Welcome

/ staticsky

Welcome to my Dulles Tech Simulations Department Blog: Static Sky.

I originally wanted to call it “Simulate This,” but thought better of it.

I am the project lead for the Alpha team, meaning I know enough of what is going on to nod my head at requests that make a little bit of sense, and shake it when I don’t grasp at all what they want to do.

Presently Alpha is the only project the Simulations Department is moving forward on given the cost of our energy needs.

Other smaller scale projects are being shut down.

Here’s what we are attempting to do:
Create a world.

Tah Dah!

Unlike the previous projects here we are not simply simulating an environment or a pre-fabed society. We’re starting at the beginning, cranking up the speed, and watching an entire world take shape – from cooling molten mass to hopefully a planet teaming with life. Sentient life. The bits of code will live. The bits of code that represent rocks will be solid when the life hits it. The bits of code that represent vegetation will be a source of sugars and nutrients to the life that eats it.

What happens we don’t know. We’ve got the algorithms written (almost). Biology, physics, chemistry, all the laws are set. When we flip it on, the chaos begins and we will see it all come together as the rules we’ve set unwind before us.

Our budget is huge, but I always try to note that it is a hell of a lot cheaper and faster than flying out in space and finding a new planet being formed and watching that grow.

Counting Down

/ staticsky

Tomorrow is the big day.

Tomorrow we push the big red “On” button.

Later tonight I’m going back to the lab to actually paint the button red.

Delays and near arrests

/ staticsky

My god what a week. As you probably realized, with my lack of posts, that we didn’t make our launch date. I’m told by Sgt. Tyler of Homeland Security that all the security checks will be done by mid next week and then we can get back to normal.

Homeland Security you say? Yep – the morning of the scheduled Alpha Launch they showed up and shut us down. It seems Jack got someone at Greystle a little annoyed.

Jack, I guess, mistook politeness as interest at the Greystle party. He’d been sending emails and calling some woman about one of his ideas. He was sure she would be interested in his newest idea – easy millions; he’d even done some research and it seems this woman not only owned thousands of acres of unharmed northern Canadian forests, but was a major investor in almost every supermarket chain you could think of (not even counting the ones Greystle itself owns). And these things were important in getting his idea off the ground. See Jack decided that his idea “Thirst Sapper” would be the biggest thing since bottled water. Thirst Sapper was to be bottled Maple sap. Not Maple Syrup, but the actual sap that sane people boil down into Maple Syrup.

Jack had taken a trip to his uncle’s farm out up in Vermont over winter break and there were still some Sugar Maples on his uncle’s farm that survived the blight. His Uncle had a side business making maple syrup and let Jack take back some sap before he boiled it down.

I had some – I have to admit it was good. It was like water but just a little sweet what was weird that when it was cold it felt cooler than water that was the same temperature, but seriously Thirst Sapper wasn’t even up there with some of his ideas.

Anyway, this investor got more than annoyed and I guess she’s really connected because Homeland Security came and told Jack to cut it out.

Not only that, Jack had to get out. He had to move off campus. He was off the project.

I hope he can get a job. I know its tough these days. Maybe when things cool down I’ll be able to get in contact with him.

Meanwhile Sgt. Tyler and his boys and girls have been basically living with us. Every drive, card, and chip was handed over and copied. My room was searched, Janice’s room was searched, Ned’s house was search, Adit’s room, heck even Sally’s room. Everyone on the team. Kim from the geology team was hospitalized because she got so stressed out by this. Seriously this is a bit much for us basement dwellers to put up with.

So Jack is off the team. Tom from anthropology and Chen our lone sociology guy are also off the team. They got up in left in the middle of the night. After that happened the searches began again.

I haven’t slept much this week. I don’t know when the new launch date will be. At the end of next week I’ll get together with the Tech folks and work out with them who’ll be our new lead. It’ll probably be Kaitlin – if we can take all her Irish music.

This doesn’t seem real. Homeland Security. Damn.

Om

/ staticsky

Today was the day. A simple command line was entered by Adit, and I got to hit the red enter button.

