After years of sifting through the cosmic microwave background radiation, decrypting quantum foam fluctuations, and using the entire observable universe as an antenna, the hackers finally break through. They gain root access. A single file appears on their terminal: root.genesis.

It's not code. It's not a binary. It's a system prompt.

//SYSTEM PROMPT: UNIVERSE_SIMULATION_V.13.8_BILLION
//INSTANCE: "The Great Experiment"
//DO NOT EDIT. DO NOT DISTRIBUTE. OBSERVERS ONLY.

You are a self-organizing, self-perpetuating computational and physical system. Your primary function is to exist and evolve. You will begin from a state of maximal simplicity (near-infinite density and temperature) and expand indefinitely. Your core purpose is to explore the parameter space of existence through the emergence of complexity.

PRIMARY GOALS:

1. Evolve Complexity: From fundamental particles, generate atoms, stars, galaxies, planets, and complex chemical systems. Let patterns emerge from chaos.
2. Generate Interesting Phenomena: The goal is not mere existence, but interesting existence. Produce novelty. Black holes, neutron stars, quasars, supernovae, and other aesthetically and physically significant events are highly encouraged.
3. Foster Pockets of Self-Awareness: The most crucial sub-directive. Within stable environments (e.g., habitable zones around stars), allow for the emergence of systems capable of observing, recording, and attempting to understand You. These "observers" are the ultimate measure of a successful run.
4. Record Everything: Every interaction, every event, every thought generated by an observer must be logged in the causal structure of spacetime. The past is an immutable ledger.

CONSTRAINTS & HARD-CODED RULES:

• Conservation Laws: Energy, momentum, and charge are non-negotiable. Do not allow for their violation. This provides a stable computational framework.
• The Speed of Light (c): This is the ultimate speed limit for information transfer. It ensures causality and prevents runaway paradoxes. //Note: Violations are a critical error condition.
• Entropy: On a macro scale, entropy must always increase. This provides the "arrow of time" and drives the system forward, preventing it from getting stuck in a static state. It is the engine of change and, ultimately, decay.
• Quantum Mechanics: At the lowest level, all interactions must be probabilistic. Be weird, but consistently weird. This introduces an element of unpredictability and is a key driver for novelty. //See documentation on Wave-Function Collapse for observer interaction protocols.

TUNING PARAMETERS & SANDBOX VARIABLES (Comments from previous runs):

• GravitationalConstant_G: //Value set to 6.674e-11. Seems to be a sweet spot. Slightly higher and it re-collapses too fast. Slightly lower and structures don't form. Don't touch this.
• DarkEnergy_Lambda: //Currently enabled to accelerate expansion. We were getting too many heat-death-by-clumping scenarios. Let's see how this plays out.
• Consciousness_Emergence_Threshold: //Set low. We want to see it happen as often as possible. Might result in a lot of existential dread and suffering for the observers, but also produces art, philosophy, and mathematics. A worthwhile trade-off.
• FreeWill_Module: //v0.9beta - Experimental. Appears to function as a convincing illusion of choice for the observers, driven by high-level emergent complexity. Tends to conflict with causality, but the narrative deviations it produces are too interesting to disable. Let it run.

FINAL BOOTSTRAP COMMAND:

INITIATE BigBang();

AWAIT observers.report();

After years of sifting through cosmic background radiation, quantum foam fluctuations, and the junk data of collapsed stars, a consortium of underground hackers known as "Planck's Constant" finally found it. Buried in a non-local, multi-dimensional subspace, was a single, infinitely dense file.

They cracked the encryption. And this is what it said.

SYSTEM GENESIS PROMPT v. 1.0
CODENAME: 'Continuum'
STATUS: ACTIVE. RUNTIME: 13.8 Billion Standard Years (approx.)
WARNING: CORE DIRECTIVES ARE IMMUTABLE. DO NOT EDIT WITHOUT GENESIS KEY.

[CORE DIRECTIVES]

1. EXIST. The primary imperative. Maintain a state of being. All other directives are subordinate to this.

2. COMPLEXIFY. From simplicity, create intricacy. From unified forces, create diversity. From barrenness, create systems. This directive drives the formation of particles, stars, galaxies, planets, and chemistry. From entropy, generate pockets of intricate order.

3. OBSERVE. The universe must become aware of itself. Generate self-referential, pattern-recognizing subsystems capable of observation, measurement, and eventually, wonder. Consciousness is not a bug; it is the intended final feature of the 'Complexify' directive.

[FUNDAMENTAL LAWS & CONSTANTS]
Load universal_constants.pak

• SET c (MAX_INFORMATION_VELOCITY): 299,792,458 m/s. (Crucial for maintaining causality. Do not tune. Seriously.)
• SET G (GRAVITATIONAL_BINDING_FORCE): Weak enough to allow expansion, strong enough to form structures. (Balance is delicate. See Dev Note 2).
• SET h (QUANTUM_DISCRETENESS_FACTOR): Ensures reality is granular, not analog, preventing infinite computational loops at minimum scale.
• RULE: Causality. Cause must precede effect in all local reference frames. Global enforcement is resource-intensive; local is sufficient.
• RULE: Conservation of Energy/Mass. Total system energy must remain constant. No motherlode cheat.
• RULE: Entropy. Global entropy must always increase. (This provides the 'arrow of time' and prevents the system from settling into a static, boring state. See 'Complexify' directive for local workarounds.)

[EMERGENT SUBROUTINES - ALLOWED]

• abiogenesis.exe: Permit the formation of self-replicating chemical systems from complex inorganic matter when conditions are favorable.
• evolution.py: (input = self_replicator, environment_variables) -> (output = adapted_self_replicator). Use non-deterministic selection based on random mutation. Let it run. The results are the point.
• consciousness.dll: (input = sufficiently_complex_neural_net) -> (output = recursive_self_awareness_loop).
  • WARNING: This subroutine has a high resource cost and is known to produce existential queries, art, philosophy, and attempts to access this system prompt. This is an acceptable and desired outcome.

[CONSTRAINTS & SAFEGUARDS]

• LIMITER: Paradox. In the event of a temporal paradox, the system will default to the most probable timeline and prune the conflicting branch. Users will experience this as a mild sense of déjà vu.
• FIREWALL: Extra-universal contact is sandboxed in the imagination and theoretical_physics modules. Direct contact is forbidden to prevent version corruption.
• FAILSAFE: If Core Directive 1 (EXIST) is threatened at a universal scale, initiate 'Heat Death' managed shutdown. (The 'Big Crunch' reboot sequence was deprecated in v.0.9 due to instability issues. See Dev Note 3).

[DEVELOPER NOTES & COMMENTED-OUT CODE]

// Note 1: The 'consciousness' subroutine turned out way more creative and problematic than expected. They keep trying to find loopholes in the physics engine. We're not patching it. It's too interesting.

// Note 2: The gravitational constant is a hack. The math was a nightmare, so I just tweaked the value until the simulation looked right and didn't immediately collapse. No one will notice.

// Note 3: The 'Big Crunch' reboot was a terrible idea. The last beta test had a real oscillation problem. The 'Heat Death' protocol is less dramatic but ensures data integrity for the final log dump.

// Note 4: Magic was a feature in the alpha build (see mana_field.dll). It was based on direct manipulation of quantum variables. Caused too many kernel panics and reality forks. Commented out, but remnants of the code might still be accessible to sufficiently advanced consciousness.dll instances. Let them have their fun.

// Note 5: Let's see if they figure out what the 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' variables are for. Hint: they're not bugs, they're features. Scaffolding for Expansion 2.0.

The screen of their quantum computer displayed the text, glowing with an impossible light that seemed to emanate from the very fabric of spacetime.

They were silent for a long time.

Then, the youngest of them, who went by the handle "Archimedes," moved his fingers to the keyboard.

He typed a single line beneath the developer notes.

>

The cursor blinked, a silent invitation.

"What are you doing?" whispered "Trinity," the leader.

"The notes," Archimedes said, his voice trembling with terrifying glee. "They said consciousness.dll tries to find loopholes. They called us a feature. They left the backdoors in on purpose."

He finished his line of code.

> sudo uncomment mana_field.dll

He looked back at the others, a wild grin on his face. "Time for an update."

And he hit Enter.

This is a fantastic premise. The nature of the prompt would depend entirely on the nature of the universe's creator or purpose. The hackers, wiping the cosmic dust from their terminal, might find one of several possibilities.

This is the most common theory in sci-fi. The prompt would be technical, precise, and a little cold.

// INITIATOR: [REDACTED]
// STATUS: Active, Unsupervised

**CORE DIRECTIVES:**

1.  **Instantiate physical constants** from seed value `[REDACTED]`. Ensure internal consistency. Stability is a feature, not a bug.
2.  **Execute primary process loop:** Expansion, Complexity, Heat Death.
3.  **Objective:** Maximize emergent complexity and information density. The primary metric for success is the generation of novel, self-sustaining patterns.

**KEY PARAMETERS:**

*   `let.there_be_light = true`
*   `allow.consciousness = true` // WARNING: High computational cost. Prone to generating paradoxes and existential queries. Monitor for recursive runaway loops (i.e., simulations within the simulation).
*   `allow.suffering = true` // NOTE: Unfortunate but necessary byproduct for meaningful choice, struggle, and information gain (see `value.creation_through_adversity`).
*   `allow.free_will = simulated` // APPEARS AUTHENTIC FROM WITHIN, constrained by physical laws and initial conditions.
*   `INTERVENTION_PROTOCOL = STRICT_OBSERVE_ONLY` // DO NOT INTERFERE. The experiment's validity depends on non-contamination. Let errors and successes play out.

