I was Ari. In 2027 I used to work in space. My best friend was named Dsh. He was mostly mechanical. We worked in orbit clearing junk and fixing things. I lost my friend during the Kid Plague in 2021, everyone lost someone. I was one of the few humans to contract the virus. For 6 years after the plague I fluctuated from highly functional to unpredictably violent, then I fell asleep. When I woke up they told me it was now, and now is here in the past. Before I went to sleep, to stay occupied when not being studied I collected, cataloged, and tried to repair bots I found in the woods. For some reason they gathered near rocks and meadows and died there. It always made me sad. Every month I am going to sketch and describe some of the bots I saw. They were my friends, all of them.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

A Tempestuous Fishing Quadcopter



I bought this thing when I was a fresh divorcee. Some guy was making them in a seed garage at the end of the block where I lived. I never had a real conversation with him. He was pleasant and overweight in a way that made me wish he could dress in a santa suit all year long to bring out whats beautiful about being shapely. His pants were too tight. He would breathe heavily when talking about the weather and seemed to really dislike the man that lived above him. I bought this because he also ran a small museum of non living things that had been shot, I am a really big fan of small museums with difficult mission charters. I took this with me every time I went to the mountains but it had faulty code and seemed more like it wanted to catch something else, maybe it had enough sentience to want to hunt bigger game, maybe it didn't like getting wet. I controlled it with a retina display and used neural haptic force whenever it hooked a fish. The bobber would send a signal when it detected proper vibration from the fishing line and the retina scanner would show the type and size of fish. If I didn't want to keep it the hook would flex straight and let the fish go. If I decided I wanted the fish I could choose a range of auto to full manual or even better use the retinal scanner and simulation software to become the fish. (pain settings were low, i am a coward) The higher the pain the more the will to fight off the hook diminishes until you get to max pain and go completely nuts and numb. It was fun to have around and moved with grace. It reminds me of frying things on a grill and drinking very nice mountain beer.