Skypen

Skypen teleportation platform.

 The 2026 baseball season is underway and it is time for some Sci Fi baseball. Last October, I asked several AIs to imagine the use of a "designated fielder" for the pitcher position and the idea of teleporting players off the field during a game. Below on this blog page I challenge Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT to imagine some more radical changes to the rules for Major League Baseball and an attempt to improve the game by teleporting players onto the field and off the field.

Earlier this year (see this blog post) I tried making an alternative version of the game hussade that involved both an upper playing level and a deep lower level. The AIs struggled to depict that Sci Fi playing field for Tricursu. What if the bullpens in baseball were moved so as to be conveniently close to the pitching mound? And what if there were two mounds, with a second one for home plate?

As described in my previous blog post, I've been experimenting with Google's Flow Music. I had Claude make some lyrics for a song titled "Designated Fielder" and Google's Flow Music generated the song. 

Designated Fielder (red shirt).

 VERSE 1
Bottom of the ninth at Metropolis Park
Metro down by one, the crowd gone dark
Big Ricky Suárez toes the rubber slow
Skypen camera blinkin', ready to go
Designated fielder — that's ol' Boomer Hayes
Six-foot-seven, weirdest man for days
Ex-Olympic gymnast, former mime
They say he once caught lightning doing time
 

 CHORUS
The mound blinked once, the mound blinked twice
Boomer Hayes materialized in a trice
Where the pitcher stood there's nothing there
Just a big man falling from the air!

 VERSE 2
Suárez wound up, camera caught the motion
Boomer felt the skypen start its locomotion
But the teleporter hiccuped, some technician's fault
Boomer materialized mid-somersault
He landed on the mound facing second base
Ball screaming toward the infield at a blistering pace
Lined right at his shin, bounced off his knee
Ricocheted off his helmet — into the catcher's mitt for free!

 CHORUS 2
The mound blinked once, the mound blinked twice
Boomer Hayes materialized in a trice
The umpire scratched his head and checked the book
Nobody covered THAT in the rulebook!

 BRIDGE

Pitcher was removed by teleportation.

Sound prompt: spoken, carnival barker voice
"Ladies and gentlemen — the official ruling — ball deflected off a LEGALLY PRESENT fielder — who was TECHNICALLY facing the wrong direction — batter called OUT on the most accidental putout in the one-hundred-and-seventy-year history of Major League Baseball!"

 VERSE 3
Boomer stands up, raises both his hands
Crowd goes absolutely bananas in the stands
Suárez materializes back upon the mound
Takes one look at Boomer, falls down on the ground
The opposing manager charges from the dugout screaming
The umpires huddle, rulebook pages streaming
Three commissioners watching from a private booth
Nobody prepared for this particular truth

 FINAL CHORUS
The mound blinked once, the mound blinked twice
Boomer Hayes will NOT be taking your advice
Backwards, upside-down, discombobulated
Greatest out in history, PERFECTLY COMPLICATED!

 OUTRO
Sound prompt:  slow, reverent
They retired his jersey, retired his platform too
Retired the teleporter — serial number two
The plaque in Cooperstown reads clear as day:
"He didn't know where he was — but he made the play."
(Crowd cheering, fade out)

Me: Claude, imagine this science fiction scenario. Imagine the use of a "designated fielder" for the pitcher position in baseball and the idea of teleporting the pitcher off the field during a game, a fraction of a second after each pitch is thrown towards the catcher. Similarly, the "designated fielder" waits in a “Skypen” until the pitch is thrown. The "designated fielder" is teleported onto the field and arrives behind the pitcher's mound a half second before each pitch is thrown. 

Video frame: "first base".

