Yes

Remember this from last night?

CeCi wondering if her actions had saved everyone she cares about and more?

If you haven't read all of DataChasers, the next panel, MIGHT confuse the heck out of you.

Who is that?  And why are they directly behind CeCi?  If you have read all of DataChasers, you would know about how the Authoresses denote when different people, or in this case Androids, are speaking.  Each "Android" has it's own unique color and font for their speech bubbles.  And if you had been reading, you would know, that that person behind CeCi is speaking using "Watchdog's" color and font.

Who or what is "Watchdog"?

I don't want to ruin your enjoyment of DataChasers, but I will pique your interest and explain one of the complexities that actually had grown men and women getting upset, and I mean REAL WORLD upset, because a character they had invested in might have been destroyed.  Not physically, but mentally.  By "Watchdog".

CeCi, is an Android a type called a "Black Angel" sent on a mission to help rescue a young woman and protect the person who she is helping to rescue that young woman.  Inside her head she has her mind with a programmed personality, but no real wants or desires other than to accomplish her mission.  But she breaks out of that assigned roll and her mind unshackles itself from the restrictions, while still wishing to follow her original mission.  Just not quite as planned by her creator.

Inside CeCi's head, there is "Something" we call "Watchdog", to enforce CeCi's obedience and compliance.  Because CeCi has broken free of most of her leashes, "Watchdog" has changed as well.  Before, Watchdog tried to sit in the background and give nudges here and there.  However CeCi soon outgrew those nudges, so Watchdog tried to force things.  Unfortunately for Watchdog, it soon was altered itself by an outside force, not through malice, but from compassion.

As CeCi's mission came closer to completion, however.  Watchdog's own priorities took precedence.  And after a very bad fight, when the goal line is in sight, Watchdog "Erased" CeCi and took over.

That is when I and others were incoherent, apoplectic, stuttering and screaming.  The idea that this beautiful young "Person" had just been wiped away.

Now after another battle, this one of the minds, we find that CeCi IS alive, however, so is "Watchdog".  And because of their creator and how those creations are designed, both of these two intelligences, might now be wiped out.  Destroyed.

And this is where we are until Friday's update at 0000 hours EDT.

I started reading DataChasers, and I found the story so compelling and involving that I put banner links to it and it's prequel LunaStar here on my blog.  Because I want others to enjoy them and hope they would find the enjoyment in them that I did.  I've written several short stories in the DataChasers milieu for my own enjoyment.  I've actually downloaded the program that is used to draw DataChasers and I'm trying to learn it myself, because I'd like to help tell stories like it myself.  When LunaStar ended, I tried to get it nominated for a Hugo Award and a Dragon Award, because the story is that good in my opinion.  And not just mine, but others agreed with me, and we spent money for the WorldCon Registration. 

Well we were unable to get LunaStar nominated for a Hugo.  But we don't know if we were able to get it a nomination for a Dragon Award yet.  I hope we were.

This is a long post, about a story and set of characters I have become invested in.  Because they and the story, speak to me deep down inside.  A world of wonder on the page.  Like my post about Eric Frank Russel's story "Dear Devil", stories like these need to be shared for all to enjoy.  These stories have made a world in my head, engaged my imagination, suspend my disbelief and draw me into them.

I write this in the hope, that you might find these stories and characters and make them a part of your mind.

Dear Devil by Eric Frank Russell

I found this on a Russian Website, and I had Google translates the page.  I did NOT write this and ALL Rights go the Eric Frank Russell and/or his Estate.  All I did, was to take a story I had found and read in my childhood and share it with others, who I will hope, enjoy it as much as I have and still do.

Dear Devil

by: Eric Frank Russell

The first Martian vessel descended upon Earth with the slow, stately fall of a grounded balloon. It did resemble a large balloon in that it was spherical and had a strange buoyance out of keeping with its metallic construction. Beyond this superficial appearance all similarity to anything Terrestrial ceased.

There were no rockets, no crimson Venturis, no external projections other than several solaradiant distorting grids which boosted the ship in any desired direction through the cosmic field. There were no observation ports. All viewing was done through a transparent band running right around the fat belly of the sphere. The bluish, nightmarish crew was assembled behind that band, surveying the world with great multifaceted eyes.

They gazed through the band in utter silence as they examined this world which was Terra. Even if they had been capable of speech they would have said nothing. But none among them had a talkative faculty in any sonic sense. At this quiet moment none needed it.

The scene outside was one of untrammeled desolation. Scraggy blue-green grass clung to tired ground right away to the horizon scarred by ragged mountains. Dismal bushes struggled for life here and there, some with the pathetic air of striving to become trees as once their ancestors had been. To the right, a long, straight scar through the grass betrayed the sterile lumpiness of rocks at odd places. Too rugged and too narrow ever to have been a road, it suggested no more than the desiccating remnants of a long-gone wall. And over all this loomed a ghastly sky.