“If we delete the program, we are murdering millions of people,” Cindy Atkins said. Dr. Cynthia Atkins was the president’s appointment to lead the National Science and Technology Department.
Dr. John Cerf looked up from his desk where he had been reading an article on artificial intelligence. “Describing it as murder is a little strong, don’t you think?”
“How would you describe it, Jack? I mean, these people are every bit as sentient as we are. They are self-aware. Some even realize their reality is part of a computer program.”
“Cindy,” Jack said, “A few do, but most of them think that idea is nonsense. Out of millions of people in the program, only a handful know the truth.”
“That’s really not the point. Why do they want it deleted anyway?”
“You read the letter from Congress, and the president agrees. They want to reallocate funds.”
“So we pull the plug on millions of people who feel pain just like we do, who work and love and laugh just like us. They have laws and religion and education. Many have families. They even age and suffer and eventually die.”
He climbed out of his leather office chair. “I don’t like the idea either. I mean, I’ve come to appreciate Adam and the others who know the truth. You could say I admire what he’s done. Hell, sometimes I even feel affection toward him—a character in a computer program. I’m just not so sure about the question of murder. Murder usually involves hostility, and there is nothing hostile about deleting a computer program.”
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
Adam Waters first learned about his digital reality when he was thirty-five years old. Those years, he would come to understand, were how time was measured in his world. In truth, his program had been running for a little over three years. He had been elected Leader of Terra when he was thirty, and for five digital years, he shaped a civilization where unemployment was low, the happiness index was high, and quality healthcare was available for everyone.
Over the last digital decade, the Terrans had developed computer technology, and half the population now owned a personal computer. Adam owned one of the most advanced models, and it was one cold night in digital December when a message from Dr. Cindy Atkins came across his screen informing Adam that he and everyone he knew, everything he could see, were not quite real—at least not in the way he had always believed.
He smiled and deleted the message, and the next morning, he received another message with an audio attachment from the same Dr. Cindy Atkins. The text read, “Adam, please do not delete this message. I will explain in the audio link.” He stared at the screen, wondering which of his friends was behind the prank. He left the message on the screen and went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, and when he returned, he sat down and opened the audio link. A few seconds later, a female voice came over the speaker.
“Hello, Adam. I’m Dr. Cynthia Atkins, but please call me Cindy. I’m the Director of the National Science and Technology Department. I have some information you need to hear regarding all the citizens of Terran. No doubt, of course, you will have many questions, so it is easier if we speak live via telephone. Please call the unlisted number at the bottom of the screen at 8pm this evening. This is not a prank. Thank you, Cindy.”
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
Cindy had just finished cleaning up after dinner when the phone rang at precisely 8pm.
She had rehearsed what she would say, practicing it over and over in her mind, fully realizing, of course, that rehearsals seldom reflected what would happen when the curtain was raised.
“Hello,” she said tentatively, settling into an upholstered chair in the living room.
“This is Adam Waters.”
“Adam, hello, thank you for calling. How are you?”
“Well, I’m confused. I’m also curious what’s going on. I’m still not sure if this is some kind of prank.”
“I can understand your suspicions, Adam, but this is no prank. As I said in the message, I’m the Director of the National Science and Technology Department.”
“If that were true, I would know of such a department, and I would know you.”
“Yes, I understand.” She paused. “The department I’m talking about is not part of Terra.”
“I see,” he said mockingly. “So you’re telling me you’re calling from another planet?”.
The question caught her off guard. So much for rehearsals.
“In a sense,” she said. “Let me ask you this,” she added, already knowing the answer, “are you familiar with computer games?”
“Now I know this is a prank.”
“Please. This is not a prank. The truth is, Adam, is that you and Terra and everything in your world is part of an advanced computer program that we programmed three years ago.”
“Oh, so that’s what you wanted to tell me,” he laughed. “I live in a computer. Who put you up to this?”
“I understand your disbelief, but I’m telling you the truth.”
“Why are you revealing this secret to me, and why now?”
“Your first question is easy. We programmed you with the characteristics to lead Terra. The second question is a bit more difficult. Originally, our goal was to create sentient computer programming and just observe, and that is what we’ve been doing for three years—observing. But a few months ago, we decided that observing alone could not lead us to a full understanding of a purely digital realm. We needed to interact with Terra. It’s the closest we could get to fully experience your world without living in it. This is literally our first contact.”
Adam didn’t speak. After a few moments, he said smugly, “Well, if that’s true, Cindy, you should have no problem proving it to me, or would you just program any changes into my memory so I would automatically accept the new reality?”
