Book request: This was a science fiction book I read years ago as a teen or young adult. It would have been in mid to late 80's through early 90's when I read it but I don't know the original publication date. The book is set in the future where population has become a problem. The main character starts out as a young boy born illegally. He is raised in his home by his parents. He looks out the window of his room which is against the rules and a neighbor sees him and turns them in. His parents are executed by slow electrocution and he is sent to a work farm with other illegal children. At the work farm he goes through many hardships but studies something I think that was call probabilities. He learns of a super computer that is guiding mankind towards an eventual war and that this machine is responsible for the laws that killed his parents and the cruel work farm he lives at. Eventually he escapes the work farm and in a twist ends up working for the very same machine. He realized the machine has been guiding his life to literally program him and at the end of the book he is responsible for starting the war that saves the world by reducing the population back to an acceptable number.

Matching book description: A boy, who has known nothing in his brief life but love and darkness, forces open a window and sees for the first time the outside world, which also sees him: an illegal immigrant by birth. Arrested, his parents tortured to death, we see through Thomas Windom's eyes a race preparing to deal with overpopulation in the only manner left. A boy, who has known nothing in his brief life but love and darkness, forces open a window and sees for the first time the outside world, which also sees him: an illegal immigrant by birth. Arrested, his parents tortured to death, we see through Thomas Windom's eyes a race preparing to deal with overpopulation in the only manner left. ...more