In a world where magic was introduced in prehistory, what would computing and automation look like? Would it be anything close to recognizable? What technology would they have that closely resembles ours? What would be completely alien to us, and what of ours would be alien to them? What lies in the intersection of what we consider magic and what they consider science and technology?
I asked myself these questions during a manic episode in early 2021. I ended up with a world with familiar-yet-foreign technology, millennia of geopolitical strife, xenometeorology, both classic liberalism and neoliberalism, no airplanes, an additional humanoid species of comparable intelligence to humans, phreakers, and Ruby Caine, your friend and mine.