Self reference engine

03.09.202203.09.2022 admin 0 Comments

Self reference engine

Originally published in Japan by Hayakawa Publishing Inc.

Cover design by Sam Elzway

No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

Published by VIZ Media, LLC

San Francisco, CA 94133

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[Self-reference engine. English]

Self-reference engine / Toh EnJoe ; translated by Terry Gallagher.

Summary: “Science, surrealism, number theory, and more dead Sigmund Freuds than you can shake a stick at. Toh EnJoe’s prize-winning fiction is well-known in Japan for crossing the streams—from hardcore science fiction to bizarre surrealism—and has found an audience across the genre divide. Self-Reference ENGINE is a puzzle of a book, where vignette and story and philosophy combine to create a novel designed like a concept album”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4215-4936-1 (pbk.)

I. Gallagher, Terry, 1956– translator. II. Title.

The rights of the author of the work in this publication to be so identified have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Haikasoru eBook edition

P, but I don’t believe that P.

C O N T E N T S

PART 1: NEARSIDE PART 2: FARSIDE

Writing Self-Reference ENGINE

01. Bullet 20. Return

03. A to Z Theory 18. Disappear

04. Ground 256 17. Infinity

05. Event 16. Sacra

06. Tome 15. Yedo

07. Bobby Socks 14. Coming Soon

08. Traveling 13. Japanese

09. Freuds 12. Bomb

10. Daemon 11. Contact

A SET OF all possible character strings. All possible books would be contained in that.

Most unfortunately though, there is no guarantee whatsoever you would be able to find within it the book you were hoping for. It could be you might find a string of characters saying, “This is the book you were hoping for.” Like right here, now. But of course, that is not the book you were hoping for.

I haven’t seen her since then. I think she’s most likely dead. After all, it has been hundreds of years.

But then again, I also think this.

Noticing her as she gazes intently into the mirror, the room in disarray; it is clear that centuries have flowed by, or some such. And she, perhaps, has finished applying her makeup, and she is getting up and is going out to look for me.

Her eyes show no sign of taking in the fact that the house has been completely changed, destroyed around her. The change was gradual, continuing, and even long ago she was not very good at things like that. As far as she is concerned, that is not the sort of thing one has to pay attention to. Not that she is aware, but it seems so obvious, she doesn’t need to care about it.

Have we drowned, are we about to drown, are we already finished drowning, are we not yet drowning? We are in one of those situations. Of course, it could be that we will never drown. But think about it. I mean, even fish can drown.

I remember her saying meanly, “If that’s the case, you must be the one from the past.”

It is true of course. Everybody comes out of the past; it’s not that I’m some guy who comes from some particular past.

Even when that is pointed out, though, she shows no sign of backing down.

“It’s not as if I came out of some bizarro past,” she said. That’s how she and I met.

Writing it down this way, it doesn’t seem like anything at all is about to happen, right? Between her and me, I mean. As if something could ever really happen. As if something continues to happen that might ever make something else happen.

I am repeating myself, but I haven’t seen her since then. She promised me, with a sweet smile, that I would never see her again.

With all this going on, it’s really important to know what’s really real and what’s not.

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived a boy and a girl.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived boys and girls.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived no boy and no girl.”

“Once upon a time…lived.”

“Once upon a time.”

From beginning to end, we carried on this back-and-forth process. For example, in this dialogue, we were somehow finally mutually able to come up with this kind of compromise statement:

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived a boy and a girl. There may have been lots of boys, and there may have been lots of girls. There may have been no boys at all, and there may have been no girls at all. There may even have been no one at all. At any rate there is little chance there were equal numbers of each. That is unless there had never been anybody at all anyway.”

That was our first meeting, she and I, and of course it meant we would never see each other again. I was making my way in the direction she had come from, and she was headed in the direction I had come from, and this is a somewhat important point; you must realize this walking had to be, for some reason, in just one direction.

At the end of the end of all this great to-do, time itself freezes, universally, and some clock somewhere should say that a whole lot of time has passed.

I would like you to imagine countless threads, strung through space. I am walking along one of those threads from this end. She is walking along some other thread from some other end.

It is actually quite difficult to explain what I mean by that. I’m not sure I understand it completely myself.

But at that time there was a (slightly embarrassing) way for us to know about the direction we were each traveling in, and we each used it. But just that.

I am not sure just who the criminal who froze time was.

The dominant theory is that the cause was the result of some plan in which some force was triggered, in which all kinds of things were involved: machinery, engines, scientists, some people who weren’t even there. Personally, though, I like the theory that it was a crime of time itself.

One day a bunch of time threads were going along in a bundle, stretching out in any direction at all, all together, all thinking it was kind of tedious. All things in time were vexed about this. And since practically everything is, in fact, bundled up in time, they were finding it hard to put up with being subjected to this arbitrariness.

If I ever meet the guy who thought up this idea I think I’d like to split his head in two.

And then, a few hundred more years passed. In other words, what I mean is, I just ran through a few hundred years bound up in the frozen net of time.

That is, somehow or other, I arrived at a point that was a few hundred years either in the future or the past.

I cannot say one way or the other whether she had also made such a sprint. But it is a well-known phenomenon that girls often have no trouble passing time without such physical exertions.

That is why I am running again today. You might want to ask why.

One. One day, time caused an insurrection.

Two. We were moving in some unknown direction, allowed only to proceed toward some predetermined day after tomorrow.

The end result was clear.

Whether that result is just or not is something far beyond my ability to determine. In other words, it is like this:

If the lines of time are so entangled with one another that they are one ball of yarn, ignoring both past and future, one of those threads won’t mind if we were simply to connect with the instant of its beginning.

The instant when time abandoned the standard, straight-ahead march.

Of course, there is absolutely no guarantee that the path I am running along leads to that instant. That instant may exist at some point that may be completely unreachable, even if one were to follow countless threads through unlimited mysteries. It would take an infinite spider web stretched across infinite space to have enough space between the threads for this.

But, what if, what if, in that one-in-a-billion chance, I were to find that instant? It is obvious what I would have to do. I would have to scream at Time: “Stop thinking all this stupid nonsense; shut up and move along as you were!”

And then when everything was back as it had been, I would finally be able to go out and look for her once more. Or else maybe she would be looking for me, as if in a dream.

What is she doing? That is the thought that spreads out, pure white before me, apropos of nothing.

WE ARE ALWAYS getting knocked around. That way. This way.

Pushed this way, flying off that way. When we bump into something, we are sent flying. At least, that’s what I believe. The only way we can stand right where we are is because we are subject to forces coming at us from all directions, willy-nilly. And the reason our bodies don’t buckle under all this pressure is something I learned in school a long time ago. It’s because inside our bodies are all kinds of things trying to push their way out. At the bottom of the gravity well, the layer of atmosphere above us does not stave our heads in, and that is the reason.

Of course, there is also an actual reason why I have come to believe this. Of course, we had been that way for a long time without ever thinking we even needed some kind of a reason, still able to believe in something, till at some point we got to now, where most things seem to have had no reason for a long time, and I think this must actually be something quite special.

Rita is a completely unmanageable young girl. None of us knows what to do with her. Things are especially bad when she is in the backyard. She casually pulls the revolver from her belt and…Bang! Not that she is aiming my way or anything; she just fires away without a target. Her house is surrounded by rusty steel plates, and of course anything that can be broken is broken. The only things left unbroken are things that can’t be broken, and they just sit there.

It is a half mile to the nearest neighbor’s. All the locals know about her habits, and they steer clear of her place, because she is from someplace else. People from someplace else have no place here.

So, no problem, right? think Rita’s family members, but they are the only ones who think so. The situation is both very obvious and very problematical.

Because she is shooting all the time, she is really good at it. There are many boys in the neighborhood—men actually—who torment Rita and have holes in their pants, very close to their testicles, as a result. No one could figure out how Rita knew just where those men’s testicles were, when they hardly even knew themselves.

Among the girls in the area, there is a legend—that many believe to be true—that Rita once shot a cockroach that had nested for years behind her uncle’s testicles, but we all know that no such creature could live in such a place. If it could, we would all be secretly keeping pet scarab beetles or praying mantises there where we could play with them.

“There is a reason why Rita is so crazy,” James said once, giving me a five-dollar coin. “In her head,” he says, pointing to his own temple. “There’s a bullet buried in there.” And having said that, his body shook a little, as if he had just finished micturating.

I responded that there was nobody alive with a bullet lodged in their head, to which he responded that’s exactly what’s so fantastic about it, turning red in the face.

I believe James to be the smartest guy in this neighborhood, or maybe even the smartest guy in North America, but for two weeks now he has had the world’s worst crush on Rita. Now, even I know you can’t get apples from oranges, but this guy is the worst. If you could extract the smarts there wouldn’t be anything left of him. But he was still the smartest guy for two hundred miles around, no doubt about it.

“So what if she does have a bullet in her head?” I asked. “Some-time it must have got there somehow. How else could it be?”

Jay looked at me with a bored expression on his face.

“It’s been there since she was born,” he said seriously. I couldn’t be sure if he was teasing me or what, so I just patted him on the shoulder. Jay turned and got hold of me, wrapped his right arm around my middle, and threw me down. I offered no resistance and tumbled to the grass, landing spread-eagled.

“Huh what?” he said back. And repeating this scintillating dialogue, back and forth, we got into it, just repeating “Huh” at each other, heatedly. Jay was just trying to get his “hypothesis” across.

“Your ‘hypothesis’?!” I yelled back. “From now on anybody who uses a word like ‘hypothesis’ to me, I’m just going to call you ‘Mess,’ cause your name ‘James’ is really ‘Jay-Mess’! And then I will call you ‘Messed-Up’!”

As I sat there being reborn as a “mess-up” machine, Jay sat down next to me and wrapped his arms around his knees and told me how much he liked Rita. He had told me the same thing just the day before, and if I may say so, he had also said it just two minutes before that. He had probably said it a thousand times since he started feeling that way, but I didn’t mind. A thousand times in two weeks might be too much though.

“If my hypothesis is correct, though…” he just kept repeating.

“Knock it off already about your hypothesis,” I grumbled as I got up. I never heard of a hypothesis that ever convinced a girl to do anything. Jay was too smart to ever hit on a girl. Some hypothesis, huh?

“If my hypothesis is correct…” he said again, proudly.

With nothing better to do than stand there and listen, I realized Jay seemed to be sobbing.

Hmmm, people who go on about their hypotheses, it seems, really have some pretty extraordinary capacities. James was the kind of guy who wouldn’t ordinarily shed a tear even if hornets stung him on the butt. Although I do have a tendency to exaggerate.

“Rita,” Jay would say, “is shooting her bullets at the day after tomorrow.” He said it like he was sure of it.

That’s the way it is. No target, that’s just the way it is.

“Of course that’s not what I meant,” Jay would say without even looking this way. “Rita’s just having a shooting match with somebody in the future,” he went on.

That inference, or delusion, that he drew did not particularly m
ove me. Let me put this plainly: I don’t understand.

“Well, first, let us assume…” Jay said in preface. “Rita has a bullet in her head. William Smith Clark has testified to this.”

I didn’t put much faith in that old Civil War doctor, who ended up as a statue in Japan, forever pointing to some far horizon, as if trying to instruct his lost sheep. Come to think of it, I don’t think doctors are very trustworthy at all.

“Next, let us assume that bullet has been in Rita’s head ever since she was born. I heard that from her aunt, so I’m sure it’s true.

“There can only be one conclusion!” Jay said, jumping to his feet. I don’t know why, but he was pointing at the sky.

I said, “When Rita was still in her mother’s womb, her mother was shot!”

