CHARACTER INTERVIEW: Chevonne Watson

A post by Mary Fan

Hey everyone! So apparently I was meant to post an interview today, and I completely forgot (it's
been a hectic couple of... weeks? months? years? Fine, I'm just forgetful). However, the blog schedule never specified what KIND of interview.

So here I am, interviewing a character of mine: Chevonne Watson! Chevonne is the protagonist of several shorts of mine: "The Adventure of the Silicon Beeches" (freebie on Wattpad, Barnes & Noble, and a few more online retailers... will be free for Kindle as soon as Amazon gets its act together), "The Note on the Blue Screen" (part of Crazy 8 Press's forthcoming Love, Murder, and Mayhem anthology), and "The Case of the Missing Sherlock" (part of the second Brave New Girls anthology, coming this summer!)

And without further ado, here's Chevonne!

Hi, Chevonne! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and the world you live in?

Sure, no problem. I live on Aryus, a planet in the Interstellar Confederation best known for hosting the headquarters of VH Labs, one of the galaxy's leading research and development firms. And also my employer. I'm a member of their Young Geniuses program, which means they plucked me out of school early with the promise of getting to work on real projects. I'm a biomedical engineer, and they gave me my own lab and let me work on whatever project I feel like. Basically, they put me in a sandbox hoping I'll discover or create something brilliant that the company can take credit for. That's fine with me, though it's a little weird having to go to work and pay for things and such like a real adult. But I like the freedom.

How did you meet your roommate, Sherlock?

I didn't so much meet Sherlock as stumble upon her. But let me back up. Several years before I joined VH Labs, they completed a years-long initiative called Project Sherlock, which was their attempt to create an artificial scientist. The technology to create humanoid AIs has been around for decades--and these AIs look so much like humans, you can't tell them from regular people by looking at them--but no one's quite figured out why some gain humanlike sentience while others remain mechanical. The engineers behind Project Sherlock were trying to create an mechanical being that would do science all day with the ingenuity of a human but without any pesky human traits. But they failed spectacularly... Sherlock did turn out to be a brilliant scientist, but she also ended up having a stubborn personality. She refused to obey orders and pretty much did whatever she want... sometimes with disastrous results.

So they shut her down and closed the book on the project. I accidentally stumbled into her in the Obsolete Equipment Storage Room shortly after I joined VH Labs. I felt bad for her, so I fixed her (it was really hard). And she's been my roommate ever since.

How much does your roommate have in common with the fictional detective she was named after?

Too much. Way, WAY too much. Though honestly, I think a lot of it's on purpose on Sherlock's part.

Project Sherlock was just meant to be a clever name that referenced the fact that the AI would be solving mysteries--albeit of the scientific sort. I have no idea why the people who ran the project decided to model their AI after a teenaged actress, but they did. Which is why I now live with an AI girl who looks my age but shares a name with a fictional man.

Anyway, after learning who she was named after, Sherlock decided to try her hand at being a private detective. I think it started out as a joke, but now, she's really into it. And she's really good. Unfortunately, she insists on boasting to me about this whenever she gets the chance.

Oh--and she likes to say "Elementary, my dear Watson" just to piss me off. It's not my fault I was born with the same last name as her namesake's fictional sidekick. And she keeps dragging me into her cases, though I refuse to be her sidekick. I've got my own life to deal with.

What are some cases you've been involved in?

One involved a boy with partial amnesia who came to us because his parents weren't acting like his parents anymore... Sherlock and I ended up going on a field trip to the private starship they lived on to get to the bottom of things. Oh, and once, Sherlock went missing, and I had to figure out where in space she went and why in space people started trying to kill me after she disappeared. That one was no fun at all.

Okay, maybe a little.

What do you do when you're not solving mysteries with Sherlock?

Like I said, I'm a biomedical engineer. The great thing about the Young Geniuses program is that I get to work on whatever I feel like. Lately, I've been specializing in bones... trying to figure out how to make them heal faster and such.

Anything else you'd like to tell us?

Just that I'm not as boring as Sherlock makes me seem... Unlike her, I'm actually sane. Well, most of the time.