Alternian Computing: The Basics

Alternia’s information and communications technology is very alien and hard to understand - and deliberately so! But there are some common threads we can use to form a loose understanding of how Alternian biocomputers work.

Slime

All Alternian computers are generally of the same basic makeup; coloured husk filled with green slime, almost identical to recooperacoons. It’s unclear whether this slime is the same or similar in nature to sopor slime; but the fact that Sollux’ computer has red and blue slime in the same colours as his cocoon indicates they may be closely related.

This slime is piped through husk-coloured hoses into the screen for the computer (and likely somewhere under the desk, the keyboard is attached, too). The exact purpose or functionality of this slime isn’t specified, but other mentions of slime used in computing give us a good idea.

Game Grub magazines apparently always boast of ‘exclusive leaks’. While the associated image positions us to read ‘leaks’ as literal leaks of slime from literal Game Grubs, we can also assume, based on the nature of the magazine, that when a Game Grub leaks, it contains something worth reporting on. i.e. data. So it makes sense that the slime contained within Alternian computers is some sort of data-carrying fluid, which is piped into the screen to be visually displayed (and isn’t piped into the keyboard in the same way, because a keyboard is a data input rather than a reader).

As well as several game grubs, the floor of Sollux’ hardware-littered respiteblock is also home to several unidentified slime-and-husk components. They appear to be sitting atop the hosing, and not plugged into any of it, so their purpose seems to be standalone; perhaps auxiliary and/or portable data storage. 

When combining the microphone with his gaming controller, Xefros identifies the inside fluid as ‘pus’; given the fact that the computer slime would appear to be at least partially a discharge from an insect larva, it seems likely that pus is the proper term for the slime inside computers and computer accessories.

Honey

One other type of computer appears on homeworld Alternia; the Beehouse Mainframe. The basic setup is actually almost essentially identical to that of a pus-filled computer; a solid frame is filled with a viscous fluid, and hoses are plugged into various ports on the outside of the frame in order to pipe the fluid into other machines.

The practice of using Beehouse Mainframes is referred to as “Apiculture Networking,” which implies one of the strengths of these computers over pusware is their networking capabilities. The ability of the worker bees, who also produce the honey, to relocate honey by themselves likely has something to do with this.

The honey produced by the Mainframe’s worker bees also has a sort of brain-boosting effect when consumed. This may correspond somehow to the difference in data containment between pus and honey.