Alice Beta
Alice Beta (December 31, 1900 - January 1, 2010) is a mathematician, engineer, and alleged time-traveler.
She is widely acknowledged for her contributions to artificial intelligence, publishing a series of Gnomon algorithm functions useful for detecting and preventing crimes against mathematical constants.
She and actor-cryptographer Niles Cartouchian are married, or have long-term relationships, in several overlapping timelines. Their romance is documented in the well-known illustration Alice Beta and Niles Cartouchian Play Chess.
Their daughter Janet Beta is a mathematician. Janet worked on the ENIAC ("Empty Noise Into Alien Communication") program.
Alice Beta was among the first to publicly question the ENIAC program's goals and methods, leading to trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Beta and engineer Henrietta Bolt have collaborated on several artificial intelligence projects, including .
Baron Zersetzung has repeatedly alleged that Alice Beta is the secret identity of The Governess in an earlier timeline.
Cross-timeline communication
Statements from multiple sources suggest that Beta is in communication with versions of herself in other timelines. Assertions include:
It is generally agreed that Beta communicates with other timelines where she is exactly the same, but where something significant has happened in those timelines which makes them different from all of the other timelines where she is constant.
In our timeline, Beta's husband Niles Cartouchian is missing and presumed dead or held captive in a transdimensional prison. In all of the other Beta-constant timelines, Beta and Cartouchian have a long and happy marriage.
Other Beta-timelines are characterized by:
- The Trinity project sets fire to North America.
- The Hindenberg does not explode; a woman (disguised as a man) gives birth during that time.
- The Tunguska event becomes a global religious shrine.
- Nikola Tesla is a crime fighter.
- Galileo Galilei is a crime fighter.
See The Many Worlds of Alice Beta.
Beta herself has never directly answered questions on the topic, although she has stated that "everyone knows multiple timelines are real, and that cross-timeline communication is a fundamental product of Gnomon algorithm research. Well not everyone -- some people still believe in demons."
Forensic allography
Beta published numerous papers on forensic allography over the course of her career.
In the News
November 19, 1974: Green Ring tells Dick Cavett a funny story about the time Alice Beta and Andy Warhol ran into each other — "literally ran into each other, smacko, like two outfielders chasing a pop fly" — in some Manhattan nightclub.
Mathematician Janet Beta says that she "caused her mom a lot of headaches when I was younger," but that they "are now the best of friends."
Signed first edition of Alice and Niles Dancing goes viral, draws record number of followers.
While newsmen take notes, Chairman Dies of House Committee investigating Un-American activities, proofs and reads his statement replying to Alice Beta's attack on the Committee (Oct. 26, 1938).
Alice Beta and Niles Cartouchian Play Chess wins Pulitzer prize, hailed as "most entertaining illustration of our time."
1943: Alice Beta Paragliding published. Many experts believe that illustration depicts Beta infiltrating the ENIAC program, although this is widely debated.
Nixie tube collectors praise Alice Beta's The Nixie Economy as "a long-overdue assessment of the economic and historical significance of Nixie tubes (nonfiction).
Albert Einstein and Alice Beta Conducting Research wins Pulitzer award for "most prescient illustration of the decade".
The Governess has the power to control machines as if they were children.
Alleged photograph of Alice Beta using mind-transfer machine for the first time.
Fiction cross-reference
- Abomynous - alleged Supervillain (nonfiction) and enemy.
- AESOP - alleged autonomous artificial intelligence, widely believed to exist as electrical patterns in the Earth's ionosphere. According to Alice Beta, AESOP is familiar with the novel The Recusant; Beta has suggested that AESOP "identifies with the protagonist's struggle to survive in isolation from its native environment."
- Alice Beta and Niles Cartouchian Play Chess
- Henrietta Bolt
- Janet Beta
- Niles Cartouchian - trusted friend and fellow crime-fighter.
- Forensic allography
- Green Ring (AI)
- The Governess - superhero identity of Alice Beta.
- That Was Then, This Is Here - unauthorized, sensationalist biography of Alice Beta
- The Nixie Economy - Alice Beta's nonfiction book about the economic and historical significance of Nixie tubes
- Two Plus Two Opens The Door - Beta's classic children's book about Gnomon algorithm theory
- Why Can't We See Transdimensional Tax Returns?
Categories
Nonfiction cross-reference
- Artificial intelligence (nonfiction)
- Nixie tube (nonfiction)
- Superhero (nonfiction)
- Trinity (nuclear test) (nonfiction)