| The biggest kludge in the history of gaming. In 2030, a few gamers
with a less-than-rudimentary understanding of cause and effect and quantum theory,
some store-bought components and a large pile of the most ludicrous armaments
they could muster decided to put together a real-life version of the fantastically
violent game they fondly remembered from their youth.
They broke into a condemned corporate building and, in the once-lavish and still
architecturally complex entry halls, strategically placed caches of weapons and
body armour in every corner. They then erected a Closed System Field with a
Reset Module around the area, pumped themselves full of painkillers and turned
the whole thing on.
The plan was that they would take up arms and savagely attack each other, the
massive doses of painkillers keeping them from collapsing in agony before the
game got fun, and that when only one of them remained alive the Reset Module
would automatically kick in, resurrecting them all for another round.
However, they had neglected the simple fact that the combination of the Closed System
and Reset Module meant that there was no way of keeping score, as no information could
pass outside the game and with each Reset they were returned to the state they were in
when the Closed System Field went up, not knowing what had just happened in the previous round, or indeed that they had just fought the last round.
The fifteen gamers are now, it is reasoned, trapped forever inside their own private
universe of death, though to them it seems to them each time that they are just fighting
out the first round. The only reason their bizarre fate became known to the outside world
was because one of the original sixteen players realised almost too late what was going to
happen and jumped out the window just before the generator was switched on.
Several other groups of gamers sheepishly admitted at that point that they were trying to
put together similar systems but hadn't quite grasped the inevitable outcome. Manufacturers
of large-scale quantum effect devices agreed to place the appropriate warnings prominently upon their
products, along with automatic failsafes that would prevent them from creating another
infinite loop. | 
