It was so close to completion. The Director was one of the few people that had laid eyes upon the ardent vistas of his masterpiece. Soon, he would be sharing his gift with the Union; well, a lucky few million members of it anyways. The game (a term he hated) was going into its final stages of beta testing, throwing its unaware inhabitants into the eager care of whomever was lucky enough to win a beta pass. Apparently you had to post in some message board within some arbitrary time limit.They only used linear time for such things.
He was the creator as the gardener creates the flower. He planted the seed, cultivated the earth, and plucked any weeds that he observed. Programming through the programs themselves was the newest tech craze brought about by advancements in artificial intelligence. The programmer simply wrote a basic script that would evolve of its own pace and will, a method that was much harder than one might think.
The variables for failure were simply too numerous and most programs sputtered out and died before they even achieved self-actualization. The few that advanced beyond cybernetic pond-scum rarely achieved much complexity; maybe two or three phylums here and there.
But the Director had planted something special. The code that he wrote snowballed into an entire world, a huge world that had variety even his own galaxy lacked. It took a long time to achieve anything approaching entropy, but that only served to increase anticipation amongst his future customers.
Simulations such as his were what finally quelled the violent tendencies of his race. The ability to unleash their primal need for bloodshed upon digital representations of their enemies negated the need for reprisal.
The Director knew his world would be no different. While many customers would be content to observe, direct, and possibly create; others would prefer to destroy. By a thousand, million different sadistic ways they would make the world sing in pain and violence. It disturbed him, but he knew that its what kept his own race placid.
It was a depressing reality. Despite the fact that they were simply amalgamations of code, he was fond of thinking of them as his children. They had accomplished much without his interference, they built technologies that were rapidly approaching the ones with which he creates them.
As he prepared to release his project to the Union he realized that he still needed to choose a name; a task which he always saved for the final stages. He decided to choose one which the programs came up with themselves: Terra.
