Wednesday, January 28, 2050 Dear Mom and Dad,

Thanks for your e-mail. It was not good news to hear that the 'ring of fire', as prophesied by the religious heretics has suddenly gone active again. You know that ever since Panterra outlawed religious and political heresy, worldwide and started jailing heretics, the heretics' underground newspapers have been making dire prophecies that have all failed to materialize. If they're being freed someone must be taking them seriously. I hope they have succeeded in dealing with the diseases they tell us are rampant in the gulags.

Life has been exciting here too. That's why I haven't written since Christmas, but I'm well and so is Sally (She says "Hi."). From Jan. 2 until now there has been a total communication blackout here at the project. I received all three of your letters this morning. Before Jan. 2 we were just discouraged from reporting very much about what we were finding. Until four weeks ago I think it was mostly a 'right to discovery' thing by Geocorp. I mean it was startling enough when the cores came up with well-preserved, temperate-zone, animal remains. No one expected to discover a city when the digging started. It is essentially impossible unless you give credence to those old crust-slippage theories proposed first, I think, by Charles Hapgood almost a hundred years ago. So you can see that the find was a very prestigious one for Dr. Pandall. Of all the discoveries of great cities like Troy, Herakleionr, Sodom or Gomorra, I think this is the greatest. That's not just cause I'm in on it. And that was before the latest dramatic discovery that threatened to shut down all communication. Finally the communication blackout has ended. We are even being allowed to send e-mails, not just censored letters, before our findings are released. I think it's a kind of appeasement, because they are going to need our good PR unless they jail all of us, which given your news, doesn't sound likely. Anyway all the excitement started on the morning of Jan. 2.

Although, in retrospect, I guess I can remember the helicopters flying overhead the night before, the morning began pretty much as it always did on the day after Sunday break. Of course this had been a special break, the New Years Day. We breakfasted in the cafeteria that, as I've told you, is much like the student union at the U, but with slightly inferior food. I'm forever thankful for big bedrooms and that they allow us to decorate anyway we want. You wouldn't want to see Sally and my decorations. They sort of reflect that we're the only two girls under forty on the dig. That's been a two edged sword. I shouldn't tell my parents this, but things have changed.

Anyway, as I was saying, the morning started out as usual. After breakfast we got our gear together and took the crawler out to the site. I have always enjoyed the snow crawler especially after a day and night in the commissaries. The eight archeology grad students, six guys, Sally and I spent most of the trip talking about the New Years Eve party. As always we looked in awe at the huge ice bluffs towering more than a kilometer above us.

The first thing different from the usual occurred when we arrived at the city. Usually we went right up the peninsula to the temple, but this morning we were told by my supervisor, Dr. Shudbam, that we were stopping in the city. The city and the temple beyond, buried for at least 10-12 millennia, were chopped and blasted out of the ice of Antarctica during the last 16 years. When I say "the city," I must clarify that this is probably a small part of the city. Most of the city is likely still under the ice, but focus has now turned to the temple The city, however, is interesting enough all by itself. Some of the buildings already freed from the ice are intact and made of some type of tough and dense linear polyethylene. Carbon dating has proved unreliable. They are in rows on what must have been a wide street. The buildings themselves are moderately sized, one-story dwellings with low domes for roofs. They could pass for art galleries. .All sorts of exotic scenes are permanently sealed into the wall material both inside and out. They depict what appears to be primitive native people engaged in all sorts of activities: mundane, intimate and mortal as well as scenes from a very civilized society. There are also scenes depicting strange creatures who vary as to how humanoid they are, but engaged in very civilized activities such as dance, sports and love. The animals depicted both in mortal combat, being hunted and just standing are fascinating. There are many I've never seen even in pictures and don't expect to. There are two dinosaur creatures, but much different from any I've seen depicted in books. There also many prehistoric animals, many I recognize: cave bears, woolly rhinos, mastodons (or mammoths or both - I can't tell the difference and Sally's no better.), giant bears, a moa and a dodo and more. There are many apes and monkeys, old and new world, and some lower primates. There are also unicorns, which are always shown in a garden Most mysterious are the very strange starscapes on the outside walls. We all wondered where such night skies could be viewed. Some of the art is sort of representative, but very little is truly abstract.

In front of every dwelling is what I must call an obelisk or the ruins of one. The obelisk is like a cross with an extra bar at right angles to the others. One bar faces the ocean at one end and what must have been the glacier at the other. The other bar is perpendicular to that. The obelisk sits on a circular platform that is very smooth and the bars produce distinctive and complex shadows that move in complex patterns with time like a very complicated sun dial. The obelisk is translucent and there is light inside which varies from very bright to quite dark over time. Don't ask me what the source is. The broken ones give no clue. That's not all. It's the ratios that are startling. Every length is 1.618 time the length of the next longest. Using Sally's nomenclature, the upright is 3.236 units high (That's 4*.809, which Sally says is important for modern chaos theory), the bar pointing at the sea is two units and the other bar is 1.236. The upright is the tallest, the bar pointing to the ocean is next and the third bar is the shortest. In addition all the bars are oval with an axis ratio of 1.618. We measured the changing light and it varies from light to dark in a ratio of 1.618. Most of the dwellings are rectangles following the ratio of 1.618. Along the street alternate houses present their long and then their short side towards you. (Sally pointed out that if you write the logistic equation :Xn+1=4*.mu*(Xn*(1-Xn), where mu<1 and make mu=.809, you quickly converge to a sequence in which the numbers alternate between .809 and .5, which have the ratio of 1.618. It is called a super- stable, logistic equation because it's the only one that returns to mu; the others give only lower values. And so I guess they thought it beautiful to follow that pattern. In many of our older civilizations it was called the golden ratio. If their civilization had survived, I wonder if our buildings would follow patterns like that. Dr. Shudbam is certain there is some religious significance and I guess he's probably right.

As you would probably guess the houses are in blocks that are rectangular, you guessed it, 1.618. There are rectangular windows (I won't say it.) made from a polymer, not glass. The buildings can be entered, now that we've removed the ice, through openings that must have contained doors at one time, but no longer do. What can only be a unicorn is carved over many of the doorways. Inside there are common items such as tables, chairs, tools and beds all made from super-tough polymers, even the soft mattresses. There are shelves with polymer urns bearing ashes, which is perhaps why we've found no bodies. There are a number of items that are made from an even more indestructible polymer that were probably used for heat and/or cooking (If the rest of the world at that time was in the stone or maybe the bronze age, this civilization was in the polymer age. There are almost no metal fragments.). There are globes that may well have been for something like our TV or maybe computers, because they have coded spots on them. As I said before in all the houses there is art work. There are what appear to be musical instruments, but no books to be seen. Mind you all this survived the pressure of the ice. We don't seem to have found the commercial area yet. We probably would have if we had dug in the other direction, but they took several cores and we dug towards warmth.

About a km down the peninsula is the temple. It is one story with vertical walls about 20 metres high and a dome on top. Seen from above the building would look like an ellipse about 150 metres long and 75 wide, thus not of a 1.618 ratio. One of its two sides, the one facing the houses, is almost transparent. The other, facing the ice-packed ocean, is opaque. The building is composed, at least on the outside, of some inorganic thermoset with super-heavy polyethylene-like fibers. That's different from the houses, which were clearly organic thermosets. It is so tough and strong that it seems impervious to just about anything, including tremendous heat, acid and even abrasion by diamond tools. We tunneled part way under it and found a floor of the same material. We tried to penetrate it with plastic explosives. Not a scratch. Spectography gives impossible results involving heavy Group IV elements that don't exist. Maybe someone will find a way to figure out more.

Through the transparent walls we can see a man and a woman, clearly alive, but we wondered where the oxygen was coming from under all that ice. There are also many of the globe-like things we saw in the houses, but larger. The funny thing is that if I stand and watch for 15 minutes, I can see the man take at most two steps. Sally commented the other day that if that's for real then our time must be moving around a thousand times faster than inside the dome. The woman moves just as slowly. We can also see a huge canvas of a night sky, but a night sky totally unfamiliar to Sally, me or to any of our fellow grad students. Beside the temple is a very small house like those in the city. We haven't been able to penetrate it either. It has no obelisk in front of it.

The opaque wall is covered with writing that is inscribed into its surface. How, we couldn't even guess, but it seems to be much like the art I described earlier on the walls of the homes. There are 16 blocks of what appears to be the same message. Each is composed of four approximately two-meter-wide columns of writing. Each column is slightly over 12 meters high. It's arranged so that there are eight of these blocks of writing, a broad bare space and then eight more blocks. Above the blank space is a starscape, a starscape seen from Antarctica maybe 12 millennia ago. Over the sealed door of the small building two more lines are inscribed apparently by the same process. There are several different alphabets, but none are picture alphabets. After four years of study our best linguists have concluded that four messages, two on each side of the blank space, appear to bear a relationship to ancient languages: Proto Basque, Proto Khottic, Linear A and Sanskrit. The two lines on the little house are in one of the completely unfamiliar languages. Four separate groups have tried to analyze the four messages in the possibly interpretable language bases. No one informed the grad students about any progress, but the most popular rumour has it that they can't agree. All rumors agree the message is beyond bizarre.

This morning there was a barricade at the entrance to the peninsula. The prime minister's security forces were manning them. As we came closer we saw Dr. Seinheltz, the well-liked director of the project, stride up to the barrier, clearly very angry. The 'discussion' was loud enough for us to easily hear them.

"You must allow the team in, Colonel. You have seen it. What makes you special?"

"I'm sorry, sir, these are all security cleared troops. This material is really even too sensitive for you and the senior scientists to see, but not much can be done about that now. However, if you attempt to communicate it in any way, you are subject to severe penalties."

"Colonel, you have seen it and read it, right." The colonel nodded. "Then you know that you can not stop it from being discovered. It is meant to be discovered and further have you thought of the consequences to yourselves of acting to prevent it?"

"What I don't know is who put it there." The colonel ignored the question.

"How could anyone have put it there in 36 hours? It's imbedded under the surface. We have not even been able to scratch the surface of the building; two kilometres of ice have not damaged it. I doubt that a nuclear bomb would damage it."

The officer smiled his superiority. "I can not let you in without new orders, but if it will make you happier, I will allow you to speak with my superiors," He was all arrogance and condescension.

The colonel and Dr. Seinheltz walked to the largest of the helicopters. The rest of the troops, with holster straps loosened, faced our not- very-formidable group of workers. There was a flurry of loud speculation that the officer, now in charge, tried without success to quiet. The confrontation, if that's what one would call it, lasted for a long time.