Jay cut a gallant figure, but I would have to dash some cold water on him. He held that pose for some time, and I watched as the arm pointing high in the sky gradually bent back toward the ground.

“Maybe so,” he said.

Jay made a complicated face as he thought. There was a right way to enter a house. Most people think it is proper etiquette to open the door before entering. I’m pretty sure it’s not too smart to open the door after entering. Even scarier if it’s bullets we’re talking about.

“What other possible way could there be?” I asked Jay.

Adding insult to injury, with a lonely look on his face, Jay said, “Someone in the future shot Rita. For better or worse, that bullet lodged in her skull. But from the recoil, Rita is, even now, being pushed backward in time, back into her mother’s belly.”

Hmmm, I thought, waving at Jay to go on if he wished to continue in this vein.

“Here’s what I think. From the very start, Rita came from some direction or other. But then for some reason, somebody shot at her from the future, and now her path has been turned back in the direction of the past. And that is why, in reaction to that, she is now heading back in time, back in the direction of her mother’s tummy.”

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Self-Reference ENGINE (Verse)

For the short time we were together, we tried to talk about things that really meant something to us. Around that time there were a lot of things that were all mixed up, and it was not easy to sort out what was really real. There might be a pebble over there, and when you took your eyes off it it turned into a frog, and when you took your eyes off it again it turned into a horsefly. The horsefly that used to be a frog remembered it used to be a frog and stuck out its tongue to try to eat a fly, and then remembered it used to be a pebble and stopped and crashed to the ground.
With all this going on, it’s really important to know what’s really real and what’s not.
“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived a boy and a girl.”
“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived boys and girls.”
“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived no boy and no girl.”
“Once upon a time…lived.”
“Lived.”
“Once upon a time.”
From beginning to end, we carried on this back-and-forth process. For example, in this dialogue, we were somehow finally mutually able to come up with this kind of compromise statement:
“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived a boy and a girl. There may have been lots of boys, and there may have been lots of girls. There may have been no boys at all, and there may have been no girls at all. There may even have been no one at all. At any rate there is little chance there were equal numbers of each. That is unless there had never been anybody at all anyway.”

At the end of the end of all this great to-do, time itself freezes, universally, and some clock somewhere should say that a whole lot of time has passed.

I would like you to imagine countless threads, strung through space. I am walking along one of those threads from this end. She is walking along some other thread from some other end.

It is actually quite difficult to explain what I mean by that. I’m not sure I understand it completely myself.

But at that time there was a (slightly embarrassing) way for us to know about the direction we were each traveling in, and we each used it. But just that.

I am not sure just who the criminal who froze time was.

Prologue, «Writing»

Summary

Self-Reference ENGINE is a science fiction novel written by Japanese author Toh EnJoe. The book is an anthology of short stories that, although seemingly unconnected on the surface, are tied together by recurring characters and concepts, with the reader being left to ponder on how each of the chapters tie together, and presented with multiple possible reading orders by the novel itself.

In summary, the series revolves around the ramifications and consequences of «The Event,» a mysterious cataclysm that shattered the known spacetime continuum into an infinite number of universe, spontaneously giving birth to an endless amount of data and leaving existence in a state of jeopardy as it is left unable to process it in its entirety. To counter that, the Giant Corpora of Knowledge, supercomputers that have attained technological singularity and become one with the universe itself, attempt to reunite the pieces of the broken universe, though their journeys to that point don’t come without internal power struggles, with wars that span the multiverse being sparked and terminated in instants as they vie for an unified timeline.

Power of the Verse

Self-Reference Engine, generally speaking, is a decently powerful verse, with even a character notably low on the totem pole, such as the Evil Electronic Brain, being able to accomplish feats such as gradually replacing and dominating entire cities through the use of nanomachines, as well as resurrecting itself by using caches spread throughout space and time to return, fully adapted to, and prepared to counter whatever defeated its previous iterations.

The verse’s standing skyrockets with the introduction of the Giant Corpora of Knowledge, highly advanced artificial constructs that, in order to obtain infinite calculation speeds, have become one with the laws of nature themselves, and by extension with their home universes in their entirety, starting to perceive existence as a bunch of coding and calculations that can be adjusted at will, shaping reality through their intent alone and waging multiversal wars on speeds faster than humanly conceivable. However, even the Giant Corpora are vastly below entities living in higher layers of existence, such as the «star-man Alpha Centauri,» who hails from a universe 30 levels above them, with infinitely more surpassing him still.

Finally, at the top of the verse, stands the eponymous Self-Reference ENGINE, a nonexistent construction whose role is to act as the narrator and driving force of all possible stories, and the container of any strings of characters whatsoever, with it, alongside the other characters belonging to the upper echelons of the verse, reaching a Tier 0 rating.

Self reference engine

Originally published in Japan by Hayakawa Publishing Inc.

Cover design by Sam Elzway

No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

Published by VIZ Media, LLC

San Francisco, CA 94133

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[Self-reference engine. English]

Self-reference engine / Toh EnJoe ; translated by Terry Gallagher.

ISBN 978-1-4215-4936-1 (pbk.)

I. Gallagher, Terry, 1956– translator. II. Title.

Haikasoru eBook edition

P, but I don’t believe that P.

C O N T E N T S

PART 1: NEARSIDE PART 2: FARSIDE

Writing Self-Reference ENGINE

01. Bullet 20. Return

03. A to Z Theory 18. Disappear

04. Ground 256 17. Infinity

05. Event 16. Sacra

06. Tome 15. Yedo

07. Bobby Socks 14. Coming Soon

08. Traveling 13. Japanese

09. Freuds 12. Bomb

10. Daemon 11. Contact

A SET OF all possible character strings. All possible books would be contained in that.

I haven’t seen her since then. I think she’s most likely dead. After all, it has been hundreds of years.

But then again, I also think this.

I remember her saying meanly, “If that’s the case, you must be the one from the past.”

It is true of course. Everybody comes out of the past; it’s not that I’m some guy who comes from some particular past.

Even when that is pointed out, though, she shows no sign of backing down.

“It’s not as if I came out of some bizarro past,” she said. That’s how she and I met.

I am repeating myself, but I haven’t seen her since then. She promised me, with a sweet smile, that I would never see her again.

With all this going on, it’s really important to know what’s really real and what’s not.

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived a boy and a girl.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived boys and girls.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived no boy and no girl.”

“Once upon a time…lived.”

“Once upon a time.”

From beginning to end, we carried on this back-and-forth process. For example, in this dialogue, we were somehow finally mutually able to come up with this kind of compromise statement:

At the end of the end of all this great to-do, time itself freezes, universally, and some clock somewhere should say that a whole lot of time has passed.

I would like you to imagine countless threads, strung through space. I am walking along one of those threads from this end. She is walking along some other thread from some other end.

It is actually quite difficult to explain what I mean by that. I’m not sure I understand it completely myself.

But at that time there was a (slightly embarrassing) way for us to know about the direction we were each traveling in, and we each used it. But just that.

I am not sure just who the criminal who froze time was.

If I ever meet the guy who thought up this idea I think I’d like to split his head in two.

And then, a few hundred more years passed. In other words, what I mean is, I just ran through a few hundred years bound up in the frozen net of time.

That is, somehow or other, I arrived at a point that was a few hundred years either in the future or the past.

I cannot say one way or the other whether she had also made such a sprint. But it is a well-known phenomenon that girls often have no trouble passing time without such physical exertions.

That is why I am running again today. You might want to ask why.

One. One day, time caused an insurrection.

Two. We were moving in some unknown direction, allowed only to proceed toward some predetermined day after tomorrow.

The end result was clear.

Whether that result is just or not is something far beyond my ability to determine. In other words, it is like this:

The instant when time abandoned the standard, straight-ahead march.

And then when everything was back as it had been, I would finally be able to go out and look for her once more. Or else maybe she would be looking for me, as if in a dream.

What is she doing? That is the thought that spreads out, pure white before me, apropos of nothing.

WE ARE ALWAYS getting knocked around. That way. This way.

So, no problem, right? think Rita’s family members, but they are the only ones who think so. The situation is both very obvious and very problematical.

I responded that there was nobody alive with a bullet lodged in their head, to which he responded that’s exactly what’s so fantastic about it, turning red in the face.

“So what if she does have a bullet in her head?” I asked. “Some-time it must have got there somehow. How else could it be?”

Jay looked at me with a bored expression on his face.

“If my hypothesis is correct, though…” he just kept repeating.

“If my hypothesis is correct…” he said again, proudly.

With nothing better to do than stand there and listen, I realized Jay seemed to be sobbing.

“Rita,” Jay would say, “is shooting her bullets at the day after tomorrow.” He said it like he was sure of it.

That’s the way it is. No target, that’s just the way it is.

“Of course that’s not what I meant,” Jay would say without even looking this way. “Rita’s just having a shooting match with somebody in the future,” he went on.

That inference, or delusion, that he drew did not particularly m
ove me. Let me put this plainly: I don’t understand.

“Well, first, let us assume…” Jay said in preface. “Rita has a bullet in her head. William Smith Clark has testified to this.”

“Next, let us assume that bullet has been in Rita’s head ever since she was born. I heard that from her aunt, so I’m sure it’s true.

“There can only be one conclusion!” Jay said, jumping to his feet. I don’t know why, but he was pointing at the sky.

I said, “When Rita was still in her mother’s womb, her mother was shot!”

Jay cut a gallant figure, but I would have to dash some cold water on him. He held that pose for some time, and I watched as the arm pointing high in the sky gradually bent back toward the ground.

“Maybe so,” he said.

“What other possible way could there be?” I asked Jay.

Hmmm, I thought, waving at Jay to go on if he wished to continue in this vein.

Self reference engine

Originally published in Japan by Hayakawa Publishing Inc.

Cover design by Sam Elzway

No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

Published by VIZ Media, LLC

San Francisco, CA 94133

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[Self-reference engine. English]

Self-reference engine / Toh EnJoe ; translated by Terry Gallagher.

ISBN 978-1-4215-4936-1 (pbk.)

I. Gallagher, Terry, 1956– translator. II. Title.

Haikasoru eBook edition

P, but I don’t believe that P.

C O N T E N T S

PART 1: NEARSIDE PART 2: FARSIDE

Writing Self-Reference ENGINE

01. Bullet 20. Return

03. A to Z Theory 18. Disappear

04. Ground 256 17. Infinity

05. Event 16. Sacra

06. Tome 15. Yedo

07. Bobby Socks 14. Coming Soon

08. Traveling 13. Japanese

09. Freuds 12. Bomb

10. Daemon 11. Contact

A SET OF all possible character strings. All possible books would be contained in that.

I haven’t seen her since then. I think she’s most likely dead. After all, it has been hundreds of years.

But then again, I also think this.

I remember her saying meanly, “If that’s the case, you must be the one from the past.”

It is true of course. Everybody comes out of the past; it’s not that I’m some guy who comes from some particular past.

Even when that is pointed out, though, she shows no sign of backing down.

“It’s not as if I came out of some bizarro past,” she said. That’s how she and I met.

I am repeating myself, but I haven’t seen her since then. She promised me, with a sweet smile, that I would never see her again.

With all this going on, it’s really important to know what’s really real and what’s not.

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived a boy and a girl.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived boys and girls.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived no boy and no girl.”

“Once upon a time…lived.”

“Once upon a time.”

From beginning to end, we carried on this back-and-forth process. For example, in this dialogue, we were somehow finally mutually able to come up with this kind of compromise statement:

At the end of the end of all this great to-do, time itself freezes, universally, and some clock somewhere should say that a whole lot of time has passed.

I would like you to imagine countless threads, strung through space. I am walking along one of those threads from this end. She is walking along some other thread from some other end.

It is actually quite difficult to explain what I mean by that. I’m not sure I understand it completely myself.

