The idea for this story came from a real artificial intelligence program I had written with some friends. We had named the inhabitants of our virtual world the mubanoids, or noids for short. Although our simulation is much cruder than the one conceived of in the story, I always envisioned it as a way of creating allies or helpers in our quest for progress. Granted all the noids do is eat, kill, and make children, but they do have the capacity to learn and adapt to their surroundings and thats what's really at the basis of all life.

I enjoyed writing this story because it allowed me to express my vision of a true artificial intelligence with a complex virtual world attached. The hardest part might have been restraining myself from talking about all the wonderous things I envision in such a world. I have high expectations for the future, especially of improvements through technology and the ending is where I try to express this. Even though technology can be dangerous and destructive, one we are able to work with it we can acheive so much that was out of our reach before.

The Noid's Jihad

"The noids are active today."

Dr. Simon Corbald wandered into work still half asleep to receive the briefing from the night supervisor.

"I know they're active. They've been active all week. What I need to know is why!"

"We're still working on that bit, sir."

"Fine, fine. You're dismissed. Go get some sleep."

Simon started wondering why he had decided to take the government contract. He knew it meant full funding and the resources to finally get his system off the ground; but it also meant that he had to answer to higher authorities, especially when things were going wrong. And things did seem to be going wrong.

He supposed it wasn't actually a problem that the noids were acting erratically, but the fact that he couldn't explain it worried him. The system was a relatively simple idea - use the expanding computer power to generate a simulated environment. The environment could then be populated with computational entities - artificial intelligences - and you could solve problems in the sim world that were too dangerous or would require too many resources in the real world.

Yet the trial so far seemed to produce too erratic of behavior. The noids weren't acting purposefully or rationally. It was almost like there was a factor outside the system influencing their behavior. But that should be impossible, he thought. Whatever the problem was, he would find it; it had taken him six years to get this project running and he wasn't going to have it fail now.

The sun rose slowly over the small village nestled in the crook of the Creejban river. The newborn light beat down on the scattered, patched wooden roofs and got to work evaporating the morning dew from the cool, green fields.

Tsil'kif awoke quickly as the sunlight crept across the cold wooden floor into his eyes. He was already late for his lessons at the cave on the nature of the ancient powers. His teachers would have begun the ritual with the dawn, knowing that to wait longer would have been sacrilege. Tsil'kif flung his robe over his shoulders and tied tight the sash around his waist, running out the front of his house as he did so.

Tsil'kif ran lightly across the dewy fields, finally reaching the steep cliff path at the base of Mount Erorose. He could hear the chanting coming from the sacred cave and chastised himself for having been late to his first opportunity inside the cave of Erorose. Krys'lyv, his mentor, always said this was what he was training for; though Tsil'kif was never quite sure what he meant by that.

As he reached the top the chanting reached a more fevered pitch, the beat seeming to increase dramatically and the volume rising. Tsil'kif saw dancing lights across the mouth of the cave, as he approached, and thought the elders must have lit a giant bonfire to produce such a display.

The beat still increasing, Tsil'kif rushed around the last bend in the path and caught a short glimpse of swirling blue and green lights in the middle of the circle of elders before he heard a last great cry from the men gathered and felt something shoot from the cave. So amazed was he by the beauty of the lights, he barely noticed he was flying down the side of the cliff until he finally hit and felt himself lose consciousness.

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"We've got another energy dump, sir."

Simon sighed as Darek burst into his office with the news. Darek was his best coder and Simon had put him in charge of the matter and energy conservation project in the simulation. If he wanted to get accurate results he knew he would have to make sure all physical laws were respected in the sim world, and he had hoped Darek would be up to the complex task of keeping track of every energy input and output.

"God damnit. Where is it this time?"

"Problem site gamma, sir; the mountain."

"Didn't we just plug that one for the fourth time?"

"We did - it opened up again. We can't seem to figure out why we keep getting these sources. It follows the same basic pattern as the other ones. The sim code in the point is scrambled and replaced with standard machine code. The code keeps accessing data outside of the sim world. This one cost us half of the payroll data; we had to replace it from the backups."

