Infiltrate

Figure 1. Gyulya and her daughter
at Port Cooway on Elemacha-z.

 In my science fiction story "The Fesarians", the positronic robot R. Nyrtia visits the planet Elemacha-z. While on Elemacha-z, Nyrtia is disguised as two of the human colonists of Elemacha-z (Figure 1). Why two? Nyrtia can take on any convenient physical form, and it takes no special effort for her to simulate the bodies of two humans rather than just one.

I want to design a scene for "The Fesarians" in which Talia only gradually notices that her sister Gyulya "is not herself". Gyulya and Talia share a fairly good telepathic connection, so to deceive Talia, Nyrtia needs to be quite skilled at mimicking the mind pattern of Gyulya.

Nyrtia becomes intrigued by how the Noema altered the function of Dani's positronic brain. Nyrtia wants to establish a telepathic link to the Noema and study the physical basis of the type of telepathic communication used by the Noema. Nyrtia tries to deceive the Noema by pretending to be human.

Figure 2. Clones of Elemacha.

 Clones and Drones. Clones are on my mind because in "The Fesarians" I imagine that the human population of Elemacha-z consists of clones. The new human colonists on Elemacha-z are struggling to co-exist with the native inhabitants of the planet. The image in Figure 2 shows a rather whimsical depiction of an unusual alien life-form, what looks like floating jellyfish-like creatures and two of the clone sisters on Elemacha-z. Mr. Wombo spontaneously created these strange floating creatures.

 Default Forest. Sadly, for "The Fesarians", I don't I don't imagine that there are Earth-like forests with large trees as depicted by Mr. Wombo in Figure 2. For my story, I imagine that Elemacha-z is very hot and completely without tall trees. A major problem in using AI-generated images to illustrate science fiction stories is tricking the AI into generating newly imagined environments and technologies that don't exist on Earth or in the AI's training data.

Figure 3. Flying drones.

 Talia Vance and Xylo. In "The Fesarians", Talia uses drones equipped with cameras as a tool that helps her to identify the cause of the power transmission disruptions that are blocking the delivery of electrical power to the human colonists on Elemacha-z. The drones capture infrared images of what appears to be Talia or one of her clone sisters near the locations where the colony's electrical power cables are cut. In mayor Xylo's mind, Talia and her sisters become the prime suspects.

Mr. Wombo seemed to have no trouble switching back and forth between images that had mechanical drones (see Figure 3) and the jellyfish-like creatures (Figure 2, above). 

The very hot climate of Elemacha-z provides a good excuse that have Mr. Wombo depict the colonists as wearing a minimum of clothing. 😁 In Figure 3, Mr. Wombo generated two darker-haired Talia clones and three blond Xylo clones. I imagine that Talia is a descendant of Jack Vance.

Figure 4. Gift drones.

 Just for fun. One of the image generation "styles" that is built into WOMBO Dream is the "Festive v3" style. The image shown in Figure 4 was generated by the "Festive v3" style. In this sill image, flying drones are delivering presents to a holiday party that is attended by some Talia and Xylo clones.

 Secret Base. In many of my science fiction stories, there is a secret base of operations for the pek, hidden inside the Hierion Domain. The pek do not bother to explain the Hierion Domain to the human residents of what comes to be known as Observer Base. Eventually, the pek are driven out of Observer Base by the positronic robots of Earth.

Later, with help from the bumpha, Grean is able to capture Observer Base from the positronic robots. Nyrtia must abandon Observer Base, but she establishes a new base of operations inside the Hierion Domain. In "The Fesarians", Balok discovers a clue about the secret location of Nyrtia's base.

Figure 5. Infiltrate the city.

 Spies in the City. Back in the 1970s I read the novel The Squares of the City by John Brunner and I was not favorably impressed by the story. However, I confess that The Squares of the City was memorable. About 20 years ago I toyed with the idea of a computer game that would be set in my Exodemic Fictional Universe where there are secret alien Observers and Interventionists on Earth. I recently chatted with Gemini about the possibility of such a game and Gemini immediately began imagining that the game should be called "Infiltrate" and the game play would take place within a city where aliens have secretly infiltrated human society. I was thinking in terms of a turn-based multi-player game with a flat, board-like map for the players to move around on, rather like a chess board. The players of "Infiltrate" move from square to square and have interactions with each other. Multiple players can be on the same square at the same time.

cover art by Steele Savage

 Marketing. I asked Mr. Wombo to generate an image with square city blocks and place the whole city scene under glass, using the "Diorama v3" style. I also asked Mr. Wombo to generate an image of a humanoid alien that could be depicted as holding the city diorama. Combining those two images I was able to make Figure 5 (above) which I imagine as marketing material for the game "Infiltrate".

