Читать книгу Everything Happens as It Does - Albena Stambolova - Страница 13

7.

Digital Worlds

He kept reading until the moment he discovered computers. Then he finally entered a world that corresponded to his own expectations—he found a new way of creating order. A new way of possessing what he called his own. Entrances were designated by icons.

There was nothing friendlier in his life than these icons, behind which sparkled his treasures. The icons multiplied, and the electronic beeps with which his computer responded felt closer to home than anything else.

Then he began to create virtual civilizations. Primitive, medieval, improbable, all kinds of civilizations. Their populations grew according to the variables he would input, and people slaughtered each other, they always destroyed themselves completely, whether their lives were short, or long. The civilizations that quickly declined were not his favorites. He learned how to keep an archive of their histories and return to it for reference. Gradually he began to see the mistakes he had made, if these could indeed be called mistakes. He was not using all available options.

His first virtual worlds were short-lived, like explosions. Later they began to resemble pyramids, then spirals. The graphs of their development showed their respective level of stability. His goal was to create a kaleidoscopic civilization. He tried setting aleatory parameters. But his creations did not submit to such operations.

Then he started to feel some kind of responsibility for the people in his virtual worlds. And fear. Their longevity and their death depended on him. At first he liked the idea, but then he began to feel uncomfortable. Events were taking place on his computer even in his absence. Whenever he peeked inside, he was astounded to see how much his creations had progressed. He began to realize that his task was to slow down their development. And slowing it down meant adding more parameters. This, in turn, meant more variables. He searched for an optimal relationship between input parameters and the predictability of outcomes.

And, at some point, toward the end of high school, he knew what he wanted to do later in life.