The Altersis a high-concept sci-fi story that asks a lot of big questions. It asks us - rightly - to focus more on the human parts of Jan’s adventure, leaving the whys and wherefores of how exactly his space expedition works to good old-fashioned video game technobabble. There’s no reason we can’t have a little fun and explore some of the game’s scientific plot holes, though!
Thinking too hard about Project Dolly opens up a lot of questions and quandries, as well as some dilemmas that might be even bigger than those presented in the game.
This article includes spoilers. We recommend finishing The Alters at least once before reading further.
6Faster-Than-Light Travel Is Never Explained
Project Dolly’sQuantum Computeris designed tooptimize the best possible outcome, specifically for finding and extracting Rapidium. To that end, itconstantly adjusts the ship’s navigation system, pointing it in the direction of a star system and planet most likely to contain the elusive element.
That’s all well and good, but it still doesn’t explain how Jan’s ship, and the rescue vessel that follows,reach another star system in a matter of weeks.We know from Lucas' garbled message during the prologue that the planet orbitsGliese 3804, otherwise known asRed Dwarf L 762-51, accordingto thestellar catalog.That puts Jan37 light-years from Earth.
The times vary on each playthrough, but assuming the rescue team leaves Earth around Day 30 and arrives around Day 90, that’s a 60-day journey, soAlly Corporation vessels are capable of traveling at a rough average of 225 times the speed of light, at a slow estimate. How this feat is achieved, though, is both never explained, and is apparently common enough that nobody thinks to mention it at any point.
It is theoretically impossible for anything in the universe with mass to exceed the speed of light, never mind travel at hundreds of times that speed.
5Time Dilation Doesn’t Exist, Except When It Does
A common sci-fi conundrum istime dilation, perhaps most famously depicted in the filmInterstellar.Simply put, the closer you get to light speed, the slower time seems to progress for you. There’s no telling how much this would realistically have affected Jan, but it doesn’t seem to have had any impact at all, either at the mobile base or on Earth.
Traveling at just under lightspeed, Jan would have taken around 37 years to reach the exoplanet, whileapproximately 266 years, give or take,would have passed on Earth. Calling Lena would have been out of the question, to say the least. It’s possible that breaking the lightspeed barrier also renders time dilation moot, but that would have to be explained in the game’s universe.
The Scientist does mention time dilation when discussing Temporal Anomalies, so we know that it at least exists as a concept in Jan’s world.
4Whose Idea Was It To Deploy A Giant Monowheel?
The mobile base has a cool design, but it’s frankly astounding that it’s still standing by the time Jan reaches it - never mind by the end of the game. There must have been some kind of preliminary survey done on the planet before sending humans there, if for no other reason than to know what kind of supplies the crew would need; if Ally Corporation can send people, they can send drones.
The planet’s rocky, uneven terrain means that everything is a potential obstacle for the base’stwenty-story monowheel design.Worse yet, the planet has an atmosphere capable of producing clouds and rain, and that means wind blowing against aflat surface with a high center of gravity,so it risks tipping the whole thing over. The base’s design might be conveniently modular, but it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
3What Exactly Are The Alters Made From?
Rapidium doesn’t create people from whole cloth; rather, itaccelerates the natural growth process of organismsThis begs the question of what the Alters are actually built from.
It makes sense that the ship would have had sheep embryos on board to test any potential Rapidium they found; that’sexactly what Jan does, resulting in the birth of Molly during the prologue. It makes a lot less sense that there would have been any human embryos on board for any reason,let alone as many as seven,especially since creating Alters was never part of the original plan, even for Maxwell.
It’s possible that with advances in medical technology, all the Womb actually needed was some stem cells, which the Infirmary module could have had on hand to regrow limbs and organs for emergencies, but that’sjust our best guess.Maybe it’s better not to know in this case.
2Is Nobody Concerned That The Planet Proves The Existence Of Extraterrestrial Life?
If your jaw didn’t hit the floor when the game told you to “gather Organics” on an alien planet, you weren’t paying attention in science class. Organic matter, by definition,has to come from living or formerly-living organisms.Jan spends the entire game surrounded byirrefutable evidence of life existing somewhere other than Earth, and nobody mentions it once.
The only explanation isthat the discovery has already been made and accounted for,and it’s simply accepted.. Otherwise, there’s no reason that the base wouldrun on fossil fuelsand expect the crew to drill for them after their arrival. Still, you’d think thatthe answer to one of the most fundamental questions in all of human existencemight have merited a line somewhere.
The Scientist is excited to discover living microorganisms in the Rapidium Oasis at the end of his storyline, but again, not nearly as excited as you might expect him to be if he had been the first to discover living aliens. This furthers the theory that in the universe of The Alters, extraterrestrial life is rare but not unheard of.
1The Quantum Computer Could Bring About The End Of Humanity
The Quantum Computer is a tech bro’s dream;an AI model capable of creating a fully functional, sentient human intelligence based on available data.Not only that, it canfully plan and execute the development of a human brain from the fetal stage to adulthood,designing and building one of the most complex structures known to science with (comparatively) limited side effects.
That kind of power and intelligence is terrifying; the Quantum Computer is even able todevelop theories from discarded data, like the Scientist’s nanomechanics research, and work them into the developing brains in its connected Womb Module. The Alters can then learn and progress from those implanted memories and pieces of knowledge. That means that it has the ability tocreate an intelligence greater than itself,the hallmark of the technological singularity.
The technological singularity is a theoretical endpoint where artifical intelligence is able to adapt, upgrade, and improve itself at a rate faster than humans could. While there’s no way to tell what the actual consequences will be until it happens, the only thing that’s certain is thatwe will no longer be in control.In the universe of The Alters, once the Quantum Computer realizes what it’s capable of, all that humanity can do is hope that it’s benevolent.
Maybeplanting the bombs at the end of the gamereally is the best choice, just not for the reasons you’d think.
