civilization

Several people in my lab (3 postdocs, the co-director, and a grad student) are playing a space-age version of Civilization that one of the postdocs developed. This has been going on for a while.

The game is like civilization in that you have cities (or planets, here), technology trees, military units (mostly spaceships), and so on. Moves are submitted, battles simulated, and (coolest of all), videos of battles and outcomes are generated. Two of the postdocs (Pat and Fuat) have been working together on several real-world projects, and seem to naturally be allied. The co-director (Leigh) seems to be on their side too. Consequently, it's sometimes difficult to tell what they're talking about: an upcoming deadline or an upcoming coup.

Recently the grad student (Mike) made a move against, as far as I can gather, the developer of the game (Damon), in an effort to take him by surprise and generally shake things up. Since Damon's the developer, a master strategist, AND the narrator person (like the D&D counterpart?) people have been mostly afraid to do anything to him, to his slight chagrin. He's in it to play, after all.

Mike told me about this while we were scanning, which usually involves at least a couple hours of sitting around trying to keep busy/awake. He cackled and rubbed his hands gleefully, in anticipation of the smackdown. He'd submitted his decisions for this round, and they were scheduled to go through in three days' time. Since then every time I've given him a significant "tell me what's going on" look, or even said "hey, what about...?" he's made frantic shushing sounds and looked nervously over his shoulder for the enemy.

These are things I don't want to forget.