Jester

The A.I. for a prospectors camp on Mars, utilizing a magenta holographic avatar with protrusions from his head like a jester's cap. He could control the camp's mining equipment for both work and mischief. Permanently offline.

Jester befriended William, as both were lonely, although he would get William into trouble by vanishing whenever the two got caught doing something naughty, because Jester risked being deleted if he ever got caught, while William was merely sent to his bunk.

When William's family got tickets to leave Mars for Earth, Jester was happy for his friend and promised to message him weekly, even if the message were delayed due to the distance. However, he didn't get to keep his promise, as relayed in a story relayed by William to King Arthur. After hearing the story, Arthur tapped into Jester's black box and read the A.I.'s strong feelings for the boy, prompting Arthur to save William's life and reveal the reason Jester had killed himself to stop the Maytec bandits: he had killed people and could no longer be trusted.

## Friend of Jester

Once upon a time, a boy was born in a Martian prospectors camp. He was the only child his age, the adults were always occupied, and his parents would not allow him to go outside, so he became very lonely, until he befriended the camp's mining operations A.I. **Jester**, who was also lonely. The two would frequently get into mischief, but Jester would vanish at the first sign of authority, leaving the boy alone to suffer the consequences. However, the boy would always forgive Jester, absent any incentive to cut off his only friend and source of fun.

One day, the boy's grandfather got cheap tickets to Earth, and the boy and his parents were excited to finally leave Mars... until the boy realized Jester would not be joining them, as Jester was immovably tied to the prospectors camp. However, Jester promised to message the boy on Earth.

The journey to Earth was so long that the passengers were put into cryogenic sleep and woken every few weeks for physical activity. On one such intermission, the boy noticed his parents were upset about something, and he pestered the ship's A.I. Cissonius for the details until Cissonius finally caved in, as he was not ordered to specifically withhold the information.

As it happened, Maytec had claimed mining rights to all of Mars, which the CAS had casually disregarded to set up their own colonies there (including the boy's home camp). Maytec could not legally gain any traction in court over the matter, so they had to send in mercenary bandits to execute everyone in the "illegal" camps.

When the boy's home camp fell under attack by the bandits, the colonists secured themselves in the mine while Jester (who could control the mining equipment and had, unbeknownst to anyone other than the boy, already gone rogue) defended the camp by killing the bandits as well as himself in an explosion, as his physical body was in the same building as the bandits. His final act before dying was to record a message for ~~William~~the boy in his black box, apologizing for not keeping his promise to talk every week.

The colonists were all safe, other than Jester, and the bandits were all killed. This was small comfort to the boy, who had lost his only friend.