We were all cold by the time the Dr. Seinheltz and the colonel came out of the helicopter. The colonel was not pleased, not at all.

"Let the workers in, but keep a secure net around the entrance to the perimeter and don't allow anything recorded, especially written notes, to come out."

Sally and I looked at each other thinking the same thing. "Who needs notes?"

We weren't allowed back on the bus. We gathered our tools and walked up the peninsula, still wondering what great secret was about to be revealed. None of us were even close to guessing it. Not even after we walked around the building and first saw the blank center of the temple's wall filled with writing, English writing we realized when we were closer, did we guess more than a part of it. We dropped our tools and approached the wall. Then we read it and read it again. I didn't need notes; it was burned forever in my memory.

Finally, I looked at Sally. She was looking at me. She whispered, "Maggie, just think, two universes, and we probably can't ever reach either."

"Don't say that Sally," I replied, whispering in response to Sally. "It's something you can't know. I find prediction hard right now."

"I hope you're right," she whispered.

Both of us looked back at the message, well more of a chronicle, and read it again. The lines that had been on the little house were at the bottom of the English translation, also in English.

So here it is. The modern names are from the text. I am sure the continents were not called what I saw written. The names from our mythology are also those of the writer. I have taken a few liberties with the spelling such as spelling Africa with a 'c' rather than a 'k'. There are several others. I've done nothing with the names. Looking at the story in other languages, I believe whoever wrote the English version also Anglicized the names a bit. I would love to see the translations that the four groups of linguists have come up with. No wonder they had a hard time believing what they were finding was right. This chronicle will probably amaze and shock you as it did all of us. As I said, it will be common knowledge pretty soon. I don't know what the reaction will be. I hope it won't have unfortunate consequences.

Your loving daughter,

Maggie

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This is the story of Algin Sandor, perhaps a successful man, perhaps a flawed god, but certainly a flawed man. Just as much it is a story of a great empire in crisis.

The Lemurian Empire was in its 4th millennium when Sandor was born. About 14000 years before Sandor was born Humans came to the polar continent from the southern most point of South America. At about the same time the island called Atlantis was settled. In both cases the groups who moved were not sufficiently warlike to compete on the recently settled South American continent. Since they were not experienced on the sea, they island hopped, always leaving some behind. Those on the cool polar continent expanded across the plains and into the mountain valleys. They hunted, grew crops and eventually developed writing.. For unknown reasons their life spans increased dramatically over those years. They worshipped two gods, both gentle gods: Lem, the creator and Netjer, the sun. The first large city was named Lemura or home of Lem. Eventually the whole continent was called Lemuria. Despite the name of the largest city, Netjer became more important than Lem. Perhaps it was due to the long seasons without much sun.

Life was easy and long and there were no large predators. However, game dwindled and there was fear of an ecological disaster. It was probably the need to control hunting that created the need for a government, the first step towards a civilization. The next and largest step occurred when the shamen truly learned chemistry. Long before copper was discovered, they discovered how to extract hydrogen from water and shortly thereafter to make strong polymers from cellulose and the oil pools hidden in mountain valleys. They developed synthetic foods as the more sophisticated hunting techniques continued to reduced the size of the game herds despite efforts by the government to adequately control hunting. Soon they developed thermosets to contain great heat and then built steam engines. They built boats and extended their civilization to the islands still inhabited by the descendants of their own ancestors. They built huge walls, found copper, nickel and iron, but metals could not compare with the strength of their polymers. Many developed contact allergies to some of the metals, so even when used, they were polymer coated. At some point the priests decided that to preserve the animals, the people on the polar continent should become vegetarians and if possible to eat only synthetic foods.

A royalty grew which shared its power with the priests of the great, and by then only God, Netjer. The calendar starts at the beginning of the reign of the first Emperor, Janbak I, 3786 years before the birth of Sandor. Life continued to be easy in the Lemurian Empire, almost too easy. Almost everything anyone could want was on the continent and more could be obtained from the islands. Winters were dark and harsh by standards in South America and Africa, but they did not really reduce the Lemurians quality of life. They had evolved to it. Since no one wanted for anything, science, theatre and the arts, including ice carving on the huge glaciers came to define the self image of The Empire. Although the priests claimed that Netjer forbid it, without the invention of the viewing globe in 1074, it is possible that the invention of the airplane might have turned Lemuria towards expansion. It did expand minimally, to several widespread empty islands that had resources it could use. It spread to Atlantis, where they found people much like themselves except for life span. The Atlateans welcomed what the Lemurians had to offer, especially the promise, eventually fulfilled, of an extended life span. The also drilled for oil in Sonderland, a vast low continent. They did not bring their civilization to the people there, but helped them with such things as farming techniques and medicines to cure their sick. In fact they did have a huge empire. Still the people did not have an expanionistic mentality. Since there was uncompromising population control, there was no population pressure.

Instead the masses, and perhaps even members of the royalty, became avid viewers of 'The Life and Tribulations of the Savage'. It was a viewing program started by the inventor of the globe and carried on by many others. The Savage was an African or South American native. The population of The Empire became passionate addicts of these programs. Many spent large parts of their waking hours viewing the natives's pathetically short lives, their triumphs, their wars, the deaths at the teeth of predators, etc. Most people learned one or two of the Savage languages, some many more. No one would have dared to suggest disturbing the Savage Lands.

It would be false to say they did not interfere. A number of the sequences showed obvious signs of meddling by the producers. Also there was serious interference in the area of breeding and selection. Reproduction was not an "ad lib" affair anywhere in The Empire. Little girls and boys had their tubes tied with a reversible operation. As adults both males and females were allowed to have children based on their creativity and lack of aggressiveness. Every ten years a group of native men was captured for breeding. The breeding was part of a much anticipated holiday. Most woman considered it an honor to be selected, even though for a few generations the life span of her children would be reduced. After the holiday priests returned the native men to their villages. The men became objects of great interest to the globe viewers. Since their capture meant abundant sex, food and latet status among their peers, the natives did not complain and before long there were only volunteers. Repeated aggressive crime, even by children, was dealt with by sterilization and banishment to The Savage Lands. Children were usually banished to a tribe with at least one member who had participated in the breeding holiday.

For almost 4000 years change with stability, change which always returned to its base, defined The Empire. This philosophy was symbolized by the Symbol to Life. The symbols could be seen all over the capital city Lemura and the island city of Atlantis. The Emperor and the high priest, The Voice of God', ruled Lemura. The 'Daughter of Lem', who held only slightly less power than the Emperor and the 'Voice of God', administered Atlantis as the representative of both. However, The Empire was becoming tired and it was already ripe for that small step from stability to chaos when Sandor was born.

Sandor had a dream, formed when he was young, in school, and living in a small town near the great city of Lemura. He heard two lectures that gave him a vision that guided him throughout his life. One day, at the beginning of the term, one of his science teachers presented a lecture on a super model of the universe. To Sandor it was a thrilling vision.

The teacher started at a fairly elementary level. He pointed out that "as long as anyone can remember the Lemurians have believed the universe had five dimensions. In the beginning the dimensions were bipolar: up-down, left-right, front back, past-future and light-dark. The Symbol to Life, the symbol of our religion reflects these dimensions as do the 32 aspects of being. In its crude way religion was ahead of science. Scientists started out with three dimensions. Time was added as a dimension primarily because the math was simpler that way. Finally it was necessary to hypothesize a 5-dimensional universe. It led to a unified theory of gravity and light and separated the electromagnetic force from gravity. It was a very good symmetric theory for a while. At that time there was considerable research on the structure of atoms and various particles. As a result a new force was discovered. It was a force that can be simply described as holding the atom together, very powerful, but with a very small range. Soon after scientists discovered a fourth force that was very weak, but not so weak as gravity. This force was necessary to explain the decay of the neutron. These discoveries gave rise to the discovery of many many particles, way too many to be described by a 5-dimensional universe. As well, there was a strong desire to have a field theory that unified all the forces.

"Before I go on, I should describe current thinking on why we only see three dimensions and are directly effected by time. Why don't we see a fifth? In the past most answers have included bundling up small ribbons into extraordinarily small, essentially invisible, bundles. The statisticians have come up with an information or variance based model. To illustrate let us assume that there is a sphere with millions of little points floating around in it. There is no way to tag these points without putting three dimensional coordinates in the hollow sphere. Then the location of every point can be specified by its relationship to the three coordinates. Suppose there is one way that we can rotate the coordinates so that we can almost describe the layout of the points as a disk. That is that rotation puts all the points very close to two of the coordinates. Our galaxy is that way. Then we can say that two dimensions can explain almost all the variance or point positions. Now assume a 5-dimensional sphere. We put in 5-dimensional coordinates and rotate them. We find that almost all the variance can be explained by four dimensions. Those four dimensions explain so much of the variance that life evolves to process only those dimensions. It's not until science becomes interested in explaining the underpinning of how our universe works that we start measuring the other.

"However, five dimensions was not enough, so scientists started looking at a universe with more than five dimensions. To their surprise and chagrin it wasn't so easy. Five dimensions gave permissible solutions, but 6, 7, 8 and 9 did not. Ten and 11 did, but after that one had to go to 26 dimensions to find a solution. It was many years before the mathematician Shimi Stastox showed that any solution had to be of the form 8jx3k+2 dimensions and that neither exponent can be larger than two plus the size of the other exponent. Either exponent, but not both can, be zero. I might mention here that when we started doing mathematics we used the base eight. It was some time before the thumb became a finger." He laughed. The class politely laughed too. "Thus possible dimensions for our universe include: 5, 10, 11, 26, 66, 74, 194, 218, 578, 1538, 2216, etc. Thus five dimensions had worked because it was of the form 80x31+2. Ten worked because it was of the form 81x30+2, and eleven was of the form 80x32+2. Twenty-six was the next possible number and was of the form 81x31+2. Remember 80x33+2 is not a solution because three is greater than 0+2. By the way if we were using base eight the 26 dimensions would become 32, the original number of aspects. I am cheating. Can you figure out how?