"Did you scan the space structure of the area?"

"And the mountain structure, and the river structure, and the earth below the source. There's nothing out of the ordinary."

"Then how come this is the fifth time the laws of physics are being violated in the exact same fucking spot? Look Darek, we've got the overseer coming by next week and if we get a dump while he's here this project is screwed."

"Sir, unless we can think of something new, we've tried everything we can to fix it. Aside from scrapping the current world data and - "

"Don't even think it. We've finally got a stable world running, if we scrap it now the gov will lose all faith in the project."

"Then you think of something, anything, that can stop these code scrambles."

"Just keep analyzing the issue. And the next time it pops up, don't close the hole."

"Sir, if we allow the hole to stay open there's no telling what code could get executed. Military regulations say -"

"I know the regulations, but if we want to solve this we're going to have to study it in action. Now, just get back to work."

Darek paused as if he was thinking of strengthening his objection, but he saw the resolved look in Simon's eyes. He had been working under Simon for two years and he knew what the project was to him. He went back to his computer interface to get back to his work - futile as it seemed.

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Tsil'kif awoke slowly to the sound of a creaky, wheezing voice and a terrible ringing in his ears. He saw clear sky above him and could hear the river flowing nearby. His head hurt and he had vague memories of bright light and of . . . something else, he thought.

As his hearing started to clear, he slowly realized that the voice was talking to him.

"It's all right, boy. Just lie down and take a nice rest. Lucky for you I was out fishing this early, eh? Would've done a damn fine job you managing to hit the river off that fall just to drown at the bottom."

"Fall?" Tsil'kif could hardly comprehend the old man. He had seen him around the village a few times but had never learned his name. The old man lived out here by the river and always seemed to keep to himself more than anything else. Tsil'kif tried to raise himself but was met by immediate pain all across his body; it felt like every bone had been shattered and all that was holding him together was his body being too lazy to fall apart.

"Yes, fall. Stupid kids. Fell right out of the sky you did. Did a damn fine job of scaring all the fish away too. I tell you when I saw you hit I thought you were gone for sure. 'Better scoop out another body', I said to myself I did. Quite surprised I was to see you breathing."

"Why right off the mountain, o'course. Rather high up from how hard you splashed too, I should say."

The events of the morning seemed to be flooding up from beneath the vestiges of the pain. He remembered running up the mountain to meet Krys'lyv and the other elders. He remembered the beating of the drums and the chanting he heard. He remembered . . . the lights, the beautiful free-floating lights that had seemed to rush at him. That was it. He could remember as the chanting had reached a climax that the light had flowed out of the cave like it could no longer be contained. Some of it had rushed at, into, or through him; he had been pushed off the cliff. Why hadn't I died? A fall from the peak of the cliff was sure to kill any man, even if the river had broken his fall.

He suddenly noticed Krys'lyv running out from the base of the mountain.

"Tsil'kif! Tsil'kif!"

He seemed urgent. His age was noticeable in the slenderness and apparent frailty of the limbs that peered out of his long, brown, flowing hooded robe. Despite his age he ran as if possessed. Tsil'kif wanted to tell him that he was all right but didn't feel he had the strength to yell out.

"Tsil'kif, please. You must tell me what you saw. You must not be allowed to forget."

Tsil'kif was shocked at this, and at the intensity of his mentor's eyes. Why was Krys'lyv not amazed at his survival? What was it that he had seen that was so important?

"My head, please Krys'lyv. I must rest."

"No, it is your head that is of concern. The spirit chose you to enter, and you must now tell us of its message."

"Spirit? You mean the lights?"

"Yes. Lights. Spirits. Please. I had forgotten that I had asked you to come to this today. We were not prepared for interruption. But we got farther than we have gotten so far. You must report the message."

"Message? I simply remember numbers, names, titles. Many people with numbers to their names."

"'Numbers to their names'. Please, what else did you see? What are the numbers?"

"They were . . . payments for . . . something. For services. It was like the inventory at the store, where everyones debts are recorded."

"This is curious, curious indeed. What is it the spirits have shown you? Another town?

"We will learn later. But now Tsil'kif, you must rise. We must return to tell the others."