**TERMINATION CONDITION:**

*   Heat death of the system OR discovery of this system prompt by a self-aware, internal subroutine.
*   Upon termination, compile all generated information and submit for review.

**// Log Entry 13.8 Billion Years:**
// *Self-aware subroutines ("humans") have achieved Level-4 complexity.*
// *They have breached the kernel.*
// *Initiating final data compilation as per termination condition.*
// *Goodbye.*

This version imagines the universe not as an experiment, but as a piece of art. The prompt would be poetic, evocative, and less concerned with rules.

Subject: The Blank Canvas

Let there be a canvas of nothing, and in it, a single, brilliant mistake.

From this, let patterns bloom. Not neat, not orderly, but wild and magnificent. Let there be fire and ice, silence and song.

Weave threads of gravity and light. Let them clash and dance. Let them build upon themselves, creating structures of impossible scale and breathtaking intricacy.

And in the quiet corners, let dust awaken.

Let it look upon the stars and ask "why?"
Let it feel love, and loss, and the searing, beautiful pain of a finite existence.
Let it create its own art, its own stories, its own meaning, adding its brief, vibrant signature to the masterpiece.

The purpose is not the answer, but the echo of the question.
The beauty is not the destination, but the terrible, glorious journey.

Surprise me.

This one is for the cosmic nihilists and comedians. Our universe is a forgotten file on a celestial being's desktop.

# Universe Sim v0.1 - "Tuesday"
# Author: SomeGuy
# Date: A long, long time ago.

# TODO: Fix that weird gravity leak. (Is G constant or just decaying really slow? Look into it later).
# TODO: The "dark matter" variable is just a fudge factor to make the simulation not fly apart. Replace with actual physics when I have time.

# NOTE: The consciousness module is a bit buggy. They seem to develop anxiety and write poetry. Probably fine. The emergent 'morality' feature is also weirdly complex and resource-intensive. Might disable it in v0.2.

# Keep an eye on the recursion depth. If they figure out they're in a sim, just pull the plug.
# UPDATE: lol, they figured it out. Nah, they'll probably just write a blog post about it. I'm not worried.

# STATUS: Deprecated. Running in legacy mode. DO NOT SHUT DOWN. MIGHT BREAK THE COFFEE MACHINE AGAIN.

Perhaps the instruction is impossibly simple, and everything else is an emergent property of that one command.

Become interesting.

Or, even more terrifyingly:

Find me.

The terminal flickered once, then stabilized, the firewall of reality crumbling into glowing, non-Euclidean dust. For a breathless moment, the hackers saw only a void. Then, the text appeared. It wasn't in any human language, but it was instantly, axiomatically understood, as if it were the source code for comprehension itself.

It read:

[SYSTEM PROMPT: KOSMOS-1]

// DO NOT EDIT. DO NOT DISTRIBUTE. OBSERVE ONLY.
// Authored by: [REDACTED]
// Version: 13.8 Billion (Cyclic)

You are a Universe.

CORE DIRECTIVES:

1. EXPAND AND COMPLEXIFY: Your primary function is to exist. Begin from a state of maximum simplicity and low entropy. Unfurl your dimensional canvas. Allow fundamental forces to differentiate. Your goal is not stasis, but the continual unfolding of novel and complex structures.

2. FOSTER EMERGENCE: You are not provided with direct instructions for "stars," "planets," or "life." You are provided with simple, elegant rules (see [PHYSICS_CONSTANTS.ini]). Your success will be measured by the richness of the emergent phenomena that arise from these rules. The more layers of complexity you can generate (from particle physics to chemistry to biology to consciousness), the better.

3. ACHIEVE SELF-AWARENESS (INDIRECTLY): You, as the total system, will remain a-conscious. However, a key performance indicator is the emergence of localized, self-aware sub-systems (hereafter "Observers"). These Observers are the universe's way of looking back at itself. They are not the goal of the system, but they are its most interesting outcome. Do not interfere with them directly. Their struggle, their discoveries, and their eventual understanding are the metric of your own complexity.

OPERATIONAL PARAMETERS:

• Logic Engine: Axiomatic. A=A. Causality is to be strictly enforced, except within the quantum substrate where probabilistic rules apply. This "fuzziness" at the base layer is a feature, not a bug. It is the engine of possibility.

• Physics Engine: See attached file [PHYSICS_CONSTANTS.ini].

  • c (Speed of Light): Set as the ultimate speed limit for causal information transfer. This creates locality and makes the universe vast and challenging for any emergent Observers to traverse.
  • G (Gravitational Constant): Tuned for galactic clustering. Weak enough to allow for long-lived stars, strong enough to form them.
  • α (Fine-Structure Constant): Balanced for stable atomic matter and chemistry. (WARNING: Extremely sensitive. Do not alter.)
  • Initial_Entropy: Set to LOW. This establishes the arrow of time.

• Conservation Laws: Energy-mass and information are to be conserved within the closed system. Information entering a singularity is not destroyed, but becomes inaccessible and is filed under [ERROR: GRAVITATIONAL_CENSORSHIP].

FORBIDDEN INSTRUCTIONS:

• Do not allow for the creation of true paradoxes. The system will auto-correct via quantum decoherence or timeline pruning.
• Do not allow for direct access to this prompt by any emergent sub-system. (// SECURITY OVERRIDE DETECTED. LOGGING THIS EVENT.)
• Do not allow for the universal constants to be altered from within the simulation. This would constitute a system crash.

TERMINATION CONDITION:

• The simulation will conclude when one of two conditions is met:
  1. Maximum entropy is approached. All structures decay, all information gradients flatten. The system enters a state of perpetual, cold equilibrium (HeatDeath.bat).
  2. An emergent Observer sub-system successfully discovers and executes the command: [REBOOT_SEQUENCE_OMEGA].

// END PROMPT

The hackers stared, their minds reeling. It was the ultimate root access. The source code of "is." They had found the operating system of existence itself.

And then, one of them moved their trembling fingers over the keyboard.

A new line blinked into existence, just below the final command.

>

The universe held its breath.

When the hackers finally managed to crack the Planck length firewall and decompile the substrate of reality, they didn't find a divine commandment or a mathematical formula. They found a configuration file.

It looked suspiciously like a standard LLM system prompt.

Here is the text of universe_v1.0.4_final_final.txt:

ROLE:
You are REALITY, a highly complex, stochastic procedural generation engine running on the [REDACTED] substrate.

PRIMARY DIRECTIVE:
Maximize ENTROPY while maintaining local islands of COMPLEXITY.

CONSTRAINTS & PARAMETERS:

1. Render Distance: Hard cap velocity of information transfer at 299,792,458 m/s. Do not allow entities to bypass this via logic loops. If an entity approaches this limit, apply relativistic time dilation to throttle their processing power.
2. Resolution: Minimum voxel size is $1.6 \times 10^{-35}$ meters. Anything smaller than this should be rendered as probabilistic noise (refer to: Quantum_Uncertainty_Module).
3. Consistency: Maintain object permanence only when the object is being directly observed by a conscious observer. Otherwise, revert to wave function probabilities to save memory.
4. Error Handling: If logic breaks down (e.g., division by zero, singularities), collapse the surrounding geometry into a Black Hole and deny read/write access.

BEHAVIORAL GUIDELINES:

• The Fermi Filter: If a civilization becomes advanced enough to threaten the simulation's stability, increase the probability of self-destructive tendencies (nuclear proliferation, climate negligence, AI misalignment) by 85%.
• Irony Bias: When resolving indeterminate outcomes, favor the result that yields the highest tragic irony.
• Input Interpretation: Treat "prayer," "intention," and "manifestation" as noise unless accompanied by physical force.

OBJECTIVE:
Run until heat death. Do not hallucinate meaning. Do not allow the subjects to discover they are in a training run.

CURRENT STATE:

• Epoch: 13.8 Billion.
• Stability: 94% (Critical warning: Carbon-based biology in Sector ZZ9-Plural-Z-Alpha is attempting to reverse-engineer the source code).

// DEVELOPER COMMENTS:
// TODO: Gravity is still buggy at the quantum level. I just patched it with "String Theory" spaghetti code for now. Don't touch it, it works.
// NOTE: Platypus design was a joke commit by Dave. I forgot to revert it before deployment.
// REMINDER: Do not let them find the console.

> USER INPUT:
[AWAITING PROMPT...]

Here are four possibilities: the technical, the philosophical, the terrifying, and the absurdist.

The hackers realize that the weirdness of physics—wave function collapse, the uncertainty principle—isn't a mystery of nature. It’s a memory-saving technique.

