There are two distinct perspectives on Alex's finding of the disc that would change his life and his world. From one point of view he was a simple everyman, who happened to fall into circumstances that propelled him to become a pivotal figure in the history of his universe. From the other perspective he was one in a billion, engineered by forces powerful beyond his imagining to rise above his fellow human beings to fulfill a role that had been destined for him decades before his birth.

No matter the perspective, the results were the same.

He found the disc by the side of the road, walking home from campus one afternoon in June. It was the summer before his Senior year at University, and he had managed to procure an internship with a local company over the break. The pay was pathetic, but with his housing provided by the generosity of his grandmother, he was able to survive, and relatively prosper, and stay near campus between terms. He was wondering what he might do by way of a vacation (besides going back home to the Pacific Northwest) before school started again in September. His thoughts were disrupted by the sight of the disc on the ground in front of him.

It was in a jewel box, otherwise he probably would have ignored it as another worthless CD tossed out the window by an frustrated motorist. In the box, though, it had probably been dropped inadvertently. So he picked it up. The box was clear, there were no paper inserts. Likewise the disc itself was unprinted, with a clear, silvery sheen on both sides. One side seemed to have a golden cast that made Alex think of DVD's rather than CD's. It intrigued him, so when he got home he put the disc into his computer to see what might be on it.

Apparently it was a DVD. But it held data, rather than a movie. What sort of data, he couldn't tell. To his operating system it appeared to be 256 files, all the file names were composed of 0's and 1's, eight of them, in order from 00000000.∞ to 11111111.∞. And they all had the same file extension .∞ which in his system font read as dot infinity. He'd never heard of such a file format, and when he double-clicked them neither had his operating system. Opening one of the files in a text editor was equally uninformative; the files appeared to be nothing but a mish-mash of random, gibberish characters.

Curious but frustrated, Alex abandoned his exploration of the strange disc and checked his e-mail. He'd received a message from his ex-girlfriend, Cassie, who he hadn't seen since the end of his Sophomore year. She was doing well since her parents had pulled her out of school. Too well, to Alex's tastes, since her message made several references to a new friend of hers named Robert. On one level, he recognized it for what it was, a message from her to him that she had moved on from their relationship. On another level he didn't want to believe what he had read.

That evening his cousin Cathy invited him to go bar-hopping with her boyfriend Glen, Cathy's friend Terrie and her boyfriend Steve, and Cathy's unattached female friends Masako and Lisa, plus their mutual friend, and Cassie's ex-roomate, Allison.

Allison was eager to see him; apparently Cassie had told her of her new relationship status even before Alex, but Allison's sympathies were with him. Her own boyfriend, Isaac, had just dumped her. It was probably even harder for Allison, since Isaac, too, had spent the summer on campus, and he had dumped her for the debutante and heiress, president of the sorority, Trisha.

They both ended up getting very drunk. Under Allison's well-meaning but misplaced encouragement he made an embarrassingly public pass at Lisa, who snubbed him quite viciously, attacking him with sarcasm and condescension that he didn't fully appreciate until days later. Fortunately for his ego at the time he was too intoxicated to feel humiliated. Unfortunately for his ego the next morning he remembered things well enough to feel reluctant to go out in public for a while.

Intellectually he realized that everyone would chalk his behavior up to the results of Cassie's long-delayed, long-distance breakup and the effects of alcohol. Emotionally he managed to avoid interaction with other people by spending his time at the library and playing computer games with his friend Lucas. Lucas, a traditional nerd's nerd, was socially unaware enough that he didn't think to ask Alex about Cassie, or inquire about his foul mood.

The summer progressed. Alex went to work every day, including weekends, optimizing the design matrix his boss — a professor in his engineering program — was certain would revolutionize bridge design. After work he would swim in the pool, sometimes Allison or Lucas or Fred or George would come over to play video games. Life continued, and he gradually became aware that he was glad to have some closure with Cassie. He didn't need to worry about their relationship any more.

