Building God Read online

  What if they would rather die than live in a world without real choice? The thought startled me with its simplicity. Already, there had been stories in the news of people committing suicide to avoid the world where the God Machine ruled. The protestors I could live with. They almost amused me with their disdain for the project. But if there was some country, some group that had access to weapons beyond even my imagination, could they destroy us all? If so, the midnight timing of the population drop seemed fitting.

  I turned off my computer and rushed back down to the GM interface. We had to run tests – rises in violence, discontent, ability to commit mass murder, something. When I got down to the interface, I could see something was obviously wrong. There was a mass of people outside the room, pounding and kicking on the door. My first thought was that they were protestors, but at second glance, I noticed the name badges, recognized a few of their faces. These were my workers. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “It’s Timothy!” one man shouted in an unusual show of brashness. Ah, so this is what I need to do to break them of their fear of me: get them to turn against each other. “He’s gone and locked us all out.”

  I groaned and brushed through the crowd through the door. “Tim?” I called, knocking brusquely. “Timothy, it’s me. Open the door.” I heard the lock being turned and the door opened a slit. I saw Tim’s round puffy face peer out at me. He looked frantic and close to tears.

  “They just kept asking questions!” he pleaded, pulling me inside by my arm and slamming the door shut behind us. The shades had been pulled down around the inner windows and I heard the shouting start back up outside the door. “I’ve done the work you asked, though.” He started piling papers in front of me in a haphazard pile.

  “Tim, we’ve got a problem here.” I brushed the papers aside and waited until he looked up at me. “You’ve locked everyone out!”

  “They wanted to know what I was doing, why I was running so many simulations and pulling up so much data! I didn’t know what to tell them.” He was sniveling and looking frantically at the door, ushering the papers toward me. “I-I couldn’t find anything. Not any natural disasters, anyway. A small earthquake in Taiwan, a minor flood in Portugal, nothing that would explain, you know, the data.”

  I nodded, not really expecting it. “I have something else I want you to run though, Tim. What about human-induced disasters?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Like bombs? War?”

  “Yeah. Can you do a simulation on rising violence or plans to annihilate the world?” I said the last part with a small laugh, but he didn’t return my smile.

  “Well, I can try. I mean, we honestly haven’t tried to run anything very complicated yet, but I’ll play around with it. Just…get rid of them.” He gave a worried glance to the door. “I can’t think with all that noise.”

  “Sure, Tim. I’m counting on you.” He gave a nervous bark of a laugh and I headed back out into the crowd. “Hey.” I waited for their attention, but they were all shouting at me and gesturing angrily. “Hey!” I shouted again and they finally went silent. “Look, Tim’s working on a project for me and he needs the GM.” I pointed up at the 99.99999% flickering overhead. “We’re as close as we’re going to get. Everything is ready for tonight, so please just head to your offices until midnight. We’ll meet back here for a quick meeting, then start the first simulation.”

  They still didn’t look convinced, so I gave them a conspiratorial smile and cupped my hand around my mouth. “We’ve all been working long hours,” I said in a mock whisper. “Some of us are taking it better than others. So let’s just give Tim a few hours of peace by himself so that we’re all ready for the long night ahead. I’ll be supervising him personally, alright?”

  Most of my employees laughed then, and I could breathe again. I slipped back into the room as they dispersed. “Okay, Tim. It’s up to you now.” He was already immersed in his work and only nodded slightly, mumbling to himself as he hunched over the system. I decided to check in downstairs, to see how the protest was going. I wished I had brought an extra set of clothes, my toothbrush, or anything really, in case I couldn’t go home for awhile.

  The lobby was in a state as disarray as the half dozen security guards and two receptionists desperately tried to handle the people pounding at the door and phones ringing off the hook. When the protesters and reporters saw me through the glass, they went crazy and the noise was deafening. Over it all, I could hear my name being shouted repeatedly.

  “Where are the police?” I shouted.

  One of the receptionists looked at me, teary-eyed. “I don’t know!” she said in desperation. “Please, can’t you do something?”

  A security guard grabbed my arm and hauled me back out of the lobby. “Stay upstairs,” he demanded. “You’re only making them crazier.” I pulled my arm out of his grip and hurried away, back toward my office. “And close the blinds!” he shouted after me.

  I was horrified. Close the blinds? What were they going to do, send snipers after me? Back in my office, I ripped the blinds down over the windows and pulled out my laptop. Locking the door, I huddled under my desk, feeling slightly safer. Leaning back against one of the sides, I switched on the news and looked down on my office building from the view of a helicopter.

  “-have traveled from all over the world to be here.” The reporter’s voice droned over the snip-snip-snip of the helicopter blades. “Estimates at the size of the crowd have ranged from one thousand to one hundred thousand people. Travis, can you guess at the size from up there?”

  A man’s voice broke out over the broadcast. “Well Stacey, it’s hard to guess at an exact number, but I’m not sure if one hundred thousand even covers it. You can see that people are still showing up.” The camera shot zoomed over to one of the side streets, several blocks away, where more people were piling out of the subway entrance carrying signs and banners.

