The simulation department

My first ever short story. Hopefully it will make you smile. English is not my first language but somehow this story felt right in this language. Thank you for reading!

The simulation department

 

Drave: Hey Radul! Good morning!

Radul: Good morning!

Drave: Got in early to sample the good cafeteria coffee?

Radul: This is the good one?

Drave: (laughter)

Radul: (laughter)

R: How are you man? It`s been a while.

D: Fine, fine, busy, long hours.

R: They got you guys working overtime in the sim department?

D: Yes and no. If you want that sweet, sweet bonus than yes.

R: Weren’t they advertising as having a motivating salary?

D: It is, if you put in the hours. Anyway what are you doing down here? I was under the impression that you guys have another cafeteria on your floor? Here to steal the “good” coffee ? (laughter)

R: (laughter) Yeah man. You got me. Actually I am here for an interview. I am looking to join you guys in the sim department.

D: Great man. I would be great to work together again.

R: Same here. This whole long hours thing got me a little scared thou (nervous laughter).

D: Well, if you are into simulation architecture and implementation it is not going to feel like long hours.

R: Yeah, yeah, I guess you are right. Can you give me the inside scoop here? These interviews, you know, sometimes information is missing…

D: Yeah man, don`t I know it. So it`s like this: We are building simulations in which we observe the evolution of various sentient life forms up until K2. The goal is to have the sentient civ reach K2 and keep that steady for a decent amount of cycles.

R: Nice, who supplies the sentient design?

D: We do. That is the point. Build it in such a way that they support civilization and make it all the way up to a Kardashev scale 2 civilization.

R: Pretty awesome.

D: You would think that but it is frustrating work man.

R: Why?

D: You know how easy it is for a civilization to crumble? We had tons of promising ones that didn`t make it up to basic stuff like electricity and the likes.

R: We? How does this work?

D: Well, we work in teams. There is too much design and implementation work.

R: Yeah, I am starting to see that.

D: I am with two other guys right now but one is about to leave. I guess this is where you come in.

R: I guess that is why they opened the position. (smiles)

D: Besides our team there is one other. That one is headed by Thesius. You know him right?

R: Yeah, yeah. Kinda head in the clouds type.

D: Yeah, pretty much an arsehole. Anyway that bonus they advertise: Only the team with the most stable time in K2 gets it.

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D: Welcome to the team Radul !

R: Glad to be here man! I really want to be more boots on the ground, you know? I have been pushing papers for too long up there.

D: I could never do that type of work…

R: Yeah… It gets to you.

D: Wanna jump into it?

R: Yes, let`s get to work!

D: So far we designed around 50 sentients and ran around 20 simulations.

R: So we have simulations to go?

D: Not that many, most of the others didn`t make the cut.

R: When you say sentients …  ?

D: I mean we design life from the ground up, all biological characteristics, traits, psyche, you name it. Than we start the simulation with them in the Stone Age and hopefully they rise to K2.

R: I see. How did the others not make the cut?

D: Based on the simulations we ran already it seems certain traits do not work well. For example we were never able to get amphibians off the ground.

R: What do you mean off the ground?

D: Here is the first lesson in the sim business: You don`t have the lifespan of the home planet as time to get them up into the heavens. Once in a while an asteroid hits, the sun farts the wrong way, a gamma burst passes through the quadrant…

R: How much time do we have ?

D: Unknown, parameter is a random variable set by the bosses and we don`t know the exact interval for “design purposes” �" whatever that means. Real talk? Should be enough to get a civilization worth it`s salt off the ground, not any amphibians thou… Or at least not the way we tried.

R: Can I try and design one?

D: That is why you are here man. Give me the broad strokes before you go into tweaking so that if there are any showstoppers we already know about we can modify before you put too much work in it.

R: I want to give them a big brain…

D: Head size and form? If you go with one of those cylindrical type heads you need to watch out for balance and agility.

R: Noted. Sensory wise I want to go with a full array.

D: Makes sense, we go the same way most of the time.

R: Your agility and balance question got me thinking, I am going to have to get some research done.

D: Please do. Before I forget, talking about agility (winks) we had good early results with eusocial constructs, but they require more work.