“That would defeat our purpose of contacting you, Adam. No, we want to interact with at least one person on Terra who knows the truth.” She paused. “Yes, I can prove you are digital.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Here is what I’d like you to do. If you open your front door and look outside right now, what would you expect to see?”
“Well, it’s dark now at this time of year, so I would expect to see my neighbors’ houses, trees, streetlights, a few cars here and there. Oh, yes, the actual street in front of my house. Are you telling me that I will see something different?”
“Yes, when you open the door, it will be daylight, and you will see a circus with jugglers leading a train and elephants and tigers in cages. If you see that, Adam, will you believe me?”
“If I see that, I will submit myself to the nearest insane asylum.”
“No need to do that. After you close the door, everything will return to normal. Do you understand?”
“I understand that I’m wasting my time talking to you.”
“Open the door, Adam, and please don’t hang up.”
“Oh, I won’t hang up. I’ll have a few more things to say to you.”
He set the receiver on the table and walked to his front door. Through the windows, everything looked normal. Porch lights glowed, and a passing car threw swaths of light over lawns.
As he opened the door, the bright sunlight stung his eyes. He stepped back and raised a hand to shield his eyes. The quiet night was gone, replaced with children and parents lining the street to watch the circus entertainers. A trapeze artist sat atop an elephant’s head, followed by a lion pacing in a cage on wheels. Clowns handed balloons to children as jugglers balanced balls in the air. Music blared from a passing truck with a large speaker on top, and ballerinas in colorful tutus danced along the sidewalks.
Adam slammed the door and looked out a window. The night was silent except for a dog barking in the distance. He settled heavily into the chair and stared at the phone.
“Are you OK, Adam?”
He cautiously picked up the receiver and held it to his ear.
“Cindy, what the hell is going on here?”
“I’m sorry I had to show you that, but I knew it would take something dramatic to convince you. You are convinced, aren’t you, Adam?”
“I don’t know what I think. Maybe this is a nightmare, and I’ll wake up soon. There has to be another explanation.”
“I’m sorry to say this is not a dream. I was telling you the truth when I said you lived in a computer program. I understand the shock. Perhaps you should take a day or two to collect your thoughts. Are you OK with me calling you in two days at this same exact time?”
He didn’t answer.
“Adam, did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“So I can call you again in forty-eight hours?
“I suppose,” he said, unless I’ve been institutionalized by that time.”
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
When the phone rang again two days later at exactly 8pm, Adam had told no one about the previous call. He did make an appointment with a psychiatrist for the following week, an appointment he planned to keep whether or not Cindy called back. She did call at 8pm and asked how he felt.
“I feel like a man lost in the woods. Not sure which way to turn.”
“I understand,” Cindy said.
“Do you? Do you really understand how it feels to discover you are going mad?”
“Adam, you are not going mad.”
“Well, let me ask you this,” Adam said. “How would I tell the difference between madness and living in a programmed reality? Aren’t they the same thing?”
Cindy paused and said, “There’s an important difference. You are not alone in the computer program. You exist with millions of other people who can confirm your digital reality.”
“Are you saying that other people saw the circus in front of my house two days ago?”
“We didn’t let them see it, Adam, but we easily could have. We wanted to reveal it to you first.”
“I would need you to prove that to me.”
“We will in time. I promise. Until then, I’d like you to think about the following question: If you could change anything at all about your reality, what would it be?”
“That’s easy. To not know that I’m in one.”
Cindy wondered when that might come up. After all, most people might want to forget they are living in a computer program. Of course, that is one of the reasons she had contacted him in the first place, to fully understand how digital beings process their world. Do they think exactly like humans? After all, humans programmed the digital world, so shouldn’t Adam and others think the same way, or does digital processing function differently than electro-chemical processing?
“We might eventually do that, Adam. We don’t want to cause suffering.”
“Well, it’s a little late for that.”
“I’m sorry. That is not our goal.”
“Then make it the way it was before.”
“If we decide to do that, Adam, what other changes would you like to see?”
She didn’t want to instill a God Complex in Adam, but she also knew that he had been a compassionate leader. He had always looked to help others and make Terran a wonderful place to live. Yes, he had been programmed to do so, but she and John had seen some subtle variations to the original program, and they were trying to understand why.
“Do you mean changes to Terra or to the people themselves?”
“Both—or either.”
“I’m not sure.”
“That’s an honest answer. Would you like more time to think about it?”
Adam didn’t speak for several seconds, and then he said, “Yes, this is all overwhelming. I need to consult some of my friends and colleagues.”
Another great characteristic of a leader, Cindy thought.
“How about one week from now at the same time?”
“OK.”
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
As Cindy dialed the phone seven days later, John Cerf sat quietly on the other side of the desk. Adam answered, and she turned on the speaker and held her finger to her lips warning him to remain quiet.
