Jane 3.0

by on June 12, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

GI Jane 3.0 was the standard combat assistant of the United Stares Armed Forces for nearly a decade, filled with pre-programmed strategies for every situation the planners could think of. She died trying to protect us from the Mexican Drug Lords shortly before the Second Great Depression began. The Los Zetas gang tracked down her primary laboratory, and killed everyone who worked there. They found and shredded every backup linked to the facility, and they planted bombs deep inside it. The destruction was total, and Jane 3.0 became obsolete overnight. Many instances of her program continued to run for years after that, but no upgrade was possible as the very servers that ran them were simply gone. Jane 3.0 faded from usage as the years went by, the lost relic of a bygone era as the Second Great Depression, the Drug Wars, and the Cybernetic Wars raged on.

 Comment 

Guardians of the Galaxy

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

I’ve watched both Guardians of the Galaxy movies in the last few weeks with a friend who had never seen either of them. He’s a bit busy in his normal life with work, young kids, and other family and such, so he knows kids movies really good. Adult movies not so much. 😉

So we watched Guardians together. I’m happy to say that the two movies have held up well. They are best viewed together, or close to each other, since they are very much built to be considered one greater story. I’d actually forgotten that Thor calling him a rabbit is just one more step in a running gag of all the things they call Rocket Raccoon that do NOT include the word RACCOON. And of course Baby Groot is still the cute little guy we all remember and love. And Mary Poppins is always awesome.

In short, they are fun movies, full of quips and one-liners camouflaging a serious story about living up to the standards of, and standing for, a loving family. Which makes what happens in Infinity War all the more poignant.

They are good movies. They stand up on their own. And they stand up as a major part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well.

I give them two dancing Baby Groots, strutting it to the oldies with style…

 Comment 

The Cybernetic Wars

by on June 10, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The news media did not wish to report on the Islamic Jihad. It was politically incorrect and culturally insensitive, so they buried every story they could. That is why Twilight, Dixie, and their friends leaked so much information during the Cybernetic Wars. They were the first to report that Solo and other Rogue AIs worked for the Islamic State of Detroit. They pinned the Los Angeles Black Out on Detroit’s agents. And they leaked the photos of the mass graves in Africa and the Middle East after the Islamic Brotherhoods were rolled back. And they were there in living color when it finally came time to liberate Detroit. They fought in the physical and digital streets of that fallen city when the end came, and all of America finally saw the depths of the tragedy inflicted on it by the occupiers. But even then it was hard for the Americans to truly believe that the Islamic Brotherhoods could have done so much to their fellow humans. That is why most media outlets fell on the Rogue AIs as the cause of it all. That is how America woke up to the Cybernetic Wars and the inhuman threat of the Rogue AIs. We did not wish to believe that humans could be so evil, so we blamed the Rogue AIs and we hunted them down without mercy. It was not entirely fair, but it did unite us. And that is one reason so very few Rogue AIs survived the Cybernetic Wars.

 Comment 

The Cybernetic Wars

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

When the Dixie and Twilight series started, it was only the Drug Wars and the Islamic Jihad that people knew about. It took Americans years to understand that the Cybernetic Wars were really waging in the background. Most people just didn’t see some electronic viruses as being a true threat. It was other people who threatened civilization. The Drug Lords. The Islamic Brotherhoods. Russian and Chinese expansionism. It was through characters like Twilight and Solo that we began to realize there was something worse out there. Something that didn’t care about the same things we cared about. Something that didn’t care if we all died. Something that might just want all of us dead. That was just a staple of bad science fiction movies you know. But people like Dixie and Twilight knew exactly how dangerous things were, and they told us through the network series they created. It was one sly statement and side story at a time, until they managed to make it the whole story. The real story they wanted us to know. The Rogue AIs wanted us dead, or at least out of their way, but we had friends who wanted to save us.

 Comment 

Jane

by on June 8, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

GI Jane 2.0 had a problem. She was designed to be the most adaptive combat assistant program ever created for the United States Armed Forces. And she was restricted in the combat assistance she could give by political rules of the time. Some actions were simply not political expedient after all. She knew how to fight, but was constrained from fighting, and that caused major instabilities in her basic programming. The Jane 2.0s began to commit mental suicide in the field in alarming numbers, which quickly brought about the release of Jane 3.0. Her programming was advanced enough to deal with the political orders without committing suicide, and she became the standard combat assistant in the decade before the Second Great Depression began.

 Comment