Who Are Neutrino Computers?

So many of us got to know Neutrino Computers at the start of Foundations, when in Directive 001 they requested circuit boards, many many circuit boards. The purpose? We were told it was to help map the many uncharted islands of the archipelago. We decided to try and dive a little deeper and ask around about Neutrino Computers, the all-things digital subsidiary of the Seed Industries corporate umbrella.

When we approached Neutrino Computers for an official history, or indeed any comment on their backstory and origin we were given a firm wall of silence. However, I was informed that there is a great Earth historian, Brando, who I reached out to. He sent me a very sweet, if somewhat obscure note in response. It read simply: ‘Meanwhile back at the ranch, we were right to back quantum computing…’ It was superimposed on an image that we presume is a prelapsarian Terran photograph. A street, some buildings, tracks in the street. 

Image: The image from Marlon Brando, esteemed Earth historian. We've decided to publish it despite the watermark. Courtesy Marlon Brando, kind of

It’s safe to say that without Neutrino humanity wouldn’t have got to Avesta. But are there other secret achievements? Neutrino was credited with developing quantum computing in the age when artificial intelligence, socalled, was starting out. Taking everyone by surprise, they had been secretly researching and developing for half a century before storming out of the shadows and ushering in one the great leaps in humanity. But, what did this entail exactly?

Your trusty reporter made the big trip to Metahaven on the mainland (yes, they’re still letting some of us unihaveners in), and not having heard any response to my persistent appeals for info, I camped outside their main office and doorstepped them. On the second day, finally, someone walked out that looked like, well, a computer scientist. I approached them and asked point blank: if Neutrino Computers invented the computational power to get humanity from one solar system to another, why is it that we have so many shortcomings on Avesta? Why, for example, do societies apparently fail so often throughout history? Why do Seedlings get sick and, perhaps most fundamentally, why do we still die?  

‘Whoever you are, you’re missing a key point of all of this,’ and the man, for he was male, my age, with a bad haircut, raised his arm as if to indicate all of Metahaven, ‘we’re not here to cure humanity. On the contrary. Neutrino’s mandate is, simply, to keep the servers going. The lab results need to be processed. Now please, don’t come any closer.’ And then he was gone.

So there you have it, it’s not much to go on but you can decide if you want to supply cooling fans to Neutrino. Presumably to keep their servers cool.