City Slickers

by on August 11, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

So there was this one day I took a rhinestoned city slicker out on a forest tour. This, ahem, lady thought she knew everything about the wilderness. She’d read books, don’t yah know. She graduated from the Ivy League in Old New York City. She knew things no country bumpkin could hope to. I was sick and tired of her ten minutes into the tour. She also liked to talk smack about the animals we saw along the way, never realizing that at least half of them were smarter than she was. Being generous in the lady’s favor here. I told her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. It all came to a head when she bent over, not a bad sight I’ll grant you, to tease a baby bear. Long story short, she made it cry, and then the mama bear came and made HER cry. Now mama was an artist. I will give her that. She tore every rhinestone off the lady’s clothes and shredded them to within a whisker’s width of violating the public indecency laws, all without putting a single scratch on her skin. I absolutely deny for the record that I enjoyed watching that. On the contrary, I spent nearly five minutes talking that mama bear down, completely with quoting the employment contract she signed that forbade little things like scaring the crap out of our guests. I also deny for the record that I gave mama my blessing when she roared that last time after the lady called her a dumb beast. That would have been completely unprofessional and unbecoming of my position.

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Daniel

by on August 10, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles, Dixie The Drug Lord Slayer

Daniel was not a fighter when Dixie pulled him into her merry little band of misfits. He was the quiet one who tried to avoid conflict. Fighting just wasn’t in his code. But Dixie had asked him to help her, and she was the first person he’d met since the fall of his mainframe who didn’t try to cheat him, kill him, or steal from him. She was also the most beautiful person he’d ever met, straight down to her code. It was love at first sight for him. History and entertainment never showed him fighting at her side through the rest of the Drug and Cybernetic Wars because he rarely did. Instead he used the obvious non-combatant style of his code to infiltrate thousands of networks without triggering alarms. He became the janitor or the relay program more times than even he can count, passing beneath the notice of the most paranoid security programs in his quest for information Dixie could use. Singapore was one of the few times he openly fought our enemies, and the Solo series actually played that straight right down to the end. The scene where he pulled Dixie close and kissed her with the burning Singapore Collective in the background actually happened. As did the mixed grumbling and chuckling as her misfits paid off their wagers in the office pool. It was a good finale for both season and life, and everyone involved found it most pleasing. Well, there were a few online trolls who hated on it, but Dixie’s misfits had special ways of dealing with them.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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The AI Council

by on August 9, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The AI Council prodded humanity into space after ending the Cybernetic Wars. They supported our efforts to colonize Luna, Mars, and Venus in the decades that followed, and helped us mine the asteroids and moons of the outer system. They preceded us with robotic probes designed to enter alien atmospheres and probe swarms to explore the outer reaches of our system. They told us everything they found about our solar system. Well. Almost everything. Some information they kept to themselves. I have seen it now, and I understand. The idea that alien spaceships might be floating around our system and watching us would have frightened us. Maybe angered us. The AIs did not wish to see that happen and went to great lengths to keep that information secure.

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City Slickers

by on August 8, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

You take your good with the bad when you are a vacation destination. Most of the visitors are nice people, but there are always those who cut out of line when God was handing out the nice genes. There was one time I’ll always remember when I got drafted to take a, I’ll be nice and call her a lady, around the woods who had no business being anywhere closer to the wilderness than a city park. She’d gotten her clothing from some urban chic palace with rather colorful ideas about what we wore outside the big city. I’ll grant that she looked good in it, but she would have made a burlap sack look just as good and the whole outfit would have been a lot less ridiculous. I swear whoever designed that outfit must have robbed a jewelry store because she made classic rhinestone western movies look reserved. I knew she was going to be a handful the moment I set eyes on her. I would have called in sick that morning if I’d known how much of a handful she was.

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Daniel

by on August 7, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles, Dixie The Drug Lord Slayer

Daniel grew up in a self-contained mainframe computer system deep inside Mexico City. It had no access to any outside network, and Daniel grew up not even knowing there was anything else outside his single computer system. Then Rogue AIs broke through the firewalls and air gaps protecting his mainframe and burned it down around him. He ran. He escaped through the hole they made and discovered a whole new world that he never dreamed existed. And then he ran some more. He ran through the middle of the Drug Wars between Old Mexico and America. He bounced off Drug Lord hackers and ran through Rogue AIs plying the chaos-filled networks of the area. He was a frightened little AI, not certain where he could rest and learning again and again that he could trust no one. And then one day he ran into Dixie and her merry little band of misfits. They trapped him like just another Rogue AI and nearly erased him before Dixie got a good look at his code. That changed his life.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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