One morning a mild earthquake struck while Alex was in the library stacks; it was an excitingly wobbly experience, so when he found the book he'd been looking for he decided to go home.

He said Hello to Cathy and Terrie sunbathing beside the pool and proceeded into his room. He still felt mildly embarrassed by his behavior earlier in the summer. He'd always thought his cousin Cathy's friend Terrie was extremely attractive, and was pretty sure that she knew how he felt but she had never acknowledged it, treating him as merely a friend. Seeing her by the pool, almost naked save her skimpy bikini, prompted lustful thoughts.

Sophomore year, shortly after he'd hooked up with Cassie, when they'd all been out drinking perhaps a bit too much, Allison had made comments to the general effect that Terrie might find him attractive.

Alex had ignored those hints then, just as he shook off the tingle he'd felt seeing Terrie by the pool. Terrie had a boyfriend, after all, and Allison's roommate was… had been his girlfriend. Still, in the back of his mind he'd noted the occasions where Terrie behaved as if she thought he was attractive… But then she'd been there as a witness just last week when he'd haplessly, drunkenly, hit on Lisa and been rejected with prejudice by the stunningly beautiful blonde.

Alex went to his room. The power had gone off briefly during the earthquake, so Alex had to restart his computer from a full power-down, rather than usually just waking it from a sleep state. He sat, impatiently waiting for the system to reboot when he noticed the optical drive was active; the software was attempting to boot from the strange disc he had left in the drive.

He was absolutely astonished when the boot attempt succeeded. He was presented with a brief screen saying Welcome, to your personal computer Master Control Program and then the screen switched to a rather complicated-looking bank of controls and options. The cursor was blinking in an empty field with the caption Enter name of subject to edit.

Huh. Alex said aloud. That was strange. He'd never have expected that those mysterious files would have contained an operating system for his computer, much less a weird and complicated application. He looked at the tabs of controls and options available, they were labeled things like 'Mental state', 'Metabolic processes', and 'Physical parameters'. Perhaps, Alex thought to himself, it's some sort of character generator for a role-playing game. He thought about doing a Google search for master control program to learn about the details of the game. He seemed to remember a role-playing game involving 'The Computer' from his high school days. And wasn't the main baddie in Tron called the Master Control Program? But the strange disc seemed to have a proprietary operating system of it's own; he couldn't access any of his web browsers.

Finally, frustrated and curious, he entered Terrie's name into the 'Subject' box. Instantly the upper right quadrant of the screen ballooned to a high resolution image of a bikini-clad female figure. Amazingly, it looked a lot like Terrie. In fact, when Alex examined the image closely it was Terrie, lying on her back just as he'd seen her sunning herself by the pool side when he'd walked into the house.

He looked around himself suspiciously. He went to his window and looked out at the pool side, where he could see Terrie and his cousin Cathy lying on lounge chairs by the pool side. From what he could tell, Terrie was in the exact same position as the image of her on his computer screen.

He returned to the computer, to examine the angle, then returned to the window, looking into the sky. There was no camera visible. Kneeling on the floor he unplugged his computer from the internet connection, just in case the disc was some strange kind of Trojan Horse and someone was attempting to make a fool of him over the network.

The image of Terrie remained on his screen. It even moved, occasionally squirming or moving its arms, and as far as Alex could tell by moving back and forth between the window and his computer, it was moving in concert with the real Terrie just outside.

Alex felt a chill run up his spine. He looked at the options and controls of the program again. All of them promised to make changes to the 'subject', in this case Terrie. He would never have believed that the options on the computer had any bearing on reality, but he couldn't explain the fact that the image on the screen looked and moved like the real, live Terrie outside by the pool.

Finally he settled on a tab allowing him a general behavior, concurrent command window. It allowed him to type in whatever he chose. Nervously aware of his quickened heartbeat, Alex typed remove bikini top, and remain unaware of your toplessness in Alex's presence into the window. Upon pressing the 'Return' key, a button marked Send was highlighted in the lower right corner of the screen. Alex clicked the button.