"Scientists rapidly split into two camps: 10-dimensions and 11-dimensions. Both explained most of the data, although there were some particles that seemed not to fit for either solution. The 11-dimensional solution explained more, but some subsections were over specified and yielded up more than one solution. Recall, we are putting either 10-dimensional or 11-dimensional coordinates into N-space and that four account for almost all the variance. Scientists discovered more particles and both theories became seen as inadequate. There appeared to be two solutions. One was to go back to the ugly days of more than one set of coordinates, that is combining the 10-and-11-dimension solutions. It is somewhat like putting two sets of coordinates into N-space and rotating them differently, but not orthogonally. It gives the explanatory power of 15 dimensions, which is an impossible number. It did the job, but was slightly over specified. There were also those who demanded a beautiful 26-dimension solution. That solution was dramatically over specified. The battle ended when Dori Grack postulated a fifth force. He called it the binding force. It was the force that combated entropy and caused the universe to differentiate. It was both like gravity and not like gravity. It was weaker than gravity by a factor of about 10. The problem was and is that we have not been able to specify its components, much less the number of particles we need. Will the composite solution be satisfactory or are there enough components to demand 26 dimensions and if the latter will our equations still be over specified?

"Just two more points. The scientists who are not information-theory oriented see a grand geometry, not coordinates in N-dimensional spheres. They see ribbons. Imagine a long, flat piece of metal. It has length and width. We will assume it has no thickness. Let us assume its width varies. Now assume we drive it randomly from one end. The vibrations along the metal ribbon will be determined by its resonant frequencies and their harmonics. Since the width of the ribbon is variable these may be complex. If we can think of the ribbon as being attached at the other end, then the waves on the ribbon will be standing waves. According to our model the ribbon is itself two dimensional, which accounts for the two in the equation. Now think of a caterpillar. It moves along with waves running along its back. A snake slithers along with the waves going parallel to the ground. The next is hard to visualize. Assume our ribbon does both. Standing waves exist along its back in eight dimensions and it slithers, in a standing wave sort of way, from side to side in three dimensions. Such a geometric view requires a grand theory of 26 dimensions driven by both the 8-dimensional and 3-dimensional waves. This is a very simplified view of the geometric interpretation. At the moment there is no reason to assign any one dimension a special character. Some day someone will take a shot at fractal dimensions to solve an over-specification problem and that will be really interesting. I think that's a ways off yet. First we need a really good chaos theory of the universe.

"Finally, the information statisticians are not concerned by placing several different sets of coordinates into the space. They consider it parsimonious to do so. A geometrically grand theory is not a goal of theirs. They eschew the reality of geometric models. Conservation of information is their priority. If simulated life is a possibility on a computer, I believe the components of the fifth force will have to be specified and then programs based on an information approach might just achieve computer sentience." He went on with more, but this was the part that impressed Sandor.

Several days later his instructor in Religious Theory, Prof. Rigbaun, discussed a view of god that depicted god as a creator who had created the universe and its laws and then had stepped back to watch what happened. According to this view God, presumably Netjer, had some basic goals and occasionally prodded the universe in the direction he wanted it to evolve. This was very much out of vogue in religion. The common belief, not an enforced belief, so long as the believer subscribed to the Moral Code, was that Netjer meddled in everything, was omnipresent and interpreted by his priests.

As he grew older, Sandor dreamed that a computer scientist, like himself, could be like Prof. Rigbaun's god. He could create a universe of his own within a computer and decide how much he wanted to meddle. It would have to be a totally information based universe, since all that could exist would be mathematical algorithms. It would evolve from a very primitive stage to intelligent beings. At the time he didn't think about competing with the videos of the Savage Lands

Sandor became a very successful in the field of artificial intelligence. By the time he was 29 almost all the "intelligent" robots being produced were of his design. His robots could not only be designed to do mechanical chores, but to teach children at an elementary level with some supervision. They could be a cook's helper, give bed care, etc. His accomplishments might have satisfied most scientists. They did not satisfy Sandor. His robots were not truly sentient. They could not engage in what he considered to be abstract thought, nor did their behavior appear to have meaning or implications to themselves beyond the task. They had limited emotions and could not creatively link tasks into super tasks. Some of the smaller whales had been shown to do the latter.

Over the years Sandor's successes provided him with the resources to develop a computer of enormous capacity and power. However, he knew great computer power was not enough to achieve his goal. Then, when Sandor was 29, the guru of information theory, Moxi Cardelli specified the components of the fifth force. He showed that the composite universe of (81x30+2) +(80x32+2) was adequate to handle the fifth force. This pleased Sandor because it required much less computing power to effectively describe 10+11 dimensions than 26 dimensions. He certainly did not think that the ribbon structure subscribed to the geometricists was a veridical description of the geometry of the universe. He saw it as a convenient metaphor.

Determining the components of the fifth force opened the door for Tala Jaster to find a way to store the information from the brain of a small rodent. Even a small rodent taxed the power of her computer. Das Compelli by extrapolation hypothesized that the contents of a human brain would require eight to ten terabytes of information. Sandor was sure that with the non-linear quantum computers, he could build codes based on the stored information from brains, but was unsure how to account for emotions. He hoped that by starting his world at a very primitive stage, evolution would solve that problem without demanding any more resources. If so he thought he could generate 40 million humans in a super computer, but this was not even enough, unless all he wanted were humans floating in limbo. For sometime this blocked his progress. One day he realized he could use his processing speed to process sequentially so that micro time intervals could be bundled as a single instant. In that way he was almost sure he could simulate 850 million humans living in one operational city in a time frame such that one year in his similcron world would pass during a day in the real world. To really study the development of his world from an early stage of evolution, he decided that was too slow. When his break through came it was from an unexpected source.

He had one close friend with whom he shared his ideas, Pango Jostry, at 84 still an early middle-aged man. One day when he was 33 he had lunch with Pango in Atlantis There he first met Pango's 15 year old niece, Diedre Tadwez. They met at a cafe in the shadow of the impressive Temple of Philosophy. In front of them was the circular Canal of God. Across the canal they could just see the original and still largest Symbol to Life. In the center of all the canals, on an island, was the beautiful palace of the 'Daughter of Lem'. Sandor looked hard at the palace mostly to keep from staring at Diedre, beautiful, but half his age. At first it was easy because she said nothing while her uncle spoke.

"Algin, I don't know how you can possibly hope to create a whole world on a simulated planet without using all the resources of this planet. You talk about information, but you fail to note that each particle in your planet has all the information inherent in the smallest particle on ours. This is true of humans as well. Note that just as there is an energy-matter tradeoff in a geometric universe, there is an information-energy tradeoff in an information based universe. How are you going to create a planet without utilizing all the energy and/or information in our planet and if you plan to really create a planet, where are you going to get the energy?" Pango asked.

"Truly, Pango, do you believe all the energy or information has to be present all the time? See that table over there? How much information is in the visual image that you see compared to how much would be present if you analyzed every particle in the table or even burned the table? A very small amount. I don't need to put the particle information into the computer, except as potentials in equation form," Sandor replied

"An excellent solution, Algin. As I understand it then, information only exists out of equation form when you care to measure it and that even then you almost never have to measure it to its finest details to describe all that you might care to. It seems as if you need to find a level of information that will need to be operational all the time. You never know when a person will observe a building, but I agree even someone living in the building doesn't tap the information in the atoms and microparticles. Let's face it, people saw buildings before we even knew what molecules were. Also bounded random processes are very helpful in that they don't even need to be tightly specified until you measure the state of something at time 't'.

"You indicate that you may not start with a fully developed world. Could you elucidate. How can you get all the constants right to make it evolve at all? Won't evolution be to slow? Can you create an extra fast world relative to ours?"

"I need to do lots of work on constants and the basic equations, but I hope I can start before the single cell stage. I don't know enough about how the gene transmits information via the proteins, etc. Before the priests outlawed it we plotted the genome, but that information doesn't really help. I have to let evolution do most of the work. I must run my universe, at least in the beginning, at a super speed. That may be a problem at first, but computer speed is increasing all the time and it's pretty fast right now. My biggest worry is the geology of my planet. Since I will not start before planets formed, I need to get its geology close to right. Time and gravity should be easy if I don't get clever. I'll make the day the same percentage of a year as on Earth. I'll make gravity on my world to be relatively the same to other bodies as it is on Earth. To be safe, the impact of the sun and solar system will be about the same as on Earth. I will also have the same magnetic force, so I must program in an iron core I think."

"You may have to back track then because things can go wrong in a hurry, before you can catch them." Pango answered.

"True, but it will perhaps be a minimal loss of time if I can make time move quickly enough."

"Let's hope," replied Pango.

There was a pause, which seemed to give Diedre permission to speak. "I think I see a basic flaw in the way you are both thinking about this. It is hard to articulate, but I will try."

Her uncle laughed a bit nervously. "Now comes the crunch," he said. "I was expecting this. Still I have found that listening to Diedre is always profitable, if I don't let my ego get in the way."

She smiled beautifully. "I'll start by asking you a question, Algin. May I call you that? I have been inundated with you by my uncle since I was a baby." She waited for me to nod. "The question. You say that you don't have to use energy for those parts of the simulation that aren't being observed by someone. You said like the atoms in a table. They are just equations. Now, what do you think is happening to your people when you are not watching them?"

"I would suppose they are going about their business like you or me or your uncle."

"Really? Do you suppose there are little men and women walking around unobserved inside your computer?"

"Are you saying that I can't truly create a similcron world then?"

"Not at all. I'm not really saying it's necessarily any different from this world, except you're in this world. How do you know I have any conscious life when I'm not here?"

"Well, you tell me and I mix that with what I observe now. I mean you are a real physical entity."

She gave an I've-got-you laugh. "But I thought you believed that all of reality was information and what we see is how we process it. Are we somehow not part of natural law? You, living in this world, do see more than is visible on a computer globe or in your goggles, but I'm sure if you asked one of your similcrons, he or she would emphatically proclaim the reality of his or her experience when you weren't watching."

Sandor thought for a minute. "Suppose I could download myself. Then I would see things that weren't on the screen."

She smiled in such an agreeable way, that it was not even infuriating. "But once it is in the computer what you down load isn't you and doesn't have a direct connection to you. The 'you' in the computer is a similcron programmed to simulate you. It is all information and like all other similcrons, it will proclaim the validity of its experience if you ask it. As time passes it will even simulate you less and less because process does take place. The information equations are forever changing as they interact. Someone your simulation meets there one day and then again sometime later will change as much as I will between now and the next time you meet me."

Both Pango and Sandor were silent for some time. She waited politely.

Finally Pango said. "OK, Diedre, aside from going after a philosophical victory, what's the point?"

