Building God Read Free

this.”
    I gave him a sharp look. “All that’s not right is that the machine’s temporarily dysfunctional. I don’t want to hear any end-of-the-world crap from you, understood?”
    “Understood.”
    “Now this is what I want you to do. Start running more tests. Do population by each country individually. Run simulations for natural disasters. Anything you can think of. Start a live print-out of world population immediately and look for any discrepancies. See if the GM is correctly predicting all this positive population growth up until midnight.”
    He nodded quickly and rushed out of the room. “And remember, don’t tell anyone,” I stressed again as he left. The office door slammed behind him and I sank into my chair, carefully picking the print-out off the ground. Folding it up neatly, I placed it on my desk and opened up my Internet browser. If this wasn’t some fluke of the machine, if it really was accurate, what kind of event could cause such devastation? Trying to keep in mind that this was simply a worst-case scenario, I started pounding in keywords. Meteors, black holes, sun expansion, anything. I even briefly opened up an article on the Top 10 Ways Scientists Think the Earth Will End, but quickly closed it as the possibilities became overwhelming. Surely scientists would see something like this coming, right? Or perhaps more importantly, scientists would tell us if something like this was coming…right?
    Feeling restless and claustrophobic, I paced over to the window to try and think. The mass of people below was still growing, extending in every direction down the streets. I could hear the muffled sound of the roar below, even through the window pane, so high up. I wondered where the police were, if they were going to clear out all the protestors blocking the streets. It couldn’t be legal. Then again, maybe the police were already down there, amongst the protestors, encouraging it to go on. I sighed and turned away. It was going to be a long time until I was able to get home if the police didn’t start clearing them up soon. What was it about these people that made the idea of free will so essential to their lives? What was wrong with knowing there was only one future and being able to predict it with such certainty?
    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