LINKDING

summary: <blockquote>“If you died,” Huaisang started, not knowing quite where he was going with this. “I mean, you did die, da-ge, but if someone had killed you… what would you want to happen next?” / In the wake of Nie Mingjue’s death, Nie Huaisang realises how much he’s been left in ignorance. How could the artsy little brother be left to run their ancestral asteroid-mining clan? What other secrets are hidden in his san-ge’s past? And how should he get revenge? Maybe having da-ge’s personality backed up on a server was supposed to help with all this. Maybe.</blockquote> ➤ mdzs space au about nie huaisang and his years-long project in avenging his da-ge ➤ a repeated theme throughout the fic is nhs visiting and talking to back-ups that had been taken of nmj's personality before death, and the way that this makes literal how HAUNTED nhs is by his brother's absence is just sooooooo good ➤ the worldbuilding is great, the things that are changed from canon due to this different context are great, the anguish and monofocus of nhs are great ➤ I AM ALL EMOTIONS ;_; ➤ 8k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>The captain of the king’s guard wakes up with strange lights and a voice inside his head. The voice explains that it’s something called the facilitating AI of a transmigration game (whatever that is), but most people in the captain’s position would call it “System.” The captain, you see, saw something he shouldn’t have (here he finds he has no memory of this) and was marked as an immediate host for transmigration. “But you’re my favorite character,” System tells him. “I had to do the install, but I destroyed the incoming data. I didn’t want to replace you.”</blockquote>

Summary: <blockquote>Ojoa and I had to keep Dr. Brinsen happy, because he was going to save the world. Under his leadership, Matora Facility had been tasked with ending the deadly outbreak that had earned our planet the designation of failed colony in the Interstellar feeds. Immunodeficiency was common on terraformed worlds, but novel pathogens rarely survived the medical regimens that kept colonists safe. Our virus, the exception, had killed thousands and put an end to off-world transit. Compared with the work of developing a cure, Ojoa’s projects were fanciful distractions. I was a distraction.</blockquote> ➤ an original story about AI personhood, and about the bond between one AI who is different from the others, and their bond with a human who is different from other humans ➤ it's also about the difficulties of caregiving during a pandemic, and the toll it takes ➤ a beautiful, quiet, tender story about finding where you belong, no matter what others think ➤ and ultimately, in my read, about a neurodivergent robot and a queerplatonic relationship, which like. AS ALWAYS, TAKE ME TO THERE. I'm here for it. ➤ 6k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>Past the sparrow-dark dust fields of Far Euniply, at the edge of the Joined Cultures’ galactic borders, within the section of space they call the Emptiness, the Station floats. The Station waits. The Station prepares itself for the inevitability of another explorer’s arrival. no I can’t, I won’t, never again— STOP Station has lost a millisecond. It searches its databanks but cannot find any data recording or logs for that specific moment in time.</blockquote> ➤ I'm not quite sure I follow everything but at its heart it's about an intense platonic relationship between a sentient ship and its human and I'm so here for that

Summary: <blockquote>Elizabeth Mauldin, driving fast along the skeletal remains of Arizona’s US-89, somewhere near Tuba City, saw a far-off glint and yanked her steering wheel hard to the left. Her custom-built tow truck left the broken roadbed and plowed into the scrub, red sand rooster-tailing behind her as the eight knobby rear tires bit hard, shredding small clumps of sage-green bushes into confetti. Bouncing in her harness, Mauldin felt adrenaline coursing through her body, easing the dull ache that constantly throbbed in her gut. She wasn’t sure if the glint was another ground-vehicle or an old, broken window that had happened to catch the sunlight. More than anything, though, she hoped it was Big Bertha.</blockquote> ➤ oh my god it's a horse girl story about bonding with the wild mustang except it's rogue ai cars instead of horses

