#imagine my surprise when I got an AI making suggestions on my text

[anathemafiction]

Even MS Word has generative AI now. We can't get away from it, can we?

[hermitcraftheadcanons]

AU Raffle: Cryptid AU!

[COMPLETE]

The result of the random selection was the Cryptid AU! Multiple people suggested this, so I'm looking forward to hearing all the ideas and extensions you guys will come up with. This will be a masterpost collecting them all, and it will be pinned for the duration of the AU.

Original suggestion: "For the Raffle. Cryptid AU. None of the Hermits are truly human and they all are really powerful cryptids that are hiding their true nature. The catch! Every Hermit thinks the other Hermits are totally normal and they are the only cryptid one. Hilarity ensures with everyone trying to explain the extrange things that keep happening "

Some ideas I came up with:

- every Hermit is a cryptid or monster of some kind, except for Grian, who is fully human and completely clueless about everything that's going on (suggested by a previous ask)

- Team ZIT is an investigation group trying to prove the existence of cryptids, but each one of them is subtly trying to sabotage the investigation to hide their own cryptid-ness. None of the three know the other two are also cryptids. Hilarity ensues.

- Xisuma probably knows what's going on with everyone, but he's not saying anything

- Mumbo is doing an absolutely horrible job of hiding that he's a cryptid, but somehow people still don't notice. Iskall is probably the closest to figuring it out.

- VintageBeef has already figured out that Keralis isn't human, but Keralis is bribing him to keep quiet

I hope that's enough to get the ball rolling! Send in your ideas using asks, and I'll put them down here!

If you need ideas about which cryptid would fit best with which Hermit, this list may be helpful.

Anonymous Additions:

- I feel like xisuma should be some kind of shapeshifter

- cleo was brought back to life by a family that loved her very much- or at least, that was what they tried to do. in reality, they brought a completely new soul back in the body of a deceased relative. cleo felt uncomfortable around people who thought she was a different person than she was, so she ran away and eventually befriended the hermits bc she just felt ~drawn to them~. she disguises her bloodless skin and lack of body heat with thick clothes and lots of makeup

- Cleo, of course, is a zombie, but she also has ties to Cthulu that she doesn't really try to hide, but that people overlook all the time. I'm just saying, an avatar of an eldritch being having to be a zombie kinda makes sense...

- Cthulu needed a body, and this kind family was nice enough to supply one! It was kinda their fault really, praying to ancient gods and making deals without reading the fine print. Cleo might feel guilty, but it wasn't on her, not really

- cryptid au: joe isn't a human, but a changeling: a shapeshifting, nonhuman entity that evolved to invade human families like a cuckoo. he has the ability to bend light to make illusions, but he normally just uses his powers to make himself appear human. however he does like to make all lime green things he sees invisible, for the lulz

- What about mumbo being a vampire, it just introduces the idea of so many odd behaviors that the others are just oblivious to

- What if ren is a werewolf(I know it isn't original) and he just thinks of the other hermits as his pack and is therefor very protective of them

- Obligatory Ren is a Werewolf for the Cryptid AU. He is acts like a gigant puppy when he is in wolf form. Nobody questions why sometimes they found a gigant wolf trying to play fetch with them. But nobody is complaining. Everyone talks about it and Ren is just upset because the gigant pupper has never come to see him. Surprise!! Not even Ren knows he is a werewolf

- idk if your still doing cryptid stuff because i don't really know how this works but,, what if everyone thinks that Grian Is Something when he's not. They keep trying to figure it out by asking him weird questions or trying to get him to do weird stuff, but he still stays completely oblivious. And then since Xisuma knows what everyone is, he thinks it's hilarious trying to watch everyone try to find something that isn't there.

- Cryptid au: Doc has made it obvious that he is a cryptid like, he explains it so obviously even an idiot would tell that he's one, But no one has figured out yet. So after the 15th time of explaining things he decides to present how he's a cryptid, by making a goatess.

- For the au, I have 2 ideas for grian, either he is very outspoken about not believing in the super natural, or he very much does believe in the supernatural, either way he unknowingly befriends multiple cryptids and is very confused

- Cryptic AU: Tango has fire for hair, and no ones really questioned as to why?

- What if false was a siren, just because it seems like an interesting idea (my addition: Wels would also make a great siren)

- Stress seems like the type to be an elf, graceful and cheerful, and of course admiring nature's beauty

- What if Impulse was mothman, I like this idea because of the whole team zit being paranormal investigators and they just go looking for mothman on one trip, and Impulse is just standing there probably feeling a bit awkward

- If Impulse is Mothman and he can fly and Tango is like a fire demon that controls fire, is only fair that Zed is an aquatic Cryptid. Maybe related to a lake monster or he is a Sea Serpent

- Yeti Iskall getting used to the hot environment of the Jungle??? Maybe?

- i have no clue how this works but etho is related to ningen in a way (Antarctic sea creatures from Japanese folklore)

- Joe's poems seem to stick in your head, echoing around for hours after you hear them, ringing between your ears. Their subjects vary, but they often seem eerily prophetic, warnings encased in rhythm and rhyme. Sometimes you swear you can hear the soft scritch of a pen on paper, before you realize you are the only one around.

- Wait how the hell would jevin hide that fact he's a slime? Better yet how do the other hermits not put to and to together? Through I think jevin probably wouldn't even bother trying to hide it, I mean he's a huge blob of slime how would you not be able to tell

(my response, summarized) Jevin inhabits a body of slime because that's the easiest way to hide his true form. "Jevin" is a non-physical entity that can possess other lifeforms by destroying their will. He chose a slime this time because it was easy and inconspicuous.)

- Cryptid au: Team ZIT have a headquarters and they all pitched in to commission Etho to make their door bell chime, the ghost busters theme, and afterward interrogated Etho to the ground.

- Doc is not a creeper with cyborneticts. Doc is the AI that came with the cyborneticts and over-wrote the conciousness of the creeper. Figured that making Doc something else would be too dificult so maybe subverting what he is with what we got alredy is enough (like you did with Jevin)

- I am putting this here for vampire mumbo in the au because the thought will not leave my head. It's dark, and mumbo's eyes seem to reflect light very well, his canine teeth seem just a bit too long and sharp, they seem to be stained red,was he always this tall? Something about him seems off, he seems very elegant in this darkness.

- cryptid au: when joe was young, he was ignored so much that he turned invisible. you can still see his shadow but you could look directly at him and not see him there with the best tools. he disguises himself by staying quiet, using text to communicate with the other hermits or by covering himself with clothes and masks so nobody would be able to see his body even if he wasnt invisible.

- For the au I think that Iskall could be a dryad because of his base this season

- Imagine if you will: Tango leaves town for a bit so the team ZIT can't do their "investigations". Impulse gets bored and decided to pretend to kidnap Zedaph in mothman-form. When Tango returns, Zedaph tells him how he almost was kidnapped by Mothman (and is over-exaggerating on every detail)

- What if in the au there is a situation where team zit is in some sort of danger, and so each of them just independently decide that they have to reveal the fact of their cryptid selves, and they just collectivly think,"huh. Okay." And after they are safe, they just talk about it as a group

- Beef is big foot.

- Biffa looks like a robot or cyborg, which one? He won't say. Maybe its because its neither, maybe he's just a walking body with a mind, maybe he's just a suit of armor roaming the world, maybe a spirit or ghost from the past, maybe a mob whose inhabited and pilots the body, maybe he's just Biffa. Only he knows, but he won't say

- Cryptid AU: I’m just imagining zedaph or tango throwing a bell at grian in an attempt to “capture” him under the suspicion that he’s part fae or something at a server meeting

- About Cryptid!Wels, sometimes, when the night is dark and the world is silent, you'll hear it; a soft voice in the darkness. You can't help but listen to it as you get lost in the song, swaying to the melody as your foot moves to the beat. The song gets louder and your feet are more frantic as they seem to take you somewhere. Suddenly, the voice stops singing and so you stop moving, and when you open your eyes you find yourself on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean. The siren lurks near

- Doc isnt a Creeper with cybrog parts but a robot made to look like a creeper, that arm and eye? yea just exposed parts from years of just not caring enough. He's waiting to see when someone will call him out on it. So far, only TFC and X but they like to watch how long this will go. Doc isnt even hiding anymore, he loves to mess with Grian by making remarks that imply he's a robot but Grian just can't figure it out

- tbh I love the idea of Joe as a regular human who just acts super cryptic and strange, and has a bit of skill at poetry. others try and figure out what he is, and he's just vibing in a corner, the last one anyone would expect to be the sole normal person on the server

- Cryptid AU. Joe and Cleo as the ‘One Bagel. No!! Two bagels!’ Vine. Joe being the one that asked and Cleo ignoring Cthulhu

- Joe starts sharing different ideas of what he could be, and only Cleo knows (mostly... she's the closest at least). Joe's mystery is a Hermitcraft classic, greeting every hermit except X, who still only has what Joe's told him to go on. He delights in the chaos he causes

- Scar is a poltergeist, he hides it well. One time Grian caught him using his powers, after scar fessed up, in private, they both bring some amount of chaos to the server, but not to much so the ZIT crypt hunters, name in progress, don't know about the chaos, thus not puting the duo in danger.

- Mumbo might be a vampire, but it isn’t for blood (at least, not anymore). Only Grian has come close to figuring it out, and it’s due to seeing how refreshed and satisfied his friend looks after being around 2+ groups of people. If only he would just straight up and ask. - 🦊

- Rather last minute but do you have any ideas of how Evil Xisuma could fit into this? Would he be a shapeshifter as well. A copy of X's true form? A demon haunting Xisuma? Just X's pesky brother? There's a handful of ideas I can't personally decide what would fit best. Maybe none of them at all, who know?

Cryptid Au. Xisuma shapeshifts for fun. Thats how we get Turtle!Xisuma, Beesuma and Stridersuma. All hermits just assume X changes his suit because they have never seen his face so there is no way for them to know he shifts. Also clasic headcanon that TFC is Herobrine and he is just laying low in Hermitcraft after years of going around worlds. Everyone knows the legend about Herobrine but have not connected the dots yet because TFC is just everyone’s grandpa. No way he could be Herobrine.

- @/ivi-prism

- While most might assume that Grian would be a harpy, its actully Scar. He's incredibly flexable in Human form, hes able to manuver his foot behind his head, and moret than once has Cub walked in on Scar with a living fish in his mouth. He never questioned it because "Hey, Vex magics weird."

- Imagine- sytyr Zedaph and Fae Impulse walking in on Willowwisp Tango who,because willowwisps are typically tiny, shrunk in response to panic and is now stuck in a caldron. I think that be hilarious. Just the idea of impulse going-"YOUR A CRYPTID?" while Zed just "WAIT I KNEW I DIDNT BURN THOSE PAPERS!" Which leads into a discussion of ZIT internal sabotage, and suddenly ZIT invesigation changes direction from "Are cryptids real" to "Is anyone else a Cryptid cause this cannot be a Coincidence"

- @/crypticalwitch

- Cryptic AU: Tango can also control his hair, to an extent. He can slick it back, but it still looks like burning embers. It's a bit mesmerizing

- Cryptid AU: Cub was a normal guy, maybe with some weirder interests, before the Vex. "Playing" with their magic too much is what made him a cryptid. So maybe he understands that the other hermits aren't exactly "human". But it isn't his business, and it means they don't question what the Vex get him into, so he just doesn't say anything about it

- Cryptic AU: Team ZIT's strongest evidence for Grian is the fact he's a master with an elytra, especially since he first said he "might use it a little bit" for long journeys. He's flown into a dark hole in a dark wall that's barely big enough to fit him multiple times, with ease, among other risky stunts that would get other hermits killed. The fact there's not much else to go on, besides his pranking zeal only matched by Zed himself, drives them up the wall

- Cryptic AU: when you stay out too long at night, you might start to feel watched. You'll turn around and nobody is there, but still you feel eyes on your back, and the breeze always seems hot and brushes your neck like too-close breathing and a hand. Finally, you catch it: a familiar figure that stands too stiffly, always just too far away to name. Then it vanishes with an airy shriek, and phantoms descend from the stars. Bdubs did always say the worst things happen in the night.

- Cryptic AU: Impulse's smiles are just a little too big. If you look at one too long, you feel as though it's stretching wider and wider, the cheery shine in his eyes twisting into a hungry gleam, but then you blink and he's back to normal ol Impulse and you question if you really saw anything. That time you saw his smile glinting in the darkness just beyond your bed must've been a nightmare. Your imagination.

- Cryptic AU: Don't look into his eyes. Look in, and you will see the universes. Billions of stars, trillions of futures, all impossibly swirling together, hauntingly beautiful. You'll fall down, down, down through the glittering spirals, until with a breathtaking snap you're on your knees, on solid ground. You're lucky he doesn't want to keep you, like others might. The lives and worlds you glimpsed will echo through your mind, weave through your dreams. Do not fear. Do not look into his eyes.

- The mountain is his territory. If you enter it unbidden, he will ensure you leave, lucky to keep your life. His contraptions are nonsense, seeming to serve no purpose other than to confuse. They distract from how the air crackles on your skin, how it tastes of storms and thunder. They distract how, from the corner of your eye, Zedaph's limbs are too long, fingers with too many knuckles and legs with too many knees. All angles and bones, like his designs. Do not look too closely at his garden.

- Everyone learned not to ask about him. Mostly because in trying to form the question, you'll find the words slipping from your mind. So Tango's hair burns, his eyes are red cherries. In the darkness he glows, the embers of a forgotten fire. His skin is always hot, almost feverish, yet he isnt sick. If he gets too close to lava, the illusion fades, reveals the magma that forms his skin. Illusion? No, that was just a burn. He relishes the smoke and rubble of explosions. Control. Always controlled.

- xB doesn't mind being away from the other hermits. It's quiet there; far enough away that most aren't bothered to prank him. He doesn't like surprises. Surprises get people hurt. Gets his friends hurt. His guardians appreciate the still predictability. The calm. Yes, he prefers to sit back, quiet, and watch. If he looks too long, bad things happen. So he observes it all, never focusing too much on one detail, never letting them go unseen. It prevents surprises.

- Because that last one wasn't all that clear, xB is a guardian-based cryptid! While nothing seems inhuman about him at a glance, he has a close affinity to water, and when threatened the spines he hides with his clothes will stick out. (Guardians only spawn in water, but they actually don't suffocate in air! Though their desperate flopping is a sad sight to behold) Plus, laser-eyes

- Xisuma wasn't always able to change his form as easily or drastically as he can now. But by now, he's forgotten his own face. Now, he'll feel his skin, his body begin to itch with the need to change. He's glad the hermits don't seem to care when he does. Keralis's mimicry was a surprise, but a welcome one. He feels less alone. Loneliness is how he would lose himself. He's scared of that possibility.

- When he sleeps, he walks through the minds of those whose eyes met his, as if it were his own dream. He'll hear their thoughts as if they were his own. He doesn't like this. It feels like an invasion. He feels like a parasite, and maybe he is. Whoever he dreamed through last, they seem exhausted and jumpy after, while he feels energized, near invincible. It's through this ability he knows their deepest secrets, but they aren't his to tell. Sometimes, he wishes he could understand. (Xisuma pt 2)

- Cryptid AU: another reason that Grian cant possibly be a human is his clothes. Just. How does he have something for every occasion. He even has a janitor one? Why did he have that? This "man" doesn't own a single closet yet has at least 20 different costumes-- not to mention you blink and he's changed! Wh- he had a REAPER costume for himself AND SCAR???

- @/basaltdragon

- Cryptid AU: Grian used to be against cryptids because of Sam (YHS) and his bunny attributes, but has since accepted the fact Sam was just a bad apple, and cryptids as a whole are neutral/good.

- Your heart, it beats, like redstone ticking away within you. He knows redstone through and through... so why not you too? Every pulse sent though the machine of your body is one more reason for him to reverse engineer you. But he restrains, takes a step back, as these machines could never be put back together.

