I get to spend less and less time with the core Alpha team. Almost all the developers are working on setting up Tangent. And some of the stuff they’ve come up with is amazing. We’ll be able to see divergents in real time. Not POV “seeing” of course, or even rendered snapshots but dynamic graphs showing the branches and offshoots of the data sets that comprise Alpha and Alpha’s Tangent.

I’ve broached the subject of what change the Alpha team would like to make that would trigger the change and creation of Tangent, but the concept of them playing “God” and manipulating an event on Alpha turns the meetings instantly into shouting matches. The team has become a bunch of Deists I guess, believing the creators of the world should stop interfering with mortal affairs after the initial creation.

I am noticing that my argument that Alpha itself will be untouched and that it is Tangent that will be the manipulated one is starting to sway them. Of course the fact that we still have jobs cannot be underestimated as a motivator.

Listen to me, this project has become too much politics and drama. I was going to devote this post to Alpha itself, not shop talk.

There are a variety of different species of our intelligent apes. Some separated by mountain ranges but in a few cases sharing the same valley.

As you’d guess most of the time they don’t get along, but generally the keep out of each other’s way. If you like violence however, you have to tune in whenever the resources are scarce then you’ve got theft, sabotage, and outright wars. It’s all too familiar.

Whether forced or possibly even romantic there have been examples of cross breeding. Leading, alas, to ostracized children that often don’t make it to adulthood because they have no support. If they do make it they almost always end up childless as they are often sterile.

They aren’t always rejected by their peers. Some often display gigantism or dwarfism like ligers and tigons (oh my). Whether to be used as warriors or mascots these unfortunate children are at least given a life with the tribe.

Technology both agricultural and martial has been slow to advance. Or at least it seems that way to me, one who has never witnessed the creation of a civilization before. Arrows and plows have both made an occasional appearance though. Flashes of genius that haven’t yet taken root.

Now to see technology we literally go to the other side of the world where our stoic little lizard friends have created wood analog computers that predict lunar cycles and even the positions of the fake little planets we’ve placed up in the skies. These guys are causing us a lot of CPUs. To make it easier on our systems the stars and planet projected on to their sky are our own. Alpha has our moon and sun. Even our Jupiter. Our already existing projections data of our solar system and night sky are just being loaded right into Alpha – so no new number crunching needed.

This touches on something we’ve discussed a lot over and over. While Alpha is often wondrously alien it also is very familiar. It is very Earth like. And by projecting our solar system onto the Alphan data we bring up again the most compelling argument as to why. Earth is our template. And because of that our rules and laws of existence create Earth like creations.

We have made Alpha in our own likeness. Heh, Janice would kill me if she read that.