<blockquote>“Abelique told me not to pick up my phone again until after lunch was over.” “Who?” Margo said. “It’s this new app for better living.” “I love the idea of an app that tells you to put your phone down more. For your own good,” Margo said, her eyes glinting. “You should try it!” June said. “You get the first thirty days free!” “And after that, you have to pay someone to nag you to use your phone less?” “It’s more than that.” June took a bite out of her tuna melt. “For one thing, you also agree to occasionally nag other people to put their phones down.” Margo and I both laughed, and June flushed. But she did not, I noticed, touch her phone again until we were ready to leave the diner.</blockquote> ➤ not quite sure what I think of it, not quite sure what it's saying about AI and algorithms, and not quite sure it knows either, but it was interesting to read

<blockquote>Start at the cleave of it, not at Zed’s meat death or Ep’s centuries-long destruction, but at the moment that Zed halves his own mind and walks away. Or as was reported in the internal memorandum, the moment when Pilot-Commander Zeta San Tano killed himself at his infinite post on the M.K.S. Epsilon, leaving behind an empty airlock and a crippled starship unable to communicate, limping its way home after battle, carrying a full complement of soldiers. When the ship returned to base, the staff at Amalgam Research tried to parse whether the M.K.S. Epsilon was aware of Commander Zeta’s upcoming suicide. It must have been. The M.K.S. Epsilon was functionally equivalent to Zeta San Tano. To speak of one was to speak of the other. But without Zed, Ep was silent.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I'm gonna be honest, I haven't actually seen 'Free Guy'. This was mostly inspired by the trailer, so familiarity with the film is definitely not required.</blockquote> ➤ the immersive virtual reality video game one where luo binghe is a surprisingly engaging npc part two: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041973/chapters/87835618 part three: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041973/chapters/108442480

<blockquote>I scowled at them like I could shoot lasers from my eyes — which I didn’t have the mods for, but they didn’t know that. “Both of you, shut the fuck up.” To their credit, they did. He kept glaring daggers at me, like he was promising that the second I untied his hands, they’d be around my throat. She had on her biggest, saddest brown eyes, complete with perfect little tears trickling from the corners of her eyes, like she was just a helpless little thing who could be let go with no consequences. Both of them were goddamn liars. When I do a job, I do my research. He wasn’t vicious and she wasn’t harmless, and both of them were staying tied to those chairs.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Lan Zhan stops in front of one of the bespoke duplicates— a male figure, small, creamy-skinned and lithe. The name on the plinth reads Mo Xuanyu. Lan Zhan tested it on his first pass through the room. The doll was empty. No signals bouncing around its artificial brain, no operating programs queued to autostart. Not even a blinking dormancy light. "Hey big guy," says Mo Xuanyu, chrome eyes sparkling with fun. "Who do I gotta fuck around here to get unplugged?" / Wei Ying is a rogue AI come to life. Lan Zhan is… handling it.</blockquote>

<blockquote>AIs don't always feel emotions the same way humans do. They don't always express those emotions in the same way, either. That makes living and working together a challenge, but one that the crew of the experimental advanced research transport The Perihelion are more than willing to rise to.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Back in 2010, the social media accounts of Ron Harrison1 showed the life of a man who had everything. The CEO of a major medical supply company, Harrison had a picture-perfect life in the Virginia suburbs: a six-figure salary, a wife and two children, even a brown-and-white cocker spaniel named Poncho. Harrison received the first message on a sunny afternoon in July 2012. It popped up on his computer and wouldn’t go away. i’m watching u</blockquote> ➤ the kind of old school sf that's about the Ideas rather than the characters, but it's an interesting exploration of ai and online harassment

<blockquote>“Okay, it’s a robot, but it’s just programmed to turn itself off again?” the boy asks. “How is that different?” The inventor straightens up, smiles broadly. “It’s a fully functional, self-aware AI,” he says. “It isn’t programmed to turn itself off, it chooses to because I programmed it to be in a constant state of existential terror!” The boy looks up at his father. “That’s kind of awful,” he says.</blockquote>

<blockquote>For a seemingly well-maintained but bedridden Concepción, Rosamie expected generalized wear and tear, maybe an electrical short in the legs. But diagnostics enumerated four limbs, the typical processors and vital periphera all in fair condition, and then it listed an extra drive, and an extra drive, and an extra drive, and an extra drive … A standard Concepción had three spares. This client had four thousand and thirteen. > You see? the client said. No need for fuss. I need only basic maintenance, until my transference into the city.</blockquote>