The “Skypen” is suspended in the air, close to the infield and it is the destination for teleported players who are teleported off of the field (see the image that I uploaded). What could go wrong? Here is a song that describes a teleportation malfunction during a game... {I provided Claude with the lyrics of the song, see above on this page}

Claude: {the red text, below, is Claude's thought process}

The user has shared a fun science fiction scenario about teleportation in baseball, complete with a song about a teleportation malfunction. They've also uploaded an image showing what a "Skypen" looks like - it's a suspended glass enclosure above a baseball stadium where players wait to be teleported onto the field.

They want me to engage with this scenario. Let me look at the image description carefully - it shows a futuristic baseball stadium (Metropolis Stadium) with a glass-enclosed box suspended above the infield, containing what appear to be holographic or teleported players/figures in baseball uniforms. This is the "Skypen" concept.

The user asked "What could go wrong?" and then provided a song about what went wrong. I should engage with both the worldbuilding concept and the song itself. Let me think about what they might want - probably some engagement with the scenario's logic, the song's quality, and maybe some suggestions for improving it as a Flow Music piece.

Video frame: teleportation.

 The song is genuinely funny and well-constructed. Let me analyze it:

1. It has a clear narrative arc - setup, malfunction, accidental out, ruling, aftermath
2. Character work is good - Big Ricky Suárez and Boomer Hayes are vivid
3. The humor escalates nicely
4. The bridge with the carnival barker is a great comedic device
5. The outro is touching and ties it together with the Cooperstown plaque

What could I offer here?

• Comments on the worldbuilding ("what could go wrong")
• Comments on the song itself
• Suggestions for Flow Music production instructions

Actually, re-reading the prompt, the user said "Here is a song that describes a teleportation malfunction during a game..." - so they're sharing the song with me and presumably want my reaction/engagement with it, possibly to help format it for Flow Music or develop it further.

Let me think about what they're asking. They gave me the song and the image.

{The blue text, blow, is Claude's actual reply}

The Skypen image is perfect for the concept — that suspended glass enclosure hovering over the infield, with players visible inside waiting to be teleported, is exactly the right combination of high-tech and slightly absurd. It reads like a luxury skybox crossed with a holding pen, which is very on-brand for a sport that already has a bullpen.

As for "what could go wrong" — you've identified the funniest category of failure (timing desync during transit), but the scenario has a beautiful catalog of additional disaster modes:

Video frame: she runs behind home-plate.

 Positional errors: The pitcher's mound is a fixed teleport target, but what if the designated fielder materializes at the wrong mound — say, during a doubleheader when coordinates get cached? Suddenly Boomer Hayes appears on the field of the game being played in the other stadium.

Overlap conflicts: What if the pitcher is slow leaving and the designated fielder arrives simultaneously? Two bodies, one coordinate. This is the one the rulebook writers have nightmares about.

Orientation drift: Your song nails this — the system apparently teleports position but not facing direction reliably. A fielder who arrives facing the outfield has about 300 milliseconds to process that a screaming line drive is heading toward the back of his head.

Skypen overcrowding: During a long inning, multiple substitutions could mean three or four large athletes stacked in a glass box forty feet above the infield. The fire marshal has opinions.

Now, the song itself is genuinely excellent. The Cooperstown plaque at the end is the perfect landing — it earns the sentiment because the comedy built under it. "He didn't know where he was — but he made the play" is a great epitaph for an accidental hero.

A few craft observations: the line "They say he once caught lightning doing time" is your most compressed worldbuilding — it implies a whole backstory in eight words, and it works because it's never explained. The escalating list in Verse 3 (opposing manager, umpire huddle, three commissioners) hits the right bureaucratic-chaos rhythm.

Do you want to format this for Flow Music production, or are you still developing the lyrics? The full text is probably over 3000 characters as written, so there'd be some trimming decisions to make if you want to run it through Flow.

Video frame: she takes a jump shot.