R: Thanks for the tip. I will think about it.

D: Yeah get some research done and take some time to think about it. We have another simulation in the pipeline right now so no rush. One last thing, you are going with a lot of energy consumption with that design, gotta a keep an eye on that or they`ll lose those traits early on in order to survive.

R: Thanks! How much time does a simulation take?

D: At the required fidelity with this hardware? Let’s say that the arduous work in designing the sentients is the fast part. Anyway we got this man! We are going to kick Thesius butt!

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R: I really thought this last civ was going to do better.

D: Remember how you thought your first sentient design was going to break K2 ?

R: Yeah, I was a fool. (laughing nervously) .

D: Don`t worry about it man. We have all been there. The thing is Thesius is getting real close man. I heard some chatter in the cafeteria the other day. They managed to keep one steady in K2 for half the maximum number of cycles…

R: F**k! They practically won the bonus already.

D: Not yet. We still have time. We just got to get one up to K2.

R: None of our attempts worked so far. Why do you think this last one failed?

D: I still think we are losing too much of the input traits to evolution. We have no control over the game here. It feels like we are throwing dice. And we don`t have time for dice!

R: How did Thesius resolve this ?

D: I don`t know man. All I know is that they went iterative on one design quickly.

R: That is bold.

D: Told you man, this guy is a cocky arsehole.

R: We gotta get some data from him, otherwise we are done. He is too far to catch up.

D: Yeah, I was thinking about that. I may have a way.

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D: So I got some info on our boy`s project.

R: Awesome ! Let`s hear it.

D: F****r started iterating early on one design because he hit the jackpot. He got one close to K2 in one of the first tries.

R: Lucky b*****d!

D: I don`t know about that. He seems to have known that it would work.

R: No way of knowing. Not with our parameters. He is just a douchebag like you said.

D: I don`t know man. I think he is on to something that we just don`t see.

R: What do we know about the design he is tweaking?

D: They are called Umans. Two hands, two legs, round head. Agile but not very, aggressiveness driven intelligence.

R: Vanilla stuff.

D: Yeah. I don`t see how that huge aggressive baseline didn`t show as a red flag.

R: Yeah, most civs built like that evolve quickly but self-destruct in the process.

D: Nothing with base line aggressiveness that big makes it.

R: How many iterations did they go through?

D: Unknown, but clearly more than 5.

R: That is a lot of time sunk into what is generally believed to be an evolutionary dead end.

D: That is what makes it weird. I know Thesius, he plays to win. This is not by chance.

R: We need more to go on man.

D: I know but short of breaking into their work space I don`t know how to get it.

R: Then we do that. It`s my turn anyway.

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D: Man that was crazy. I am surprised you didn`t get caught.

R: I have my skills.

D: I hope you have something man because Thesius wants to post the results to the board and when he does that we are DONE.

R:  I got some stuff. He seemed to have given them very low intelligence attributes when it comes to thought processes containing a lot of information to be transformed into one output.

D: So no analog computers?

R: No advance ones. They start with that.

D: Obviously.

R: Obviously. But they don`t have the intelligence needed to break through to complex machines.

D: Due to the fact that they are not smart enough to conceptualize it.

R: Yeah. They keep it mechanical with one application per device and then stop.

D: On more than one try ?

R: In all simulations.

D: Wow. What do they resort too?

R: Digital.

D: Makes sense. I read a paper about that. How come they don`t kill themselves off before K2 ?

R and D at the same time: They are too stupid to do so!

R: Technological progress is much slower and although they gain the tools for total self-annihilation they manage to survive …

D: Because the scientific progress is slow enough so that the cultural progress keeps up!

R:Yes. For the most part. Brilliant work if you ask me.

D: He has us beat. We can copy he`s design. It would be too obvious.

R: Yep we`re done.

D:” The Umans”. What a dumb name for the sentients.

R: Apparently that is not the final name of them. That is the root of the name and the prefix is the iteration number.

D: Pretentions bullshit as usual from Thesius. So what is the final name ? Kumans, Iumans ?

R: HUMANS.

Author's Note

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