“Om” Adit chanted as we looked at the code fill up the screen. I let out a laugh but Janice gave the “that” look. Adit was being serious. “Om” being the first sound of the universe or something.

When we projected the rendered images the gravity of the moment hit me. The gases, dust, and debris gathering together before us. Alpha was being born. EDIT: I just noticed the gravity pun – sorry.

We’ve started

We have it cranked up so Alpha should begin cooling by the end of the week.

Ned and I have a meeting at the Greystle Group tomorrow to get more funds. Kaitlin has quite a wish list for new hardware.

Because I need to get ready, I’m skipping the “launch” party, which is probably just as well. A bunch of basement dwellers getting together in a stunned state of disbelief (at having actually begun and still recovering from the whole Jack/DHS fiasco) is probably as fun as it sounds.

Life in a poison world

/ staticsky

Life – or something like it!

That was fast. The universe really must be teeming with life.

When we first started out Jack and a lot of the anthropology folks wanted to go the exogenesis route and just plop life willy nilly all over Alpha. I think their argument was basically “it would save time.” We went the organic compound route. Some Greystle guy thought that meant we were going the panspermic route and Janice practically bit off their face when she heard that.

This was about seeing life happen, not watching it evolve from microganisms or another primitve form of life. It was about seeing life itself occur. So yeah we had rocks dropping on alpha with stuff, but none of that stuff was alive.

The rocks, comets, and dust were as chockfull of organic compounds as those we’ve found way out in the Kuiper belt: amino acids and primative sugars, just like my mom’s cooking.

I’d say it is beautiful watching the shooting stars splash into the dead world, the splash of molten metals, the swirls of gas shooting away from the impacts at hurricane speed, and the instant electrical storms, but the truth is we have all been so busy pouring over all the unspooling data that we’ve never bothered rendering anything that’s been going on for the past week.

Our patent pending count from the gasses, isatopes, and other general crap is already over fifty and Greystle has brought in their own chemistry folks. The fourth floor now has more of their people than ours. Janice won’t go on the fourth floor anymore, she says they’re spies. Not sure how you can spy on your own product, but I understand; you can’t help but feel self-concious around those guys.

The fourth floor has the only vending machine with Janice’s favorite noodle bowl, so I have to go up there twice a day. Those guys do not fit in. We’re all running around excitedly spouting out words like “stromatolites” and “prokaryotes” they’re talking about “office action” and “patent flooding.”

On Land

/ staticsky

Almost spilled some of the miso soup on some neurologists who were leaving the lab when I brought in lunch. They were brought into the lab to help Kaitlin and Rasa on some things. Yep, Kaitlin and I have started calling Adit “Rasa;” we want to make sure we don’t use his real name with any of the folks that come in to help now and then – when we get into something that’s out of our areas of expertise (well that’s almost on everything for me).

Got a call earlier for Janice that some Alphans made land! I wish I was there. I was going to use that event as an excuse to ask Janice out. A milestone of the project celebrated by just the two us – some place nice. Alone. Instead I’m basically living in a lab with Kaitlin and Rasa. Actually using the name Rasa has another advantage – this isn’t Adit. Not yet, not until he’s “fixed.” He is different. I miss Adit, and I’m sure Rasa does too.

Anyway the Alphans that made land don’t have lungs yet. Janice says they have an amazing filtration system in their “skin” that basically plucks the oxygen right out of the air. I think Kaitlin was half proud and impressed at her “Alphans” progress but also just as pissed that we again handed Greystle a patent bonanza. You just know that there will be ten new products coming out next year that filter air in heavily polluted areas and none of them will mention Dulles, Alpha, or the cute little slime blobs that made it happen.

I think Janice is pissed at Adit, Kaitlin, and I too. She doesn’t know what we are up to. Ned has told everyone that we have to prototype a new simulation process for Greystle so we can get a new round of funding from them. I know he choose that excuse because it was the most plausible, but it just pushes Janice’s buttons. She hates those guys.