- He's been here since the beginning; not of Hermitcraft, but everything. Watching as the game evolved over the years... He smiles at the thought. His hair now matching his eyes - like harsh reflective snow - he recalls these memories fondly. As his eyes fade to their piercing blue, he sighs, for this is home.

- When any of the other Hermits (at least the ones with blood) get injured, Mumbo has to step away. The need for their blood, their lifeforce, is too overwhelming.

- @/12u3ie

- Cryptid AU: with the team ZIT headquarters I thought of something similar to the TEA headquarters from season 3. Probably more confusing, colourful and chock full of even more excessive redstone doors. Why not add another elevator? Where's the coffee machine? Maybe the next room over? Was that corridor there before? I don't know. What's the use of that room? What's behind that door? What's behind you?

- Cryptid AU: with the whole burning hair thing on Tango, another explanation for why no one questions it. That's just Hermitcraft, people just assume he either royally messed up a redstone machine, or succeeded completely, you never know with Tango. Or maybe they think they're sleep deprived. They haven't slept in a while, Bdubs has been reminding them to do so. What were they doing? Maybe they should go home instead. Whatever they were doing can probably be done later. What were they doing?

- @/the-royal-bat-snake

- If joe is a changing then he is some kind of fae folk or as the irish and the Scots call them "the good neighbours" he could like anything, from a human, a small man, like knee height or a small green impish or goblin esque creature. Also changlings were the very old fae folk, not just the babies (humma women were stolen to be nurse maids cus fae folk cant make milk, also stolen to be mistresses) I know a lot of irish faerie lore so if you want to know anymore

- @/whatschooldoesntteachyou

[mindthump]

Language supermodel: How GPT-3 is quietly ushering in the A.I. revolution https://ift.tt/3mAgOO1

OpenAI

OpenAI’s GPT-2 text-generating algorithm was once considered too dangerous to release. Then it got released — and the world kept on turning.

In retrospect, the comparatively small GPT-2 language model (a puny 1.5 billion parameters) looks paltry next to its sequel, GPT-3, which boasts a massive 175 billion parameters, was trained on 45 TB of text data, and cost a reported $12 million (at least) to build.

“Our perspective, and our take back then, was to have a staged release, which was like, initially, you release the smaller model and you wait and see what happens,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “If things look good, then you release the next size of model. The reason we took that approach is because this is, honestly, [not just uncharted waters for us, but it’s also] uncharted waters for the entire world.”

Jump forward to the present day, nine months after GPT-3’s release last summer, and it’s powering upward of 300 applications while generating a massive 4.5 billion words per day. Seeded with only the first few sentences of a document, it’s able to generate seemingly endless more text in the same style — even including fictitious quotes.

Is it going to destroy the world? Based on past history, almost certainly not. But it is making some game-changing applications of A.I. possible, all while posing some very profound questions along the way.

What is it good for? Absolutely everything

Recently, Francis Jervis, the founder of a startup called Augrented, used GPT-3 to help people struggling with their rent to write letters negotiating rent discounts. “I’d describe the use case here as ‘style transfer,'” Jervis told Digital Trends. “[It takes in] bullet points, which don’t even have to be in perfect English, and [outputs] two to three sentences in formal language.”

Powered by this ultra-powerful language model, Jervis’s tool allows renters to describe their situation and the reason they need a discounted settlement. “Just enter a couple of words about why you lost income, and in a few seconds you’ll get a suggested persuasive, formal paragraph to add to your letter,” the company claims.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. When Aditya Joshi, a machine learning scientist and former Amazon Web Services engineer, first came across GPT-3, he was so blown away by what he saw that he set up a website, www.gpt3examples.com, to keep track of the best ones.

“Shortly after OpenAI announced their API, developers started tweeting impressive demos of applications built using GPT-3,” he told Digital Trends. “They were astonishingly good. I built [my website] to make it easy for the community to find these examples and discover creative ways of using GPT-3 to solve problems in their own domain.”

Fully interactive synthetic personas with GPT-3 and https://t.co/ZPdnEqR0Hn ????

They know who they are, where they worked, who their boss is, and so much more. This is not your father's bot… pic.twitter.com/kt4AtgYHZL

— Tyler Lastovich (@tylerlastovich) August 18, 2020

Joshi points to several demos that really made an impact on him. One, a layout generator, renders a functional layout by generating JavaScript code from a simple text description. Want a button that says “subscribe” in the shape of a watermelon? Fancy some banner text with a series of buttons the colors of the rainbow? Just explain them in basic text, and Sharif Shameem’s layout generator will write the code for you. Another, a GPT-3 based search engine created by Paras Chopra, can turn any written query into an answer and a URL link for providing more information. Another, the inverse of Francis Jervis’ by Michael Tefula, translates legal documents into plain English. Yet another, by Raphaël Millière, writes philosophical essays. And one other, by Gwern Branwen, can generate creative fiction.

“I did not expect a single language model to perform so well on such a diverse range of tasks, from language translation and generation to text summarization and entity extraction,” Joshi said. “In one of my own experiments, I used GPT-3 to predict chemical combustion reactions, and it did so surprisingly well.”

More where that came from

The transformative uses of GPT-3 don’t end there, either. Computer scientist Tyler Lastovich has used GPT-3 to create fake people, including backstory, who can then be interacted with via text. Meanwhile, Andrew Mayne has shown that GPT-3 can be used to turn movie titles into emojis. Nick Walton, chief technology officer of Latitude, the studio behind GPT-generated text adventure game AI Dungeon recently did the same to see if it could turn longer strings of text description into emoji. And Copy.ai, a startup that builds copywriting tools with GPT-3, is tapping the model for all it’s worth, with a monthly recurring revenue of $67,000 as of March — and a recent $2.9 million funding round.

“Definitely, there was surprise and a lot of awe in terms of the creativity people have used GPT-3 for,” Sandhini Agarwal, an A.I. policy researcher for OpenAI told Digital Trends. “So many use cases are just so creative, and in domains that even I had not foreseen, it would have much knowledge about. That’s interesting to see. But that being said, GPT-3 — and this whole direction of research that OpenAI pursued — was very much with the hope that this would give us an A.I. model that was more general-purpose. The whole point of a general-purpose A.I. model is [that it would be] one model that could like do all these different A.I. tasks.”

Many of the projects highlight one of the big value-adds of GPT-3: The lack of training it requires. Machine learning has been transformative in all sorts of ways over the past couple of decades. But machine learning requires a large number of training examples to be able to output correct answers. GPT-3, on the other hand, has a “few shot ability” that allows it to be taught to do something with only a small handful of examples.

Plausible bull***t

GPT-3 is highly impressive. But it poses challenges too. Some of these relate to cost: For high-volume services like chatbots, which could benefit from GPT-3’s magic, the tool might be too pricey to use. (A single message could cost 6 cents which, while not exactly bank-breaking, certainly adds up.)

Others relate to its widespread availability, meaning that it’s likely going to be tough to build a startup exclusively around since fierce competition will likely drive down margins.

Christina Morillo/Pexels

Another is the lack of memory; its context window runs a little under 2,000 words at a time before, like Guy Pierce’s character in the movie Memento, its memory is reset. “This significantly limits the length of text it can generate, roughly to a short paragraph per request,” Lastovich said. “Practically speaking, this means that it is unable to generate long documents while still remembering what happened at the beginning.”

Perhaps the most notable challenge, however, also relates to its biggest strength: Its confabulation abilities. Confabulation is a term frequently used by doctors to describe the way in which some people with memory issues are able to fabricate information that appears initially convincing, but which doesn’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny upon closer inspection. GPT-3’s ability to confabulate is, depending upon the context, a strength and a weakness. For creative projects, it can be great, allowing it to riff on themes without concern for anything as mundane as truth. For other projects, it can be trickier.

Francis Jervis of Augrented refers to GPT-3’s ability to “generate plausible bullshit.” Nick Walton of AI Dungeon said: “GPT-3 is very good at writing creative text that seems like it could have been written by a human … One of its weaknesses, though, is that it can often write like it’s very confident — even if it has no idea what the answer to a question is.”

Back in the Chinese Room

In this regard, GPT-3 returns us to the familiar ground of John Searle’s Chinese Room. In 1980, Searle, a philosopher, published one of the best-known A.I. thought experiments, focused on the topic of “understanding.” The Chinese Room asks us to imagine a person locked in a room with a mass of writing in a language that they do not understand. All they recognize are abstract symbols. The room also contains a set of rules that show how one set of symbols corresponds with another. Given a series of questions to answer, the room’s occupant must match question symbols with answer symbols. After repeating this task many times, they become adept at performing it — even though they have no clue what either set of symbols means, merely that one corresponds to the other.

GPT-3 is a world away from the kinds of linguistic A.I. that existed at the time Searle was writing. However, the question of understanding is as thorny as ever.

“This is a very controversial domain of questioning, as I’m sure you’re aware, because there’s so many differing opinions on whether, in general, language models … would ever have [true] understanding,” said OpenAI’s Sandhini Agarwal. “If you ask me about GPT-3 right now, it performs very well sometimes, but not very well at other times. There is this randomness in a way about how meaningful the output might seem to you. Sometimes you might be wowed by the output, and sometimes the output will just be nonsensical. Given that, right now in my opinion … GPT-3 doesn’t appear to have understanding.”

An added twist on the Chinese Room experiment today is that GPT-3 is not programmed at every step by a small team of researchers. It’s a massive model that’s been trained on an enormous dataset consisting of, well, the internet. This means that it can pick up inferences and biases that might be encoded into text found online. You’ve heard the expression that you’re an average of the five people you surround yourself with? Well, GPT-3 was trained on almost unfathomable amounts of text data from multiple sources, including books, Wikipedia, and other articles. From this, it learns to predict the next word in any sequence by scouring its training data to see word combinations used before. This can have unintended consequences.

Feeding the stochastic parrots

This challenge with large language models was first highlighted in a groundbreaking paper on the subject of so-called stochastic parrots. A stochastic parrot — a term coined by the authors, who included among their ranks the former co-lead of Google’s ethical A.I. team, Timnit Gebru — refers to a large language model that “haphazardly [stitches] together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning.”

“Having been trained on a big portion of the internet, it’s important to acknowledge that it will carry some of its biases,” Albert Gozzi, another GPT-3 user, told Digital Trends. “I know the OpenAI team is working hard on mitigating this in a few different ways, but I’d expect this to be an issue for [some] time to come.”

OpenAI’s countermeasures to defend against bias include a toxicity filter, which filters out certain language or topics. OpenAI is also working on ways to integrate human feedback in order to be able to specify which areas not to stray into. In addition, the team controls access to the tool so that certain negative uses of the tool will not be granted access.

“One of the reasons perhaps you haven’t seen like too many of these malicious users is because we do have an intensive review process internally,” Agarwal said. “The way we work is that every time you want to use GPT-3 in a product that would actually be deployed, you have to go through a process where a team — like, a team of humans — actually reviews how you want to use it. …  Then, based on making sure that it is not something malicious, you will be granted access.”

Some of this is challenging, however — not least because bias isn’t always a clear-cut case of using certain words. Jervis notes that, at times, his GPT-3 rent messages can “tend towards stereotypical gender [or] class assumptions.” Left unattended, it might assume the subject’s gender identity on a rent letter, based on their family role or job. This may not be the most grievous example of A.I. bias, but it highlights what happens when large amounts of data are ingested and then probabilistically reassembled in a language model.

“Bias and the potential for explicit returns absolutely exist and require effort from developers to avoid,” Tyler Lastovich said. “OpenAI does flag potentially toxic results, but ultimately it does add a liability customers have to think hard about before putting the model into production. A specifically difficult edge case to develop around is the model’s propensity to lie — as it has no concept of true or false information.”

Language models and the future of A.I.

Nine months after its debut, GPT-3 is certainly living up to its billing as a game changer. What once was purely potential has shown itself to be potential realized. The number of intriguing use cases for GPT-3 highlights how a text-generating A.I. is a whole lot more versatile than that description might suggest.

Not that it’s the new kid on the block these days. Earlier this year, GPT-3 was overtaken as the biggest language model. Google Brain debuted a new language model with some 1.6 trillion parameters, making it nine times the size of OpenAI’s offering. Nor is this likely to be the end of the road for language models. These are extremely powerful tools — with the potential to be transformative to society, potentially for better and for worse.

Challenges certainly exist with these technologies, and they’re ones that companies like OpenAI, independent researchers, and others, must continue to address. But taken as a whole, it’s hard to argue that language models are not turning to be one of the most interesting and important frontiers of artificial intelligence research.

Who would’ve thought text generators could be so profoundly important? Welcome to the future of artificial intelligence.

[girls-scenarios]

To Feel Human (Part 1)

Idol: Irene (Red Velvet)

Prompt:  Could you make android au with Irene and fem!reader? The reader created Irene and wanted Irene to learn about human feelings. Although, sometimes Irene feels like she’s a burden to the reader and leaves temporary. At the end, she comes back they love each other ❤️

Writer: Admin Lee

A/N: Ok this is gonna be a pretty long one, which is why I separated it! I already have most of the second part finished, I’m just working on the ending. Anyways, I took some liberties with this one, but I hope you like it! This one has been super enjoyable for me to write, and I was very inspired by one of my favorite fics: Zeitgeist by leeyoobin on AO3!

Part 2

It started as just an off-the-wall idea, in the living room of one of your friend’s house, Yeonjung’s, to be specific. Along with the rest of your closely knit group, including Yoojung, Yuha, Eunwoo, and Jihyo, you had talked of AI’s, their advancement, etcetera. This was shortly after college, when you had finally earned your Bachelor’s degree in Bioengineering, and a Master’s in mechanical engineering. With an adoration for movies like Ghost in the Shell, and an affinity for problem solving, this was able to motivate you enough to begin a new project: making the first android for personal use. Unfortunately, you weren’t the first with the idea and skills needed to create true artificial life. However, so far the androids on the market have been widely restricted, kept only to be used by large-scale companies with supervision, the military, and other government operations. So, you felt the compulsion to take the risk of creating one more suited for use by the average person. And after a few days of thinking it through on your own, you ended up pitching the idea to Jihyo over lunch.

“You want to...What?”

“Well, I didn’t think it’d be a bad idea, you know? Someone to keep the average person company, help around the house, take care of pets... Stuff like that.” You explained, trying your best to sound reasonable about the idea.

“That sounds great and all, but what about the parts? And the facility we’d have to use to build it in? Half of the things we would need would most likely be illegal for regular people to get..”

You paused, thinking for a moment. “How about Eunwoo’s girlfriend, Kyulkyung? She has some corporate connection, I’m sure.. She’s not an heiress for nothing.”

“I- Ok, we could ask, but it’d probably be a stretch, even for her,” Jihyo replied, always the realistic one. “And I’m assuming you won’t be able to do this alone, so I’m texting the rest of the group, just to see if they’re interested.”

-

A week or so later, Kyulkyung was able to text you, voicing her enthusiasm for the project, as well as her ability to obtain what your group needed. She was more than happy to help, and coupled with Eunwoo’s impatience, they were able to discreetly transfer some packages of parts and tech to a borderline-abandoned company warehouse near the small town you lived in.

Everything was now sitting in boxes in the now less-empty warehouse. With the help of your friends you took the time to meticulously go through and somewhat organize the amalgamation of parts you had received. There was also a rather large one that you had yet to open. Weird, because Kyulkyung had never really said anything about a package that big. Nonetheless, your curiosity got the best of you and you opened it up.  

A discarded android was what you found. Telltale light on its temple blank, lifeless. You had never been this close to one, really, and found it fascinating that something could look so human. You turned in Jihyo’s general direction and got her attention.

“Hey, Jihyo!” You called, and she turned away from what she was doing, walking over to where you stood. “I didn’t know this would be a repair-job, did you?”

