Lycerius’s post on Reddit last week by caused enormous, worldwide interest as he revealed that he had been playing a single game of Civilization II for a decade, and that in that time, thousands of years had gone by, and the world had been nearly destroyed by centuries of war and rampant climate change (“a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation”). It was a detailed, apocalyptic vision of a world where war and unlimited resource exploitation leads to a long, possibly eternal dark ages for the unlucky survivors.
Redditors were so captivated by this nightmare world that they have begun to write short stories set in Lycerius’s wasteland, little first-person narratives from the miserable simulated people caught in the meat-grinder.
IO9’s George Dvorsky has rounded up some of the choicest morsels, but, as he points out, you really owe it to yourself to have a look at the whole thread.
It seemed like just another day in this never-ending war. The last few historians left (who needs history now, really) agree that it has been going on for at least 1500 years, but their estimates vary. Why does it matter, anyway. The leaders of the remaining superpowers are locked in this pointless struggle, with no breakthrough. I have no idea how the Vikings keep being so consistent over such a long time, but the Communists have had the same family (and principles) in power ever since the war began and over here in America we’ve hooked up our president to a computer so he could rule forever. What a brilliant plan that was… Each nation is powerful just enough so neither can fall. Every time a city is captured, it is taken the next day. When roads are build in order to help dry up the swamps, they are immediately destroyed. The only way to rebuild our Earth is for someone to win, but that won’t happen. At least, that’s what I thought until now.
Our forces took another city by dawn. Nothing was special about it, apart from the fact that it was the first time it has been under American control since the war began. It’s not that it was heavily guarded, only it was never deemed important enough for capture. As a part of our new military “strategy”, we had to capture it for the slight chance that an inhabitant over there could have any sort of solution to the famines. We didn’t find a man, but we got the solution alright.
