Open Source - Rant Radio Theatre

Episode One:
Alpha and Omega


Wilson: This is Janet Wilson for CKFU News Channel Four, reporting live
from Arkham, Massachusetts, where the controversial computer rights court
proceedings of Miskatonic University vs. Professor Charles Ward are about
to take place.

Fortunately, the Honourable Gordon Levies has allowed media presence in
the courtroom, and we will be broadcasting a live audio stream from the
proceedings.

----

Bailiff: All rise. This court is now in session. The honourable Judge
Gordon Levies residing.

Judge: You may be seated. We are convened in civil case 72-CI-68,
Miskatonic University vs. Professor Charles D. Ward, which is called for
trial.

Judge: Mr. Pickman, ready for the prosecution?

Pickman: Yes, your honour. Ready for the prosecution.

Judge: And Mr. Derleth, for the defense?

Derleth: Yes, your honour. Defense is ready.

Judge: Very well, let's get this underway, shall we? Opening statements?
Mr. Pickman?

Pickman: Thank you, your honour. Three months ago, my clients suffered a
great monetary loss at the hands of Professor Ward's 'pet project'. The
Genesis Project, a computer virtual reality experiment headed by Professor
Ward and his class, has rung up a bill of over four hundred and sixty
thousand dollars within the first two months. Upon being ordered to shut
down and dismantle the project, Professor Ward refused, citing an absurd
claim that the computer is 'alive'. The project has remained running,
under this pending lawsuit, furthering the cost of the running, until this
point, where the power bill has grown by an additional one million, six
hundred and eighty-three thousand dollars. Your honour, my clients want
nothing more than to save their educational organization from going
bankrupt, and it is because of the defendant and his cohorts, that the
bill is rising on an hourly basis. Thank you.

Judge: Mr. Derleth?

Derleth: Yes, your honour. My client and his so called 'cohorts' are
nothing more than humanitarians. They have developed a computer system so
complex, so *advanced*, that it has gained a trait that we, as human
beings, have grown to take for granted. Self-Awareness. Not just in the
singular aspect, but in the multiple. The Genesis project was an
experiment in creation. From the first inception of life, to the pinnacle
of intelligence. Ward's creation is not only intelligent, but sentient.
Tiny digital life forms have been growing and reproducing bit by bit within
a housed system, and since the beginning, they have looked to Professor
Ward and his assistants as their creators.

Judge: Pardon me, Mr. Derleth... are you saying they consider Professor
Ward as... a God?

Derleth: In a nutshell, your honour.

Judge: Doesn't that seem a little pretentious, Mr. Derleth?

Derleth: Not in the least, your honour. Professor Ward and his assistants
programmed this world from the start, creating it piece by piece until the
system had enough base code to start coding and advancing by itself. Mere
minutes pass by for us, while for them, time passes at an exponential
rate. Days. Months. Even years can fly by in as little as a weekend for
us. Therefore, it is not the least bit pretentious to be considered the
creator, if that is, in fact what you are.

Judge: Very well. Mr. Pickman, please call your first witness for
questioning.

Pickman: Yes, your honour. I call forth Gregory Williams, Professor Ward's
lab assistant.

Judge: Mr. Williams, please approach the stand.

...

Bailiff: Do you agree to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you God?

Williams: I do.

Bailiff: You may be seated.

Pickman: Mr. Williams... would you please tell the court for how long
you've been working with Professor Ward?

Williams: Yes... it'll be my fourth year at the end of this semester.

Pickman: So, you would say that in four years, you've gotten to know the
Professor quite well, wouldn't you?

Williams: Yes, sir.

Pickman: And would you say, sir, that Professor Ward is an... egotistical
man?

Derleth: Your honour, I object. My client's personality is not on trial
here.

Pickman: Your honour, I am simply trying to allow the court clear vision
of the possibility that Professor Ward keeps this project running to do
nothing more than feed his ego.

Judge: Sustained. Mr. Pickman, please keep the eye on the ball.

Pickman: Very well. Mr. Williams. Are you aware of the costs of running
this project?

Williams: Yes, sir. I'm aware that the project incurs a lot of costs-- but
the amount that we've learned from--

Pickman: But are you aware that in keeping the project running, Mr.
Williams, that it would essentially bankrupt Miskatonic University?

Williams: Yes, but--

Pickman: That will be all, your honour.

Judge: Your witness, Mr. Derleth.

Derleth: Mr. Williams. How much of a hand have you had in Project Genesis?

Williams: A fairly large one. I was right underneath Professor Ward in the
programming of the Genesis Engine.

Derleth: So, you are familiar with the underlying technology?

Williams: I know that code like the back of my hand, sir.

Derleth: And... could you summarize, for the court, what the history of
Project Genesis is?