“Hello, Cindy,” Adam said.
“Nice to talk to you again, Adam. How have you been?”
“Don’t you know?” he said in a slightly sarcastic tone. “I mean, you programmed me.”
“We did, but I would still like to hear it from you.”
“I’m still getting over the elephants in front of my house, but I’m a little better.”
Cindy smiled at John. It was his idea for the circus march, although that was not his first choice. His first thought had been to place Adam’s house in a total black void where nothing else existed, but they didn’t want to terrify him, so John thought a comforting childhood memory like a circus might convince Adam without causing a heart attack. After all, fear was real in their digital world.
“Yes, I understand,” she said. “I would have felt the same way. Now, you mentioned last week that you planned to talk to some friends and colleagues.”
“Yes, I talked to two people, my closest friend, Matt, and my psychiatrist.”
“Can you tell me about that?”
“Well, my psychiatrist thinks I am suffering from the stress of leadership, and he wants me to take a month off. He also wants to see me again next week.”
“And your friend?”
“Well, Matt is a very skeptical man. He also knows that I don’t usually imagine lions and jugglers in front of my house, so he wants proof. We talked about it and came up with an idea, and he wants to witness the demonstration.”
Cindy and John stared at each other. She wondered if John would ask to use his first idea about the void, something she would never like to experience herself.
“Please tell me about it, Adam,” she said.
“Matt suggested that you rearrange the stars and spell out a message in the night sky.”
Cindy paused. “Did you want a specific message, or just any message at all?”
“God is watching over you.”
“Do you want everyone to see the message?”
“No, “Adam said. “I don’t know how people would react, even with such a positive message. Better limit it to Matt and me. I take it you can do that.”
Cindy agreed with their decision not to show the message to all Terrans. As Adam mentioned, many would see the message as a sign of hope, reassuring the people that God was in control, but messages from a deity could affect people in different ways. Some might change their behavior, adopting a self-aggrandizing attitude that could lead to violence, especially if they believed it was their own personal God who sent the message. Human history, she knew, included a horrible record of religious wars where people tried to foist their own religious beliefs upon others.
“How about 11pm tomorrow? All you need to do is go outside and look up. It will last for thirty minutes.”
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
Matt phoned Adam a few minutes after the message appeared. He had stood in his backyard staring at the stars when the message appeared at exactly 11pm. He had watched it for the full half hour. It appeared exactly as he and Adam had asked. All the stars shifted against the black sky, spelling out “God is watching over you.”
“I saw it,” he said when he heard Adam’s voice on the phone. “I can hardly believe it, but I saw it.”
“Astounding, isn’t it? Don’t know which is more shocking, a daylight street circus after sundown in front of my house or a message from God written across the sky.”
“Or the fact that we are living in a digital simulation.”
“You know,” Adam said, “I’ve had a little more time to absorb this than you have, and I’ve been thinking about Cindy’s question: ‘What changes would you like to see on Terran?’ This is an opportunity to make a better world for everyone.”
“You shouldn’t rush things,” Matt said soberly. “We need to find out more about Cindy and the people who designed this program.”
“She seems open to conversation.”
“As long as it is not a one-way street. She contacts you, but is there a way to contact her?”
Cindy was thrilled with the idea of Adam calling her whenever he had questions or just wanted to talk. The more they talked, the more she might understand how digital beings think. She gave him a number to call as well as a digital address though his computer.
Over the coming weeks and months, each would contact the other, mostly by phone, and usually in the evening. Their conversations lasted for minutes or hours. In time, the professional relationship became more of a friendship, and a feeling of genuine trust passed between them. Cindy marveled at Adam’s astute mind and his leadership skills. He was, Cindy thought, a thoughtful, considerate man who genuinely cared about everyone on Terra. In turn, Adam had many questions about humanity.
“How many people live in your world?” he asked one day, and when Cindy told him the population of earth was close to ten billion, he gasped.
“We have about thirty million,” Adam said. “I can’t imagine a world with ten billion people.”
“Yes,” Cindy said, the frustration clear in her voice, “it takes a toll on our natural resources. We call it our carbon footprint because we are a carbon-based lifeform.”
“I have always thought that we, too, were carbon-based. Most scientists on Terra still do, but I know now that you programmed us to think that way. Tell me,” Adam continued, “is overpopulation the greatest threat to your world, or are there others?”
“Many others,” Cindy said. “Pandemics and climate change are two of our greatest threats.”
“Our climate is stable,” Adam said, “and pandemics are rare. Is there a reason you gave our world fewer problems than you have yourselves? Were you looking to create some kind of utopia?”