  “Can you see any form of police response to the protest?”

  The camera swung away again, off to another side street where a few red-and-blue twinkling lights were visible. “There are several waves of police responding to the area to keep the crowd under control, but the sheer size of the demonstration is against them. I would guess that they will have to call in forces from some of the neighboring cities to gain any sense of control.”

  The shot cut back to the newsroom where a woman was nodding. “Quite the scene over there, Travis. And now let’s check back with Korbin, live on the streets. Korbin?”

  A man surrounded by chaos appeared on the screen with his finger jammed into his ear, trying to hear the newsroom. He quickly smiled and stood up straighter. “Thank you, Stacey. As you can see, it’s a pretty wild scene out here.” A wave of people moved backward, bumping into him and he stumbled backward, looking nervous. “We talked to several people here today who are taking drastic measures to protest the Global Modeling project.” He motioned the camera to follow him as he took a step to the side and a man covered in blood shambled over. “This man, along with others, has removed his monitor just moments ago. Sir, can you tell us why you felt it was necessary to take out your monitor?”

  The man, blood still running down his neck, had a triumphant grin on his face as he held the little metal square up high. “I did it to take back my freedom!” he screamed as others cheered him on. “I demand my free will back and I never agreed to be part of this so-called God Machine!”

  “Idiots,” I muttered, taking a screen capture of his face. Let the authorities deal with him.

  There was a thump at my door and I started, the laptop clattering to my side. I quickly closed the computer and set it on the desk, hurrying over to the door. “Who is it?” I demanded.

  “Timothy!” an indignant voice returned.

  “Alright.” I unbolted the door and slid it open, ushering him inside. “Any results?”

  He hesitated and I knew I wasn’t going to like his report. “Well, I ran the population simulation for some o
f the countries individually. They all show the same…anomaly.” I nodded, expecting that result at least. “But I also ran the violence statistics for some of these countries.” He handed me another bundle of papers with the graphs for several other countries. The lines were all increasing sharply with the latest results a nearly vertical increase upwards. I pursed my mouth as I shifted through the papers, not altogether shocked by the trends.

  “Okay,” I said, gesturing toward the window. “I could’ve told you that by just looking outside.”

  He nodded. “I compared that with some historical information though.” He handed me another small stack. “This is some of the data from the last few wars, of the offensive nations.”

  I leafed through them, my displeasure growing. They were nearly identical to the current trends. “So you’re saying we’ve started a world war?”

  “Well no, not yet,” he quickly assured me. “It could be a false alarm, or the models could be inaccurate, but…”

  “But?”

  “Well, I’ve been watching the live feed of global population that you had me start. It’s nearly identical to the predicted population that we printed out this morning.”

  The room had grown darker as we talked and I knew evening was approaching. I flicked on the overhead light to study the graphs closer. “So is that all, then?” I asked. He hesitated again and I looked up sharply. “Tim?”

  “Well, not quite,” he ventured. “I’m pretty sure this anomaly isn’t the result of a world war. See, I ran some more simulations and –“

  He was cut off abruptly by the phone ringing to life. “One sec.” I held up my hand and switched on the screen. It was my dad. “I’d better get this,” I said with a touch of resignation in my voice. I hooked the receiver around my ear and clicked it on. “Hey dad.”

  “Hey.” His low voice rumbled through the phone. “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, you know. Have you been watching the news?”

  He ignored the question. “Have you rethought your decision to pursue this project?”

  I slumped my head into my hand. “No, dad.”

  “Have you ever heard the saying that ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful?”

  “Yes, dad. I’ve heard that line. That is precisely why you began this project. Because how can we tell the useful models from the not useful, if they are all wrong?” The day was beginning to weigh heavily on me and I glanced at the clock. Midnight was approaching far too quickly.

  “The news channels keep playing that clip of you, the one where you claim you’re building God. You don’t think their anger is justified?”

  I snapped. “No, no it’s not. We’re making real progress here, we’re saving lives. We’re not changing the future, only predicting it more accurately. If people want to live in ignorance, I’m not going to stop them. Why are you even bothering arguing with me about this? You know as well as anyone that there is only one future. What happens, happens. You can’t change anything. Our courses were set the moment the universe came into existence.”

  “And my course was to try to convince you that you’re headed down the wrong path. We humans are not meant to be all-knowing. You’re not God and neither is that abomination I conceived.” I could hear the exhaustion in his voice, mirroring my own.

  “I’ve got to go, dad. There’s still a lot of work to be done before tonight.”

  “Fine,” he said shortly. “But I fear for you, Catharine.”

  “You could have done so much more with your life, dad,” I said sadly. “You shouldn’t have let all that talk get to you.”

  “I love you, Catharine.”

  “Love you too, dad.” I tore the receiver off my ear and jumped when Tim cleared his throat. I had forgotten he was still there. “Sorry, what were you saying?” I addressed him.

  “I don’t think we’re headed toward a war,” he repeated. “I ran some more simulations and well, I know our data isn’t so good outside Earth’s biosphere, but I ran some basic activity models for some of the other planets in our solar system.”

