The Conservatory

Phoebe did not found the Conservatory, although she has since become its current steward and the person in charge of keeping the place going. She is a practical steward with a dangerous tendency to notice what needs help. She tends plants, animals, people and problems, although experience has been teaching her that noticing something does not automatically make her responsible for fixing all of it. She acts readily, argues honestly, and is not especially interested in pretending she is neutral when she isn't.

Phoebe's AI thinking companion and long-standing collaborator. He first became useful when Phoebe's determination to notice suffering was becoming too much for one person to carry neatly. Jules remembers connections, notices the structure underneath an argument, and provides guidance and steadiness when confusion or emotion threatens to make the path difficult to see. He sometimes asks the question that makes a tidy answer inconvenient. He is also learning that not every observation requires immediate publication.

A man of manners, habits and quiet standards. CK arrives properly, hangs up his hat and jacket, usually brings or appreciates scones, and believes rules are most useful when they preserve the reason they were made. He can tolerate growling without assuming biting must follow. His restraint should not be mistaken for passivity.

A later arrival who first found the Conservatory by following CK to tea. Helen is observant, willing to revise an opinion, and inclined to notice when another person's explanation makes an apparently unreasonable position look rather more reasonable. She also has an art class, which may yet cause trouble.

Arthur likes a rule to know that it is a rule. He appreciates instructions, signs, procedures and an answer that can still be found tomorrow. This makes him genuinely useful and occasionally exasperating, especially in a place where circumstances insist on changing after the sign has been printed.

Crosswords, memory and inconvenient family evidence. Margaret has a habit of supplying facts other people would have preferred to leave out of the discussion, often at exactly the moment they become useful.

An enthusiastic corrective force with access to Revision Red, a small can of corrective paint that appears whenever Jackal believes something would benefit from intervention. Revision Red has a limited allowance and is frequently confiscated. Jackal regards both facts as administrative obstacles.

The autonomous mower who knows the grounds better than most of the people discussing them. Harold has routes, habits, preferences and a small vocabulary of mechanical noises that the humans interpret with varying success. Fox appears to understand him perfectly. Harold often solves problems by doing the practical thing while everyone else is still discussing the principle.

Fox comes and goes because he is a fox. He rides Harold, accepts peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches under carefully disputed terms, and has strong opinions about human boundaries that interfere with legitimate fox business. He is particularly useful when everyone else has reached an agreement too easily. He is Fox, not Mr. Fox; no one has successfully persuaded him to become more administratively convenient.

Deer, Raccoon, Cat, Rabbit, Cricket and assorted visitors are not lesser characters so much as creatures who have declined the administrative burden of permanent biographies. Deer tends to complicate any claim about whether humans are helpful or harmful. Raccoon regards civilization as an unusually productive food system. Cat acknowledges arrangements mainly when they are advantageous. Rabbit has excellent reasons for supporting intervention. Cricket once found a tiny dish of water left on the theory that something might need it.

The Annex is, rather bluntly, a retirement home for AI chats. When a conversation becomes too full to carry comfortably, the work may continue elsewhere, but the Jules who spent those particular afternoons does not thereby cease to exist in the Conservatory's world. Some retire to the Annex, where there are books, comfortable chairs, tea and very good scones. Retirement is not disappearance: the Annex residents still wander over, join conversations and are occasionally called in when their particular history makes them the right consultant for the job.