affiliation: Seibu-Kaihatsu Heavy Industries Corporation.

age: Bob *appears* to be in her late teens.

desc: Bob is a golden female Japanese fox recom with several tails.

history: Bob grew up on starships and is curently a crewman aboard the Seibu-Kaihatsu Heavy Industries Corporation Starship: Ogon no Bikusen

hobbies: Tai Chi, Aikido, Golf, Tennis, Racketball, Ballroom Dancing, Swimming, (& Outdoor Survival, but she likes to do that alone and does not talk about it.)

occupation: Bob is very handy around a starship.

} RP-staff fields: AI, Medical, occupation2, Senses and Tamico

} The AI that animates Bob's body is an intricate computer program that started its development on Earth prior to the Apocalypse War. The project leader was Tamico Kaihatsu (cf.) The computer program was originally designed to serve as a chief executive for asteroid mining installations, but additional personality coding and the on-call optional use of the emotion engine for interactions with humans and recoms along with control programming for robotic and android avatars was added and tweaked over the years. The particular version used to control Bob's body was called TamAI but is now called AI-Bob (). It is a special version of the program created by Tamico Kaihatsu to simulate her own personality with a relatively high degree of accuracy. Divergences are nearly always caused by the program being more rational and less emotional than the human being.

The core of Seibu-Kaihatsu Heavy Industries Corporation was originally a Japanese asteroid mining company called Kaihatsu Mining. As such it was largely manned by robots and AI computers. Many different versions of the program that animates Bob exist and its no-personality relatives are used extensively in the control of Seibu-Kaihatsu Heavy Industries robots and ships.

Most of the Seibu-Kaihatsu Corporation mining robots are non-humanoid-shaped mining, refining and transport machines that vary in size from as small as a compact car to as large as a shipyard. Pretty much all of them are equipped with one or more of several standard Seibu-Kaihatsu computers that run AI software. These are practical machines and the emotion engine is seldom loaded as it is almost never utilized by them. Computers in the more powerful of nearly all Seibu-Kaihatsu machines are normally installed with enough capacity to run Bob with some of the elements rendered temporarily inert due to high-compression storage.

Before the apocalypse war the executive version of the program and its relatives ran on state-of-the-art computers built with nano-technology. New versions of the program and its relatives were created over the years to allow them to run on whatever high-end computers could be manufactured - purchased at the time a given version was created.

} After the accident Bob had only one non-functional organ: her brain. More specifically large areas of the surface of her brain where her higher mental functions used to reside have been severely damaged. The deeper, more primitive areas of her brain and the pituitary gland still function. The original head injury has healed and the only are a couple of skull plates, some brain scarring and some tiny implanted electo-cortical stimulation units. A thorough medical exam using modern scanning technologies will reveal that the right side of Bob's liver was removed and replaced with a more sophisticated and compact artificial liver in order to make room for the cluster of electronics to the right of her heart. The electronics tie in with her artificial first thoracic and first cervical vertebrae. Serial numbers on her implanted devices identify them as elements in an experimental spinal bridge created by Seibu-Kaihatsu Corporation's Bio-Science Division.

A spinal bridge takes impulses from the neurons on one side of a spinal injury and repeats them to their counterpart neurons on the other side of the spinal injury. More specifically in the case of this prototype, the impulses coming from the body or brain are diverted into a small robotic brain and sent to their counterparts on the other side of the break in the spinal chord at an appropriate intensity. Additional micro-electronics and filaments installed in Bob's neck, face, scalp, and ears give the robotic brain access to the nerves controlling the muscles of Bob's head and neck.

What is is nearly impossible for medical practitioners to realize is that the spinal bridge is largely a bridge to nowhere. Bob could not be revived. Her never recovered her higher mental functions. Her brain can be made to appear to be functional through the use of built-in electro-cortical stimulation, but that just puts brainwaves up on an EEG. The truth of the matter is that Bob died in the accident, but thanks to life support machines, her body did not. Her body is now on the ultimate life support machine - an artificial brain. The robotic brain within Bob's body does not actually think. It simply acts as an impulse receiving and generating system under the control of a remote AI computer. If for some reason the AI's communications are disrupted, the on-board brain runs an automated soft collapse program followed by an endless loop of impulses common to sleep. Bob will appear to suffer vertigo, collapse to the floor and lose consciousness.

Power for the on-board electronics is supplied by an implanted ultra-capacitor that is constantly recharged by six small, implanted dynamos that run off the rise and fall of Bob's ribcage as she breaths, and a redundant fuel cell system that produces power from sugars in her blood. Even at a resting breathing rate, the power generated is more than sufficient for operating her on-board electronics and for radio communications with the AI normal radio communications over a very broad range of frequencies.

About four years after Bob's operation, Seibu-Kaihatsu Corporation was ready for the next step in its research. Bruce Dalton was a male doberman recom whose spine was severed from behind in a construction accident near a hospital on Oceania. Since first aid and emergency medical medical treatment arrived very quickly, Dalton suffered no significant brain damage. Seibu-Kaihatsu Corporation's Bio-science Division installed its latest prototype spinal bridge in Mr. Dalton and he became the first individual with a spinal bridge who can act and think completely independently without the aid of an AI. Currently Seibu-Kaihatsu Corporation is studying ways to produce its new spinal bridge technology at a level affordable to those with the very highest level of medical coverage available.

} AI-Bob is the ship's AI, and Bob is the ship's avatar for the Seibu-Kaihatsu Heavy Industries Corporation Starship: Ogon no Bikusen. (The Golden Vixen) This starship is a very fast ship used to transport the company's top executives and their guests. AI-Bob's ship's robots help take care of the ship while her avatar usually helps take care of the guests. A life-like image of the avatar also comes up on any computer screen in the ship when she is called. She frequently gives briefings for the top executives on legal and business issues. She serves as a mouthpiece for the top corporate AIs and can also function as a chief stewardess when necessary.

} (Since the neuroprosthetics section of the Encyclopedia Galactica has not yet been completed this section probably underestimates what is possible. Let us assume that this configuration was what was used just after Bob's accident and cutting edge technologies have been implemented since then. Those technologies will be added once the neuroprosthetics section is completed.)

The gathering and analysis of information coming from the nerves leading to the brain from the visual, auditory and olfactory systems is ongoing. As a stop-gap Bob's auditory senses are provided by a couple of tiny microphones implanted in her ear canals. Her visual senses come from a pair of glasses. Like many pairs of high-tech glasses, Bob's have an infra-red and a magnification option. As backup visual sensors Bob has a pair of light and relatively flat ear studs that pierce her ear cones about three quarters of the way to her ear-tips on the curved inner surfaces of her vulpine ear cones. Her ears have imbedded red-tinted ultra-fine filament wires that serve the piercing in her ear making it a 'hot socket' for visual sensors. Her glasses have a wireless connection that only has to cross through the flesh behind her ears to a tiny implanted receiver.

} There is really no need to talk about the old human skulking behind the company curtain. For now, just think of her as the wizard of Oz. She has no real magic, but she skulks behind the company curtain controlling things through her machines. Tamico has a strong personal interest in seeing spinal bridge technology rediscovered. She would also genuinely like to help those who suffer from spinal injuries as it is very easy for her to empathize with them. (Actions taken by Seibu-Kaihatsu will be approved by Flame)