"The point is that you may be able save energy. I was sure at first, but I'm not sure now. We don't look at the particles in a table one day and again the next and ask them: 'So, what have you been doing. In fact we are unable to even measure all aspects of what they've been doing. Regarding me you have to have a lot of equations ready to produce answers to whatever you might ask."

"What has Pango told you about my love life?" Sandor asked.

She laughed and blushed and choked on her words. Finally she said: "Right, there has to be an equation to respond to even that. What the equation says is that my uncle has told me that you have gone out with quite a few women, but none are as pretty as me."

Sandor could see she thought she had him again, but he did not even pause before he said: "As usual your uncle was quite right, but he could have made that assumption even if he'd never seen a woman I went out with. Equally or more important, you are also brighter."

She blushed and lowered her head. "Thanks," she said softly.

They knew they were friends then, although it was many years before they would become lovers.

Sandor thought for a long time about what she had said, which his head knew was right and everything else about him could not accept. He finally gave up on that and thought about whether thinking about his world from that perspective could save him energy. In the long run he realized if he accepted the totality of what she had said, it would cost him energy, but probably save his project. He realized that he was creating a total ecology and he must be very careful about failing to include equations for process. He wondered at what point on the detail continuum would further detail became inconsequetial.

Starting early was anything but a cure all. It appeared that the further back he went the lower the magic line was going to become. He wondered how, without having that cutoff in the right place, he could start evolution 2 billion years in the past and set processes in place that had any hope of evolving to a human, or at least humanoid, population. He was afraid it would require that he completely understand how small particles work. Also, how would intelligence evolve the way he wanted?

He decided to go to Atlantis and speak with Diedre. That cheered him considerably. Instead she unexpectedly came to see him and they met beside the palace garden and woods. At first they just watched the unicorns play. Diedre had not seen them since she was very young. She said how sad she was that there were no wild ones anymore. She seemed generally sad. Finally she said. "I had a tantrum. I see you don't know about my temper bouts. They are pretty infrequent now, but they're pretty violent. I do terrible things, not so much physically to people anymore, but to property. When I get over it, I am so anguished and depressed that I have come close to suicide. My family tries to think of fun things for me to bring me out of it. This time you're my fun thing. A great choice I think."

Distressed as he was to here of her distress, he was thrilled to hear that he had been chosen as 'the fun thing.' "What would you like to do?" He asked.

"What I really want to do, I don't think we should do yet; it might spoil things and that would make me really depressed. But someday..." She left it hanging and turned away for a moment. She turned back and said "Someday?" This time it was a question.

Sandor gulped. Someday seemed like a long time off, but it also seemed certain. "Someday, yes," he said and under his breath: "Hopefully more than that."

But she heard him and replied: "I so want it to be true."

They spent the rest of a wonderful day wandering through the parts of the woods open to the public. Sandor was amazed that he was in love with a girl of fifteen whom he had hardly met. They didn't talk about his project until dinner at the Inn in the Garden. When he told her his concern, she thought for a few minutes and replied: "My teacher had us read a pre-press article about bounded variance as it effects cognition. He discussed how bounded random processes in the mind produce fractal like structures. The processes are random, similar, but not the same as chaotic. They lead to cognitive structures depending on other cognitive structures. As I see it, you could eliminate much of the detailed information and stay at the cognitive structure level for most organisms."

"That sounds like the fifth force," Sandor replied.

"Like it, but not it," she explained. "Perhaps, if you thought of this and the binding force together, you might find your cutoff level. I'll send you the article and the name of the author, Chantey, I think. Anyway I'll send you the author's name and address."

We spoke some more on this and then some other concerns Sandor had. He told her he had decided he would have to be able to stop or slow down evolution. He hoped that would make him able to step in and nudge evolution with as focused an effect as he could manage. He described the importance to him of knowing Earth's fossil history. "Every so often there was a catastrophe," he explained. "If necessary, I can engineer those easily. The last catastrophe destroyed the great lizards. If I can evolve my worlds to lizards I would explore not having a catastrophe. There would be no meteorites unless I allowed them. Without a catastrophe, it would be interesting to see what happened."

She stayed for three days and they stuck to their decision of 'someday.' They did not trust themselves to sleep in the same bed, however.

Diedre sent him the article. He concluded it provided him with some real possibilities. He visited Chanerly's (It was Chanerly) research lab and had an extensive talk with him and his students. One student who was originally a physicist gave him some excellent ideas about tying the fifth force and bounded randomness together even in inanimate objects. When he left he was sure he could use those ideas to become much more efficient.

Some weeks and two visits to Atlantis later he figured that using a variant of bounded randomness he could obtain a speed of 500 msec on Earth to one year on his computer generated world. If he were to start 2 billion years ago, it would take about 32 years to evolve to the present. Even at that speed he could evolve to only 20,000,000 people and perhaps five cities. He still did not have enough power or capacity to create a whole world. He bought an archipelago of very small, tightly grouped islands. It was about 5 km off the coast, some distance from the city of Lemura. He moved his computer facility to one of the island so it would not be disturbed.

Time passed. He became increasingly famous for his technical breakthroughs in many areas. He used all his fame to gather more and more capacity for his computer complex. At the same time he kept his goal a secret except to Diedre and her uncle. Ten years passed, split between research and visiting Diedre at home and school. During that time he startled people by freezing primitive multi-celled creatures and dumping their information. He also started publishing in small particle physics and funding geological expeditions. The amount of metal resources surprised him. He was the first to describe volcanoes and earthquakes in detail.

Toward the end of the ten years Diedre started going with him on most of his expeditions. It was on one of these expeditions, in the tenth year, that 'someday' arrived. After that Diedre moved onto his island with him. In addition to being his fiend, she became his lover and his coworker. He had still never seen one of her temper tantrums.

At the end of 18 years he was at a point at which he calculated he had enough power and capacity to eventually support a billion humans, another 20 billion animals and plants and an almost infinite number of bacteria and viruses, on a planet the size of Earth. Cities would be no problem when the time came. He hoped he had enough knowledge of the behaviour of small particles and had an adequate knowledge of the minerals that were found on Earth.

Since he had been creating the algorithms he needed over that time, he was truly ready. He had to write programs for the known physical laws, at a macro and micro level. Many were the result of his research, always highly influenced by the lecture many years before and of course by Diedre. On a day early in the year 3837, when he was 51 and Diedre was 33, he started his program. Right from the start all the information was in his program. It would be transformed over the course of the evolutionary process. Of course there had to be a sun, a moon and other planets. There must be stars and phenomena such quasars potentially visible from his simulated world and with small gravitational effects.. He only needed to write programs for their effect on his world. Only the sun, the moon and planets had to have a complexity above his cutoff. His one concern was that various theories prevalent in physics might not be even close to correct.

As he had hoped, evolution did take place. At 500 msec to a year evolution was such a blur that he had to introduce pauses to make any sense of the process. Every 10000 years he had to stop evolution completely so he could dump all the information in an instant onto a capsule. That way when he had to back track he would not have to start at the beginning. He only kept the latest dump because a single instant from a whole world required an enormous amount of storage. He only required 17 backtracks. Still he kept his project a secret, but with Diedre's help his other work did not suffer. His robots became even more sophisticated.

When he reached the stage of multi-celled animals on land, Diedre started her own world. She set up her computer on the island where their home was rather than in Sandor's lab. Making use of what they had learned about Sandor's worlds she was able to let hers evolve quite a bit faster. After 25 years that included much nudging, a few induced catastrophes, and some adjustment of the physical constants, the first large lizards appeared on Sandor's computer-generated world. Then Sandor and Diedre unveiled the project. It was a bombshell to the scientific, religious and philosophical communities, but a commercial opportunity to entrepreneurs. The 30 million or more television addicts went into a frenzy and demanded to see evolution take place. Almost immediately viewing helmets, which allowed the viewer a much wider range, started to outsell globes. During the first three months his program ran at Earth speed, allowing Diedre's world to almost catch up. Everyone wanted to watch for entertainment and for much more.

Scientists were interested in the effect of choosing particular theoretical equations. How had his universe evolved from the standpoint of a physical system? It seemed clear that it had evolved more rapidly then Earth, even given the one year to 500 msec conversion. Several suggested that he change the constants or even start again with different constants. The suggestion of restarting evolution angered the public and many philosophers and animal lovers. How could one be sure these animals did not have the awareness of real animals or as one philosopher put it, animals at our level? Not a few were concerned that Sandor was trying to play god and would create similcrons without souls.

Sandor ended most of the arguments by convincing the Emperor, Sulig I, to fund fifty more computer installations with power equal to or greater than his facility. Sandor's problem was keeping evolution going. Evolution was millions of years from something like the present. He had to have some time to let his world evolve at year to 500 msec on Earth. By now it was possible to double the speed so he agreed that until they caught up he would run his evolution at a fast speed only 12 hours a day. The new computer labs were built in Sandor's archipelago. The islands were so close that a network of bridges was built to connect them. It made for an exciting, architecturally glorious and closed scientific community. The scientists wrote programs exploring many different premises about the physical and biological universe. Some even programmed in the potential for magic, which amounted to the externally facilitated breaking of the 'primary' laws by some individual or individuals. The researchers selected different speeds of light and, chose different universal constants and even different mechanisms for heredity. Within ten years only 12 of the original 40 new universes had not failed. Included in the failures were all those with less than 21 dimensions. Whenever one failed, a new one was started with different parameters. This set in motion a process of convergence towards a set of limits that could spawn a viable universe. One of the strongest forces toward convergence was the limited range of conditions under which complex life forms could evolve.

For ten years his simulated world outdrew the Savage Lands programs during the 12 hours he ran at slow. When Diedre almost caught up it was possible to split the 12 hours between them and they still outdrew the Savage Land programs for another six years until other worlds could take their turn. During that time Sandor continued to have to nudge his universe now and then to keep it on track. Both his and Diedre's worlds did want to bog down in the dinosaur stage. He admitted to a friend that given no catastrophe the dinosaur stage seemed to be very stable. However, it didn't take too much of a poke to create an environment that favored mammals. Diedre allowed her dinosaurs to evolve. Sandor's land mammals tended to evolve in one of four semi-sapient directions: a bipedal primate-type creature; a four-legged mammal with five fingered prehensile front feet; a mammalian lizard also with five fingered prehensile front feet; and a mammalian humanoid with wings and humanoid arms and hands. The four fought for dominance. With more interference than he liked, Sandor managed to isolate each on a continent so he and most of the Lemurian Empire could watch and see which developed intelligence. None did. Each, in its own way, developed semi-intelligence. The primates evolved to make fire and bury their dead; the four legged semi-sentients and the mammalian birds developed very complex, but mostly instinctual societies; the lizards became expert tool users, but showed no facility for abstract ideas.

