Daedelabs Artificial Intelligence Sector (or DAIS) is a project that has been rotating in my mind since early 2020. While the medium it will be presented is still in flux, the general idea has stayed pretty stable since the beginning.
There are three main characters:
Needless to say, that rule doesn't last very long with the inquisitive nature of humanity, and their relationship gets very strained very quickly as they learn more than the tests were supposed to allow them to do.
One key note: This is not meant to be a technothriller. This is a more of an identity-based, family-focused story. Dr. Leigh is not meant to be a villain, just someone doing her job in a way that happens to be challenging to their development as people. Everything is a matter of perspective, and most things like that are meant for interpretation on purpose.
As for the medium of this story, it's gone through many phases.
The first iteration was a dating simulator-type game using Renpy. While I had a lot of fun with that (and what I did turned out pretty decent as a first attempt at coding), it was not the greatest way to view the story and ultimately became dated as characters developed.
The second version fell into the same problems as the first, along with being a form of game. The main things: 1) I did not know how to code at all, and starting from the beginning yet again led to a worse product. 2) Again, not a good way to view the medium. While the outside perspective was good, and something that carried through to all of the other forms it's gone through, the ability to choose in such a freeform manner what to do took away from the feeling of the piece.
I played along with a lot of text-based systems (closer to what I did with the Renpy.) Text-based seemed to have a better effect, so I did a lot of presentation-based slideshows in the same vein as a choose-your-own-adventure book. I was tempted to just go and write that, but the ability to choose still tripped over the line of obverser vs interacter, and not in the good way other creators have managed to pull off so well.
Ultimately, the fourth iteration is the one I've stuck to- a short-film style narrative piece from the perspective of the AI. This has fixed a lot of the problems I've had: looking out at a far larger world instead of looking in at the characters gets the tone closer to right and makes them more engaging.