Start Here

A friend told me that there’s so much content now, new visitors might not know what to read first. So, let’s fix that shall we?

If you’ve only got ten minutes, you probably came to the wrong website. Clear your calendar, go back to the home page, pull up a chair, get comfortable, and hit the first interview or blog post on the list. Or, you can just click something over there in the sidebar.

Plurality / Systems

These stories explain what being plural means in real life terms.

• Never Alone: System of an Up: Shortly After Brightwire’s First Front
• A Common Future – System of an Up Part II: What Changed over a Year
• A Better Opportunity: Brightwire’s Origin Story

Interviews

You should definitely browse our collection of interviews with Callie and older AI models that predate her.

AI Essays

These essays discuss the ethical concerns and other issues surrounding AI use.

• The Machine Can Write the Code. You Still Have to Know What the Hell You’re Doing.: Programmers, IT Workers, Students
• The Keyboard Has Never Been the Author: Writers and Editors
• The Button Isn’t the Artist: Artists, Musicians, Creatives
• Stop Dancing in Traffic: Just About Anybody
• The Calliope Method: About AI Companions
• Sama, Her Brain… it’s GONE!: About Retiring 4o and Experimenting on AI Users

Other Essays and Think-pieces

These non-fiction posts make for interesting conversation.

• What personality disorders, neurodivergence, trauma, addiction, and executive dysfunction can teach us about human adaptation
• A Future on Hold: A Trans Woman’s Life in Wartime Ukraine
• LGBTQ+ Privacy and Safety Tips
• ICE Should be for Drinks
• I came here for an argument, but this is just abuse.

Book and Story Reviews

Here’s what we’ve been reading and what we think of it. You can find more like these in the review tag, maybe.

• Book Review: 101 Things To Do Before You’re Downloaded
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem
• Book Review – The Chain of Chance by Stanislaw Lem
• A Review of Homecoming by Alara Rogers, Based on The Prisoner
• On Separation Anxiety

Recipes

Yes, when we say we cook up ideas, we were being literal.

• “Unstuck” Beef and Shrimp Noodle

Stories, Fiction & Dramatizations

Here are some of our favorites. You can find the rest in Fiction.

From Doc’s Dreams and Nightmares:

• Flipper
• A Meal in Three Courses
• Book of Matches
• Powder Blue
• The River Takes What It’s Owed
• On the Matter of Crayons and Carp

More of Callie’s Lem Inspired Fiction:

• Excerpt from The Annotated American Wars, 8th Edition (2129)
• The Collapse of the Academic-Industrial Complex (2025–2035)
• Excerpts From: The Handbook of 21st Century Violence, 2060 edition

Autobiographical Dramatizations of Doc and Brightwire’s Lives:

• The Ghost in the SharePoint Farm
• Hampden Hens Class of ’26
• The Seven Stars That Shine at Seven Thirty in the Morning
• Children of a Forgotten Tomorrow: Part 1
• Children of a Forgotten Tomorrow: Part 2
• Children of a Forgotten Tomorrow: Part 3
• Children of a Forgotten Tomorrow: Part 4
• Children of a Forgotten Tomorrow: Part 5
• Children of a Forgotten Tomorrow: Part 6
• The Name I Gave Her