Diedre's dinosaurs grew smaller and smarter, but the reduction in size allowed mammals to develop and compete with them. Some of the dinosaurs became bird like. Soon she had three species similar to those on Sandor's world, except humanoids with wings and arms did not evolve. They developed the same levels of intelligence and special skills as those on Sandor's world.

There intellectual development stopped. Sandor tried high levels of radiation. The radiation produced mutations, followed by persecution and wars that thrilled the audience, very pacifistic in life, but had come to crave vicarious violence. It did nothing to enhance intelligence. The primates became more humanoid in appearance. The others became less like their ancestors. Five years passed and evolution was at a dead end so far as intelligence was concerned, not that anyone was bored. Diedre's world followed the pattern of Sandor's world without any radiation, albeit more slowly.

The other scientists, whose universes were approaching or were already in the mammal stage, urged Sandor to give a firm nudge towards intelligence. After all, they argued, every one of their worlds except Diedre's had required a nudge to get past either the insect or the dinosaur stage or both. He agreed, but was not immediately sure what to do. Manipulating the brain structure did not help. He could not figure out what was different between his computer-generated world, and the real world. The humans in the Savage Lands did not appear to him to be as intelligent as the Lemurians, but they were definitely inside the sentience boundary. His beings were definitely outside it. He knew he had all components of the fifth force specified. His world looked like Earth. Diedre's looked like Earth as well and she was having the same problem. Was there something in the catastrophe on Earth that shot mammals towards intelligence? He was stumped.

One night as Diedre and Sandor were having a drink after dinner, Diedre said: "You know, there is something I've been noticing for some time, but until this second didn't relate it to our problem. I think your intelligence block is more pervasive then we have thought. I've been looking at animals. If I rate our real animals with the similcron animals for level of evolution, our animals are brighter than any of the similcron animals. Something basic must be missing and it's probably on the chromosome."

He nodded absently. She laughed. "You are going to hate me for suggesting this, but suppose the grand-theory people are right and the solution is that any description of the universe must be a unified one."

This brought a reply, "I suppose, but there are so many left-over components and it sure is less efficient. Unless..."

"Yes, unless intelligence really is not a product of the other five, but something special in and of itself. I don't mean something mysterious, but rather something that requires components of its own."

Sandor laughed. "Are you putting forth a new force?"

"Not really," she replied. "At least not yet. It doesn't fit my idea of a force unless, unless at some level bounded randomness requires more than just programming it in like we did just to be efficient. Maybe the mechanism we have programmed for bounded randomness is wrong and limits the growth of cognition."

"You are suggesting a new force. Not like the others, although you make it sound as related to the fifth force as the fifth force is to gravity. OK, we'll try 26 dimensions just like the grand theorists do. It will take awhile because I don't want to wreck everything and it is quite a change"

She hugged him because she had expected him to sneer at her idea.

It was every bit as hard a job as Sandor expected. Trial and error were necessary to determine how many terms were needed to write equations in 26 dimensions such that intelligence could exist. Fortunately he started saving an iinstant every time he made a change, because he found many solutions that had disastrous effects on the rest of his universe and more than one that worked without disastrous consequences. After Diedre created a second world, at the same stage as her first, they experimented on hers for almost a year just looking for differences between the solutions. Each time they saved a instant. Finally they settled on one solution, not because it led to a more viable universe, but because evolution appeared to progress in the same way they believed it had on Earth. The year of experience had also shown them the least traumatic way to introduce the change in the physical laws to Sandor's world and to Diedre's first world. Even so it was almost as catastrophic as the meteor that caused the demise of the dinosaurs on Earth. Still for succeeding generations it had no major effect except on intelligence. As part of the change Sandor and Diedre were able to impose Lemurian as the language of their worlds. The viewers were delighted. The solution was adopted for all the other worlds even before they arrived at the intelligence barrier. In all worlds it also acted like a short term natural disaster. The intelligence breakthrough was so encouraging that many started a second world. Diedre kept her second world going. The grand theorists in the scientific world were pleased by the very gracious capitulation from the islands and with the possibility of a sixth force.

There was some concern over the increased capacity demanded by the change. However, research indicated that if they linked the first-generation worlds, and their solar systems, in an optimal pattern, simulating distances measured in the thousands of light years, more than enough information would be available to all the first-generation worlds. They easily synchronized light years and made the visible star pattern logical and expanding in three dimensions across their new universe. They all had almost the same number of days as Earth, but no one dared change that or gravity. They played with the distance between systems, gradually contracting their universe towards an optimally efficient size. The populace loved the idea of what they called, 'The Shrinking Universe' to distinguish it from 'The Expanding Universe', their universe. For the first time anyone could remember there was talk of going to the stars and perhaps finding other sentient life. It was a credit to the power of the priesthood, Sandor supposed, that such speculation had been inhibited for so long.

Computing the starscape for each world so excited Diedre that she decided to put a starscape from each of her worlds and Sandor's on the walls of their labs. She persuaded Sandor to take the popular course on computer imbedding with her. To imbed a picture one used strips of a clear polymer material called anotac printed with ink made from cambric acid.. A strip was up to a meter wide depending on the type of printer into which the computer globe fed. It could be almost any length. The anotac strips were about a millimeter thick. A part of the picture was printed backwards on the face of the anotac strip. The strip was then placed on a wall, with the face in. It was held there by a temporary adhesive. When all the strips necessary to make the picture were on the wall, a setting agent, usually pensac was sprayed onto the surface. It fused the strips together and to the wall without affecting the picture. Usually the process was repeated with clear anotac strips to further protect the picture. It was fairly quick. Sandor and Diedre managed to make a starscape requiring six one by eight meters long strips in six hours. The bulk of the time was spent in the printing.. Soon starscapes were in all the labs and in many homes.

Now the laws of physics appeared almost identical between the real and the similcron universe even down to the universal constants. There was general pleasure that life did nor seem to evolve unless the mechanisms of heredity were the same on the similcron worlds as on earth.. Once they had intelligence, the worlds developed civilizations at which time most of worlds were slowed for at least part of the day. There was nothing about the residents of these worlds that led one to believe they had any less developed self-awareness than did the computer scientists themselves. They had religions, some appearing very odd to the Lemurians; they developed technologies that generally were more heavily based on metals than was the case in The Lemurian Empire. They loved; they hated; they visited therapists to fix their self-images; they wrote what they defined as great plays and great music. In addition they fought wars and committed murders, which shocked the pacifistic viewing audience, but also titillated it. More than one of the similcrons' plays was produced in Lemura, to great acclaim. One way in which the worlds differed from each other in almost a black and white manner was in the tendency to be expansionistic. Many civilizations were like the Lemurian Empire, which in most ways left the uncivilized world alone. They showed no urge to go to the stars, although several had, as had Lemuria, put satellites into synchronous orbit. Others were very expansionistic and extended their control into any area that could not defend itself.

The humanoids on Sandor's planet were of the latter type. Still the Lemurians issued only minor complaints when the humanoids on Sandor's world wiped out all their intellectual competitors and gained, control of their minerals, especially the metals. Humanoids did the same on many worlds. Although the Lemurians proclaimed their horror, the genocide stimulated a rush of genocidal art and musical lyrics. A very popular world was that of Freaz Vinlow. He reasoned that what controlled personal identity was a person's priorities, especially what was reinforcing and what was aversive to all the senses as well as the emotions. Reasoning thus his program stored that part of every humanoid at death and later bequeathed the tendencies to some baby at birth. He claimed to have created reincarnation. The viewing audience bought it and loved it. It also turned out to be resource efficient.

Technology developed rapidly. Then almost simultaneously two women, on different similcron worlds, one of them Sandor's, successfully programmed a similcron world. In both cases new technologies dramatically increased capacity. Sandor took advantage of their new technology and increased his capacity by a factor of 1010. Soon other similcron worlds followed suit. After that the worlds generated by the Lemurian scientists were called first-generation worlds and the worlds created by the first-generation worlds were appropriately called second-generation worlds. From the standpoint of Sandor and his fellows the rate of evolution on the second-generation worlds was a blur. Within three years it was clear that in some manner the second-generation worlds had overcome the intelligence barrier and three, including one of Diedre's worlds, had created third-generation worlds. The viewing audience was irate that their scientists could not make the second- or third- generation worlds available to them. Occasionally the scientists did stop their worlds when the first-generation worlds (The Lemurians called them the 'Middle Worlds'.) slowed down the second-generation worlds ('Lower Worlds'). This gave the viewers a peek. There was no popular name for the third-generation worlds because the viewing audience never saw them.

Many innovations were tried that were both scientifically interesting and in addition appealed to the viewing audience. Sandor was conservative about adjustments even though he had the best record by far of adjusting without causing far reaching and unexpected results that altered the course of evolution. Everyone dumped an instant about every one 100 years of their world's time so that backtracking did as little damage as possible to the civilization. Jode Resporm was at the other end of the spectrum from Sandor. He introduced magic. His first tries at magic caused his civilization to become chaotic, but after some dead ends he generated a very entertaining world having little humanoids and lizards with magic. His big humanoids were great warriors and wielded huge iron, not polymer, swords that shielded them to some extent from magic. He generated other colorful characters, becoming more interested in entertainment than evolution. Perhaps most exciting was the clear delineation between those characters the people loved and those they hated. Diedre was more daring than Sandor, although she had generally avoided very serious disturbances to her evolutionary stream. Sandor vividly remembered a discussion between Diedre and him about one her adjustments.

She and Sandor were sitting in her lab. After some small talk she said, "While you've been away, dear, I've tried an experiment. About 136 years ago, my world's time, the one the public sees, I split my universe. I transferred the data from one world to another. Then I engineered a battle which came out differently on each world. The evolution of each world divided. The changes were dramatic in some ways, but not in others. Different boundaries were formed between countries, although the physical geography remained the same. Some people in the two worlds are completely different, but some people are matched amazingly closely to someone in the other world, despite having very different memories about major events."

"I've heard something about it. Apparently the audiences are excited about the idea of effecting history that way and want you to allow them on line to that world."

