《Hustling Through the Dark》Vlog #11

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"Hello, worlds.

"We're now a twentieth of an AU from Earth, and Pumpkin is purring right along.

"I've been spending a lot of the last day talking with both the old and the new Fazzes, and a few other people. Turns out that the organic Faz didn't quite fill out all the proper paperwork, and she's looking at a civil fine or two. The digital Faz is in the clear, after the organic Faz had claimed all the details were taken care of, so her software self had no mens rea of doing anything wrong. We're far enough from Insulo Tri that it's not really possible for the original Faz to remote-control her - though she does want to use up a lot of my bandwidth sending personal updates to her robotic twin. So I've been trying to get to know the new Faz as a distinct person.

"It's... okay, it's downright weird. The original Faz has done the lifelogging thing since before she was born; she's been recording video of what's going on around her her whole life, with various digital gizmos. And all of that went into the new Faz, as memories. And she acts like Faz, has Faz's opinions, and so on... but the original Faz is deeply committed to being a fully-organic being, even if that organicness happens to be shaped like livestock instead of a baseline human; and the new Faz is very excited to explore what life as a digital person can be like. In fact, Faz is currently housed in my tailsnake's computer, and insisted I make today's vlog while she's embodied as said tailsnake."

"Hi, everybody! I always knew, but never really knew, that Dee looked at things differently, with a computer brain and a living body. I'm going to find so many ways to embarrass her - privately. Mostly. And we're going to be private! Nobody else will get to know a single thing we do aboard this ship unless we want them to. Isn't that wild?"

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"So... looks like I'm not going to get out of life being confusing and complicated and interesting. And that's just with the new Faz - I've already had at least three arguments with the original Faz about how much money she dropped on this project. Without getting into details, I'll just say that the two of us have very different conceptions about the marginal value of a given number of euros, I wish she'd spent the money differently, but now that it's been spent we're just going to deal with that spending having been done."

"You won't see me complaining about the purchase. After all, if I hadn't paid for me, I wouldn't exist."

"And I think Faz is being silly with pronouns just to try to get my eye to start twitching."

"Hey, I have to get my fun where I can. Do you want me to start dropping hints that you have an actual secret that you've managed to keep from everyone?"

"I can still turn around and leave you behind, and only lose two days of travel time, you know."

"Ah, we both know you won't do that. Cee would pitch a fit if you didn't at least keep an offline copy of me aboard."

"You know, for a year I planned to spend all by myself, a lot of people are still sticking their oars in."

"It's your own fault. You could have lived in a virtual paradise, and had centuries of hedonism in an instant, but no, you had to stick with the human race and get a job and make friends and all that junk."

"Mm. I suppose if I'm not going to toss you out the airlock, I should at least finish applying all the optional upgrades to your body, for when you want to move around on your own again. And set up the biofabricator for its various realism-enhancing goops. And reprogram the clothes fabber to at least make you a hazmat suit for emergencies, even if you don't need a vaccsuit. And start discussing with you how to split up the hobby space, for whatever you get up to these days besides focusing your attention on me. I mean, with this you being an AI, can you still play the piano?"

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"Pia-? I'm a trombonist, as you very well know."

"Oh, good, you are actually paying attention. You still haven't told me if you still plan on a job programming like the other you does, or you're going to branch out in a different direction, or what. I mean, with your body having been paid for, you don't really need to work hard to cover rent, or any of the other expenses your other you's been covering, so you-you have a lot of options available."

"Well, I always have wanted to be... a lumberjack! Leaping from tree to tree! As they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia, with my best girl by my side!"

"You know the two of us are probably the only ones who'll get that reference, right?"

"Yep. But the two of us do get it. And you're underestimating how many people have their assistant AIs throw up context details in AR. Hey, how about we put on Grail? I want to see if watching it as an AI feels like how I remember watching it with meat-for-brains, when you showed it to me the first time, and I made fun of you for being English when the French so obviously won."

"Sounds like a plan to me, though if you derail the show at the Castle Anthrax scene again, I can still build a catapult to launch you back home, even if you're not as big as a cow. And I'm going to pop you back in your body, first; I know you're going to want to clop along with the coconuts, and don't want you to give me a tail-headache by headbanging with my tail. ... And given that that sentence made complete sense to me, I just might have to double-check with Cee that I'm actually still sane. Until next time, world!"

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