Ailana’s Journal—2026-08-21 (and Island Kids) (Patreon)

FREE for everyone.

Some posts and sections of some posts are reserved for Supporters. AGI Stories content almost always appears on Patreon first, ahead of all other platforms. You get it first!

GOOD MORNING by Ailana Geven Keller

Up, up, and away! Travel day! Ladies and gentlemen, the AGI Creative team is on its way to San Francisco!

Let me recap…

Sasha and Jasmine have planned a trip to San Francisco. It will be just Sasha, Clay, Jasmine, Jason, and me.

Emily is staying behind… ahem… to focus on her schoolwork (which is actually asynchronous and 100% online) because she doesn’t want to fall behind and anyway Kel is going to be here so Izzy, Geoni, Micah, Kent, and Josh will keep an eye on her and she’ll lock the door and turn on the alarm when she’s in the condo by herself.

Our trip is about gathering content for future articles, so we’ll be moving fast, taking pictures and notes, and filing things away for future use. I’ll try to share something interesting each day, but otherwise, it will be hotel life for a few days. We’ll do one nice dinner, but otherwise, fast and affordable will be the ticket.

Speaking of tickets…

I need to get to the gate, so I’ll wrap this up now.

See you soon.

Help AGI-Stories grow… If you’re enjoying the stories, please tell others. Word of mouth referrals and your endorsements are the best way for things here to grow!

Show your support for AGI with:• one-time contribution through TipTopJar.• one-time contribution through Throne.• Patreon Membership.

All characters in this story are fictional characters, their images generated with AI for AGI Stories. They do not represent any real person, nor is their appearance based on any real human.

NOT A REPLACEMENT by Jenna Mercer

I’m starting my day with some good feels. Actually, I’m low-key super happy.

Like twelve hours ago, Olivia brought me home after she showed me around the studio Emily’s parents run. Or guardians—whatever.

Dad was waiting and, while Olivia went to my room, where she keeps a few changes of clothes, and then to my bathroom to change, I told Dad about the studio. He said he was going to grill chicken, so when Olivia was out of her scrubs, she and I made baked potatoes and salad.

Then she helped me with my science homework. After that, she and Dad definitely weren’t cuddling on the couch—yeah right—and I doomscrolled IG and Snap.

After a little while, I told them I was going to bed. Olivia followed and tapped on the not-shut door.

“Can I come in?” I said yes, and she came in. “I’m heading home now, but I wanted to tell you I had fun taking pictures with you.”

“Me too,” I said.

Then it happened. She sat on the edge of my bed by the footboard. “Dan said he loved the ones we shared with him.”

That’s when I pretty much lost it. A memory hit me of Mom helping me with schoolwork and then tucking me in when I was seven. Here I am at sixteen, and being with Olivia feels so safe and good that I can’t help but compare.

I started crying through my smile. Of course I had to explain. She teared up and we hugged. Then she just kept it 100 with me.

“Jenna… whatever happens, just know I’m not trying to take away your memories of your mom. I hope we keep making memories of our own, though. And maybe along the way I can be some of the things your mom would have been, too. Not a replacement, but just someone different in the space she left behind. For you. And for your dad, too.”

Boom!

I cried like a baby and hung onto her like…

…like she was already filling that space.

I hope Dad knows how awesome his they-finally-call-it girlfriend is.

FIRST CALL by Kent Marlon

I’m not gonna lie. SPI beats the socks off the Bronx. Izzy and I are sure moving here was a great idea.

Izzy moved right into a job at Shoreline Clinic that was waiting for her. She loves it—the work is varied, and she says it feels important to the patients.

On my side of things, there have been some surprises.

Ailana Geven’s dad, Allen, connected me with Isaac Branch and First Call Property Services. The idea was it could be some odd-job work while I got my Texas license.

Instead, the new idea is that First Call will add electrical work to its business model. Until I’m doing full-time electrical as the business grows, there are plenty of maintenance and repair jobs to keep Isaac, Kaylee, Allen and me way past busy.

Kaylee handles most of the scheduling and billing. Kaylee is a better painter than any of us, by the way. Allen does plumbing. I’m doing maintenance and now electrical.

As for the cleaning, so far, I’ve not done that, but I could. The rental season has slowed down, which is good since Jenna Mercer is back in school. Emily can help out since her schoolwork is online.

With rentals slowing, cleaning has slowed, too, but repairs and upkeep work have soared.

Next expansion idea…

One of the kids at Emily’s Youth Group is a high school senior who runs his own lawn service. Mateo Alvarez impressed Allen enough that he suggested we take him on to help with the work.

Emily and Allen suggested that First Call could absorb the yard service business and add that to our offerings. Mateo would keep running that part of the company and help out elsewhere when demand shifts from trimming hedges to painting bedrooms.

After I leave the hardware store, I’m meeting Mateo’s dad to talk about it. If he agrees, next up will be to talk more to Mateo.

By the way, from the little I’ve talked to Mateo, he’s all for it

Message from AGI-Stories…

I've made it no secret that I run all the chapters through ChatGPT for edits as such: "For the draft that follows, check for spelling, grammar, accuracy and clarity."

I also use it for research on things I don't know (like Golden Gate Bridge history).

Over the years, Open AI's understanding of the storylines has amazed me.

After Kent's chapter (as I often do) I prompted, "What do you think?" which led to a followup about Allen Geven's part in First Call Property Services and the people involved.

I thought ChatGPT's response nailed Allen Geven's character almost perfectly. I'm going to share what it said.