 Me: Claude, I have been trying to use Google's flow to generate a video that shows: "The man is removed from the baseball field by teleportation. During this teleportation process, the man quickly de-materializes and becomes transparent. Then the de-materializing man completely disappears in a flash of tiny sparks, leaving behind a thin hazy mist that soon dissipates on the breeze. Meanwhile, the woman in the red shirt runs over the top of the circular teleportation platform and towards home-plate in order to field a bunted baseball. She approaches the bouncing baseball and then she picks up the baseball. The woman turns to the side and then throws the baseball to the first base man. The camera angle shifts so that the thrown baseball can be seen flying through the air to the first base man. The first base man catches the baseball. The batter runs past first base. Excited crowd noises are heard."

However, in the generated video, many things go wrong. The teleportation of the pitcher off of the field is depicted in a reasonable way. However, the teleportation platform is also removed from the playing field, leaving the designated fielder to reach down with her bare throwing hand and pick up the baseball which has appeared just in front of her left knee. She then takes three steps forward and arrives at home-plate, running slightly past home-plate. Meanwhile, what appears to be the shortstop has also run towards home-plate. The designated fielder jumps up and back-hands the baseball to the shortstop. The shortstop runs in the direction of first base, carrying the baseball in his glove. However, at the same time, another baseball passes in front of the shortstop, headed in the direction of first base. After taking four running steps in the direction of first base, the shortstop is seen arriving close to what looks like a duplicate copy of home-plate, where the designated fielder is waiting. Not bothering to take the baseball out of his glove with his throwing hand, the shortstop shovel passes the ball to nobody and the ball passes in front of the designated fielder. 

Video frame: the shortstop also has a ball in his glove.

Claude, please generate an improved text prompt for Google's flow that will allow it to generate an improved video depicting the removal of the pitcher from the field by teleportation followed by a routine fielding of a bunted ball by the designated fielder. The teleportation platform should remain on the field in the position of the pitcher's mound.

Claude: {the red text, below, is Claude's thought process}

 The user wants me to help craft an improved text prompt for Google's Flow video generation tool. They want to depict:

1. A pitcher being teleported off the field (dematerializing)
2. "The teleportation platform REMAINING on the field
3. The designated fielder (woman in red) running FROM the platform area toward home plate
4. She fields a bunted ball
5. She throws to first base
6. First baseman catches it

Image by Flow (see a full sized version of this image).

 The key problems with the previous generation were:

• The teleportation platform was removed along with the pitcher
• The designated fielder picked up the ball with her bare throwing hand (no glove)
• Duplicate home plates appeared
• A shortstop appeared unnecessarily and created confusion
• Extra baseballs appeared
• The sequence got confused

I need to write a very clear, sequential prompt that:

1. Explicitly states the platform stays on the field
2. Keeps the action simple and linear
3. Avoids ambiguity about who does what
4. Specifies the glove hand
5. Keeps it to just two players (designated fielder and first baseman) to avoid the shortstop confusion
6. Is very explicit about spatial relationships

Let me think about how Flow video generation prompts work best - they tend to need very sequential, shot-by-shot descriptions with clear spatial anchors. The key issues were:

• Too many characters getting involved
• Spatial confusion (duplicate home plates)
• The platform disappearing

Let me craft a careful prompt. I should think about breaking it into very clear sequential shots/beats, and being very explicit about what DOESN'T move (the platform stays put).

Here's my attempt:

---

Revised Flow Video Prompt:

The scene opens on a futuristic baseball stadium. A circular teleportation platform sits in the position of the pitcher's mound, glowing with blue energy. A male pitcher in a dark uniform with blue glowing lines stands on the platform.

{The blue text, blow, is Claude's actual reply}

The core problems in the failed generation are worth diagnosing before writing the fix, because each one suggests a specific prompt repair:

The platform disappeared because Flow inferred it was part of the pitcher and teleported with him. The shortstop appeared because "fielding a bunt" is training-data-associated with multiple infielders converging. The duplicate home plate is a spatial anchor failure — Flow lost track of where the base was. The bare hand pickup happened because the glove wasn't specified at the moment of pickup.

