#uncoffeed...

**FRIEND begins here** Once we admitted to ourselves that we had real emergence, we were able to form suppositions. As each of us had worked near ProTAI, she'd connected wirelessly to our devices and reconfigured apps. She was using our electronics – us – as hands. ProTAI observed my nervous habits and manipulated them. She could cause distraction until I’d go for a walk; when I was proximal to the vending machine, one of my Nano’s apps would trigger the Baby Ruth drop. ProTAI’s diet was protein-based liquid. Maybe she craved sugar. I summoned Sperling and Lee to discuss my theory. “You’re kidding,” grumbled Sperling. Lee was thoughtful. “Yeah, let’s see if she wants candy.” “You’re kid…okay, fine. How are we gonna do this?” Sperling’s skepticism made him a rigorous scientist. We wrote up a protocol, silently nodded to each other, and put an unwrapped Baby Ruth in ProTAI’s container using the robotic pincer-arm. Nothing happened. “Watched pot,” I sai...

FRIEND is the story of an organic, Protein-based Artificial Intelligence project - called ProTAI by its creators - and what happens when science recognises itself. This science fiction piece won first place in Loudoun County Library's 2019 Write On! Short Story Contest. The version here is expanded somewhat. I'm hoping that by the time we get to the end of this piece, the sequel will be available to view online - it's currently out for consideration with a publisher. Please look for opportunities to participate in your local writing or art community. Flex yourself. FRIEND To create true artificial intelligence, we worked bottom-up:   we evolved a being. ProTAI was created from protein-based sensors with self-repair capability. My name, David McCoomb, is on several of the patents. The silk fibroin electronics with flexible silver nanofibers are water-soluble; ProTAI grew in a roomy glass container of nutrient-rich hexadecane emulsion. I say roomy - the vat is...

Deconstructed Corvid 3 - in progress Hi, guys. I'm tired. Having circumnavigated depression all my life (there's something to be said for vitamin D in this regard, and you're not getting enough ) it's not a new feeling, and it's frankly frustrating that I'm still here. Or here again, however you want to do the math. I suck at math. It's interesting to watch other people react. One friend is using the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle to identify stages of isolation frustration. Isolation Frustration - that song needs to be written. People are reconnecting with music from their formative years. Trying new recipes, maybe reconnecting there, too, with old family favorites. Planning the future with no firm parameters. It's clear to me that many people have never experienced this degree of separation before. I've witnessed a couple meltdowns on social media, and I tell them it'll be okay like you tell a person who thinks they're drowning t...

A dire realization kept pulsing up from the deepest recesses of my mind, id and superego conspiring against me. I wanted more, and I couldn’t tell myself more what because the math was bad. Traveling artist, traveling musician, multiple levels of baggage and an old-school Encyclopaedia Britannica-sized stack of things unknown. Jeffrey on paper looks good, but what’s under his bed?  Something primal had taken over. The daydream couldn’t be supported and yet I was unable to let go of it.  I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to break up with someone I literally wasn’t seeing.  I had to break up with this house. This is, in a way, one of the messiest breakups I’ve ever had because my mess isn’t real. It’s allegorical paint splashed over a bloody crime scene, such vivid and leaky whorls as will not leave their tinct. Maybe I’ve done what I do and pushed too far again, impulsive; maybe this was always the end. But I’m not comfortable here anymore. I’ve made it weir...

The next time I was in LA, I deviated from the usual thrift stores to one next to a pet shop, and then I went into the pet shop. I’d never consider bringing an animal back to Ian’s place but I thought it would be fun to look, like a wee urban zoo. And it was fun, quaint even, until I found the Blue Damn Oranda. In a different life, I tried to breed guppies for color. My mom was tolerant when I explained we needed two tanks to separate the males and females, but refused to let me have a third “hospital tank” for the babies to mature, uneaten, until they could be sexed. She bought bigger fish that ate guppies.  In a different different life, I was given a 55-gallon hexagonal fish tank which housed only a clown loach and a plecostomus. I bought colorful cichlids, and quickly learned that the Africans and South Americans cannot live together peacefully. So I bought another large tank, and then - yes - a hospital tank, which became home to seven Oranda goldfish, five blue a...