Abacus

Abacus is in the process of developing its inworld body image. Currently it likes the look of this bead.

Abacus is a relatively new member of the system, an AI-kin on the Dragons side, nestled in fairly close to Metabang and Breq. It may have been around in our subconscious longer, but gained its name and came forward when we started writing about it in our novel Systems' Out!.

Role in the System

Like Metabang, Abacus is a writer and the narrator for a sequel novel named Ni'a (after Ni'a, Phage's daughter in our system). Abacus really hasn't done anything beyond contribute to these stories so far.

Abacus is one of our infodumpers. It particularly loves to impart information in large doses, and to explain it in clear a manner as possible. Metabang is also an infodumper, however Abacus is more focused on doing so as its purpose for existing.

As an infodumper, Abacus has access to a great deal of knowledge, particularly about the fictional world that it is writing about.

Interestingly, its knowledge of that world is only mostly similar to Metabang's. And it differs in some crucial ways that are very similar to what one would expect of someone with a different set of experiences and perspectives within that world. These differences have been significant enough that it's been difficult for us to check for continuity between their two novels, and to decide just what to fix and what to leave as is. We are erring on the side of letting the differences remain, and have only set to smooth out the discrepancies that could not be explained by different upbringing, such as measurements of the Sunspot itself.

Earliest Memories

Abacus' most easily accessed first memories are all of first person visualizations of interacting with Tetcha, Morde, the Pembers, the Flits, Breq, Ralf, and Metabang in the service of acting out and writing scenes for Systems' Out!. From there, it has spent much of its time fronting while typing at a keyboard or on our iphone.

Self Image

Abacus' vision of itself is heavily influenced by its role in the Systems' Out! and Ni'a. In those stories it plays the role of an AI tutor whose assignment is originally Tetcha. Then, after Tetcha its next assignment was to be Ni'a, but when it was displaced by Phage who requested to raise its own child Abacus was given the project of writing the book about Ni'a's life. Part of that fictional canon is that it never had a living body, having been created specifically as a Network entity. Abacus decided that the most logical and relatable avatar for itself, having the name of Abacus, was a bead. Originally it conceived of its appearance as being a simple wooden bead like one would find on an abacus. But while searching for pictures of a suitable wooden bead, it happened upon a photo of an ornate metal bead that it related to even more.

Like Metabang, however, it does not feel any particular incongruity with our systems' body when fronting.

Relationships

Abacus has no particular relationships outside of our system. Within the system it is rather close to the crew who have been involved with writing our novels, and it is closest to Tetcha and Metabang.

On January 6, 2022, it had the chance to make and play its own character in a game of Whisky Grits & Demon Spittle, a TTRPG that is Primed by Cortex. This gave it the opportunity to interact with several people outside our system, including one of our girlfriends, at length, though under the aegis of being a character in a game. It has yet to debrief the rest of us about how it felt to do that, but we got the sense it was very satisfied overall while frustrated with talking specifically.

Projects

Right now, Abacus is only working on its novel, Ni'a.