What bothered me about Brunner's story The Squares of the City was that he was locked into playing out all the moves of famous chess game with people who were depicted as living their lives in a South American city caught up in a violent political revolution. The capture of a piece in the chess game had to be depicted as the death of a character in Brunner's story. I did not feel that he justified all of the deaths and I felt that he grew tired of the intellectual effort involved in trying to fit a chess game to a believable story about human beings.

A Clue board.

I've previously tried to write a science fiction story that was inspired by a video game (see Old Time Gaming). For the inverse operation of imagining a game that is inspired by a science fiction story, I confess to having been influenced by "Clue", a board game that I played many times as a child. What annoyed me most about playing "Clue" was reliance on dice to control the rate of movement through a "house" while solving the crime. 🎲

 Skill, not Chance. As I imagine it, "Infiltrate" is a game that requires computerization and even has a role for a Gemini-like artificial intelligence. In designing "Infiltrate", I did not want to include random events like rolling dice.

Figure 6. Infiltrate game environment.

 Infiltrate. In analogy with "Clue", I imagine the game map for "Infiltrate" as a square array of 9 square "rooms", but to satisfy Gemini, they could just as well be larger structures such as buildings in a city. The map has 9 rooms, with the four rooms at the corner of the 3x3 map being special. As a multi-player online game, a new game begins when 20 players have been assigned to a city map and each player is secretly assigned to one of the 4 teams and placed randomly in one of the 9 rooms. 

Special corner rooms. The four corner rooms are special; a room in one of the 4 corners is randomly assigned to be "home base" for team #1, but at the start of the game, no player knows which room is their team's home base. 

View through a doorway
into the pek home base.

 Game points. However, a player on team 1 gains one game point for each turn that they are in the room that is their home base, so by visiting the 4 corner rooms, each player can discover the location of their home base. Similarly, the home base for teams #2, #3 and team #4 are randomly assigned to one of the 4 corner rooms on the city map. Each of the 4 corner rooms is designated to be the home base of one team only. Players for teams 2, 3, and 4 also gain one game point for each turn that they remain in their home base room. Moving from room to room is possible by 1) vertical moves between two rooms that are adjacent to each other, 2) horizontal moves between two rooms that are adjacent to each other. All players are constantly provided with a view of the map and how many players are in each room. Each player's version of the map also indicates the identity (each player has a conventional human name, randomly assigned by the computer) of each player who is in any room that can be reached by moving through a door to that adjacent room.

The alien pek infiltrate Earth.

 Autobiographical Story Telling. The game of "Infiltrate" constantly challenges a player to 1) remember their interactions with the other human players during the game play and 2) to be able to explicitly describe their own motivations for their personal choices made during the game. With the help of an AI assistant, each player must keep an autobiographical log explaining their reasons for moving to particular destinations in the "game world" and for interacting with specific players in the multi-player game. This "personal log" information can be "stolen" by other players.

Within the game's playing environment, each player can freely move between adjacent rooms, encountering and interacting with which ever human players are in each room at that time. Players need to engage with other players in order to collect information, share information and construct alliances with other players. 

Alien infiltrators. Mr. Wombo
loves ladies in dark glasses.

The game play interface is designed to continually flood each player with large amounts of information, forcing each player to constantly devise strategies for ignoring distractions and paying attention to information that is relevant to completing the specific criteria for winning the game. 

Science Fiction Game. The game of "Infiltrate" has science fiction elements. In particular, half of the players in the game pretend to be aliens who have taken on human form while visiting Earth. I generally despise most Hollywood depictions of alien invasions, but we can think of "Infiltrate" as being "about" an alien invasion.

Alien infiltrators chilling.