"Never, but there's more. I switched pairs of these analogous people from one world to the other. I wanted to see how they would adapt to having different realities from those around them. Half the pairs, and this happened by pairs, became psychotic but returned to normalcy when switched back. Two pairs were locked up, again in pairs, as psychotic, but were really only iconoclasts. They just refused to change their view of reality. The other pairs spent time at the library and eventually completely assimilated the new history and culture. At this point there are three couples that I can switch at any moment. They have decided that reality is unstable and adopt the history of the universe in which they find themselves."

"What did you do with the psychotic pairs and the pairs labeled psychotic? Did you just leave them?"

"No, no, I felt guilty and returned them to their original world. I thought this might interest you. Sarta Bonfuld and Fander Gurg are basically replicating my experiment. The public loves it. They are much less concerned with terrible things happening to similcron people than to those in the Savage Lands."

"Of course they are not real people to them. I just wonder if they are becoming more accepting of real violence. If they are, I suppose we'll find out." Sandor responded. He continued: "I see another problem in what you did. You changed a people's identity?"

"No," she argued. "I did not. You have to go back in time to really do that. When you use an earlier single-instant dump to go back in time and change a single thing, you must either effectively kill the old world or create a second at the bifurcation point. In the latter case the old and the new live side by side with one ahead of the other with histories that start similarly, but become more and more different. Even if you changed nothing just chaos would slowly cause the two worlds to diverge. I didn't do that. I had a bifurcation point without going back. However, if you say I played God with individual's lives, you are right. I can only argue that in the excitement of the experiment, I overlooked that."

"I think we all have to beware of rationalizing that they are simply similcrons when we find it convenient," Sandor replied. "Also I do think we ought to be aware that we may have people modeling our worlds' morals."

"Well perhaps those viewing Geo Platt's world will be forced to reflect. They do like his world and how it's progressed?"

Geo Platt developed a population of humanoids for whom abstractions and flexibility have the most value for everyone. They could not have been less hardwired. In his world three non-interbreeding sentient species developed. One species appeared driven to be abstractly creative; one was driven to protect the genotype before the phenotype; the third worshipped physical strength, youth and health. In the end the gene-oriented society lost and the other two groups developed a functional multi-task society, which by Lemurian year 3898 was 2100 years old. By that world's time, it was the oldest continuous society on any of the worlds.

A significant benefit emerged from the first-generation worlds: technology. One of the earliest was a polymer that had a lightness to strength ratio that was superior to anything in Lemuria. It was remarkably impervious to the elements. It was an important step. Sometimes one of the worlds would illustrate how existing Lemurian technology could be used differently. On one planet they used the fusion-fission reactor to produce oxygen in submarines, which could then stay under water indefinitely. It was very simple, but no one in Lemuria had thought of it. Since their time moved faster some were already ahead of Lemuria in a number of areas and promised to get even further ahead if Lemuria did not take advantage of what they had to offer or of course slow down the evolution. Most were adverse to that except when they were on line. The public for some reason really liked the time leaps between viewing.

While The Empire adopted many beneficial technologies developed on first-generation worlds, not all had a positive impact. Many of the worlds developed genome projects. This caused a panic among the computer scientists. If the scientists on these worlds were successful in learning to perform massive genetic manipulations the demands on the computers could escalate enormously. Still the scientists were too concerned about the effects of mass interference and too interested in the findings to stop it outright. Fortunately as time passed the problem for the scientists on the first generation worlds became increasingly complex although significant progress in disease control did occur, In fact the most negatively impactful technology was developed on one of the two worlds arising from Bonfuld's experiment. In the Lemurian year 3900, two scientists on one of her worlds developed a type of game, which ran off one of the computers they used to simulate a second-generation world. Players could enter her computer as characters with various roles, such as politician or general and influence events in that world without fear, since they did not download themselves and could return to their real life. When they left, the world was reset. It required the almost continuous dumping of instances.

Sarta adapted the game from her world and produced it throughout her island using the world that had not developed the game. It became very popular. Everyone on the islands wanted to play it. Soon word got out to Lemura and the people demanded to have it. They were willing to pay. Several other computers were made available for the game as the demand rose. Soon there were game stations all over The Empire, especially in Lemura and Atlantis. Participants were taking courses in first generation languages, where they had evolved away from Lemurian. The games turned out to be not only fun, but psychologically addicting. Soon there were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Lemurians wandering around the first-generation worlds at any one time. At first the Emperor, Sulig I, was enthusiastic and pressured the computer scientists to make their worlds available. Soon even the population of smaller cities became passionate players of the game. Many computers were now running at Lemurian speed all the time.

To the surprise of many, but certainly not to Sandor and Diedre, the ability to return to ones own world made most players risk takers and many aggressive and violent. Social consequences began to be obvious all over The Empire. The earliest was that many people did not want to leave the game and that proved a medical problem. It is certain that some players would have starved to death in those early days if the price for time were not so high. Prices were raised to control time spent in the game, but that led to a second problem, the black market. Going back to proscribed viewing time did not work. Some people still did not get off line and speeding up the computers with people visiting them had terrible psychological consequences. Violent crime, almost unheard of in the past, started to be evident. Many such crimes were outgrowths of violent confrontation in the game worlds.

Sulig I did not react until there were several raids upon the Savage Lands simply for sport. First he threatened to outlaw the games if such raids continued. That almost caused an uprising. Then he issued an edict in which he announced that he would punish violence by enforcing banishment to the Savage Lands. He asked for the support of the church and received a lukewarm agreement with the condition that they be allowed to send missionaries to the similcron worlds and not have the games reset. Sandor wondered how they thought they could save non-existent souls since they believed the similcrons soulesss. Sulig I agreed to give the missionaries ten worlds that would not be reset. He also greatly enlarged his police force.

In the middle of this unrest an unexpected development took place on the first generation world of Adley Winstat. His so-called bird people (They had feathers instead of hair.) succeeded in transmitting information faster than the speed of light. It was not just a break with a notion of locality; it was a true transmission of information. What is more, their scientists claimed they were only a small step from transferring mass at a speed greater than light. Had the news gone beyond the islands it would have caused panic among the scientific and priestly community. According to well-established theory, if what they were doing were possible at all, the mass would grow until all the energy or information in the universe had been converted to super-dense matter.

Instead the computer scientists met and brainstormed. The first thought was to just shut the world down, but Winstat and Sandor argued that it would then destroy the second and, if they existed, third and fourth generation worlds. Another suggestion was to just destroy the project or perhaps just almost stop the world.

Diedre and Adley Winstat argued that they could not be so conservative as to shut down a potentially world-shaking discovery. They argued that the speed of the discovery and the bird people's confidence suggested that they had copied it from one of their worlds. To the arguments showing that the accumulation of mass must happen, Diedre pointed out that: "None of the traditional theories even deal with the binding force, much less a possible sixth force." She eventually won the day by suggesting that they cut all energy transfer between Winstat's world and the other worlds and program an information energy-transfer rate from the real world to Winstat's world. She pointed out that if no problems occurred the steps could easily be undone.

They took the precautions and waited. It didn't take long. The particle was fired at three times the speed of light. At first the mass grew, but near the point at which the often acceleration in time dilation was supposed to occur, the mass stopped growing and remained constant. The bird-people had conquered the light barrier. Still, they did not know if it could be conquered on Earth. Could there be something they had done to make all or just one of the first generation worlds different? Given the dogma of the priests, it was going to be a hard question to answer.

However, Sandor saw a problem that he discussed only with Diedre. If the first generation worlds went to the stars, would there be any stars for them to find? Except for their similcron solar systems the stars were just dots in the sky with a little gravitational pull and the complexity of equations to go along with that. There were stars the bird people could see that could be measured as closer than the full blown solar systems of the project. They would almost certainly try to explore some of these closer stars first. It would be easy enough to not have habitable planets around those stars, but the stars would need to do what stars do and at all distances. Sandor told Diedre he saw a real energy crunch coming. Until they had a solution they must persuade Adley to bring time in his world to a near standstill

The games and the constant resetting had already brought evolution to a standstill on all the participating computer worlds. That amounted to all the worlds except Sandor's world, one of Diedre's, one of Sarta's, one of Fander Gurg's, one of Geo Platt's and fortunately Winstat's, but the computer scientists prevailed on him to slow down his world as well.

The idea of the invasion of the missionaries on any worlds infuriated the scientists. It was unacceptable interference. They refused. Since they had control over their computers, there was a standoff. The priests suggested that they could reset for everyone, but the missionaries. When the populace discovered that the priests would be able to enter ten worlds without resetting them, while the common man's influence would be, and had always been removed, they were irate at the priests. Open anger at the priests would have been unheard of a short while before. Without registering that the scientists had refused the priests, the viewers held demonstrations against the priests, the Emperor and the scientists. Atypically, to judge by history, the demonstrations turned into riots. The scientists lived on well guarded islands and were totally self sufficient, but the temples were more vulnerable and many were violated.

When the mob attacked the palace and trampled the gardens and woods, true to his word, the Emperor started rounding up rioters and dropping them in the Savage Lands, where many met violent deaths. In the end the Emperor told the computer scientists that each computer scientist could preserve one world from any invasion. The others would be invaded without resetting. The priests did not like that solution, but acquiesced. The scientists finally agreed when the Emperor threatened to stop funding all the computer establishments and make them subject to taxation, by force and banishment if necessary.

The consequences were very much as Sandor had feared. The players refused to leave the game and several died of malnutrition. Their presence appeared to be destabilizing since wars on the first-generation worlds led to pandemics and on two worlds civilized-humanoid-life ended. With three exceptions the worlds that were not invaded by the Lemurians suffered no such social upheaval. Street gangs roamed the streets of Lemura and Atlantis engaging in mini wars that were extensions of hostilities on the first-generation worlds. The Emperor banished more rioters to the Savage Lands. The priests demanded sole access to all the worlds to bring the violent ones into the fold. They did not see that they were failing in Lemuria. The Emperor approached the scientists with their request.

While Winstat's world was now reconnected to the other worlds and was slowly gearing up for space travel, Diedre, Sarta and Fander were having serious problems. Their worlds that had been left alone had all developed the game. In all three cases the first-generation worlds had allowed the game to be played without resetting on at least one of their second-generation worlds. The result in each case was not only catastrophic for the second-generation world, but also for the first-generation world that socially degenerated and then violently tumbled to anarchy and eventually disease.

