Wednesday, January 2, 1991

Correspondence: February 2, 1991

Porter Corners, NY

... I haven’t had time to experiment with SimEarth much; I find the manual intimidating. I did, however, play with it for an evening in the experimental mode (a mode which allows you infinite energy to inflict your will on the unsuspecting tenants of your world). I terraformed Mars and guided it through about seven hundred years of development. Unfortunately, I overpopulated the planet with people who soon reproduced to an extent unknown even on the Earth of today. The plants were healthy, but all the intelligent (?) life did was kill one another. They reached a plateau in their advancement and lived in constant conditions of war or plague.

I tried to lessen the burden on the planet by killing off large numbers of the population, but they quickly proliferated and were back to their original numbers in short order. I tried volcanoes, I tried meteors, fires, plagues, I finally even resorted to a barrage of nukes. It was very Old Testament. Those Sim-pletons wouldn’t quit fighting, so I just got out and deleted the file.

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