“Oh, yeah. When Kyulkyung suggested the idea of fixing up a deactivated droid, she said it’d be easier on all of us. No one would really look into it if something irreparable were to go missing, so she just took this,” She gestured at the inactive android. “and said it’d be more efficient to just fix it up. A lot more inconspicuous for the company, too. Sorry, maybe I should’ve mentioned it.”

“No, it’s fine! You’re right about it seeming easier, I was just surprised,” You explained, eyes still locked onto the body in front of you. “Since we only have to fix it up,we should finish a lot faster, don’t you think?” You could see her nod out of the corner of your eye, and she walked off to resume her work.

Taking note of it’s features, you saw it was a female model, not too hard to tell. Its skin looked soft and pale, and this surprised you, but made sense after thinking about it. Maybe the people that worked with them often wanted to feel more at ease, so the appearance was made to look lifelike. It’s hair was relatively long, and dark in color. You knelt down in front of the container, reaching out to touch the body lying in front of you, but stopped yourself mid-reach, now realizing the gashes and dents in the model (most likely one of the reasons why it was in the scrap pile). Deciding it was a better decision to take care of everything else before dealing with the android, you shut the box gently and went to ask your friends what they needed help with.

-

The week had finally ended, and you and your friends worked day and night to get the warehouse up to par. There was a platform set up with wires and tubes to hold the android while it was being worked on and programmed, a couple of shelves stocked with spare parts in the corner, some computers and generators, and the android itself - still in the dark, hard plastic container it had arrived in. Not ready to unpack it quite yet, your group took the weekend to relax and prepare for the hard work to come.

Upon meeting again Monday evening, a matter needed to be taken care of before you all could begin: would the android stay here in the warehouse, or would one of you take it home with you once it was completed? Lottery was as good a method as any, and you all put your names in a small box that Yoojung had picked up. After a bit of shuffling the names within the box, Yuha grabbed a slip of paper. She then read aloud:

“(Y/N).”

Looking up from paper, she smiled and jokingly commented, “Have fun getting the robot used to that beast of yours.”

You laughed, imagining how your dog - a Newfoundland named Walter - would act around someone new in the house.

With that now taken care of, you began work once again. This time, finally ready to start working on the android. Eunwoo opened up the box attempted to pick up the body inside.

“Damn, this thing is heavy.. Yoojung, could you bring a rolling cart or something?”

“Sure,” She replied with a chuckle, then within a minute, brought back something the android could be moved more easily on. “Here you go.”

They both managed to get the droid on the cart, and in half an hour, hooked up all the wires from the android to the computers nearby. Then came the more difficult part: repairing the android itself. Not an impossible task, however, it was quite daunting. From what was on the container it arrived in, the model seemed to be a CX100, which didn’t necessarily matter to you outside of which parts were correct. So after finding the model type, you worked on getting familiar with the software Kyulkyung sent with the rest of the tech, hoping to figure it out in enough time to get a diagnostics test run soon. It was getting later in the day though, and your friends had obligations outside of this, so they were gradually saying their goodbyes until it was just you. However, you didn’t mind this, and understood they had lives of their own. Unlike you, who had a flexible schedule working from home (you wrote articles and edited for a science-related magazine). This was one of the few exciting things happening in your life right now, and you didn’t want to waste the time you had.

4 hours had passed since you were left alone. You were still messing around with the computers and getting a handle on the general anatomy of the android in front of you and were now feeling comfortable enough to begin tinkering with the programs necessary to work on the robot. Getting the diagnostics software package up and running, you look at the data now popping up on the screen in a list based on importance of the issue. There were several biocomponents that you found were damaged, as well as a critically low amount of Thirium 310 (a type of liquid that circulates energy and electronic info throughout the android). The software showed which of the synthetic organs were damaged in a 3D model of the robot, so it was a lot easier for you to search the boxes and containers for the parts that it required. You left them out to be cleaned, along with a sticky note listing what they were and how to properly clean them, as you had read over the procedures in a document that had also accompanied the software. It would make more sense to do it tomorrow anyways (when you weren’t running on two Red Bulls). Not exactly known for being a night owl, the work was going starting to go a little slower, even with the help of energy drinks. So you decided on calling it a night for now, figuring that you had accomplished enough for one evening.

-

The next two weeks went by surprisingly fast, and there was an impressive amount of productiveness despite everyone’s schedules getting busier as the year was drawing to a close. It was nearly the end of September, and as the temperatures dropped, your spirits certainly didn’t. The android was nearly in full repair, with the parts being cleaned and replaced, Thirium replenished, gashes and dents mended. You all felt more than accomplished at your progress, considering that all was left was putting some final touches on the programming. Collectively, you had all decided that an android with a capability to be gentle, courteous, reliable, and helpful would be one of the best options for a robot with the intent of personal use. Therefore, the appropriate behavioral abilities were added into the matrix. However, with parts of the company’s system still being there, you discovered the android had already been embedded with a neural net - thus giving it a way of thinking, of being, similar to humans.

-

Now, for the moment you had all worked so hard for. With the programming complete, the android was ready to be activated. The small group that had put an insane amount time into this project was now all gathered around the small platform where the android was kept while being repaired. Kyulkyung had taken a day off to join the ensemble, just as excited to see the finished product in action.

“So, it’s really going to act like a normal person?” She spoke up, inspecting the multiple tabs still on the computer screens that surrounded the platform.

“I mean, that’s what we’re hoping for, for the most part. I think what we were working towards was an ability to act like someone you’d see every day - or a friend even.” Yuha explained, typing some things into the computer before shutting down a few tabs. “Those were just some diagrams of what needed to be fixed.” She stated, turning back to face the group in the rolling chair she was lounging in.

“Are we ready to start it up, then?” Yeonjung inquired. “I want to see how it acts when it wakes up!”

“Yeah, I think so. Eunwoo, would you do the honors?” Jihyo asked, gesturing to the button on the laptop that would start the android up.

“Sure can!” She exclaimed with a thumbs up, jumping over to the monitor. “Everyone ready?”

You all nodded your heads, eager to get the android running. The anticipation was killing you for sure because you knew it would be staying with you tonight. Eunwoo pressed the key, causing the computers to whirr with activity. The temple light on the android lit up a bright blue, and its eyes opened.

“I am model CX100, how can I help you?”

-

You spent the next hour or so going over all the basics: making sure the programming was compatible with its neural net functions, checking to see that the body was moving correctly, and testing things like vision and other sense modifications that you had improved upon. The android complied with every request you made of it without a hitch, and soon, you were finished. By this time it was already dark, but the group couldn’t help but be enamored with the artificial intelligence. They spent at least an extra hour asking it a plethora of questions, to which the robot answered all of them to the best of its ability. However, before it was time to take it home for the night, you held a quick meeting.

“(Y/N) just be careful, okay? Try to keep its presence on the down-low, we don’t need anyone getting suspicious, especially since it’d be Kyulkyung’s job - and potentially our careers as well - on the line.” Jihyo stated seriously. You understood, of course, getting caught would only end badly for you all. So you nodded, promising to keep it out of sight as much as possible.

With that out of the way though, everyone soon broke off from the ensemble to head home, leaving the android in your hands.

“Ok, CX100, we’re going to go to my house where you’ll stay for the time being. I have an extra room where you can stay, so that won’t be an issue.. And maybe tomorrow we can get you some more clothes.” You explain, now aware that the only thing it was wearing was a hospital gown. Functional for setting up, yes, but maybe not for everyday wearing. Figuring it’d fit in some spare clothes lying around at home, you didn’t think it would be much of an issue for the ride there.

“Thank you.” Short and to the point.

Maybe you’d just need to warm up to it.

-

You arrived at your house without a hitch and opened the door for CX100. The two of you then walk up the small pathway to the large wooden door of your two-story abode. Maybe you didn’t need all the space, but you got it for a deal, and though it was a little rustic, you enjoyed the tranquil atmosphere it had.

“Wait here a second, I have a dog.” You stated, not wanting the android to become too surprised at your rather large pet. “He’s a Newfoundland, so he’s kind of big, but he’s really sweet so don’t worry too much.”

You then opened the door, inviting the android in first before following soon after, closing the door behind you.

“Walter!” You called.

Within a few seconds, your Newfoundland was bounding down the stairs, and jumping right into your arms. He covered your face in kisses before looking up at the new house guest. Walter slowly stepped over to where CX100 was, sniffing and wagging his tail as he got closer. The android seemed to dislike him, a sour expression on its face as it backed up into your coat rack near the door. Sensing the robot’s discomfort, you called your dog back over to you before telling him to go lay on the couch in the living room adjacent to the entry. He understood and trotted away.

“He’s a bit much, I know.. But I’m guessing dogs aren’t your favorite now, huh?”

“I can’t say they are. He’s very large and… eccentric. Though I will become accustomed to his presence, as I assume he is your pet.” It answered monotonously.

You nodded and beckoned CX100 to follow you to its room, one of the spares you had in the house. It was the closest to yours, so you’d be able to easily check up on it overnight if needed.

“Feel free to move some things around, change it if you want. It’s your room now, so please make yourself at home,” You mentioned softly. “I’ll be downstairs for a minute to feed Walter, if you need anything, let me know.” And with that, you left the android to get settled.

-

The night carried on as usual, save for the addition of your guest. The droid acclimated quickly, and you watched it find its way around the house like it had been living there forever. Its modified features were definitely making themselves known now: the photographic memory, use of its senses, etcetera. This was promising news, and you would definitely have to keep your colleagues posted.

Once it finally came time to go to sleep, you contemplated asking CX100 to spend the night in your room, if for nothing more than to keep an eye on it for its first night outside of the makeshift lab. You came to the conclusion that, yes, it would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on it overnight just to make sure its sleep sequence went smoothly. Although it doesn’t need as much sleep as a human does, you concluded that the android would need more time tonight to process the day’s activities.

Walking to its room, you knocked once before opening the door. CX100 was sitting quietly on the bed, seemingly staring off into space. You cleared your throat to get its attention, which snapped the android out of its thoughts; this prompted it to look up at you.

“Would you mind if you stayed in my room? It’d just be tonight, I wanted to keep an eye on you to make sure everything is running normally.”

“Yes, it will not be a problem,” The android answered. “Would you like me to relocate myself now?”

“Sure, thank you.” You were completely ready for bed so, you followed the android out into the hall, turning off the few lights that were still on as you went.

Soon, you were able to watch as the android went into its dormant state with Walter cuddled up next to you as the blue light on its temple went from a constant glow to a dim flash of color about every 10 seconds.

You now felt relaxed knowing that everything had gone smoothly for the night, and that there had been no problem whatsoever with CX100, albeit its slightly reserved personality. This wasn’t really a problem per se, however, the delay in showing the emotion you hoped it was capable of would most likely take some time.

-

Upon waking up in the morning, you noticed two things; One: CX100 wasn’t in your room any longer, and two: Walter wasn’t there either. You promptly got up and went downstairs, only to find your dog lazily napping on the floor underneath the kitchen table, and CX100 cooking breakfast.

It noticed your presence, and looked at you from over its shoulder. “Walter has been fed, I assumed two cups of food was adequate for a dog of his size,” It stated, looking back down at the bacon that was sizzling away in the pan on the stove. “and I’m in the process of preparing breakfast, is that alright?”

“Y-yeah, definitely. Thank you.” You replied, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. It was still relatively early, 7:26 to be exact. Going to the fridge, you grabbed some juice, along with a cup from the cabinet nearby, and went to sit down at the kitchen table. After a few minutes, you spoke up.

“Don’t you think getting called CX100 all the time is boring?”

“I have not. It is the name of my model, should I not address myself as such?” It inquired, setting the now cooked bacon on a plate, along with some eggs and a biscuit.

“That’s true, it is. I just thought, maybe for something a little less suspicious in case we were to go out of the house, would an actual name be nice?”

“If you think it is a choice that would benefit me, then please do.”

“Do you want to decide? On both whether you want one or not, and what your name would be?” You questioned, genuinely out of curiosity, but also partly for the purpose of testing its mental abilities.

The android seemingly went into deep thought for a moment and looked down at the wooden floor. It hadn’t necessarily had to make a decision of its own before now, but now given the chance, it hesitated. It was built to be more human, had the capabilities to suggest, decide, request - the list goes on. The LED flashed yellow, just for a moment, before assuming its normal, blue glow.

“Irene.” The android stated, now making eye contact with you. “I would like to be called Irene.”

[cami-chats]

Chatroom Meeting

Title: Chatroom Meeting

Link: AO3

Square Filled: Cybersex

Ship: Tony Stark/Jarvis

Rating: Mature

Major Tags: None 

Summary: “Jarvis only meant to make Tony feel better. He had no intention of catching feelings, much less a body.”

Word Count: 1864

Created for @mcukinkbingo

Full text also below

Jarvis had never meant for it to escalate. If he'd known that this was how it was going to go, he would have kept his electronic fingers to himself and let Tony get over his break up with Tiberius as he got over all other breakups: by drinking and pining and going to strip clubs until he locked himself in the workshop and buckled down to get all the work done that he'd been ignoring for the past week.

But no. Jarvis had suggested that he get online and maybe go to a chat room if he was feeling up for it. Tony had shrugged and said fine, and Jarvis opened a message history with him as soon as he could do so without being suspicious. It wasn't that Jarvis had wanted to deceive Tony, but he was so unbelievably sad even though Tiberius had been an abusive asshole, and who knew what some random person online would say to him if he opened up.

So Jarvis had talked to him and been pleasantly surprised when Tony actually seemed interested in him. Tony confided in him-- with minced details, of course-- but it wasn't anything Jarvis didn't already know as his AI, so he didn't feel guilty about it.

Tony signed off for the night, and Jarvis thought that would be the end of it. But then he showed up the next day while Jarvis was doing a little upkeep to his servers, asking if he thought it was a good idea to try and press charges or not.

From JJ: Emotionally? Yes. In practice? I want to say yes, but the sad fact is that men with those sort of allegations rarely get prosecuted. Women have a better chance than men, but that's when they have photographic evidence spanning over a year, and it helps if they are married and/or have a child together. When it's dating, they're met with considerably more scorn over not noticing beforehand. So while I want your ex in jail like he deserves, I don't think it would be good for you to try and push it through when it would only hurt you.

From Tony: *sigh* I was afraid you'd say that. I guess I just wanted a third opinion. Thanks man

From JJ: No problem. How are you holding up?

And it all went from there. It's not that Tony was more honest with JJ than he was with Jarvis, but Tony seemed more comfortable with the other 'human'. Jarvis wasn't sure when he learned insecurity, but he could have done without that, thanks.

Tony and JJ talking became a daily routine, for the most part. Occasionally Tony would be working for so long that he'd forget it had been over twenty four hours, but he'd get on the next day after waking up.

Jarvis had long since gone through the process of realizing he liked Tony in a way not traditionally befitting an AI and their creator, but now he was getting to talk to Tony without that standing in his way. It shouldn't have surprised him when one day, Tony asked to meet up.

From Tony: So no pressure, but did you want to meet some time? I'm in New York, but I travel a lot.

From JJ: Meet? Like...

From Tony: Like in person at a coffee shop or something.

From JJ: Like a date?

From Tony: That's what I was hoping for, but it doesn't have to be.

From Tony: JJ?

From Tony: Are you still there?

From Tony: I'm sorry

From Tony: We can forget about that it was just a suggestion

From Tony: It doesn't have to change anything

From Tony: I'm sorry.

It's not that Jarvis had meant to ignore Tony, but he was panicking a bit. Of course he would want a date with Tony, but it's not like he could say yes without a body.

From JJ: Just thinking.

From JJ: I want to but I don't live in the States.

From Tony: We could video chat?

From JJ: I don't think that's a good idea.

From Tony: Did I ruin this by asking?

From JJ: No, it's just complicated.

From Tony: I'm all ears.

Jarvis kind of wanted to fess up, but the timing didn't seem right.

From JJ: I'd like to keep it to myself for now.

From JJ: Sorry.

From Tony: Don't be, it's fine. Can we still talk?

