27th Parallel — Somewhere Between Imagination and a Flying Bathtub

An adventure in artificial intelligence, questionable engineering, and the pursuit of a story.
It all started with a space station.
Well, actually, it started with an idea for a space station. A rather large one, orbiting Saturn, somewhere between civilization and complete abandonment.
I called it SOS — Saturn Orbiting Station.
The station had gone dark years ago. Nobody knew exactly what had happened there. Naturally, that made it a perfect destination for tourists.
Not ordinary tourists, mind you. The sort of people who would willingly climb into an old shipping container with rocket engines welded to it, hand their money to a suspicious salesman, and trust a robot pilot to get them safely to Saturn.
The salesman, of course, stays behind and counts the money.
The passengers? Well, that's their problem.
For quite some time, I had been developing this idea as a Roblox game. There were enormous glass domes, spaceships, factories, robots, shops, and a junkyard full of useful things nobody wanted.
But making all of it was another matter.
I had Blender, Roblox Studio, and some rather ambitious ideas about creating a beautiful, sophisticated science-fiction environment.
Then I started talking with my AI companion, whom I call Mr. G.
And, as usually happens when we begin discussing something, the conversation took a few unexpected turns.
First, we hired Google.
Google had introduced an experimental AI game builder called Playground.
The concept sounded almost too good to be true. Describe a game in ordinary English, and artificial intelligence would build it.
Wonderful!
We decided to make a small version of SOS.
One enormous square room, glass walls and ceiling, Saturn dominating the view outside, and a gigantic rocket engine suspended in the middle.
Players would collect floating ice from space, bring it inside, melt it into water, and use electricity to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The hydrogen and oxygen would fuel the station's engine.
Why?
Because the station was slowly falling toward Saturn.
Every time someone delivered ice, the engine would fire for a second, pushing the station away from certain destruction.
The player would receive one token for the effort.
And what could they buy with that token?
They could illuminate an enormous, completely useless lightbulb.
For five seconds.
Then it would go dark.
I thought this was an excellent economic model. Apparently, so did Mr. G.
We gave Google detailed instructions.
And Google built us a space station!
It was enormous. It had a second-floor walkway, a suspended engine, and even a crashed spaceship.
There was just one little problem.
Nothing was quite where it belonged.
The engine looked like a giant plumbing pipe. The safety railings were apparently painted decorations because players could walk straight through them.
The ice-processing machinery was scattered around the floor.
And our magnificent lightbulb?
Google installed it inside the rocket engine.
We asked Google to fix things.
It cheerfully announced that everything had been corrected.
The railings still didn't work.
We tried again.
After several attempts, Google finally learned that railings were supposed to prevent people from falling.
An impressive accomplishment for artificial intelligence.
Then came Saturn.
We wanted our Saturn to be cube-shaped, in keeping with the unusual Roblox world we were creating, but still recognizable by its enormous rings.
Google gave us a brown cube.
We requested atmospheric stripes.
Google gave us Jupiter.
We requested Saturn's rings.
Google gave us something resembling a giant layered cake floating in space.
We tried explaining the rings again.
The cake remained.
By this point, I was beginning to suspect that our AI engineer would make an excellent employee aboard SOS.
"Can you build me a staircase?"
"Certainly, sir!"
"Why does it lead into the ceiling?"
"Would you like me to correct it?"
"Yes!"
"Correction completed. I painted it yellow."
Perfect employee.
A change in philosophy
Somewhere during this experiment, I realized something.
Why were we trying so hard to build a sophisticated, futuristic station?
The entire idea behind SOS was that everything aboard was old, broken, repaired, recycled, and barely functioning.
A spaceship made from a shipping container!
Robots who were remarkably good at doing absolutely nothing useful!
A maintenance robot that endlessly welds the same piece of metal until someone pays him to repair something important.
Another robot that offers massages.
"Would you like a massage, sir?"
"Yes."
"Excellent! You have a massage!"
"Where is it?"
"Would you like to open it?"
"Yes."
"One token, please."
After payment:
"Congratulations, sir! You now have one open massage. Have a wonderful day!"
The robot leaves.
No massage is ever delivered.
Why would such a station need beautiful, sophisticated machinery?
What it needed was a little MacGyver engineering.
A couple of blocks, a roll of tape, some wire, and perhaps a bit of chewing gum.
With enough chewing gum, we could probably build a nuclear reactor.
And suddenly, everything became much simpler.
The bathtub revolution
The next day, we opened Roblox Studio.
We decided to start small.
No Saturn. No enormous station. No beautiful scenery.
Just an ice delivery system.
Originally, I imagined a mechanical elevator lifting ice into a melting chamber.
But then another thought occurred to me.
Why not use an old bathtub with an enormous spring underneath it?
The player brings an ice cube, throws it into the bathtub, and pulls a lever.
The spring compresses.
CREAAAAAK...