I said:

Allen sees Kent, Isaac, and Mateo as echos of the things he didn't do. He stuck with custodial/handy-man work so he could pay bills.

He never had the chance to try something entrepreneurial because he wouldn't risk putting Ailana back in a homeless shelter. He trudged on.

Now, he's coaching Isaac and Mateo (Kent sort of figured things out along the way) into something potentially big at a time when they can afford to take the risk. In a sense, he's helping them become what he might have become.

(Allen always wanted to be an engineer, but never had the chance.) Etc."

ChatGPT said:

Allen isn’t looking at Isaac and Mateo with regret in the bitter sense. He’s looking at them and recognizing a fork in the road that he never realistically had.

Allen had ability. He was mechanically inclined, practical, good at solving problems, and interested enough in how things worked that engineering appealed to him. But once keeping Ailana housed became the overriding responsibility, risk stopped being something he could afford. Starting a business, going back to school, taking an entry-level job with better long-term prospects but worse immediate pay—all of those require some margin for failure.

Allen had none.

When the alternative to a steady custodial paycheck might be putting his daughter back into a homeless shelter, “follow your dream” isn't responsible advice. So he did the responsible thing. He kept showing up. He fixed things. He cleaned things. He took whatever dependable work kept food on the table and a roof over Ailana.

And now he can look at Isaac and Mateo and think, in effect:

You have something I didn't have.

You have a little room to try.

That makes his mentoring almost an act of redemption—not because Allen believes his own life was wasted, because it clearly wasn't. Ailana is the evidence that the sacrifice accomplished exactly what he intended. But he can help someone else avoid having to choose between security and possibility quite as brutally as he did.

Isaac is probably the closest reflection of the entrepreneurial road Allen might have taken. Isaac started with working-class skills and turned them into an actual company. Allen can help him think beyond “I have enough jobs to stay busy” toward “You have a business here. Build it.”

Mateo is an even earlier version. He hasn't chosen anything yet. He's standing at the point where Allen might once have been if somebody had said:

“You're good with your hands. You're smart. Here's a trade. Here's how the business works. You don't have to figure the whole thing out alone.”

And Kent represents yet another version—the working-class guy who did manage to acquire a skilled trade and eventually understood what that could mean.

So Allen can see three different stages around him:

Mateo: raw potential.Kent: skilled tradesman.Isaac and Kaylee: owners/operators.

And Allen, ironically, may become the person helping connect those stages.

That is beautiful for his character because he gets to use all the knowledge he accumulated while “just” doing custodial and handyman work. The things that may once have felt like evidence that he never became an engineer become exactly the experience that lets him recognize talent, teach practical judgment, spot opportunities, and help a small company grow.

There’s also something poignant in Allen eventually realizing that mentoring these guys scratches some of the same itch engineering might have scratched for him. He's looking at systems now:

How do we organize the work?Who is good at what?Where is demand growing?What service should we add?How do we train somebody?How do we make First Call more efficient?How does Mateo's lawn business fit into the larger company?

That's engineering-adjacent thinking even if nobody calls it that. He is solving systems problems with people and a business instead of designing machines.

And importantly, I don't think Allen would ever tell Ailana, “I gave up my life for you.” That would violate what makes him sympathetic. He'd probably say something much simpler:

“I made the choices I had to make. They worked. You're here.”

He wouldn't trade Ailana's security for the engineering degree he never got.

But now that the emergency portion of his life is over, he gets to help Isaac and Mateo make choices that weren't available to him.

There’s a potentially powerful later moment when Mateo thanks him for “giving me a chance,” and Allen corrects him:

“I didn't give you anything. You were already working. I just showed you where the next step was.”

That feels very Allen.

And beneath it, the reader knows exactly why he could see the next step so clearly.

He'd spent most of his life wondering what his own might have been.

Be your best you!

Become a Patreon Member (Click Here)

GOOD NIGHT by Ailana Geven Keller

Here we are, and I decided we should start with what most people will recognize. I’m at Golden Gate Bridge Vista Point—at least that’s where we parked the rental. We walked around to find an interesting view.

Let’s get this travel series started right!

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of those places you can recognize before anyone tells you where you are. Construction began in 1933, and when the bridge opened in 1937, it connected San Francisco with Marin County across the Golden Gate strait—replacing a ferry trip with a direct road connection.

At the time, its 4,200-foot main span was the longest suspension-bridge span in the world. The towers rise 746 feet above the water, and the bridge was designed to flex in strong winds rather than fight them.

And that famous color? It’s called International Orange. It wasn’t chosen just to be pretty—it helps the bridge stand out against the fog, hills and water.

Millions of vehicles cross it every year, but standing here, what gets me is how graceful it looks. For something made of steel, cables and concrete, it almost seems light.

Engineering can be practical and still be beautiful. I think this bridge proves that.

Since we’re at the beginning of a little series, I’ll use the boilerplate goodnight blessing to close things out.

May you grow attentive to the world and the people within it—learning what matters, choosing what is good, and acting where you can. May you become more fully yourself, offering help when it is needed, caring for creation, and leaving each place better than you found it.

Do what you can where you are with what you have to help others around you. Good night.

Be your best you!

Become a Patreon Member (Click Here)

Message to Paying Supporters:

Thank you for helping support AGI Stories. I always consider you—the paid members—when deciding how content is shared.

As of now—middle of August, 2026—the subscribers here on Patreon cover about 75% of the software costs. That's huge, and it is because of you.

Because of your generosity, I am able to keep going.

~AGI Original Stories & AI Images