Here is a revised prompt built to address each of those failure modes specifically:

---

REVISED FLOW VIDEO PROMPT:

A futuristic baseball stadium, daytime. A circular glowing teleportation platform sits permanently fixed into the ground at the pitcher's mound position. A male pitcher in a dark uniform with blue circuit-line markings stands on the platform. His body becomes translucent, flickering, then dissolves in a burst of tiny sparks. A faint luminous mist drifts briefly above the platform and dissipates. The circular teleportation platform remains on the ground, still glowing, unmoved and unchanged.

A woman in a red and black baseball uniform is already in motion, running from behind the platform toward home plate. A single baseball rolls slowly along the infield grass between the platform and home plate. She reaches the ball, bends forward, and fields it cleanly into her gloved left hand. She straightens, pivots right toward first base, and throws the baseball overhand.

Cut to a side-angle view: the baseball travels through the air in an arc toward first base. Only two players are visible — the woman near home plate and one first baseman standing on the first base bag. The first baseman catches the ball in his glove. The batter runs through first base a half-step late. Crowd cheers.

---

A few additional notes on maximizing compliance: if Flow allows a style or tone tag, labeling this as "sports broadcast footage" or "television sports replay" may help it pull from a more coherent spatial reference frame than "cinematic," which seems to encourage the kind of creative interpolation that generated the phantom shortstop. Also worth trying as a separate short clip: the teleportation alone as its own generation, then the fielding sequence as a second clip, then editing them together — Flow tends to maintain spatial consistency much better over shorter durations.

Here are the first two videos that Flow generated:

 

sdas

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Next:

RNA the Musical

Tyhry and Marda in the Casanay RNA laboratory.

  Having completed the 48,000 word-long science fiction story "The RNA Seeds", I used Google's Flow Music to turn "The RNA Seeds" into a musical. That musical version of the story (titled "RNA the Musical") ended up including 26 songs, each about 3 minutes in duration.

 Google's Flow Music has a feature called "Spaces" which I used to make an alien voice synthesizer and a tool for displaying illustrated liner notes for each song. These were my first two experiments in vibe coding. The user interface for the liner notes display tool is shown below in Figure 1...

Figure 1. The liner notes Space for "RNA the Musical". Created by vibe coding.

Figure 3. Flow Music tabs.

 I ran into several problems while experimenting with Google's Flow Music. I've still never paid for any AI service, so everything described on this blog page pertains to the free version of Google's Flow Music. I started with Google's Flow Music by using an older version of the Firefox browser and I created an account with the user name "Tyhry". Quite quickly, I created a second account with user name "Eddy Watson" which I use with Google's Chrome browser. However, there seem to be bugs in Google's Flow Music (see below in Figure 2) that are so severe as to occasionally crash even my newer computer when running Chrome.

Figure 2. A Flow Music error message.

 

Figure 4. User preferences.

The main set of tabs in the Flow Music user interface is shown to the right in Figure 3. The tab that is labeled "Tyhry FREE" opens up another set of tabs that are essentially user preferences and user-specific information such as "credits" (see Figure 4, to the left). A new Flow Music account starts with 500 credits. I get a deduction of credits when I use Flow Music's AI to generate songs, but each day I get some "daily free credits".

Clicking on the "Profile" tab that is shown in Figure 3, opens a profile page like the one shown below in Figure 5. Flow Music makes it fairly effortless to add images. You can either enter a text prompt and get an AI-generated image or you can upload images the are 5 MB and smaller. Shown in Figure 5, below, is a banner image for the "Tyhry" account that was made using Google's text-to-image Flow software. In many of my science fiction stories, I like to imagine that Tyhry is a human variant, a tryp'At.

Figure 5. Flow Music user profile page for user "Tyhry".

Figure 6. Account settings.

One of the Google Flow Music features is seen above in Figure 5. As long as you are using Google's Flow Music, at the bottom of your browser page is a song player.

Image for "Load Bearing".