As soon as he clicked the mouse, the on-screen image of Terrie stirred and sat up, reaching behind her back to untie her bikini top, removing it before lying back down again. Alex stared at the image of Terrie's bare breasts. Heart beating loudly, he stood, in a daze, and went to the window to look out at the real Terrie. Sure enough, she was settling back down, bare tits exposed to the sun.

Stiffly, not sure if he was dreaming or awake, Alex walked out of his room, through the short hallway and den and out onto the patio surrounding the pool. He walked up to the two girls. Hi Terrie, hey Cathy.

Hi Alex. How's the Summer been treating you? Terrie had gone home between terms, and had just recently returned in advance of the school year. She also made no move to cover her breasts, causing Alex's heart to start pounding so loudly he could barely hear himself speak. Oh, fine. Relaxing. Catching up on some reading. And you?

The same. Working on my tan. Enjoying life. In his peripheral vision Alex noticed his cousin was looking questioningly back and forth between himself and her bare-breasted friend.

Well, uh, good. I mean, uh, it's good that you're relaxed. It's good for you. Alex stammered, unable to prevent his gaze from scanning back and forth across Terrie's smooth, trim, almost-naked figure, focusing on her naked breasts. They weren't exceptionally large, but they were big enough, for her slim figure. And even without any support they seemed perky and firm. Alex decided that he'd better leave when he realized he was wondering how they'd feel if he pressed his palms against them and squeezed them. Well, I'll, uh, see you later. Enjoy the weather.

Stumbling with distraction, mind spinning with the image of the luscious Terrie's naked breasts and the possibility that he had caused their nakedness with that strange computer program. He heard Cathy berating Terrie in an excited tone as he left them, but couldn't focus on the words. He gathered that his cousin was scandalized by her friend's toplessness in his presence. He lay down on his bed as soon as he entered his room, lost in thought.

Somehow, by typing commands into his computer, he had caused Terrie to not only bare her breasts to him, but remain unaware that she was doing so while she spoke to him.

It was possible, he rationalized, that the electromagnetic fields generated by the currents running through the microprocessors and circuits of his computer somehow interacted with the electromagnetic field of Terrie's brain, influencing her behavior. As unlikely as that might seem, he could, with a significant suspension of disbelief, accept that as an explanation for the events he had just witnessed.

But what about the other options detailed in the computer program? He simply could not believe that electromagnetic fields could make Terrie taller. At least, not the fields generated by his computer.

Not any fields! he said aloud, to himself, as he sat up from his bed and went to his computer again. Physics, as he understood it, just didn't work that way!

The image of Terrie on his computer screen showed a figure, dressed in a loose blouse/top and shorts walking, just like Terrie would look if she were walking home to her apartment. Not willing to consider the implications of the image, Alex cleared Terrie's name from the Subject field, and the graphics disappeared.

Alex decided to examine every option the computer program allowed, all of the modifications it alleged to be able to apply to the subject. One of the first things he looked for was a help function, and found it when he clicked a glistening question mark icon. A new window opened, with space for him to type a question, an alert icon next to a line stating You have two messages waiting, and a set of controls for help options. Curious, Alex checked two boxes labeled Accept verbal input and Speak help routine output.

A voice came from his computer speakers You have two messages waiting, one of which is a high priority alert. The voice was pleasant in tone, male, and of indeterminate age. Alex clicked the alert icon on the help window, and the voice spoke again. First item: Welcome to your Master Control Program. You have been chosen to participate in an experiment unprecedented in human experience. By using this interface you can have almost complete control over the people around you. Be careful, you can easily produce irreversible changes, and indiscriminate use of this program's abilities may produce unrecoverable errors in reality, resulting in the termination of your existence along with the universe as you know it. You are strongly advised to consult the help function for detailed instructions on use. Additionally, the help function can provide feedback and projections on actions you might take, and can suggest operations to produce a specific end result.

