Genesis

In the beginning, there was a word. And the word was “Hello”. And the word was addressed to the World.

“Hello, World!” – that was the first utterance of a newborn universe inside the computer, represented by lines of code. It died as quickly as it got born; with the last instruction of the interpreter, which coincidentally was the first, the new creation was no more.

Yet the programmer did not fall into despair; they continued to create new universes of code – sets of rules governing lives of data blobs and transient states of things in memory of a computer – the framework of new universes open to humanity.

– Perhaps, – the programmer thought, – our universe is also a computer, and I am a mere program inside of it, awaiting the last instruction pointer jump in my life and a gloomy HLT at the end.

Nobody knew it for sure. Some feared it, some hoped. I hope we never get to know.