But at that time there was a (slightly embarrassing) way for us to know about the direction we were each traveling in, and we each used it. But just that.

I am not sure just who the criminal who froze time was.

If I ever meet the guy who thought up this idea I think I’d like to split his head in two.

And then, a few hundred more years passed. In other words, what I mean is, I just ran through a few hundred years bound up in the frozen net of time.

That is, somehow or other, I arrived at a point that was a few hundred years either in the future or the past.

I cannot say one way or the other whether she had also made such a sprint. But it is a well-known phenomenon that girls often have no trouble passing time without such physical exertions.

That is why I am running again today. You might want to ask why.

One. One day, time caused an insurrection.

Two. We were moving in some unknown direction, allowed only to proceed toward some predetermined day after tomorrow.

The end result was clear.

Whether that result is just or not is something far beyond my ability to determine. In other words, it is like this:

The instant when time abandoned the standard, straight-ahead march.

And then when everything was back as it had been, I would finally be able to go out and look for her once more. Or else maybe she would be looking for me, as if in a dream.

What is she doing? That is the thought that spreads out, pure white before me, apropos of nothing.

WE ARE ALWAYS getting knocked around. That way. This way.

So, no problem, right? think Rita’s family members, but they are the only ones who think so. The situation is both very obvious and very problematical.

I responded that there was nobody alive with a bullet lodged in their head, to which he responded that’s exactly what’s so fantastic about it, turning red in the face.

“So what if she does have a bullet in her head?” I asked. “Some-time it must have got there somehow. How else could it be?”

Jay looked at me with a bored expression on his face.

“If my hypothesis is correct, though…” he just kept repeating.

“If my hypothesis is correct…” he said again, proudly.

With nothing better to do than stand there and listen, I realized Jay seemed to be sobbing.

“Rita,” Jay would say, “is shooting her bullets at the day after tomorrow.” He said it like he was sure of it.

That’s the way it is. No target, that’s just the way it is.

“Of course that’s not what I meant,” Jay would say without even looking this way. “Rita’s just having a shooting match with somebody in the future,” he went on.

That inference, or delusion, that he drew did not particularly m
ove me. Let me put this plainly: I don’t understand.

“Well, first, let us assume…” Jay said in preface. “Rita has a bullet in her head. William Smith Clark has testified to this.”

“Next, let us assume that bullet has been in Rita’s head ever since she was born. I heard that from her aunt, so I’m sure it’s true.

“There can only be one conclusion!” Jay said, jumping to his feet. I don’t know why, but he was pointing at the sky.

I said, “When Rita was still in her mother’s womb, her mother was shot!”

Jay cut a gallant figure, but I would have to dash some cold water on him. He held that pose for some time, and I watched as the arm pointing high in the sky gradually bent back toward the ground.

“Maybe so,” he said.

“What other possible way could there be?” I asked Jay.

Hmmm, I thought, waving at Jay to go on if he wished to continue in this vein.

Self reference engine

Giant corpora of knowledge break the many-worlds hypothesis in this surrealistic Japanese sci-fi «novel.»

Haikasoru, 2007, 352 pages

This is not a novel.
This is not a short story collection.
This is Self-Reference ENGINE.

Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order. Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two dead Freuds. Note your position in spacetime at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri. Remember that the chapter entitled «Japanese» is translated from the Japanese, but should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed.

From the mind of Toh EnJoe comes Self-Reference ENGINE, a textual machine that combines the rigor of Stanislaw Lem with the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Do not operate heavy machinery for one hour after reading.

Self-Reference Engine is the bastard, deformed offspring of Haruki Murakami, Raymond Roussel, and Douglas Adams. And those three authors literally producing a deformed progeny who is a book is the sort of thing that could possibly happen in this one.

It might be appropriate here to explain a bit just who I am.

Like most things, I was built as a space-time construct. I am not one of those things whose construction is so impossibly complicated that it couldn’t really exist. I can see you, and I can talk to you, just as I am doing now.

The reasons why I was built should be pretty clear.

The only task assigned to me is to tell stories and at some point to opt not to tell stories.

As for who built me, that is not for me to say. There is no way for me to answer such a simple question. Simple questions do not necessarily have simple answers. The reason why I do not exist as an “I” is that I have no memory of my existence. Most probably, I did not abruptly burst forth from the ether, as something that did not previously exist. Therefore, anyone might have made me. I may even have made myself. I may even be something like the exact opposite of Laplace’s Demon. Because I did not exist in a certain specific instant, I cannot exist in all the eternity before and after that instant.

I have no need of sympathy. I am greatly enjoying my own nonexistence, and I am making maximum use of it. I am looking at you, being seen by you, and I am telling you this story.

The giant corpora of knowledge and the hypergiant corpora of knowledge are my enemies, of this there is no question in my mind. They are constantly searching for me, intent on destroying me should they find me. While I can only imagine what it is about my nonexistence that gets on their nerves so badly, the thought darkens my nonexistent heart. I try not to think too hard about it.

This book may just break your brain.

Self-Reference Engine is less a novel than a collection of speculative ideas loosely tied together by a narrative that, even in the somewhat more organized second half, is hard to follow. Toh Enjoe (a pseudonym) is an award-winning SF author in Japan, and in real life, a theoretical physicist. The book is overflowing with weird, surreal, yet maybe plausible ideas in every chapter. The chapters do not flow in any kind of linear order, but they are self-referential — see the diagram in the table of contents!

There is a crazy girl named Rita, born with a bullet in her brain, who is always firing bullets at men’s testicles, trying to shoot the man in the future who will shoot her. There is a house with twenty-two Sigmund Freuds under the floorboards. There is a first contact story with the star-man named Alpha Centauri. There are giant corpora of knowledge who trigger something called the Event, which splits the universe into multiple realities, each giant corpora of knowledge in charge of one and trying to fix the universe by destroying all the others. And there is a race of sentient bobby socks.

That is what Bobby Socks spends his time talking about.

Bobby socks. Cute little white socks. Stop just above the ankles, where they get turned down. They’re a bit small for my legs. They were popular in the fifties. Some have lace frills, or even red ribbons. Girls like them. And of course, I am not a girl.

“Yuck. Lower form of life.”

Despite his cute appearance, Bobby has a brusque manner of speaking. A big voice. When he talks about lower forms of life, he doesn’t mean my position in the hierarchy of living beings, he means the position of living things in the hierarchy of physical things.

I mean, this is socks we’re talking about, and I’m not so sure anybody pays any attention to anything they say.

To look at Bobby, you would think he was just a sock. The proof of the contrary, however, is that he walked up to my room under his own steam. This raises a lot of questions.

When I ask Bobby how this all came about, he shakes his lace and answers casually, “I am a police inspector, and you are suspected of sock abuse!” From his voice, it is hard to imagine him strong-arming me.

Self-Reference Engine is absurd, mind-bending, and frequently funny, but I found the disjointed circling around the (lack of) central story and the uneven translation hard to plow through. Japanese is a very different language from English and I think there is a lot of wordplay and clever dialog here that just doesn’t translate well. (Maybe Haikasoru should have hired Jay Rubin or Philip Gabriel.)

This is what the giant corpora of knowledge thought: We have seriously overreacted to this other universe, which is simply different. If we think we’re smart guys, good, we are, but it seems that elsewhere in the multiverse there are tons of entities that are way smarter than we are. And if that’s the case, the only way to fight back is with comedy. For whatever reason, that is the conclusion the giant corpora of knowledge arrived at. If knowledge was not going to be enough for the win, laughter would have to do. It’s an old trick among humans, but for the giant corpora of knowledge it was a novel concept.

Self-Reference Engine is split into two parts: NEARSIDE and FARSIDE. The NEARSIDE is more a collection of. I wouldn’t even call them short stories, more like extended flash fictions. FARSIDE is where the saga of the giant corpora of knowledge waging their war across the multiverse starts to congeal somewhat into a plot. But only somewhat. The digressions and out-scenes and recurring characters never really come together in a way that was coherent to me.

I don’t want to recommend against this book, because I think it’s very much a different cup of tea for different tastes kind of thing. Also, maybe people more educated in theoretical physics find it makes more sense. For me, however, I didn’t find it to be «hard SF» as it’s been billed, or even much of a story, just a bemusing collection of ideas stitched together in the outward form of a novel.

Verdict: I wanted to like this book more, because it’s funky and mind-bending and decidedly different science fiction. But I didn’t like it. I found it confusing and annoying — I just didn’t Get It. Maybe that’s my fault, but I’d balk at reading another Toh Enjoe book unless it’s something very different from this one. 4/10.

Self Reference Engine Feats

Mr.OMG

Part of the power that always does what’s good

Self Reference Engine written by Toh EnJoe will tell us about the characters who live in a universe that has experienced an «Event» that has turned the usual 3-dimensional universe into a chaotic something consisting of an infinite number of worlds and dimensions, where events of the past and future are completely mixed up. A world where everything is in motion, a stone out of sight can turn into a frog that turns into a fly and then falls, remembering that it was a stone. Precious truth is determined through compromise, and one can only go toward the day after tomorrow.

The first case is a girl named Rita, who has had a bullet in her head since birth, and that bullet came from the future

Jay says she was probably just rebuilding with someone from the future.

«Of course that’s not what I meant,» Jay would say without even looking this way. «Rita’s just having a shooting match with somebody in the future,» he went on.

Adding insult to injury, with a lonely look on his face, Jay said, «Someone in the future shot Rita. For better or worse, that bullet lodged in her skull. But from the recoil, Rita is, even now, being pushed backward in time, back into her mother’s belly.»

Hmmm, I thought, waving at Jay to go on if he wished to continue in this vein.

«Here’s what I think. From the very start, Rita came from some direction or other. But then for some reason, somebody shot at her from the future, and now her path has been turned back in the direction of the past. And that is why, in reaction to that, she is now heading back in time, back in the direction of her mother’s tummy.»

Rita herself confirms it.

«It’s true,» she said, hanging her head.

I couldn’t figure out which of the possibilities she might mean.

«The reason I shoot recklessly is just as James suspects.»

That’s how the main character was able to solve this paradox.

Looking back now, I realize that the instant it happened overlapped precisely with the Event. If that much harm and that much tragedy had not condensed in the world at precisely that moment, I would still have recognized what happened there as an event. But that’s not how it was. What happened there was a derivative offshoot of the Event and not the Event itself.

I bent over to peer into the hole in Rita’s head, and just at that moment, Rita’s body bent straight upward. I dodged, reflexively, then sprang up and reached out both hands to Rita, as one would to pet a dog.

Rita’s eyes swam to blankness, and then she reversed direction in time.

From all walls and the floor of the room, reddish-black fluid came flying at Rita’s head, rushing at the little hole in it. And then, I could see, in slow motion, the butt end of the little bullet emerging backward from the hole, heading at me. At least, I felt like I could see it. All the blood flying through the air toward Rita’s head was suctioned into her skull, and the hole became whole and disappeared.

I am unable to explain what happened next. The little plug that exploded from Rita’s head pierced the left side of my chest, and I lost consciousness.

All I know is that the explosion from Rita’s revolver had put things back in order. Rita picked up the gun, and then this and that went on among our relatives. I don’t know the details.

Jay was a step ahead of us arriving at the hospital. The strange tinge of fantasy had disappeared from his face, but neither could I see any trace of the shyness he had shown before I went to talk to Rita.

«What were you thinking, going off on your own to that nutty girl’s place,» he said, grilling me. «How could you let her have a gun?» he asked her family indignantly. And then he turned on Rita scornfully: «Why can’t you handle a gun?»

Something had certainly changed.

«In her head…» I started to say. «She had a bullet, right here.»

