From: tolman%asylum.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman)
Subject: The Mallogor (part I)
Date: 18 Apr 92 23:49:03 GMT


  I had been playing a silly adventure game, you know the type.  There
was an arch-villian named DarkWater, and he was a real jerk.  It was
pretty typical, we both kept buying more chips and space, so the world
slowly expanded.  I was putting more and more time into the game, and
less into other interactions with the businesses, but I had my droids
doing that.
  Droids?  They are computer programs that simulate myself, and go and
do interactions in my behalf.  I instruct them on what to do, and they
go and carry out my commands.  If they hit a tough spot, one they don't
know how to handle, they pass control back to me.  Or they used to.
It is sort of like multitasking my brain out, I don't have to worry about
the I/O, the droids do it.  Exactly like the old serial computers did,
they would process on the real data, and have subtasks doing the grunt
stuff with the disks.  So I could be doing 10 things at once, you know.
Except I stopped having them come back to me, I bought some "evolve"
chips and let them solve their problems by themselves after a while.  I
spent all my time playing, and my 24 droids went about doing my business,
all at once, hopefully making me money.  They did.
  The game was typical- constrained and all.  The first games let people
act like gods, do anything they want.  But soon everyone got tired of that,
and realized the fun stuff is in working within the constraints.  So me
and DarkWater had agreed to the "rules" to start out, and then they were
set and could not be changed at all, unless the whole place was destroyed.
Inside the game were thousandss of simulators doing people, and they would
join sides.  DarkWater would take his followers and make them serve him,
make them only do things he wanted.  I liked to have them act on their own,
and got more "evolve" chips which had quantum random to create emergent
properties.  For some reason, a lot of the people thought that DarkWater
was more powerful, and would turn to him to serve him.  So DarkWater
gathered more power in numbers, not by a lot, but enough.
  That was probably the trouble, this is where it began.  DarkWater began
to attack neutral towns, and imprison the simulators.  When I talked to
him, he said "It's just a bunch of damn robots".  I told him about how they
were TOTAL replications of human concsiousness, and he would say, "They are
just in the damn computer, and will go away if it is shut off"  A spy of
mine found out he was torturing them, unless they vowed to serve him.
They did not have any rights, and appeals in the "outside" drew blank
stares and laughter.  If DarkWater took control of the whole land, I lost
my hold in it and he would own all the hardware, all of my investment.
That's how the game works.  I suppose I should have stopped playing in
the beginning, but after some investment it is hard to stop upping the bet.
Now me and DarkWater fought fiercely over the land, in this world of
strangeness and wonder.  We had agreed to rules which were unknown, and
had many strange properties.  In this world DarkWater felt no morality,
in this simulation he did not care for it.  That was why I opposed him
so strongly, and left the droids to care for my business.  Leaving the
droids to do business by themselves was illegal, but I cared little.

  "Jason" said Kleif.
  I turned and looked over at him on his horse.  The steam from his horses
mouth formed strange spirals.  I had figured out long ago that this steam
was actually a transform of some random person's movements.  Some effort
to save computation perhaps.  Kleif was pointing down through the trees,
at a group of pigs trotting across the ground.
  "Yeah, I see the pigs" I said, smiling, "what of it?"
  Kleif pointed up, "They migrate west, which means the moon has passed
the apex, and now the power of magic rises again"
  I nodded, wondering if he was thinking the same thoughts I had.
  "DarkWater will rise with the power," he said.
  "We will be ready," I replied, "I fear that we must crush him this time,
and many people will die on both sides."
  Kleif looked at my face, "At least you care, my friend, you are doing
what is right."
   However, I knew we might fail, indeed, and all the life would be lost
for no cause, DarkWater may gain control.  His armies were larger and
better armed.  I had my clever minions, but cleverness will not save
a cat falling off a cliff.  We began to ride back to the fortress, or
rather the world began to move past us.  It was hard to tell, were we
moving through the world, or was it moving past us while we were still?
The trees rustled in the wind, and a pattern could be sensed behind their
movements.  I stopped the horse and listened.  This world always seemed
to be giving signs and hints, words written in the strangest places for
decypherment.  Now I could tell the trees had some secret among
their branches.  Kleif had pulled in his horse, and was arming his crossbow.
   "The wind?" said Kleif, guessing at the trees message.
   "No," I said, listening with my eyes, my ears, and nose, "the Air"
   He whipped up his crossbow to aim at the sky.  We saw it.
A shifting pattern of black and orange flew at us in a streak.  Kleifs bolt
whizzed out towards it, and their paths met just before us.  The monster
screamed and dove at me, I had pulled my sword halfway out and could only
manage to knock at it with the pummel.  Sharp pain ripped through my shoulder,
and my horse bolted now, dropping me onto the forest floor.  Kleif was
shouting and had struck at it with his own sword.  I hefted my weapon in
my good arm and turned to strike at it, hacking off part of its body.
There was a horrible gurgling sound, and it disintigrated into a few hunks
of rock.
  "The Mallogor" Kleif said, panting, prodding at it with his sword.
  "Yes," I replied, "DarkWater is using the magic of destruction.  The
creation of this beast burned out some chips somewhere, and the world
shrinks."
  Kleif looked up at my face, "we can not defeat him if he uses this magic"
  I held my shoulder, and looked at the bits of deanimated rock, "We both
swore not to use the magic of destruction.  Years ago we played with it
and destroyed many of the chips irreparably.  He would not destroy the
world to gain control of it."
  But as I spoke, I saw a tree a few hundred yards away thinning, and
vanishing.  Some other creature of destruction was being born at this
moment far away in the stronghold of DarkWater, and a piece that made
up the very fabric of the world, a chip overheated and fused together some
connections.  The tree was now gone altogether.
  "Come on", I said, "forget my horse, we'll both ride on yours, we must
get back now and make plans."
   Plans for what I was not sure.