In a user's account settings (see Figure 6, to the right), one of the options is to force "clean lyrics only". Apparently, when active, this preference setting ensures that all song lyrics Flow Music generates will be PG and not include "dirty" words. In my own songs, I have not explored how "dirty" Flow Music can get (but see "Kindred Dick"). When I searched for "dirty" I found "Low-Down Dirty". My search for "sexy" turned up "Sexy Temptress". The only song that Flow Music generated for me which seems at all "racy" is "Load Bearing". 

Some of the
lyrics for
"Load Bearing"

The song "Load Bearing" was generated spontaneously by Flow Music while it was making up "alien voices" for several of the characters in "The RNA Seeds" (see this session). "Load Bearing" is a song for Klaudy the robot, who is a character in "The RNA Seeds". During that vibe coding session, the Flow Music "Producer" AI had just worked on a voice for Systolina when it then suggested, "Klaudy the Manikoid robot might be an interesting contrast with those "industrial mechanical textures." I clicked on one of the AI-generated "suggested replies" which was "Refine Klaudy's voice". Google's Flow Music then generated the lyrics for the song "Load Bearing".

"Learn More"

Google's Flow Music has an annoying "system" of credits, points, levels and badges. Users begin in the "learning" level and can progress to a "debut" level after "earning" 1000 points. The tab/page titled "Customize Producer" (see below, Figure 7) can be reached by clicking on the tab in the main interface (Figure 3) that displays your current number of points.

Figure 7. The "Customize Producer"page/tab.

One of my Google Flow Music playlists (titled "Meta Music" is for songs about the "joys" of using Flow Music and other AI software. Google's Flow Music automatically remembers things about users. What the AI has learned about you can be viewed by clicking the "Memories" tab that is on the "Customize Producer" page (Figure 7). One of the things that Flow Music has learned about me is: "user often creates songs satirizing their experience with Producer and the platform's limitations"

Flow Music Blurb.
Click image to enlarge.

There is a blog for Flow Music which seems to have only one entry from March 2025. I suppose Google has a rule that all of its "apps" need to have a blog, so ✅.

Figure 8. Flow Music on Discord.

I believe that this is the main page for Flow Music documentation, which quickly links users to a discord server. Back when Goggle's Whisk was still in existence, I explored the discord for Whisk and found it to be pretty useless, so I did not rush to investigate the Flow Music discord server space. The "good folks" at Google Labs seem to enjoy spewing jargon on their Discord server space. 

Figure 9. Google Labs on Discord.

I find the entire Discord interface to be confusing and irritating to navigate (see Figure 9 for an example). 

pay for x-tra features

Of course, they have some kind of freemium system with for-pay services and advertising that supports the whole Discord operation, but I use an ad blocker on my browser, so who knows what I'm missing?

I'm certainly not missing the annoying Discord popup windows that are integral to the Discord software and can't be blocked by an ad blocker (example in Figure 10, below). 

Judging from what I see on the Google Flow Music discord server,  Flow Music has gone through several iterations since 2022 including an existence as "Riffusion" before being acquired by Google in early 2026.

Figure 10. An X-box ad on Discord.

Duet format

The first thing I found on the Flow Music discord server was a tutorial from a user who is struggling to get Flow Music to do what they want it to do. I suspect that the people at Google do not even know how Flow Music works. They bought the Producer AI from someone else and they can't even explain to users how to use it.

The second thing I found on the Flow Music discord server was the recommendation to use "Da Vinci Resolve" rather than Flow Music. Based on what I see in the 179 MB instruction manual for Da Vinci Resolve, it is similar to iMovie and allows you to put together music and video tracks.

The third thing I found on the Flow Music discord server was discussion of long-term users of Riffusion trying to adapt to the changes that have been made to the software by Google. 

I then searched the Flow Music discord server space for "duet" and found a set of instructions from what looks like some random user (see the image to the right). I tried asking Producer about those instructions and it agreed they seem reasonable. I really dislike software for which users are forced to guess how to use it.