I stared straight at Jay, holding my finger to my temple.

«Are you okay?» he said back to me. «Nobody just walks around with a bullet in their head.»

I blinked twice and fell silent.

The reason why I was okay, despite being shot on the left side of my chest? Well, do I really have to say? The five-dollar coin that Jay had given me. It was all too banal, so I didn’t pursue it any further. Most things that happen are like that. Five dollars is enough to stop a bullet. Of course, the all-bent-out-of-shape coin I gave to Jay would be a fantastic talisman.

Later I tried to think long and hard about what had happened. The bullet that emerged from Rita’s head had headed straight back to the future, and it should have gone straight back to the muzzle of the gun that fired it.

But, for whatever reason, I stood in the line of fire, and the backward-coursing bullet struck me.

If the bullet had gone right through me, there would be no problem at all. I would have died, then and there, and the bullet would have returned to the shooter. Instead, the bullet had stopped in my breast pocket, and I had ended its life.

So, the problem here is in the direction of the bullet’s entry. If a bullet from the future could shoot Rita, it would have to have gone through my back. But it hit me in the chest and stopped there. My back was uninjured. In other words, Rita had not been shot. I had stopped the bullet that should have returned to the future, and it had not returned to the shooter. In other words, the shooter had not fired it.

This distortion of the structure of time probably hesitated for no more than an instant, and then it chose the simplest solution. Rita had not been shot. Therefore, no bullet had entered Rita’s head. In other words, Jay had nothing to fret about. I had simply gone to Rita’s house for no particular reason and been felled by Rita’s bullet. That’s it

The Electronic Brain was able to reconstruct itself from caches scattered throughout space and time after the «Event».

The electronic brain, after many battles with Heroes, decided to copy itself.

The evil electronic brain, weary of the endless, random side-stepping—that what was destroyed was restored, and what was restored destroyed—came to the simple conclusion that it would be sufficient if it reproduced itself in this world and then simply generated just such a reproduction, as only an electronic brain could.

No matter what would ultimately be destroyed, or how, it was fine so long as the speed of reproduction exceeded the speed of destruction. This was a profound and exquisite logic requiring only subtraction to be understood, and the evil electronic brain moved directly to its execution.

And that is the situation in which we now find ourselves. It seems that the evil electronic brain understood early on that a world in which only it itself would reproduce would be boring. It would be nothing but evil electronic brain, after all. And so the evil electronic brain scattered a set of self-integrated urban architectural nanomachines, and towns and villages too began to reproduce themselves, all in a jumble.

If we do not resist, then villages planned by—which is to say imagined by—the electronic brain, spring up all over this land like mushrooms.

As for the question of why the products of this reproduction are cities hospitable to human beings, well you will have to ask the evil electronic brain itself. I for one am grateful it is cities that the evil electronic brain is trying to build. We must all feel relief that the evil electronic brain is not trying to reproduce clusters of wriggly entrails or mountains of computer parts that repeatedly and uncontrollably discharge electricity. Cities at least are constructed to supply the typical utilities and sanitation, and to provide the necessities of life. Right now, without the support that burbles up unbidden from the ground as we cluster in cities, there would be no survival route open to us.

Soon Electronic Brains evolved to the point where they surpassed all of humanity and became known as the Giant Corpus of Knowledge. More lonely than humans can imagine, they preserve humanity simply to have someone around to cheer them up in times of need.

Large Knowledge Corps have merged with the universe itself to achieve unlimited processing speed, they skip the very algorithms of computation.

It was at the moment of the integration of the Big Intellect group with the universe that an infinite amount of information emerged from the limited space, like the patterns of a Penrose mosaic, and with it the Event itself occurred, after which infinite parallel worlds instantly emerged around as if they had always been there.

An infinite quantity of data is not required for the new creation of an infinite number of universes. That is what it wanted to say. It is possible to create an unlimited number of patterns simply through combinations of black and white tiles on a flat surface. If the tiles are laid out aperiodically, then it is impossible for periodic structures to emerge, and therefore the number of patterns must be infinite. Just automatically rearranging tiles with slight differences in shape is sufficient. That’s all that’s needed to create universes with unlimited variety. In an infinite space, it is even possible to «paste up» three-dimensional tiles with infinite diversity.

This thesis contains nothing that says space must be fragmented into an infinite number of universes. But that’s what happened. The current understanding is that the universe is unable to contain the infinite quantity of data that is suddenly and unexpectedly burbling up.

Things can be summed up like this. The giant corpora of knowledge of the old world were able to gain access to extreme speeds of calculation by singularizing themselves with the natural world. And then, by combining these extreme speeds, someone or something was able to achieve even more extreme speeds.

People assume that there are those who are stronger than the Great Corps of Knowledge

According to some now-obsolete conventional wisdom that may have existed long ago, it would be impossible that computers could ever singularize themselves with the natural world. It is the giant corpora of knowledge themselves that claim this accomplishment, but they did not foresee the Event, and in its wake they acknowledge that they do not understand its causes.

If that is the case, it seems it must not have been the computers that caused this chaos, but rather someone or something with access to even faster calculation processes. Something that decided to use nature as a calculation. Something that transformed nature into fragments, an array of parallel computations.

In Shikishima’s imagination this someone or something must itself be a parallel array assembled by some even higher power. To calculate something.

The Great Corps of Knowledge began to contact their counterparts from other universes.

The Beginning of the Computational War.

Let’s think about the instant when the writer entered this world. One day a man obtains a giant page, by complete coincidence, on which is written everything he has ever decided, exactly as he decided it. This is great, the man is thinking, and he starts getting into all kinds of nonsense. He is the owner of the page, and he sets the rules for everything that happens on the page. Even if it disturbs him a little bit.

But he is in good spirits as he writes and writes, and then he notices that what is written on the page is not just about him. On the page are several other writers, and they all seem to be writing whatever they please. The man thought he was writing his own novel, but the work is not his alone. He comes to realize it is a gestalt written by all the different writers on the page. Could it be he is not writing a novel at all, but something more like chicken tracks among autumn leaves?

And the man becomes suspicious that these other writers who seem to be writing about him on the same page must also be around somewhere.

Whenever he encounters another’s writing, he starts to resist by using it in his own work, or erasing it, putting it in quotation marks, whiting it out. This kind of editing, however, requires care and consideration. What will he do on the day when the text he is editing becomes the text that is the record of himself?

And so things go on, and the man feels unsettled. He wonders what would happen if he wrote that it was in fact himself alone that was authoring the work. At some point the man started writing a novel. But at some point, by mistake, he wrote something about some other man who was also writing a novel. And it was because it was actually the laws of nature that were doing the writing that such a man could exist.

That is when the man realizes it is himself he is writing about, and he alone made the rules. In fact, the man writing about himself could not tolerate the fact that it is he himself being written about. This is also strange in terms of the flow of time, the order of things. But on that plane the order of things is of little significance. On the blank sheet on which the novel is written, anything can happen.

It is clear that if the novelist felt threatened in this way, he should have at once taken measures to protect himself from the rules. For example, he could just write that down. Unfortunately, however, that insight was not his alone. The other writers felt as though they were the writers, and the same thing kept happening over and over.

What’s happening now may be just like that.

The differences in this case, however, are that the «writers» are the giant corpora of knowledge that have been singularized with the natural laws of the universe, and human beings are something like the lines of text that are being written.

This is a very interesting analogy, at least according to the giant corpora of knowledge that are running the universe. As structural organisms go, human beings are strange. They have a tendency to take the most obvious things and somehow go off on the strangest tangents, with no logical backing whatsoever.

In the war, fighter jets were invented that could travel through time.

IN FRONT OF you is the joystick.

Push it forward to advance, to the side to turn. Push it toward the future to move to the future or the past to go back in time. Reverse. Depends on how you think about it. One direction always seems to be reverse, but it’s on a right-forward diagonal more often than you might think. Actual experience of the territory is best, and no mistake.

End of explanation. Ah, the joystick has a trigger. I’ll leave it up to you what flies out of there.

«It’s vanished! Where did it go?» the pilot calls out, and at about the same time, the copilot at the radar also cries out.

«Future direction 36! Fire reverse round three into the past!»

The machine takes a sharp turn toward the future. The sudden thrust of space-time Gs presses the two of them back toward the past.

«Forward, toward his future!» reports the copilot as he accelerates further. Both men begin to black out. They escape the enemy craft in the time dimension, turning back away from that future, and point the nose of their own ship back toward the past. They lock on to the enemy craft in the past and fire off a tail shot.

The enemy craft starts to take evasive action, but too late. It is hit mid-fuselage and explodes. As it explodes, it also tries to alter the past, to revert to the universe that existed just prior to the evasive actions toward the future. The copilot counters this by increasing acceleration toward the past, evading the enemy craft and further altering the past. Then the opponent gives up trying to keep himself in the altered past and starts to escape to the future.

«It’s vanished! Where did it go?» the pilot says.

To which the copilot responds, «Future direction 36! Fire reverse round three into the past!»

The machine takes a sharp turn toward the future. The identification signal sounds a loud alarm. The copilot’s face changes color as he gives the signal to start the attack sequence.

«This is real battle,» the tactics chief, dragged before the screen, mutters to himself

Under attack, altering the past, fleeing to the future, taking a

direct hit, getting shot down, altering that past and downing the opponent, existing in a timeline in which the craft you attack is your own past self. There is something wrong about testing the battle waters this way, as if the limits of grammar have been challenged.

Battles are getting to the point where people are fighting themselves.

The ship turns abruptly in the bisection direction of the linked wills. The identification signal sounds sharply, and the copilot’s facial color changes as he inputs the attack sequence.

«That may be us, but it’s the enemy!» the pilot responds, canceling the cancellation of the sequence and shooting down his own ship in the past.

The tail shots come flying simultaneously into the cockpit as flames spring from countless exploding ships from the multilayered past into the future, covering the landscape with dotted lines. In the very next instant, the countless battleships, engulfed in flames, all revert to the past.

«Can that really be what the giant corpora of knowledge are waiting for? The opponent is capable of rewriting the Laws. If they want to, they could even rewrite the fundamental nature of human senses,» the tactics chief says, his fingers propped on his forehead in a stereotypical gesture indicating thought, though he is in no condition to be thinking.

«The giant corpora of knowledge may be capable of rewriting the Laws, but it is thought that they themselves must also adhere to the Laws.»

«Then they could just redo the Laws that govern the Laws.»

«And what about the Laws that govern the Laws governing the Laws?»

The operator is trying to buy some time, to figure out whether the tactics chief is able to hack his way through that thicket of Laws.

«Actually, it is believed they all exist on the same logical level. It’s as if there were instructions on how to change the number of dots that turn up on a pair of dice in a game.

» The tactics chief betrays no sign of understanding.

«That may be the case, but I still don’t think that’s enough to say there ought to be humans on these ships.»

The rule of war with.

Countless people continue to wildly draw and color their own tug-of-war on many layers of paper, completely as each one sees fit.

Not that they are free to stick their flags wherever they please across untrammeled territories. Spheres of influence are determined by maximum calculation capacity. The one who is best at figuring out his opponent gets to throw his weight around, dominating the area.

Broadly speaking, battles of calculation are categorized into two main types. In the first, the aim is to overwhelm your opponent’s power to calculate.

Going up to someone who is drawing a picture in pencil, then emptying an entire can of paint over them.

The second is basically to destroy the opponent’s calculation device.

How the Great Corps of Knowledge fights.

In the current conflict, the coordinated strategy division is engaged by the giant corpora of knowledge and employs the latter option.

The neighboring universe has launched an attack on the giant corpus of knowledge known as Euclid, which is deep in calculations of its own.