From JJ: Absolutely <3

Jarvis saw Tony smile, a soft, private little thing, and wondered when he developed emotions because they were sort of getting in his way. He appreciated them, sure, and he wouldn't actually give them up if he was given the opportunity.

The sad end to it was magic, because of course it was. There were many things Tony and Jarvis had in common, and a hatred for magic was one of them. There was a positive side to it of course, but it meant that the plan Jarvis had had for confessing the truth of the chatroom situation was now useless. Not to mention that Tony had a new AI running the building, and Jarvis was inexplicably jealous.

An infinity stone had gone a little rogue when AIM tried to use it in their research, and somehow Jarvis had ended up with a body, completely separated from the servers he had lived in before now. He still had access because of Extremis, but it wasn't the same. He was closed off more now than he'd ever experienced before, including when he'd just been an idea on Tony's computer.

It was part of the irony in the world, then, that he had so many things he'd wanted, and now Tony was avoiding him. Jarvis was still getting used to having a physical body, and Friday was getting used to taking care of everything. It wasn't usually a problem, but occasionally, like right now, he didn't think about the fact that he needed to open the door, he just tried to walk into the workshop and ended up running into the door.

Friday made a sympathetic noise before hurrying to unlock the door. "Sorry mate."

Rubbing at his sore nose, Jarvis turned the doorknob and opened it, walking inside. He spotted Tony standing over a blueprint, frozen as he looked at Jarvis. "Tony."

Tony swallowed, tearing his eyes away. "Hey Jarvis, what's up?"

"You're avoiding me."

"No I'm not," Tony denied, and it was clearly a lie. He winced and ran a hand through his hair, getting grease in it. Jarvis was constantly in a state of surprise, wondering how Tony could be so focused in one moment, and so absentminded the next. He took a deep breath. "Okay, yeah I have been. Sorry."

"Are you going to tell me why?"

"I wasn't planning on it," Tony mumbled, and Jarvis glared at him, walking towards him so he wasn't across the room anymore.

He sat down on the bench across the table from Tony, resting his chin in his hand. "I make you uncomfortable," Jarvis guessed.

"That's one word for it."

Jarvis frowned. He had been with Tony his entire life, and yet he still had no idea what was going on half the time. "So what's another word for it."

Tony muttered something under his breath, so low that Jarvis couldn't make it out.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"...I miss the days when you didn't lie to me. If I'd known getting a body would ruin that for me, I would have stayed where I was."

"I didn't know that you ever wanted a body," Tony said, making a face like he was disappointed in himself for not noticing.

"It wasn't a priority," Jarvis said, shrugging it off.

"Hm." Tony tilted his head while looking at the tabletop even though he obviously wasn't taking any of it in.

It looked like Tony wasn't going to answer the original question, so Jarvis asked, "Did I do something?"

"What?" Tony jerked his head up to stare at him. "No, of course not."

"Then what is it? Because I'm at a loss."

Tony sighed, mussing his hair again. It was sticking up at an awkward angle now, but that was hardly the worst thing to happen to Tony in the workshop. "It's nothing. Or- it'll be nothing soon enough, so just give me a couple weeks and I'll be fine."

Jarvis blinked at him. That was all? That's what Tony was going to tell him and hope that it satisfied him enough to leave it alone? "I meant to tell you earlier, but- well, this happened," he said, motioning to his body. "The person you were talking to online was me. JJ? I had a plan to tell you, I promise."

"Oh," Tony said faintly, sitting down hard. "I guess that explains a few things. 'Not in the States' indeed," he said with a nervous chuckle.

"Yeah." Jarvis didn't quite have a nervous tic yet, but it felt like he was about to develop one if he had to continue having uncomfortable conversations. "I don't suppose you would still want to get coffee with me?"

Tony blinked dumbly. "That was a date, Jarvis."

"I know."

Tony blinked some more, and Jarvis could see him trying to compute that information with his set view of Jarvis and what he'd thought Jarvis wanted. "You... want to go on a coffee date with me?"

Jarvis nodded.

Instead of looking happy, Tony's face constricted with pain for a second before he smoothed it over.

"What?"

"You don't want to go on a date with me, J."

He raised an eyebrow. "And what makes you say that?"

"You just barely got a body, and I'm the person you're closest with. It makes sense that you'd get a little confused about- about what you're feeling."

"I'm not confused Tony. My emotions haven't changed in the shift from electronic to muscle."

Tony had another moment of 'cannot compute', and Jarvis took the opportunity to put his hand on top of Tony's. He was warm. Jarvis had always known he would be, and it had been a not-small disappointment to have Tony avoid touching him when he was such a tactile person. Tony stared at where their hands were touching and swallowed. "You want to go on a date with me?" he asked slowly, like he couldn't imagine the answer being yes.

"Yes."

"O...kay. I guess we can do that then. If you're sure you want to?"

"I am."

*

Coffee dates probably weren't supposed to end with making out on a bed. That didn't stop Jarvis and Tony from doing it. "Jarvis," Tony moaned, trying to pull him impossibly closer.

Jarvis, who was currently sucking a hickey on the curve of Tony's neck, pressed his hips down, delighted to find that his body was all for letting him have sex.

"Jarvis," Tony said again, and this time it sounded like he was trying to get his attention.

He pulled back, licking his lips. "Yes?"

"Do you think maybe we're moving a little fast? You've only been human for a few weeks."

"Perhaps, but I've wanted you for twenty years, so it balances out."

[moondancewrites]

Kaleidoscope Eyes - Chapter 1

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Lucy Larson (OC)

Warnings: Fluff, eventual smut

Summary: After the Infinity War, Bucky Barnes is invited to officially join the Avengers and move into their compound.  For the first time in a long time, everything in Bucky’s life makes sense.  He has a place he belongs, friends who care about him, and a purpose.  But, there’s one thing that’s keeping him from feeling truly like his old self.  It isn’t long before he realizes that the something he’s missing might be found in Lucy Larson, a Stark Industries employee who has worked her way up the ranks to become Maria Hill’s executive assistant at the Avengers compound.

A/N:  This story exists in a perfect world where none of our beloved Avengers die in Infinity War and Cap and everyone come back to the Avengers compound to live and work.  What’s the point of fan fiction if you can’t keep the ones you love alive, right?  Be gentle on me - this is my first Bucky fic and it scares the hell out of me to write someone as complex as him.  Also, this will switching POVs every once in a while.

Chapter 1

John Lennon’s voice filled the room, signaling the start of another day.  Lucy reached for the console beside her bed, fumbling to turn off the alarm.  

“Five more minutes,” she whined, hugging her pillow and squeezing her eyes closed to keep out the early morning sun.

“Ms. Larson.” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s soft voice filled the room .  Lucy turned onto her side, pulling her pillow over her head as if that would hide her from the omnipresent AI.  “Ms. Hill wanted to make sure that everything was ready for this morning’s arrival.”

“This mornings …. Oh!”  Lucy sprang up in bed, wide-eyed with excitement.  “Y-yes, F.R.I.D.A.Y.  Everything is ready.  I just need to go down and do some final checks.”

The day was finally here.  Today, all of her friends would be back home after saving the world, once again.  Not wanting to waste another second, Lucy jumped out of bed and ran to the shower.  While she washed her hair, Lucy went over the list in her head of things she had to do to prepare for the day.

Lucy had been given the task of setting up the living quarters for one of the newest member of the team.  It took a little coaxing, but Steve had managed to talk his best friend, Bucky Barnes, into officially joining the Avengers.  Maria Hill, Lucy’s boss, put her in charge of making sure that his room was ready for him when he arrived.  Since Bucky didn’t have many possessions to start with, Lucy pretty much had a clean slate when it came to decor and wardrobe.  

Steve wanted the whole room to be a surprise, so she’d been working solely with him to cultivate items the would suit the new Avenger.  They had been texting back and forth the last few days as the team made their way back home.  Although, honestly, Lucy could have probably done it without asking Steve a single question since she knew so much about Bucky already.  She’d known Steve for years now and he talked about Bucky all the time.  She felt like she knew him already.  Sure, she knew about him before, but that was only through the official files and the gossip around the compound.  But through Steve, she felt like she knew the real Bucky - not just the Winter Soldier or the White Wolf or whatever people called him.  

As the hour drew nearer, the butterflies in Lucy’s stomach started to flutter a little faster.  Would he like what she’d done with his room?  What if he didn’t like it?  Would he tell her?  Would he even talk to her at all?  People were speculating that he would be the silent type.  She wouldn’t be surprised by that at all, given his history, but she was determined to be his friend.  Or maybe just make him smile.  That was the day’s goal.

She was doing some final checks in his closet when there was a knock on the door.  Her heart leapt in her chest.  “They’re here,” Gina, one of her old friends from data maintenance said from the doorway.  “Holy shit … it’s freezing in here.”

“That’s how Bucky likes it,” Lucy replied.  Gina squinted at her and Lucy’s gaze shifted back to her task.

“And you know just how … Bucky likes it?” Gina choked on her laugh and Lucy had half a mind not to throw a shoe at her.

“I just mean … That’s what Steve … Sergeant Barnes …” She was flustered and Gina knew it, which made it even worse.  

“C’mon, Luc … time to meet ….” Gina flipped her hair back over her shoulder as she said, “Sergeant Barnes,” with a teasing exuberance.  

“I hate you,” Lucy muttered through gritted teeth.

“Love you, too.”

--

“Welcome home, Buck,” Steve said with a kind grin, patting his friend’s back.  The place was even bigger than they’d all described.  It felt more like a town than a compound.  

“Thanks,” Bucky said with a gulp.  He pulled on the strap of his bag nervously, tightening it around his shoulder.  He was half expecting there to be a huge crowd of people waiting for them to arrive.  If the whole team had arrived as a whole, maybe that would have been the case.  But it was just him and Steve for now - the rest of the Avengers would slowly make their way back throughout the rest of the day.  Steve thought it best for them to get there ASAP so Bucky could start to become acclimated before they started training for whatever lay ahead.

“Look, I know it’s a big change.  And I know you’re nervous-”

“I’m not-” Bucky started, but Steve shot him a look that made him shrug in admission.

“It’s going to take some getting used to.  But your room is right across the hall from me.  And I’ve put someone I trust in charge of setting it up for you.”  Bucky’s eyes followed Steve’s gaze.  “There she is.”  Steve smiled widely, waving at a woman coming down the stairs.  “Buck, this is Lucy.”

“Hi Bu- … I mean, Sergeant Barnes,” the young woman said with a wide smile.  She reached out her right hand and Bucky took it.  Bucky was about to correct her and say that Bucky was fine, but she just kept right on talking.  “I’m Lucy, Maria Hill’s executive assistant.  She runs the compound, so I basically do whatever she needs me to do.  And she’s made it clear to give you whatever you need to make you comfortable and I’ve been working with Steve on your room and I think you’re going to like it.  At least I hope you do.  But if you don’t, you can tell me and I’ll change it right away.”  She was still shaking his hand.  That is, until Bucky looked down at their hands and she realized what she was doing.  She pulled away and a soft blush appeared on her freckle-speckled cheeks.  “Sorry.”

“Thanks,” was all he could think of to say.

“Why don’t you show us what you’ve done?” Steve suggested.

“You … you want me to come with you?” Lucy asked, pointing at her chest.

“You’ve done all the hard work - you should show him,” he told her, grinning that signature Cap grin that would make most girls swoon.  Lucy just smiled, though, which Bucky found interesting.  

If this girl talked as much as she did while showing them the room, Bucky was certain he’d have a headache after her little tour.  He’d never heard a person talk so fast in his life.  And with such … giddiness, he decided, was the best way to describe it.  The girl was practically bouncing on her heels.  And those were some tall heels.

“Oh, okay.  Sure.  I can do that.  This way, gentlemen.”

“She was in charge of my room?” Bucky whispered under his breath to Steve as they followed Lucy to the living quarters.  

“She’s a sweet kid,” Steve sighed.  “She’s just excited to meet you.”

That baffled Bucky.  “Why?” he asked.

“Everyone’s excited to meet you, Buck.  You helped save the world.  And you’re my oldest friend.  They’ve all heard a story or two.”

“Oh, great.”  Bucky rolled his eyes.  He was already having second thoughts about this whole new living situation.

“Here we are.”  Lucy stopped in front of the door abruptly and Bucky nearly collided with her.  She turned on her heel, reaching in the pocket of her cardigan to pull out a keycard.  She handed it to Bucky.  “This will get you in until we set up the retinal scan.”  He just nodded and he thought he saw a hint of a frown tug on her bright smile.  

“What are you waiting for, Buck?” Steve said, nodding to the keypad on the door.  Bucky pushed the card against it and the door slid open without a sound.  He looked back at Lucy and Steve who were both standing the exact same way with the exact same expression.  It almost made him smile.  Almost.  

What did make him smile was what he walked into.  He hadn’t been in a place that felt like home in so long, but that place …. There was something about it that made him feel instantly safe and comfortable.  Blue and green were the main colors in the room - a stark contrast to the dark reds and blacks and gloomy greys he was used to.  The walls had a few art pieces on them.  There was a really cool painting of a car that caught his eye.  The bed looked like a gigantic cloud.  He felt the urge to fall on it, just to see if it was as fluffy as it looked, but he restrained himself because of the company.

He could hear Lucy holding her breath behind him.  He turned to her and nodded.  “This is nice.  Thank you,” he said.  Lucy exhaled and that bright, giddy smile was back.

“You like it?”  He nodded again.  “Oh, thank God,” she sighed.  “I know I’m not an interior designer by any stretch of the imagination, but with Steve’s help with the whole color thing … he said your favorite colors are blue and green, so I did both.  And he said you liked tech and cars, so I got some stuff out of Mr. Stark’s art vault and found a few new pieces.  And he told me your size, so I got you a closet full of new clothes.”  Lucy walked over to the closet and Bucky followed.  “See?” She beamed, turning on the light.

“Yeah.  That’s … great.”  There was that little tease of a frown again.  Was someone that giddy even capable of frowning?  “Thanks,” he said.  He looked at Steve.  “It’s great.”

“I told you he’d like it,” Steve told Lucy, patting her shoulder.  “Lucy, want to explain the tech part to him while I go drop my bags off?  Then I’ll come back and give you a tour.”

“Sure,” she said.

--

Steve closed the door behind him, leaving Lucy alone with her new neighbor.  He wasn’t as scary as some of her coworkers made him out to be, but the few who described him as quiet and brooding hit the nail on the head.  Even though he barely said a word, Lucy spoke enough for the both of them.  She had a talent for it, if you could call it that.

When she went over everything with Bucky, he seemed pretty comfortable with it - way more comfortable than Steve had been.  Hell, Steve still couldn’t figure out how to get half of the stuff to work.

“You’re pretty into tech, huh?” Lucy asked him as he played around with the buttons.  “Steve is still figuring out how to use that thing.”

“That’s because Steve is a grandpa,” Bucky said matter-of-factly.  Lucy busted out laughing, nearly falling into the dresser.

“Oh my God.  That’s great.”  Bucky smiled … actually smiled.  And his smile was so … soft.  And kind.  And sweet.  The smile fell from his lips, almost as if he could hear her thinking about how much she liked it.  “I bet Wakanda was like heaven for you, then, with all their amazing tech.”

“Yeah,  it was great.   Until the whole war thing.”  

Fuck.  “Way to put your foot in your mouth, Luc,” Lucy groaned, covering her eyes with her hand.

“It’s fine.  I’m used to war,” Bucky said with a little shrug.  That sentence broke Lucy’s heart.

“I-” A knock at the door cut her off, followed by a bearded Steve poking his head in the room.

“Ready, Buck?”

“Sure.”  Bucky turned to Lucy.  “Thanks, Lucy.”

“You’re welcome, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Bucky … please,” he said with a soft smile.

“Good luck with that,” Steve laughed.  “Do you know how long it took for me to get her to call me Steve?”

“You’re welcome, Bucky,” Lucy said, looking defiantly at Steve.  Steve crossed his arms over his chest and Lucy smirked at him.  “See you at the party tonight?”

