Kwononk

Figure 1. Alien Halloween.
Click image to enlarge.

 While writing my science fiction story "The Fesarians" I have been experimenting with AI-generated images of alien plants. Today I was working on that project and I began to get some AI-generated images of that seemingly included "alien pumpkins". Gemini told me that an Abenaki word for "pumpkin" is "kwononk".

Past Pumpkins. In 2009, I wrote a "ghost story" called Moon Hammer. That story is on this page of this blog. In 2023, I got a few AI-generated images from Mr. Wombo that included pumpkins (example). Sometimes Mr. Wombo just randomly includes a pumpkin in an image, as shown in Figure 12 of this 2024 blog post. A few additional AI-generated pumpkins are in this 2023 blog post.

 Alien Halloween. The AI-generated image in Figure 1 (shown to the right on this blog page) is a composite. The smaller alien creatures at the bottom of Figure 1 were each generated individually and pasted into the main image for this scene.

Spaceport pumpkin merchant.

 Pumpkin Merchants on Exoplanets. Another AI-generated image with pumpkins is shown to the left. This image was made using the "steampunk v2" style of WOMBO Dream. The image to the left is actually a composite, made by combining two AI-generated images, one providing the hazy background for what I imagine to be a spaceport on a distant exoplanet. 

I've previously mocked science fiction story tellers for imagining economies of the future galaxy that are built upon one fantastically valuable commodity like cotton. However, maybe there is an alternate Reality where pumpkins are the most important product in the universe.

An alien pumpkin merchant.

An alternative scene with an alien pumpkin merchant is shown in the image to the right.

I'm in the middle of writing "The Fesarians" and I'm concerned with creating fun illustrations of the alien creatures on the planet Elemacha-z. However, when I used the setting for weak dependence of the image generating process on the reference image, Mr. Wombo also wanted to make scenes with human pumpkin merchants.

A human pumpkin merchant.

 The image shown to the left was the scene that Mr. Wombo created for a depiction of a human pumpkin merchant.

Figure 2. Alien pumpkin patch.

 Depicting Aliens. The image that is shown in Figure 2 was too strange and unusual to put into Figure 1. The alien egg-headed creature in Figure 2 has the kind of tentacle-like arms that were often given to both alien creatures (example) and early depictions of robots in science fiction stories (example). In "The Fesarians", the Neoma are technologically advance artificial life-forms composed of femtobot components. They can take on any convenient physical form, but they prefer to use biological forms. The creature in Figure 2 is too mechanical in appearance to serve as a depiction of a life-form on Elemacha-z.

Talia's vision of Dani.

 Sedron Time Stream. For the image above showing a human pumpkin merchant, Mr. Wombo had originally generated an image that centered on a woman with red hair. I then asked Mr. Wombo to make an updated version in which she was made to resemble Cintia Dicker. For "The Fesarians", I have been telling Mr. Wombo to make images that depict Dani the humanoid robot as having an appearance that is inspired by Cintia Dicker. Talia can access the Sedron Time Stream and that allows her to have visions of the future. Even while a young child living on Martiz 23, Talia had visions of Dani. The image to the left is a depiction of Dani surrounded by nanites.

When Dani arrives on Elemacha-z, the alien Neoma send their femtobots into Dani's body and they adjust Dani's positronic brain circuits. With the help of Mr. Wombo, I've been making depictions of Dani at the time when her body is invaded by alien femtobots (see also:  Figure 15 in this recent blog post). 

Xylo triumphant by Mr. Wombo.

 Another one of Talia's visions of the future is shown to the right. That is Talia's vision of Xylo. When Talia experienced this vision of the future, she had no idea what she was "seeing". Later, while in Starfleet's training program for colonizers of exoplanets, Talia and Xylo met and were soon working together to plan a human colony on the planet Elemacha-z.

Talia's vision of a plant woman.

