Station Toad

Deceptive hygiene or is it sanitation?

The sleek stranger shifted his stance slightly producing a squeak as rubber boots dragged across the smooth surface of the floor.  With dark pooling eyes, long spider-like eyebrows the man stated: “What is this? How long have you been here?”

Roz and Stu looked at each other then back at the man standing in front of them.  Stu’s mouth was still in the shape of an ‘Oh!’ despite having exhaled moments before.

“I haven’t been on the station that long, I have been noticed ... Not long enough for others to know where I’ve been docked.”

The man tapped a gloved index finger against his lower lip as he continued.

“Which means you were here when I arrived ...”

Pausing his dialog a moment the man scanned the surrounding area.  His focus settled on the collection of boxes, crates and miscellaneous garbage that had concealed Roz when he arrived.  

“You must have been here”, the man pointed the menacing finger at Roz’ observation stack of debris.

Stu, thinking this an opportunity to escape, started inching towards the grate he and Roz had arrived through.  The illuminated bag moving with Stu caused the shadows in the room to shift in a way that the stranger's attention was immediately returned back to the two cornered eavesdroppers.

The man took a step forward, the light within Stu’s bag went from blue to amber.

Another step and the light went red.

The man paused, tapped his lip inquisitively. Curiosity was interrupted by beeping on the the man’s wrist.  With a look of disdain on his face the man lifted the threatening finger to freeze his prey. With fluid motion the finger redirected and tapped a button on a gauntlet attached to the man’s forearm. 

A hologram of a toad faced looking man appeared hovering between the man and his captors.  The figure in the hologram spoke, “Why is your fancy ship still attached to the station!  You need not be seen ...”

Not a big fan of the extra steampunk thumb, but I give up.

Roz recognized the voice of the figure speaking from the man’s wrist, but was confused by the image displayed in the hologram.   The voice heard was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place …

“ ... if you don’t debark soon, I’ll order debris-drifters to bump y’er hunk of tin into the sun!  One way or another our agreement will be forfeit!”

Debris-drifter? That’s it! Roz’s eyes widened as she realized that she was listening to the spokesperson for the Solar Sanitation guild -- responsible for collecting space debris encroaching on the station.  Whenever there was a large enough piece of cosmic trash threatening the station Solar Sanitation would collect or redirect the nuisance before it caused any damage.  Sketchy sanitation missions would require folks on the station to secure themselves in the advent of an impact; requiring announcements from this voice.

That face never accompanied this voice.  This plump mole ridden face was a stark contrast to the chiseled specimen visible on terminals during announcements from Solar Sanitation.

Without voicing a word the man nodded his head in agreement. His eyes never broke contact with the eyes of the hologram. With a flick of his wrist the hologram switched off.   The finger then returned to the man’s lips and with an equally intimidating glare he exhaled, shhh!

Both Roz and Stu’s heads nodded in unison giving acknowledgement of the threat and promise.  With that the man spun on his heels and vanished into his vessel, of which, departed before he could possibly have been manually at the controls.

The following captions are my prompts to Chat GPT to send to Dall-E.

Can you ask Doll-E to generate an image of the wrist, hand and gauntlet projecting the Toady face from the last description. Remember to have steampunk elements with a cartoony feel of 5 on a scale between 1-10. Make the hologram a green hue and keep the rest of the characters out of the scene. Remember they are in a bay with crates, boxes and station junk (odds and ends).

I really thought I was going to nail this on the first try. I really couldn’t with the toad.

That bay looks more nautical than belonging to a docking bay on the La'zen. Toady in the narrative was to depict a fat man with moles on his face. Same instructions but with the corrections.

Apparently the toad is too tempting of a suggestion.

Okay, remove toady as an instruction and exchange for a cubical dwelling fat man with moles on his face and a tanktop undershirt with a stain on it; only show from mid chest up. Can you also place the hand more in a fist position, use the left hand, make it more of a rectangle image instead of a square,

Um no. You’re soo much better than this Dall-E

I'm going to forget you did that, where did the rest of the scene go. have the hologram coming up from the back of the wrist and you have the wrong outfit on the character.

Ugh… Out of desperation I uploaded the first image with the next request.

Okay that hologram is better, but make the man look angry and put a cigar in his mouth. Go back to this hand position.

Kinda nailed it, here, but I really didn’t like the mechanical thumb.

That is better, but I would like more of the bay in the background and the extra thumb on the gauntlet is distracting.

Uh, where did all the steampunk stuff go and where did the angry man with the blood on his shirt come from. Is Dall-E mad?

Umm no, you lost the steampunk theme of the bay. Another attempt please.

Really close, but I couldn’t ruin the story with a the new henchman in the background. I’m starting to feel threatened with the new characters.

That was near perfect, but no characters should be in the background. One last try?

Umm no, again, and is that Thanos’ gauntlet? Feeling hopeless, I uploaded three of the previous attempts as part of my next request apparently, this is a “technique that should work” from earlier experiments with generative AI.

Okay, can we get the gauntlet of the first image, the bay of the second and the hologram of the third image? Or, some rendition of that remember the bay is steampunky, there are large windows opening up with a view of the crimson rocket (not necessary to be in the picture), no other characters are to be in the scene.

Uh, that is definitely Thanos’ gauntlet, I’m stopping before AI snaps some fingers and summons that evil St. Nick to my dreams. I’ll explain all that to mom offline — she reads this blog.