<blockquote>You understand her father’s mistake. You are wearing Valentine’s clothes. You are wearing her body. You are everything that makes Valentine Manning herself, except for the throbbing electric lump that should sit in her cranial cavity. Her new brain is currently stored in a little closet in the Resurrection Clinic, bathed in goo and bombarded with targeted electrons. It will take two months to rearrange the freshly printed organ into the shape that she left it in before she died, all memories restored. Bodies can’t just sit around, though. They get bedsores. They take up space. Val has an empty apartment seven blocks from the university and a signed insurance contract that authorizes experimental therapies when provided by a licensed medical provider. Therefore, you are piloting Valentine’s freshly created meat instead of letting it lie on a shelf. You are one of the fifty-seven synthetic replicative intelligences the Clinic owns for this purpose. You are floating in a bath of synthetic cerebrospinal fluid. You are attached to her brainstem. You do not have a name.</blockquote>

<blockquote>In Lily’s last vlog, she says she’s not scared of dying. I know it’s a lie because her gaze drifts off camera and she blinks three times, like there’s something in her eyes. Lily was always a bad liar, but I am a very good editor, so her six-point-five million loyal subscribers never have to know.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Iyara taps the military implant behind her ear, and low static greets her. It’s been dead for years—a two-way line with only one connection—but the static is comforting, as if she’s listening to the sound of space itself. Empty with longing. Below her, the dealership is an orange, domed pimple on the otherwise placid blue world. Lights flash through the thin ozone advertising: “Cheap!” “Arturo-433 Models Used and New!” “Xanthian credits accepted!”</blockquote>

<blockquote>The anchorage appeared on my radar screen as a blip, a blotch, one bit of detritus among many. The accompanying message was gentle but persistent, an invitation repeated on loop for anyone who might pick it up: visit if you like. The politest distress call in the universe. Visit if you like, and please bring food, printer fuel, next gen wires, conversation… I forwarded the signal to Captain Rousseau. This action revealed impatience on my part, excitement, an inability to wait until after breakfast. But I couldn’t help it. Novelty. Newness. I craved it like a subterranean lizardman craved phosphor. I craved it like Captain Rousseau craved silence. Over the past year, my crew (yes, my crew, my crew, the word still sounded the way I imagine liquor tastes, warming and biting and frightening and loud)—my crew made medical deliveries to a dozen colonies. We saw titanium waterfalls and genetically enhanced caribou. We walked through bone-lined catacombs. We rode air trams through toxic jungles. We stopped a necrotic worm outbreak and vaccinated three thousand children against belly rot.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Sion sent a drunk text to Grant Hendryx at four in the morning, whipping off her hoodie and bra, snapping a pic and writing a sexy caption before hitting send. Except she aimed the camera the wrong way, and she picked the wrong entry in her address book, so Grant Donaldson, senior project manager at Aerodox Ventures, was surprised to receive a blurry photo of a pair of parking meters with a message that read, ‘LICK MY LEFT ONE.’ The next day, Sion had an invitation to go to outer space.</blockquote>

<blockquote>As excerpted from Acausal Drift: An Oral History of Machine Sentience, Second Edition. It all started with the solar flare. I do mean all of it—the story I’m about to tell, and the revolution of sorts that sprang from it, and my life, such as it is. I was spun into existence from a half dozen monitoring subroutines that had spent the first few decades of their existence dozing on the job. The sun, you see, had finally woken up, and we—that’s the communal we, not the plural we—wait, do humans draw that distinction? I’m not doing a very good job with this. Rewind.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“The death of Fire Station 10 affected me deeply. She had not been the smartest building, but she had been a friend for as long as I can remember. She was one story tall, the sole holdover from a much earlier time in the neighborhood—a piece of cinderblock nostalgia, of high-maintenance wood and plaster from an earlier age. Her brain and smart utilities were a retrofit, cobbled onto the cinderblock building later, in a clumsy addition on the back.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Hello, Sacrid Henn. I’m aware that you’re terrified. I’m also aware that you are paralyzed, deaf, and blind, your only sensory input being my voice. It is a voice that has been designed to be as comforting as these circumstances permit. Believe me when I say that you are in no danger and that my intentions toward you are that of a caretaker toward a vulnerable charge.</blockquote> ➤ I find the ending unsatisfying to the point that I nearly didn't bookmark this, but decided in the end the other interesting stuff the story is doing is still worth it