Even before going to Elemacha-z, Talia had visions of strange creatures: plant women. When Talia finally is able to begin communicating with the alien Neoma on Elemacha-z, the aliens begin altering their physical form so that they can use the human body shape. One of these future visions of the Neoma is shown in the image to the left.

Talia's vision of the Fesarious.

From a young age, Talia has had visions of Dave Bailey and her future life living with him onboard the Fesarious. 

The image to the right shows a depiction of Talia's future vision of the time when she is living inside the Fesarious. This image was generated by Mr. Wombo and is a typical example of the artificial intelligence's preference to force women to wear high heels. 

Reference image.
click to enlarge

 Fun Fact: this image of Talia onboard the Fesarius (to the right) began as a reference image that was a satellite view of hurricane Helene. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite image that is shown to the left includes clouds from the western half of Helene on the morning of September 26th. The lights from cities in Texas became the orange lights above Talia, inside the Fesarius.

Plant woman Helene.

I also used that satellite image as a reference image for making a depiction of a Neoma in humanoid form (see the image to the right). This image was made by Mr. Wombo using the "Monster v3" style, so there is a creepy purple creature behind the plant woman. In this AI-generated image, lights from a Texas city became the monster's eye.

A Neoma takes on human form.

I zoomed in on the plant woman who is in the image to the right and then using that new reference image, Mr. Wombo was able to generate the more sedate plant woman who is shown in the image to the left. The clouds of the hurricane remain as the forest mist. Text prompt: "a pretty plant woman with green skin, the plant woman is a beautiful twenty year old Cintia Dicker, the plant woman is cute, the plant woman has large glowing eyes, forest mist in the background, the plant woman has healthy glowing skin, Cintia Dicker has big bushy red hair, Cintia Dicker is looking to the side".

Gemini generated this image of a "pumpking".

 Pumpking. I asked Gemini to: "generate an image depicting a "pumpking". The pumpking is a pumpkin-shaped humanoid alien from a distant exoplanet. Make the head of the pumpking look like a cross between a Jack O'Lantern and a humanoid alien face. The pumpking has all of the usual visual trappings of an Earthly king of old, including a golden crown. In the image, show the pumpking surrounded by some adoring subjects (regular pumpkin people)." Gemini actually generated four images, one of which is shown to the right. Sadly, neither Gemini or Mr. Wombo (see below) got into the spirit of depicting a group of pumpkin people (I imagined that they would have humanoid arms and legs) gathered around their king.

Pumpking by Mr. Wombo.

 Me: "Gemini, create a 350 token-long verbal description of the pumpking and the scene that shows the pumpking surrounded by his pumpkin people subjects."

Gemini: "The Pumpking and His Subjects. Imagine a world where pumpkins are sentient beings. In this realm, a towering figure reigns supreme: the Pumpking. His head resembles a pumpkin. Yet, this isn't a mere vegetable. His face, a mesmerizing blend of a Jack-o'-lantern and a humanoid alien, is adorned with piercing eyes. Atop his head, a golden crown, encrusted with precious stones, gleams in the sunlight. Surrounding the Pumpking are his loyal subjects, a diverse array of pumpkin people. Their faces vary, each with its own unique expression of devotion and admiration. They gather around their monarch, their eyes fixed on him with reverence. The Pumpking, in turn, surveys his kingdom with a benevolent gaze. His presence is a source of comfort and security for his people, a symbol of their unity and prosperity."

Pumpkin Queen.

I had Mr. Wombo make his version of a "pumpking" using the "pumpking" image that had been generated by Gemini and this text prompt: "vivid colors, on an exoplanet, the Pumpkin-king's head resembles a pumpkin, the Pumpkin-king's face is a blend of a Jack-o'-lantern and a humanoid alien, piercing eyes, the Pumpkin-king has a toothy grin and atop his head is a golden crown, surrounding the Pumpkin-king are many beautiful pumpkin people, green plants in the background" One of the images that was generated by Mr. Wombo is shown above and to the left on this page.

