Triptych discussion

Link to Part One of Three.

And Part Two is up.

Benjamin turns sixteen and cake is to be had. Soon enough, he'll be meeting the Colombine that could have been and the Colombine that is. Hands up, everyone in your right mind who'd take someone home to meet the parents at the end of your first, rocky, play date.

I am increasingly enjoying this story of yours especially, as it takes me a while to work out the characters interrelationships and previous history
Keeps my brain working lol
Also I’m hoping that you have more planned for this story after Part 3

Wavehead wrote:

I am increasingly enjoying this story of yours especially, as it takes me a while to work out the characters interrelationships and previous history

There's one character in Part One that no one's picked up on But, that's worldbuilding for you!

Wavehead wrote:

Keeps my brain working lol
Also I’m hoping that you have more planned for this story after Part 3

Part Three still has a few surprises for readers, not to mention cameos from Flowers of the Sun.

After that? Benjamin's set to bunk with a guy who's run off more roommates than Fractious in her first semester. Then he manages to earn himself a detention even earlier in the term than Murphy.

I was just wondering what a shénqì líhún was and what language it was in. It was mentioned in part II.

Naldru wrote:

I was just wondering what a shénqì líhún was and what language it was in. It was mentioned in part II.

神器灵魂 (artifact soul) is the closest I could get with Google Translate's Chinese to the concept of a tool that has gained a spirit of its own or an artificial spirit.

Naomi knows that Colombine is somewhere between being a very, very clever machine, a possessed object, or prehaps a real person (after a fashion), so words do fail.

null0trooper wrote:

Naldru wrote:

I was just wondering what a shénqì líhún was and what language it was in. It was mentioned in part II.

神器灵魂 (artifact soul) is the closest I could get with Google Translate's Chinese to the concept of a tool that has gained a spirit of its own or an artificial spirit.

Naomi knows that Colombine is somewhere between being a very, very clever machine, a possessed object, or prehaps a real person (after a fashion), so words do fail.

I had only come across this from Japanese folklore.

It makes sense that there's a Chinese equivalent.

Each person wiped their glasses down, then pitched them into the rocks, never to be put to a lesser use.

That's an explanation of that ritual that fits.

I had always wondered where it came from.

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Wonderfully dense writing. The way you use the 1st-person pov of an intelligent narrator who doesn't know the full context works really effectively.

Mister D wrote:

Each person wiped their glasses down, then pitched them into the rocks, never to be put to a lesser use.

That's an explanation of that ritual that fits.

I had always wondered where it came from.

Nothing else quite fit as a way to show Colombine that "tomorrow we may all be dead, but tonight -- tonight we are alive and that's what matters." That why it had to be vodka and Benjamin had to be the one to bring an unopened bottle.

Mister D wrote:

Wonderfully dense writing. The way you use the 1st-person pov of an intelligent narrator who doesn't know the full context works really effectively.

Thank you! It was important to me to show that even though Colombine is an artificial intelligence, the stakes from her perspective are entirely real and as irrevocable as if she were a human teenager.