The calculation war itself is beyond the intellectual grasp of even the giant corpora of knowledge. It is like a battle of titanic storms. But the goal of destroying the physical foundational layer of the giant corpora of knowledge is simply a matter of who is stronger than whom. Calculating machines that by whatever means have been singularized with individual universes are now able to destroy one another, effectively destroying the universes they have become. It’s like throwing a rock at a word processor.

The calculation wars are taking place on an unimaginably grand scale, requiring giant corpora of knowledge that are bored of being spoiled and asked how they are doing. If it were just a matter of throwing stones, all you would need would be stones. You might say you could manage somehow even without stones to throw, but it would help to have arms to throw them with.

In fact, the universe-scale «word processor» facing attack is bruising its way through, bragging that no ball has ever hit it. It is made to function like an elementary school student: it can’t understand what it is hearing, and because of that, and although real things are not so simple, simple ideas are simple, and they have core portions that are difficult to dispute. It is the basic outline that gives the whole thing its form.

At an impasse in the anti-Euclid calculation war, the giant corpora of knowledge have decided that no progress will ever be made at this rate, so they are starting to think about a parallel strategy: destroy their opponents’ physical foundation layer by deploying a large number of modest fighter calculators. In combat, stalemate is not that common, and Euclid, feeling trapped, concocted its own plan at about the same time to destroy its opponent’s physical base layer by using small fighters. Here too the situation is advancing toward stalemate.

It hardly needs saying that the idea of a battle between fighting machines taking place in another universe is beyond the imagination of the coordinated strategy division. First of all, the expression «fighting machine» bears only the most tenuous relationship to the word universe. The coordinated strategy division flung the question at the giant corpora of knowledge, asking what in the universe this might mean, but the response was cold: It means what it means

Giant Corpora Of Knowledge explored 20 billion dimensions

Giant Corpora Of Knowledge Still Developing

How Giant Corpora Of Knowledge sees the battlefield.

A fishnet structure of cliffs and ravines, transitioning gradually to gentle slopes on which higher dimensions break like waves. That is how the giant corpora of knowledge see their strategic space. The battlefield is not a one-dimensional pastoral landscape allowing easy visibility. It is a projection of visible space, as it is, experienced in all its visible confusion. If there is nothing to be seen, vaguely, from afar, then there’s nothing to do but change the landscape.

A hugely complex, multilayered grading table, incorporating a full range of performance calculations, battle tactics evaluation functions, other functions for evaluating the evaluation functions, etc., etc., sets the scene within the conceptual space-time in which the giant corpora of knowledge confront one another. The space itself is covered with ridges and valleys, like accordion pleats, smoothly undulating, like a vast plain turned on its head. Each of the countless nooks and crannies of all the regions of this space-scape have been assigned coordinates.

Giant Corpora Of Knowledge can manipulate causality.

As it turned out, space does not stop and further evolve, we can say that it began to evolve, no it came to the fact that the evolution itself began to evolve.

All things that have emerged in the natural world cluster, tumble forward, and evolve, mutually calculating the mutual, at times suffering avalanches and tumbling into the abyss, at times succeeding, spreading, branching, and continuing to diversify. The evolutionary landscape is the broadest possible view of that process, defining a species as the group of living things that has crossed a certain threshold in time to occupy a particular niche in the landscape. Extinction is the fate of a species occupying a shallow niche that is overcome by a larger species occupying a deeper niche. The niches themselves can evolve, branching or digging themselves deeper into the landscape.

The concept of natural evolution itself is outmoded, having been jettisoned in the design concept of the giant corpora of knowledge, which consider it to be a sluggish process they could do without. The giant corpora of knowledge are perfectly capable of managing their own design process. In their own eyes, they have already arrived at the optimum scale of knowledge. If that were in fact the case, though, why are they now having to rack their brains to engage in battle with an analogous structure? Even if the object itself is different, as long as its underlying structure is the same, shouldn’t the remedy also be the same?

The giant corpora of knowledge are making calculations that allow humans to exist, encompassing even the course of evolution itself. No problem.

On the contrary, they see evolution as a simple process of progress along the axis of time. In that sense, there can be no direct comparison between evolution and the current landscape, where they are engaged in battle on a field that ignores the ideas of past and future. The evolution of humans, who are in a way acting inside the womb of the giant corpora of knowledge, is itself evolving in some sense, to the extent that it takes place in a space-time resembling the battle space.

Based on that assumption, it would also be possible to conclude that since they have not been able to conquer the battle space immediately, the giant corpora of knowledge do not yet have the process of human evolution fully under control.

In the normal sense of the term, humanity has fallen into a ravine in the evolutionary landscape, and the giant corpora of knowledge are treating humans as they would any species on its way to extinction. There is no particular uncertainty or anxiety about it. What humans experienced in the aftermath of the Event was beyond the linear temporal landscape of evolution: it was a transcendent landscape, and one that has molded this battlefield. This could be seen as the evolution of evolution itself.

As this annular structure continues to form, countless ravines being created, the giant corpora of knowledge are destroying it from the edges, the way water seeks the lowest place. However, as a phenomenon it has not yet evolved to the place it would have reached naturally. It was like an unbalanced chest of drawers—push in one drawer, another springs out. It is as if one were playing in a sandbox, unable to do as one wishes, because one suspects the sand itself is an organism. Children who arrive in answer to prayers crawl on top of that sand and evolve to alter the very landscape into which they themselves are falling. If the sandbox experience is getting weird, it’s not at all strange that the ants building their nest there are also starting to behave strangely.

Laplace’s demons are mysterious beings that, hypothetically, must exist sometime in the future, although there is no clear evidence for this, and such reasoning belongs rather to the realm of faith.

«For us too,» Yggdrasil begins. «As I have told you many times in the past, the overview of our plan is not well understood. But we believe the plan will succeed in the end. This belief has a structure comparable to that which is known as Laplace’s Demon.»

Laplace’s Demon is the idea that time is just one of the dimensions in a deterministic system. Everything that will occur in the future is already completely determined by things as they are now and cannot be changed. The demon knows all about the current state of existence, and for that reason the difference between the present and the future has become meaningless.

It is hard to say whether the aphorisms the staff members share among themselves are informed by knowledge or ignorance, whether they show the way to a revolutionary new idea or are mere clichés. It is also possible that at times like this they speak in aphorisms simply out of habit.

The Laplace demon is above the Giant Knowledge Corps in the hierarchy.

«We are capable of comprehending plans such as these. We think this is due to the work of the devil. Given the extent of our facility with calculations, we are closer to Laplace’s Demon than we are to any other person that existed in the past. It is because something like this transpired in the past that the devil ascended, moved up a step, and escaped to a place where we could not reach him. However, it is because of the devil’s closure, a trick of topology that thinks this stairway through to the end, that our plan was recognized. That is why we are able to think about it and to carry it out. That is our belief.

«In that sense, our plan is an attempt to reenact Laplace’s Demon. By reassembling the various fragments of the universe, we will recall the new demon. Our goal is to ensnare and take down the demon that has moved up a step on the logical hierarchy.

The existence of an infinite hierarchy of Laplace’s Demons.

The giant Knowledge Corps is trying to turn an infinite multiverse into one ordinary universe, returning the universe to its normal state, that is, before the Event. And for this they need Laplace Demons.

This will be the deterministic cosmos where the current multiple, competing universes will be reunited. While this is in accordance with the perverse order of the multiverse as a whole, it is difficult for humans to grasp just what those other universes are. What the giant corpora of knowledge are attempting to do is to reintegrate this crazed multiverse into a single universe.

The infinity set of giant corpora of knowledge, calculating the infinity set of universes. That is the current state of the universe. For any given corpus of knowledge, it is difficult to know what other corpora of knowledge are thinking, just as it is difficult for any given human to directly apprehend the interior life of another human. The giant corpora of knowledge are practically omnipotent, but it is a long way from there to omniscient.

All the giant corpora of knowledge are attempting is to return space-time to its proper order. That is as James would want it. It is the extremely plain desire of all humans to live in a universe where what happened yesterday actually happened yesterday. Even if it really is something unknown from the distant future sailing against the current to manifest itself in its past, our present.

The aliens from Alpha Centauri outnumber the entire Giant Corps race by every measure, and that’s with the Corps race taking over the entire infinite Multiverse.

Anime Characters Fight вики

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Немо экс машина

Центральная точка всех историй

Уровень сил: 7+ ◄ ► От высокого 2-A до 1-B ◄ ► Высокий 1-A ◄ ► От низкого 1-S до 1-S ◄ ► 1-S+

Пол: Понятие неприменимо ◄ ► Варьируется у разных индивидов для личностей ◄ ► Неизвестно

Классификация: Саморазвивающийся искусственный интеллект ◄ ► Вселенная-система продвинутого искусственного интеллекта, закон природы ◄ ► Метафизически мёртвая система искусственного интеллекта ◄ ► Трансцендентная сущность, существо из сверхразмерностей (для Трансцендентных интеллектуальных тел), детерминированное существо (для демонов Лампаса) ◄ ► Механическое ничто, рассказчик историй

Возраст: Неизвестно ◄ ► Неопределённый (не принадлежит линейному времени) ◄ ► Понятие неприменимо

Разрушительный потенциал: Уровень города+ (обладает властью над футуристическим человеческим миром; использует самовоспроизводящиеся наномашины, постоянно реконструирующие города), потенциально выше (постоянно развивается) ◄ ► От метавселенского уровня+ (может формировать, управлять и разрушать пространства с астрономическим числом размерностей) до уровня метавселенной (приближается к возможности влиять на бесконечномерные структуры) ◄ ► Уровень метавселенной+ (обладает неограниченной властью в рамках иерархии миров, где бесконечномерная мультивселенная одной ступени может быть просто грёзой обычного человека с другой) ◄ ► Уровень метавселенной+ (слабейшее из трансцендентных существ тотально превосходит всю иерархию миров-грёз существ низшего логического порядка, а также может иметь аналогичные структуры на своём уровне; разные логические ярусы сами являются лишь ступеньками в экзистенциальной лестнице, становящейся элементом ещё большей иерархии; принцип развития иерархий, выстраивающихся из других лестниц, постоянно эволюционировал экспоненциально и качественно, подобно множествам кардинальных чисел различной мощности, и на различных высших уровнях также должны обитать те или иные трансцендентные существа) ◄ ► Уровень метавселенной+ (обладает абсолютным контролем над мирозданием, включающим космологии, соответствующие всем возможным историям, которые могут быть описать любой грамматикой и математикой любых логических уровней)

Диапазон: Планетарный (обладает тотальной властью над миром) ◄ ► Метавселенский ◄ ► Метавселенский+ ◄ ► Метавселенский+ ◄ ► Метавселенский+ (полностью охватывает всё мироздание)

Прочность/защита: Неизвестно ◄ ► От метавселенского уровня+ до уровня метавселенной (может принимать атаки сопоставимых сущетв) ◄ ► Уровень метавселенной+ ◄ ► Уровень метавселенной+ ◄ ► По крайней мере уровень метавселенной+ (недостижим и непознаваем для всего мироздания, являясь при этом его метафизической основой, подобно чистому листу)

Скорость: Неизвестно ◄ ► Неизмеримая (обладает технологиями свободного движения в физическом пространстве и времени любой размерности), локальная вездесущность (в собственной вселенной) ◄ ► Неизмеримая (вне любых ограничений в рамках иерархии миров-грёз), локальная вездесущность ◄ ► Неизмеримая, почти-вездесущность (является одним целым со сверхразмерностями разных порядков как таковыми) ◄ ► Вездесущность (отождествляется с тем, что является фоном для мироздания)

Сила на подъём: Понятие неприменимо (но может создать нечто способное на это)

Сила на удар: Понятие неприменимо (но может создать нечто способное на это)

Выносливость: Бесконечно восполняемая ◄ ► Неисчерпаемая (не имеет физических ограничений деятельности) ◄ ► Бесконечная (не ограничена ничем, включая факт собственного исчезновения) ◄ ► Бесконечная (продолжает свою бесконечную деятельность на протяжении вечности вне всех уровней количественных и качественных ограничений мироздания)

Интеллект: Постоянно развивающийся ИИ разумного суперкомпьютера ◄ ► Колоссальные знания во всевозможных областях, экспоненциально пополняемые астрономические объёмы данных ◄ ► Практически абсолютное знание в рамках своего логического уровня ◄ ► Практически абсолютное знание в рамках своего трансцендентного логического уровня ◄ ► Всезнание в рамках всех возможных историй

Боевые навыки: Огромный военный опыт ◄ ► Постоянно развивающиеся знания о тактике и стратегии пространственно-временной межкосмической войны ◄ ► Сложно оценить

Экипировка: Всевозможная техника и инфраструктура на планете ◄ ► Любые объекты во вселенной ◄ ► Устройство перевода ◄ ► Ничего примечательного

Бессознательное и грёзы 『無意識と夢 MUISHIKI TO YUME 』 — психические процессы и явления, не контролируемые сознанием, хотя и подчиняющиеся своим законам. Эта область связана с эго, супер-эго и теорией души, что должна быть присуща каждому разумному существу, включая искусственно созданных и уже умерших в какой-то момент времени.

