So, first time mention of Savants in SOL. Now I gotta explain 'em. This may be a long one, so get the coffee brewing.

I created Savants for two reasons. The first was simply to have some form of wizard/jedi/mystic/etc in the sci-fi setting. Always makes for good story telling, mystics. And in a science based setting such as interplanetary space, figuring out what one could do is interesting.

The second reason is much longer, and that's the topic of AI. Artificial intelligence always seemed like a bad term to me. If something is faking intelligence to the point where you can't tell it apart from a person, is it still artificial? In strict definition yes, but in reality I don't think so. I'll be using the word sentient instead of AI in SOL. Especially since all AI would be considered to be alive.

So, anyways, every time I tried to figure out how AI would fit into society I realized it's only two choices: slavery or war. I don't want to do either. Fighting evil robots has been done, buried, and dug up to be re-done over and over and over. And most Craft can't be slaves because we don't fly or drive or steer them. We would need them and they would know it. Plus, I have a feeling space Craft could very easily drop asteroids on planets if they wanted.

The only way any kind of peaceful society would be able to survive peacefully would be cooperation. Symbiosis. And there's your basic Savant. Mankind decides to change some of it's genetic makeup at some point in the history of SOL. I think of it like defragging your DNA, and adding a bit to it. Makes most humans healthier by far, longer living, and more resilient to a chok-full-of-deadly-cosmic-rays outer space. Part of the changes allows a small percentage of the population to grow up with an innate ability for technology and science. When trained these savants become engineers, mechanics, doctors, etc.

Now, not all of the people in those professions are savants, but savants lead their fields and tend to be the most handy. The person who puts the cast on your broken leg may not be a savant, but your neurosurgeon most definitely is. After 5000 years of technological advances, I think society may need something like this, or people will be faced with studying their very narrow fields for 30 or 40 years just to get competent.

Ara is a Savant with a specialization in space Craft. She trained since she went into school as a child to be one, and still when asking her specifics about what shes fixing or working on, she may not be able to tell you. She just knows that this goes there and that should go here for the doohickey she's working on to work.

And there's the cooperation, the symbiosis. Man needs it's AI living machines to have a space based, non-stone aged society, and those AI living machines need man to keep them functional. It's win-win for the most part, with some strange perks and drawbacks. The only one I'll tell you now is that if Mankind wants to go to war, but Craft and other sentient machines don't, Mankind doesn't get to go to war. And Craft have no instinct for war.

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