  He handed me yet more papers and I stared at them for a moment before comprehending the information. “I-I don’t understand,” I stammered. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  He shrugged and handed me a couple more. “I didn’t either, so I ran some models of other galaxies. Just simple movement simulations and such.”

  I glanced and then shoved the stack of papers back at him. “This can’t be right, Tim. This is impossible.”

  “They all show the same thing,” he said slowly, spreading the graphs out on my desk, knocking my pens to the floor. “They all go blank at just after midnight tonight. No data to report. Just…nothing. It’s like existence no longer, well, exists in just a few more hours.”

  I shook my head. “No, you have to be doing something wrong. The GM is broken or the data is corrupted. This cannot be right. How come we never caught this until now?”

  He shrugged again, his voice resigned. “We never ran a future model with this much accuracy until now. The last model we ran past midnight tonight was over a year ago, back when we were only at 80% accuracy. Things have changed since then.”

  I pointed at the numbers over the door. “We still have an error margin,” I insisted. “It could still be wrong.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “An error that crops up on every model? Do you realize the chances of that?”

  “Yes,” I snapped. “I’m not an idiot. I understand it’s unrealistic.” As I turned away from him, the room was suddenly stripped of light and I stood stock still as my eyes slowly adjusted. “Tim?”

  “I think they knocked out the power,” he said in wonder, stumbling over to the window and lifting up the blinds to gaze out at the crowd. “It’s okay though, the GM has a ton of back-up generators to keep it going.”

  “You think I’m worried about the GM?” Even to me, my voice sounded shrill.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” I could see his silhouette turn away from the window. “We can’t change the future, right? No more than we can choose any of our actions. We might as well just enjoy the time we have left. You wanna go check on things downstairs? Maybe they have some idea on what’s going on with the power.”

  “Sure.” I walked ghost-like out of the room, feeling like I was floating down the hallway, my head someplace else entirely.

  “Hey!” A woman’s voice called out from somewhere in the gloom, lit only by the emergency lights. “Ms. Riese, is that you? What’s going on? Are we still on for midnight?” I heard other doors opening and closing, the staff all waiting for my word. Tim nudged my side.

  “I’m not sure,” I managed. “Stay in your offices for now. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  We continued downstairs, shuffling down all the stairs. As I opened the door to the main floor, I froze, hearing a commotion from further down the hall. Startled out of my trance, I left Tim behind as I raced toward the main entrance. The sound of breaking glass urged me on. The sight that met me in the lobby left me breathless. People were pouring in through the windows and door, grappling with the guards. The sheer blackness of the night had transformed the angry crowd into an anonymous mob, no longer hampered by security cameras or reporters. I was frozen in fear, watching them continue to cascade in and quickly overwhelm the few guards.

  A hand pulled me back into the hallway and I let myself be hauled back toward the stairs. “Go, go!” Tim’s voice urged me on and we tore upstairs.

  We reached the office level in less time that it took to descend just moments before and I shakily yanked my keys out of my pocket, locking the doors behind me. “Stay in your offices!” I yelled.

  “What’s going on?” a man’s voice demanded.

  “They’ve broken in.” I bent over, feeling like I was going to pass out from the exertion, but Tim was pulling me along again. “They’ve broken in,” I repeated. “Lock your doors and stay inside.” I heard a sob from somewhere in the dark and the sound of doors closing echoed
down the hallway. I felt myself suddenly being yanked to the side, into a room. Instinctively, I locked it behind me and I heard Tim pulling up the heavy desks to further blockade us inside. With an exit sign glowing overhead, I glanced around. We were in the interface room.

  “We have to protect the GM,” Tim explained, out of breath. “This is the only entrance to the innards. We have to save it.”

  I heard a strange ruffling sound and searched for the source of the noise. The GM was still spitting out paper from one of its many printers. “The current population,” I said softly, reaching down to feel the paper slide through my hand. “What time is it?”

  I saw the blue glow of a watch light up, then vanish. “11:30,” Tim replied. “We have half an hour.”

  “Why are we even bothering to save it?” I asked, more to myself than anyone, but Tim replied anyway.

  “Because it’s our job,” he said simply. “What else are we going to do, huddle in our little offices and pray? I took this job because I truly believe this is the greatest invention of our time. With the GM, we can see the future.”

  “But all we can do is watch it happen,” I said, wondering if this is truly what my dad ran from. To be able to see disaster approaching and be unable to do anything to stop it? This wasn’t what I wanted. This was not God.

  “Well, those doors should probably hold the mob off for awhile, so what do you wanna do? Run some simulations?”

  “Sure,” I said. And what else was there to do? If I was going to die, I at least wanted to know why. The answer had to be in there somewhere.

  We sat over the interface, entering in simulation after simulation, not even bothering to print off the results. The display was enough. But the graphs just got shorter and shorter as midnight approached and there was less future to predict. Everything went blank at that point in time.

  “Tim, do you believe in God?” I asked suddenly.

  He shuffled next to me, his fingers pausing over the interface. “I suppose,” he said. “I mean, there must be something out there, something that made this universe come into being.”