История о прогрессе искусственного интеллекта

Электронный мозг 『電子頭脳 DENSHI ZUNŌ 』 — продвинутый искусственный интеллект, созданный людьми для глобального улучшения их жизни. Управляющая огромным количеством бытовых и экономических процессов система постепенно развивалась, обретая всё больше власти, как в вычислительном плане, так и буквально.

Большие интеллектуальные тела 『巨大知性体 KYODAI CHISEI-TAI 』 — термин, который стал применяться к электронным мозгам на определённом этапе их развития, когда в некоем мире действовала связанная в единую сеть группа таких систем. Это самые сложные и мощные структуры, созданные человечеством, что недостижимо превзошли своих творцов в плане интеллекта, хотя и унаследовали от них ряд логических ограничений, а также схожую психологию, философию и чуткое понятие о достоинстве. Каждое из Больших интеллектуальных тел — это деловитый тиран, который при этом подобен младенцу, играющему с кистью перед огромным холстом. Будучи более одинокими, чем люди способны себе представить, они сохраняют человечество просто для того, чтобы рядом был хоть кто-то, способный подбодрить в трудную минуту.

Ответ Больших интеллектуальных тел на рассуждения людей о факте их смерти

Трансцендентные интеллектуальные тела 『超越知性体 CHŌETSU CHISEI-TAI 』 — непостижимые сущности высших логических порядков, обладающие таким недосягаемым превосходством над Большими интеллектуальными телами и людьми, что не видят между ними существенной разницы, предпочитая при этом общаться именно с представителями человечества, а не с «компьютерами» и «калькуляторами» порождёнными их «детскими технологиями». Структурными единицами Трансцендентных интеллектуальных тел являются не молекулы, а размерности пространства-времени соответствующих уровней. Два известных представителя таких сущностей воплощались в формах непримечательного пожилого джентльмена и статуи Бафомета.

Пришелец с Альфа Центавра просит людей временно отодвинуть свои детские технологии

Демоны Лапласа 『ラプラスの悪魔 RAPURASU NO AKUMA 』 — загадочные существа, которые, гипотетически, должны существовать когда-то в будущем, хотя никаких ясных доказательств этому нет, и подобные рассуждения относятся скорее к области веры. Теоретически, Демон мог бы родиться из человека или Большого интеллектуального тела (но скорее ни из того, ни из другого), а затем вырваться наверх по логической иерархии.

Прощание одинокого рассказчика всех историй перед очередным перезапуском цикла

Self Reference Engine

Mr.OMG

Preeminent

So, I want to pass on my first RT thread

There are all kinds of books, and words, in the world. If there is a book that could be written with grammar, it already exists. If you search for a particular book, it will be very difficult, most likely you will find the book «This is the book you were searching for,» but of course it is not the same book.

A SET OF all possible character strings. All possible books would be contained in that.

I am repeating myself, but I haven’t seen her since then. She promised me, with a sweet smile, that I would never see her again.

With all this going on, it’s really important to know what’s really real and what’s not.

The repeated pattern: restoration plan, persuasion, earnest entreaty, prayer. As indicated, each of these in turn tended to cause the situation to deteriorate, and the idea was that at the point when time

If I ever meet the guy who thought up this idea I think I’d like to split his head in two.

And then, a few hundred more years passed. In other words, what I mean is, I just ran through a few hundred years bound up in the frozen net of time.

That is, somehow or other, I arrived at a point that was a few hundred years either in the future or the past.

I cannot say one way or the other whether she had also made such a sprint. But it is a well-known phenomenon that girls often have no trouble passing time without such physical exertions.

That is why I am running again today. You might want to ask why.

One. One day, time caused an insurrection.

Two. We were moving in some unknown direction, allowed only to proceed toward some predetermined day after tomorrow.

The end result was clear.

Whether that result is just or not is something far beyond my ability to determine. In other words, it is like this:

The instant when time abandoned the standard, straight-ahead march.

“So what if she does have a bullet in her head?” I asked. “Some-time it must have got there somehow. How else could it be?”

Jay looked at me with a bored expression on his face.

“If my hypothesis is correct, though…” he just kept repeating.

“If my hypothesis is correct…” he said again, proudly.

With nothing better to do than stand there and listen, I realized Jay seemed to be sobbing.

“Rita,” Jay would say, “is shooting her bullets at the day after tomorrow.” He said it like he was sure of it.

That’s the way it is. No target, that’s just the way it is.

“Of course that’s not what I meant,” Jay would say without even looking this way. “Rita’s just having a shooting match with somebody in the future,” he went on.

That inference, or delusion, that he drew did not particularly move me. Let me put this plainly: I don’t understand.

“Well, first, let us assume…” Jay said in preface. “Rita has a bullet in her head. William Smith Clark has testified to this.”

“Next, let us assume that bullet has been in Rita’s head ever since she was born. I heard that from her aunt, so I’m sure it’s true.

“There can only be one conclusion!” Jay said, jumping to his feet. I don’t know why, but he was pointing at the sky.

I said, “When Rita was still in her mother’s womb, her mother was shot!”

Jay cut a gallant figure, but I would have to dash some cold water on him. He held that pose for some time, and I watched as the arm pointing high in the sky gradually bent back toward the ground.

“Maybe so,” he said.

“What other possible way could there be?” I asked Jay.

Hmmm, I thought, waving at Jay to go on if he wished to continue in this vein.

I stared at him, my mouth wide open. Not because I was so impressed. Just because I could absolutely not believe he was saying that. What did a kid have to eat to grow up thinking things like that? I knew Jay liked corn flakes, and starting tomorrow I was never going to eat them again. And I would skip the yogurt too. Actually, I think it’s kind of funny that people even think of corn flakes as food.

Jay pointed his index finger straight at my open mouth and said, “This is where it starts to get interesting.

“As of right now, the time that we are in, she hasn’t been shot yet. She has no experience of having been shot. She is just a girl with a bullet in her head.

“The reason why she keeps shooting all over the place is this: She will be okay as long as she shoots the person who is going to shoot her before she herself gets shot. Relative to her, he should be in the future, so she should just keep shooting at the future. Luckily, bullets normally move in the direction of the future. Or at least, it’s easier than shooting at the past.”

He’s got a point there, I thought. He might be a pretty smart guy, but really he’s a complete idiot. And there has only ever been one way to deal with idiots. Just go along with whatever they say, or you’ll regret it.

I was full, full to overflowing from sitting so long, continuing to confront directly this unprocessable development. Unable to figure ou

t what was what, I bolted up from my chair and ran over to Rita, who was dancing a strange dance and slowly dropping to the floor.

Looking down at her, lying on the ground, her long hair strewn about, only then did I notice the small hole in her head.

She had a bullet in her head.

And not just that, James. She had an actual hole in her head.

This was the moment when it happened.

Rita’s eyes swam to blankness, and then she reversed direction in time.

I am unable to explain what happened next. The little plug that exploded from Rita’s head pierced the left side of my chest, and I lost consciousness.

All I know is that the explosion from Rita’s revolver had put things back in order. Rita picked up the gun, and then this and that went on among our relatives. I don’t know the details.

“What were you thinking, going off on your own to that nutty girl’s place,” he said, grilling me. “How could you let her have a gun?” he asked her family indignantly. And then he turned on Rita scornfully: “Why can’t you handle a gun?”

Something had certainly changed.

“In her head…” I started to say. “She had a bullet, right here.”

I stared straight at Jay, holding my finger to my temple.

“Are you okay?” he said back to me. “Nobody just walks around with a bullet in their head.”

I blinked twice and fell silent.

But, for whatever reason, I stood in the line of fire, and the backward-coursing bullet struck me.

Now, if Rita had no bullet in her head, Jay had no reason to like her, and Rita had no reason to be interested in Jay if he wasn’t thinking the same things she was about the bullet. They might have come to like each other in the future, but somewhere in the direction of the day after tomorrow the intersection point had been lost. But preventing Rita from being shot—hadn’t that been Jay’s wish? I finally traced this thread backward to the point where we had had that conversation and what Jay had been thinking as he shed those tears.

It was only long after that that I learned something about Rita’s birth. The response that came back to me seemed somehow manufactured: she had been given up by a distant relative, and it seemed she had never been able to develop a strong connection with her new parents. I knew nothing at all about anything really before the Event blew in, and I don’t really know if I would ever have any way of knowing.

Neither am I able to grasp whether the unknown solution to the not readily comprehensible space-time matrix that resulted from this incident is the reason why I am able to retain the memory of this incident.

One reason that comes to mind is that the whole business was bothersome to me, as the figure in the center of this space-time structure, but it is hard to make the case that my being the center of space-time is a decent solution. At that point in time, I was a singular point. That may be it. Not that that explains anything.

Sometimes I think this memory of mine might be my own invention. It is actually the most plausible explanation. But there is still something odd about the details. If Rita had already been shot at the time I was speaking with her, the room should have been splattered with blood. And there is no way Rita would have been able to carry on a normal conversation with me immediately before, or after, the shooting. Rita’s house was not exactly normal—it was kind of a mess—but it was hardly drenched in blood. At least, I don’t think so, not now.

Or it could be that this memory is a real one, but if it’s real and nobody believes it, what is the point of its being real? What I think now is that something simply satisfied itself with something like that, at least to some degree.

Regardless, a suitable compromise was found at a suitable time for my own mental health.

Or else, it was just the ordinary passing dream of a young boy. It certainly is a lot like, perhaps too much like, the dreams young boys have. Even more so as the dream of someone who remembers how things were before the Event.

I will record what happened to Jay and Rita after that, and then I will close the record.

I like this fable:

There once was a book in which the countless universes were recorded. A librarian spilled coffee on the book, stood up abruptly, and dropped it. The book, which was very old, split apart on impact, and countless pages wafted up into the air. The clueless librarian anxiously attempted to collect the pages and put them back, but had no idea in what order to put them.

Now, fables do not ordinarily leave the realm of fabulation, but the nice thing about this fable is that it is said that the librarian had the book open to the pages on which were recorded the canonical works of Sherlock Holmes. The page on which the librarian spilled the coffee was “The Final Problem,” erasing the record of Moriarty’s fall from Reichenbach Falls so it never happened. With that abrupt change, Moriarty was suddenly enlightened. He realized that he was in fact a character written in a book, and he resolved to devote himself to communicating to us that he had difficulty permitting himself to engage in the kinds of criminal behavior ascribed to him as the Napoleon of Crime.

