God’s Game

Sitting at the kitchen table, Greg finally finished his homework. The last problem, about calculating the overall volume of a 5 dimensional object suspended in a 6 dimensional matrix was unnecessarily hard. Greg hated his math teacher, the dude was such an asshole. But Greg was also a perfectionist and, self proclaimed, but also actual, total genius. So, of course, Greg had to work through the whole thing until he was absolutely sure it was right. It had taken 2 hours.

“Mom.” Greg was beside his mother now, even as Greg was in his bedroom, beginning to oscillate in tune with the input strings of the simulation he was running, while Greg also made a sandwich across the kitchen at the fridge. All the while Greg was also back at school watching his math teacher’s look of disappointment at Greg’s perfect answer. Finally, throughout all of this, even while Greg had left his simulation to do his homework, Greg devoted a small amount of energy to watching the inter-dimensional live feed for any announcement on whether his favorite band was going to be getting back together. That last Greg was constantly active and, so far, had spent several cycles very disappointed.

“I’m done.” said the Greg who was beside his mother. Greg finished the sandwich and Greg standing next to Greg’s mother now held the sandwich in his hand. Greg in class decided it was a waste of attention and came back to the Greg next to Greg’s mother as well. Greg next to Greg’s mother waited for the OK.

Greg’s mother’s attention was divided between about a dozen tasks spread over the multiverse. She was burning the onions. “Go ahead,” she said, distractedly.

Greg didn’t wait a millisecond. All manifestations of Greg coalesced in the Greg now entwined in the interface for the simulation, except, of course, for the Greg waiting for the announcement back on the live feed. Eager to see what had happened, Greg logged in.

“Oh shit.”

Greg had forgotten to pause.

Greg looked around the landscape of the planet he had been working on. Last he’d left it, the entire planet was thriving, filled with bizarre creatures Greg had thought up over lunch break. Giant monsters, relatively speaking of course, with huge teeth and long tails with maces on the end. Lots of crazy shit. But now, the whole place looked totally different. There was no sign of Greg’s custom life. All that remained of them were fossils. Instead, some other organism had taken over the entire planet, and Greg didn’t even recognize it.

“Shit shit shit.”

This was bad. By failing to pause, Greg had allowed his simulation to organically develop without documentation, way beyond the legal limits for that sort of thing. He ran the calculations in his head. He’d been gone for about 2 hours working on his homework. Greg muttered another curse. That would be almost 65 million years sim time.

If the counsel found out Greg had allowed runaway evolution to progress for that long, Greg would never be allowed to build a sim again. He couldn’t let that happen.

One last time, Greg scanned the planet, marveling a little at the sheer ingenuity of the simple creatures that had evolved in his absence. They built, again relative to their size and understanding, amazing structures and technologies. Greg couldn’t help himself. He sent himself down into their midst at various points, only about 6 different manifestations of Greg in total, and only for well under a second Greg’s time. In total Greg spent about 1,000 years local time roaming the place his strange creatures referred to as “Earth”. He had some pretty rad adventure there, fell in love with some of the weird locals, “Humans” they called themselves, made some really weird babies, and then, nervous that the council could find out any second, returned to his dimension.

Back in his simulation interface, Greg kicked himself for letting this get so out of hand. If only he’d guided these creatures in their evolution, documented it as required by the council, then maybe he wouldn’t have to wipe them all out utterly and completely.

But hell if Greg was gonna let some stupid simulated life forms on a planet he created stop Greg from having a good time. Hell, Greg thought, they got almost half a million years they were never even supposed to have.

At ease with what he had to do, Greg stimulated the strings for mass deletion and watched as the “Earth” – stupid name anyway – was vaporized by its moon.

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