For Karru

"Quite a bit of time had passed since I stood with Ori at the Gray Hand terminal. He continued to take jobs in places other than Black Rock, most recently working on a contract with Nanotrasen aboard the NSS Exodus. Aside from the dread I felt about the impending launch of the Gigantic Monster Combat franchise, things had settled down to something approaching normal. Super-Position was paying me steadily enough to live in the glorified shoebox of an apartment above it."

"Then...a package turned up on my doorstep with a message, and my life suddenly took a turn for the whimsical. Irish is not the accent one expects from eastern dragons. It was an AI that had lost his bodies"

Local Backup Module - "This is a customized "Pearl of Wisdom" optronic Turing-1 AI core. I wish it wasn't spherical, since you can't leave it laying around, and it doesn't really fit into my pockets too well."

Unit #1 - "A little Eastern Dragon hardbot, about 1.5m long. Carries a nice set of multitools and a fiber-optic cable reel. Easily carried by draping over one's shoulders like a sleepy python."

Unit #2 - "Anthropomorphic Eastern Dragon softbot, indistinguishable from a nearbaseline splice such as myself without a thorough medical investigation. Probably the most conventional of the bodies he has access too, and the one best suited to polite company."

Unit #3 - "This used to be a Midoryu from Gigantic Monster Combat. I don't even know how Super Position sells stuff like this to a colony of people who live in cramped spaces, but hey, it turns a profit. Hugs like a stack of overly affectionate inner tubes. Unlike the other ones, it's limited to a cheap Synthetic Intelligence (basically "goes feral") if the other bodies aren't within a megameter or so of the nearest network node. Oh, and it's not one of those things, even if the technology is basically the same."

And so, the problem of multiple forms was solved. It took me forever to get the description written up, then FA went down.

Karru © of his player

Artwork © of me