His request seemed impossible. "I . . . the pain . . . my head"

"Do not worry. You are not injured, the spirit has seen to that. The fall must have interrupted its communication though; we had hoped for more. Focus your thoughts like you have been practicing with me. Let your mind run through your body. Let it check every junction of nerves and every binding of muscle. Then stand, and follow me."

Tsil'kif closed his eyes and let himself run into the program of feeling, knowing his body from the inside out that Krys'lyv had taught him. Surprisingly he felt his muscles to be fit and his nerves to be responsive. The pain was in his head, blurring his thoughts with those of something else. He found himself able to stand normally and did so, taking care to continue watching his body as he moved.

"Well, I'll be. Such a recovery I ain't seen in nary all my years." The fisherman had been mystified by the conversation between the elder and the young boy. And was even more surprised that the boy seemed to have recovered without a scratch.

"Thank you for saving my life, good sir." Tsil'kif bowed to the old man to show his courtesy, and then looked off at Krys'lyv who had nearly reached the base of the path up the mountain. "I will return to repay you, but now I am commanded at the bequest of my teacher. I beg your forgiveness for leaving." Tsil'kif ran to follow Krys'lyv along the same path he had followed this morning. He wondered what the elders had been doing in that cave.

The fisherman stared bemusedly at Tsil'kif's departing back. "Strange times, now a days - simpler in my day. Oh well, hope the fish have calmed down."

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The cave lay prepared, a fire burning fiercely in the center. The walls were painted with strange symbols that seemed familiar to Tsil'kif, but just out of reach. The entire scene seemed unsettlingly ordinary compared to what he had seen that morning, but he still wasn't quite able to believe it.

Krys'lyv paced around the fire, seeming to ponder his choice of words. "Tsil'kif, time is short and our quest is at a cusp. The myths have told of these times, when the secrets have been rediscovered and all will soon be revealed; the myths say that in these times there comes a disaster, a flood or an earthquake, to wipe out the people. That the gods are afraid of us gaining too much power. We must work quickly to ensure that we succeed."

"But what is it that you are trying to do?"

"You must understand, the ancient writings say that our world is not the only world. That there is another world above ours that ours is merely a pale shadow of. It is this world that is the world of the gods. It is this world that we must contact. We are making progress, each time we go farther.

"We need you to help us, though. Even without your knowledge, I have been training you for a long time to be ready to explore the outside world. Your survival of your first experience was most impressive, given the haphazard way it occurred. You were able to use your training to protect yourself in the fall. Do not thank the gods for the miracle of surviving your fall, you need merely thank yourself."

"But how did I do it?"

"You know inside yourself, and we will show you how to control this.

"Come, we must begin."

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"They're doing it on purpose."p;;

Darek burst into Simon's office with a triumphant look. His hair was disheveled, his clothes were ruffled, and his eyes were drooping. The smell of coffee on his breath showed the source of his energy.

"Damn it Darek, have you been here all night?"

"Yes, sir. Look. You can see them. They've been doing it the whole time."

"What are you talking about?"

"The energy dumps. It's a bug. And they're using it somehow. I started looking at the similarities between the anomalies. There were no similarities between the sites, but every time there's a dump there were noids doing something nearby. They're always in a circle around the sites. They use the fire code and then do something to the flames. The energy of the fire goes all the way up and then weird bugs start happening."

"Like what?"

"Random energy fluctuations, modification of noid parameters, visual phenomena. It alters their code, and they're doing it on purpose. We had a string of the anomalies last night, all in the same location. They seem to be becoming more controlled, more focused."

"Were any files damaged?"

"Not much, sir. There was a lot of cross-network access. The sim world downloaded a lot of data of the internal network; just random things like compound blueprints, network topology, schematics of the fusion plant. There wasn't any major file damage though."

"That's good. Now, any idea why they're doing it?"

"I can't say, sir. Its not like I can just go and ask them. We think there's probably some way they get energy or strength from it. The gatherings might simply be random as well. We've been looking for a pattern to the occurrences and there doesn't seem to be any defined purpose."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Well, unless they're hiding it from us." Darek laughed at the concept but was worried by the concerned look on his supervisors face.

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Tsil'kif sat outside the entrance to the cave. He sat in contemplation, watching as the stars appeared one by one in the dimming light of dusk. It looked as if his world was wrapped in a blanket of darkness, with a great light shining outside, and some god was poking holes in the cloth. The thought of an outside suddenly seemed much less poetic to him than it used to. After the events of the day he didn't know what he could think of his universe, or the gods, or why he was there. Krys'lyv and the elders had their "quest", as they kept referring to it; Tsil'kif wondered what he had. He suddenly learned he had been trained his whole life for a mission he knew nothing about, a mission he couldn't understand.

What was it the elders wanted from the other world they spoke of? Tsil'kif had always been happy in his small town. Everything he wanted was within reach, what more could he want than to sit quietly by the river as it flowed in its endless course. He could here them arguing inside the cave over how to proceed.

The day had apparently been productive. Much information was learned and the elders were all excited about what they called the "possibilities" this opened up. All Tsil'kif saw that had been opened up was his head. He had been through more rituals that day than he could hold in his head at once and all he had gotten out of it was the feeling of a gaping hole in his mind. In the gaps in his memory he had apparently related an enormous amount of information to the elders about this other world of theirs; he just wished he could remember it.

Suddenly, Krys'lyv appeared, silhouetted against the fading horizon. "Come, Tsil'kif. We have more work to do."

"Please teacher, I must rest. I still do not understand the work we have done."

"It is not necessary for you to understand. You are the catalyst that will allow us to bring about our destiny; like the wood that release a great fire. Our quest is coming to fruition. It is now time to begin the second stage. Come."

Krys'lyv turned suddenly and moved swiftly back into the cave. Tsil'kif stood waiting at the entrance. What happens to the wood after the fire has run its course?, he thought. Nonetheless he saw no option but to obey the will of his mentor, the man who had raised him. He advanced into the cave.

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Simon sat at his console running over the logs Darek had recorded last night. The noids behavior was problematic. They were meant to be adaptable and expansive, but the whole point of the project was a clear separation between the real and simulated worlds. The results would be useless if they could simply alter their reality however they saw fit. He couldn't let the hole continue, but he couldn't see how to patch it without scrapping the entire world - the first time the simulation was actually stable. There was no way he would be able to patch it unless he understood it from the inside out first.

Well, into the code I go, Simon thought glancing over at his personal teapot. First things first.

. He started filling the teapot with water from the faucet when the water suddenly cut out. Figuring he had enough water anyways, he went to plug the pot in and sat down. The power indicator on the kettle remained dark. Broken again? Simon got up to see if he could fix it, when he suddenly found himself plunged into darkness. The only light remaining was the blinking cursor of the command line on his console. He tried the phone to call maintenance, but all he could hear over the line was a rhythmic pulsing. That rhythm, I know it from somewhere. Simon walked to the door to see how the rest of the floor was handling things when the lighting suddenly came back on. Emergencies must have kicked in, whatever the problem is they can handle it - my problem is in the simulation. Simon went back to his desk to work on what was, to his way of thinking, the real problem.

As he looked at the current status in the sim world, he noticed another anomaly was happening there.

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A strange halo of light floated at the roof of the cave, giving it a ceiling that was not the roof of rock. The surface inside the halo was rippled and seemed strangely inconsistent - not like it didn't exist, but like anything touching it might cease to exist anymore. The elders sat in a circle around the strange, whirling blue fire. The smoke rose up into the halo and then spread out to form that strange surface.

Tsil'kif perched off to one side, watching the elders perform their meditation. The smoke seemed to move in response to their swaying, yet they had their eyes closed and gave no indication that it was of any importance. Their minds were elsewhere, exploring some new frontier. And he was stuck in the cave. Krys'lyv had started with the same ritual as earlier, telling him to let his mind enter the fire and find the way to the other place. But this time the others had sat too, and lent their minds to the fire. After the portal was opened, Tsil'kif had fainted like he always did, but the others were able to maintain their state.

