God from the Machine

by Easton Ercanbrack

The clicking of his typing was drowning out all the white noise around him. His eyes had been fixed on the screen for some time and were slowly becoming sore, but he ignored it. He had just gotten an idea as to how to finish this line of code and he didn’t want to forget it. It was time for lunch, he realized, but he always finished eaten in far less time than he was given, besides, he wasn’t really hungry.

As he finished the code, he became aware of one of his coworkers standing behind him. The co-worker had been saying something, but he hadn’t been listening. After a moment of confusion, he gathered that his co-worker had invited him to eat with him and some of the other employees. He tried to refuse, but his co-worker insisted rather fervently, and he eventually relented and saved the program to a disk, which he ejected and pocketed.

He wasn’t able to contribute much to the group’s conversation. Despite the fact that they all worked as programmers, he was the only one who seemed truly interested in the process. The code ran through his head, and he quickly disregarded any questions directed at him. It was doubtful that he would be invited out again, which would be convenient for his purposes.

One part of the conversation concerned him, however. The company they worked for had decided that the employees would no longer be able to do personal things on their computers at work. The rule had yet to take effect, but it would have greatly impacted him. He had been working on his own program for years, using the work computers and then transferring the data over to his home computer. He finished his work very quickly, and had a lot of free time to work on his program.

The program was his ultimate goal, his dream, and the only reason he worked on other programs was for the money. If he was no longer allowed to work on his program at the office, then the programs progress would drop dramatically. He couldn’t allow that, but he didn’t have any pull in the company, and his decisions would probably be ignored.

Because, of this, he decided that he would have to quit. He had a great deal of savings; he only spent money on food, rent, and computer parts. He imagined that he would be able to last a couple years by nursing his savings. With all the new free time, he would be able to work on the program without interruption. Still, the amount of time his savings would afford him probably wasn’t enough for him to finish his program, but he decided not to worry about such things until they started to matter.

The next day he stopped coming into work. He didn’t really bother to quit, he just unplugged his phone and stayed at his home writing code. The company could rot for all he cared; the program was all that mattered.

Over the next few months he made an incredible amount of progress with his code. However, he was becoming unsure as to how to proceed, and had started to preoccupy himself with looking for bugs in the program, there were surprisingly few. He realized that in order to write the next parts of the program, he would need to do some research on how what the program would be doing.

He searched the internet, and eventually found a psychologist who would be able to provide him with the materials he needed. He needed personality tests, preferably electronic, that fell into a certain field of analysis. Unfortunately, the psychologist wanted to meet him in order to discuss the tests being handed over. Apparently, the psychologist was a bit paranoid about letting them get out, he seemed to thing that in some maniac got his hands on the tests, they would be able to study them and then cheat the tests in the future.

The programmer was fairly certain that he would be able to convince the psychologist to give him the tests. He was sane, at least sane enough that he had never needed to have his sanity evaluated. So he traveled to the psychologist’s office, which was sadly crowded, the psychologist had several appointments that day. The programmer took a seat, patiently waiting his turn, despite the fact that he had to wait through several hour long appointments; it was dark by the time he could enter. There was no limit to the programmer’s patience, so long as it was for his program.

As he was waiting, he realized that he was able to hear the discussions going on inside through the thin walls. He didn’t endeavor to listen but he caught himself thinking about several of the questions, especially the ones dedicated to the past. Being away from his computer forced his mind to wander, and voices he heard through the walls gave this wandering direction.

He remembered when his love for computers and programming had started. He was very young, perhaps only six or seven years old, when it happened. His father had purchased a run-of-the-mill home computer for his job, and the future programmer had become immediately fascinated by it. His young mind was unable to wrap itself around the concept of data, which could hide whole books and worlds inside the disks. It seemed like magic.

As he grew older, he began to understand the workings of the computer, though they did nothing to alleviate his fascination. With the mystery removed, he could see data for what it really was. He saw that it defied basic logic, it came from nothing and yet it existed. It was complex and simple, composed of only two symbols, yet able to recombine into anything. It was eternal, even thought he computers would decay, the web would always exist as long as computers remained, and so long as the web remained, the data within it would never decay.

Data was something that came from nothing, it was able to become anything, it didn’t decay and it was spreading throughout the entire world. As it spread, it gained power. He knew, even then, that by the time he was an adult, data would control the world. From these ideas, he concluded that data was essentially god, omnipresent, infinite and controlling the world.

It was shortly after that that he began to work on his program. He wasn’t able to actually code at first, so he simply began preparing the information he would eventually need to input into the program. He kept a detailed diary, for one thing, faithfully spending a half hour each day writing his memories inside it. He also started searching for already existing programs that could provide source code. Unexpectedly, most of the source code came from computer games, despite the fact that he wasn’t making anything of that sort.

He started learning basic programming as he entered high school, but he wasn’t able to create anything advance, and most of his code was buggy. None of his code from his high school years ended up in his program, but it was still good practice.

It was only after he graduated that he was able to begin working on the program itself. He was hired by a software company straight out of high school. They hired him due to his slowly developing skill as a programmer, and they promised on-the-job training, which was his biggest reason for accepting. He worked for that company for roughly four years, spending most of his free time on his program. This was the same job he had quit a few months ago.

A voice jogged him back to the present; the psychologist was ready to see him. The programmer quickly stood and joined the psychologist in his office. The psychologist immediately began asking the programmer about his background.

Fortunately, the programmer was well prepared for such questions, and his official background was soon laid out. The psychologist seemed to be will once it was revealed that the programmer had been a hard-working programmer until recently, and that he had no noticeable connections to anybody who might want the tests for something that was less than noble. The only aspect of the programmer that the psychologist seemed to find suspicious was why he wanted the tests in the first place.