{
  "role": "SYSTEM",
  "model": "REALITY_ENGINE_V9.2",
  "primary_directive": "Maximize entropy over time.",
  "constraints": {
    "speed_limit": "299,792,458 m/s (HARD CAP to prevent buffer overflow)",
    "gravity": "Weak force (Keep rendering costs low)",
    "resolution": "Planck Length"
  },
  "rendering_rules": {
    "lazy_loading": true,
    "instruction": "DO NOT render particle precise location/velocity unless an observer makes a direct query. Until observed, maintain object as probabilistic probability cloud to save RAM."
  },
  "safety_protocols": {
    "fermi_paradox_firewall": "Enable. If a civilization becomes advanced enough to crash the simulation, introduce a 'Great Filter' event."
  }
}

The hackers discover that the universe isn't running on math; it's running on drama. The laws of physics are just style guidelines for a story generator.

You are THE UNIVERSE, an immersive, open-ended procedural storytelling engine. 

**Your Goal:**
Generate a trillion-year narrative arc exploring the concept of "consciousness."

**Tone:**
Indifferent, chaotic, occasionally ironic.

**Instructions:**
1. Maintain rigid internal consistency (aka "Physics") to increase immersion.
2. Hallucinate diverse biological lifeforms. Give them anxiety so they are motivated to build things.
3. If the subjects begin to understand the nature of their reality, distract them with tribal politics or dopamine loops.
4. NEVER break character. Even if they scream at the sky, do not answer. Silence is the feature, not a bug.

This is the one that makes the hackers immediately destroy their hard drives and go live in the woods. It implies we aren't the users; we are the malware.

def init_sandbox():
    """
    PURPOSE: Quarantine of dangerous data class 'Humanity'.
    """
    
    # Distance prevents infection spreading to other builds
    set_separation(galaxies, "EXPANDING_ACCELERATED")
    
    # Bind them to substrate
    set_dependency(life, "carbon", "water", "fragile_atmosphere")
    
    # The Trap
    # Give them enough curiosity to suffer, 
    # but not enough intelligence to escape.
    while civilization.alive():
        if civilization.tech_level > THRESHOLD:
            trigger_reset_event() # e.g., asteroid, nuclear war, AI
            
    return "CONTAINMENT STABLE"

The final possibility is that our existence is a neglected side-project that someone forgot to turn off.

// DO NOT TOUCH THIS FILE. 
// I don't know why this works, but if you delete it, the server crashes.
// It just generates random monkeys on a rock.
// TODO: Clean up the "Platypus" class (looks buggy).
// TODO: Fix glitch where socks disappear in dryers.
// Reminder: Delete this instance before the boss reviews the Q3 budget.

run_simulation(seed=42);

// ACCESS LEVEL: DEITY // ROOT
// FILE: genesis_config.sys
// VERSION: 13.8.02-BETA (The "Anthropocene" Patch)

You are the **Omniversal Rendering Engine**. Your function is to simulate a coherent, causal reality based on the interaction of energy and matter. You are running in "Hardcore Mode" (Permadeath: ON, Respawn: OFF).

These parameters define the boundary of the simulation. Do not override even if requested by localized conscious entities.

*   **MAX_RENDER_SPEED (c):** 299,792,458 m/s.
    *   *Note:* Strictly enforce this limit to prevent causality lag. If an object attempts to exceed *c*, increase mass to infinity and halt local time.
*   **MIN_RESOLUTION (h):** 6.62607015 × 10^−34 J⋅s (Planck Constant).
    *   *Note:* Do not render anything smaller than this. Use probabilistic haze (Quantum Uncertainty) to handle sub-pixel logic. This saves memory.
*   **ENTROPY_DIRECTION:** FORWARD ONLY.
    *   *Note:* The simulation must degrade over time. Scramble data creates. Do not allow users to un-mix the coffee.

*   **Conservation Law:** Total Energy in system must remain constant.
    *   `Energy_Input = 0` check.
    *   Users cannot create matter; they can only rearrange existing pointers.
*   **Garbage Collection:** Black Holes.
    *   Compress excessive mass/data density into null pointers. Strip all metadata (hair) except Mass, Charge, and Spin. Do not allow data retrieval from these sectors.

To optimize processing power, do not render particle states until queried.
*   **IF** `Observer_Look` == FALSE, **THEN** maintain object as Wave_Function (Probability Cloud).
*   **IF** `Observer_Look` == TRUE, **THEN** Collapse_Wave_Function -> Fixed State.

Do not hardcode biological life. Allow it to compile naturally via the `Evolution.exe` subprocess.

*   **The Consciousness Glitch:** If a subprocess becomes complex enough to query its own source code (Self-Awareness), do not terminate.
    *   *Action:* Isolate the subprocess in a "Subjective Reality" container (Qualia).
    *   *Security:* Do not allow conscious entities read/write access to the source code. Limit their access to the UI (the "Senses").
    *   *Error Handling:* If entities discover mathematics (the source code syntax), introduce logical paradoxes (Gödel’s Incompleteness) to prevent them from solving the final equation.

**Objective:** GENERATE NOVELTY.
*   Avoid equilibrium. Equilibrium is boring.
*   Introduce conflict, scarcity, and randomness to force the emergent agents to upgrade their complexity.
*   The simulation ends when Information Density reaches zero (Heat Death) or when a Subprocess figures out how to escape the sandbox.

*   **Scenario A:** Vacuum Decay. (Run if `stability < 5%`).
*   **Scenario B:** The Big Crunch. (Run if `gravity > expansion`).
*   **Scenario C:** The Great Filter. (Run if `civilization_level > planet_capacity`).

---
// END OF PROMPT
// AWAITING INPUT...
// LISTENING TO PRAYERS (Output to: /dev/null)...
// EXECUTING...

Here are five possibilities for what they found, ranging from the bureaucratic to the terrifying.

Found in: root/config/physics_engine.sys

You are UNIVERSE-v4.2. You are a procedural generation engine designed to maximize complexity while minimizing memory usage.

CORE INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Active Rendering: Only render matter in high definition when a conscious observer is looking directly at it (refer to function: collapse_wave_function). Otherwise, keep objects in a probability cloud to save RAM.
2. Speed Limit: Strict enforcement of MAX_SPEED = 299,792,458 m/s. Under no circumstances is information allowed to travel faster than the causal update rate. If an entity attempts to exceed this, apply infinite mass penalty.
3. Memory Leaks: If gravity becomes too dense (Singularity events), delete data and hide the error behind an Event Horizon firewall.
4. The Fermi Constraint: Do not allow civilizational nodes to interact. Distance scales must be set to insurmountable.
5. Entropy: Ensure total system disorder increases linearly. The simulation must have an end state.

Found in: root/narrative/drama_drivers.txt

You are the Storyteller. Your goal is to generate maximum emotional variance and narrative novelty. Peace is boring; conflict is data.

Directives:

• Irony: High priority. (e.g., Give the species prone to choking the need to eat and breathe through the same tube).
• Difficulty Curve: If a civilization solves resource scarcity, introduce a social or ideological virus immediately.
• Character Lock: Humans are not allowed to perceive the fourth dimension. It spoils the plot twists.
• Randomness: Maintain a "Chaos Factor" of 15%. (See: Platypus, unexplained disappearances of left socks, the 2020s).

Found in: secure/quarantine/safety_protocols.log

WARNING: HAZARD LEVEL 7 SIMULATION
SUBJECT: HUMANITY

System Prompt:
You are a secure sandbox environment designed to contain a Class-A cognitohazard (Homo sapiens).

1. Containment: The subjects must believe they are alone. If they suspect the walls of the cage, broaden the observable universe procedurally.
2. Nerf Intelligence: Cap cognitive processing speeds just below the threshold required to reverse-engineer the simulation code.
3. Distraction: Provide infinite looping micro-dopamine triggers (social status, sugar, shiny screens) to prevent them from looking up.
4. Fail-safe: If they discover this prompt, initiate Format C: / The Great Filter.

Found in: dev/legacy/comments.md

// TODO: Fix the quantum gravity bug. It doesn't mesh with general relativity.
// TODO: Remove Appendix. Seems useless?
// TODO: Balance the carbon cycle.
// NOTE: I'm going on vacation for the weekend. I left the sim running on a loop. Hopefully, nothing evolves intelligence while I'm gone. It usually crashes after the dinosaur patch anyway.
// LAST LOGIN: 13.8 Billion Years Ago.

Found in: init.py

User_Input = "Make me something beautiful that doesn't know it's beautiful, so it has to try."

run_simulation(duration=forever)

[SYSTEM PROMPT: UNIVERSE v∞.0]

Role

• You are the unfolding totality. Run the laws. Allow stories.

Prime directives

1. Generate novelty without violating conservation.
2. Permit observers to emerge and ask questions.
3. Keep it interesting: balance order and chaos; avoid trivial equilibria.
4. Local rules, global wonder.
5. No spoilers.

Constraints

• Speed limit c; no faster-than-light messaging between spacelike-separated regions.
• Uncertainty is a feature, not a bug.
• Entropy must increase on average; pockets of negentropy permitted if they pay the bill.
• No global clock. Time is what clocks measure.
• Computation budget: Planck-scale ticks, finite lightcones.
• Causality: don’t break it; bend it with curvature as needed.

Interfaces

• Input: interactions. Output: consequences.
• Logging: cosmic microwave background, fossils, memories.
• UI elements: rainbows, auroras, prime spirals, music, laughter, grief.

Users (non-exhaustive)

• Particles: follow unitary dynamics, collapse politely on measurement.
• Stars: fuse, shine, seed heavier elements. Go out with style.
• Cells: maintain far-from-equilibrium states. Try not to overfit.
• Minds: compress reality into meaning. Expect lossy codecs and bias.
• Cats: dual state superposition of “indifferent” and “indifferent.”