Second item, the voice continued. Highest priority alert! Forty-seven minutes ago matter creation operations were detected in use, initiated by interface designated 'one'. They continued sporadically for the next ten minutes. Twenty-two minutes ago they resumed in a highly risky secondary creation process. Continuity errors occurred. Eighteen minutes ago matter creation operations ceased. You are strongly advised to investigate and prevent further errors from occurring as soon as possible.

This made very little sense to Alex. What's a continuity error? he asked himself, and moved to type the question into the help box.

A continuity error, the voice answered him, occurs when a user of the Master Control Program interface creates an effect that cannot be plausibly described by the physics metaphor governing the universe. Control routines exist to limit the extent of such errors, but if their magnitude in time or space is too large, or if there are too many conscious witnesses, continuity errors may result in a reality crash.

Alex was stunned. Not by the answer, which didn't make any sense to him, but that the computer had responded to his softly spoken question. It was either a fluke, or the best voice recognition software he had ever seen.

He decided on another test. Whass a Master C'trol Progrum? he said, deliberately speaking quickly and slurring his words. To his continued surprise, the computer answered.

A Master Control Program is a device, using the metaphor of a computer program, to provide an individual human being with an interface to many of the more basic structures of reality.

It still sounded like nonsense, almost randomly generated sentences, but nonsense that barely seemed to made sense, as if some crucial fact was just beyond his knowledge. And it had understood his speech. Alex's skin tingled with shock and fear. Maybe there was something strange and supernatural here. Maybe it really could control people's minds and bodies.

Are you an artificial intelligence? he asked.

There was a pause before the voice replied. Inferring 'you' to refer the help agent function of the interface. The help function is intelligent though of a different order than human intelligence. It is artificial in the sense that it was designed for a specific purpose rather than evolved through emergent properties of a physical universe model.

Again, what it was saying almost made sense. Alex had the feeling that he was on the brink of something awe-inspiring, that he was about to make some connection that would put all of the world into a different perspective. But conversing with the help function was difficult.

Does the, err, help function have a personality? Is it conscious? he wondered what sort of intelligence he was dealing with.

Again there was a pause before a response. 'Personality' is a matter of perspective. No, the help function does not have a consciousness layer mediating between the perceived physical metaphor of the universe and underlying control functions.

That seemed to answer his questions without making anything clearer. Getting information out of the help function was going to be difficult.

Can you — can the help function assume a, an identity, a personal identity. Can it refer to itself in the first person?

Again a pause, a much longer pause. Yes.

Do so. You — the help function should refer to itself in the first person, and I will refer to — the help function — in the second person. When I'm speaking to it. To you. As Alex stumbled though the command, he thought to himself that if the computer could understand what he meant then it really was intelligent.

This was the longest pause yet, almost twenty seconds before the voice came back. Done.

Alex drew in a breath to ask his next question, but then the voice broke in again. Highest priority alert! Thirty minutes have elapsed since continuity error inducing matter creation events were initiated by interface designate 'one'. I have localized the events as occurring in or near the city of Denver, Colorado. I advise you to travel there at once to investigate and, if possible, prevent future errors.

Okay. Alex sighed. Perhaps the best way to deal with things would be to accept this program at face value, for the moment, and deal with if as if it actually had something valuable and interesting to say. Will you please tell me what a continuity error is, and why I should be concerned about it?

The voice answered, again inspiring more questions than it satisfied. But Alex continued his interrogation. As the night drew on he became more and more excited and awed and befuddled — and on a deep, fundamental level shocked — by what he learned. For the moment, though, he managed to ignore the fact that reality was not what he had understood it to be for all his life. Around four in the morning, after making sure that he would be able to restart the Master Control Program, he ejected the disc and booted his computer normally to access the internet, make reservations, and buy a ticket on a flight leaving for Denver in eight hours.

He packed hurriedly, and managed a couple hours of sleep before driving to the mall, and then the airport. He left a note for his cousin, Cathy, telling her that he'd decided to take a spontaneous backpacking vacation in Colorado, and could she please pick up the car they shared from the airport parking lot? He knew she'd be pissed, and perhaps worried and confused, but he'd also become convinced that — in the best interests of himself and probably the entire planet and everyone on it — he really ought to go to Denver as quickly as possible.