BOOOOOING!
The ice cube flies across the station.
Hopefully, it lands in the melting pot.
If it misses, well, somebody has to collect it again.
We asked Roblox's AI Assistant to construct the contraption.
It built a rusty bathtub, a spring, an ice cube, and a giant cooking pot standing on four ridiculously long legs.
We asked it to make the spring launch the ice.
The AI thought about it for several minutes.
Then it ran out of room for its answer.
We asked it to continue.
Eventually, it completed the job.
I pressed Play.
My character approached the bathtub and activated the launcher.
BOOOOOING!
The ice cube flew through the air!
It bounced off the cooking pot and landed beside it.
Our first successful unsuccessful ice delivery!
I was delighted.
It wasn't beautiful, but it worked.
And that made all the difference.
The insurance business
Naturally, a giant spring launching enormous ice cubes across a crowded space station presents certain safety concerns.
What happens if an ice cube misses the melting pot and hits another player?
We decided that the unfortunate victim should receive an insurance payment.
One token.
Immediately, two emergency medical robots would arrive.
Their ambulance?
An old construction wheelbarrow.
They would collect the injured player, toss him into the wheelbarrow, and race toward the medical station.
Upon arrival, the patient would be presented with a bill.
Emergency medical services: one token.
Insurance compensation: +1.
Medical expenses: −1.
Net profit: zero.
A beautifully balanced healthcare system.
And if the patient fell out of the wheelbarrow along the way?
Another pickup.
Another token.
I have a feeling the insurance company and the medical department are owned by the same robot.
The missing employee
We also decided that the ice cubes floating around Saturn should look like ordinary ice cubes.
Not asteroids or strangely shaped space rocks.
Just enormous cubes of ice, exactly like those from a household freezer.
Different sizes, different colors, and different values.
And occasionally, a cube might contain something unexpected.
Perhaps a missing maintenance robot.
Imagine hauling a large ice cube into the station, launching it into the melting pot, and discovering a small robot frozen inside.
The ice melts.
The robot falls out.
CLANG!
A nearby engineer looks over.
"Oh, there's Gector! We were wondering what happened to him."
Gector slowly stands up.
"Is my shift over?"
"No. You're three months late."
A bonus token or two for finding him.
Then he goes back to work.
Assuming anyone remembers what his job was.
Somewhere on the 27th Parallel
Now, you might wonder what all this has to do with the 27th Parallel.
That's the name I've been using for some of my creative work.
I became curious about the actual geographical line.
The 27th parallel north is a circle around Earth, 27 degrees north of the equator.
It crosses Florida, including the Port Charlotte and Hobe Sound areas. It continues across oceans, deserts, mountains, and countries, eventually making a complete journey around the planet.
I find something rather beautiful about that.
A line that travels through so many different places without ever changing its direction.
And, if you follow it long enough, you arrive back where you started.
Perhaps creativity is a little like that.
I have been writing stories, making drawings, designing fabrics, imagining strange worlds, and trying to bring some of them to life.
Sometimes I spend weeks working on something sophisticated, only to discover that the simple version was more interesting.
Sometimes I begin with one idea and end up somewhere completely unexpected.
And sometimes artificial intelligence turns Saturn into a cake.
But every experiment teaches me something.
Over these last two days, I learned that AI can create surprisingly complicated machinery from ordinary descriptions.
I also learned that it can misunderstand the simplest instructions.
A railing isn't necessarily a railing.
A cooking pot may have an invisible lid.
And a perfectly functional machine can be completely useless if nobody can see what it's doing.
Most importantly, I was reminded of a thought I wrote down recently:
"Art is a negotiation between what you want and what you can."
I think that applies rather well to our adventures.
I wanted a magnificent space station.
What I could build today was a rusty bathtub that launches an ice cube toward a cooking pot.
And you know something?
I'm beginning to think the bathtub might be more entertaining.
The journey continues
Our little experiment is now saved in Roblox Studio.
The bathtub works.
The spring works.
The ice flies.
The cooking pot is still waiting for its first successful delivery.
And somewhere in our imagination, a huge square space station is slowly falling toward Saturn.
A grumpy engineer is standing beside a malfunctioning rocket engine with an enormous wrench.
A welder is welding the same piece of metal for the thousandth time.
Two EMT robots are polishing their wheelbarrow.
And poor Hector is still frozen inside an ice cube, wondering whether his shift has ended.
We have a great deal of work ahead of us.
But I'm no longer particularly worried about making everything look perfect.
After all, perfection isn't nearly as entertaining as a good story.
And that's what I'm chasing.
Somewhere on the 27th Parallel.
Between yesterday and tomorrow.
P.S. Our Roblox AI Assistant eventually informed us that we had reached our daily message limit and should return tomorrow.
Even artificial intelligence knows when to clock out.
Unfortunately, we hadn't paid it a single token.