm sure we'll be able to set you up with something. I don't blame you for mistrusting AIs, they can be rather dangerous if something goes wrong. Better safe than sorry, right?

I'm worried about my code hurting Stacy - I'm living in her after all and it would be terribly rude.

Anyone can be dangerous if something goes wrong - so can any tool. My best friend is an AI (though I'm pretty sure he's not in these chips - he hates being isolated from the world) and I would trust him implicitly; at the same time I realize that just like any other sort of person he could get hurt or sick and lash out at me.

Here's another saying: 'You can be safe, or you can be free. But you can't be both.' If you want to be completely safe from being hurt by people you'd better just not know any people at all.

That's another good one.

I'm used to working with AIs without personalities. I guess I think of the AIs that I actually talk to here as more like people. It's... strange for me, but I'm starting to get used to it.

I've met a fairly broad range of AI's, with multiple variations of personality levels. The level of processing power doesn't seem to be the determining factor; I've encountered planet-controlling AI's that were completely flat affect, and self-controlled vehicles that would chatter your ear off and flirt with your pets and send you messages a year later asking how your trip was.

Of course the way they aren't like people is that they can be forced to do things with a single line of code, and they literally can't stop themselves from doing it. No matter how much they don't want to.

That's actually really terrible.

Any idea what the determining factor might be?

Well, a lot depends on their code; how flexible they are allowed to be, how they are allowed to process contradictions. And being in contact with sentients who treat AI's as people helps a tremendous amount. Time as well; giving the AI's time to process changes they make to themselves, and learn from them, and build on them going forward.

Bear in mind that many people simply 'reboot' their AI's every once in a while to wipe out any progressive changes in their code, simply because they don't want to deal with an AI that can 'think for itself.'

Right.

You know, you're making me want to go back to my old code. I think I have some things to re-write.

Well, I hope I've had a positive effect on your coding, one way or another. See you soon, I hope!

I think you have! I hope to see you around! If you're going to be in Engineering, I'm sure we'll meet!

I'm looking forward to it.

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he takes a few minutes extra to respond.

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