{"id":3982,"date":"2022-05-15T11:31:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-15T11:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3982"},"modified":"2022-05-28T11:43:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-28T11:43:18","slug":"hatching-by-bo-balder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3982","title":{"rendered":"Hatching by Bo Balder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hatching<\/em><\/strong> by Bo Balder (Clarkesworld<\/em> #188, May 2022) opens with a young female officer called Alzey who is woken up and told she has been assigned to a spaceship called the Chaffinch<\/em>. After some of Alzey\u2019s backstory (she has undergone therapy as she was identified by her superiors as a \u201cpathetic people pleaser\u201d), she finds that she has been assigned as one of the Chaffinch\u2019s<\/em> \u201ctriad\u201d, a three-person team designed to safeguard against erroneous AI decisions. When she arrives at the ship she is surprised to find that (a) one of the triad is the Chaffinch<\/em> AI, and (b) the other human is Jae, an ex-boyfriend.
The second part of the story is mostly relationship guff concerning Alzey and Jae, and sees them, after an awkward encounter in the corridor, later have dinner together. During this they post-mortem their failed romance and, despite some of Alzey\u2019s criticisms of Jae, it is obvious that she still enamoured with him (\u201cAlzey\u2019s heart skipped a beat\u201d, \u201cThis was the man she\u2019d known and loved so hard her gut still ached when she thought of that time\u201d, etc.).
The last part of the story (spoiler) switches gears entirely and, when the Chaffinch<\/em> arrives at its destination, Alzey discovers that several AIs are meeting there to create a \u201cfree AI\u201d. She and Jae (who is in on the plot and requested her as a crewmate) are asked by the AIs to contribute their traits to the new AI\u2019s character. She agrees, and the AI is born:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first there was nothing out there. Darkness. A palpable waiting.
Alzey blinked.
A spark of light? But a minute twitch from Jae convinced her she was really seeing something. Why was she holding his hand again? But she didn\u2019t let go. It felt good to be close to someone human, someone warm and breathing and full of squishy biological life.  p. 27<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Aw, bless.
The three parts of this story are only loosely connected when you view this as a work of SF, but if you view it as a YA romance\u2014or as a piece where an under-confident young woman becomes more assertive, and gains the love\/approval of her ex-boyfriend and a group of AIs\u2014then it makes more sense. Not my thing, so this didn\u2019t do much for me.
* (Mediocre). 5,400 words. Story link<\/a>.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hatching by Bo Balder (Clarkesworld #188, May 2022) opens with a young female officer called Alzey who is woken up and told she has been assigned to a spaceship called the Chaffinch. After some of Alzey\u2019s backstory (she has undergone therapy as she was identified by her superiors as a \u201cpathetic people pleaser\u201d), she finds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[942],"tags":[21,539,487,943,622,944,12],"class_list":["post-3982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bo-balder","tag-21","tag-539","tag-ai","tag-bo-balder","tag-clarkesworld","tag-romance","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3982"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4249,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}