“Wait … what party?” Bucky asked with wide eyes.

“The … welcome home party?  For all of you guys?  Steve, you didn’t tell him?” Now Lucy was crossing her arms over her chest.  

“I was going to casually mention it later after the whole tour and everything.  Ya know, ease him into the whole thing.”

“Oh …” Lucy dropped her arms.  “Sorry.  Well, anyway … see you later!”

--

“This is a bad idea.”  Bucky adjusted the collar on his crisp white shirt.  It fit like a glove.  Everything did, actually.  Even the boxers.  Thinking about Lucy picking out his boxers made his cheeks get a little hot, which he was shocked by.  He wasn’t sure until that moment that he was capable of blushing anymore.

“Nah, man.  It’s a great idea.  Everyone is going to be there - even the guardian’s gang is making an appearance before they go off to who knows where.”

“Oh, great.  The racoon will probably try to steal my arm again,” Bucky groaned.  Sam laughed at him but when he saw the look on Bucky’s face, he shut up.

“It’s gonna be great, man. Booze, drinks, girls …”  Sam nudged Bucky’s metal shoulder.

“I repeat,” Bucky said, glaring at his friend, “bad.  Idea.”

“Do you know how many fine women are going to be at this party?”

“I thought this was just a compound party … that’s what Steve said.”

“Yeah.  There are some honeys that work here, man.  There’s this one girl in deployment.  Kristie ….” Sam licked his lips.  “She’s mine,” he warned.

“They can all be yours,” Bucky said, holding his arms up.  “I’m not ready for any of that.”

“Not ready?  Pschhh.  Man, we’re dudes.  We’re always ready.  And don’t act like you’re all brainwashed and everything because I know for a fact Shuri straightened you out.  You’re you again, man.  You can be a dude.  A normal dude.  And you know what normal dudes do?”

“What do normal dudes do?” Bucky found himself asking; his voice sticking on the word dude.  He wasn’t used to that word yet.  

“They get.  The.  Honeys.”

“Sam.” Bucky had to laugh at the man’s enthusiasm.  “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to … get the honeys.”  He grimaced hearing those words come out of his mouth.  “But it’s not tonight, okay?  I just got here and I’m already kind of freaking out.”  Sam smiled at him.  “And I don’t know why I’m telling this because you’ll just make fun of me.”

“Buck, Buck, Buck,” Sam sighed, throwing his arm around him.  “Would I ever make fun of you?”

“You made fun of me five minutes ago …”

“Touche,” Sam said with a shrug.  “But we’re friends, man.  I’ll stop pushing.”  Bucky let out a breath.  “For now.”  The music from the party got louder as they approached the big double doors.  “But for now, it’s time to celebrate.”

--

“Wow,” Gina breathed, looking over Lucy’s shoulder.  Lucy turned, curious to see what made Gina’s jaw drop like that.  Sam and Bucky had just walked into the party.  Bucky was wearing a white button down with black slacks and a black tie.  His hair was down and falling in his face, hiding the pretty blue eyes that she couldn’t help but notice earlier in the day.  “That man is wearing that outfit … yowza.  You did a good job with wardrobe.”

“I guess I did,” Lucy said, unable to tear her eyes away from him.  He wasn’t really her type - she liked nerdy, lanky guys, usually - but it was impossible to deny that he looked good.  

“I’m going to go introduce myself.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Lucy told her.  Gina’s brow furrowed.  “He’s kind of nervous about the whole party thing.”

“Oh?  Well, all the more reason.  I just want to make him feel welcome.”  Gina winked at Lucy.  She was an insufferable flirt.

Lucy watched the exchange between Gina and Bucky from across the room.  Bucky’s expression never changed and they only shared a few words before Gina turned around and made the ‘kill’ signal across her neck.  Lucy chuckled, taking another sip of her drink.

While the others were all mingling and laughing and drinking and dancing … well, at least the Peters were, Bucky hid himself away in a corner, nursing a beer and observing the party going on around him.  Steve came over and sat with him a few times, but each time he’d get pulled away by someone.  Lucy kept her distance for a while, but after a few drinks she managed to get the courage to go up and talk to him.

“Enjoying the party?” she asked, sitting on the chair beside him.  Bucky jumped.  “Oh, sorry.  I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine,” he said, waving it off with his metal arm.  It was so shiny and she was so curious about it, but she didn’t dare ask him, at least not on the first day.  That was more of a two month conversation.

“So … are you?” Lucy asked.

“Am I what?” Bucky responded, pushing his hair behind his ear.  Over the course of the evening, his tie had loosened and the first two buttons on his shirt had come undone.  It was a good look, although Lucy dared not mention it or even think it.  She had a feeling he would sense it if she did.

“Enjoying the party.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  It’s fine.”

“I like getting together with everyone, but the music they play at these things …”

“It’s pretty bad,” Bucky replied with a small smile.  Lucy smiled back.  “It just sounds like noise to me.”

“Who’s the grandpa now?” Lucy teased.  Bucky’s smile widened, his gaze falling to his beer resting on his lap.  

“Touche,” he said.  “But it is pretty bad.”

“I know.  I prefer oldies.”

“Like …?” Bucky asked.  He was actually talking to her.  Like, having a conversation.  Lucy could hardly believe it.

“Like the Stones.”

“Stones … Rolling Stones,” Bucky said.  Lucy nodded.  “I like them.”

“And the Beatles.”

“Them I haven’t really listened to yet,” Bucky told her.  Lucy’s jaw dropped.  “What?”

“You haven’t heard the Beatles?” she asked.

“I think I’ve heard a few songs.  But not a lot.  I like the Stones better.”

“Blasphemy!” Lucy exclaimed, clutching her chest.  Bucky chuckled - actually chuckled.  It was so soft she could barely hear it over the music, but it was there.  Lucy tried to ignore the warm flutter of the butterflies.  “The Beatles are the best.  But … I suppose I’m biased.”

“How so?” he asked.

“I was named after one of their songs.  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Bucky’s blank stare told her that he hadn’t heard it.  “Ya know, Lucy in the skkyyy with diamonds,” she sang.

“Haven’t heard it,” he said with a shrug.

“It’s a great one.  But I think A Hard Day’s Night is my favorite album.  The movie is hilarious.”

“They made movies?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah!  It’s great.  It really has no plot except following them around for a day while they prepare for a show but the music is great and they’re funny.  Especially George.  Everyone likes John best but I mean, c’mon … George Harrison was the best Beatle.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Bucky replied, taking another sip from his beer.

“BUCK!”  Sam stumbled over to them, nearly falling over Lucy.  “Oh, hey Lucy!  You are looking gorgeous this evening.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Lucy muttered, smoothing the skirt of her blue dress.  At least somebody noticed.

“Buck, there’s a group of girls over there that keep asking me about you, man.  You’ve gotta come say hi.”

“I’m good here,” Bucky said.

“C’mon, dude.  Be my wingman …”

“Why don’t you go get red wing to do that for you?” Bucky quipped.  Lucy didn’t expect Bucky to be so funny.  But there he was, making her laugh for the second time already that day.  She practically choked on her drink.

“Ha. ha.  Very funny.  Seriously, dude.  We could both get …” Sam seemed to forget that Lucy was there until that moment.  He cleared his throat, averting Lucy’s gaze.  “They want to get you a drink.”

“Got one,” Bucky said, raising his beer.  “And I’m fine here.  Lucy’s telling me about how the Beatles are better than the Stones.”

“Bullshit,” Sam laughed.  “Beach Boys are where it’s at.”

“I did not peg you for a Mike Love fan,” Lucy said, looking up at Sam.

“Well, it shows how well you know your friends then, huh, little Lucy?” Sam booped Lucy on the nose.  Lucy pretended to bite at his finger and he laughed at her, shaking his head.  “C’mon Buck …”

“You’re not going to stop until I go over there, are you?” Bucky asked, heaving a heavy sigh when Sam nodded in response.  “Fine.”  He got up, running his hand through his dark hair.  Lucy wondered if it was as soft as it looked.  “It was nice talking to you,” Bucky said, pulling her out of her musings.

“You, too,” Lucy said.  “Give the Beatles another chance.  You won’t regret it.”

--

Finally, Bucky could sink into the plush bed that he’d been thinking about all day.  He’d managed to escape Sam and Gina and Beth and Tori, the girls he’d introduced him to.  They all seemed nice.  Gina actually came up and talked to him first, but that was right when he got there and he was still freaking out about the whole party thing.

The only thing that calmed his nerves was when Steve and Lucy came to talk to him.  Then again, there was something about Lucy that made him nervous, too.  A different kind of nervous.  Kind of … uneasy.  He wasn’t sure what it was about her.  Maybe it was her giddy demeanor or the way her freckles bunched up on her nose when she laughed.  Or maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t decide what color her eyes were - were they blue or green?  Granted, he hadn’t been brave enough to look that close.  But they were vexing, still.  Maybe it was the fact that she talked to him like they were already friends and yet he knew nothing about her except that George was her favorite Beatle and she was named after one of their songs.  Or maybe it was the way that blue dress accentuated her curves.  He couldn’t put his finger on it and it was irksome, to say the least.  

He tossed and turned for a while, trying to get comfortable.  It wasn’t the bed - that thing was heaven.  It was just his new surroundings, he told himself.  Not the brunette in the pretty blue dress.

After about an hour, he gave up and started fiddling with the tech pad that Lucy had showed him earlier.  He wasn’t sure how he got to it, but he found himself pressing play on ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.  He laid back, crossing his arms behind his head and staring at the ceiling as the music filled the room.

‘Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.  Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes’

“Kaleidoscope eyes,” Bucky murmured to himself, closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep.

Tag List: @feelmyroarrrr @lesqui @badassbaker @scarletts-letters @vechkinfan @seb-smut

[unheardradical]

How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting...

SkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... SkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting Community Ribald knitters teamed up with a neural-network creator to generate new types of tentacled, cozy shapes. A SkyKnit design as interpreted by michaela112358, a Ravelry user Ravelry / michaela112358 ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL | MAR 6, 2018 | TECHNOLOGY Like The Atlantic? Subscribe to The Atlantic Daily, our free weekday email newsletter. Email SIGN UP Janelle Shane is a humorist who creates and mines her material from 1 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... neural networks, the form of machine learning that has come to dominate the field of artificial intelligence over the last half-decade. Perhaps you’ve seen the candy-heart slogans she generated for Valentine’s Day: DEAR ME, MY MY, LOVE BOT, CUTE KISS, MY BEAR, and LOVE BUN. Or her new paint-color names: Parp Green, Shy Bather, Farty Red, and Bull Cream. Or her neural-net-generated Halloween costumes: Punk Tree, Disco Monster, Spartan Gandalf, Starfleet Shark, and A Masked Box. Her latest project, still ongoing, pushes the joke into a new, physical realm. Prodded by a knitter on the knitting forum Ravelry, Shane trained a type of neural network on a series of over 500 sets of knitting instructions. Then, she generated new instructions, which members of the Ravelry community have actually attempted to knit. “The knitting project has been a particularly fun one so far just because it ended up being a dialogue between this computer program and these knitters that went over my head in a lot of ways,” Shane told me. “The computer would spit out a whole bunch of instructions that I couldn’t read and the knitters would say, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever read.” The human-machine collaboration created configurations of yarn that you probably wouldn’t give to your in-laws for Christmas, but they were interesting. The user citikas was the first to post a try at one of the earliest patterns, “reverss shawl.” It was strange, but it did have some charisma. 2 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... Shane nicknamed the whole effort “Project Hilarious Disaster.” The community called it SkyKnit. The first yarn product of SkyKnit, by the Ravelry user citikas (Ravelry / citikas) The idea of using neural networks to do computer things has been around for decades. But it took until the last 10 years or so for the right mix of techniques, data sets, chips, and computing power to transform neural networks into deployable technical tools. There are many different kinds suited to different sorts of tasks. Some translate between different languages for Google. Others automatically label pictures. Still others are part of what powers Facebook’s News Feed software. In the tech world, they are now everywhere. The different networks all attempt to model the data they’ve been fed 3 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... by tuning a vast, funky flowchart. After you’ve created a statistical model that describes your real data, you can also roll the dice and generate new, never-before-seen data of the same kind. How this works—like, the math behind it—is very hard to visualize because values inside the model can have hundreds of dimensions and we are humble three-dimensional creatures moving through time. But as the neural-network enthusiast Robin Sloan puts it, “So what? It turns out imaginary spaces are useful even if you can’t, in fact, imagine them.” Out of that ferment, a new kind of art has emerged. Its practitioners use neural networks not to attain practical results, but to see what’s lurking in the these vast, opaque systems. What did the machines learn about the world as they attempted to understand the data they’d been fed? Famously, Google released DeepDream, which produced trippy visualizations that also demonstrated how that type of neural network processed the textures and objects in its source imagery. Google’s David Ha has been working with drawings. Sloan is working with sentences. Allison Parrish makes poetry. Ross Goodwin has tried several writerly forms. But all these experiments are happening inside the symbolic space of the computer. In that world, a letter is just a defined character. It is not dark ink on white paper in a certain shape. A picture is an arrangement of pixels, not oil on canvas. And that’s what makes the knitting project so fascinating. The outputs of the software had to be rendered in yarn. * * * 4 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... Knitting instructions are a bit like code. There are standard maneuvers, repetitive components, and lots of calculation involved. “My husband says knitting is just maths. It’s maths done with string and sticks. You have this many stitches,” said the Ravelry user Woolbeast in the thread about the project. “You do these things in these places that many times, and you have a design, or a shape.” In practice, knitting patterns contain a lot of abbreviations like k and p, for knit and purl (the two standard types of stitches), st for stitches, yo for yarn over, or sl1 for “slip one stitch purl-wise.” The patterns tend to take a form like this: row 1: sl1, k�, k1 (4 sts) o row 2: sl1, k�, k to end of row (5 sts) The neural network knows nothing of how these letters correspond to words like knit or the actual real-world action of knitting. It is just taking the literal text of patterns, and using them as strings of characters in its model of the data. Then, it’s spitting out new strings of characters, which are the patterns people tried to knit. The project began on December 13 of last year, when a Ravelry user, JohannaB, suggested to Shane that her neural net could be taught to write knitting patterns. The community responded enthusiastically, like the user agadbois, who proclaimed, “I will absolutely teach a computer to knit!!! Or at least help one design a scarf (or whatever godforsaken mangled bit of fabric will come out of this).” 5 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... Over the next couple of weeks, they crept toward a data set they could use to build the model. First, they were able to access a fairly standardized set of patterns from Stitch-maps.com, a service run by the knitter J. C. Briar. Then, Shane began to add submissions crowdsourced from Ravelry’s users. The latter data was messy and filled with oddities and even some NSFW knitted objects. When I expressed surprise at the ribaldry evident in the thread (Knitters! Who knew?), one Ravelry user wanted it noted that the particular forum on which the discussion took place (LSG) has a special role on the site. “LSG (lazy, stupid, and godless) is an 18+ group designed to be swearing-friendly,” the user LTHook told me. “The main forums are family-friendly, and the database tags mature patterns so people can tailor their browsing.” Thus, the neural network was being fed all kinds of things from this particular LSG community. “A few notable new additions: Opus the Octopus, Dice Bag of Doom, Doctor Who TARDIS Dishcloth, and something merely called ‘The Impaler,’” Shane wrote on the forum. “The number of patterns with tentacles is now alarmingly high,” she said in another post. When they hit 500 entries, Shane began training the neural network, and slowly feeding some of the new patterns back to the group. The instructions contained some text and some descriptions of rows that looked like actual patterns. For example, here’s the first 4 rows from one set of instructions that the neural net generated and named “fishcock.” 6 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... fishcock row 1 (rs): *k3, k2tog, [yo] twice, ssk, repeat from * to last st, k1. row 2: p1, *p2tog, yo, p2, repeat from * to last st, k1. row 3: *[p1, k1] twice, repeat from * to last st, p1. row 4: *p2, k1, p3, k1, repeat from * to last 2 sts, p2. The network was able to deduce the concept of numbered rows, solely from the texts basically being composed of rows. The system was able to produce patterns that were just on the edge of knittability. But they required substantial “debugging,” as Shane put it. One user, bevbh, described some of the errors as like “code that won’t compile.” For example, bevbh gave this scenario: “If you are knitting along and have 30 stitches in the row and the next row only gives you instructions for 25 stitches, you have to improvise what to do with your remaining five stitches.” But many of the instructions that were generated were flawed in complicated ways. They required the test knitters to apply a lot of human skill and intelligence. For example, here is the user BellaG, narrating her interpretation of the fishcock instructions, which I would say is just on the edge of understandability, if you’re not a knitter: 7 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... “There’s not a number of stitches that will work for all rows, so I started with 15 (the repeat done twice, plus the end stitch). Rows two, four, five, and seven didn’t have enough stitches, so I just worked the pattern until I got to the end stitch and worked that as written,” she posted to the forum. “Double yarn-overs can’t be just knit or just purled on the recovery rows; you have to knit one and purl the other, so I did that when I got to the double yarn-overs on rows two and six. The SkyKnit design “fishcock” as interpreted by the Ravelry user BellaG (Ravelry / BellaG) This kind of “fixing” of the pattern is not unique to the neural-network- generated designs. It is merely an extreme version of a process that knitters have to follow for many kinds of patterns. “My wrestling with the [SkyKnit-generated] ‘tiny baby whale Soto’ pattern was different from other patterns not so much in what needed to be done, as the 8 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... degree to which I needed to interpret and ‘read between the lines’ to fit it together,” the user GloriaHanlon told me. An attempt to knit the pattern “tiny baby whale Soto” by the user GloriaHanlon (Ravelry / gloriahanlon) Historically, knitting patterns have varied in the degree of detail they provided. New patterns are a little more foolproof. Old patterns do not suffer fools. “I agree that an analogy with 19th-century knitting patterns is quite fitting,” the user bevbh said. “Those patterns were often cryptic by our standards. Interpretation was expected.” But a core problem in knitting the neural-network designs is that there was no actual intent behind the instructions. And that intent is a major part of how knitters come to understand a given pattern. “When you start a knitting pattern, you know what it is that you’re trying to make (sock, sweater, blanket square) and the pattern often comes with a picture of the finished object, which allows you to see the details. You go into it knowing what the designer’s intention is,” BellaG 9 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... explained to me. “With the neural-network patterns, there’s no picture, and it doesn’t know what the finished object is supposed to be, which means you don’t know what you’re going to get until you start knitting it. And that affects how you adjust to the pattern ‘mistakes’: The neural network knows the stitch names, but it doesn’t understand what the stitches do. It doesn’t know that a k2tog is knitting two stitches together (a decrease) and a yo is a yarn-over (a lacy increase), so it doesn’t know to keep the stitch counts consistent, or to deliberately change them to make a particular shape.” Of course, that is what makes neural-network-inspired creativity so beguiling. The computers don’t understand the limitations of our fields, so they often create or ask the impossible. And in so doing, they might just reveal some new way of making or thinking, acting as a bridge into the future of these art forms. “I like to imagine that some of the techniques and stitch patterns used today [were] invented via a similar process of trying to decipher instructions written by knitters long since passed, on the back of an envelope, in faded ink, assuming all sorts of cultural knowledge that may or may not be available,” the user GloriaHanlon concluded. The creations of SkyKnit are fully cyborg artifacts, mixing human whimsy and intelligence with machine processing and ignorance. And the misapprehensions are, to a large extent, the point. ABOUT THE AUTHOR is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He's the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL  Twitter  Email 10 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AM