Williams: Well... Professor Ward theorized that if you programmed a
certain amount of physics into a virtual reality simulator, you would have
basic aspects such as size, weight, gravity, basic world-building ideas
used in many gaming engines. But with those aspects, you'd need objects to
follow that code. So we programmed the digital equivalent of rock and
water, and before long we had produced a geostate. An un living mass of
minerals. Rock, gas, water. In the beginning, the project was run from a
personal computer that sat in the laboratory. Before long, several students
began to play around with the world-- adding various elements. We had
coded it to the point where a person could quit literally walk around, and
experience things as though he would in the real world, without the fear
of death.

Derleth: Indeed. Go on, Mr. Williams.

Williams: Professor Ward and I, along with some other students began
initial planning stages on project Genesis by adding a new element, with
very basic code. It was programmed to copy itself, while adhering to the
physics of our created world. And upon copying itself, to adapt. To learn
to survive in the many different environments in genesis. Before long, we
had gone from simple, single celled protozoa to higher forms of life.
Bacteria and multiple celled organisms.

Derleth: Much like evolution which began on our planet billions of years
ago, correct?

Williams: Almost exactly. But there were differences. As time progressed,
they had gone from microscopic to small animals, like fish. Soon enough,
plants started to grow across the surface, and eventually more animals
developed. Amphibians, insects, reptiles, mammals, avians. Even some
different forms of life that we hadn't expected would grow.

Derleth: Unexpected life forms?

Williams: Yes. There was no real way we could describe them, so we called
the mimetocines. They... mimicked stationary objects such as trees and
plants, but were completely animal. First, they formed as a predator, but
as the other animals adapted, they became as much prey as the others.
After a few hundred millennia, we had a real ecosystem.

Derleth: So, the project was a success then? Were there any side-effects?

Williams: Just the one. As the system grew, it used more and more
resources. There were mass extinction all throughout Genesis. We were at
a level where the amount of resources, RAM and hard drive space were being
added into on a daily basis. People were brining in their home computers
and adding it to the central CPU. The side effect of that was that fact
that it drained an excess of power.

Derleth: Therefore causing the electricity bill to rise continuously.

Williams: Yes sir. But when we discovered the amount of money it was
costing, it was too late.

Derleth: And what do you mean by too late, Mr. Williams?

Williams: Well, over the millennia, species arrived that threw the entire
ecosystem off balance, and the species had to adapt in order to survive,
gaining new abilities as the years waged on. Eventually, one such species
gained sentience.

Derleth: And what do you mean by sentience, Mr. Williams?

Williams: Well, they developed small communities at first. We examined
them from within the system after we noticed a rash of forest fires
threatening the ecosystem on one of the continents. We discovered a race
of small mammals that had developed fire and farming techniques. They were
advancing at an incredible rate, and with no more resources that we could
add to the system, it slowed down, allowing us to examine them at a slower
pace. In the beginning, a year would pass by in milliseconds. But now, we
discovered that a year took over two minutes to pass by, and it was
getting slower by the day. By the time we received the order to shut down
the system, we realized that by doing that, we would in essence be
depriving a newly grown species a future.

Derleth: Thank you, Mr. Williams. I'm done here, your honour.

Judge: Mr. Pickman, would you care to cross-examine?

Pickman: No, your honour.

Judge: Then it's your witness, Mr. Derleth.

Derleth: Thank you, your honour. I'd like to call Professor Ward to the
stand, please.

Judge: Professor, please approach the stand.

...

Bailiff: Do you agree to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you God?

Ward: I do.

Derleth: Sir, would you tell the court exactly what it is you do?

Ward: I'm the facilitator of Project Genesis. I spearheaded the project,
bringing it from mind to matter.

Derleth: And is it safe to say you know more about the current state of
the project than anyone else?

Ward: Of course. Ever since Genesis produced sentient life, I've spent
almost every waking hour in the system.

Pickman: Your honour, would it be possible to hold off on referring to it
as sentient life?

Judge: It doesn't matter, Prosecution. Overruled.

Derleth: Yes, well... So would you explain to the court please, what had
happened with these sentient life-forms?

Ward: Well, as my assistant stated, we noticed a rash of unnaturally
created fires on Genesis. Once we had investigated further, we noted a
tribe comprised of smaller animals. Rodents, actually.

Derleth: Rodents... like... rats?

Ward: Yes and no. These rodents stood upright, but were fairly small. They
had several rat-like features, but you couldn't make an accurate
comparison between the two. As time progressed, they made several more
advances. The discovery of mathematics, language, reading and writing.
Eventually they had reached the bronze age.

Derleth: Bronze age? So the life forms were able to shape metals?