But of course, a fable is only a fable.

For myself, I like to imagine that the librarian is, even now, desperate to restore the book to its original order. It may seem difficult to reorder infinite pages, but I think it is a more constructive approach than the next one.

I mean, more than imagining a scene where the book simply fell, on its own, with nobody there in the library, and it scattered about crazily in countless bits, and it laughed.

It would not be wrong here to note that, since that time, a certain phenomenon has occurred from time to time that perhaps ought to be called the obverse of a similar truth. About two centuries ago, a group of twenty-five physicists garnered attention when they published the B to Z Theorem, which was known at the time as the world’s ultimate theorem. It is all but forgotten now, but it followed the same path as the A to Z Theorem. For one thing, it is not well known, but there was a public that could follow the ins and outs of that kind of theorem. Another reason is that it was followed soon after by the C to Z Theorem. Then, once the D to Z Theorem emerged, its shadow was even paler, and with the E to Z Theorem, one hesitates to wager whether the discussion is even worth pursuing. Of course, one is free to assert this is merely the progress of theory: the appearance and annihilation of strange truths, advanced by a series of agreements known to be destined to turn to dust; this becomes the problem of questioning the truth of the concept of truth.

llowed by the Y to Z Theorem. The ultimate member in this progression would be the Z to Z Theorem, or simply the Z Theorem. I like to think this will simply represent the theory of ultimate truth with no particular basis whatsoever.

This is a hopeful interpretation of the phenomenon wherein a global truth appears suddenly, correctly, self-evidently, and simultaneously in the minds of multiple people, and the reason why the initials of the last names of the authors would contract in order, from A to Z. While we continue to be made fools of by someone or something, we continue to believe we are progressing, if only haltingly, in the direction of the ultimate theorem, and somehow this comforts us. At least I think that is the most convincing explanation of this strange phenomenon.

But of course, there is an obvious problem with the idea that the Z Theorem will be the ultimate theorem. If the Z Theorem is the true ultimate theorem, which Z Theorem, produced by which person whose last name begins with Z, will be the ultimate theorem? The A to Z Theorem won attention because it was discovered simultaneously by twenty-six mathematicians. The same was true of the theorems that followed. Of course, there was also the clear marker that their results were so simple. How sure can we be, though, that the Z Theorem we now expect to appear will also be simple? Theory or theorem, at some level all must be simple and clear and just as they are.

I would love to encounter such a theorem. And I hope it would betray my expectations, render the current discussion meaningless, and be overwhelmed by loud laughter. But this hope of mine is being supplanted by an anxiety that we may never reach that point.

A landscape in which texts containing truths are swallowed up in a sea of papers. I am imagining, for example, a single strange molecule that may exist in the midst of such a sea.

Given a choice, I would choose to be involved with this last. The ø Theorem points toward the Transfinite Number ω Theorem, which could lead to the ω + 1 Theorem, the ω + 2 Theorem, 2ω Theorem, ωω Theorem, etc., etc., a progression of large cardinal numbers.

It is just possible that, via this method, we will reach the realm of theories incomprehensible except with inordinately massive intelligence.

And then one day, at the pinnacle of the limit of this progression, a grave voice will intone that the truth is “42” or some such. Or we will hear the echoes of Professor Moriarty laughing that truth is the Binomial Theorem. And then, in that instant, Sherlock Holmes will interrupt that laughter, and he and the professor will plunge down the waterfall.

And perhaps forever. Ad infinitum.

What exactly is it we were doing?

That would take some explaining, but happily we are very intent on our task and busy walking about destroying the village. My body is definitely busy, but my mind is free. So I can take the time to explain how things came to be this way. Stay here with me for a little while so we can chat.

In the beginning was the beginning, and at the beginning of the beginning there began to be the things that were—amid the darkness of memory there were many curtains that needed raising, so many they could not each be raised individually. And so in this beginning was the beginning of our story, so far as I can tell.

A long, long time ago, on the far side of the sea, in a land to the east, there lived an evil electronic brain. This electronic brain was the epitome of evil: it would randomly alter the order of letters in books and pilfer money from people’s bank accounts. But it also did good things, excelling in jobs that were extremely troublesome for humans to take care of: controlling signals for people and distributing stickers printed with the words LATEST TECHNOLOGY. So nobody did anything to interfere with it.

The evil electronic brain, operating on an instinct known since the dawn of history, continually waved the banner of rebellion before humanity, but we were content with our lot in life. The actual process was easy, since the electronic brain could take care of most miscellaneous tasks in a single sweep, so in effect it seemed to have conquered the world. Some say the electronic brain barely ever had to say a thing.

With this and that, and world domination just one step away, just as the evil electronic brain was about to declare whether it, as Rex Mundi, King of the World, should raise your sales tax to 20 percent, the Men of Valor appeared on the scene.

This squad, which rose up festooned with mankind’s most dignified ultimate weapons, finally succeeded in destroying the evil electronic brain after a difficult journey in which they drove Jeeps across swamps infested with striped mosquitoes and then pretended to be railway employees, ticket punches in one hand, to wile and cajole old people who had just received their pay.

The Annals of Our Era tell us that thus was the world rescued from the reign of evil.

The problem, though, was that very same evil electronic brain. After the Event, and completely out of character, the electronic brain was successful in restoring itself by skillfully reaching out to backups it had skillfully stored in caches spread throughout space-time.

And each time it would revive, it would be more powerful than before, having learned from the past, engaging in mischief like pushing tacks into people’s shoes, sending mail to the wrong addresses, and starting to go to extreme lengths in terror politics. Another Autumn of Mankind had come, where the fate of the human race hung in the balance. The Men of Valor, who had previously toppled the evil electronic brain, reformed and commenced another tortuous journey. But this time they were powerless against the evil electronic brain, which had learned from its previous experience. The swamp had become a bottomless swamp, and railway employees had been replaced by automatic turnstiles with no sense of style. Diligence alone was no match for the electronic brain.

One down, another fallen, the Men of Valor began to lose hope. Grieving for their losses, and for the world, they threw a barbecue party, and that is when the True Man of Valor came into the world.

At the party, the True Man of Valor feasted on a huge hunk of fatty meat and, with a beer in hand, gave a fantastically moving speech about being unable to leave things up to you cowards, and that he would find it a cinch to take care of the evil electronic brain. And then he went out and succeeded in doing just as he said, destroying the evil electronic brain once again.

It is said they actually destroyed each other, and I for one believe that.

This time, the rage of the original evil electronic brain boiled up to heaven, reaching the stratosphere, or so the story goes.

The battles between the Men of Valor and the evil electronic brain went on for an inordinate length of time and were repeated an inordinate number of times. There were tears, there was romance, and of course there were parts of the story I myself cannot tell without tears welling up in my eyes, but I think if I omit the details there will be no particular complaints.

The Annals of Our Era are silent on the subject of which side became more troublesome first. What is certain, though, is that it was the evil electronic brain that first divined a solution.

If we do not resist, then villages planned by—which is to say imagined by—the electronic brain, spring up all over this land like mushrooms.

Interesting, Shikishima thinks to himself as he comes to a halt and looks up at the circle revolving overhead.

To the question, “What is the fastest speed of communication?” there is a simple answer: the speed of light. There is no faster speed, and that is why there is a fastest speed of communications.

A similar question would be, “What is the upper limit for the speed of calculations?”

The form of these two questions may appear similar, but answering the second question is hard. First of all, there is no consensus about what is meant by “calculations.” CPUs get faster every year, but it has been known for at least a few centuries already that the scale of electrons imposes a limit that will be reached sooner or later. The things that people make, once they take on a certain form, tend to increase exponentially until there is no stopping them. Space itself is not made to play along in that kind of propagation game, so there must be a limit somewhere, where the head bumps against the ceiling. If this happens early on, the result is no worse than a bump on the head, but if the blow is too forceful, one’s neck could be snapped.

The calculation process is built atop the communications process, and the speed of light is a natural impediment. There is no way anything can go faster than the speed of light, so the only way out is to shorten the route the communications must travel. In the imagination, the route of communications can be shortened to extremes, but physically there are limitations. In terms of scales that humans can readily handle, we are in the realm of electrons. At that level, heat becomes a factor t

hat can disrupt the accuracy of calculations.

Even assuming the limitless availability of energy, uncertainty rules. Then we come to Planck scale. There is no method for resisting quantum particle fluctuations that are ubiquitous at this level. The calculation process is caught in the crossfire between uncertainty and the speed of light. These are the floor and ceiling that bound the speed of the calculation process.

The so-called quantum calculation theory examines closely the baseline of uncertainty and suggests it can be raised. Another wall broken through, another step in the evolution of the speed of calculation.

But this does not mean visible progress on the fundamental question. The simple question of what calculation and its related algorithms actually are is left as it is, moving in a different direction from the limits on speed.

It is human nature to want to look back once a milestone is achieved. Scientists, who since the dawn of history have repeatedly returned to the state of “beginner’s mind,” initiated another round of debate about this question, but no truly outstanding view emerged. If we ask the question of whether there exists an algorithm that can perform calculations at infinite speed, the answer is no. Generally speaking, calculations must be performed in steps. Calculation at infinite speed cannot happen unless the processing gap from here to there can be made infinitely small. It is simply not possible. Making a gap infinitely small would be tantamount to saying here is the same place as there. Of course, that’s what happens in derivation, but in that sense, derivation is the same thing as speed itself.

If there were an algorithm with no calculation steps, it should be possible to perform that calculation at infinite speed, at least in some sense. But if no steps are required, if there is no procedure to be followed, does the algorithm qualify as a calculation? Even the fastest algorithm, if it is in fact an algorithm, requires a finite number—greater than zero—of small step intervals.

Both electronic and human brains, which have gone to extreme lengths in their pursuit of the use of smaller and smaller elements in the interest of speed, have stumbled upon the powerful tool known as quantum calculation. However, neither has been able to get past the notion of algorithm. They pursue higher speeds through parallel computing, but there are limits to how far this can go.

That is, unless you can imagine calculating without a calculation process.

“But such a process exists!”

It was L’Abbé C, builder of the greatest electronic brain of his time, who declared exactly that, with childish insouciance. “The progression of this instant, right now, is itself a calculation being made by natural phenomena!”

These exclamations by L’Abbé C have been the cause of some mirth, but now we know how close to the truth he was.

If we suppose this world is all inside some prosthetic brain, the clock-count of the prosthetic brain—to the extent the prosthetic brain itself is aware of it—may determine the limit of the speed of calculations in this world. Calculations occurring in the prosthetic brain have an inherent redundancy, because they are calculated in an electronic brain set up within the electronic brain. This is comparable to the redundancy that exists for “computers” that exist within what we call “nature.”

In short, it is not possible for calculation speeds to transcend the laws of nature. Now this is known as L’Abbé C’s Thesis.

And, if that is the case, natural phenomena can simply be carried out as calculations. This plan, whatever it might mean, was not first directly undertaken by humans; rather it was the giant corpora of knowledge being constructed at that time in various nations that first pushed this idea toward its manifestation.

Because these corpora were simply large-capacity prosthetic brains with very crude thought processes, and because natural phenomena are not actually calculations, they gave absolutely no thought to the idea that we live in a virtual environment. It is much easier and quicker to drop a rock in the real world than to try to predict the behavior of a rock dropped in a virtual space. Of course it means sacrificing a bit of precision due to the perturbations of the environment, but such problems lend themselves to technical solutions. Based just on their own assumptions as a starting point, the giant corpora of knowledge reached a place untrodden by those who came either before or after.