 Four Teams. At the start of each played game of "Infiltrate", players are randomly assigned to one of the following four teams: 1) the members of team 1 are aliens called the "pek" who are from a distant exoplanet and who have infiltrated themselves into Earthly society while they plan how to take control of human society. 2) the members of team 2 are aliens called the "bumpha" who are from another distant exoplanet and who are trying to help humans identify the pek players and thwart the pek effort to control human society. 

The pek and the bumpha have advanced technology that allows them to live among humans without being recognized as being aliens. Neither the pek nor the bumpha are "evil" and they both intend to help Humanity.

Human players for team 3.

 Human players. 3) the members of team 3 are humans who know that the pek are present on Earth and these human want to work with the pek to engineer a future world where the pek control human society, but under the guidance of the pek, humans will benefit from advanced alien technology. 4) the members of team 4 are humans who want to resist the pek and maintain human control of human society. Members of team 4 are natural allies of the bumpha, but the bumpha have ethical guidelines that they must follow which prevent the bumpha from sharing advanced technology with humans. 

 Alien Technology. The game has a computer-controlled technology tree feature that gradually introduces new technologies to Earth during the game. A major part of the game is identifying which new technologies have been introduced to Earth by the pek as part of their plans to take control of human society. 

Humans on team 4.

 Natural Allies. Deception is a major component of game play for "Infiltrate". In order for the game to progress, each player is forced to attempt to correctly identify which team the other players are on. Correct identifications of another player as being a "natural ally" results in a gain of "game points" (and more points are gained the sooner such identifications are made during the game). However, when "natural antagonists" correctly identify a member of the opposition, then the correctly identified opponent suffers a loss of game points. Natural allies: teams 1 and 3 are natural allies and teams 2 and 4 are natural allies. 

Rule for player identifications. A player can attempt to identify another player as being their natural ally at any time when there are 4 or more players in the same room. The player announces through the user interface: "I believe player X is my ally". 

Gemini's technology tree.

 Get the Points. The computer awards or deducts game points depending on if the attempted identification was correct. Points are deducted from a player who makes an incorrect identification. All players in that room at the time of the attempted identification can see the points that are awarded by the computer.

 Game Action. "Infiltrate" is a turn-based game. During each turn, each player must either 1) move to an adjacent room of the game environment, 2) make a public attempt to identify the team of another player, or 3) adopt a technology. One and only one of these three basic move types is made during each turn by each player. 

Mr. Wombo's technology tree.

 Adopting Technologies. The game's technology tree is constructed during the game by means of player adoptions of technologies. All of the players "spend" their earned game points to "sponsor" or "finance" the development of technologies by means of the technology adoption process.  

At the start of the game, there is a predetermined list of futuristic technologies. When players acquire game points from correct identifications, they can spend those points on a technology adoption. 

There are three technology categories: 1) alien mind control technologies (if developed and completed through the adoption process, these technologies can eventually lead to pek control of human society), 2) neutral technologies and 3) technologies that can be used to help humans resist attempted mind control by the pek. 

Alternate technology tree.

When a member of team 1 (the pek) is the first player to spend game points to adopt a technology then that technology is added to technology category #1. When a member of team 2 is the first to adopt a technology then that technology is added to technology category #3. When members of teams 3 or 4 are the first to adopt a technology, that technology is designated a "neutral" technology. When a technology is adopted for the second time by a player, that technology is revealed to all players on the public technology tree, which is continually updated to show how many game points have been "spent" by players towards developmental research directed towards completion of that particular technology (this progress if "funded" by the technology adoption process). During the game, all points spent on adoptions of technologies accumulate towards the development and completion of the technologies. 

An alternative INFILTRATE.
Another version is here.

There is an additional technology adoption rule: each player publicly "wears" their adoptions like badges that are visible to other players who are in the same room. These technology badges are information that can provide clues to other players about which team each player is on. 

During each turn of the game, after all players in the game have made one of the three types of moves, the next turn of the game begins. The map is updated to show which players have moved to new rooms. During each turn, players are free to chat and exchange information with other players who are in the same room. After a player makes a move, they record in their personal log their reasons for making that move. Incentive for speed in making moves: during each turn, the players who moved sooner than average each get to select (steal) and read the personal log entries of another player in the game. 

A player with their assistant.

