Population Control Chapter 1

Alright, so this is a novel I found while browsing Syosetu, and I found it pretty interesting.

Feel free to tell me what you think of it in the comments.

Anyway, here's the chapter, I hope you'll enjoy it!

Chapter 1: So this world is a backup?

“You're saying this world is a backup?”

“It's more complicated than that.”

That day, I was working on a fix for a serious bug we found in the test phase of the artificial intelligence system we were developing. We were very close to the deadline so I had to come to work on a holiday. In the field, we call this type of crisis a ‘death march'.

I was going to buy myself some tea between work hours, when I suddenly found myself in a white room. There we no signs of any doors, walls, or ceiling in this place. I was apparently trapped here.

It was only when I calmly looked around the room that someone appeared. He was wearing an attire that seemed like it would be worn by the saints of some bygone religions. As for his physical appearance, it was hard to describe. On the one hand, he looked like a bewitching woman, but somehow, at the same time, he had the face of a fearless, intrepid man.

It was at that point that he started saying that my world is a backup and whatever.

I'm tempted to say that he's just some crazy megalomaniac, but to take me to this white room so suddenly, he has to at least be a super-talented magician… slash, megalomaniac. Still, I think someone this talented would probably be famous, and I don't recall ever hearing about any such magician.

Man, if I don't get back to work soon… Well, I guess have to somehow negotiate with whoever this is…

For now, I decided to hear the rest of his story.

“If I may ask, what do you mean by ‘backup'?”

“The people of your world should have a similar concept. After running a simulation or playing a game for a long time, you'd usually want to save your progress in the middle of it, right?”

“Yes, that is right.”

The conversation carried on smoothly.

Not to brag, but I know my way around computers. Besides, this man's explanations were easy to understand, oddly enough.

“Your world is also one such simulation. As such, its progress has to be saved at times. As for when the saves are made, well, that's up to the person in control.”

The simulation theory. It's a theory that claims the world we live in is only a simulation running on someone's computer. Nowadays, there are very serious debates about this topic between people from all fields, starting from philosophers and religionists, all the way to science fiction writers, scientists and computer engineers. Some of them actively support it, while other actively deny it. It's not unusual for world-famous researchers to make statements that support it.

It seems like this guy is just one of those people who believe in it. But there is one little difference. He's talking like he's on the side of the ones running the simulation and not the ones being simulated.

“I'm familiar with the debates around this theory. However, when you said ‘the person' in control, you were referring to yourself, weren't you? Are you a ‘person'? Are you human?”

“No, I am not a h.o.m.o Sapiens. I am currently speaking to you using a translation function. It seems like it transformed my words to something equivalent in your language.”

“So you're using machine translation… I see.”

“It's good that you're fast on the uptake. Now then, are you convinced that the s.p.a.ce you call “the world” is a simulation running on my computer?”

“I understand. You are the owner of our world.”

If his story is true, it means our world might disappear if he spills some coffee on his keyboard or trips on his computer's power cable.

On the other hand, if this story is a lie, then I just might get killed on the spot if I push this half-crazed guy the wrong way. I'd much rather avoid that.

Either way, it's crucial right now to stay calm and not make any waves. Definitely.

“I suppose you could say that. Do you have any questions?”

“What I don't understand is, how can I speak to you when I am just a character of the simulation and you are the one running it?”

“Really? Can't you just figure it out?”】

“I'm afraid I can't do that.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

What does he mean, “figure it out”? Is this guy serious? Like I thought, he must be a dumba.s.s megalomaniac who read way too many isekai light novels or something, and this white room has to be some kind of magic trick.

“Well, if you think about it, there are only two possibilities, right? Either I made you, a character from the simulation, appear in my world through something like a 3D printer, or I temporarily put an instance of my own will into the simulation s.p.a.ce.”

“That makes sense.”

“Which one do you think it is?”

“I would say it's the latter.”

“That is correct. If I made you appear as an ent.i.ty in my world, things would get troublesome one way or another. Especially when it would be time to erase your printed version.”

Alright, in many ways, his story is coherent. At the very least, I feel like he sincerely just wants to explain everything properly.

But during this whole conversation, all I've been thinking was, ‘so what?'

So what if I live in a simulated world? Even if that's true, it doesn't change the fact that I live in this world, and that once I'm done with this conversation, I'll be back at work to deal with our death march.

That being the case, I better hear this guy out now and end this exchange quickly.

“So what's the simulator like exactly?”

“It's a game that came with a magazine. It's pretty popular. The game is about adjusting the parameters of planet's environment until actual intelligent life appears… It's actually quite hard.”

“A game…. a game you say…. And it came as a gift with a magazine…”

Well that's just depressing.

Based on this guy's sort of religious attire, I was under the impression that the simulation was created by a higher realm of intelligent life at the peak of science.

I thought this was a n.o.ble project, created in order to watch over the evolution of a civilization as direct observers. I thought they wanted to adjust the created environment until mankind could evolve to become a universal life form, at which point they'd be able to speak directly with the observers, whom they would consider to be their creators.

But if it's just a game that comes with a magazine… It wouldn't be strange if he got bored of it and turned it off, right?

“Hmm, sorry, but if that's where the simulator comes from… Does that mean there are other people such as you who are observing their own version of earth like it's a gathering of s.p.a.ce debris?”

If so, then are the players of this game a very long-lived race? Are there a lot of them? Do they have enough leisure in their lives for things like games to become popular? Maybe they're a well-established society…

…This is useless. I can't imagine it.

“Well, the simulator isn't just about the earth and what surrounds it. To speak in your own terms, there are multiple star systems organized within multiple galaxies. The simulated s.p.a.ce contains 14 of those galaxies.