I then used WOMBO Dream to make a "pumpkin queen" (see the image to the right). This image is a composite with three layers: 1) the background with many Jack-o'-lanterns, 2) the Pumpkin Queen and 3) the "king" Jack-o'-lantern (being held by the "queen"). Her head and body were generated separately by Mr. Wombo and then manually pasted into the background image.

Ten Panels. Panels 1 - 10 illustrate an AI-generated transformation of an alien pumpkin king (panel 1) with a crown morphed into a pumpkin queen with hair and oranges. (Transformation performed by Mr. Wombo.)

Cintia the plant woman.

image source

To transform the pumpkin king to a pumpkin queen, I repeatedly used a text prompt that included the name Cintia Dicker. As shown in the wide image above this paragraph, while using the "normal" setting for dependence on the reference image, Mr. Wombo successively generated images more and more like the one shown to the right. 

To generate the image to the right, I used the "weak" dependency on the reference image and this text prompt: "a pretty plant woman with green skin, the plant woman is a beautiful twenty year old Cintia Dicker, the plant woman has large eyes, green plants in the background, Cintia Dicker has big bushy red hair, green lips". Her lips, the tip of her nose and her ears were all rendered by WOMBO Dream in shades of pink and I manually adjusted the lips and ears to green.

Plant woman Cintia.

 More Cintia-inspired alien plant people. While having Mr. Wombo generate alien pumpkin women, some images like the one shown to the left appeared in which the foliage began to look more and more like citrus leaves.

At the alien Orange Festival.

 Oranges, please. Since I was was using text prompts that included the word "orange" during my efforts to depict alien pumpkin people, Mr. Wombo was constantly tempted to convert random orange leaves into oranges as can be seen in the ten-panel image that was shown above and also the image shown to the right.

Alien "pumpkin creature".

 Transforming an Alien Pumpkin into a Kwono. One of the strange "alien pumpkins" that was generated by Mr. Wombo is in the bottom part of the image that is shown to the left on this page. 

Figure 3. reference image

I manually cut out this "alien pumpkin" and pasted it into another image that was a scene with Talia (see Figure 3) on the extremely hot exoplanet, Elemacha-z. I've been having Mr. Wombo generate depictions of Talia Vance using "Kate Jackson" in my text prompts.

Next, I used that composite (Figure 3) as a reference image for WOMBO Dream with this text prompt: "a very young Kate Jackson with an alien creature, Kate Jackson has long black hair, Kate Jackson is a pretty twenty year old girl, Kate Jackson is smiling, Kate Jackson is dressed Victoria's Secret style in a swimsuit, green plants in the background, Kate Jackson is looking over her shoulder, Kate Jackson is happy". 

Figure 4. Talia and a Kwono.

One of the images that was generated by Mr. Wombo using Figure 3 as a reference image is shown to the left in Figure 4. The alien creature in Figure 4 is quite different in appearance from my previous attempts to have Mr. Wombo depict an adult Merovae. Now I wondered: what might the rest of this alien creature look like?  

Figure 5. Kwono of Elemacha.

 Kwonok Time. The image in Figure 5 was generated by Mr. Wombo, expanding on the alien head from Figure 4 to show the entire bodily form of this alien creature. I had not been imagining any large land animals for Elemacha-z, but I suppose I should take my "world building" obligations more seriously. Maybe the Kwono is only one species of alien creatures that roam the hills around Port Cooway.

Figure 6. Alien holding  a pumpkin.
Full sized: see "Alien Halloween".

I was making some variations on the "alien pumpkin" that is shown above and Mr. Wombo generated the image shown in Figure 6. 

While looking at Figure 6, I realized that this "alien" could be transformed into a caricature of Donald Trump.

Figure 7. The Donald.

After several repeated rounds of asking Mr. Wombo to generate images depicting "Donald Trump holding a pumpkin", I got the image that is shown in Figure 7.

