Oooh. I like this a lot. It's futuristic yes, but not so much that you get a space opera-type feel to it -- where you have galactic war and all sorts of unification issues plus pirate-y stuff -- which I don't like all that much. I'm sure all that is there -- I'm just choosing to ignore it for the sake of character development and AI interaction.

The code aspect of the series sure is interesting -- more of a cypher than actual code in the standard sense; directives and such instead of lines of code, if I'm getting what you're leaning towards. Instead of low-level obfuscation using memory addresses and the like, this is high-level language for lack of a better term, because Kobaj seems to recognize the structure/pattern of the code rather than identifying the code snippets themselves -- in-progress code rather than static-type stuff -- it's all dynamic and AI-y. Yeah, you can tell I'm good at pseudo-sciencing, probably because I've no idea bout AI coding or anything beyond the basics of computer programming.

Onto Kobaj and Serathano. I'm surprised the fennec fox wasn't suspicious of running into the tiger so often and wondering if there were ulterior motives going on there. I suppose the advantages outweigh the possible ramifications, but I don't think I would have used the tech without vetting it, and now we know that it had spyware on it too. Mafia-like, much? Sex, drinks, and drugs -- nothing suspicious about that at all...

I really like Halsey and Kobaj's interactions. Very... playful, and the banter is just amazing. Curious why the AI didn't just teleport him back to the ship -- where he was before -- but that would have had him answer even more uncomfortable questions like "how did you get back on board without the systems noticing" and so on.

I definitely look forward to future installments, and we'll see how fast I will actually keep up this time. I still haven't grabbed the rest of Wander yet. I suspect by the time I get around to reading and commenting, it'll be quite a ways off and no longer relevant or useful.

Stay well and thanks for sharing,
Fy

I specifically avoided listing explicit snippets of the code 'cause I can't be bothered to make up a programming language for this purpose |3 and I know enough about programming in general that I think I can get by without it, and just go by what should be there.

As for the "why Halsey didn't just teleport him back" - that's a part that played into the original plot of the story, which I'm not sure if the client is still going towards? But basically, since there wasn't a lot of actual explanation for that: Halsey straight-up says, I think somewhere near the end of this part, that it needs the specific spacetime coordinates of the target destination - as in, it can't just do a blind jump to somewhere totally random. That's supposed to imply that this weird supernova-system planet has been a past visiting destination for anyone else who's utilized the teleportation code buried in Halsey's systems. This isn't the first time the trip has been made; the surroundings are totally new to Halsey, which has to mean that it hasn't been there itself. So someone specifically put the code inside its workings before passing it off to Kobaj to repair.

If you're trying to hide something digital, you're likely to keep it on, like, your own external drive or something, right? Not the big master ship-wide AI system. Of course, nobody will think to look there for it, so...

As usual, thanks for reading and commenting <3 always fun seeing yours