A Question Of Existence or Bill Gates Is God
nd God appeared. His entrance wasn't all that special. There wasn't a blinding
flash of light, a bang, or a chorus of angels singing and playing harps in glorious accompaniment.
He was just there. And anyone who saw him, through the window of the small room or on the
security monitors, wouldn't have been able to distinguish him from any other normal person apart
from the geeky glasses and the constant expression of concentration as well as an uncanny
resemblance to Bill Gates as he sat in front of the keyboard alone in the plain room. The room
was designed to be practical and simply function as a link between the most intelligent computer
ever created and any human being who happened to have the top level clearance necessary for
access. So it was grey. The walls were grey while the ceiling and floor were slightly deeper to
indicate a greater depth to the room and make it appear less empty. The only objects in the room
were a desk holding a grey monitor and grey keyboard joined together, and to the wall, via wires
which also ran to the computer terminals sealed inside the super-cooled room next to it. God
quickly gained access to the security system, as God would, and disabled them so that he could
begin deleting the programming present on the super machine. A light flashed on the security
board alerting the attendant as to what was happening. Then time froze for everybody on Earth
without so much as a lift of the eyebrow or a hesitation in typing. He so much wanted to speed up
time within the two rooms but even he, God, was restricted by the universal speed limit that he
had created when he let light be. He was impressed after twenty minutes at the state his body was
in, a marvel of creation, as it began secreting sweat to cool the rising interior heat level caused by
the rapid movement of his fingers.
The deleting was done and so he began setting up the largest ever network known to mankind, had he been conscious at the time, as he connected all the computers with a modem and began deleting all information that was stored on them to make way for his experiment. That done he then began writing his program, his experiment, that would answer his long anticipated question. First, he created nothing, a state of being that wasn't really there but would serve as the canvas for the ultimate creation. He wrote into the program every single possibility as governed by the laws of nature that could happen from that starting point, making them exactly as they were in reality. Next came the most important part of the program and to appear the epitome of concentration a lit cigarette appeared in the corner of his mouth held only by the very end and wafting smoke which slowly rose without deviation in the still air. A cup of coffee then appeared on the desk complete with its very own ring underneath and he relished the moment. Acting like a human was his favourite past time.
It took another ten hours before the program was complete with its defining component installed in the form of a guiding influence on the nothingness with absolute and complete control of it within the confines of physics. He then reset the computer in preparation for a clean boot ready for the program. The boot took an hour in which God, for the first time, was bored. To begin with he enjoyed the sensation until, inevitably, it got boring and he sipped on his now very cold coffee in between puffs on his cigarette. He contemplated sex, but somehow he felt that it was wrong of him, God, to indulge in such an activity and so instead he created for himself a copy of the Bible. Not much of it was true, particularly the part on creation, but the romantic style appealed to him and he found it a good read with his pseudo-human brain delighting in some parts. Finally the computer and global network were ready. He began the program pressing in the letters "C R E A T E . E X E" and then pressed enter to execute the program. He was satisfied to hear the wherr of machines coming from the next room and so he sat back to read the bible and wait.
The program began, as God occasionally watched, by establishing its rules which accumulated to form the theory of light as the basis for the universe and proceeded to create light in the nothingness. The program then began forming levels of nothingness, dividing them with space and after a day there was a clear division between what was above and below the firmament of space. God had finished reading his Bible halfway through the second day of the experiment and he saw that the program had created matter in its three forms and had applied it in a particular way according to the prescribed physics and had let it react until there was a whole universal construction of galaxies, star systems, black holes and planets. He singled out a particular planet that caught his eye and proceeded to watch its development until he fell asleep. He woke on the third day of the experiment to see that the program had slowed considerably because of the mass of computations needed for a reconstruction of a galaxy. The messy atmosphere that the young planet had the day before had given way to a clear sky allowing the light of a million stars to shine upon the earth. He watched as it spun and absorbed light from the nearest star, giving life to the plants which fed on the warmth and evolved. The days and nights past in the virtual universe until the fourth day of the experiment when the plants began forming animals in the oceans and the animals themselves continued to evolve over time. God, now sporting a killer five 'o' clock shadow and the gaunt stature of a man starved for five days saw animals emerge onto the land of the virtual planet and themselves begin to evolve until one particular animal stood up on its hind legs and stayed there as it began to evolve in mind until the point where it could control almost anything on the planet. All through the sixth day of the experiment God was amazed at the detail and complexity of the virtual universe that had been created by the program and explored it thoroughly. And on the seventh day God ended his work. But before he closed the program he went back to the planet that had interested him so much on the fifth day and examined it closely until he found what he was looking for. The program had come across some inconclusions to its existence and so had manifested itself as one of the evolved beings and was working at a super computer. For a moment God was intrigued as to what the program may have been doing manifesting itself at a virtual computer and engaging in some sought of artificial intelligence program. But it was only for a moment.
God shut down the program and then created for himself a large feast, resting his body from its gruelling seven day ordeal. After he finished eating he sat back in the chair contemplating what he had learned. He had learned that it was possible to create a self contained universe, with one ultimate intelligence influencing it, through the use of physical technology created by mortal beings. He was now no closer to answering his question. Did he really exist or was he simply a program running within the confines of set laws. For a moment he doubted his own existence and the universe ended.