I particularly like the eyebrows that Mr. Wombo put on the pumpkin, without any mention of eyes or eyebrows in my text prompt. I did not expect Mr. Wombo to turn the alien's "orange hair" into a second pumpkin on his head. Mr. Wombo was very persistent in giving Donald those glowing eyes. The steps by which the green alien in Figure 6 was transformed into bright-eyed human of Figure 7 are shown below in Figure 8. It seemed strange that Mr. Wombo tried to make a beak-like nose (see the image below).

Figure 8. Steps by which Mr. Wombo transformed the image show in Figure 6 into the new image in Figure 7.

Figure 9. An alien pumpkin
creature holding a pumpkin.

 More Pumpkin Aliens.
Among the variations on "alien pumpkins" that Mr. Wombo generated, I particularly liked the one shown in Figure 9. In my imagination, this cute alien has green arms and feet but a large orange pumpkin-like belly. I like how this pumpkin alien is holding a small pumpkin in its hand.

Figure 10. Pumpkin embryo.

 Biological Processes of Alien Pumpkin People. I wanted the image shown in Figure 10 to become a depiction of an alien pumpkin woman giving birth. 

However, this image was locked into an attractor devoted to having her obviously holding a pumpkin in front of her body and I could not find a way to get Mr. Wombo to merge the pumpkin into the pumpkin woman's belly in the way that was successfully accomplished for the image in Figure 9. I really like the fact that the little pumpkin fetus is holding a very tiny orange ball in its hand.

Figure 11. Pregnant plant woman.

 Figure 11 shows an alternative pumpkin woman for which the pumpkin looks like it is her bulging belly. Mr. Wombo also gave this pregnant plant woman pumpkin-like breasts. The image shown in Figure 11 is a composite. The pumpkin embryo was cut out of another AI-generated image and pasted into this scene, giving us a view into her uterus. For some reason, the word "uterus" activates Mr. Wombo's NSFW filter.

 Pumpkin in Pumpkin. Mr. Wombo likes to show small pumpkins inside of large pumpkins. In my imagination, the little green fetus shown in Figure 11 is either emerging from a second, small pumpkin or else pumpkin embryos have a developmental stage in which they have a very large pumpkin-like abdomen.

Figure 12. Plant eats animal.

 The Insects of Elemacha-z. One of the pumpkin people created by Mr. Wombo had a leaf in its mouth. I asked Mr. Wombo to convert that leaf into a caterpillar. The resulting image is shown in Figure 12. I find it amusing to imagine alien plants that can telepathically control alien animals. In "The Fesarians", the plant-like Neoma can telepathically control the behavior of the amphibian Merovae.

I had not previously given any thought to the possibility of insect-like creatures on Elemacha-z. In Jack Vance's novel The Killing Machine, Kirth Gersen visits a planet where there are insects that look like tiny white monkeys.

Figure 13. The pumpkin laboratory.

 Frog People. When one of the AI-generated alien pumpkin people reminded me of Kermit the frog, I asked Mr. Wombo to make a more frog-like variant of the creature in that image. Also, I put the AI-generated pumpkin person into a "pumpkin laboratory" that had been generated by Mr. Wombo. The resulting scene is shown in Figure 13.

Figure 14. Bad pumpkin experiment.

 Pumpkin Research. The image shown in Figure 14 is an example of the image diffusion process resulting in the merging the scientist's nose with the stem of the pumpkin. There are more "pumpkin laboratory" images at the bottom of this blog post (Figure 25). 

Plant meets animal.

The image to the right shows another example of Mr. Wombo merging two objects. On a planet such as Elemacha-z where there are artificial life-forms composed of femtobot components, it should be possible for a plant and an animal to merge their bodies.

Proud parent.

The image to the left is similar in theme to Figure 11. Maybe some aliens lay eggs inside pumpkins and then, eventually, the growing juvenile eats its way out of the pumpkin. I particularly enjoy the AI-generated images where there is a small pumpkin inside a larger pumpkin.

