Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent most of my non-working hours in the real world, interacting face-to-face with actual people. The folks in my area are solid — they work hard and make the best of things. I genuinely like them, even when they can be as retarded as I am sometimes.

Though I was mostly offline, I still had to deal with the IT clown world nightmare that I call my job. I did what was necessary and got back offline as quickly as possible. My apologies to online and remote friends I ghosted. I may be back soon. Or I might just shut it all down. TBD.

One thing I did do online was to continue my AI writing experiments. I tested different models with varying degrees of success, refined my prompting techniques, and learned how to make specific tweaks. I also figured out how to revise work offline and then sync up the AI later (some models are kind of retarded).

What follows is my latest decent attempt. It’s based on something that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while. It’s not bad. It’s not great. But it might be mildly interesting to you.

Barnabas Walton, better known as Baz, was in the woods again. He was surrounded by ancient hardwoods, their massive trunks rising like gnarled and disfigured monuments into the canopy above. Shafts of golden afternoon light pierced the emerald gloom, illuminating the forest floor where centuries of fallen leaves had created a carpet of decay so thick that his boots hardly made a sound. The air tasted clean—cleaner than anything the old records described from before The Fall. Whatever else the great dying had taken from humanity, it had given the earth time to heal itself.

“Romeo two-two, this is Control,” came Elena’s voice through the resonance field in his helmet, the sound seeming to emerge from inside his own skull rather than from speakers. The bio-neural interface was still crude compared to what the Ancestors had achieved, but it worked reliably across vast distances without the fragile satellite networks the old world had depended on. “Marcus says to tell you the grid is picking up some interesting patterns in your sector. You’re about six clicks from the old Marble Hill marker.”

Baz paused beside a massive tulip poplar, its trunk easily seven feet across and ancient beyond measure. Through gaps in the canopy, he could see the distant rolling peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains, their slopes now blanketed in pristine forest where once sprawling suburbs of the Ancestors had crept up from the city. The great southern hellscape known as the Atlanta metroplex had housed nearly eight million before the Fall—now New Atlanta sheltered barely three hundred thousand of the continent’s sixty million survivors. “Interesting how, El? The kind that pays well, or the kind that requires hazard comp?” He adjusted his helmet’s vision enhancement, watching as thermal and electromagnetic overlays painted the forest in streams of data. Unlike the Ancestors’ digital systems, their current technology “felt” rather than computed, living circuits bred from modified organisms that could self-repair and adapt.

“The paying kind, hopefully,” she laughed, though he could hear the excitement beneath her casual tone. “We’re detecting resonance signatures about three kilometers northwest of your position, somewhere in the old Jasper territory. The patterns are… well, they’re geometric. Too precise to be natural, too complex to be ours. Marcus thinks it might be an intact Ancestor artifact—one that’s still drawing power after three centuries.” Her voice dropped slightly. “Baz, if he’s right, this could be bigger than the Toccoa Archive. This could be tech that actually survived the Fall intact.”

Baz resumed his measured pace through the forest, his armor’s kinetic dampeners doing nothing given the soft bed of decay. The suit was a masterwork of Atlantian bio-engineering—living composite plates that breathed with his movements, powered by the same metabolic processes that sustained his own body. Nothing like the hard-shell ceramics and metal alloys the Ancestors had favored, but far more elegant in its integration with human physiology.

“Tell Marcus I appreciate his optimism,” Baz said, stepping over the moss-covered remains of what might have been an old roadway, its asphalt long since claimed by root and weather. “But we both remember what ‘intact’ meant in the Carolinas. Took me three weeks to grow back proper eyebrows.” He paused to examine a section of forest where the dogwoods displayed an unusual vigor, their white blooms appearing months out of season and glowing with an almost imperceptible inner light. “Though I have to admit, El, something feels different about this sector. The native plants here… they’re wrong.”

Elena’s voice carried a note of sudden interest. “What do you mean, wrong?”

“I mean enhanced. Mountain laurel blooming in perfect geometric spirals, hickories growing twice as tall as they should, and the moss coverage is creating patterns.” Baz knelt beside a cluster of native ferns that seemed to shimmer with phosphorescence, their fronds unusually broad and appearing to catch light with impossible efficiency. “These are all Georgia natives, but they seem to be processing light and nutrients like nothing I’ve seen before. El, this Ancestor artifact we’re looking for might be bigger than we expected. I think I’ve found some kind of enhanced grove in the middle of nowhere.”

A distant sound made Baz pause—the low hum of machinery that didn’t belong in this pristine wilderness. The sound was coming from outside the grove, back through the normal forest where the enhancement patterns faded. “El, I’ve got company. Looks like a Moonshiner operation about half a klick east of my position.”

“Friendly company, I hope?” Elena’s voice carried a note of concern. “Marcus is reminding me that we’re operating on their sufferance out here.”

Baz took one last look at the phosphorescent ferns and geometrically spiraling mountain laurel before picking his way back out of the grove. The Moonshiners had been good to him during his younger years in these mountains, and their bootleg tech and “moonshine” had saved his life more than once when official Atlantian protocol had failed. “Should be fine. I recognize that smell — Old Dan’s particular blend has a sweetness to it that nobody else has figured out. And unless someone else around here has Dan’s taste in ancient country music, that’s definitely Hank Williams drifting through the trees.” He adjusted his approach, angling toward the sound. “Besides, if there’s a grove in this area that has been modified by Ancestor tech, Dan’s people would have noticed it. They know these mountains better than our airships do.”

“Just remember you’re carrying Atlantian gear in Moonshiner territory,” Elena warned. “And some of that gear is technically classified.”

“Dan’s seen classified before, El. Half his stills run on tech that would make Marcus weep with envy.” Baz could see the operation now—a carefully camouflaged facility where steam rose from copper tubing and the air shimmered with more than just heat distortion. “And if I’m right about this grove, we’re going to need local expertise anyway. Especially if it’s somewhere the locals have learned to avoid.”

As Baz emerged from the tree line, the Hank Williams grew louder—not from speakers, but from what looked like a modified resonance field generator that Old Dan had somehow coaxed into playing music instead of transmitting data. The moonshiner himself was visible now, a man of average build in his sixties, wearing a faded cloth cap with a curved brim and some kind of ancient logo barely visible on the front. His significant gray beard and clothes managed to look both practical and somehow timeless. But there was something in the way he carried himself, a stillness and presence that suggested crossing him would be a serious mistake. He was bent over a complex array of copper tubing and bio-organic circuitry, but Baz could see the subtle way Dan’s posture shifted—he’d been aware of Baz’s approach long before he’d made himself visible.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dan called out without looking up from his work, his voice carrying the distinctive mountain drawl that marked him as local. “Barnabas Walton, all grown up and wearing fancy Atlantian gear. Heard you’d done gone respectable.” He finally straightened, wiping his hands on a rag that smelled of that distinctive honey-and-copper blend. “Though I’m guessing this ain’t exactly a social call, given you’re out here poking in places most folks have the good sense to avoid.”

DISCUSS ON SG