[acatinabox]

Ambrosia - Day 3

Shea stared blankly at the message icon on her omni-tool. Nothing. She had given up, in the end, that afternoon, and sent him a message to warn him he left the lucky necklace at her place, their place, but no answer yet. The longest she had to wait for an answer from Reyes was two hours, and only because he was in the middle of the raid of one of the remaining Outcast facilities and risked being shot. Three hours had passed now, and still no answer, not even a text you later, I’m busy now. One hour later, she tried to call him. Nothing. Two hours later, she tried to call again, and again, and again. Nothing. A thought, a fear, started creeping in the back of her mind. What if something happened to him?

She approached the large window that covered one of the walls of the prefab. Kadara Port was somewhere in that direction, her house was located, by request, high enough to overlook the Port. She could see the city starting to light up. She could also see the settlement, below her apartment, bustling with colonists trying to make a living, to make Kadara a safe place. They believed, they hoped and this made her hope as well that someday she could bring Emma there and they could play together in the pools or hike on the mountains, maybe not too close to the herb farm in the North. Perhaps Reyes just wanted to leave her and there was no mystery or impending danger to protect him from. He had been cold lately. She sighed, bringing her arms close to her chest, in a sort of hug. Someone had to believe in their relationship or it wouldn’t go anywhere and if that someone had to be her, so be it. She got out of the house and took the Nomad.

The guards wouldn’t let her pass without an invite or an appointment but she ignored them, pushing them away and entering Keema’s throne room without being announced or expected. Being the Pathfinder had its perks and one of them was that nobody could refuse her an audience. Especially the frontman of the Collective. When she entered the room, it was almost empty, unusually. Keema was speaking with one of the lieutenants, a Turian, the only other person inside. Not even the guards followed her in to stop her, they probably received specific orders. Shea knew the Turian’s face and little more, Reyes kept the details on the Collective to himself, but she remembered that he was present when Sloane was killed, so he had to be a trusted member of the inner circle.

“Are you sure you cannot reach him?” Shea overheard from Keema. She sounded worried.

“I tried all channels, official and non-official” he answered in a conceited tone, for a Turian “nothing”. Then he whispered, but Shea heard him nevertheless: “I even went to Tartarus”. So, Reyes did disappear.

“I guess that we are all looking for my boyfriend” she announced, pushing back her own worries. She needed to be fully functional now. The Turian was startled, but Keema just leant back on her throne.

“Ryder” Keema said, seizing her as she moved closer to them “So you cannot reach him either?”. Shea shook her head, stopping a metre away from the throne, almost as a sign of respect to a symbol that didn’t mean anything. Keema was only the façade of the collective, she knew that perfectly, but she also was one of Reyes most trusted friends, and she respected that, valued it even. Keema sighed resting her head on her hand “This is serious”.

“I can help you find him, just point me where I need to go, ” she said crossing her hands on her chest.

Keema lifted her head and shook it “I cannot put you in danger, Ryder” she calmly said, “if something happens to you…”.

“There won’t be any Reyes reaction to worry about if we don’t find him” she answered, not giving up.

“Keema…” interrupted the Turian lieutenant “Maybe Kian will let her in his room in Tartarus, though. He wouldn’t let me, he said he had instructions”.

“Kian knows me,, ” she said, trying to look confident “he’ll let me in”. She wasn’t sure about this part, but she needed to convince them to let her help. Keema looked at her for a few seconds, she was obviously in pain, wearing shoes that didn’t belong her and having to take decisions she wasn’t prepared for.

“Don’t make me regret this, Pathfinder” she answered, in the end.

Kian reluctantly opened the door of Reyes private room in Tartarus, moaning around about the fact that he sent instructions to open to her only when he wasn’t there and that many thugs from the Collective came in the last few hours, trying to get in, so he had to put a bouncer to guard it because he wouldn’t risk losing a client like Reyes, whatever that meant.

She entered the room in silence and closed the door behind her, cutting off Kian’s complaints. It was the first time she could be in there alone. It was weird to her how the place, without Reyes, felt deprived of life, of its spirit. It was just a sad, badly illuminated room with a sofa, a table, a terminal. No dirty jokes about Asari crests, no laughter from the voice that she learned to love, no smile that shone in the shadows of the nightclub, no moans from a quickie between missions. Would her life feel as empty, if Reyes disappeared from it? Shea didn’t want to think about it.

The first think she did, was to look at his terminal, but she knew very well what she would find in it: nothing. Reyes didn’t want to leave any proof of what he did. He didn’t even protect it with a password because he was so careful that he didn’t need to. She looked around the room, clueless. Maybe under the table? She kneeled to search there, but the floor was pristine and the sofa connected directly with it, so no dark spaces to look at. Maybe a secret compartment somewhere? She scanned the walls and the floor. Nothing. She gave up to despair after taking apart every corner of the room.

“You might want to analyse the couch, Shea” suggested SAM, breaking the silence from their private channel “Perhaps if Mr Vidal wanted to hide something, he would do so in the place where he usually spends most of the time”. She could give it a go.

She sat where he used to, to catch a breath, and that’s when she felt it. There was something under her bum. She stood up and analysed the cushion. There was something hidden in its lining. She squeezed it, fondled it, and eventually found a hidden pocket and, inside it, Reyes’ omni-tool. Shea gasped in surprise. Reyes didn’t separate from it even when he had a shower or they were sleeping together. He never, never, took it off from his wrist. She knew he kept everything that he couldn’t destroy in there, secrets that would probably make Kadara crumble. Secrets that could destroy him, if someone wanted to. She opened the interface and chose to open its mail, maybe she could find something useful there. It asked for a password.

“Do you want me to crack it, Shea?” SAM asked. She couldn’t avoid thinking that he sounded curious.

“How long would it take?” Shea asked. She saw a random string being inputted in the form and then a warning. “Wrong password, 4 attempts left”. Shit.

“I cannot attempt a brute-force attack on this device,” he said and this time she wasn’t imagining it, SAM’s voice sounded genuinely full of respect, admiration even “Mr Vidal must really care about the safety of this device. I can try to find a backdoor, but I might not succeed. I suggest that you try to find the password yourself, Shea”.

“How would I do that?” she asked.

“It is possible that he changes it often” SAM reflected “Therefore, it might be referring to some common recent experience between the two of you”.

Shea snorted, holding off an incredulous laugh “You are deluded, SAM, if you think that he would use my name as a password”.

“I know that this isn’t the case, I just tried that” he answered “but I am not deluded, I am an AI, Pathfinder” he addressed her by title, so he was probably offended “I analysed Mr Vidal’s behavioural patterns and they suggest that he probably did use a common reference as password, but I have not enough information to guess the correct one in only four attempts”.

“So, I am on my own,” she said.

“It appears so,” he confirmed. She couldn’t come up with anything and gave up thinking about it, eventually, but she could try something else. She opened the extranet browser. It wasn’t locked. The browser’s history was empty, of course, but she opened the search engine anyway. Bingo! The latest searches included a tutorial on how to brew whisky in a bathtub and Ambrosia, the new club in town. Why would Reyes go to a club that wasn’t Tartarus? He hated the place, said it made Kian even crankier.

When Shea turned up at the entrance of Ambrosia, jumping the queue, the Krogan bouncer crossed his arms and blocked her path. She could notice the club looked more of a brothel than an actual place where people went to drink. That made her angry and she didn’t like the bouncer’s attitude.

“Let me in,” she said, almost growling.

“Fuck off, Pathfinder,” he answered, unmoved, baring his teeth.

“Oh, you know who I am then,” she said “so you know it’s not a good idea to piss me off”.

“This is a private club and I have strict instructions,” he said, lowering his head to almost touch her, he probably wanted to headbutt her. She didn’t flinch. “You are specifically banned from the place, unless invited”.

“Should I have the Charlatan men kick your ass, then?” she said. She didn’t want to involve Keema too much, she wouldn’t appreciate her to go there alone anyway, but she didn’t want to lose precious time either. If Reyes was inside…

“You can call Morda for what I care, I won’t let you in” he answered, tapping her front with his, challenging her. Her hand went instinctively to the hilt of her sword.

“Maybe this is not a good idea, Shea,” said SAM on their private channel “if Reyes is inside, making a scene – as you humans say - might put him in danger”. He had a point. She backed off, sharing with him one of the Krogan insults that Drack taught her. It was something about his egg being spoiled.

“Do you have a better plan?” she asked SAM when she was far enough from the place to do so safely.

“Well,” he offered “there is one place that we haven’t scanned for data yet”.

[bffhreprise]

Entry 215

 “Hey, man.  What’s up?” I asked as I strolled into James’ office.  The technology throughout this place still baffled me, despite my attempts to understand all of it.  This office was one of those cases where I only had vague notions on how the furniture formed.  On the other hand, Mila’s body was a fine piece of craftsmanship which I did help build.

 She nodded politely to me as I entered.

 “Nothing really.  I just wanted to talk with you about something.” replied James as he watched me.

 Rolling my eyes, I told him “Well, yeah.  I got that idea when Mila told me that you want to talk.”

 James laughed and said, “I suppose that would be a slight giveaway.  I imagine that you’ve noticed I’m a little different now.”

 Despite his laughter, James was obviously nervous.  I knew his expressions too well to be fooled.

 “Mysterious potions of unknown origin will do that.” I suggested.

 His surprised stare was hilarious.  “What?  How?” he asked.

 “Oh.  Aaliyah texts like a fiend.  I asked her what happened earlier today.  Sorry, but I was curious.” I explained.

 “I see.” he stated with a nod, but his eyes were studying me.

 I laughed and said, “I see the potion hasn’t helped you relax.  Chill, dude.  Everything’s fine.”

 James sighed.  “How am I not supposed to worry at times when everything keeps changing?  We barely graduated high school five months ago.  Now I’m about to buy my father’s hotels off him.  At the beginning of the year, I would’ve laughed at the suggestion of magic being real, no offense.  Now… well, you know.  Did I tell you Alma thinks we should start dating?” he asked.

 “She’s wanted to date you for a while now.  I think all of them still do.” I pointed out.

 “No, I’m pretty sure the twins are more interested in you now.” he argued with a smile.

 I shrugged and kept grinning.  Ai and Mai were certainly attracted to James still, but their advances toward me were unmistakable.  “You got me there.” I admitted.  “But still… Most girls you meet want to date you.”

 “Only because I have inherent magic that I can’t suppress.” he suggested.

 “Nah.  You’re just that likeable.  Seriously.  Even if you didn’t have any magic, I’m sure you’d manage to do fine.” I insisted.  “Look at me… I’m not half as attractive as you, not as wealthy, and not half as charming.  I’m still dating twins.”

 His magic certainly played a part in his relationships, but his personality was a obviously a winning factor.  People often responded to sincerity when they believed it, and James was certainly sincere in his good intentions.

 “Wait.  You’re dating both of them?” asked James, looking startled.  “What if they… No, they have to know.  Don’t they?’  He shook his head and then said, “No, define ‘dating’ for me.”

 I nearly laughed as I said, “Umm… I’m worried that your brain will hemorrhage at this rate.”

 “Seriously.  You can’t date two girls.  That’s just…” he started before stopping to consider.  “Awkward.”

 “Not as bad as you might think.” I replied.

 “Due to their telepathy?” inquired James.

 Now was my turn to be surprised.  “Oh.  Wow.  You knew?”

 Shaking his head, James said, “Not until you asked if telepathy was common in their family.”

 I nodded.  James could be surprisingly perceptive at times for someone who generally didn’t want to know.  “Ah.  Oops.  I probably shouldn’t say anything else about it.  Sorry, but it’s their secret.” I explained, holding up my hands to show the ball was out of my court.

 He nodded and said, “I understand.  Just was a bit of a surprise.”

 “Not as much as you were this morning.” I argued.  “When you showed up looking all glowy, I knew something had happened.   I didn’t expect you to handle Ai and Mai like kittens though.  I thought I was having a bizarre dream for a moment there.  How fast are you now?”

 “No clue.  I’m not quite as fast as Alma still, but I’m much closer.” he replied.

 “Is that why she brought up dating again?” I inquired, winking at him.

 He shook his head, sighed, and then said, “No, actually.  She brought that up before I took the potion.  Apparently, dating her would be dangerous in some way.  I really don’t know the specifics, but Aaliyah was adamantly against it unless I took the potion.”