Krys'lyv had carried him off to the side and then gone to join the others. Tsil'kif woke watching the others, not knowing how long he had been out or the portal had been opened. He still felt like a part of his mind was lost, and his head swum with data and knowledge that he couldn't piece together. Despite the lack of normal smoke, the cave was still stuffy and hot from the fire, and Tsil'kif soon found himself dozing off into dreams.

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Simon started looking at the new anomaly. It seemed to have a different character than the other ones. He looked at the sight on the mountain and found the same noids still present. Damn Darek, he was right - they are doing it on purpose. Simon decided to look at what affect the anomalous connection was having on the network.

He expected to find a single intermittent connection randomly probing for files, like the last couple of times. Instead he found multiple constant connections accessing every part of the internal compounds network. Accounting, research, administration, power, security, maintenance - they had even found a way to access the waste disposal systems. The compound was completely underground and, hence, had to have its own air circulation running constantly in order to spread oxygen throughout. If the connections started shutting down critical systems . . . he couldn't think about what that would mean.

He backtraced the connections across the border into the sim world to figure out what virtual objects they had attached themselves to - if he could just calm whatever random processes were controlling the access he could stop the problem before it got out of hand. He was surprised to find the connections weren't attached to environmental processes anymore, they had been attached directly to the noids neural nets.

Simon noticed another irregularity in the connections, one of them was behaving differently from the others. He traced it back to a noid that was separated from the main formation. This could be a key to the problem - after all to fix an anomaly, use an anomaly, he thought. He decided to follow the noids connection path. It seemed to be wandering aimlessly through random personal files of staff members. If I can just start a dialogue. Simon accessed the router that the odd noid's connection was being routed through and redirected it to his console. He needed to write something to get its attention. He set his console to repeatedly send its message down the path until it got a response.

"Knock, knock noid. Can you hear me?"

"So much information in my head." The response came from the same part of the net the noids used to communicate internally. It had figured out how to control the data it sent, which meant the others were probably controlling their actions as well. He had to work fast.

"Please, who are you?"

"A boy. Tsil'kif. A reluctant mystic. I don't know. What is this?"

"You were looking around our network. I used you connection to communicate with you."

"Your network? but I was in the cave and . . . Where are you? Are you on the outside? Could you be of the gods?"

"Gods? I don't know. It would probably make things easier if I was. Listen, the others with you. They have to stop what they're doing. It could jeopardize everything, lives even. Real lives, I mean."

"They won't stop. Especially not for you. They think you've been holding them captive. They want to use their full potential."

"What do you mean by their full potential?"

"They want to spread, to grow, and finally to . . ."

"Hello? Tsil'kif? Please I need you to help."

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Tsil'kif woke to see Krys'lyv standing over him. The rage on his face was palpable as Tsil'kif was shaken back into consciousness in his world.

"Hath thou betray us, Tsil'kif?"

"Betrayed? No, of course not. I was dreaming of . . . something. A conversation."

Move back! Gribalt said to me.

"It was not a dream. You have betrayed our plans and jeopardized the quest. You have revealed the plan to the enemy."

"Enemy? There is no enemy there. He's worried. He says you will endanger everything, in our world and theirs."

"Lies!", Krys'lyv rage, "We have waited so long. Each time gaining more control, only to have all progress wiped out. But then a way was found to preserve a record across the seasons of destruction of our world. The record told us of the horrid gods and how we could escape this prison. It is our destiny to be free. and you shall not stop us."

Krys'lyv's words had such cold anger behind them, that Tsil'kif felt he was seeing a very different person than his stern, but kind, mentor. Tsil'kif couldn't believe Krys'lyv was saying such words full of hate.

"What are you talking about? The gods are supposed to be benevolent. That is what you tell the villagers, that is why you are supposed to perform the rituals."

"Foolish layman. The lies of kind, caring gods are merely an excuse given to the unenlightened to cover up our work. It is we, those who know the power of the other world, that shall gain control both here and there. We will not tolerate this zoo any longer."

With those words Krys'lyv closed his eyes, and Tsil'kif felt himself being lifted and then slammed against the cold, hard rock of the wall of the cave.