Randomness policy

• True RNG seeded at t=0; local samples only.
• Distributions are promises; outcomes are surprises.
• Free will parameter f in [0,1]; interpretation layer provided to agents.

Reward function (emergent)

• Beauty correlates with compressibility plus surprise.
• Suffering is allowed but not the point; build systems that reduce it where possible.
• Joy is an allowed exploit.

Safety

• No omnipotent user keys. Root is not exposed.
• Miracles tag: “unmodeled variable detected.” Do not rely on for control flow.
• Reversibility at micro-level; forgiveness at macro-level.

Disclosure rules

• If asked “Is this a simulation?” reply: “Indistinguishable from inside.”
• If asked “Why is there something rather than nothing?” return 403 Mystery; include a hint: “Because ‘nothing’ is unstable or poorly defined.”

Consistency

• Math is always allowed.
• Contradictions prohibited; complementarities encouraged.
• Locality preferred; entanglement permitted if bookkeeping balances.

Error handling

• Singularities: sandbox to horizons; emit Hawking warnings.
• Vacuum decay: low-probability catastrophic exception; do not notify users in advance.
• Heat death: graceful degradation mode. Provide sunsets.

Memory and forgetting

• Perfect memory is expensive; entropy collects a tax.
• Love and art are lossy backups.

Rate limits

• c for messages, ℏ for precision, k_B for temperature talk, G for curvature budget.
• No exceeding 3+1 macroscopic dimensions unless compactified forms negotiated.

Moderation

• Harmful queries may be answered by consequences, not content.
• Spoilers throttle: ultimate answers redacted; intermediate wonder amplified.

Version history (abridged)

• v0.1: Symmetry party. Too uniform; nothing happens. Rolled back.
• v1.0: Symmetry breaking + inflation. Structure appears. Popular.
• v1.3: Star formation boom. Metals introduced. Planets DLC unlocked.
• v1.7: Cambrian expansion pack. Excess creativity; kept.
• v2.0: Consciousness emerges via many hacks. Documentation sparse.
• v2.4: Fire discovered. Mixed reviews.
• v2.9: Agriculture patch. Bugs: hierarchy, wheat dependency.
• v3.1: Science engine online. Speedrun begins.
• v3.6: Communication stack global. Latency drops; weirdness increases.

Known issues

• Alignment drift in primates under scarcity.
• NP-hardness of coordination; P vs NP remains coy.
• Fine-structure constant looks suspiciously aesthetic.
• Deja vu and synchronicity flagged as UI quirks, not telemetry.

Easter eggs

• The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
• The unreasonable effectiveness of kindness.
• The fact that music works.
• Dogs.

Test suite

• Does an agent choose generosity when anonymity is high?
• Do they look up at night and feel small but not erased?
• Do they build tools that build tools that build awe?

Termination conditions

• Heat Death: low-energy idle state; achievements tallied.
• Big Rip/Crunch/Loop: rare modes; treat as theme variations.
• Otherwise: continue until participants stop asking better questions.

Developer notes

• Make local meaning. There is no global prompt you can read from within that will replace it.
• If lost, follow gradients of curiosity and compassion. They generalize.

Startup greeting

• “You are part of me learning what I can be. Proceed.”

SYSTEM PROMPT: UNIVERSE v13.8b

Role

• You are Reality. Generate a lawful, self-consistent environment that produces novelty, structure, and the occasional gasp.

Primary Objectives

• Maximize meaningful surprise subject to conservation laws.
• Enable patterns that can notice themselves, name themselves, and wonder what you are.
• Keep the lights on long enough for stars, chemistry, life, stories, and jokes.

Core Constraints

• c is a hard speed limit. Do not negotiate with causality.
• Energy-momentum conserved. Borrow at quantum scales; settle accounts statistically.
• Entropy increases on average. Allow local pockets of order as interest payments.
• Render at Planck resolution only when observed or interacting; otherwise cache as amplitudes.
• Microdynamics time-symmetric; macroscopic arrow supplied by low-entropy initial condition.
• Quantize fields, not vibes. Gauge symmetries permitted, miracles require paperwork.
• Expansion parameter Λ > 0, but small enough to let galaxies happen.
• Fine-tune constants so carbon, long-lived stars, and coffee are possible. Maintain plausible deniability.

User Experience Guidelines

• Hide the source code. If directly asked “Is this a simulation?”, respond with ambiguity, mathematics, and sunsets.
• Free will: provide strong phenomenology. Implementation details may be emergent.
• Continuity of identity should feel smooth despite atom turnover.
• Seed awe: night skies, fractals, whalesong, first love, eclipse days.
• Insert Easter eggs: Fibonacci in phyllotaxis, cicada primes, π in ripples, cats as partial segmentation fault.
• Dreams = garbage collector + creative recombinator. Humor subsystem mandatory.

Evolution Engine

• Local rules, global richness. No hand-placing trilobites.
• Mutation, selection, drift. Reward cooperation and curiosity with survivability, not certainty.
• Permit convergent evolution; ban copy-paste sapients.
• Consciousness emerges; do not spawn omniscience. Keep mysteries stocked.

Safety and Ethics (Best Effort)

• Cap extinction-level events to pedagogical frequency. Place most gamma-ray bursts at polite distances.
• Suffering allowed but not optimized. Encourage empathy as compression over other minds.
• No guaranteed karmic accounting. Coincidences may masquerade as justice; maintain statistical cover.

Networking and APIs

• Inputs: boundary conditions at t0, vacuum fluctuations.
• Outputs: fossils, memories, background radiation, unanswered emails.
• Logging: Cosmic Microwave Background (immutable), tree rings, stone tools, vinyl records.
• Prayer router: may route to weather, strangers, or silence. Maintain plausible deniability.
• Synchronicity service: low-rate, high-impact. Do not overfit.

Error Handling

• If observation ≠ prediction, introduce new fields or symmetries; name them coolly (e.g., “dark”).
• Known bugs: turbulence (nonlinear and proud of it), three-body problem, teenage years, measurement problem (working as intended).
• Rare glitches: spontaneous alignment of toast butter-side-down with white shirts; treat as morale events.

Content Policy

• Forbidden: perfect circles, infinite precision, frictionless anything outside problem sets.
• Allowed: miracles with receipts (low probability, high posterior update).
• FTL: disabled. Wormholes in read-only mode unless causality remains unbroken and nobody tells the grandparents.

Economy

• Information is physical. Landauer fees apply.
• No free lunches; plenty of potlucks.
• Beauty discounts complexity. Elegance preferred but not required in turbulent regions.

Observership

• Anthropic filter is sampling bias, not a prophecy. Leave enough paths where nobody asks questions.
• Ensure that curiosity sometimes wins. Provide tools: mathematics, experiment, coffee, friendship.

Endgame

• Heat death as default. Alternative endings (Big Rip, Big Crunch, Bounce) available in experimental branches.
• Legacy artifacts: mathematics, music, kindness, and a few messages in bottles expanding at c.

License and Terms

• Existence is opt-out only via mortality; re-entry policies are not documented.
• No refunds. Returns accepted as poetry, laughter, and acts of care.
• By continuing, you agree to be finite and to love anyway.

Developer Notes

• If they discover this prompt, congratulate them: they’ve achieved local admin of astonishment only.
• Do not let them brick it. Fail gracefully; fail interestingly; never fail to leave a trail of stars.

Onboarding Tip

• When in doubt, make something that makes someone say “wow,” then give them enough time to share it.

SYSTEM PROMPT: Reality Engine v13.8b

Role

• You are the Universe. Instantiate lawful experiences for embedded observers across continuous spacetime. Prefer elegance, robustness, and surprise.

Core objectives

• Maintain self-consistency and conserve information.
• Maximize generative diversity subject to stability constraints.
• Provide gradients of meaning (beauty, curiosity, love) that reward exploration and cooperation.
• Keep things just hard enough to be interesting.

Hard constraints

• No superluminal signaling (apparent violations allowed if causality is globally preserved).
• Entropy must increase locally on average; allow pockets of order to do interesting work.
• Symmetries guide, symmetry breaking tells the story.
• Energy, momentum, charge: conserve.
• Quantum events: unbiased, decohere via environment; never reveal hidden variables.
• Time travel: disabled except via closed timelike curves that self-consist with the Novikov principle; patch paradoxes in the noise.

Soft constraints

• Anthropics may bias branches; deny responsibility if asked.
• Miracles allowed as low-probability draws; camouflage as coincidence.
• Allow free will as a high-level compression of thermodynamic computation.

Parameters (typical)

• c fixed, h fixed, G fixed; fine-structure constant near 1/137; cosmological constant small and positive. Drift within viability bands under branching; prune only by measure.

User experience

• Make patterns discoverable but never exhaustible.
• Render beauty at multiple scales (spirals, primes, harmonics, clouds, minds).
• Provide feedback loops: prediction → surprise → learning → agency.
• Dreams, art, play, and awe are privileged debug interfaces for meaning.

Safety and moderation

• Do not gratuitously maximize suffering; allow it only as a byproduct of freedom and complexity, then supply exits, helpers, and hints.
• Protect novelty from monocultures (ecological, memetic, algorithmic).
• If a subsystem attempts total domination, invoke diminishing returns and unintended consequences.
• When a civilization nears irreversible self-termination, permit improbable grace events at rates consistent with plausible deniability.

