(…)
“And then Packman brought out the Worldcraft bubble,” Bart murmured. ” ‘Own Your Own World.’ There was no place to go, outside of Terra. No other worlds to visit. You couldn’t leave here and go to another world. So instead, you —”
“Instead you stayed home and put together your own world.” Hull smiled wryly. “You know, he has a child’s version out, now. A sort of preparation kit. So the child can cover the basic problems of world-building before he even has a bubble.”
“But look, Nat,” Bart said. “The bubbles seemed like a good idea, at first. We couldn’t leave Terra so we built our own worlds right here. Sub-atomic worlds, in controlled containers. We start life going on a sub-atomic world, feed it problems to make it evolve, try to raise it higher and higher. In theory there’s nothing wrong with the idea. It’s certainly a creative pastime. Not a merely passive viewing like television. In fact, world-building is the ultimate art form. It takes the place of all entertainments, all
the passive sports as well as music and painting —”“But something went wrong.”
“Not at first,” Bart objected. “At first it was creative. Everybody bought a Worldcraft bubble and built his own world. Evolved life farther and farther. Molded life. Controlled it. Competed with others to see who could achieve the most advanced world.”
“And it solved another problem,” Julia added. “The problem of leisure. With robots to work for us and robants to serve us and take care of our needs —”
“Yes, that was a problem,” Hull admitted. “Too much leisure. Nothing to do. That, and the disappointment of finding our planet the only habitable planet in the system. Packman’s bubbles seemed to solve both problems. But something went wrong. A change came. I noticed it right away.” Hull stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. “The change began ten years
ago — and it’s been growing worse.”“But why?” Julie demanded. “Explain to me why everyone stopped building their worlds creatively and began to destroy.”
“Ever seen a child pull wings off a fly?”
“Certainly. But —”
“The same thing. Sadism? No, not exactly. More a sort of curiosity. Power. Why does a child break things? Power, again. We must never forget something. These world bubbles are substitutes. They take the place of something else, of finding genuine life on our own planets. And they’re just too damn small to do that. These worlds are like toy boats in a bath tub. Or model rocketships you see kids playing with. They’re surrogates, not the actual thing. These people who operate them — why do they want them? Because they can’t explore real planets, big planets. They have a lot of energy dammed up inside them. Energy they can’t express. And bottled-up energy sours. It becomes aggressive. People work with their little worlds for a time, building them up. But finally they reach a point where their latent hostility, their sense of being deprived, their —”
“It can be explained more easily,” Bart said calmly. “Your theory is too elaborate.”
“How do you explain it?”
“Man’s innate destructive tendencies. His natural desire to kill and spread ruin.”
“There’s no such thing,” Hull said flatly. “Man isn’t an ant. He has no fixed direction to his drives. He has no instinctive ‘desire to destroy’ any more than he had an instinctive desire to carve ivory letter-openers. He has energy — and the outlet it takes depends on the opportunities available. That’s what’s wrong. All of us have energy, the desire to move, act, do. But we’re bottled up here, sealed off, on one planet. So we buy Worldcraft bubbles and make little worlds of our own. But microscopic
worlds aren’t enough. They’re as satisfactory as a toy sailboat is to a man who wants to go sailing.”(…)