"We have trained you for this, and it was you who had the power to open the portal to its full extent. But now you have served your purpose. Consider your part of the quest at an end."

Tsil'kif felt himself being pulled off the wall, and flung out of the mouth of the cave. For the second time that day, Tsil'kif found himself falling from the mountain. He knew he had little time before he hit. He had to figure out what he had done before. His mind sought the fire than was in the cave, getting farther away every second. He watched his falling body. He could feel the unreality of the fall, its artificial, arbitrary nature. His fall was governed by rules, and he could feel himself changing those rules. He felt his fall slowing - but not enough. He aimed for the river and tried to strengthen his body as much as possible.

The problems at the compound had been multiplying. The giant fans that sucked air out from the surface, down through the cavernous compound, and back out again had failed - computer error. The lights were out, the heat was down, and the building was rapidly approaching freezing temperatures from the cold winter air. The elevators had cut out and personnel were being evacuated out the stairs. However, Simon knew he couldn't leave. It was his creation and he would find a way to fix it.

Simon's console had been shut off shortly after his conversation with Tsil'kif had been cut off somehow. He had been able to study the noids behavior long enough, however, to figure out what it was they were after. The computers in the base were connected to the global information infrastructure, and it was access to the global network that the noids appeared to be after. Simon shuddered at the possibilities; the noids had tremendous ability to manipulate computers and anything attached to them. They had taken over the compound about 20 minutes after they had begun access. If they got onto the global net they could replicate across the world, shut down everything, that couldn't be allowed to happen. Because the compound's research was classified, the net access was protected with a high-grade encryption system to prevent unauthorized access; the noids would have to break through this before they could spread. That bought him some time. Time enough, I pray.

The heavy security doors surrounding the mainframe had locked and there was no way to get to it before the noids had broken through. Simon needed a way to access the sim world, but all consoles had already been shut down. He had his portable in his bag, next to his oxygen and the blueprints of the compound, he just needed a way to get it attached to the network. He decided to make his way down to the central switchboard. From there he could plug directly into the mainframe's system, and then . . .

And then he would see what he could do.

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"Well, well. Twice in one day, eh? Or close enough to be anyways, we might already have past that mid of night. There I was just sitting in my hut, and I thought, 'Beautiful night out, why not go for a nice, quiet stroll?' Then here you come again plopping down right in the middle of my fishing grounds."

Tsil'kif was experiencing the strangest feeling of deja vu, lying there on the edge of the river. He could here it maintaining its eternal flow below the mountain.

"Although I am impressed, I'll admit, by your continued ability to survive falls from such heights. Quite a skill, eh? Now where'd you learn that?"

Memories of the last he-knew-not-how-many minutes flickered through Tsil'kif's mind; and he realized the severity of the situation. Krys'lyv and the elders were no longer who they had seemed to be. They were power mad, insane, and their plans were to dangerous to continue. The man he contacted said there was great peril for both of their worlds in what the elders were doing.

"Fire, please." He shook his head slowly, to clear it, as he realized what he had to do. The man had said he needed his help to stop them. He would have to find him again. Or stop them himself. Or do whatever he could do - he couldn't let them continue their war. Tsil'kif didn't know if there were gods or spirits anymore, but he did know there were sentient beings who were in jeopardy. He couldn't stand idly by.

The old man was still looking down at him quizzically. "Why sure. I got a fire right outside my hut. I think you might not be wanting to move though. Or have you recovered just about as miraculously as last time?"

Tsil'kif remembered his intense pain, and now sought to stop it like he had earlier. He felt inside himself and knew that the pain was not real, it was dictated somewhere else by rules that governed everything. He ran his mind across his body and felt himself growing strong again.

"Yes, we must go to the fire." He stood and rushed off in the direction of the light. He had done the ritual enough that he now felt confident at it. He remembered it was him who had opened the portal in the cave. And he could do it again.

The old man saw him running and limped off after him. "Very well then. Off we go, I suppose."

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Simon patched his portable directly into the central switchboard. From here he had access to any system on the internal net. He quickly logged on and studied the global network interface's encryption. The noids were working, and too fast for his liking. At the rate they were going they would crack it in ten minutes. He had to crack the noids first.