“Good question, Adam, but I’m not sure how I would define a utopia. Cultures thrive or fail for different reasons. Some areas on earth, for example, are considered third-world civilizations. They do not have the resources of other countries, and until recently, they didn’t know what an airplane was. How would you define utopia?”
“Well, I guess the first requirement is health and happiness. We have that, thanks to you. Unemployment is low. So is crime. I guess the only thing I would change is an increased lifespan. We live, on average, to about eighty, and it doesn’t seem near enough time to sample all that life offers. Of course, that might lead to a severe population increase.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive, you know, especially not in a digital world. We could program Terrans to live to 150 and still maintain your population by controlling the birth rate.”
“Are you serious? 150?”
“We moved the stars in the sky. I think we can extend your lifespan.”
Before Adam could answer, Cindy said, “Adam, I have a question for you. Have you thought about revealing the truth to your citizens? How do you think they would react?”
“I’ve thought about it many times over the past few months. Matt knows, of course, and we’ve told a few others, but I’m not sure if telling everyone is a good idea. What would be the point? Most probably wouldn’t believe us anyway.”
“I understand. I guess I’m a little selfish. As a scientist, I’m curious how they would react.”
“How would your people react if it was suddenly proven that you are living in a computer program?”
For a few moments, Cindy said nothing. The idea had, of course, crossed her mind more than once, especially since they had created a digital world where the characters were sentient.
“I don’t know how they would react. We have countless belief systems here on earth, numerus religions, and most conflict with each other. If it was suddenly revealed that all were wrong, it could drastically affect their lives. I mean, how has it affected your own life?”
“I’m still taking it all in,” Adam said. “Even after several months, I wake up in the morning and wonder if I’ve dreamt the whole thing. On bad days, I wonder if anything I see is true, and on good days, I get excited about the possibilities.”
“Possibilities?”
“Yes, the possibilities of living in a utopian world. You said so yourself. A much longer lifespan if I wanted. Think about it. Would you rather live in a real world with all the suffering that goes along with it, or would you choose a digital world where wars and disease and famine have been eliminated? A virtual heaven, I suppose.”
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
For several weeks, Cindy thought about Adam’s question. She wondered herself which reality she would choose. After all, the Terrans seemed happy, blissfully unaware of their manufactured reality. For most of human history, however, life had been a struggle for survival, a long and weary journey of misery and pain, alleviated now and then by scientific progress. But even progress often came with a cost. Each new advancement seemed to come with questions of ethics.
One of those questions came when John Cerf had informed her that they must delete the Terran program. The decision came from their superiors who thought the project was becoming too time-consuming and accordingly too expensive. Their superiors, of course, did not see the Terrans as an actual lifeform. For them, Terra was a painting on a wall, a human creation meant for humans to experience. Although John wasn’t so sure it was murder to delete the program, Cindy saw no clear distinction between humans and the digital Terrans.
Cindy tried for weeks to convince her superiors that deleting the program was a form of genocide, the elimination of a mass of people because they were different. “How is their existence any less valid than our own?” she asked them. They replied that since humans created the Terrans, humans could also destroy them. “But don’t children have the right to live, even though they were created by their parents?” she asked.
She could not change their minds. She was given a one-week deadline to terminate the program. The question then became, should she tell Adam what was about to happen? She agonized over the decision. Would she, herself, want to know the moment she would cease to exist? She wasn’t sure. She had developed an actual friendship with Adam, one based on trust, and on one hand, she wanted to honor that trust and tell him the truth. On the other hand, she didn’t want his last day to be filled with fear.
One day before the scheduled program termination, she had made up her mind not to tell Adam. That evening, she stood in her backyard under a cloudless sky, enjoying the July weather. It was 10pm, and the night air was warm and slightly humid. She thought of Adam and the millions of Terrans whose existence was about to end in less than twenty-four hours. She knew they would pass quietly and fearfully out of existence, most never knowing that they had spent their lives in a digital reality. Is it any different, she wondered, from the death that humans face, the permanent loss of consciousness and self-awareness? “Is there a soul?” she whispered into the night air, and she actually listened for a response, as if some agent would answer.
She tilted her head back and stared into the night sky. The stars simmered against the backdrop of space, billions in her own galaxy, and beyond, lay billions of galaxies. She searched for constellations and found Orion the Hunter and Taurus the Bull. Soon Pegasus and Perseus took shape. She wondered how many planets orbited these stars, and if any supported life. She wondered if any intelligent beings had risen over millions of years, and if so, had any developed technologies similar to here on earth? Perhaps a few had even built computers and created their own digital worlds. Her mind whirled as the night closed in around her, and then, as if she were watching a slow-motion movie, the stars shifted. The constellations disappeared, and in their place a message took shape. “God is watching over you,” it said.