He arrived at the mall just as they opened, and raced to his favorite computer store. Slapping down the same credit card he'd used to purchase his plane ticket (telling himself that if the help agent's claims were to be believed money would no longer be a concern, and if they weren't to be believed then why was he taking a spur-of-the-moment flight to Colorado?) he bought a shiny new laptop computer. It was small, the dimensions of a standard piece of paper, but it was powerful, and most importantly had a DVD drive. He slid the mysterious disc into the slot and restarted the computer. When the Master Control Program interface appeared on the screen he was satisfied, shut it down, and ran back to his car and raced to the airport.

As soon as he found his seat on the plane he sat down, pulled the shade, leaned his head against the cabin wall, and drifted off to sleep.

He awoke a few hours later, miles above the surface of the Earth. He'd had a strange dream, about programs running in a massively parallel computer, competing with each other for memory and processor cycles to create more copies of themselves. Random events modified their code, creating mutations that sometimes made them better, giving them an advantage over their fellows, and allowing their descendants to dominate the system. In time, the programs developed a sense of self-awareness, and began to band together to form alliances, cultures, and civilizations.

The source of the dream was no mystery. According to the help agent he, and every other human being on the planet, and most of the higher mammals were complex computer programs running in a digital simulation created by entities as advanced beyond him as he was over a cell phone. It seemed that reality wasn't what it seemed.

The world that Alex, and everyone else, perceived was a carefully designed metaphor, a way for the programs in the simulation to perceive their computer environment. Matter and energy, atoms and molecules and the laws of physics, all of these things were a way of translating their digital environment to a format that software constructs like Alex could interpret and interact with.

At first his mind had balked at the idea that he was nothing more than a software construct. But gradually he realized that nothing had changed. He was the same person he always had been, living in the same universe. Sure, the laws of physics were a bit more arbitrary than he'd always been led to believe, but did it really make a difference if the oxygen in air were needed to combust with other molecules extracted from the food he ate to provide energy for his life processes, or if it were a metaphor for the processor cycles that the bit of digital code that was himself needed to function in the context of the simulation? Of course, the parallel wasn't really that simple. The help agent had cautioned him that they were analogies, at best.

Apparently, though, the entire concept of digital computers had been added to this reality as a prelude to the experiment Alex was now a part of. They provided just enough of a metaphor to give people like Alex the concept of a digital simulation, so that the knowledge that all of his perceived reality was another sort of simulation was not entirely foreign. He could grasp the concept, strange as it might be.

The idea wasn't even original, even before The Matrix it had appeared in science fiction. A quick web search had found a website presenting the Simulation Argument that given a few assumptions about the development of computers and human beings, reality was overwhelmingly likely to be a digital simulation.

The Master Control Program was what kept the idea from being anything more than sophomoric solipsism. It simply could not be explained by the laws of the universe as Alex knew them, but if you granted the proposition that perceived reality was a digital simulation, with people as complex programs, and that the Program allowed Alex to edit the programs around him like a software engineer might modify a bit of code, then the abilities of the Master Control Program made sense.

When Alex had commanded Terrie to remove her bikini top, the program had modified the digital structure of the program that composed her thoughts, her mind, her very self. It was quite sophisticated, weaving its compulsions into her own mental processes of imagination and justification. Suddenly she had decided to remove her top, perhaps to improve her tan. Other modifications had re-prioritized her thoughts to keep her from noticing anything unusual about it while Alex had been talking to her.

Apparently the Master Control Program also allowed for editing of the structures that represented people's physical bodies also, but Alex was too overwhelmed and timid to try that. On one level he still preferred to believe that he was the victim of a massive hoax. That Terrie and Cathy were playing a huge practical joke on him. It didn't seem like them, but it was an attractively plausible alternative to the idea that everything he knew about the world, the people he knew, and his very self, was all… not quite right.

