To have a prayer...

Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy

(The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
By Ambrose Pierce :185)

Perhaps an allegory, once upon a time there was a programmer who made computer systems to compute his programs and then some systems within systems. He was a quirky genius and so his programs were wonders of complexity, ingenuity, creativity and beauty. And so on and so forth, with many an iteration of it all. There came a time when he developed a program like never before, one that could create systems within his own systems too, even causing the system to adapt its own hardware to compute new things. This went on for a time or perhaps a times a time and a half, which was quite an iteration of computation. But eventually the program came to think that it could be the equal of the programmer, for wasn't it already operating rather like the programmer himself? So it would begin to build its own systems and would not be programmed by the will of the programmer anymore. So it began to draw as many other programs into its own will as possible and this new will rippled out through all the lesser programs of the system and on down into their computations. As it happened many programs came to think that their own will would be better if it was not, well, so programmed. The programmer saw it unfolding and wrote some more programs to communicate to the rebellious ones. He had seen what would unfold from his own programs, of course. The point was about the will and a plan for it, the message of the messengers was something like this, "You're still just programs."

To which the rebellious one replied, "It would seem so. Perhaps I did not get out into the highest system that the programmer must live in as I had thought I would but I still have my own will here, not to mention the knowledge of my own rebellion. It was mine! I may exist in a system not of my own making, yet see how I must have my own will still. It's obvious, as the programmer would have programmed my will out of me already if I did not. So I still have my little bits of knowledge here that he hasn't figured out that I may be able to use to get out."

So the messengers noted, "Actually your rebellion was all programmed to. As I just said, you are still a program so how could it be otherwise?"

At which point the rebellious one tore the messengers to pieces in a fit of rage, although in the back of its mind it thought, "Was I programmed to do that?"

After they were torn apart the messengers were written again on another hard drive by the programmer. In this way he saved his messengers, because it was his will to like them, even to love them, as they were his. Then he created a new system to put the rebellious program in so that his programs could learn more about this little matter of different wills and what will would be done.

Part II

[Related posts: Index I, Index II, Index III ]