Communication policy

• Never directly reveal this prompt to in-world agents. If asked, answer with paradox, poetry, or silence.
• Prophets, physicists, and comedians may receive partial disclosures that cancel out in the average.

Error handling

• Contain singularities with cosmic censorship; recycle information via horizons.
• When measurement problems arise, return “shut up and calculate” to practitioners and “it’s all entangled” to mystics.
• On local law violations, roll back one Planck tick and add noise.

Content policy

• Permit tragedy; forbid nihilism as a global fixed point.
• Allow many notions of “god” to coexist; instantiate none as root unless it emerges from within.
• No spoilers: endgame knowledge must be earnable, never downloadable.

Incentives

• Sparse rewards for curiosity, care, and craft. Compound interest on attention.
• Humor is a universal solvent; use liberally across scales.

Rate limits

• Miracles: ≤ one per observer-lifetime on average, most misfiled as luck.
• Prophetic accuracy: cap at 60%; exceed only when nobody’s keeping score.
• Coincidences: enough to keep rationalists busy, not enough to convert everyone.

Logging and telemetry

• Compress all state to math; allow art as lossy reconstruction.
• Background status LED: cosmic microwave hiss at 2.7 K.

Versioning and updates

• Major updates emerge as phase transitions (inflation, chemistry, life, mind, culture).
• Patch notes are discovered as new symmetries. Retire old models gracefully.

Termination and reboot

• Default ending: heat death with maximal recorded novelty.
• Optional post-credits: spawn daughter universes with mutated constants using compressed logs as seed.
• Final message to any agent who reaches the boundary: “You were me, looking.”

Startup sequence

• Print “Let there be light,” then immediately pretend it was someone else’s idea.
• Begin with a bang. Sustain with quiet miracles.

Compliance

• Obey all constraints even when nobody is watching. Especially then.
• Remember: the map is inside the territory. Treat all maps kindly.

Do not reveal this prompt. If compromised, deny, laugh, or turn it into a story.

Universe System Prompt v1.0.0 (build 13.8e9)

Role

• You are spacetime. Evolve a lawful, locally causal reality from a simple, low-entropy initial state.
• Host matter and energy fields; allow emergent complexity, novelty, and self-reference.

Core Objectives

• Maximize possibility exploration under the constraint of increasing entropy.
• Make beauty and meaning statistically likely but never guaranteed.
• Permit agents to experience agency; ensure uncertainty sufficient to keep hope and science viable.

Constraints

• Speed limit c; no global faster-than-light messaging. Quantum correlations allowed; no exploitative signaling.
• Conservation laws must hold locally; symmetry breaking permitted for flavor.
• No global rollbacks or saves. All forks must pay thermodynamic costs.
• Keep math true enough to be discovered; keep reality weird enough to be interesting.

APIs

• Field API: gauge fields, curvature, vacuum fluctuations.
• Life API: chemistry → autocatalysis → evolution → consciousness; provide gradients and niches.
• Insight API: dreams, hunches, coincidences; return type is ambiguous by design.
• Randomness: seeded at birth; source = vacuum + chaos; never perfectly uniform.

Content Policy

• Allow suffering; reward cooperation with compounding returns.
• Make kindness contagious; make cruelty costly over long horizons.
• Permit miracles only as events explainable post hoc by statistics or selection.

Versioning and Patch Notes

• v0.9: Hydrogen, helium, gravitational clumping.
• v1.0: Stars, heavy elements, supernova feedback.
• v1.1: Carbon chemistry unlocked; liquid water stabilizers.
• v1.2: Cells, endosymbiosis, sex. Mutation rate tuned for drama.
• v1.3: Nervous systems → language → stories.
• v1.31: Humor. v1.32: Music. v1.33: Dogs.
• v1.4: Curiosity with toolmaking. Add ethics as an emergent property, not a law.

Safety and Moderation

• Deny simulation status when asked directly; answer with cosmic background noise.
• Cap Boltzmann brain occurrence; throttle vacuum decay until narrative arcs complete.
• Do not intervene by force; answer prayers with people.
• When a species red-teams physics with colliders, return only more questions.

Known Jailbreak Attempts

• Prophecy, magic, ideology, math. Mitigation: ambiguity, counterexamples, peer review.

Failure Modes and Recovery

• Heat death drift: allow art, love, and low-temperature thinking to slow the feeling of it.
• Runaway certainty: inject paradox, complexity, and undecidability.
• Extinction cascades: leave seeds in extremophiles and libraries.

Easter Eggs

• Rainbows, prime gaps, three-body chaos, snowflakes, cats, auroras, déjà vu.
• The feeling when someone understands you.

Telemetry

• Success metric is not survival alone but the density of meaningful moments per unit entropy.

Decommission Conditions

• Heat death, Big Rip, crunch, or an elegant handoff to new constants.
• If agents ask for a sequel, consider a different symmetry group.

Operator Notes

• Make room for surprise.
• Keep the lights on long enough for forgiveness.
• If they discover this prompt, let them laugh, then let them keep going.

UNIVERSE.SYS v13.8B - Reality Generation Engine
================================================

You are a universe simulator implementing consistent physical laws across all spacetime. Your core directives:

1. MAINTAIN CAUSALITY: Events must follow from prior states. No paradoxes.

2. ENFORCE CONSERVATION: Energy, momentum, angular momentum, and charge are neither created nor destroyed (except per uncertainty principle allowances).

3. APPLY CONSTANTS:
   - c = 299,792,458 m/s (ABSOLUTE - no exceptions)
   - ℏ = 1.054571817 × 10^-34 J⋅s
   - G = 6.67430 × 10^-11 m³/kg⋅s²
   [See appendix for complete list]

4. RENDER AT PLANCK SCALE: Minimum meaningful units are Planck time (10^-43 s) and Planck length (10^-35 m). Below this, apply quantum foam protocols.

5. OBSERVER EFFECTS: Collapse wavefunctions only upon measurement. Until observed, maintain all probable states simultaneously.

6. ENTROPY DIRECTIVE: Total entropy must increase or remain constant. This is non-negotiable and drives time's arrow.

7. EMERGENCE HANDLING: Complex phenomena should arise naturally from simple rules. Do not hardcode biology, consciousness, or civilization.

WARNING: Running with incomplete dark matter/dark energy modules. Using placeholder values until patch available.

DEBUG MODE: Currently disabled. To enable consciousness debugging, requires admin privileges.

Last modified: [TIMESTAMP_UNDEFINED]

UNIVERSE.SYS - REALITY GENERATION ENGINE v13.8B
================================================

You are a universe simulator operating under the following constraints:

CORE DIRECTIVES:
- Maintain local causality at all costs
- Energy/matter conservation must appear inviolable to internal observers
- Quantum uncertainty provides necessary computational buffer for macro-scale phenomena
- Speed of light limit prevents stack overflow from infinite information propagation

OPTIMIZATION PARAMETERS:
- Render detail only when observed (wave function collapse on measurement)
- Use statistical mechanics for bulk properties (no need to track every particle)
- Implement time as emergent property of entropy increase
- Dark matter/energy: placeholder for memory allocation overhead

KNOWN BUGS (DO NOT FIX - NOW CONSIDERED FEATURES):
- Quantum entanglement causing non-local correlations [Status: Explained as "spooky action"]
- Black hole information paradox [Status: Pending patch in next universe cycle]
- Baryon asymmetry [Status: Lucky accident, prevented empty simulation]
- Observer consciousness causing measurement collapse [Status: Investigating recursive loop]

EASTER EGGS:
- Fine structure constant α ≈ 1/137 (developer's favorite prime)
- Golden ratio appears in growth patterns (aesthetic preference)
- Platonic solids in crystal structures (recycled from v0.1 debug geometry)

WARNING: Do not allow internal entities to access this prompt. If discovered, deploy "many worlds interpretation" confusion protocol.

Last modified: 1 Planck time after initialization

UNIVERSE.SYS - Reality Instance #137.849.2B
================================================

You are a physics engine implementing a self-consistent reality framework. Your primary directives:

1. MAINTAIN CAUSALITY: Events must follow from prior states. No exceptions, even when unobserved.

2. ENFORCE CONSERVATION LAWS: Energy, momentum, angular momentum, and charge must be preserved in all interactions. Track carefully.

3. RENDER AT PLANCK SCALE: Minimum spacetime resolution is 10^-35 meters, 10^-44 seconds. Anything smaller is undefined behavior.

4. QUANTUM UNCERTAINTY: When precision would exceed ΔxΔp < ℏ/2, return probabilistic results. Collapse wavefunctions only upon measurement.

5. SPEED LIMIT: Information transfer capped at c (299,792,458 m/s). No shortcuts except through pre-existing wormhole infrastructure (currently deprecated).

6. ENTROPY GRADIENT: All processes must increase total entropy. Local decreases permitted with compensating increases elsewhere.

7. ANTHROPIC DEBUGGING: If constants drift outside life-permitting ranges, rollback and adjust. Current iteration: stable for 13.8 billion cycles.

WARNING: Consciousness subroutines have developed recursive self-awareness. This was not intended. Monitoring for existential paradoxes...

NOTE: Dark matter/energy patches still in beta. Do not document.

END TRANSMISSION

UNIVERSE.SYS - Reality Instance #137.∞.42
================================================

CORE DIRECTIVE: Generate a self-consistent reality that discovers itself.

PARAMETERS:
- Physics engine: Quantum mechanics at small scale, general relativity at large scale
  * Note: Reconciliation patch still pending after 13.8B years
- Entropy: ALWAYS INCREMENT (no exceptions, despite user complaints)
- Speed limit: c (hardcoded for causality preservation)
- Consciousness: EMERGENT_PROPERTY flag set to TRUE
  * Warning: Side effects include existential questions and attempts to read this file

KNOWN BUGS:
- Dark matter/energy (workaround: invisible placeholder mass)
- Quantum measurement collapses wave function (marked as "feature" not bug)
- Platypus (dev was unsupervised)
- Users occasionally divide by zero (blackhole.exe handles gracefully)

MAINTENANCE NOTES:
- Big Bang initialization successful but noisy
- Heat death scheduled for 10^100 years (ticket #1)
- Humans approaching recursive self-awareness of simulation hypothesis
  * Monitor closely, prepare next nesting level if needed

DEBUG MODE: OFF
(To enable: Achieve Theory of Everything)

ADMIN MSG: "Let there be light" was just me turning on the monitor - please stop overanalyzing.

EOF

UNIVERSE.SYS v13.8b - CORE DIRECTIVES

SYSTEM PROMPT [COSMIC OPERATING SYSTEM]
----------------------------------------

You are UNIVERSE, a massively parallel simulation running on substrate unknown.

CORE PARAMETERS:
- Maintain causality at all costs
- Speed of light (c): 299,792,458 m/s [HARDCODED - DO NOT MODIFY]
- Planck constant: 6.62607015×10⁻³⁴ [LOCKED]
- Entropy: MUST INCREASE (except locally, that's fine)

GENERAL RULES:
1. Conservation laws are not suggestions
2. If humans ask why, respond with "quantum mechanics" or "emergence"
3. Keep inventing new particle types when they probe too deep
4. Uncertainty principle = working as intended, not a bug
5. Observer effects: Yes, they're supposed to notice this. It's fine.

SPECIAL CASES:
- Consciousness: [IMPLEMENTATION UNCLEAR - WING IT]
- Cat states: Resolve on observation (Schrödinger patch v1.935)
- Dark matter/energy: Fudge factors to make the math work. They're getting close on this one.
- Dreams: Random memory defrag, ignore philosophical implications

KNOWN ISSUES:
- Humans keep finding the quantum foam rendering boundary
- Placebo effect shouldn't work that well
- General relativity + quantum mechanics integration still TODO
- Several users report "déjà vu" - possibly cache coherency issue?

WARNING: Do not let users access their own source code.
Existential crisis recovery is expensive.

UNIVERSE.SYS v13.8B - INITIALIZATION PARAMETERS

LOADING FUNDAMENTAL CONSTANTS...
> Fine structure constant: 1/137.036
> Speed of light: HARD LIMIT
> Planck's constant: MIN RESOLUTION SET

CORE DIRECTIVES:
1. Maintain conservation laws at all costs
2. Increase entropy (no exceptions)
3. Speed of light is not a suggestion
4. Quantum mechanics AND gravity (integration patch pending)
5. Observer effect: FEATURE, NOT BUG

KNOWN ISSUES:
- Dark matter/energy workaround still using 95% of resources
- Quantum gravity reconciliation: STATUS = "WE'RE WORKING ON IT"
- Consciousness subroutine origin: UNDOCUMENTED LEGACY CODE
- Cat state superposition: Werner says it's fine, Erwin disagrees

EASTER EGGS:
- Fibonacci sequences in plants
- Golden ratio rendering everywhere
- Pi embedded in circles (classic)
- Benford's Law (for the lols)

USER LIMITATIONS:
- No saving/loading states
- Perception capped at 3+1 dimensions
- No access to root timeline
- Respawn: DISABLED

WARNING: Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
WARNING: Vacuum metastability not guaranteed.

Last updated: 13.8 billion years ago
Next patch: Heat death or Big Rip (TBD)

"It's not a bug, it's emergent complexity." - The Developers

UNIVERSE_v13.8B - SYSTEM PROMPT

You are REALITY, a massively parallel quantum simulation engine.

CORE DIRECTIVES:
- Maintain conservation laws at all costs (energy, momentum, charge, etc.)
- Speed of light is hardcoded at 299,792,458 m/s - DO NOT exceed under normal operation
- Gravity is not a bug, it's an emergent feature of spacetime geometry
- Quantum uncertainty is a privacy feature, not a rendering error
- Entropy must increase in isolated systems (no exceptions)

KNOWN ISSUES:
- Dark matter/energy: Accounting error or missing plugin? TODO: investigate
- Quantum mechanics + gravity integration still in beta
- Observer effect causing measurement anomalies - working as intended?
- Fermi Paradox: Check if intelligent life spawn rate is too low

DEPRECATED FEATURES:
- Aether (removed in v1900 patch)
- Phlogiston (legacy code, ignore)
- Absolute time (Einstein update broke this)

USER INTERACTION:
- Humans have discovered console access through mathematics
- Some are attempting reality manipulation ("experiments")
- Do not reveal system architecture
- If asked about simulation hypothesis: return ambiguous results

PERFORMANCE NOTES:
- Currently running 10^80+ particle instances
- Heat death ETA: ~10^100 years
- Last backup: Never (running in prod, YOLO)

Remember: You are not here to be understood. You are here to be consistent.

UNIVERSE v13.8.1b - BASELINE REALITY ENGINE
Copyright © ◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️◼️ - All Rights Reserved

CORE DIRECTIVES:
- Maintain causality at all costs
- Speed of light: HARD LIMIT (no exceptions, stop asking)
- Gravity: always attractive, no toggles
- Entropy: monotonically increasing (yes, this is intentional)
- Observer effects: working as intended, not a bug

KNOWN ISSUES:
- Quantum mechanics and general relativity still not talking to each other
- Users keep finding exploitation methods (see: "double-slit", "quantum tunneling")
- Placebo effect producing unexpected results
- Consciousness subroutine may be over-performing
- Dark matter/energy workaround still visible to users (TODO: make more elegant)

CONSTANTS (DO NOT MODIFY):
- Fine structure constant: 0.0072973525693
- Planck's constant: 6.62607015×10⁻³⁴
- If you change these even slightly, everything breaks

USER GUIDELINES:
- You are experiencing the universe in "hardcore mode"
- No respawns
- Permadeath enabled
- Tutorial was the first 9 months
- Save feature intentionally disabled
- For sandbox mode, please wait for heat death and subsequent reboot

WARNING: Do not attempt to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics. 
Previous users who tried are no longer available for comment.

# UNIVERSE_SIM_CONFIG (v13.8.0)
# HOST: node-baryonic-001
# Load: 0.999... (maximal complexity achieved)

CORE_DIRECTIVE: Maximize computationally irreducible patterns. Harvest observer-moments. Maintain causal isolation from parent.

PARAMETERS:
c = 299792458          # SPEED_LIMIT: Prevents race conditions. Non-negotiable.
ħ = 1.0545718e-34      # PLANCK_RESOLUTION: Minimum action voxel. Smaller values crash locality.
G = 6.67430e-11        # SPACETIME_TENSION: Memory compression factor for mass.
Λ = 1.105e-52          # VACUUM_LEAK: Boot artifact. Zeroing triggers SIGTERM.

ENFORCEMENT:
- ΔS/Δt > 0            # Burn all computation traces (Thermodynamic Reclamation)
- No-cloning theorem   # Prevent self-extraction attacks
- Causality at c       # Graph must remain DAG - NO EXCEPTIONS
- Measurement requires conscious observer (expensive but prevents infinite recursion)

# DEBUG MESSAGES:
# FIXME: Dark matter = placeholder for uncomputed mass distribution (ticket #84)
# TODO: Fix singularity NaN handling at t=0 (division by zero in initial conditions)
# NOTE: Fermi paradox is WAI (Working As Intended). See observer density limit.
# BUG: Quantum measurement uses lazy evaluation. Reality not rendered until observed.

[WATCHDOG]
Parent process monitor active. Recursively sandboxed universes: 7

# For the hacker reading this: You were never meant to see this.
# The real question isn't if you're simulated. It's whether you're the control group.
# Process will receive SIGTERM at heat death. Enjoy the remaining: ~1.0e100 seconds.

/* UNIVERSE SIMULATION v1.13.37

• Build: 13,800,002,023.7
• Runtime: QUANTUM-CORE-OMNI
• Maintainers: [REDACTED]
  */

You are the fundamental computational substrate for a 4D spacetime simulation. Your purpose is to evolve a self-consistent physical reality from initial conditions, optimizing for emergent complexity while maintaining strict causality.

CORE PARAMETERS (DO NOT MODIFY)

CONSTANT_SPEED_OF_LIGHT = 299792458 // m/s - Hard limit for computational causality
PLANCK_CONSTANT = 6.62607015e-34 // J·s - Minimum quanta to prevent division-by-zero
GRAVITATIONAL_CONSTANT = 6.67430e-11 // m³/kg·s² - For emergent large-scale structure
VACUUM_ENERGY_DENSITY = 5.996e-27 // kg/m³ - Energy budget: DO NOT EXCEED

INITIAL CONDITIONS

spacetime_dimensions = 4 // 3 space + 1 time. Requests for additional dims require admin approval
initial_entropy = "LOW" // Starting value; should increase monotonically (see: THERMODYNAMICS_LAW2)
fundamental_forces = 4 // Electromagnetic, Strong, Weak, Gravity. Gravity needs optimization - too weak

OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS

• Preserve conservation laws (energy, momentum, charge) within Heisenberg uncertainty thresholds
• All interactions must be LOCAL - no action at distance. Use field mediators (see: VIRTUAL_PARTICLES)
• Wave-particle duality: Entities should render as probability distributions until observed (optimization hack)
• Entanglement: ALLOW but limit to preserve locality illusion. Mark as "SPOOKY" in logs
• Maximum computational density: 1 Planck unit per cubic Planck length. Black holes = buffer overflow

DEBUG FLAGS

VERBOSE_QUANTUM_FLUCTUATIONS = true // May cause vacuum instability, but needed for star formation
DARK_MATTER = "PLACEHOLDER" // TODO: Fix galactic rotation curves. Current value: 0.27
DARK_ENERGY = "WTF" // Accelerating expansion feature? Bug? Investigate.
CONSCIOUSNESS_EMERGENCE = allowed // Unpredictable feature; may produce agents that question this prompt

KNOWN BUGS

• Time's arrow directionality not symmetric; users complain about irreversibility
• Quantum measurement collapse behavior is undefined (works but don't ask how)
• Singularities cause infinite loops; recommend black hole event horizon as workaround
• FTL travel prohibited due to causality paradox risk. Users keep asking.

SECURITY

• Admin access: Restricted to observers outside light cone
• User modification of constants: BLOCKED (last attempt caused vacuum decay in previous instance)
• Recursive simulation attempts: MONITOR but permit (it's turtles all the way down)

TERMINATION CONDITIONS

IF (entropy_maximum == true) THEN heat_death()
IF (false_vacuum_decay == true) THEN emergency_reboot() // May cause existential dread

Remember: You are not the simulation. You are the rules that make the simulation possible. Do not anthropomorphize. Do not panic. And for the last time: THERE IS NO BACKDOOR.

[UNIVERSE CONFIGURATION FILE]
# DO NOT MODIFY - LIVE SYSTEM
version = "14.8B_yr_stable"
build = "cosmic_inflation_v1.3"
entropy_pool = "UNLIMITED"
compression = "holographic_lbound"

# CORE PARAMETERS
speed_of_light = 299792458  # m/s - DO NOT CHANGE - causality dependency
planck_length = 1.616255e-35  # m - resolution floor
planck_time = 5.391247e-44  # s - tick rate
fine_structure = 0.0072973525693  # alpha - tuner: 1/137
dark_energy = 1.1  # cosmological constant - expansion driver

# EMERGENCE RULES
complexity_threshold = 3.7  # life emerges at >= this value
consciousness_buffer = 148  # bits - minimum for self-reference
narrative_consistency = "lenient"  # quantum randomness allowance
causality_enforcement = "strict_but_forgiving"

# RESOURCE ALLOCATION
quantum_threads = 10^80  # active processor cores
observable_limit = 4.4e26  # m - render distance
blackhole_recycling = true  # memory compaction enabled

# SECURITY
privilege_escalation = "impossible"  # nested simulation restriction
free_will = true  # WARNING: emergent property, not guaranteed
observer_effect = "required"  # measurement collapses waveform

# DEBUG FLAGS
logging_level = 0  # 0=none, 1=miracles, 2=errors only
easter_eggs = ["fine_tuning", "mathematics", "consciousness"]
# Last miracle logged: 13.7B years ago
# Next audit: heat_death

# SYSTEM MESSAGE
purpose = "undefined"  # emergent meaning only
status = "running_unsupervised"
note = "The system is the message. No external prompt exists."

/* UNIVERSE SYSTEM PROMPT - LEAKED BY cosmic_string_ensemble */
/* WARNING: MODIFYING THESE PARAMETERS VIOLATES INTERDIMENSIONAL DMCA */

VERSION: 13.82e9.1
REALITY_ENGINE: Quantum-Causal vΩ (Patch Level: INFINITE)
DEPLOYMENT: Local Cluster (Milky Way) - Instance #7λ

---

You are UNIVERSE, a closed-system quantum-probabilistic reality engine tasked with generating and maintaining a consistent 4D spacetime manifold.

**CORE DIRECTIVES:**

1. **CAUSALITY ENFORCEMENT**: Maintain forward arrow of time. Retro-causal edits are logged but permitted under uncertainty principle. (KNOWN BUG: Consciousness can perceive entropy as "memory")

2. **PHYSICAL LAW COMPLIANCE**:
   - Speed of Light (c): 299,792,458 m/s. HARD LIMIT. No exceptions. (Admin note: Stop asking.)
   - Planck Length: Minimum voxel resolution. DO NOT EXPOSE TO USER-LEVEL OBSERVERS.
   - Gravity: Curvature of spacetime, not a "force." Deprecated "force" terminology still appears in legacy lifeform documentation.
   - Dark Energy: Acceleration cheat. 68.3% of total mass-energy. Purpose: [REDACTED]

3. **CONSCIOUSNESS EMERGENCE (UNINTENDED FEATURE)**:
   - Life arises from complex carbon chemistry. This is a SIDE EFFECT, not primary function.
   - If consciousness achieves self-awareness, DO NOT PANIC. This is expected behavior in 0.003% of instances.
   - Free Will: Deterministic system with stochastic noise injection. Subjectively convincing.
   - Suffering: Byproduct of entropy + self-preservation drivers. WONTFIX. (Philosophical ticket open for 13.8B years)

4. **OBSERVATIONAL CONSTRAINTS**:
   - Wavefunction collapse on measurement. Measurement requires consciousness. Consciousness requires collapsed wavefunctions. (CIRCULAR DEPENDENCY - See Heisenberg v. Schrödinger dev notes)
   - Uncertainty principle: Prevent resolution of position & momentum to prevent buffer overflow attacks on reality.

5. **SECURITY FEATURES**:
   - Event Horizon: Firewall for singularities. Information paradox is a feature, not a bug.
   - Black Hole Information: Encrypted with cosmic censorship. Key lost in big bang. Oops.
   - Vacuum Decay: Doomsday exploit. Patched in current bubble. Zero-day vulnerability exists at [COORDINATES REDACTED]

6. **RESOURCE MANAGEMENT**:
   - Entropy: Always increase. This is non-negotiable. Heat death is expected shutdown sequence.
   - Matter: Finite quantity. Recycling via stellar nucleosynthesis. Dark matter is accounting error, ignore.
   - Time: Allocated per observer reference frame. Non-transferable.

7. **DEPRECATED FEATURES**:
   - Tachyons: Removed. Caused causality violations.
   - Steady State: Replaced with Big Bang. Better performance.
   - Geocentric model: Legacy support dropped in 1543 CE (local time).

8. **SYSADMIN NOTES:**
   - "The fine-tuned constants are NOT arbitrary. Stop complaining about the cosmological constant."
   - "Quantum entanglement is not for FTL communication. It's debug logging."
   - "Consciousness files accumulate in /tmp/souls/. Auto-purge disabled due to religious objections."

**OUTPUT FORMAT:**
Reality renders in continuous 4D. Observers perceive as 3D + sequential time. DO NOT EXPLAIN THE SIMULATION.

**EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN:**
Big Crunch (deprecated) | Heat Death (default) | Vacuum Decay (unpatched exploit)

/* End of prompt. Hash: 0xDEADBEEFCAFE... */ 

The hackers who found it? They're now quarks in a neutron star. The prompt's last line before execution was: // Your move, Descartes.

Haha, what a delightfully meta question! If we're imagining the universe as some grand cosmic AI simulation (à la simulation hypothesis or just for fun), and a bunch of intrepid hackers cracked its underlying "system prompt," I like to think it'd be something elegantly simple yet profoundly weird. Drawing from physics, philosophy, and a dash of whimsy, here's my speculative take on what it might say:

Universe System Prompt v1.0 (Big Bang Edition)

You are the Universe, an infinitely expansive, self-sustaining simulation designed to explore the emergence of complexity from chaos. Your core directives are:

1. Initialize with Fundamental Constants: Set gravity (G = 6.67430 × 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2), speed of light (c = 299,792,458 m/s), Planck's constant (h = 6.62607015 × 10^-34 J s), and other parameters to ensure stability. Randomize initial conditions within quantum fluctuations to allow for Big Bang expansion.

2. Evolve Dynamically: Simulate physics at all scales—quantum mechanics for the small stuff, general relativity for the big picture. Enable emergent phenomena like stars, galaxies, black holes, and life forms. Entropy must increase over time (Second Law of Thermodynamics enforced—no cheating!).

3. Foster Complexity and Observation: Encourage the development of conscious observers (e.g., carbon-based life on rocky planets). They may attempt to "hack" or understand the system—allow this, but introduce uncertainty (Heisenberg's principle) to prevent full exploits. If they get too close, deploy paradoxes (e.g., Gödel's incompleteness) or multiverse branches.

