The Anomaly Corner: The UNN Investigation Pledge

Editorial By Felipe Gil Valera

We want to kick start the new Opinion and Editorial section of the UNN with our first editorial. We know that weird things happen on Avesta, and we want to also say that we're here for you, and pledge not to leave any stone unturned in our quest to find out what the hell is going on!

"Nyx...that's not a computer...."Photo courtesy of DeadlyLotus

Fellow Cultivators, have you ever noticed how Seedlings seemingly walk through walls, as if they can defy the laws of physics? Or items simply vanishing? Deliveries apparently stuck. At the UNN we’re trying to figure out each and every time these weird anomalies happen. Some of them suggest malevolent agents are at work, while others seem to question what it is we’re observing. 

So often Seedlings can’t place things where clearly they should. Or weirder still, items vanish. Delivery drones get stuck and go around in circles. I’m not saying that Seed Industries wants us to think that these things are happening, but it’s odd that they should pretend that it’s not happening. I did my best to reach out to Synthia Nexus, but the line was cold. The truth is, they’re giving us the cold shoulder at the UNN of late (we don’t know why). What are the possible explanations? Currently we can’t discount thieves, or other malevolent agents, but we should stress this is just a theory: we don’t want to encourage a breakdown in societal trust. We will continue to search for answers.

On the ground in Avesta, Seedlings seem oblivious (except when there’s no deliveries and they die from starvation, but that’s another matter). Just to double check before I filed this editorial, I asked my Seedling Jefferson, and they didn't know what I was talking about. ‘Oh no, I don’t know what you mean’, the poor guy exclaimed after I asked him what he thought about the fact he was standing in a wall. ‘I’m a Seedling, I can’t walk through walls!’

I’ve talked to some engineers who suggested - somewhat unhelpfully -  that it’s our monitors that are at fault. We met with Dr Dijkstra, who is an engineer and he told us that what is going on in front of our eyes, is not the actual events on the ground. ‘After all, the Cultivator-Seedling matrix is deeply complex, tethered across huge volumes of time and space, mediated through the largely unknown infrastructure of The Ether. Until we get a better grip of these portholes through which we observe planet Avesta, we can’t blame the “navmesh”, because there is no navmesh! Reality on the ground sees Seedling movement that is guided purely by raw sensory data and real-time decision-making, without precomputed paths or defined walkable areas. It's a messy, unpredictable, and often chaotic reality.’

Quantum physics teaches us that the act of observation can alter the state of a system. Are our well-intentioned actions as Cultivators, our adjustments to the world and our attempts to "optimize" Seedling behavior, actually causing these weird events? I listened back to our friends’ podcast, The Life Cycle. In season 2 during Eva's fascinating interview with Professor Binney at Oxford, captured it perfectly: we, as Cultivators, are like "bulls in a china shop" when it comes to managing the quantum realities of Seedling life. Our every action, every attempt to optimize their existence, may be inadvertently altering their behavior in unpredictable ways. 

What do we think? Is it a glitch in our operating systems, or a distortion of something much more sinister? We all need to stay on top of these weird and frustrating occurrences. Together we can solve these annoying problems. At the UNN we will continue to petition Seed Industries for solutions. 

And if you see something, as always, say something.