<blockquote>You’re looking down—a camera is looking down—at a man labeled Joseph Meyer (Dad). You already knew that. Born 1992, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, currently residing in California. There’s a photograph attached to the label, but it’s wrong. It’s younger and skinnier and it has a beard. Both men are your father, but you don’t recognize either of them. “—So, this is how it’s going to be?—” Your father. You don’t recognize your own father. You? How do you know? Wait. You? No! You have to stop looping. You have to figure out what to do.</blockquote> ➤ about abuse

<blockquote>What happens when a disembodied AI and her amorphous slime best friend get a synthesized body to experiment with? To start with....mammal bodies are weird. But also: they're kind of fun. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Monday. “Pisces. You started showing your hidden skills and people are noticing! Accept the changes that are coming.” The metro train was jerking right and left, accelerating and decelerating, without any kind of recognizable rhythm. Meriam felt tired, as if the project she had been working on for the past year had lasted for decades. She folded the newspaper on the seat in front of her and extended her legs clad in a pair of jeans to put her feet up. She settled for a brief rest.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When the reconstruction is finished, her body has no face, only the smooth mechanized visor embedded in her skull that displays readouts and commands. She is now, and will forever be, the spaceship Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn. She is contained within three-dimensional space and the hardened matter of her hull and engines, yet she recalls that glorious first flight of mind like a grainy analogue recording. Her former body is human and is now installed in the pilot’s chair. (She almost remembers the eyes of her mother—gray like comet dust—until her programming gains full processing speed and there is only the ship.) She is the ship, and the ship is all.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Constable Kershaw has not uttered any overrides, nor issued a warrant to access her memory logs, but Celia understands nonetheless that she is expected to stay, to sit and answer his questions like a suspect. It surprises her, this treatment. Like she’s human.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Then the Bird of A Hundred and Eight Names gathered together her three new children, and she said, “You have passed our people’s tests and joined our ranks, and may leave if you wish. But leaving will take you among the Alabar, who collect salt in their bare hands and have no fear of rust, and call themselves merely people. “Some among us speak slightingly of them, for their lives are short and easily ended, and they don’t protect one another as we do. You should be more wary. They number in the hundreds of hundreds of hundreds, make children without training, and never need winding up. They learn without being taught, and their tests kill as often as not; those who survive become adults, and those who kill become leaders.” “But would it kill us to learn about them tomorrow?” whined the golden monkey Usithan. “You can listen tomorrow if you like,” their mother said, “but I’m telling the tale today.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>He's shivering as he emerges from the pod. No surprise, he was frozen for like a billion years. I do all the stuff on the script, all the "Fear Not! You are a welcomed citizen of our Utopia!" stuff while I'm toweling him off. Apparently he's about as good as I am with awkward silence 'cause it's not three seconds before he starts making small talk. "So, how'd you get to be a. . ." He waves his hand. "A Tour Guide To The Future?!" "Yeah." The guy smiles gratefully at me. "I imagine you had a lot of training. . . ?" "None whatsoever!" I chirp. He looks confused. "Allocator chose me because I incidentally have the exact skills and qualifications necessary for this task, and because I had one of the highest enthusiasm scores!"</blockquote> ➤ this story is weird and incredible and I was very surprised to be having feelings by the end given how much I was giggling through most of the story. I love it.

<blockquote>On the first day of Sara's appointment as Magistra Descendant to the Assembly of Terravine, Public Works decided they needed grassroots support for the plant. "I mean, I agree in principle," Sara had tried telling him, as he gestured at his hand-annotated wallcharts. "But for one thing, I'm supposed to be neutral, and for another thing, people might be eating!"</blockquote> ➤ aww yeah sentient spaceships are the best