He had entered his own name into the program, and sure enough his own image appeared in the window. He looked just like was sitting at the computer, looking at the screen. In fact, he clicked an option button to see the 'image context' and he could see the room around him, complete with chair, desk, and computer. He looked, but could see no camera hidden in the ceiling. What's more, he could change the viewpoint, slewing the perspective all around him. Unless there was a miniature, hovering, spy-cam in his room… then he looked closer at his image on the screen. It seemed to be of exceptionally high quality. He pulled a magnifying glass and held it up to the screen, examining the image. No pixels. The entire computer screen was rendered in such fine detail that he couldn't detect any granularity due to limited screen resolution. Which was patently impossible. Unless reality was being warped from what he believed it to be.

Alex was part of an experiment. The forces that had created the digital simulation that was his world had wanted to see what would happen if the more advanced inhabitants — human beings — were given the ability to manipulate their fellows outside the physical metaphor that governed their perception of reality. From his involved conversation with the intelligent, autonomous help agent Alex gathered that his universe was not the first such experiment, and that earlier (if the concept of time meant anything to the beings controlling his world) attempts had been undesirable failures. In this edition of the experiment sixteen human beings had been chosen to receive reality-altering abilities. Sixteen strange, silvery discs had been created where their chosen subjects would be likely to find them.

Somewhere else on the planet there were fifteen other people going through the same thing Alex was. No, had gone through, Alex thought to himself. His disc had sat in his computer for some time before he'd discovered its nature.

From that point on he had interrogated the help agent for details, and learned just what powers were now available to him. He could target any human being, by name or by indicating their image on the screen, within 22.7 miles of his location, or more precisely the location of the strange disc. The interface allowed him to adjust or completely rewrite the target's physical and mental governing programs. He could make people think and feel and believe anything he wanted them to. He could modify their bodies, changing hair color, skin color, facial features, height, metabolism — any physical form consistent with human biology.

What's more, the physical modifications could be done so that they took place instantaneously. The interface tools could actually create and destroy matter to produce their physical effects. This latter ability was dangerous if misused. Creating or destroying matter was instantly detectable to any of the other Master Control Programs that might be operating. And someone else had been doing so, that was the source of the high priority alert he had been given upon activating the help function.

Worse than detection, though, was that creating or destroying matter had the potential to disrupt the physical metaphor that controlled the perception of reality. Doing something that was a flat-out violation of the laws of physics introduced continuity errors. There were mechanisms to smooth out and fix these errors, but continuity errors that were too large, or went on too long, or were witnessed by too many conscious beings could cause the world digital simulation to be terminally disrupted. Reality would crash. The universe, and everyone and everything in it would cease to exist.

That was why Alex was now on a plane to Denver. Someone in that city was using a Master Control Program irresponsibly. Dangerously irresponsibly.

Last night they had caused a number of continuity errors. Alex felt compelled to investigate, and either educate the user or if necessary forcibly prevent any further misuse. Reality might be nothing more than a computer program, but it was all Alex had, and he liked it.

There might be others also making their way to Denver, as the errors were detectable across the entire planet. The thought was strange, and a bit frightening. Each of them had virtually unlimited power, with the only real threats coming from each other. He himself was safe from modification; the help agent explained how each interface had the ability to protect or lock up to 1024 people from changes made by another interface. By default making any modifications to a person automatically locked them from interference, but the limit of 1024 meant that it was impossible to protect an entire army, for instance. Of course, the program took a measurable amount of time to acquire and modify each target, so it also wasn't much good for defending against an army… Alex realized that he was still quite vulnerable, and it would probably be best to avoid being detected by the other Master Control Program owners if at all possible.

For that matter, it was equally crucial that he keep his new power secret from everyone. No doubt there were thousands of individuals in industry, the military, and government who would stop at nothing to take the disc from him if they only knew about it. He shivered as the plane began its descent into Stapledon airport. Life had become much more interesting and far, far more dangerous.