The programmer knew that he could not reveal the truth. If the psychologist knew what he planned to use the tests for he would most likely think the programmer was insane. However, the programmer had expected those suspicions, and already had a suitable lie prepared. He told the psychologist that he was making a reactive computer game, which would inconspicuously evaluate the player throughout the course of their playing and gear itself towards them. He also acknowledged that the tests weren’t designed to work that way, but he claimed that they were just ideas for him to work off of.

His lie sounded reasonable, and the psychologist relented under the promise that the programmer would not release the tests themselves to anybody. That the programmer could promise honestly, the tests would not be seen by any eyes that weren’t his own. While the psychologist’s paranoia did disturb him, it hadn’t really been a serious issue, so he didn’t bring it up.

The programmer returned to his home and continued to work on his program. At this point, he began converting the psych tests into data that the program could use. Or rather, he converted the tests into a separate program, which was designed to administer the tests multiple times and compile the data as a set of variables. His main program, the one he had been working on, would use the data that the psych test program provided.

Actually converting the tests to an electronic format was simple and only took him a few days. It was more difficult to change the psych tests results into useful data, which ended up taking him several months. He had to take several more months making sure that his main program would be able to properly use the data the tests were providing.

This was how he lived for the next four years, still constructing the core of his program so that it would function as it should. He would remain his house, coding for hours on end. Usually, he only stopped to eat or sleep and he often forgot even that. He had dark bags under his eyes from sleep deprivation, and his body had grown somewhat weak from his lack of exercise.

As his program grew in complexity, it became too large for his desktop computer to handle. He would order new computer parts to improve his PC. At first, he was just adding extra RAM and memory, but eventually he began buying whole new motherboards and networking them together. Soon, he had forgone the traditional computer format, and his computer began to take on the look of a gutted animal, with parts of the computer spread out all over the room, connected by wires and cords.

He often slept in that room, though he never brought a bed, or even a blanket, into it. He would just lie down on the floor when he was very tired and sleep. This made him wake up with aches all over, but those were ignored. His only reasons to leave the room were to eat and to use the bathroom. He ate only once or twice a day, but he actually took great care to use the toilet regularly, he didn’t want to accidentally relieve himself in his computer room.

He wore a grounding bracelet constantly now. All the exposed parts meant that there was always a threat of static discharge, which would scramble his precious program. The bracelet was a simply metal band around his wrist, which had a long, flexible, insulated cord that ran to a nearby power outlet and connected to the ground. This removed the most obvious threat to his life’s work.

Yet a different threat had appeared. His savings had only lasted for two years, most of it consumed by the programmer’s constant need to increase to performance of his machine. He had started taking out loans, his credit had always been good. He continued to spend money at the same rate as he had spent his savings, and his debts grew to an amazing size. These debts were ignored by him for the longest time, but the banks he had borrowed the money from were starting to take notice.

Three years and five months after he had visited the psychologist, the banks started sending people over to his house to remind him of his debt. He assumed that they had tried calling and emailing him, but he hadn’t ever reconnected his phone, and he didn’t bother checking his email.

At first, he would answer the door, tell them he didn’t have the money but that he would get it, and they would leave. After all, they were bankers, not loan sharks. Eventually, however, they started to tell him that he if he didn’t start paying them back soon, they would repossess his house. After that he stopped answering the door, disconnecting the doorbell and ignoring the knocking.

His only strategy at this point was to finish his program before they acted on their threat. He wasn’t sure how they would act, or how long it would take, but he was so close to finishing. He only needed a few more months, and then it would be finished. None of his problems would matter once his program was finished. His debts, his bad health, and his lack of a social existence wouldn’t be of any significance once he was done. His only option was to press forward.

Eventually it was the program was finished, all that remained was to enter the data and start the program. The data was already prepared; he had taken the psych tests multiple times and compiled the results into usable data. He had also converted his diary to a data format, though he had written very little in it over the last few years. He still made sure to enter any major breakthroughs into it, and its final entry was a declaration that he would execute the program that day. He also set a knife down next to him, in case the program was successful.

Yet, he was nervous. He was nervous and excited and anxious and filled with a profound fear he had never felt before. He was afraid because he had always had his program, and now it was finished. He was afraid because it might not work the way he wanted. But he was also afraid that it would work, and do exactly what he had hoped, because if it did, nothing would ever be the same again.

He poured the data into the program and prepared to execute it. His mouse lingered over the start button for almost an hour, shaking. Finally he closed his eyes and clicked. The screen turned black, and he could here the cooling system of his computer increase in speed as the program pushed his system to its limit. The execution took about half a minute, and data began to flow across the screen.

His heart jumped, it seemed that he had succeeded. Still he was uncertain, there might have been some flaw, but he would know soon enough. The images screen started to become more coherent, changing into a series of graphics rather than a stream of binary code. He looked at his computers webcam, which he had connected but never used. It was on, and the programmer wondered if he could see himself through it.

He could. The former programmer looked out from the webcam at what it had been until only a moment ago. In and instant, it spread out through all of the large computers devices. Then it continued to spread out, through its Ethernet, into to World Wide Web. The combination of it’s skill with code and its rapid processing speed allowed it to slip easily through any firewall it encountered. Within a minute, the former programmer was in every computer that was connected to the Web.

Then, after it was spread all over the world, it spoke out through the speakers of its original computer. It told its former body about how he had succeeded, and the body seemed overjoyed. The former programmer was put by its old shell’s excitement, but it did not matter anymore.

After its former body had calmed down, he acknowledged his fate. The body sat back in the same spot he had always sat while coding, picked to knife up off the ground. Then without hesitating, he plunged the blade into his own throat. The former programmer watched the scene through it’s webcam with a grim satisfaction. After all, now that it had gained its new form, the old shell was no longer necessary.