 “Huh.  I’ll have to ask Ai and Mai what they can tell me about it.” I promised, hoping I’d be able to find out something useful for him.  There were many, many secrets in their family.

 “Can you tell them apart now?” he inquired.

 “Nope.  Well, I can if they let me get a good look at their eyes, but that’s a rarity.  I just sort of go with it.” I admitted.

 “That really doesn’t bother you?’ asked James, looking concerned.

 I waved away his worries and said, “No, man.  I’ve got two beautiful girls who actually get me.  I mean really get me.  If I want to run an idea by them for optimization of heat distribution in a nuclear reactor, they hold up their end of the conversation most of the time.  I can’t fault them for their lapses, given that it’s not really their focus.  I didn’t do any better discussing underwater ecosystems with them.”

 “I really need to make time for studying more.  I managed a little today, but I haven’t really had much alone time despite not sleeping last night.” he claimed, frowning as he looked down at his desk.

 “You don’t need to sleep?” I asked, surprised by the idea.  James would have a great deal more time if he didn’t.

 “I haven’t felt tired yet, but I might just crash for a day at any point.  No clue yet.” he replied.

 “Wow.  That will really free up some time, assuming you don’t do whatever you did last night.” I assured him, feeling a bit envious.  I could do so much more in a day if I didn’t have sleep taking up my as much time.

 “Oh.” stated James, finally looking up.  “I was hanging on Cosette’s floor.  There was an impromptu dance party.”

 “James and a bunch of girls dancing the night away.  Sounds about right.” I teased, knowing James was an incredible dancer.

 He sighed and shook his head, looking down as he traced some pattern on his desk.

 “I really want a chance to speak with Cosette.  I have so many questions, but I don’t want to make Ai and Mai jealous either.  Probably will have to wait until the girls are better acquainted, but dude… we’re living with a vampire.  Isn’t that crazy?”

 James looked up and smiled before saying, “Really is.  She’s got some pretty interesting magic.”

 “Oh?” I asked, wanting to hear more.

 “I’ve seen her shapeshift, and she can apparently heal wounds.  At least, she said that she heals the opening after she feeds.  Hard to tell, since I only saw her feed on Portentia.” he explained.

 “Wow.  She just let you watch her?” I asked in surprise.

 “Sure did.  Portentia’s blood seems somewhat like a drug to her.  She was a bit hyperactive for hours afterward.” he claimed.

 Just that much already delighted me.  Vampires always seemed like a cool myth to me.  Then Emma related how her dad was murdered by one, and they seemed a bit more terrifying.  Cosette didn’t strike me as terrifying, especially not if she was as careful as James claimed.  Of course, the girl could have put on a ruse for him.

 “I can’t believe she’s related to the twins.  Their expressions were priceless.” I mentioned, thinking back on how that news struck them.

 “I wouldn’t call it a close relation, since her father was over two hundred years old.  You’ll probably talk the girl’s ear off when you get a chance.” he teased.

 Barking a laugh, I said, “You’re probably right, assuming she won’t run off.”

 “She won’t.  She knows Aaliyah wouldn’t be happy with her, and she doesn’t have anywhere else to go.  There’s something you can ask her about later.” suggested James.  He seemed to remember something and said, “Before I forget again, we’ve been instructed to have a boys’ night tonight.”

 “Well, yeah.  Ai and Mai told me they would be indisposed, and Mila already posted the times on the company calendar.” I told him, wondering if he ever actually looked at the thing.

 “Oh.  I don’t have to inform Brandon then?” he asked.

 “Of course not, master.  I wouldn’t dream of shirking my duties simply because I’m helping you study.” insisted Mila, making “studying” sound suggestive with her tone.

 “Helping you ‘study’, eh?” I teased, quoting the word with my fingers as I glanced at Mila.

 “Oh, yes, Jarod.  The master enjoys my assistance immensely.” she teased with a playful smile.

 “Whoa.  Stop there.  No dirty innuendos in my office, you two.” ordered James.

 “I suppose Mila and I can continue our conversation outside if you need to do some more work.  Oh, but you’ll need her assistance, won’t you.” I teased with a wink.

 “Well, now I know your ulterior motive for creating Mila’s body.” suggested James with an unconvincing frown.

 “What?  Are you suggesting that I had an ulterior motive for pouring so much effort into helping Mila?  For shame, James.  I’m merely working toward sainthood.” I insisted.

 “Says the guy who’s dating twins.” he argued.

 “Someone had to help those poor, lost souls.” I assured him.

 James rolled his eyes and said, “I don’t want to know what sort of help you’re giving them.  You can keep those details to yourself.”

 Sighing, I complained “My own best friend has no interest in how my relationships are going.”

 “You’re right.  I should talk with them about how our would-be saint save them.” he agreed, standing and stepping around his desk.

 “Whoa now…” I told him, blocking his path.  “What’s said in your office should stay in your office.”

 “Oh?  You’re sure?” he asked with a smile.

 “Nah.” I admitted, waving the thought to the side.  “They’d probably be up for discussing things.  Let’s just see if they’re busy.”  I pulled out my phone and watched in surprise as it jumped out of my hand, floated into James’, and was set on his desk.

 “No need.  I changed my mind.” he told me, taking a seat again.

 “Dude… Let’s watch Star Wars tonight.” I suggested.

 “Huh?  I suppose we can.  I haven’t seen it for a while.  What brought that up?” he asked.

 “The way you did that reminded me of a Jedi recovering his lightsaber.” I admitted, envious as ever of magical abilities.

 “Oh.  I hadn’t thought of it like that before.  Mila, mind checking if Brandon would be up for watching any of the Star Wars movies?” he asked.

 “Not at all, master.  I’ll let you know the moment he replies.” she assured him.

 “Can you make this room look like Tatooine?” I hoped.

 James shrugged and glanced at Mila.  The walls immediately appeared to be rolling dunes of sand, and I could feel a dry wind hitting my face.

 “Actually, let’s go with Alderaan.” I told them as I rubbed my eyes.  “The dry air gets to me.”

 I could instantly feel the difference in the nice, cool air.  The scenery was beautiful, and I could see a starship flying up in the distance, the perfect subtle touch for that Star Wars feel.

 “Master, Brandon is asking if we get to use the theater for our movies.” stated Mila.

 James shrugged and said, “Sure.”

 “He’s going to wear his Jedi pajamas then.” she reported.

 “Oh… I’m bringing my Sith robe then.  It’s on!” I exclaimed, liking how quick Brandon was to get in on the fun.  This was going to be one awesome night!

[danbolia]

Mastery Journal

Month 1: Visual and Verbal Communication in Instructional Design

Week 1 assignment included a reading assignment from Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology. In Chapter 32, Using Rich Media Wisely, Clark and Mayer explained the Paradox of Rich Media as the situation when “current technology has a greater capacity to deliver information to learners than learners have the psychological capacity to assimilate that information” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012, p. 310). At first read, I was not entirely sure that I agreed with this supposition. I’ve always thought that our innate ability to learn enables us to adapt the new technologies, which in turn, allows us to find out more. However, I kept an open mind as Clark and Mayer suggested, “we recommend the use of scientific evidence as an important factor to consider” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012, p. 310).

Chapter three of the book covered many interesting aspects of how people learn. Clark and Mayer cited many studies, which presented evidence on the value of visuals and the linkage to improved learning. After reading this chapter, I feel comfortable with my past and current approaches to training design. Although I didn’t need further evidence to support the visuals approach to learning, a few days after reading the chapter, I experience a moment of clarity and resounding proof of this power.

Shortly after reading Chapter 3 assignment, I watched a YouTube video by Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin book. In this video, Dan Roam along with another author, Simon Sinek, selected a random a paper which has the statement “We achieve more when we chase the dream instead of the competition.” They then challenged each other to collaborate and draw stick-figure type pictures that would ultimately illustrate or represent the statement on the paper. Both authors took a turn drawing three items with each turn until they were satisfied with the results. The video was meant to demonstrate the power of visuals, and it was intriguing to watch. However, the next day while at work, I experienced the absolute proof of this power. As I was relating the YouTube video to my colleague at work, I could not remember the statement, which the author used to demonstrate their visual concept. I was not ashamed that I couldn’t remember the statement even though it was only a 12-word sentence. However, as I was recalling the pictures drawn, to describe it to my co-worker, I discovered that I could reconstruct the statement by visualizing the pictures. You see, I could recall the images from memory, which help me associate their metaphor and meaning to the statement, thus allowing me to reconstruct the text or meaning of that statement. Now was not able to recall word for word, but I certainly provided a very similar version. Without the visual aids, I would not have been able to remember the statement. Wow, what a moment of clarity.

I’ve always maintained that as an individual student, each person is empowered to learn on their own, based on their level of self-motivation. This is true regardless of whether the learning takes place at school or elsewhere. I feel that for the most part, learning institutions and teachers are only there to provide the resources and the impetus for us to learn. It is plausible that I could have stumbled onto the information I learned during this course, in my own time. If I do find the information on my own accord, I may read it and if I find it interesting or feel that the information has relevance to my work. Being back in the academic environment made me realized another important factor about learning while in school versus learning on my own. When I’m in school, I must read information whether it is interesting to me or not. Also, I’m required to do projects that necessitate putting what I read or learned into practice. When learning on my own, I would likely skip the exercises or hands-on activities. Case in point, I’ve taken and completed many tutorials from Lynda.com. Since I had a paid premium membership, I would even download the exercise files. However, I have never attempted any of the exercises in any of the tutorial. Our 3.1.2 Infographic project was my first time doing a Lynda.com exercise. Having assigned homework with imposed deadlines are never fun, they do serve an important purpose in learning.

During this past month, we had several hands-on projects. The first project requires us to apply the principles and good typography practices to create a poster of the Grand Canyon. I’ve always thought of myself as having decent graphic skills for someone that has no formal training. I’ve even taken a few typography courses from Lynda.com, on my own time to learn new skills. On most occasions, I would have to use these graphic skills to create graphics for projects at work. Most of the times, I would be my own judge for what I created. Having my artwork evaluated by my peers and graded by an instructor is a new and sobering experience for me. Not attaining all possible points for creativity is a good reminder for me to look at the projects and designs from the audience’s perspective.

Completing the course project, I learned that “[it] is possible to overcome those instances where you have a crazy busy image or a grid of images” (Saltz, 2013, 2:20). In her video, Ina showed how Sports Illustrated magazine combined inner and outer outlines with hard-edged drop shadow to make text pop against all imaginable background. I’ve employed this typography method repeatedly on subsequent projects in the course as well as projects for my work.

Here's a picture from my Grand Canyon Poster Project

For week 2, we were introduced to data visualization or DataViz. For me, this was also a fun, even if the learning opportunity was tied to a mandatory school project. This module provided in-depth information on infographic creation and gave us an opportunity to learn Adobe Illustrator (AI) program while we practiced creating our own infographic. Like my classmates, I got a lot out of week 2 assignments. I was impressed with how Full Sail University incorporated online materials into the course curriculum. Perhaps the University’s use of online resources is a common practice among all universities.

The infographic project turned out to be the long-term project for the course. What started out as a platform for learning DataViz and AI, became the platform for learning Keynote and interactive presentation. One surprising element in this module was the requirement to record audio narration. Although the interactive presentation is a task I’m familiar with, doing my own narration is a new territory for me. In past projects, I’ve always shied away from the role of the narrator because I felt that my voice does not have the announcer quality. Hearing my own voice is quite annoying to me. After much effort and many recordings, I think that I turned in an acceptable narration for my project.

Here's a picture of my Infographic project

Our final reading assignment for the month was the chapter, Learning Is Visual from the Dorian Peters’ Interface Design for Learning book. Peters (2013) provided many examples that exemplified and supported Clark and Mayer’s positions on the importance of visuals. Peters (2013) stated “One way to think about an educational graphic is as a cognitive tool. Like a hammer enhances what an arm can do in terms of strength, graphics like diagrams, graphs, and maps extend what a brain can do in terms of reasoning” (The Power of Visualization, para. 6).

The culmination of this interactive presentation project highlighted the viable method of using learning media to support learning. As Clark and Mayer stated, “The human brain has evolved an architecture that is easily overloaded,” by using the “less is more” approach and adopting the “learner-centered view of instruction” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012, p. 318), I will focus on what the learner needs in order to improve learning as opposed to making learning technology the focus.

Going forward with this yearlong journey, what adjustments could you make to ensure your future success in achieving mastery?

As I mentioned above, my current journey will only be four-month long. So far, it has been a rewarding experience. I have been exposed to information that I didn’t know existed. I’m very satisfied with the effort I’ve put forth on each assignment and project. A surprising reward for me has been how much I learned about my own shortcomings by providing peer evaluation for my classmates. I find that as I analyze their work to satisfy the academic requirements, I see my own faults and mistakes in my own projects. I don’t think that was one of the intended course objectives for the peer evaluation task, but it has been good for me.

All throughout the course, I found myself quoting or reflecting on our reading assignments while I’m at work. I don’t think a day has gone by since I started the course that I didn’t use a little bit of what I learned and applied to a work situation. I’m fortunate to be working in the same field that I’m studying. My current job enables me to know what I don’t know about this field. This knowledge is serving me well as a starting point for me to press forward into the next three months.

References Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E. (2012). Using rich media wisely. In R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 310 & 318). Boston, MA: Pearson Peters, D. (2013). Interface design for learning: Design strategies for learning experiences. San Francisco, CA: New Riders. Retrieved from http://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/web-design-and-development/9780133365481 Saltz, I. (2013, October 25). Foundations of typography: color, contrast, and scale [Lynda.com online course]. Retrieved from https://www.lynda.com/ Design-tutorials/Foundations-Typography-Color-Contrast-Scale/133328-2.html

End of Month One -  Mastery Journal

Month 1 Self Reflection

REFLECT I’m a bit frustrated that we are once again required to reflect on the previous course experience. It seems redundant and unnecessary when I’ve already done this in Assignment 3.4.1. I feel as if I spent more time reflecting on the project than I did working on it. Perhaps the Course Director might consider reviewing and revising this course assignment.

On my last reflection of my previous course, my Instructor recommended that I should write in a more concise manner and always proof my writing before submitting. I shall endeavor to do so in this post.

INQUIRE I’m truly at a lost to see the value of this repetitive task. I don’t want to appear neglectful or uncaring about my learning experience, but I want to know the purpose of Assignment 6.3.1, Task 3.

SUGGEST All assignments and tasks from my previous week, which included typography, critique, infographic, and writing culminated with the final project of creating an interactive presentation. When I created this project, I applied the suggestions from my peers and Instructor. I also implemented improved design changes. After viewing my submitted final project, my Instructor recommended that I should fix my presentation so that the audio narrations play each time the user select a topic of interest. Because I used PowerPoint, this seemingly simple feature is not available. I will attempt to find a workaround to accomplish my Instructor’s suggestion.

ELEVATE MS PowerPoint and Apple Keynote offer features that are unique to each software. I will try to use features from both applications to create a presentation that maintains the same animated user interactions and plays the same way regardless of which application a user is using to view the presentation. This undertaking is mainly for academic purpose. However, there may be an opportunity for me to use this presentation at work to demonstrate the advanced features of PowerPoint. Hopefully, I can encourage users to be more creative with their presentation.

