A Computer Simulation Game
Played by a frustrated God
God stared at the computer screen with a red face. He threw up his hands in despair and said, “This is getting ridiculous.” He turned to his assistant. “Can you get Raj, the architect of the UnivSim game? Tell him it’s urgent.”
Within five minutes, Raj was standing before God, wondering why he had been summoned.
God trying to keep his cool, spoke softly, “Raj, I have been playing your UnivSim game.”
“How do you find it, sir?”
“It’s good. I can create stars, planets, plants, trees, and various life forms. Everything is fine except the… humans. The ones I populated on planet Earth.”
“What about them, sir?”
“I can’t stand them. They were cute at first, but now they’re getting on my nerves. They are becoming more intelligent and interfering with everything…it’s taking the joy out of playing the game. How do I get rid of them?”
“The quickest way to do that is to trigger a GDE, i.e Global Destruction Event, like hitting Earth with an asteroid. Here, let me show you, sir.” Raj took control of the computer mouse and walked God through the menu options. When he finished, a large red button labeled “Send an Asteroid” appeared on the screen, blinking ominously.
“Go ahead, sir. Click on it,” urged Raj.
God smiled and clicked on the red button. “Ok. Now, what?” he asked.
“Since a GDE impacts the whole planet, the program will be busy for the next several hours, executing different background jobs. Wait for twenty-four hours and then log in. You wouldn’t see a single human being on the planet.”
“Ok, thanks, Raj.”
When Raj received a call from God the next day, he knew something was wrong. He grabbed his laptop and rushed.
When he arrived, God didn’t greet him. He pointed at his computer screen, asking, “Do you recognize this place on Earth, Raj?”
“Yes, this is Time Square in New York.”
“Why do I see so many humans crawling all over the place? Shouldn’t the asteroid have killed all of them?”
“Give me a few minutes, let me check, sir.” Raj opened his laptop and pulled all the log files created by UnivSim in the last twenty-four hours.
After ten minutes of troubleshooting, Raj raised his head triumphantly from the laptop. “I know why humans are still alive, sir. We did trigger the asteroid successfully. But it did not reach Earth, the world you created. Instead, it reached Metaverse.”
“What the hell is a Metaverse?”
“That’s the world humans have created. There is a memory leak in the game that is forcing the asteroid to enter into the Metaverse. It’ll take several weeks to fix the issue before we can execute the GDE again, sir.”
God sighed. “So, what do you suggest?”
“You could ignore Earth, create a brand new planet, and start from scratch. Begin with a clean slate.”
“Ok, I can do that. But how can I prevent humans from appearing on my new planet?”
“That’s easy, sir. While creating the new planet, make sure to leave the check box “Support for Intelligent Lifeforms” unchecked. But I need to caution you on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Without intelligent lifeforms, my game will be pretty boring, sir.”
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