Ward: Yes. Another week of real-time had passed and they were up to the
iron age. What's interesting about it is that as they grew more advanced,
the system began to slow down. Their advances became slower. Until
recently, while the time scale from inside to outside is roughly a week for
every hour.

Derleth: So they're moving at a much slower rate now?

Ward: Oh yes. It's been slowing down considerably for the past three
weeks.

Derleth: And now, Professor Ward, could you please inform the court just
how advanced they are?

Ward: Well, their technology style is considerably different than ours...
but if I was to compare, I'd say that they're about at our current
technology level.

Judge: Our current technological level?

Ward: Yes, your honour. So you see, we can't shut down the project. It'd
be genocide.

Pickman: Your honour, this is absurd. They're nothing but a few lines of
computer code, not real flesh and blood like us! They're digitized,
there's no way they're alive!

Judge: Wait your turn, Pickman.

Ward: They're as alive as you or I, your honour. They've got every aspect
of our society in theirs. Art, crime, religion, science, government.
They've got especially interesting music. They have an entire religion
based on the Hamster Dance.

Judge: The hamster dance?

Ward: One of the assistants piped it into the global audio system for an
April fools prank. As they heard it, it came from the sky, in a large
booming voice sometime during their version of the dark ages. Needless to
say, there's now a religion of party-going, happy-go-lucky dancers.

Judge: I don't even want to know... Mr. Derleth, is that it?

Derleth: Yes, your honour.

Judge: Prosecution?

Pickman: Thank you, your honour. ... Professor Ward... what possessed you
to start up Project Genesis?

Ward: Well, what do you mean by that? Nothing really possessed me to start
it. It just sort of fell together.

Pickman: Did it? Isn't it true, Professor, that when you started Project
Genesis, you knew full well of the incredible costs it would rack up? And
that it was your plan all along to stick the bill on Miskatonic
University?

Ward: Well, quite simply, sir. No. It was never my intention to 'stick it
to the University'. The costs that were inferred upon them took me by
surprise just as much as it did them.

Pickman: But surely you agree that it seems somewhat suspicious, that just
before you started the project, you took a minor pay cut?

Ward: Yes, well... I realize how that looks, sir. But once again, it was
never my intention to--

Pickman: I submit, Professor, that you simply started Project Genesis, in
order to get back at the University through monetary means. You KNEW, sir,
that by starting the project, you would be inferring immense costs upon
your employers. It was your revenge, Professor Ward.

Ward: No, it wasn't! I never--

Pickman: Thank you, Professor. That will be all, your honour.

Judge: Very well. We'll take a five minute recess, and I'll come back with
my judgment.

----

Wilson: This is Janet Wilson for CKFU News Channel Four, reporting live
from outside the Arkham Courthouse, where we've just received a serious
in-depth look at Project Genesis. From a look at our online polls, the
majority of our registered viewers seems to think the project should, in
fact, be shut down. I'll read out some comments that have been posted on
our forums.

A viewer from Boston writes, "I believe that Professor Ward is trying to
play God, and it is nobody's right to do so but God himself. The project
should definitely be shut down, and then Professor Ward should be tried
for crimes against God."

Another viewer from Vancouver, Canada writes, "What the expletive deleted?
The guy just developed actual artificial intelligence! He should be getting a
Nobel prize, not an expletive deleted trial based on why he should lose his
job! Grow a brain, for expletive deleted sake!"

I'm getting confirmation that Judge Levies is now returning to the bench.
We return you live to the verdict...

Judge: I've carefully examined the testimonies for the prosecution and the
defense. And I've reached a decision...

I hereby order Miskatonic University and Professor Ward to work together
in order to find a new home for Project Genesis. But until such a home is
readily available, the project is to be shut down and dismantled, as per
Miskatonic's wishes..

Ward: Your honour, we can't!

Judge: ORDER! Do NOT speak until I'm finished, Professor Ward. I hereby
order the project to be shut down until such time that Genesis can be
restarted with a corporate sponsor. I'm making a compromise, Professor
Ward.

Ward: But you can't do that, you honour! The program will be wiped out!
We'll lose the entire civilization! It'd be genocide!

Judge: I refused to acknowledge the virtual 'people' as living beings,
Professor. The very idea is absurd. This isn't Star Trek, it's real life.

Ward: But sir--

Judge: That is my final decision, Professor. Dismissed.

----

Wilson: And there you have it. Project Genesis-- denied. Professor Ward
has been ordered to shut down and dismantle the project. Miskatonic
University can finally heave a sigh of relief, because---

Wilson: Wait. This just in-- we're receiving word of an atmospheric
disturbance occurrence in the middle east. A voice appears to be coming
from the sky. I'm not quite sure--

God: Sorry everyone, don't have enough cash to keep you
running. It's been real. I'll be shutting down the system now.

Fin.