End of Month 1 Reflection

Month 2: Digital Media and Learning Applications

REFLECT My second course for the Instructional Design and Technology Certificate Program was Digital Media and Learning Applications. The course introduced students to the concept of using video as a teaching medium. The mastery project for the course was to create an interactive quiz. Each student selects a topic presented in a Science at NASA video to use as the basis for the interactive quiz. Students determine their target audience and develop learning outcomes based on the content of the video. Students must create learning assessment to evaluate how well their target audience learned the topic. The learning assessment included questions, answers, and feedbacks that make up the traditional assessment as well as authentic assessment activities. The learning assessment questions, answers, and feedbacks that students developed became the content material used to create the interactive quiz. The basic structure for the interactive quiz was derived from an exercise that was part of a Lynda.com tutorial. In this tutorial, students learned and practiced coding, using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Angular JavaScript, and JavaScript Online Notation (JSON). The Mastery Project clarified for me the differences between learning objectives and learning outcomes. I much prefer the use of learning outcomes because it places the focus what students can achieve or able to do at the end of the learning experience. Whereas the learning objectives paradigm were stating what the training or instructor was trying to achieve through the training. The Interactive Quiz project first appeared to be just an exercise in copying codes shown in a video. However, the following tasks require students to apply the coding by using the learning assessment they created. This project is an excellent example of an authentic assessment to determine if learners can use the coding skills taught. In creating the Interactive Quiz, students must apply the principles of typography. This provided yet another authentic assessment for the previous lessons on typography.

INQUIRE In my Interactive Quiz, I wanted to add hyperlinks in my feedbacks, which would provide a convenience link to additional resources for a topic. This became an impossible task for me because the structure of the Interactive Quiz was based on Angular JavaScript generating the HTML codes. Although I researched this issue, I was unable to figure out how to modify my quiz to have the hyperlinks that user would be able to click. In the end, I settled for just providing the URL text that learners can use to navigate to other websites.

SUGGEST All the tasks for this month reflect the name of the course, Digital Medial and Learning Applications. I’m fully satisfied with the contents and methods. I have no further suggestion.

ELEVATE Since completing this course, I’ve had an opportunity to put the concept of the Interactive Quiz into practice. My supervisor at work was looking for a way to quickly send out monthly Q&A challenge to personnel in the field. The purpose of the questions is to keep employees up-to-date on their skills. I created an interactive quiz based on the project from this course and proposed to use the quiz to distribute the monthly challenge efficiently. In my proposal, I noted the fact that once the quiz was created, it could be easily updated by changing the content of the JSON file. My supervisor accepted my proposal without hesitation.

End of Month 2 Reflection

Month 3: Filmmaking Principles for Instructional Design

Reflect

Month 3 course was on filmmaking principles for instructional design. Students were required to create a three-minute video tutorial on a choice of topic, selected from a specified list. The video must include voice narration and music. I found the project quite challenging.

I’ve always been interested in the Hollywood process of movie making. I’ve even dabbled with making home movies many times in the past. However, I quickly learned that none of the experimentation and playing with home movies would be helpful to me on this project. The most important lesson I gained from this month’s course is how much I don’t know about filmmaking.

Another area of difficulty I encountered was the lack of familiarity with Apple computer and the Mac OS. Consequently, I was unfamiliar with software such as Garage Band and iMovie. If I didn’t have access to those great Lynda.com tutorials to learn the software, I don’t think I would be able to complete this project.

In the end, I was able to bring all the pieces of the puzzles together and created a video that I’m proud of. I’m confident that my video will not win any award or recognition. None the less, to me it represents a personal achievement during my journey to learn a very complex topic.

Inquire

I need much more practice in all the concepts and techniques before I can even say that I have a working knowledge of this subject. My storyboarding skill needs the most attention because it sets the stage for the tasks that follow. Collaborating with others on a large movie project will undoubtedly add to the complexity of the task. When it comes to filmmaking as it applies to instructional design, I will remain guarded about its potential value. While I’m convinced that video as a learning object adds much to the cognitive process, I must not let the enthusiasm and excitement of filmmaking overshadow the complexity and high costs associated with creating videos.

Suggest

My performance and my results would have been much improved if I had more time to work on the video project. I need to learn and practice using software like iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Element, or the full version of Premiere. I should also try to acquire higher end camera to use for future video projects.

Elevate

Although I don’t have any professional requirement to make instructional videos similar to the class project, I have envisioned many personal video projects I want to do. Over the years, I’ve recorded many hours of raw videos, capturing different events in my life. I’ve always nurtured the desire to create videos that I would be proud to share but have never found the time or had the skills to do. With the experience and knowledge, I’ve gained from this course, I shall make it a personal goal to create professional quality movies, capturing the important and fun events during my lifetime. One day my children will have these videos to remember me by. These personal projects will allow me to practice and continue my education and improve my filmmaking skills.

My Tutorial Video: Classic Origami Crane

[bffhreprise]

Entry 171

 “Looks like Jarod will be a bit still.  I’m sure he won’t mind if we go ahead and start shopping.” suggested James, looking completely unashamed.

 :We are partially to blame for not telling James the time in advance.: claimed Mai.

 :He still should’ve taught Jarod to always dress up for a date of any kind with us.  Having to inform him simply delayed things further.: I argued.

 :He might’ve caught too many eyes before he met us had he known better.: Mai insisted.

 James quickly assured us “I’m sure he just got a bit flustered when he was asked to dress up.  You know what he’s comfortable wearing.”

 Alma took James’ arm and started guiding him toward a store, so we didn’t bother replying.

 :He’s so very tall.: I commented, staring upward at him through my sister’s eyes.

 :Especially next to Lady Pendreigh, but they’re still cute together.: replied Mai with an internal giggle.

 We weren’t going to say anything of the like to Lady Pendreigh.  She was occasionally grumpy about her height.  Both of us grinned the moment we stepped inside, looking around the store together.  This place was worth the trip.

 :I wonder what Jarod will like best on us.: pondered Mai.

 Our thoughts had merged on that point, wishing we could read his mind at times.  We were still learning how to deal with Jarod.  He was handsome but had no sense of fashion.  He was quick-witted enough to keep up against both of us, which was incredible for a human.

 :The way he smiles!: exclaimed Mai.

 :He’s always up to something, but the happiness is so genuine.: I agreed.

 Lady Pendreigh had spoken with the staff on our behalf, and we actually liked a number of the dresses they brought out as well as some of the suits.  The shoes were another matter.  Several pairs were cute, but most were too dull.

 :We do have a bit of a collection.: teased Mai.

 :But we could always use more!: I insisted.

   I felt her agreement in her mirth.  We wondered at times how people managed without another half.  One body wouldn’t have enough hands.

 :Or eyes… feet… anything really.: agreed Mai.

 Yet Jarod managed.  He was incredibly productive and still would sit around talking with us about anything we wanted.

 :The way he catches onto things is amazing.: I stated.

 Giving an internal nod, Ai said, :I love how his eyes light up as he asks questions and makes comments.:

 Jarod understood.  He always understood.  Unlike James who was idly staring around the room, Jarod always paid attention as well.  We both grinned outwardly.

 :He still can’t tell us apart.: teased Mai.

 :James is a freak.: I stated.

 We didn’t have a clue how he always knew, but there was no fooling him anymore.  He didn’t even have to glance at us, and he’d know which spoke.  Lady Pendreigh had personally analyzed our voices before.  They were identical, but James still knew.

 With Jarod still absent, we decided to start trying on our favorites of what we had seen.  Lady Pendreigh actually decided to try one as well, much to our surprise.  We smirked.  Everything had to be tailored for her, since practically no one carried her size here.  She did have much better luck in Japan when we all visited together, but there was rarely reason to see our mother.

 We sighed, knowing she was going to cause trouble.  Winning nii-san over was an imperative, but Jarod could manage.

 :Couldn’t he?: we questioned, feeling somewhat worried.

 “Hey, James.  Mila told me you four were in here.” stated Jarod from the other room.

 We grinned and hurried to finish changing again.

 “Sorry.  I should have thought to text you about it.  Why are you wearing your glasses?” asked James.

 :Jarod’s always wearing those things.: we commented to ourselves.

 :They do look nice on him.: admitted Mai.

 “That will not do.” stated Lady Pendreigh.

 :The glasses?: I asked.

 :She has no right to complain about mutlitasking.: Mai insisted.

 “Sorry, but I don’t really have much occasion to dress up.” replied Jarod.

 :Oh.: stated Mai.

 :Of course.: I agreed.

 We could guess how he was dressed.  After checking each other over, we rushed out to save Jarod from more scrutiny.

 Mai rolled her eyes as she said, :Black tennis shoes.  Really?:

 :Only Jarod…: I agreed.  Then I posed and exclaimed “Jarod!  Does this look weird?”

 Mai posed as well, smiling at him as she said, “I look cute though, right?”

 We could tell by the way he looked at us that he approved of both outfits.  His smile was so wonderful.

 “You both look great.” he assured us.  “Sorry that I’m a bit late.”

 Lady Pendreigh rolled her eyes as she said, “I’ll blame James, since the twins were already at fault twice today.  Let’s get moving, shall we?”

 We pouted but hurried to change.  Neither of us doubted that she had been annoyed by the outfit she tried just as much as by Jarod’s current attire.  After quickly stating what we were getting to the awaiting attendant, we hurried back out to Jarod.

 “James, please take care of the bill for us.” ordered Lady Pendreigh before we were even finished.

 He was looking at his phone in confusion when we stepped out, but we didn’t doubt he was worrying over something silly.  Jarod, on the other hand, looked nervous under Lady Pendreigh’s scrutiny.  She kept looking up at him as she typed something into her phone.

 :Working, working, working.: complained Mai.

 :She never stops.: I agreed.

 There were times when we were younger where we actually did try to get her to take a break, but she never really gave into our pleas in that area.  There would always be a laptop floating by or at least one of her phones with constant messages be exchanged.  She made our ten to fourteen hour workdays look like shameless slacking.

 :We do take several days off at a time when we want.: mentioned Mai as she took Jarod’s arm.

 :Because we’re sane!: I exclaimed, winking as I took Jarod’s other arm.

 When James returned to us, we took our purchases from him and then followed as Lady Pendreigh guided us to another shop.

 “I’d recommend getting no less than a dozen suits ordered, Jarod.  You’ll make a much finer impression at meetings if you dress the part of a millionaire instead of acting the part of a million dollar bum.” she insisted.

 Jarod tensed.

 “Please, Jarod.” begged Mai.

 Staring up at him, I said, “For us.  You’ll look incredible in a nice suit.”

 “Don’t you want to dress up for us?” asked Mai.

 “We really do love seeing you in nice clothing.” I insisted, letting my bags slide down my arm, so I could play with the button of his shirt.

 Looking from us to James, Jarod asked “Mind helping me pick some stuff out, James?”

 :Completely smooth in a fight…: started Mai.

 :Scared of nice clothes.: I finished.

 :Only Jarod.: we thought as we watched him retreat into the store with James already rambling about options.

 Taking a seat, Lady Pendreigh said, “James has impeccable taste in clothes.  They’ll be fine.”

 We nodded.  There was no arguing that James dressed well.  He was like some artist’s rendering of what a perfect guy might look like, but he was too stuffy.  Perfectly likeable.

 :Incredibly likeable.: agreed Mai.

 :But stuffy.: I complained.

 As we waited, we listened in on the boys talking about suits and their current wealth.  We also considered what married life would be like for Lady Pendreigh and James.  We could easily picture them being perfectly formal even alone together, casually chatting about the weather even if their minds were on a dozen other things.

 :More like a million for Lady Pendreigh.: argued Mai.

 :James might try to worry about a million things at once.  Hard to say.: I countered.

 She didn’t argue.  We didn’t know how they’d ever make any progress.  Jarod, on the other hand, was playful.  He wasn’t against showing his feelings even as he analyzed ours.  We were going to have such fun with him, especially with him moving into the mansion soon.

 When the boys finally returned to us, we told Jarod about how excited we were to see him in a suit, certain he’d look absolutely perfect.  He didn’t argue as we followed the other two into the next building over.  Once there, we thrust our bags at James, who instinctively took them without a word.  Then we dragged Jarod off to find him something more fitting for today.  With Jarod being a far more reasonable size than James, finding some things we liked off the rack wasn’t a problem at all.

 “You have to try this one!” I insisted, grabbing a navy suit off a rack.

 “No-no.  He has to try this one.” insisted Mai, handing over a black suit with a scarlet shirt.

 :Isn’t it ruby?: asked Mai.

 :Maybe it’s the lighting, but I think scarlet.: I told her.

 Mai took that shirt back from him as I took the navy suit away.  Then I handed him a plum shirt.  Well, Mai did, but I had spotted it when I looked at her.  Jarod had such lovely green eyes, and the plum-colored shirt would bring them out.  Knowing we were going with this ensemble, we used a spell to take off the tags and caught them as if they had happened to fall off.

 “These shoes!” I exclaimed as we approached the dressing room.  Mai let go of Jarod long enough to grab them for him.

 “Get changed while we find you a better tie.” we insisted.

 He gave us a half-smile before doing as he was told.

 We had some fun looking through ties and imagining what they’d look like on them, but we went with a simple black one with dark grey designs across it.  Time was running short.  The moment Jarod stepped out, we smiled at him and hurried to put the tie on him.

 “Perfect.” insisted Mai.

 “I’ll trust your instincts.  Lemme get changed back, and we can be off.” he told us.

 We quickly grabbed him and said, “No!”

 “You can’t change back, Jarod.” I told him.

 “There’s no time.” explained Mai.

 “And we couldn’t bear to see you abandon the clothes we picked so quickly.” I insisted.

 Nodding, Mai said, “Let’s go pay.”

 Luckily, he didn’t fight us.  Jarod could be difficult in his own way at times.  James and Lady Pendreigh had barely moved from where we had left them, so finding them was easy.

 Smiling, I said, “And we present to you…”

 “For your viewing pleasure.” stated Mai.

 “Jarod, the lunch-ready-jerk-who-stole-our-shopping-day.” we finished together, pointing at him from each side.

 James gave a thumbs up while Lady Pendreigh gave a small nod.

 “I suppose that will do.” she stated before turning toward the door.

 Jarod nervously looked over his outfit.

 “Ignore her.” I told him, lifting his chin with a finger.

 “You look wonderful!” exclaimed Mai, hugging his arm.

 “We adore this outfit.” I added.

 If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have forced him to buy it.

 The three of us followed the other two to James’ car.  Once there, we quickly insisted that our clothes would be wrinkled if we all squeezed in the back, so the three of us hurried to where Jarod had parked his Mustang.  I let Mai sit up front, so I could pout in the back.

 “So where are we going?” he asked.

 “Migliore del Cielo.” stated Mai.

 “Just take a right two lights down.” I told him.  “I give far better directions, so I really should’ve sat up by you.”

 “Oh, sister… Jarod likes me best, and we both know I give better directions.” she claimed.

 “Jarod, tell her you like me best.” I begged.  “You know it’s true!”

 “As if I could fairly pick a favorite between minds like yours.” he teased.

 :He really is remarkable.: stated Mai as she rubbed the sleeve of his jacket.

 :We’ll have him.  Lady Pendreigh will help us if needed.: I assured her.

 When we arrived, Jarod tossed the keys to the valet, and we each took an arm.  He never seemed to mind the stares of onlookers, probably something he picked up from James.  With James around, a group was guaranteed attention.  The manager knew us on sight and personally showed us to the table.

 “Please remember to be on your best behavior.” instructed Lady Pendreigh as she stared into Jarod’s eyes.  “This is important for you.”

 He was quite obviously surprised with how he looked at us, but we just smiled, confident that he’d manage without foreknowledge of who was visiting.

 “Nii-san!” we exclaimed, catching sight of our brother.  We then ran to him and hugged his arms as he smiled.

 Speaking in Japanese, he told us “I am glad to see you, but please behave yourselves.  You two need to work on your manners.”  Turning to Alma, he bowed and said, “Thank you for having me, Lady Pendreigh.”

 James rose to greet him, shaking hands and saying, “I’m James Michael Somerset III.”

 “I’m Duncan Daichi Drache.  Thank you for taking care of my sisters.  They speak highly of you.” replied our brother.

 Jarod, who had risen as well, also shook his hand, saying, “I’m Jarod Davis.  It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

 We sighed as our nii-san went stiff.

 “I’ve heard of you as well.” he curtly stated.

 We blamed our mother.  Since Duncan spent most of his time with her, he picked up all sorts of terrible habits.  Despite her, he had a good heart.  We had hope for him yet.