It has to be *just right*, you see. Back the way it was. The relationship dissolves. The child is permanently estranged, comes to hate his father and then chooses to spend the rest of his life in the simulation as a tree. Just...contemplating. Except there's nothing to contemplate. Is there?

Meanwhile the father winds up in a simulation of his own, forever brooding on how his child had gone wrong on him. Maybe he'll try again you see. He's run into some very nice Jesus freaks who promise him a Heaven in a different simulation so now the father is there, wasting away. It's a bleak tale.

There's not a scrap of hope in this story. None. I don't know what Walter Jon Williams wanted to do with "Daddy's World" or what state of mind possessed him to write it, but I have never encountered, in my life, a more agonizing and protracted tale of despair. Father and child go to separate Hells.

That's what Hell is...stasis. That's why "cryosleep" is not actually kind even if it looks so neat and clean. Gosh it's not like they're *suffering* in a *cell* right? Great #police state thinking. That's always how they think. They imagine that there's some twisted kindness in being neat and tidy.

I...don't know how to write this next bit exactly. I wasn't aware that this story had burrowed so deep into my brain. I encountered it early in my Seattle life when I was trying to keep up some sort of relationship with the local sci-fi community. I remember some group...forget the name. ~Chara

It was a brief thing. I drifted away, we all drifted away I suppose. Seattle doesn't seem to be good for such things. There was no rancor or anything just...I vaguely recall a bit of conviviality with people I can't remember, watching "Galaxy Quest" together, and writing one book review. ~Chara

I don't think it went anywhere. I fired it off to whoever and I don't remember ever hearing about it again, but it was a review of an anthology called "Not of Woman Born" edited by Constance Ash and "Daddy's World" was the last story in it. What a finish huh? A big chunk of despair. I recall little.

I don't know what directions my thoughts went but...given my own serious daddy issues...probably not in good directions. But I will point out the following to M. @tobyfox.undertale.com. I do sense in this affair some pertinence. A strange inversion of #Undertale is in this Walter Jon Williams tale.

#Undertale might be construed as escaping from an underworld, or a simulation perhaps, although it's a kindly one and you can take your friends with you! "Daddy's World" is about the opposite, people who end up imprisoned in simulations. The father goes willingly, talked into some Jesusy bullshit.

What about the child, though? They decide they want nothing better than to be a tree in the simulation and fade away but...is that what really happens? Simulations don't just *fade*. We do know, from the story, that the father abandons the child. It's...quite upsetting. I will quote some. ~Chara

"Jamie had been loaded from an old backup—there was no point in using the corrupt file that Jamie had become, the one that had turned itself into a tree, for heaven's sake." Isn't that nice. The father now regards his child as "a corrupt file" and that makes it all better. Just data. Who cares.

So he starts all over again with a copy of Jamie when they were still happy and *not* estranged, because that's something you can do with sins, right? From Jamie's perspective their father had done something very cruel to them, deceiving them, and rather than deal the that the father just...snaps.

But through the miracle of #technology, which promises eternal #life (isn't that so @fchollet.bsky.social and @wang.social isn't that what all you darling cheeky accelerationists think you're getting from SEMICONDUCTORS IT'S MATTER IT'S NOT ETERNAL YOU FF anyway) in some virtual paradise... ~Chara

...the daydream of Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen and Bryan Johnson and everyone... If Walter Jon Williams meant "Daddy's World" as a cautionary tale about the dangers of this sort of thing then, well, I was very definitely warned off. I've always been horrified by this "virtual immortality" crap.

But there's a problem that I don't think Williams (oh another Williams) counted on, which was...I read the story. I do not have the sort of brain that is capable of letting go of stories. I feel as if I have to digest all of them, turn them over in my mind, satisfy myself as to my grasp of them.

And there's no breathing room in "Daddy's World". Not a tiny bit. The story is, ironically, too well written. If there were a fault in the fictional fabric my mind would have escaped through that. Seriously! That is how I interpret things. Take "The Terminator" for example. I've told this. ~Chara

Watching "The Terminator" I simply refuse to imagine that Lt. Traxler dies. I just don't. He's Paul Winfield! This...charming, amusing man, a familiar face in films. He gets shot in "The Terminator" and I've heard there's some cut scene where he's said to die but fuck that! On screen he doesn't. 🔴

I want to believe in Lt. Traxler, partly because he's got such a cool name (the surname of a chess player as I've said, and the name of a strange wild option for Black in the Two Knights Game). It's Paul Winfield and c'mon. He's a resilient guy, he'll pull through. Lance Henriksen is toast though.

There's an example of a tale with juuust enough wiggle-room. But "Daddy's World" has none and it just...I think it preyed on my mind in some strange way without my realizing it, because you know dissociation etc. And that would PERHAPS explain why playing "Undertale" for the first time was so... 🔴

...overwhelming. For it would seem that Walter Jon Williams's tale took up permanent residence in my headspace. Jamie trapped in their Hell as a tree, regarded as merely a "corrupt file" by their father, now in his Jesus-freak simulation. I really don't like #Christian computer programmers. ~Chara

In any case, M. @tobyfox.undertale.com, it seems we have a weird parallel. There's Jamie, a *tree* in one simulation. A plant. There's Daddy in the Jesus-freak simulation, "forever" "happy" with a copy of his kid, frozen at at earlier age before any unpleasantness turned up. You know how it is.

It's terrifying to think that a substantial fraction of humanity now thinks this sort of thing is a great idea, a vision for the future. #Optimism! So...is Jamie like Flowey? and is Daddy like W. D. Gaster? That's my question. Is that a sensible connection to make? I need to think about this. 🔴