You might be wondering how time plays into this, but this is a simulator, so there are some options like a centuple speed mode, for example. We certainly have long lives compared to your people, but we don't live for 15 billions years.”

A simulation of 14 galaxies? …Does it simulate everything down to the level of particles? With the most performant computers of our modern era, all we can simulate realistically is the behavior of a single protein for a duration of one second. Just what kind of program and computer would you need to simulate 14 galaxies?

“That doesn't mean that each aspect of the movement of particles in the entirety of this s.p.a.ce is being simulated. If that was the case, the game's machine would crash, as you'd expect. So when it comes to stars or the void of s.p.a.ce, the machine only simulates ‘abstractions', to keep the memory usage to a minimum.”

“Abstractions?”

“That's right, abstractions.

Stones are just stones and water is just water, unless you observe them in detail with an electron microscope like you h.o.m.o Sapiens have recently started doing. But their microscopic features are not always present, be it the crystallized structures of silicates or the molecules of water and the brownian motion they generate. It's only when you observe objects at the right scale that they become distinguishable as ma.s.ses of elementary particles, molecules, or atoms.”

This reminds me of video game graphics. In a game, when something is far away in the background, it's usually shown as a single picture or rendered with a lower polygon count. Making it any more elaborate would be meaningless as it would only look like a dot on the screen either way.

But when the characters of the game go for the place shown in that background, it can suddenly be depicted as a very realistic street, where each sniper, fighter, or stray cat is rendered in a complexe and realistic manner.

Considering how much time it takes, working on objects that are only shown in the background doesn't have a significant enough influence on the final result. That's why even movie productions with abundant budget and resources haven't been bothering to do that lately. Abstraction is definitely the way to go to avoid wasting rendering time and memory usage.

This guy is talking about something similar. Unless you make actual detailed observations of them, there is no reason to be aware or conscious of the existence of particles, atoms or even molecules to a certain extent.

Stones can just be stones and water can just be water. It's only when scientists observe the world using electron microscopes and particle accelerators that the simulation's system has to offer results to their observations. As long as said results match the behaviors that the scientists can infer, the world will make sense.

“So object are approximately generated unless we directly stare at them.”

“Yes, and that used to be good enough. Until you h.o.m.o Sapiens reached greater wisdom.”

“Is there a problem with the simulation?”

This guy is being careful to keep his explanations right under the limits of my scientific knowledge. On one hand, he caught my curiosity so I'm happy to find out what he has to say, but at the same time, it's a little bit annoying to know that he identified my limits as a human.

“Say…”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what a combinatorial explosion is?”

“I do…”

I remember watching a PR video about that in some science museum. It said something about how if the number of roadside stations in j.a.pan increased just a little bit, the number of possible pathways to go through all of them in one setting would become impossibly large. That one small increase would result in such an enormous raise of possibilities that I'd have grandchildren by the time they could calculate every path.

“So you'll understand when I tell you that your world is pus.h.i.+ng the simulation to something similar to a combinatorial explosion and is eating up my computer's memory.”

“What's causing that exactly?

Is it because the number of computers we're making is increasing too much? Or because people are observing the movement of particles all over the place because of how much science has been progressing? Or is it because of all the information circulating through the internet?”

“These things do play a part in it, but the crisis I'm currently dealing with is that the amount of resources used by your h.o.m.o Sapiens neural network has been increasing geometrically.”

“I see. Our small brain cells are all connected with each other through many paths, and every connection is meaningful. I suppose you wouldn't able to use abstraction on this.”

“No, I don't think you fully understand.

A single one of your brains consumes as much as what it takes to simulate the physics of a whole dwarf planet.

There are 7.5 billion people. I mean, chickens are vertebrates just like you but their brain consumes a hundred times less resources than an asteroid.

That's all fine when your people just eat and sleep, but lately they've been randomly thinking about complex matters, and trying to a.n.a.lyze the simulation from its constants to its algorithms.”

“Wait.

Isn't the whole point of the simulator to generate intelligent life? How did they not take that into consideration when they created it?”

“Think of how many of these brains with the complexity of a dwarf planet are generated every single day. This is way beyond expectations.”

Apparently, the magnitude of mankind's breeding activities has exceeded the expectations of the simulator's manufacturer. And there are probably newborns coming to life all over the world as we're speaking.

“…Yeah, sorry about that…”

“…So, what would you do in my stead?”

“I guess I'd make a backup, move it to another computer to try stuff out, and if I managed to successfully solve the problem, I'd make that new save the main one.”

“That's right. And that's what I meant when I said that the world you're currently in is a backup.

As for you, I called you into this room to make you my agent so you can ‘try stuff out', like you said.”

“I see. I was wondering why a G.o.d-like being would come out to me when I wasn't run over by any kind of other-world truck… wait, hold on! Your agent? Me?”

“Why else would I tell you so much?”

Right after suddenly learning about the truth of the world, I'm now being told to fix the problems of that world. That made me panic a little.

But the next moment, without a warning, this G.o.d… or rather, this gaming addict of a higher realm of intelligent life, messed around with my brain. That mysteriously calmed me down.

“What did you do?”

“I fiddled with your brain a bit. While I was at it, I gave you the ability to modify the variables of the objects within your world.”

“My brain? Is that really safe?”

“Fortunately, there was a lot of empty s.p.a.ce in there so I managed to put that in. As expected of the equivalent of a dwarf planet.”

What the h.e.l.l is this person doing with my precious free s.p.a.ce?

Translator's note: Learned a lot while working to translate this novel. As for what he said about combinatorial explosion relating to the human brain, that actually makes a lot of sense. I've read a few scientific articles about it while translating the chapter but is the easiest text I could find, and has a part about the brain, too. (ctrl+f the word ‘brain' to find it)