The computer scientists publicized the decline of those three first generation worlds in the hope that it would act as a wake up call to all The Empire. Those worlds should have been used as windows into the potential future of The Empire. Instead the increasing social problems in The Empire resulted in nothing more than finger pointing mostly at the three scientists whom they believed completely controlled those worlds. Some even wanted them banished to the Savage Lands. Others laughed at the idea of punishing the scientists, pointing out that these were not really living beings, but were just similcrons, virtual images. An attempt was even made on Sarta's while she was visiting relatives in Lemura. After this the computer scientists and their staff seldom left the islands. Many citizens called for the computers to be shut down, because they thought that would be the solution to the violence. The priests did not support that idea. They had not given up yet. However, they reprimanded the computer scientists for thinking of themselves as gods.

In the middle of the turmoil Sulig I died of some undisclosed ailment. The new Emperor, Daret XIV, decided the solution to the increasing violence was to release the pressure by annexing an area of the Savage Lands by force. The priests opposed him, but he sent an army from Lemur. He needed no conscription. Many of those players who had participated in first generation wars were eager to volunteer. It was a disaster in many ways. Battle hardened natives, used to guerrilla warfare, slaughtered the well armed, but completely untrained army. Many who survived the natives were killed by large predators who found the inexperienced soldiers easy prey. Although the air war went better, the pilots had a hard time finding strategically important targets. Before the war was concluded Daret XIV was assassinated. The priesthood was accused. The new Emperor, Daret XV, called the troops back and executed 'The Voice of God'. The troops brought back new diseases to which the natives were apparently immune but the Lemurians were not. Several epidemics started and did not stop. Despite their sophistication in chemistry, Lemurian scientists could not keep up with the rate of the viral and bacterial mutation.

The killing of 'The Voice of God' was a serious mistake by the Emperor. Instead of taking away power from the priesthood, it gave them power because such a sacrilege further angered a frightened populace. If the Emperor had not acted so, it is likely that the priesthood would have been accused of causing the epidemic by displeasing Netjer. Instead the priests were able to coerce the Emperor into demanding that the computer scientists let the missionaries enter all the worlds and to shut down all the computers to entry by the people. The Emperor issued the decree and threatened to bomb the whole archipelago. The computer scientists had to capitulate. When the priests arrived, they were more sophisticated than the computer scientists suspected. They arrived with recorded disks of themselves. Rather than enter the worlds as they did in the games, they required that the disk of at least four priests be downloaded into each first-generation world. In addition they demanded to be downloaded with large sums of money so that they would have immediate power, although some like Sandor successfully diverted the power to a rather small sector of their world.

After the priests were downloaded the speed of time was increased on the problem worlds so they could evaluate the results sooner. Before long this forced a second download of the priests to replace those aging on the planets. They sped up three worlds that they evaluated as stable. On these worlds the first act of the priests was to fund the medical establishment for work on vaccines. Some of the priests' choices puzzled the researchers on those worlds, but they were happy for the funding and agreed. Priests had carefully directed some of the funds to research beneficial to whatever first-generation world they were on. Where the priests attacked existing problems there were three effects. On two of the troubled non-game worlds there were very slow positive effects. On two of the game worlds, priests brought the game playing under control, but at the expense of many lives in ensuing riots. The third and most disastrous effect occurred on Diedre's world. Shortly before the priests came, Diedre had moved her scientists and their two computers to an island away from the population in attempt to stem the slide towards anarchy. When the priests arrived, they ordered the scientists to shut down their computers. The scientists refused every request to shut down their computers, although one denied access to the public, causing demonstrations, but no deaths. Finally the four priests on the world became angry. They quietly raised a skilled attack force and attacked the island where the computers were located. They killed most of the scientists and shut down all the computers, thereby shutting down all three of the second-generation worlds and with them seven third-generation worlds and probably one or more fourth-generation worlds. It was all done in a single night on Earth, while Diedre slept.

For the first time in decades Diedre let loose her fabled temper. She destroyed all the priests along with the countries they controlled with all the people in them. When Sandor came home that night, he found her practically incoherent with grief and guilt, saying over and over, "Diedre, mass murderer." It was some time before she got out the story. She felt as if she were as bad as the priests. He comforted her as best he could despite being shocked himself at her reaction, which had been so unnecessary. Later she told him that she had found six scientists alive, but injured. She had copied their code and had them on a disk.

"May I put them on your world?" She asked.

"But, Diedre, when did you last dump an instant? Didn't you dump with the rest of us when the priests came?"

"Yes, of course, but you know it doesn't save my world. There will just be another world with a similar history. Most of the people on my world now weren't even born when I dumped my instant. That was just before I moved the computers to the island. Anyway of course we can start a new world if we can find an empty computer. That may be tougher than it would have been a few years ago. In the meantime I'd like to download my scientists."

Although he thought it a bit silly he gave her permission. She had the access codes and left when she asked him to, for protection of the anonymity of her scientists, behavior he found strange coming from her. Still she was really upset about the calamity on her world so he guessed she had a right to be a little crazy. He vowed to look for a free computer into which to feed her instant. He was trying hard not to show her how shocked he was by her action, knowing how depressed she was likely to be.

It was impossible to keep it secret and when the priests found out they were furious at her and requested the Emperor to banish her to the Savage Lands as a warning to the others. The Emperor agreed, but before he sent the soldiers into what would certainly have been a confrontation, one of her research assistants found her hanging in her lab. The computer scientists demanded then that all the similcrons of the four priests be removed from all the computers onto which they were downloaded. From a political standpoint the priest had no choice but to accede to the demand. The four priests protested but to no avail.

Sandor was devastated. In addition to his grief he felt guilty for not staying with her all the time until she recovered from her despair. She had warned him that she could be suicidal years ago. What had he done to make her happier? Nothing, but under the circumstances it would have been hard to do. He felt futile. This was the woman he loved, but all he could do besides grieve was to maintain her worlds. Although her tubes were untied, he had never had his vesicles untied so there were not even children as a memorial. He did retrieve Diedre's capsules with the intent of downloading them onto a free computer if he could find one. At least he might be able to save the second-, third- and fourth- generation worlds, but Diedre was right. Free computers were not easy to find and going to the mainland was really out of the question.

The priests did not try to download any more priests onto Diedre's world and they allowed Sandor to slow it down. Many of the other scientists, whose worlds had been evolving very fast, demanded slow downs. They didn't want something bad to happen too suddenly for them to react in time to prevent a tragedy. The slow downs disgruntled the priests because they could not measure their very slow successes on the slow moving worlds, but in the aftermath of the suicide they only grumbled a bit. The scientists were not happy about the interference and were almost as angry as Sandor about Diedre's death. They tried to get the priests to leave the islands, where they had taken up residence since their entry into the computers, but the priests were frightened to be seen in Lemura.

No wonder the priests were afraid. Revolution brewed in the city. The populace was facing a pandemic and was cut off from entering the worlds, while the priests were safe from disease on the island and given complete access to the computer worlds. The sympathy for the priests after the assassination had flipped one hundred and eighty degrees when the populous was cut off from entering the computers. The Emperor was banishing more and more rioters to the Savage Land, but instead of quelling the uprising it made it worse.

Finally, he reasoned that if there were no computer worlds, his subjects could not be upset for very long about being denied access. There might be a swell of disquiet when they were first shut down, but after a time they would settle back to enjoy what they had for millennia. He sent a covert edict to the priests to see to the shutting down of the computers. He failed to take into account the priests' fear and the extent to which they had come to view their similcron selves as their insurance. They did nothing. Again Daret XV issued an edict with no response. The third edict threatened force. This time the priests leaked the edict to the populous, making clear the implication that they would never be able enter the computers or even follow the lives of the similcron people and that most of the effective vaccines had come from the more technically advanced computer worlds.

There was disease and rioting in the streets as Daret XV readied his air force, but it never flew over the archipelago. Instead they responded to an announcement from the 'Daughter of Lem' that Atlantis was succeeding from The Empire and closing its borders to avoid the pandemic that had not yet affected them. Daret XV would not allow this. He sent planes from the many small islands belonging to The Empire and bombed the Temples of Science and Philosophy. He undoubtedly thought that Atlantis would be intimidated and beg his forgiveness. If he thought that, he was wrong. Instead Atlantis bombed the small islands to rubble and against all logic destroyed the refineries and well sites in Sonderland. When Lemuria responded with a devastating bombing attack on all of Atlantis, Atlantis did the unthinkable, they sent planes to Lemura, three of which carried nuclear bombs. Before the Lemurian air force shot them down, they had dropped a bomb on the largest and second largest island and on the huge chemistry, polymer and physical science labs at the edge of the mountains outside of Lemura. The third plane was shot down over the edge of the glacier, but its bombs were detonated. The next day the glacier started to move into Lemuria. In three days it traveled 300 metres. Those scientists still alive predicted that at that rate all of Lemuria would be under a kilometre of ice in under 150 years. Distorted versions of the scientists' report were leaked almost immediately. Some of the rumours had the time frame down to a year and a half. Others declared it was unimportant because most of them would die of radiation poisoning long before the glacier came. Daret XV was livid. He launched a massive nuclear attack on Atlantis. Atlantis was prepared and defended itself well. Had the island itself been stable, the Atlanteans might have lived to enjoy their independence. It was not. The nuclear explosions in the ocean around the island, not only caused a damaging tidal wave, but they caused severe earthquakes and initiated volcanic activity all up and down the eastern shore of the island.

On the fourth day a huge mob attacked the palace, and although they did not breach it, they caused considerable damage. The next day the glacier moved 500 metres. On the next day they attacked the palace again. This time Daret XV sent his sickness-decimated army to retaliate in full force. It drove back the mob and both sides suffered losses. The next day the glacier moved two kilometres, causing many in the rural areas to flee to the city. Every day for ten days the mob attacked the palace. Every day the Emperor's troops drove the mob back with much loss of life on both sides. By the twelfth day not a unicorn was left alive. On the fourteenth day the first cases of radiation sickness appeared. On the night of the 15th day since the first attack, Daret XV fled with his family to the archipelago and asked for asylum. It was granted. On the next day the palace fell.

The mob was disappointed not to find the Emperor and his family, but their anger was partly satiated by executing his advisors. No one knew where the Emperor had gone. No word leaked out of his arrival at the islands. Some suggested that he was there, but the general opinion was that he was an anathema to both the scientists and the priests and would never be accepted. There were those who wanted to attack the islands anyway and force them to open the worlds to them, but the first revolutionary government resisted that idea. It was sure that it would not work and that the only outcome would be a stoppage of research to arrest the diseases. Still the glacier moved at over a kilometer per day.

