Stories of Your Life and Others

FROM: Zoe Armstrong
You won't believe what my Natasha did today! We were at the
playground, and another digient hurt himself when he fell and was
crying. Natasha gave him a hug to make him feel better, and I praised
her to high heaven. Next thing I know, she pushes over another digient
to make him cry, hugs him, and looks to me for praise!
The next post he reads attracts his attention:
FROM: Andrew Nguyen
Are some of the digients just not as smart as others? My digient
doesn't respond to my commands the way I've seen other people's do.
He looks at the customer's public profile, and sees that the avatar is an
endless shower of gold coins; the coins bounce off each other so that their
trajectories suggest a highly abstract human figure. It's a dazzling piece of
animation, but Derek suspects that the user hasn't read Blue Gamma's
recommendations on raising the digients. He posts a reply:
FROM: Derek Brooks

---

When you're playing with your digient, are you wearing the avatar
that's displayed in your profile? If you are, one problem is that your
avatar doesn't have a face. Set your camera to track your facial
expressions and wear an avatar that can display them, and you'll get a
much better response from your digient.
He continues to browse. A minute later, he sees another question that
he finds interesting:
FROM: Natalie Vance
My digient Coco is a Lolly, a year-and-a-half old. Lately she's been
really naughty. Never does what I tell her to, driving me crazy. She
was an absolute doll a few weeks ago, so I tried restoring her from a
checkpoint, but it doesn't last. I've tried it twice now, and she still ends
up with the same naughty attitude. (It took a little longer the second
time, though.) Has anyone had a similar experience? I'm especially
interested if you have a Lolly. How far back did you need to roll back
to get around the problem?
There are several replies in which people suggest ways to isolate what
specifically triggered Coco's change in mood and then work around it. He's
about to post a reply of his own, to the effect that a digient is not a
videogame that you replay until you get a perfect score, when he sees a
response from Ana: