In his spacious office atop the Headquarters Building of the Celestial Construction Company Inc., the General Operations Director hummed to himself as he sat at his desk and scanned over Contract 13,700,000,000 B.C. The contract document was brief and straightforward and called for the creation of a standard Mark IV universe--plenty of light; the usual suns, planets, and moons; a few firmaments here and there with birds and animals on the land; fish-filled waters around the land. There was an attached schedule for accessories, spares for renewable resources, and some supporting services. Deadline for the contract was seven days--a piece of cake, the GOD told himself. Design Engineering Department's final proposal for the bid lay to one side of the desk in the form of a bulky folder that constituted the Works Order Review Document. Until final approvals were granted, the W.O.R.D. would be all that existed of the universe ... but it was a beginning.
What promised to make this project a little different from the previous Mark IV's, and somewhat more interesting, was the optional extra that Design Engineering had tagged on in the Appendix section of the proposal: "people." Unlike the species that made up the usual mix of Mark IV animal forms, which simply consumed resources and multiplied until they achieved a balance with the environment, the people would have the capacity to harness fire, make tools, and generally think about how they could be better off. This would produce an awareness of needs and the motivation to do something about satisfying them. Eventually the people would discover that, as their numbers and their demands increased, they would no longer be able to satisfy their needs with the resources that came readily to hand. At that point, the reasoning went, they could simply give up; they could fight over what they had until it ran out, and then be obliged to give up anyway; or they could develop the intellectual potential inherent in their design and apply it to discovering the progression of new resources hidden around them like the successively more challenging, but at the same time more rewarding, clues of a treasure hunt. The way out of the maze lay in the third alternative.
Wood, growing all over the surface of the planets, would be the most obvious fuel following the taming of fire, but it wouldn't prove adequate for long. It would, however, enable the more easily mined metal ores--conveniently scattered on top of the crusts or not very far below--to be smelted and exploited to make the tools necessary for digging deeper to the coal. Coal would enable an industrial base to be set up for producing machines suitable for drilling and processing oil, which in turn would yield the more highly concentrated fuels essential for aircraft and rudimentary space vehicles. The scientific expertise that would emerge during this phase would be the key to unlocking nuclear energy, and the fission technologies thus brought into being would pave the way into fusion--initially using the deuterium from the special-formula oceans premixed for the purpose--and hence out to the stars and on to the advanced methods that would render resources effectively infinite for the lifetime of the universe. On planets set up for them in that way, and with brains that ought to be capable of figuring the rest out for themselves, the people would have a fair chance of winning the game.
What the purpose of the game was, Design Engineering hadn't said. The GOD suspected that it was more for their own amusement than anything else, but he hadn't objected since he was quite curious himself to find out how the people would handle the situation. A modicum of applied precognition could no doubt have revealed that.... But somehow it would have spoiled things.
He was still browsing over the last page of the contract when the phone rang with a peal of rising and falling chimes. It was Gabriel, the Vice President of Manufacturing. He sounded worried. "It's proposal number thirteen point seven billion B.C.," he said. "I think we might have problems."
The GOD frowned. "I was just going through it. Looks fine to me. What's the problem?"
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