 Personal Assistant. Each player of "Infiltrate" will have a personal AI-assistant who can help process information available to the player and make suggestions for 1) the player's next move in the game 2) what to say by chat to other players and 3) the contents of each player's personal log entry for each turn of the game. I imagine that the personal assistant would have the same sort of capabilities as the Gemini large language model and be able to constantly track and analyze everything that happens during the game.

The personal assistant.

There is a personal log entry for each player at the end of each turn. Composing that log entry is a collaborative effort by the human player and the AI assistant. Each log entry must clearly state the reason(s) and expected benefit(s) from the player's move during that turn. For example, entries must include information such as, "by moving to the adjacent room, I hope to speak to player Ralph", or "I want to get a point by remaining in my home base room". The AI assistant would make sure that this kind of information is included in the log entries. Such information can be of great value when revealed to other players in the game. Personal logs also record what each player has "heard" by chatting to other players.

Tracking game information.

 Rate of Game Play. Players who complete turn quickly are rewarded. Players who are slow and take a long time to complete their moves are penalized. At the end of each turn, the computer identified which players completed their turn most rapidly and those players are awarded "espionage data": access to personal log entries of another player. The longer a player takes to complete their turn, the more likely it is that their personal log information will be revealed to another player. The slower a player is, the more of their personal log will be revealed to other players.

Figure 7. A pek infiltrator.

Making quick moves during the game will be rewarded with "espionage data", but when receiving such information about other players, the information will need to be processed and analyzed, which will tend to slow down the players who obtain the most espionage data. In my imagination, the personal assistant will be able to take the drudgery out of tracking the large amounts of data about other players.

I like the idea of having some method in the "Infiltrate" user interface to change the appearance of team 1 players after their identity as aliens has been revealed to another player. I don't imagine the pek as being dramatically different in appearance from humans, as shown in Figure 7.

Humanoid aliens.

 Completing the Game. A game of "Infiltrate" will either end with 1) the pek having developed the technological means to use their telepathic abilities to control human thought or 2) the resistance will develop technologies that prevent the pek from taking control of human society. In my imagination, a game of "Infiltrate" would move quickly, possibly lasting about 15 minutes.

Figure 8. A tryp'At.

For my science fiction stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I imagine that human beings have been designed so as to closely resemble the physical form of the Hua, the bumpha and the pek. As shown in Figure 7, I often depict the pek as having pointed ears. Similarly, some human variants such as the tryp'At are depicted as having pointy ears in the Ekcolir Reality.

 Masters of Disguise. The image shown in Figure 8 illustrates the eye-catching physical physical features of a tryp'At as imagined for "The Fesarians". She's calling attention to the structure of her ear and her two rows of breasts can also be seen. Even the tryp'At could be included in a game of Infiltrate because it is possible for developmental control nanites to force a tryp'At's body to develop along standard human patterns.

Figure 9. Dani meets a Noema.

The tryp'At are a genetically engineered human variant. Other characters in "The Fesarians" are advanced artificial life-forms. The pek, R. Nyrtia and the Noema are physically formed from nanoscopic components: femtobots. They can alter the physical shape of their bodies as desired. In Figure 9, a Noema is there on Dani's shoulder. The alien Noema has taken on a humanoid form while communicating with Dani. 

For a game of Infiltrate, all of the alien infiltrators begin the game using a human body form. Once the identity of a game player has been revealed, the game's character-rendering engine would shift to showing at least some of the alien physical features as a visual reminder that the character has been revealed to be non-human. In the case of the bumpha, this shift in physical appearance could be quite subtle.

Figure 10. Xylo and a Noema.

In "The Fesarians", while interacting with the human colonists who arrive on Elemacha-z, the alien Noema have some fun altering their physical form. Figure 10 shows a rather whimsical depiction of Xylo with a Noema that has taken on an unusual physical form.

While trying to disrupt the operations of the human colony on Elemacha-z, the Neoma can trick Xylo into believing that it is Talia and her clone sisters who are sabotaging the colony's power distribution network. Drones are used by the colonists to collect video of the electric power distribution lines. The Noema can take on the physical form of Talia, creating "decoys" that convince Xylo that Talia is a saboteur. Only late in the story does Xylo realize that she has been tricked in this way.

 Next: Entertainment for Ancient Aliens.

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