Figure 15. An anti-gravity
pumpkin experiment.

For the scene in Figure 15, I had Mr. Wombo place Talia Vance into an alien biology laboratory. In my imagination, Talia is using anti-gravity technology in this experiment and successfully reducing the weight of the pumpkin that she is holding.

Figure 16. Talia and a Noema.

For "The Fesarians", Talia is not experimenting with pumpkins; she discovers that the plant-like Noema of Elemacha-z can alter their physical shape by re-arranging their femtobot components. I had Mr. Wombo modify Figure 15, removing the pumpkins and adding in some alien plants from Elemacha-z. The resulting image is shown in Figure 16.

As a bonus, there is the head of a Merovea at the bottom of Figure 16. I don't really imagine a Merovae being brought inside for experiments, but maybe the Neoma have their own plans for infiltrating Merovae into human buildings of the settlement at Port Cooway.

Figure 17. Neoma morphing experiment.

Another scene with Talia and a Neoma in the laboratory is shown in Figure 17. The orange color in this image is all that remains from the pumpkins that were in the original reference image. In my imagination, there is a serious communications barrier between the Neoma and humans. The Neoma have a form of technology-assisted telepathy that is based on hierions. Talia has some access to the Sedron Time Stream, but is not a very good telepath. In this image, the Noema is trying to learn how to program its femtobots to take on human form. Talia is rather astounded to see what she thought was just a plant is able to take on human form.

Eventually, the communications barrier is overcome by making use of the synapex nanites that Talia has brought to Elemacha-z from her home world of Martiz 23.

Figure 18. An alternate body
form for a Noema.

 The Elemacha-z Biome. Figure 18 shows another alien creature that was generated by Mr. Wombo. In my imagination, this could be one of the many physical forms used by the Neoma.

Figure 19. Play time.

 Play Time. The image in Figure 19 could be a depiction of a juvenile Kwono playing with a Merovae hatchling. For the first few weeks after hatching, the Merovae juveniles live on land and feed on special land plants that grow in the marshy land near the ocean. During this time, there would be opportunities for interactions and play between the Kwono and the Merovae.

Figure 20. Fun and games.

 Other life-forms of Elemacha-z are shown in Figure 20.  

Figure 21. A bird-like alien (top).

 In "The Fesarians", Balok uses an avian body form. I've never seriously thought about there being flying creatures on Elemacha-z, but why not? Figure 21 shows what might be an avian creature of Elemacha-z, standing on the ground near what could be another juvenile amphibian. Why should there be only one amphibian species on Elemacha-z?

Figure 22. Gray alien.

 I'll close out this blog post with three more examples of "pumpkin aliens" that were generated by Mr. Wombo. Figure 22 shows what I'll call a gray alien. Sometimes when asking Mr. Wombo for a pumpkin, you get a bonus of a bat flying through the sky.

Figure 23. Exoplanet Halloween.

 The image shown in Figure 23 is one of the more "classic" Halloween images that Mr. Wombo generated in this series in the sense that this alien looks like it it trying to scare us. This could be a scene on a distant exoplanet where there is a large orange planet in the sky of this world.

Figure 24. Talia is in a pumpkin.

 Flower Child?  Figure 24 shows a depiction of Balok holding a pumpkin. There's Talia inside the pumpkin, ready to help with Balok's attempt to determine the secret location of R. Nyrtia's base of operations inside the Hierion Domain. 

 There are no wizards in science fiction. In the original AI-generated image, there were some stray autumn leaves, but when I had Mr. Wombo modify the image, the leaves turned into flowers. As shown here in Figure 24, Mr. Wombo is likely to dress aliens in wizard robes when they are holding a pumpkin (see also: Figure 14).

Next: Part 5 of "The Fesarians".

Figure 25. Compare to Figure 15, above. Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers