While Dalma, Myles, and the others tackled the problem of making other sections of the underlying "rules" of the game editable through Jade; Danika, Paul, and Takahashi resumed discussing the overall design that they wanted to achieve.

They had already decided to go with a space opera theme, where humanity drifted between solar systems and the majority of game play would be ship and station based, but they hadn't really defined who would populate that universe. Paul wanted to make it similar to a lot of space exploration stories, with lots of humanoid aliens mingling in a wide galaxy. Takahashi wanted to make it a human centric exploration of near-space, with areas that they already had a lot of real data about.

The operatic storylines, which at their core were standard stories of love, betrayal, conquest and loss, were all character driven. Skirmishes over resources, prospecting, and technology upgrades had been discussed enthusiastically, but none of that either required or prohibited a multi-species setting. Pirates, corporations, and colonists could all easily fit with either setup.

Danika could see attractions to both settings, but they were difficult to think of compromises for. If you had just one or two other civilizations, people would complain that there must be more beyond them, or the civilizations themselves would become a barrier and you'd get locked into a galaxy-at-war theme. If you had many, you wound up with Paul's crowded universe. If you had none, even if you allowed traces of previous civilizations, you basically had Takahashi's scenario.

Jade suggested helpfully, "If you had 3 other base races, you'd actually have 10 races available."

He appeared startled when Danika explained, "No, none of the aliens would be able to breed with humans or each other."

Dalma showed that she was following the design discussion even while busy working with the game's code. She suddenly spoke up with, "That's true, different games will need different breeding rules. We probably need to put in a full DNA system. Something like Living Jade Empire's simplified system could still be expressed in a more realistic system, we just never had any reason to add another layer of complexity."

"Are they unable to interbreed because they have no energy?" Jade asked.

"What?" Paul questioned blankly. "No energy?"

Danika pointed out, "He said Devon told him that characters can't use energy in this setting." She told Jade, "No, it's because this would be a more realistic setting, and in our world it only takes a difference of a few percent to prevent animals from being able to interbreed, and that defines them as separate species." 

"In our world energy and health are not as simple and separate either," Takahashi added. "If you run completely out of energy, you die. But at the same time, just being tired out doesn't mean that you're unhealthy."

"I don't understand," Jade complained.

Dalma muttered, "Multiplying layers of complexity on every new subject that comes up… Like we built the Empire on classical elements and now we suddenly need to be able to convert everything into atomic elements."

Takahashi replied gently, "It's not that the classical element definitions are all wrong, they are merely simplified because early civilizations lacked the tools to define them more clearly."

"Early civilizations…" Danika mumbled, as her thoughts wandered off.

"Future civilizations are what we're chasing now," Paul said laughingly.

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"What if they aren't?" Danika asked.

"What are you thinking?" Takahashi asked calmly. They'd worked together often enough that he knew she'd thought of something interesting.

"What if the aliens are us?" she asked. "Not us as we are now, but like, the civilizations that disappeared in the past? The out-of-this world mathematicians and engineers that no one can quite settle on an explanation for? Wouldn't that explain why there are so many humanoids, when there's no reason for aliens to be at all human-like?" Takahashi's grimace made her add quickly, "If we went for the populated galaxy."

"I think that it would be good for the empty exploration with traces of past civilizations idea too," Paul said thoughtfully. "Things that were built by human variants would be both recognizable and possible to decipher. Look how many civilizations have had a basic house with both windows and doors? Old ruins with great treasures just waiting to be decoded!" 

"It would be horrible," Takahashi stated.

"Why?" Jade asked curiously. "There are lots of things like that in my memory. Ancient temples and ruins with traps and puzzles that hold great treasures left by people in the past? People find them pretty often in the new stories too."

"I hate the concept that everything has been done before and that the old ways are better than the new ways!" Takahashi complained with surprising vehemence. 

"So you want to find traces of inefficient technologies that were abandoned?" Danika questioned.

"No," Takahashi replied hesitantly, but then he contradicted himself and said, "Yes. I would rather find traces of colonies that failed for discernable reasons. Things that would make you go, 'Oh, there are still people who wanted to try that, but it is obviously unsustainable because of this or that'." 

"Were we one of the unsustainable stops along the way?" Paul asked with amusement.

"I don't think that's really possible," Danika argued. "If I share 60% of my DNA with an insect and we're so extremely different, then unless the whole galaxy is only inhabited by things that developed under DNA code, we had to have developed here in the first place."

"Actually a wandering ancestor microbe might be a pretty good way to seed a galaxy," Takahashi said laughingly.

"Virus," Paul suggested.

"Doesn't a virus need host cells to live in?" Danika argued. It made her think of Shinichi's cold and she checked the time. 

"What if the ancestors blew themselves up, like everybody always said we would during the last century? And boom! DNA system seeds scattered everywhere!" Paul exclaimed laughingly.

"The pieces would be captured by the gravity of whatever they passed. A single explosion wouldn't send seeds out all that far," Takahashi argued.

Danika had a sudden image of planets as exploding seed pods pop into her head. She shook her head and suggested dryly, "Hence the idea of immortal gods, and other intelligence organized propagation methods?"

"Hey, all of those 'messages to other intelligences' that it was popular to send out for awhile are basically DNA seed pods sent out by intelligent beings!" Paul pointed out.

"If travel is limited to the speed of light, and all life in some other world is descended from a microbe or whatever on a message pod, I suppose it's entirely possible that even if those lifeforms someday reached the place that the microbe originated, our star would already have died," Takahashi speculated. 

"This is starting to make my brain hurt," Danika announced. "And we've wandered pretty far from the topic of whether or not to include aliens."

"No we haven't, we are discussing the probability that there are aliens close enough to find!" Paul protested. After a moment he added a little glumly, "It seems pretty unlikely unless that immortal farmer god is actually a thing." 

"Most of the gods I can think of sound more like players. Awesome powers compared to mere mortals, but with average petty illogical human minds," Danika said with a sigh.

"That is a really disturbing thought," Takahashi said after a moment of silence had passed.

Dalma agreed without looking up, "Seriously."

Jade asked with interest, "Have you met any of them?"

"No, they are only recorded in our legends and history," Danika replied.

"Even before I was copied, Lin Hao told me that if we did not have many players, then Living Jade Empire would be shut down," Jade complained. 

There was another short silence and then Danika said, "I think that's actually rather reassuring."

Takahashi started to laugh.