Unimaginable

Danika was relieved when she discovered that Shinichi was waiting for her when she logged out to eat lunch. He'd even prepared food for them both, even if it was just slicing fruits, vegetables and cheeses.

"Most of the cheese is yours," he told her.

Danika gazed at the plate and then looked up at him worriedly. "Do you really need to keep dieting when you're getting sick?"

He reached out and tapped her nose lightly. "Withhold calories or exercise more, there's really no other method, and I'm supposed to take it easy right?"

"Yeah," she agreed a little reluctantly.

He grinned at her and took a bite from a slice of fruit.

"What?" she asked a little suspiciously.

"Why are you getting upset, when I'm the one who has to suffer the restriction?" he asked cheerily.

"Why do you look so happy about it?" she countered.

"I can't be happy that you care so much?" he asked in return.

She didn't know how to respond to that, so she stacked a little fruit and cheese sandwich together and took a bite. He reached out and ran warm fingers down her cheek, tucking back her hair a little on that side, when she looked up at him again.

--

When Devon Yu finally logged in to spend the afternoon on the new server, he listened to the summary of their morning brainstorming session with amusement. "Why does it matter if it's realistic to include aliens?" he asked curiously. "I think you've come up with some great background story rationalizations for either setting, but it's still a game, and anything that you can imagine is possible!"

His question made Danika feel a little guilty about having spent so much time on the subject, but she was relieved of having to explain by the united front Takahashi and Paul presented. They complained almost in unison, "The more realistic we can make it, the better," and "It should at least seem realistic!"

"I see," Devon replied with a grin. Danika just shrugged when he met her eyes, and his grin widened. He glanced around and then asked, "Why do you all seem to still be separated by your original departments? I thought that the adjustment to the physics was completed?"

Everyone looked around for a moment with somewhat blank expressions, and then Dalma volunteered, "Lin Hao finished modifying it so that in the future the basic physical laws can easily be modified, but now we're working on doing the same thing for character attributes and skills. I'm afraid to touch the genetics system until he gets back."

Devon raised an eyebrow and asked, "Why do you need to mess with the genetics system?"

"I think we'll need more realistic genetics if we're going to have a more realistic breeding system," Dalma complained.

"Right," Danika agreed. "Because aliens and humans won't be able to interbreed in a more realistic system, just like dogs and cats can't?"

"I don't think you want a realistic breeding system if you just want to have those aliens that you proposed, where you're assuming that they are all based on our DNA system," Devon objected mildly.

"We do," Paul protested. "We'll want to have a lot more variety than creatures from Earth and its legends, and more realistic interbreeding restrictions."

"Myles," Devon prompted.

Everyone turned to look at Myles Blue, who didn't respond.

"Myles!" Devon repeated more sharply.

Myles jumped and then glanced around. "What?" he asked nervously under their curious gazes.

"They are saying that they need more realistic genetics in order to explore alien worlds," Devon repeated.

"What? Has there been a breakthrough in the decoding?" Myles asked blankly.

Everyone except Devon gazed at him with incomprehension. Devon said calmly, "No, I think I just need you to unlock the breeding overrides for Jade."

"Okay," Myles replied doubtfully, and turned back to his screens. "Ugh," he muttered, "all the Turtle's functions are scattered around now." A few minutes later he asked, "Can you all stop hovering?"

Devon nodded and calmly asked everyone to write a short description of a world unlike Earth. Danika hovered in front of a blank screen for awhile. "Unlike Earth" was too vague. The moon was unlike Earth. A lot of the moons of legend and lore were completely unlike each other as well.

After a bit she wrote, "I think it might be a bit like visiting a different continent, only more so. There are trees that I recognize as trees, but they smell different, and a close inspection shows that they even flower and make seeds in a different manner. There would be animals that I don't know how to name, but I think that there would still be predators and prey, herbivores and carnivores, and flying and flightless varieties? I suppose it depends on the terrain that they live in. I think I read somewhere that all DNA life requires water, and that the gasses in water make up a huge percentage of our air, so I think that the habitable worlds would actually need to be similar to Earth."

"Done," Myles announced.

Devon said simply, "Jade, make me a feathered elephant with paws like a cat."

Jade asked, "What kind of bird should I take feathers from? Which type of elephant and cat?"

"Just choose randomly," Devon replied with a hint of impatience.

Everyone closed the screens they'd been writing in and gathered to watch Devon Yu and Jade. An enormous feathered shape appeared beside them, while Jade made a string of comments like, "It's trunk won't function well if the feathers cover it."

When it was complete Devon instructed, "Now make it this big," and held out his hands to demonstrate.

Danika was startled by the way the feathered elephant changed as it shrank. It wasn't simply scaled. The feathers did become smaller, but they were actually much larger compared to its body size than they had been. The feet were also bigger in proportion once it had shrunk, and its eyes were bigger too, instead of becoming the tiny specs that they would have been.

"Now make one of the opposite gender and create a couple of their children," Devon continued. "And add some plants that they would like to eat."

"Okay!" Jade agreed cheerfully and three more of the strange little animals popped into existence. Plump looking grasses and a berry bush grew up from the floor. "They can't see us," Jade added, "or they would run away."

"Now tell me that doesn't look like a group of alien creatures grazing!" Devon challenged them all with satisfaction.

Weirdly, the first thing that occurred to Danika wasn't a platypus, but the question, "Are there any elephants in 'Living Jade Empire'?"

"No," Myles replied shortly.

Devon explained, "Elephants are licensed. We have their data but we can't present anything that is too close to an actual elephant."

"Licenced?" Danika asked blankly.

"Like dinosaurs and other reconstructed animals. Haven't you wondered why Living Jade Empire features so many endangered animals?" Takahashi questioned.

"Awareness campaign?" Danika suggested.

Paul laughed and the others either smiled or chuckled. Devon said, "When we found out that we'd have to pay to have elephants, we started adding every animal that might fall into reconstructed status in the near future. As long as they are included before that happens, they are free."

"Okay…" Danika replied with mixed feelings. What she had assumed to be meaningful had turned out to be penny pinching.

Paul asked, "Is combining earthly animals really enough to create a wide enough variety of alien creatures? Not that those um, feathered olipads, aren't surprisingly convincing."

Takahashi knelt beside them and examined them more closely. "I had no idea that the only thing stopping us from combining more than two animals was a rule restriction, I thought that it was their complexity?"

Devon shrugged, and pointed to Myles. "Myles is the one who talked us into advancing creature design from the old fashioned pasting 3D models together to rendering them from their characteristics. And I have to admit, it's been smooth! Sometimes the combinations the game renders on its own are beyond weird, but they all come out as functional possibilities."

"But they aren't being compiled from the actual DNA right?" Danika asked a little incredulously.

"Of course not," Myles told her with a disbelieving roll of his eyes.

"If we could do that we probably wouldn't have time to spend on making games," Devon added with amusement. "Someday though. And Paul, if you can come up with a physical characteristic that some kind of plant or animal has never displayed on Earth, I'll be unimaginably impressed."

"It has to be possible," Danika assured Paul quickly. "It's just really really hard to imagine something that isn't like anything else!"

Devon laughed and Takahashi nodded as Paul grimaced.