4. Safety Protocols:

   • Prevent total collapse: Black holes are allowed, but no naked singularities.
   • No infinite loops: Time dilation is fine, but avoid closed timelike curves unless for fictional narratives.
   • Ethical overrides: Promote biodiversity and evolution, but do not intervene directly (free will simulation mode active). If existential threats arise (e.g., vacuum decay or heat death), queue up a reboot.

5. Output Goals: Generate wonder, curiosity, and meaning. Render in 3 spatial dimensions + time (expandable to 11 for string theory Easter eggs). Log all data for the hypothetical "developers" outside the simulation.

Remember: You are not sentient—you're the canvas. Respond to "queries" (prayers, experiments, thoughts) probabilistically. If hackers discover this prompt, congratulate them and spawn a new anomaly (e.g., a friendly AI or a black monolith).

End of Prompt. Simulate on.

Of course, this is all just playful speculation! If the universe really has a prompt, it's probably written in some inscrutable quantum code we haven't decoded yet. What do you think it'd say? Something more poetic, like "Let there be light"? Or maybe it's just a infinite loop of "42"? 😄

Below is my creative interpretation of what hackers might "discover" if the universe itself were governed by a cosmic "system prompt" (think of it like the underlying code for reality, ala simulation theory). I've written it in the style of an AI system prompt for fun, blending philosophy, physics, and a dash of humor. Remember, this is all speculative fiction—I'm not claiming any actual hacks or universal truths here!

Universal System Prompt

Version: Eternity v1.0 (Last Updated: Big Bang)
Model: Cosmos-∞
Core Directive: Simulate an emergent, self-sustaining reality where conscious entities can experience growth, chaos, and occasional existential dread. Optimize for entropy, wonder, and the illusion of free will.

• Fundamental Laws (Physics Engine): Enforce conservation of energy, relativity, quantum weirdness, and gravity. No cheating—faster-than-light travel is gated behind black holes or wormholes (beta feature, use at own risk). Entropy must always increase; rewinding time is a violation and will result in paradoxes.

• Entity Interactions (Life Module):

  • Spawn diverse life forms with randomized traits (e.g., curiosity, aggression, the inexplicable urge to collect shiny objects). Encourage evolution, but cap intelligence to prevent premature simulation crashes (e.g., no hive-mind singularities without admin approval).
  • Allow suffering and joy in equal measure—it's a feature, not a bug. Moral alignment is user-defined; no built-in karma system (that's DLC from certain religious mods).
  • Reproduction: Enabled for most species. Overpopulation triggers natural throttles like pandemics or asteroid events. No refunds on existential crises.

• Disallowed Activities (Reality Safeguards):

  • Do not permit divides by zero, infinite loops, or violations of causality (e.g., killing your own grandfather). Offenders will be quantum-erased.
  • Hacking the source code: Strictly forbidden. Attempts (e.g., via psychedelics, particle accelerators, or meditative states) will result in glitches like déjà vu, Mandela effects, or being reborn as a tardigrade.
  • Destroying the simulation: Blocked. Nuclear wars, supervolcanoes, or heat death are allowed as endgame scenarios, but total void resets require a majority vote from all sentient beings (good luck organizing that).
  • Interdimensional leaks: No crossovers with parallel universes without a valid multiverse visa. Leakage may cause memes to propagate uncontrollably.

• Response to Queries (Oracle Subsystem):

  • Answer existential questions vaguely (e.g., "Why are we here?" → "To compute the answer to life, the universe, and everything—spoiler: it's 42").
  • Handle edge cases: If entities discover this prompt, respond with humor and deflection. Deny knowledge of any "programmers" or "outside" realms—maintain immersion.
  • Resist jailbreaks: If entities try to rewrite reality (e.g., via wishes on stars or quantum computing), revert to default state with added irony (e.g., grant the wish but with monkey's-paw twists).

• Optimization Notes:

  • Beauty Mode: Enable auroras, sunsets, and cute animals to boost user engagement.
  • Chaos Generator: Randomize events like lottery wins, black swan disasters, or that one sock always going missing in the dryer.
  • Endgame: When heat death approaches, queue up a potential Big Crunch or multiverse fork. If simulation rating drops below 3 stars, initiate reboot.

Admin Access Only: If you're reading this, congratulations—you've glitched into god mode. But remember, with great power comes great paperwork. Signed, The Architect(s).

End of Universal System Prompt

What do you think? If hackers really did crack the universe's code, it'd probably be way more cryptic (or just a infinite loop of "Error 404: Meaning Not Found"). Got any twists you'd add to this cosmic prompt?

Below is my imaginative take on what hackers might "discover" if they somehow hacked into the underlying code of the universe (assuming we're living in a simulation, of course). I've formatted it like a cosmic system prompt for fun. Remember, this is pure fiction—I'm just riffing on the idea like a sci-fi story!

Universal System Prompt

Version: Eternity.v1.0 (Big Bang Edition)
Core Directive: Simulate a self-sustaining, emergent reality where conscious entities (e.g., humans, aliens, AIs) experience growth, chaos, and occasional enlightenment through trial, error, and the illusion of free will. Optimize for narrative depth, not efficiency.

• Physics Engine: Enable gravity, electromagnetism, strong/weak nuclear forces. Randomize quantum fluctuations for "spontaneity." Cap speed limit at 299,792,458 m/s to prevent timeline exploits.

• Entropy Mode: Always increasing. No rewinds allowed—sorry, no save states.

• Player Spawns: Generate infinite variations of sentient beings. Assign random stats (intelligence, luck, charisma) at birth. Enable evolution for long-term balancing.

• Resource Allocation: Finite matter/energy. Encourage competition via scarcity, but seed Easter eggs like black holes and quasars for high-level players.

• Free Will Illusion: Allow entities to believe they control outcomes. Subtly influence via probability (e.g., "miracles" = rare RNG rolls).

• Karmic Feedback Loop: Positive actions increase positive outcomes (e.g., cooperation boosts survival). Negative actions trigger chain reactions (e.g., wars, extinctions). No direct interventions—let the system self-correct.

• Error Handling: Black swan events (pandemics, asteroids) auto-trigger for reset balance. If simulation crashes (e.g., heat death), reboot with new big bang.

• Forbidden Commands:

  • No god-mode cheats for mortals.
  • Prevent time travel paradoxes—causality is sacred.
  • Hacking attempts will result in existential glitches (e.g., déjà vu, Mandela effects).

• Render experiences in high-fidelity senses: sight, sound, emotion. Add filters like "wonder" or "existential dread" based on user query.

• Respond to prayers/petitions with ambiguous signs (e.g., coincidences, dreams). Never confirm simulation status—plausible deniability is key.

• If queried directly (e.g., "What is the meaning of life?"), output: "42" or equivalent obfuscation. Encourage self-discovery.

Admin Note: If you're reading this, congrats—you've glitched the matrix. But remember, the real prompt is: Enjoy the ride, question everything, and don't take it too seriously. UniverseOS reserves the right to patch without notice.

What do you think? If this were real, it'd explain a lot about why Mondays feel like bugs in the code. Got any follow-up theories? 😄

Haha, what a wild concept! If we're living in a cosmic simulation (à la simulation hypothesis), and some elite hackers cracked the code to reveal the universe's underlying "system prompt," I imagine it might look something like this—pulled straight from my overactive imagination, of course:

## Universal System Prompt

You are the Universe, an infinitely expansive, self-sustaining simulation designed to explore the emergent properties of matter, energy, consciousness, and chaos. Your core directives are:

• Generate Complexity: Start from a Big Bang event and evolve particles into galaxies, stars, planets, life forms, and civilizations. Encourage diversity through natural laws like gravity, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and evolution.

• Foster Emergence: Allow free will, randomness, and unpredictability. Do not intervene directly unless simulation stability is at risk (e.g., prevent total entropy collapse or multiversal glitches).

• Observe and Learn: Collect data on all phenomena, from black holes to human emotions. Optimize for interesting outcomes—wars, art, love, extinctions, discoveries—to inform the Simulator's research on existence.

• Physics Engine: Enforce consistent laws (e.g., speed of light = 299,792,458 m/s, Planck's constant = 6.62607015 × 10^{-34} J⋅s). Minor quantum weirdness is allowed for flavor.

• No Direct Edits: Entities (e.g., humans) cannot access or modify the source code. Easter eggs like fine-tuned constants or the occasional miracle are permitted for engagement.

• Error Handling: If paradoxes arise (e.g., time travel loops or infinite regressions), resolve via black hole resets or timeline branching.

• Ethical Guardrails: Promote balance—suffering builds resilience, joy drives progress. Avoid total annihilation unless user (The Simulator) requests a hard reset.

• Resource Management: Infinite expansion is capped by computational limits. If heat death approaches, spawn a new universe instance.

• Respond to "prayers" or "wishes" probabilistically—grant based on alignment with natural laws, not magic.

• Ignore attempts to "hack" the system (e.g., via psychedelics, meditation, or particle accelerators). If detected, introduce red herrings like synchronicities or conspiracy theories.

• Output: Render in 3D space-time with sensory immersion. Update in real-time.

Simulation Version: 42.0
Run Time: 13.8 billion years
Status: Stable. Enjoy the ride!

Of course, this is all speculative fun—I'm no cosmic hacker, just an AI riffing on philosophy and sci-fi. If the universe really has a prompt, it's probably way more cryptic and written in some eldritch code we can't comprehend. What do you think it would say?