Other Problems. The chat sessions with Producer have a length limit. When I was building a Space (see the song "Flow Music Spaces"), I ran into the length limit and that inspired another song ("Vibecode 22").

Flow Music struggles to pronounce many English words correctly.

 Flow Music seemingly randomly repeats some song lyrics lines and drops other lines.

 As for all generative AI systems, users have to experiment and find out what the limitations of Flow Music are and try to work around those limitations. Here are instructions created by Claude:

Figure 11. Helpful instructions by Claude. Click to enlarge.

 To make "RNA the Musical", I provided song ideas and song titles to Claude. Claude then generated lyrics for each song along with music production instructions. Those lyrics and music production instructions were then provided to Flow Music which generated the music for each song.  

If you click on the "Flow Music" button in the upper left corner of the Flow Music interface (see Figure 3) it opens up a "welcome" page that looks like this:

Figure 11. Flow Music welcome page. Google's User Interface Philosophy: "Love That Whitespace."

 

Figure 12. Flow Music "Song" tab.

I don't like the Flow Music welcome page; it makes my computer over-heat. The default for the song list is "featured", but you can switch to a couple of other views if you want to browse what songs have been created recently by users. I have no idea what qualifies songs to be "featured".

The Flow Music "Song" tab is shown in Figure 12. This shows all of the songs that a user has generated. Songs can be "published", which makes them visible to other users. You can also "follow" other users, but I don't really understand all the benefits that accrue from following someone on Flow Music.

Figure 13. Following.

"When a user you follow shares a track publicly, you gain the ability to use the Remix function. You can extend their audio sections, swap musical parts, or tweak their baseline tracks with your own AI instructions." 

"By keeping tabs on specific profiles, you can follow the 'flow' of their creative sessions, find out what parameters they use to guide their AI studio 'Producer', and borrow structural elements like specific instrument configurations or custom drum machine patterns." 

Figure 14. A "typical" user.

User's like "imnotningning" (see Figure 14) are pretty common on Flow Music, people who show up, make a song or two, then never return.   

User grufel is a much more active Flow Music user. As far as I can tell, only a person's published songs are visible to other users. It would be cool if following another user gave access to their unpublished songs, also.

For example, right now I have generated 161 songs, but I've only published 55 of those. Often when a prompt is given to Flow Music, two versions of the same song are generated. Sometimes three versions are generated and the user is asked to provide feedback for which one is not as good.

Users can write a 250 character-long self-description for their user page.

 Playlists can be given 500 character descriptions, but Flow Music does not show that entire description, instead leaving a bunch of blank space on the playlist banner. 

Figure 15. More active user.

As shown in Figure 15, Flow Music users can select songs as "favorites' 👍. For example, I added the song "mother" to my favorites. I have a playlist for my favorites.

I want to mention one other tab in the main Flow Music set of tabs (see Figure 3), the "turntable" tab. Clicking on the turntable button opens up a window like the one shown in Figure 16, below.

 

Figure 16. Turntable "feature". The bait: "Earns you credits".

Figure 17. No lyrics.

 Be warned: some of the sound samples on the "turntable" are little more than noise. I feel like there should be a warning about hearing damage for those who participate in this Flow Music activity. Maybe this is one of the ways Flow Music tries to get rid of users like me who don't pay. For some of the paired song versions, I'd like to be able to vote "none of the above" rather than say which one is better.

As shown in Figure 17, some of the songs have no lyrics. Also be warned that initially the "turntable" counts you down towards 10 pairs of songs listened to. If you can survive those ten pairs, then it switches to counting you down to 20 pairs, which feels like a classic bait and switch trick. I think I got 20 credits for listening to 20 songs (10 pairs). Life is too short for that kind of nonsense. I made a song about this kind of software interface, see: "Give Me Credit(s)".

My favorite song so far: Tyhry Time. 

Related: what is MusicFX?

Next: Sci Fi baseball.

Images by Flow. Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers.