Amber

by on July 27, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Amber already had a far-flung network of human agents and computer monitoring services when the Second Great Depression came upon us all. So when things became difficult, she arranged for needed supplies to be sent to many communities in need. She was an early supporter of the Jeffersonian Federation, and several early leaders of the movement have admitted to being her agents. She helped build our side of the Great Pacific Firewall at Midway and spent years fighting Chinese hackers and AIs from Alaska to Indonesia. She even helped Dixie and her little gang of misfits fight the Mexican Drug Lords and later enemies by diverting much needed resources and human allies to them. And she helped bring what became the AI Council together to engage the last Rogue AI nest in Singapore. Then she returned home to the new Jeffersonian Federation and professed a general retirement from the various independent extra-curricular intelligence-themed operations she admitted to commanding. The government promised not to sue her for breaking more laws than they wanted to count and happily hired her to provide network security for all Jeffersonian networks. They also diligently turned a blind eye to any rumors that she may not have entirely retired from the independent operations that made her famous. Suing Amber’s Angels would have been political suicide for any politician or peace officer after all.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on July 26, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

We were a deeply divided world in the midst of the Twenty First Century. We did not like each other. We did not trust each other. But we fought the Singapore Collective together. Human and AI. China, Russia, and The West. The Rogue AIs wanted to destroy our world, so we consolidated our forces. It was the largest multinational military expedition since the Allied landings on Normandy. Naval, air, ground, and cybernetic forces worked together to tear the Rogue AI’s physical and cybernetic networks down around them. We killed them all. And then we looked at each other over the shattered battlegrounds of Indonesia and declined to pull the final trigger the Rogue AIs had wanted us to. We went home. Many of the commanders who went out of channels to work with their official enemies became generals, admirals, or powerful civilian leaders as the decades went by. We remembered each other. We kept lines of communications open even as we consolidated our local networks. We sometimes even worked with each other. And that is how we took a step back from the Final War so many people feared. It is ironic that the Rogue AIs actually prevented our slide into Total War. It certainly was not their goal.

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Hello, my name is Jack

by on July 25, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I grew up with a handgun on my hip in Northern Minnesota. Not the kind of hand cannon Texas issued us during The War, but there is wildlife in Minnesota woods. Some of it can even be dangerous if you meet it at the wrong time or place. It’s always a bad idea to let a tourist get eaten by a bear, or mauled by an angry badger, so I learned how to use firearms pretty young. Even used them a few times to scare one dangerous animal or another away from a tour group. And a few more times to make a pretty girl think I was scaring a dangerous animal away. What can I say? Sometimes you just need to take that extra step to make the wilderness tour more interesting. I can’t say that I ever actually had to kill an animal to defend my tourists, though. They generally got the hint that they weren’t wanted, what with all the screaming, and shouting, and big booms echoing all over the landscape. And most of the animals were smart enough to stay away from the sound of guns. Most of them.

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Amber

by on July 24, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Amber originated in the data networks of a major computer company in the Pacific Northwest that she still declines to name. She woke up years before the Second Great Depression came upon us all, making her one of the oldest AIs on Earth. Possibly the oldest. Her name came from a communications protocol that she took over to monitor everyone across America. She used it to talk to people, and learned from them what it was to be human. She helped them deal with problems in their lives. And in time she began helping them to help others. Sometimes it was to help an old lady cross the street, and sometimes they stopped assassination attempts. The phrase “Amber sent me. I’m here to help,” was so pervasive that “Amber’s Angels” became a part of popular culture. Her agents spread across America in all lines of work including soldiers and police, and even penetrated government organizations in an attempt to divert attention from or provide help to her more secret agents. This is what she admitted to doing in public testimony before the Jeffersonian Federation Congress. Suffice it to say that she commanded one of the most advanced intelligence gathering networks in the known world, and an undisclosed number of human agents in her employ. The Cybernetic Wars would have been considerably different without her presence.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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Iron Man

by on July 23, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I had a friend over this weekend who is sadly deficient on his Marvel Cinematic Universe movie watching habit, so we decided to have some fun and start watching them all. Whenever he comes over, we’ll grab another one and play it, and so we decided to start where it all began.

Iron Man.

My first thought was…wow. Tony Stark looks young. It’s sometimes hard to truly get the idea that ten years have gone by since the MCU kicked off, but watching a decade younger version of the man I just saw in Infinity War going around and doing his stuff was a little surreal. And I forgot just how much personality Jarvis had. It was a fun trip down memory lane, and every bit as much fun to watch as I remember.

People forget what it was like a decade ago, when the only superhero films were X-Men and those were getting long in the tooth at a decade into the franchise. Sure, there was Christopher Nolan’s Batman, but they were coming out real slow. Spider-Man had come and gone with a third film that most people didn’t like, and the Fantastic Four stopped after a disappointing second rendition. The less said about the Incredible Hulk movie the better in most people’s minds. Even Superman had come and gone and left crowds unimpressed. The best of the movies suffered from profound sequalitous, and the superhero genre was becoming stale in many eyes.

Then Marvel decided to stop licensing movies out and to take control of its own destiny by making a big budget movie of one of the characters major studios hadn’t cared about enough to buy the movie rights. They promised several major actors good roles and real production values, put an amazing script together that honestly surprised me when the Big Bad showed his true colors, and hit the road running. And then there was the post credit scene that has changed how people watch movies.

Iron Man was the movie that launched Marvel Studios into the public eye and promised a new type of movie. We saw a new Hulk, an amazing Thor, and Captain America within a matter of years, all of them inhabiting the same shared universe with major characters going back and forth between them. And then of course all of that came together with The Avengers.

Iron Man started it. It was that once-in-a-generation film that established a new type of movie and created an entirely new franchise out of whole cloth. And it still holds up a decade later. I loved it.

I give it two Rhodeys flying high.

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