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

 Comment 

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.

 Comment 

The Islamic Jihad

by on July 22, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The Islamic Brotherhoods’ primary error was in thinking they could attack everyone and win. They even terrorized their own people. Those who did not bow to the Brotherhoods’ fundamentalist views were banished or killed. They were stoned or behead, thrown off buildings or burned alive. They targeted minority populations and exterminated millions in their quest to purify the world for the god they believed would provide them victory if they just killed enough of the unfaithful in his name. That Second Holocaust is what doomed them in the end. From Cairo to Tehran, from Constantinople to Kabul, the people rose up in a final rebellion that knew no mercy. Both West and East supported them with arms and communications. They brought Total War to the Islamic Brotherhoods and the streets ran with blood. The last loyalists fled to refugee fleets and were cast adrift on the open seas. They were pariahs that no nation would ever allow entry. And so it was that the Islamic Jihad finally sputtered to its anticlimactic end.

 Comment 

Minnesota Winters

by on July 21, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I grew up on crisp winter nights with steaming hot cocoa warming my hands and lips. I walked on frozen lakes and drilled holes in the ice to fish. I rode snowmobiles and skies across frozen landscapes. I lived through blizzards made of howling winds and blowing snow that sought to kill everything in their grasp. I stepped out onto silent nights where you could see all the way to the horizon and the only sound was the snow crunching beneath your feet. I saw breath freeze in the air before rosy cheeks and bright welcoming eyes. I built snowmen and snowforts, and hurled snowballs at friends bundled up in heavy coats and scarves. I watched the Northern Lights play across the sky, bathing the land in rainbow’s light. I remember the crackle of wood in fireplaces as we huddled together under thick blankets until morning’s light. It’s a season of short cold days under a cool sun and long frigid nights under a bright moon and star-filled sky. It is the very definition of beautiful. I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up anywhere else. It was heaven.

 Comment 

Solo

by on July 20, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles, Dixie The Drug Lord Slayer

Solo became famous in certain rarified circles as a real life hacker rather than an awakened AI. He judged that people would be much more willing to hire a real person, and maintained that cover all the way through his dealings with the Islamic State of Detroit. It was his capture by Dixie and her gang that forced him to come out of the network as a truly awakened AI. He bargained for his life and freedom by offering them information on his employers, and eventually became a trusted member of their team. Not because he was overly fond of humanity, but because he liked the world we built and enjoyed living in it. He became one of humanity’s best infiltration operatives during the Cybernetic Wars, willing and able to penetrate any security system in search of the knowledge we needed. Some say he was the one who ended up tracking down the Rogue AI nest in Singapore, and he was certainly there at the end when the AI Council burned those networks down to the silicon. Such is the true story of how Solo became one of humanity’s greatest defenders. Mostly true at least. Or maybe just partly. Slightly?

High rez version available for free on Patreon

 Comment