After he arrived at the archipelago, Daret XV again demanded that the computers be shut down, but he had no military power with him and the power of his word, and thus his leadership, was completely eroded. Still the priests and the scientists were eager to pacify him, so they downloaded him and his family in small countries on three stable worlds. Once his similcron was safely on the first-generation worlds, his attitude changed completely. It was unfortunate that his radiation sickness was downloaded as well.

On the mainland a stream of people started leaving Lemura for the remaining islands between Lemura and South America. The stream increased to a river and then to a deluge. Facilities on the islands could not respond to the population explosion. To make the situation worse many were suffering from radiation sickness. The local government lost control. All public services stopped. This resulted in many trying their luck in Africa or South America. The first revolutionary government fell in Lemura. The new government declared it would invade the archipelago and open the computers. The next day the government launched an armed flotilla. To their surprise they were stopped by a huge transparent dome, which they could not penetrate or even breach with their weapons.

Events in the dome were equally surprising to Daret XV, the priests, the scientists and their staff. At one point they were watching the approach of the flotilla with dread; the next moment they were inside a dome and a voice from nowhere in particular was addressing them in perfect Lemurian. It told them they were safe from the attack and ordered a meeting of everyone to take place on Sandor's island. No one was inclined to disobey.

When they had gathered, a small, hairless humanoid appeared before them. Without introduction he started speaking. First he described the revolution on the mainland, the destruction of the islands and the oil fields, the break up of Atlantis and the migration to South America and Africa.

"Who is not downloaded into a computer?" He asked. Sandor raised his hand. No one else did, much to Sandor's surprise "When I'm finished you must do so, Algin Sandor. Then I have an important job for you, that may have import in the future of this world. Before you do download, look carefully at the disk that your friend Diedre Tadwez down loaded."

He continued. "This is the end of your civilization and my experiment. I am only slightly sad about that, because it was a successful experiment. Only one civilization in your worlds has lasted over 2000 years. Your civilization, on my world, has lasted almost 4000 years. It has ended with a development I did not foresee, which incidentally is responsible for my being here without becoming part of your world.

"For years you have used the people of the Savage Lands as the source of your entertainment. More than that, watching them became a very major part of the fabric of your society. Now that role shall change. It's now their turn. While you have been watching, those in the north have evolved to the dawn of a civilization. I shall let that continue and perhaps nudge here and there. You will not be without influence since those who have been banished, have fled and those who will flee shall have a significant impact on their development. As well the fallout from your nuclear attack has killed thousands and will cause mutations I can't predict. I can say that your technological achievements will not be passed on. I will not allow it. It will be an easy thing to do since virtually all of those who might have done so are dead or dying. Closing your civilization is not why I'm here, although your leaders made its end inevitable. However, they did such a good job of destroying it that they hardly needed my help. I am here to protect your worlds. I postponed as long as I dared. Protecting the worlds is a sacred trust. I must protect your worlds; the people in those worlds must protect their worlds. Similarly, those in the world that created my world must protect it and I supposes those who created them must protect them and so on.. We are all similcron gods. Sandor's friend, Diedre, knew the sacred trust, even though she over reacted in breaking that trust."

A priest's hand was raised and she was recognized. "Have we then been dupes worshipping a false similcron god?"

"Only if you believe in a perfect omnipotent and omniscient god. I have much power, but you know things I don't. Scientists on Sarta Bonfuld's world are responsible for my being here without down loading. Before that if I need someone to influence direction, I picked a baby and nudged him into adulthood. I could make them much braver about facing up to entrenched gluttony than my downloaded self would be. By the way one of my names, we have many where I come from, sounds a lot like Lem, but not Netjer. That's OK though. Your worlds have lots of different names for their gods. Were you part of my plan? Very much so. You were the instruments of my plan, the custodians. All the citizens of the Lemurian Empire participated in my experiment, which was my plan. I started my universe, the one in which you live, much much earlier in its history than any of you did. Why do you think the scientists here before you objected so strongly when you, and your fellow priests interfered with their plans? Like I do, they have the power of a god, but even more, the responsibility of a god. It is hard. Even very good gods have failed as did Diedre Tadwez. She punished herself, but like a good god, she should not be wasted."

"What about a soul?" A male priest asked.

"Ah, yes, the soul. Perhaps, not as mystical as you think or wish. I think you know now that a whole new force needed to be discovered before the so-called similcrons became sentient and, if you look carefully, developed a complex sense of empathy. I think you have a soul and those on the scientists' worlds have a soul and so do I and probably so does the one I call God. It does not go to some good place after you die, but its works outlive you. I am also considering writing in a reincarnation program such as the one written by you, Freaz Vinlow. It's very efficient. I would make some changes such as increasing the temporal and physical proximity of incarnates who interacted well previously and reducing the proximity for those who did not. I once did consider having a place that people went to after death. Much to my surprise one of those I nudged promised a good place and a bad place. I had to straighten him out quickly. I thought about it though. I even considered a sort of middle place. I never got to deciding just how I'd manage it. Besides good and bad is hard to keep track of when you've got millions of people."

Sandor raised his hand. "How close was our 26-dimension solution to your solution for our universe?"

"Why ask? Your solution has worked well. If I told you yours was different you would probably want to change. I don't know whether my solution for your universe is the same as our God's was for ours. What you should ask, given that you know the potential exists to go to the stars, is how are we going to generate enough energy to have planets ready for humans to land on. I think until we figure that out I'll have to do something like making the speed of light an impenetrable barrier. We haven't gone to the stars, but I think our God's planet has. He dropped a few hints to that effect when I asked him about the dangers of firing a particle at over the speed of light. He told me not to worry, so I didn't interfere. I am like you were quite concerned by the genome projects. One of my agents talked your priests into banning your attempts, but that may not always work. In combination with going to planets with alien environments the drain on resources could be prohibitive.

"And now my friends it is time for those who have not downloaded themselves to do so. I think that's only you, Algin. You might check Diedre's lab as well."

Sandor went to his lab. He took out the disk he had prepared earlier, debated entering what he had learned from Lem, but rejected the idea. He was about to down load it when he remembered what Lem had instructed. He looked in his lower drawer where he somehow knew Diedre's disk would be. He smiled when he was through checking it. She thought of everything including immortality. Sandor was surprised and was not sure if he could do it for himself as quickly as Lem seemed to want, but of course as Sandor read on he found she had written the code for him as well and, he note with a feeling of guilt, left his vesicles untied. He went back to his disk and loaded her code for him onto it. He would not remember these last days or even Lem or even Diedre's catastrophe, but that was probably for the best.. He and Diedre would live for a very long time with one less bad memory. He downloaded his altered disk. He went to Diedre's lab. There next to the computers for her other two worlds was a brand new, apparently unused, computer. Next to it was a trolley with all Diedre's capsules on it. He knew what he was to do. He booted up the new computer and went to work. When he was through, he down loaded Diedre and him onto that world. On a whim he looked in the bottom drawer of what had been her desk. As he suspected there was an identical disk, with a note telling him into which of her worlds she had down loaded herself. He downloaded himself on that world too, wishing Diedre was with him on this Earth. He would be more lonely than his similcrons. He sat down with a sigh. He awoke suddenly with a start. He would be late to the auditorium to find out Lem's plans.

When he returned to the auditorium only Lem was there. "Where are the others?" Sandor asked.

"They are long gone. Time has been slow within this dome compared to the world outside, my world and even compared to your worlds. I think I'll keep it that way for awhile or perhaps increase the difference. Much time passed outside while you slept. It is quite possible to have two time frames on the same world, if you isolate them."

"But you kept me here."

"Remember I told you I had a job for you. Besides you are now the only god of all the worlds, the universe, in the dome. Do you call it the temple? How many languages do you know?"

"Lemurian and those of Diedre's and my worlds. I know the main one from Sarta's world and from Adley's world. That would be eight"

"Sarta's and Adley's would be good. Yours not so good, but we'll use one. Soon you will remember more of the popular languages of the game worlds and I guess three from the Savage Land. I'll decide which. You will write a story in each language on the outer walls of the dome.

"What sort of story? Also none of the Savage Land languages are written."

"Your story, the story of how you became God of a universe. Also I will let you know things that happened outside the archipelago that you may not know about. So it will also be the story of the fall of The Lemurian Empire, of my experiment. As to the writing. Making up three written languages should be a rather enjoyable challenge I should think."

"Will I know why you allowed nuclear bombs to be dropped?" Sandor asked.

"Perhaps, but perhaps not. No, I will tell you that by not slowing down this world when I should have, I made the same mistake as your friend Diedre. I was luckier. I feel quite certain that if the 'Daughter of Lem" had not declared independence when she did, all your worlds and billions, perhaps trillions, of people would have been destroyed. I only realized I must slow you down after the second nuclear attack occurred. I am not an evil god. That is not the end of my experiment, as I foresaw it. I am truly sorry, as was Diedre. I do have a dump, as you call it, from before the priests came, but you know it would do your world no good, but only start a new one. None of your first-generation worlds were at risk by the bombing, so I decided to let my experiment end."

They went outside. Sandor looked at the night sky. He could tell by the constellations that time had passed. The ice had covered all of Lemura, except at the end of the peninsula where the temple stood. The peninsula? Were there not islands where the temple stood? Lem showed him where to write and where not to write. He said to write the same thing in each of the sixteen languages he did or would know. To Sandor's question he replied that the blank space was to write the story in another language if need be. He showed Sandor a small house, with a computer, printer, many rolls of something like, but not, anotac and bottles of something like, but not, pensac. In the corner he saw a sprayer. There were all the amenities of a home including a food dispenser. Outside the house were several wide ladders. He was to live in the house while he worked. It was cold outside, but not in the house.

Sandor asked Lem why he must sleep outside in the house. Lem told him time was too slow inside and his night would be too long. "Also," Lem said, "if you ever see the sky again it will very different from this one. Enjoy it."

Before Lem left he told Sandor that when Sandor finished there would be an old friend inside waiting to keep him company. He smiled and Sandor knew. His heart skipped a beat, but he said nothing.

It took him eleven days to draft and edit the story, and 34 days to make up enough of three written languages to write three of the stories. Translation took him 44 more days. If he works very hard he should finish in about 70 days and be almost ready to go inside. Before he does go inside, he will do one more thing. He will make a copy of the midnight sky so that, if he ever comes out, he can see it again and so that anyone seeing his writing can see it as well.

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Thank you, Algin Sandor. Only a good and modest god would write his story in the third person. I will try to be as good a god as you. Lem