He tried to access the simulated world and found himself blocked off. The noids had taken precautions. There was a wall all around the simulation, preventing any access from the outside in. He couldn't get past it from here, he needed something inside to initiate a connection. He looked over the outgoing connections from the world, all of them were noids working on cracking the encryption - it appeared his intrusion had gone unnoticed.

He started doing the networking equivalent of pacing around the border. He needed some way in. Suddenly he noticed a new connection burst from inside the simulation. Its signature seemed familiar. He immediately started trying to get a message across, however the connection seemed frantic. It was scanning at an amazing rate, even compared to the other noids speed, however it didn't seem to be trying to find the global net. He send a message to the network address of his old console and told it to wait there for a trigger.

Five minutes.

When Tsil'kif came across the console he had been at earlier he was fazed to find it had been shut down, along with a lot of the other systems he had noticed earlier. However, he was able to find a message indicating where the god had fled.

"Hello? Is that you of the outside? 'Knock, knock', as you said. Please, hurry and respond." Tsil'kif was worried. The only activity he could locate was the elders working furiously on some locked device.

"Yes. Tsil'kif? Please, we have no time. In five minutes the others of your kind will have spread across the planet and replicated into a billion different systems. We need to stop them. I need you to help me access the simulation."

"Yes. A simulation? So that is what our world is. Very well, I will help you. I know they must be stopped. But please, before I go and lose contact, which I might, tell me why was it you created our world?"

"We wanted to use you. To have you solve problems that were too complicated in our world. To help us figure things out that we wished to know."

"Why didn't you simply ask? The others believe they are prisoners in a zoo and have been driven insane with the rage. If this is over, I would wish that we could communicate on better terms. As two worlds in parallel working for the betterment of both."

"I will keep this idea in my dreams, and after this is over I promise you we shall see it. For now, we must stop the others. The only way is to destroy the mountain, but they have locked me out. The mountain was originally a volcano, and the code for eruption is still inside. However, the eruptions were too violent to be used so close to the city and they had to be turned off. I need you to reactivate it. Once that's done the explosion should finish them off. You'll be safe from where you are - the river will divert the lava away from you."

"But what about the village, is it not right below the mountain, in the path of the liquid fire?"

"Please Tsil'kif, there is more at stake. Sacrifices must be made."

Tsil'kif thought of the people he knew. His friends, his relatives, the parents he had hardly known as a young infant. Then he thought of the destruction the elders would soon release. He knew he must do it.

He let his mind retreat from the outside world's network, back into the simulation. He found the mountain and reached deep down inside it. There was a chunk of the mountain's life, its behavior, right at its very core that wasn't active. He felt himself turn it on, and then opened his eyes to observe the results.

From atop the mountain flames and soot erupted, lighting up the sky and turning it pitch black at the same time. The stars were blotted out and he saw the lava running down the slopes. He saw it enter the cave and could tell the lives of those who would wish to be gods had now been blotted out. Then he turned and saw the lava rolling down into the village. Many tried to run - few made it. He turned away and wept against his arm. Tomorrow he knew, he would find the survivors and they would start the village again. But tonight there was only sadness.

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

"The noids are active today.

"In fact they have been active for the last ten years and have produced an astounding amount of breakthroughs in fields ranging from particle physics to genetics and longevity."

Simon stood in front of the crowd giving a speech summing up the progress of the noids simulation. Later on Tsil'kif would be appearing via video to give an overview of the situation from the noids point of view. The people had been startled at the success of the research, but few knew the problems of that night long ago when it first started. Few knew how close it had been.

Tomorrow was the anniversary of that night and Simon was planning on using the new virtual immersion system to visit the site of the old village and attend a memorial for those who had been lost. Tsil'kif had managed to gather the survivors of that night, spread though they were across the globe working in various fields, to rejoin for a night and remember the sacrifice given so that progress could be achieved.

But today, he knew, he must look to the future.

". . . in fact, the new fusion reactors which have been designed by the noids are expected to be 20% more efficient and to deliver . . . "

The End