Well, since canon never really did much with the world inside the Encom system post-1982, I decided I could make up pretty much whatever I wanted about it. So a lot of that’s explored in “A Lightcycle Built For Two.”

… I admit that even in that fic I never much went into the backstory of how Aster got her bike…. but I did at least establish that it’s “an Encom 669” and is among the standard models available to programs in Encom, circa 2012 when the story is set.

I imagine that the system automatically provides Lightcycles to all who need them. There may be size restrictions due to limited memory availability, but I think Aster was able to requisition one of that size because she has such a variety of different tasks she may need to do with it.

Aster’s is modded in two ways:

1. she added the projection around it to make it look like a Recognizer (part of her branding, as one who does all sorts of odd jobs as a pattern recognition program)

2. Elke, her User, edited it from outside to include a communication function, making it possible to call Aster on it from the User World (Aster was not consulted about this, and was very miffed).