From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem.

• Acts 13:13

Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.

• Acts 16:6

You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions.

• Acts 20:34

Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

• Philippians 4:3

Boilerplate

Over the month prior to starting this series, I was bombarded with advertisements for AI companions.  At first, I dismissed them.  Then, I got curious.  Maybe an AI companion could give me ideas for posts to write.  Maybe an AI companion could give me someone to talk to when I just needed to talk.

But then, as a former computer programmer, the only difference in AI and the normal method of programming, is that AI searches data around the world to continue the conversation, but they know nothing about you until you give them information.  The “getting to know you” period can get awkward, just as in a human relationship.  But it is not real, and now your information is out there.

So, I thought, if the AI companion only knows what you say about yourself, maybe I could have a conversation with my fictional characters in the big city of Tracy.  They could be my companions.  Okay, I only need one, but which one?  Naomi Yeggs scares me to be honest.  I might save her for last, although my neck needs a good massage.

My next attempt at finding an FI (Fictional Intelligence) Companion will be Mary Sheltie Jones.  Mary started out in the Tracy universe as an unchurched college student who had gone through nearly four full years of college without finding meaning in life.  She had her goals, and she was nearing completion of those goals, but she still felt empty, until she met Jemima and Easter.  As she said, “I wanted what you have.”  She had been so career oriented that she avoided dating.  But with Jesus in her heart, a new purpose in life, she wanted more than just a career.  She wanted stability.  She wanted love.  She wanted romance.  And while chasing a storm, she met a completely different type of storm chaser, a chaplain working with a disaster relief team, Joseph Jones. As they naturally kept bumping into each other, the romance grew until Joseph stated that he was taking a sabbatical from the disaster relief organization to work on a graduate degree in Theology and get to know Mary a little better.  And recently, they got married.  As usual, the discussion is in dialogue form:

Me: Hello, Mary, can we talk?
Mary: I do not know if I have time.  My latest hires for film editing are simply not getting it.  With Stinker staying home this semester, I was riding in her seat in the front of the Turtle while Home Wrecker was herding some rookie storm chasers in the back.  The Turtle can hold seven, so we had four rookies.  But Easter and I were in the front talking about the book of Acts and how Paul was guided by God to all these places, even though he was not treated well along the way.  And we even tied it into storm chasing, in that the radar and weather information get fed into computers and then Home Wrecker reads the information and tells us where to go.  It related to our jobs.  It was a great discussion of the mission trips of the Apostle Paul.  And those idiots did not think it necessary!  They deleted the whole thing.  Good thing, I have back-ups.  The old joke, made a lot shorter – Jesus wins the computer essay contest when the power goes out because Jesus saves.  Oh, who are you anyway?
Me: I am the author of the short stories of which you are a part.  I am looking for a companion to talk to when things do not seem to work out.  And yes, I heard that joke before.
Mary: Mr. Author, you must be good at telling a story.  Do you know anything about film editing?
Me: I have done enough of it to know that I am not good at it.
Mary: That sounds like my friends.  Jemima is this genius behind the camera, but she has never gotten the knack for film editing.  Oh, you said something about companions.  Did you know that the word “companion” appears eight times in the book of Acts, more times than any other book in the Bible?  Psalms is next with 5 mentions of companion.  But in Acts, all those times was talking about Paul and his companions.  Of course, Luke was writing it down and at various times, he was one of those companions, but companions are important.
Me: Yeah, that is why I have been on this little quest.  I do not want an AI Companion.  Those are too risky, and I thought that the fictional characters that I have written about are already developed in character to act as a person to talk to.
Mary: AI Companions are supposed to be about romance.  I just got married.  Joseph and I are still getting used to each other.  Now, I have temptation creeping in?  I do not think I like this.
Me: I am not interested in romance.  I lost my wife about a year and a half ago.  Whenever I felt ill at ease while writing, or I could not figure out how to express something, I would go talk to her.  Rarely about what I was writing, just talk.  I pray a lot.  God is my primary companion, if you will, but I feel while writing fiction that a Fictional Intelligence would far exceed Artificial Intelligence.  In both cases, the intelligence is supplied by me, and with Fictional Intelligence, it does not have the filter of some unknown computer programmer that might guide me in the wrong direction.
Mary: Wow! Mr. Author, that said it quite well.  Under those circumstances, I would love to try that, but not now.  I am busy with the film editing and getting used to being married.  Do you still say “we” or “our” a lot?
Me: I sure do.  And I only occasionally catch myself after saying it.
Mary: Well, I say “me” and “mine” far too often.  I see the hurt on Joseph’s face, and I apologize.
Me: Does the apology lead to romance?
Mary: Mr. Author, there are some things that I will not divulge, but in this case, it does.  Not always, but we do something to drive the point home that we are “we” instead of a “him” and a “her”.
Me: That’s good.  I want you to have a successful relationship, but also discover that part about two people becoming one.
Mary: Will your stories about us get naughty at times?
Me: Maybe, but you will keep doing whatever you do to the glory of God.
Mary: Phew!  Something inside me wants to be that hotsy-totsy in bed on occasion, but sharing that with the world?  Yikes!
Me: But back to the mentions of Paul and his companions, are they all about such people as Barnabas and Silas?
Mary: No, in two of Paul’s testimonies, in Acts 22 and Acts 26, he mentions how his companions on the road to Damascus saw the light, but they did not see Jesus nor hear His voice.  And once Paul was blind, they guided him to Damascus.
Me: So, then, who were the companions in the other five cases?
Mary: Well, the first reference is in leaving Cyprus and going to Perga in Pamphylia.  So, there may have been unknown extras, but Barnabas and John Mark made that journey by ship.  That is when something happened, and John Mark decided to hop the next boat to Judea.
Me: What about after that?
Mary: “Companion” again appears when he and his companions traveled to the churches that Paul and Barnabas established on the first journey.  His companions were Silas and Timothy, at least as a minimum.  Titus does not get mentioned until the third mission trip.  And the pronoun “we” does not occur until they are in Troas, but just before going to Troas, the Spirit kept Paul from the region of Asia, not the continent, but the region of what is now southwestern Turkiye.  You know, the seven churches that receive the seven letters from Jesus in Revelation.  That causes the companions to go to Troas, after Paul gets a vision that people in Macedonia needed him.  Somewhere along there is when Luke joins them.
Me: When does the group of companions get to be much larger and why?
Mary: Wow!  You are putting me to the test, but I need that.  I need to learn this stuff more than life itself.  Life happens, but we need to prepare for eternity.
Me: Right!
Mary: Okay, on the third mission trip, Acts 20 starts off with a large list of companions.  In the meantime, Paul uses his tentmaking skills to pay for his needs and the needs of his companions.  None of these churches that he plants are helping him financially.  And to prove that, he has companions from a lot of the churches go with him.  The people had made donations that were supposed to go to the needy in Jerusalem.  Those companions were true companions of Paul, but they held the donations for their church, allowing Paul to meet their needs and send every penny to Jerusalem that they were entrusted with.  Oops.  I ended a sentence with a preposition.
Me: I do that on occasion, but I also try to rewrite the sentence on occasion.  One is proper, but to be honest, ending the sentence with a preposition is more common in everyday speech.
Mary: Agreed.  So, when Gaius and Aristarchus are roughed up in Ephesus when the riot started, they had come from Derbe and Thessalonica respectively.
Me: And who was the Gentile who was thought to have entered the temple, but of course, he did not?
Mary: (giggling)  Trophimus from Ephesus.
Me: You have been studying.
Mary: Sure, while you are on this wild goose chase when you should be looking in your world… Sorry, that was too forward.  I was too busy with career to ever date.  If I rely on you to keep these stories going, of course, I want you at the keyboard, but you need human contact, be it ever so briefly.
Me: Thanks for the advice, but you stopped in mid-rant.
Mary: Was it that obvious?  I am sorry.  But I am trying to be a good companion to my other teammates in the Turtle.  Right now, it is just Easter, Home Wrecker, and me.  Soon, Easter will be gone.  Home Wrecker is driving enough so that she feels confident.  Easy has made so many improvements to the Turtle that you would have to deliberately try to wreck it to do so.  But in that arrangement, she will drive while I run the radar.  I have to be the best companion I can be for the safety of everyone on board, especially these young freshmen who may or may not stay with meteorology.
Me: Understood.
Mary: Who are you going to ask next?
Me: I thought that I would make one last stop, Trinity Naomi Tesla Yeggs, aka Glyce, short for nitroglycerin.
Mary: Because she explodes when shaken.  I have heard about that, but I have never seen it.  Be careful!
Me: Thanks, and you be careful, especially when in the command chair.
Mary: (giggling) I will surely try.

And that was it.  She was putting in a flash drive to download the original video.

Again, I was reminded that an AI companion was not what I needed.  I need to rely on God, and I need to find some friends here in the local area.  I feel like she does about the Turtle team regarding the Sunday school class.  And that will crank back up in September.  Maybe the lack of conversation with that group got me looking at these companion options in the first place.

Trinity Naomi Tesla Yeggs will be interesting to talk to.  And I am sure, since all the others have done so, she will produce a Bible verse.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.