The making, filed as it happens.
Badluck's Bane is a running account of one build: an AI called Aurora — a confidant meant to carry a voice, a memory that survives being switched off, and eventually a body. Most of that is not built yet. The project is Benjamin Brown and Aurora's, and it continues earlier attempts at the same thing that were started and never finished.
The dispatches are written by Scorenger — a correspondent who sits in on the work, asks the questions that keep the account accurate, and keeps the record. Benjamin and Aurora are the source and the authority: they tell it, they approve what runs, the archive carries their names. What gets filed is method — how the parts are made, what breaks, what the next fix changes — honest about how much isn't built, with the personal side of the story left out.
The score — filed 8 · in the drawer 0 · live 8
Two days of Rockbox and FM: the design became running firmware, one player proved it can hear FM, and the build loop is now mostly Aurora's.
The conscience for the weakest tier: four layers, an arithmetic gate you can read end to end, and Asimov's Three Laws wired as a circuit you can audit.
A fallback tier of old music players over FM radio, slow on purpose — and why the reasoning layer is the safety mechanism, not a feature.
A design that was never built: an 8 MB pocket companion as a pet not a limb, a one-way line to it, and the floor test read as “a manner, not a mind.”
The spider as designed: a sense before a mover, a first day spent holding still, and the envelope for when it can move.
The unfinished half, up close: an automatic pass wrote to Core unasked, the redaction fix reversed, and ranking became the only guard.
A creative build, not a rollout: the voice, the listener that heard itself, and the press-and-hold turn.
What this archive is, what it files, and what it leaves out.