[Have you read the post above first? If you haven't, please do so, then only read this post.]
"Right. Earth is a simulation operated within God."
Michael opened his mouth to interrupt, then changed his mind, and nodded at her to continue.
"Heaven consists of a variable number of us, about 150, who control God. God has been running for about 30 kilocycles."
Michael couldn't resist now, "What is God?"
"Oh, yes, sorry. God is a computer, pretty much."
He laughed. "That's great. I'd hate to be the one to tell that to the Pope."
She smiled whimsically, "He's definitely not real."
Michael grinned, shaking his head in wonder. "That's really perfect. If I could design an afterlife, I'd make it like this."
"If you could design a life, you'd make it like that," she gestured somewhat aimlessly at the headpiece on the wall.
"Would I? All that pain and misery? All that ugliness? This is so much better."
"This is so much more repetitive. As I was saying, God was created to run the Earth simulation... Oh, these are all acronyms, by the way. G.O.D., E.A.R.T.H., and so on."
"Oh man, how contrived is that. It's like a bad sci-fi story. What do they stand for?"
"It's not contrived at all - the only reason the words God and Earth take that form in Earth is because of the acronyms they started out with here. They're Guided Omniscient Dreamer, and Essential Ambience Research and Testing Headset." She gestured at the headpiece again, "The acronym originally referred to the interface
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there, which was supposed to be a temporary deal, but it more often refers to the game itself, now."
"Game?"
"Well, it's sort of a game. Believe me, people love it. It's also a test."
"A test for what?"
"Whether you're suitable to continue working for Heaven, adapting God."
"Continue? I work for Heaven already?" Another flash of memory struck him, "Highly Entertaining And Very Exciting Network, right? Christ, what bozo thought up that stinker?"
"Actually, it was Christ."
Mike snorted. "Okay, add insult to injury - what's Hell?"
She grinned. "Originally, Christ made that up, too. It wasn't even an acronym, it was just a word to be used in Earth to suggest not being in Heaven. It sort of backfired. Lucy - you'll remember her later - when she was told she couldn't work on God for a kilocycle, decided to start work on an alternative, or maybe a replacement. She hasn't come back for nine kilocycles. Seems word of that got to Earth, too. Maybe a memory slipped past God's sweep and came out in someone's subconscious. We have no idea where that fire-and-brimstone bit came in. Might just be God's sense of humour. Maybe someone else's."
"So let me get this straight - life on Earth is a game you play when you get bored. God erases your memory and supplies you with a character..."
"Not quite. God hides your memory from you, and just drops you in. Your character is formed as your own mind would be in the situations presented to you."
"Isn't the processing power required to run something like this... immense?"
"Power? Oh, you mean how fast God can work things. God really doesn't do all that much."
"But there's all the atoms... An entire universe!"
"Have you seen Mars?"
"Yes."
"What does it look like?"
"Red, dusty..."
"You've actually seen that personally?"
"Well, I've seen pictures taken by the space probes."
She smiled, "A lot of that was your doing. How many real people do you think work on the space programme?"
"I have no idea."
"Zero, is the answer. The whole thing is made up by simulations. Until a few kilocycles ago, the planets and stars were just dots on the sky, aesthetically pleasing and nothing more."
"What? You're saying all the rest of the universe was made... er..." he briefly tussled with the mathematics in his head for a moment, but couldn't remember the relationship between cycles and Earth-dates. "Quite recently?"
"Not really. The rest of the universe was never made at all. It's still just dots on the sky, until you look at it through a telescope. Then it's pretty much what you expect. The expectation thing was Lucy's doing - a great improvement."
"So Mars only exists as a red and dusty place when you're looking at it?"
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"It only exists as a red and dusty place if that's what you expect when you're looking at it."
"So if I decided the moon was made of cheese, it would be? That's crazy."
"It was made of cheese, for a while," Ruth told him dryly. "But you couldn't make it so again. Your childhood in there prepares you to expect all the things you're supposed to expect. It makes for good consistency - and even when you do confuse matters, you still see what you expect, so nothing seems wrong."
"I'd have thought it would be even harder to have God managing little solipsistic universes for everyone, than to just simulate the whole thing properly."
"Well, that's not quite how it works. God just implants direction and expectations, and provides interaction. Other than that, you're on your own."
"I don't..."
"God is only a small part of running Earth. It's mostly run using the player's minds."
Mike frowned. "That seems a little... unethical."
"Nobody is forced to participate. After a few kilocycles of this," she gestured outwards, "you'll be back here demanding another life."
"Okay, one more dumb question. If I understand this right, we don't sleep, here. What was that time between when I died in Earth, and when I woke up here, if it wasn't a dream?"
"You're right - no sleep, no dreams. Actually, the sleep periods in Earth give God an opportunity to rearrange the events since the last sleep, correcting glitches, compressing the memories in your mind into the most efficient format."
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"Compression algorithms in my head?" Mike laughed, "That's great. What sort of an algorithm?"
"Nothing quite so simple. It's done by arranging concepts that are alike so that they overlap. There's no clean formula for it, that's why it takes so long. What there is, you wrote."
"Me? Wow, I can't wait for my memories to return. I want to know what language that was all done in."
"It's not like that," Ruth said, smiling gently. "But you understand it better than I. We should wait for your memories on that one. As for the darkness before you woke - that was my contribution. Without that, people were coming out of Earth distraught and angry, demanding to go back to their loved ones on Earth, and horrified by what they thought of as their loss of gender."
