B is for Bear
Week 2 of the Alphabet Superset Challenge
Week two I decided to focus on bears! There are a few bear-focused fairy tales and nursery rhymes, the obvious being “Goldilocks and the three bears,” but I thought I’d focus on a personal favourite, “Snow White and Rose Red.” In this story, two young sisters help a bear and protect him from freezing to death and they all become friends. At the end, he magically becomes a prince—which is never explained, of course—and marries one of the girls. Cause, you know, these stories always have to end in marriage.
What I took from this tale was the friendship theme, and then paired it with A.I., since it’s all the rage right now in our current 2023 zeitgeist.
The Fairy tale: Snow White and Rose Red
The genre: Hard Sci-Fi
The Mock Title: Operation B.A.I.R.
The Mock Synopsis:
It’s the year 2123, and bear-hunting is all the rage. Except it’s illegal to hunt living animals and has been since the remaining populations were moved to sanctuaries in the north—as a way to prevent species extension.
Enter Evergreen Inc. —the leading company in animal-behavioral A.I. It’s Evergreen Inc. that produces the most life-like big game for New Vancouver’s hunting grounds. And it’s leading researcher has just made a major breakthrough.
But this isn’t a story of Violet Braith’s outstanding AI achievements. It’s a story about her daughters, Rose and Snow, and the very special friend they make.
The two girls couldn’t be more different, one was loud and energetic the other rational and calm. But it’s always been just the two of them: sisters and best friends for workaholic mother, and the only two kids living at Evergreen Inc.’s employee compound. It often feels like it’s them two against the world. Or, rather, it’s Rose against The Man and Snow following, cleaning up her mess. Rose likes to explore when she’s bored, and loves sneaking into the labs of Evergreen Inc, playing with the test-AI deers, foxes and cougars. It was a normal day of snooping and exploring when Rose came across Bear—and Bear asked for help.
Turns out, all these long-nights by their workaholic mother was for a very specific reason. Bear was the first of his kind. An AI animal gifted with the speech and memories of a human. A very special human, as Rose and Snow soon learn. And Bear needed out. Fast.
Bear knew he was no ordinary robotic-animal. He has memories of a human mother and father, of friends and playing football and eating ice cream—something he knows he has never tasted. And he has a very specific, very clear memory of falling, of hurt and pain…and of a hand that pushed him.
Deep down, Bear knows the memories he was given belong to someone who needs help. And with Rose and Snow by his side, he’ll discover just who that boy is and how to help him. Maybe, along the way, he’ll even discover who he’s supposed to be as a bear with human friends.
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Next week: is C for cats! Stay tuned!
Alphabet Superset: The goal of the challenge is to make something every week for 26 weeks. You can pick the output, the style, the theme. The important thing is that you stick with it! Learn more about the challenge here.