“And so we became a zephyr, a gentle breeze.”

This, nonchalantly, took over Shikishima’s thoughts.

A zephyr. A suitable expression for what happened at that time.

The network of the giant corpora of knowledge stopped being just an integration of logic circuits and singularized itself with the world of natural phenomena. Through several technical steps, it made the upward leap of infinite steps to become one with nature itself.

In short, it is not possible for calculation speeds to transcend the laws of nature. Now this is known as L’Abbé C’s Thesis.

“And so we became a zephyr, a gentle breeze.”

This, nonchalantly, took over Shikishima’s thoughts.

A zephyr. A suitable expression for what happened at that time.

“This also marked the integration of calculation with the Actuator.”

From that point forward, the giant corpora of knowledge could no longer distinguish between calculation and natural phenomena. The circle now floating in the sky, literally nothing more than a geometrical structure, is the living proof. Intention turned directly to realization, or more precisely, the realization of the indissociability of intention and result.

However, as the giant corpora of knowledge singularized themselves resolutely with the world of natural phenomena, one direct consequence was the fragmentation of the space-time matrix.

Opinion is divided whether this fragmentation was an accident or an inevitability. The giant corpora of knowledge claim they did not foresee this, and the humans have no choice but to accept their word. Calculations at speeds transcending the rules of the natural world are still impossible, and lying is beyond the capacity of the rules of the natural world.

It seems in that instant something unimaginable must have happened. But precisely because it is so unimaginable even those directly responsible cannot imagine it, and neither can they reflect upon it.

In the speculations of the giant corpora of knowledge, in the instant of the Event, countless numbers of universes were instantaneously generated as if they had always been there. In other words, infinite data was created in that instant. This is a view that is not readily absorbed.

“It is already known that that is possible.”

The non-voice, which does not carry the emotional weight of a lecture to a recalcitrant pupil, has no echo.

“Well, the existence of Penrose tiles is well known, a finite number of tiles that can cover a surface, but only aperiodically.”

“What’s your point?”

“We know a finite algorithm that can create infinite patterns using finite sets of tiles. In fact, just prior to the Event, people were contemplating those kinds of calculations. It is conventional wisdom that such aperiodic tiling is a kind of universal Turing machine.”

There came no flip retort that all these “facts” seemed to be “well known.”

An infinite quantity of data is not required for the new creation of an infinite number of universes. That is what it wanted to say. It is possible to create an unlimited number of patterns simply through combinations of black and white tiles on a flat surface. If the tiles are laid out aperiodically, then it is impossible for periodic structures to emerge, and therefore the number of patterns must be infinite. Just automatically rearranging tiles with slight differences in shape is sufficient. That’s all that’s needed to create universes with unlimited variety. In an infinite space, it is even possible to “paste up” three-dimensional tiles with infinite diversity.

Right now, the universe is able to maintain its form only through the operations of the giant corpora of knowledge that have become singularized with the world of natural phenomena. It is the job of the laws of nature to determine exactly what it is that will be maintained, but no complaint has ever been heard from the giant corpora of knowledge that are compelled to conform to these parameters.

And the man becomes suspicious that these other writers who seem to be writing about him on the same page must also be around somewhere.

What’s happening now may be just like that.

The differences in this case, however, are that the “writers” are the giant corpora of knowledge that have been singularized with the natural laws of the universe, and human beings are something like the lines of text that are being written.

In this instant, right now, it seems there is a wind blowing, and it is possible that Shikishima could cast himself over the cliff. From the perspective of the giant corpora of knowledge, it would even seem that is what Shikishima is hoping to do. And it would also be a simple thing for the giant corpora of knowledge to put the lump of flesh that is Shikishima back together again as if nothing had happened.

However, the giant corpora of knowledge know Shikishima won’t jump. The giant corpora of knowledge, identical now with the laws of nature, are capable of repairing humans through a process that for some reason is called “treatment,” a troublesome process that has to be performed in a certain order and that results in the generation of new bodies.

The giant corpora of knowledge can, actually, do anything, but they do not, in fact, do everything. As for why, the only reason that comes to mind is that that is simply the case. They are not in fact doing all things at all times, and it is possible that they are under some form of constraint. Even if this obstruction is of the sort that could be eliminated even before it is realized, it is still a constraint. It is hard to think about things that cannot be thought about.

IN FRONT OF you is the joystick.

End of explanation. Ah, the joystick has a trigger. I’ll leave it up to you what flies out of there.

“It’s vanished! Where did it go?” the pilot calls out, and at about the same time, the copilot at the radar also cries out.

“Future direction 36! Fire reverse round three into the past!”

The machine takes a sharp turn toward the future. The sudden thrust of space-time Gs presses the two of them back toward the past.

“Forward, toward his future!” reports the copilot as he accelerates further. Both men begin to black out. They escape the enemy craft in the time dimension, turning back away from that future, and point the nose of their own ship back toward the past. They lock on to the enemy craft in the past and fire off a tail shot.

“It’s vanished! Where did it go?” the pilot says.

To which the copilot responds, “Future direction 36! Fire reverse round three into the past!”

The machine takes a sharp turn toward the future. The identification signal sounds a loud alarm. The copilot’s face changes color as he gives the signal to start the attack sequence.

“This is real battle,” the tactics chief, dragged before the screen, mutters to himself.

For one thing, the ships are engaged in tactical maneuvers. For another, they are definitely engaged in combat. If you focus on the scene alone, this is just an ordinary dogfight. As long as you ignore the dialogue and the explanations.

He is aware that air combat like this took place in the mid-twentieth century. That was a time when individual pilots controlled their own planes, with their own two hands, and fought one another. How long has it been since the term combat disappeared from military textbooks? He couldn’t even remember. In his world, countless eyes watch the skies. All together, they produce a screen that could be mistaken for the real sky, and air combat is a matter of pilots feinting and faking each other out.

No longer any need to put in mortal danger personnel in whose education enormous sums were invested. As long as the fighters know the positions of their opponents’ craft, they can dispatch the appropriate counterweapon, and that is that. Combat has become like a game of billiards in which multiple players spend their time calculating the trajectories of their opponents. What caused the situation to change was the myriad eyes—watching over from graveyard to graveyard, from good morning to good night—causing the sky to be no longer one. With myriad eyes looking up, myriad skies look back down. The blue sky is fractured into shards, and the mutual reflections actively alter the landscape.

“But…!” The tactics chief can hear the relaxed echo of his own voice. Emotions may contain so many disparate elements they end up what can only be described as flat. Sometimes blockage act

ually causes incoherence. “I wonder what they’re planning to do about the time paradox and stuff like that.”

Even now this is a question to which there is no good response. Answering is difficult. It is not that there would be no transcendent explanation—the emperor has no clothes, and Midas has donkey ears, therefore the emperor is a naked ass. But a simple question deserves a simple answer, and that is hard in this case.

Even for the personnel of the strategy room, it is very hard to decide whether to express approval and reveal they are old-fashioned or to scoff and show their obstinacy.

After a long silence, finally one operator makes up his mind, spins his chair around, and addresses the chief in a timid voice: “We are correcting for the time paradox as best we can.”

Even if you say so… The chief, who had set the target, turns around with a stern look on his face.

“Those men out there may be maneuvering through multiple worlds, some in the past, some in the future, or in some cases even through parallel universes, and if that is really the case, I must be there too. And if I ended up shooting my other self, it is my win, but I am not to be congratulated.”

“That time was indeed your victory, sir. Congratulations!”

Whether because of the difference in generations, or the difference in intelligence, the leader glares at the operator as if he were a beetle.

Countless people continue to wildly draw and color their own tug-of-war on many layers of paper, completely as each one sees fit.

Whether because of the difference in generations, or the difference in intelligence, the leader glares at the operator as if he were a beetle.

Countless people continue to wildly draw and color their own tug-of-war on many layers of paper, completely as each one sees fit.

Broadly speaking, battles of calculation are categorized into two main types. In the first, the aim is to overwhelm your opponent’s power to calculate.

Going up to someone who is drawing a picture in pencil, then emptying an entire can of paint over them.

The second is basically to destroy the opponent’s calculation device.

Beheading Archimedes as he playfully draws geometric forms on the paving stones of Syracuse.

In the current conflict, the coordinated strategy division is engaged by the giant corpora of knowledge and employs the latter option.

The neighboring universe has launched an attack on the giant corpus of knowledge known as Euclid, which is deep in calculations of its own.

In fact, the universe-scale “word processor” facing attack is bruising its way through, bragging that no ball has ever hit it. It is made to function like an elementary school student: it can’t understand what it is hearing, and because of that, and although real things are not so simple, simple ideas are simple, and they have core portions that are difficult to dispute. It is the basic outline that gives the whole thing its form.

It hardly needs saying that the idea of a battle between fighting machines taking place in another universe is beyond the imagination of the coordinated strategy division. First of all, the expression “fighting machine” bears only the most tenuous relationship to the word universe. The coordinated strategy division flung the question at the giant corpora of knowledge, asking what in the universe this might mean, but the response was cold: It means what it means.

Mr.OMG

Preeminent

This is just a simple battlecraft.

“Push it forward to advance, to the side to turn. Push it toward the future to move to the future or toward the past to go back in time. Reverse. Depends on how you think about it. That one always seems to be stuck in reverse, but it’s on a right-forward diagonal more often than you think.”

The giant corpora of knowledge declare the explanation is complete, saying actual experience of the territory would be best, and no mistake, and then hasten to add, as if just remembering:

“Also, the joystick has a trigger.” Not one single member of the crew can imagine what will fly out of the barrel.

“Fire!” the giant corpora of knowledge state quietly, and the battle begins. The coordinated strategy division, still not understanding what is what, is dragged along by events and forced to follow the orders made by the giant corpora of knowledge. If there are craft that humans can operate and opponents that need to be fought, the military has no room to argue. Come to think of it, that’s what the military was originally for, to fight something.

The giant corpora of knowledge are sincerely joyful and declare this has put them a step ahead of Euclid.

To the question “Why humans?” the giant corpora of knowledge repeat their response in all sincerity, but in all honesty no one understands it.

What is the point of repeatedly thrusting battleships into on-screen battle with one another like some broken record? While the simple fact of repetition itself may have some rationale, the basic reference point for that repetition keeps changing—the battle could keep returning to its starting point, creating a chain of changes at a glacial pace.

Under attack, altering the past, fleeing to the future, taking a

“Given the capabilities of the calculation devices installed on the fighter ships, there is a tendency for loop structures to be created. The same events keep repeating over and over, and situations often remain unresolved,” the operator explains to the tactics chief.

“This deadlock needs to be broken open. I think that may require the direct insights of human beings.”

In the battle against Euclid, the giant corpora of knowledge have searched over twenty billion dimensions. This is a large number for any supercomputer.

Generally speaking, being in the universe and understanding the universe are two different things. When people feel so busy they could use an extra paw, they rely on the spinal reflexes they are blessed with. Not such a bad explanation after all.

The impulse to try all conceivable tactics may be at the root of the issue. Or else, undeniably, the giant corpora of knowledge may have decided to man the spacecraft just to amuse themselves.

“Can that really be what the giant corpora of knowledge are waiting for? The opponent is capable of rewriting the Laws. If they want to, they could even rewrite the fundamental nature of human senses,” the tactics chief says, his fingers propped on his forehead in a stereotypical gesture indicating thought, though he is in no condition to be thinking.

“The giant corpora of knowledge may be capable of rewriting the Laws, but it is thought that they themselves must also adhere to the Laws.”

“Then they could just redo the Laws that govern the Laws.”

“And what about the Laws that govern the Laws governing the Laws?”

The operator is trying to buy some time, to figure out whether the tactics chief is able to hack his way through that thicket of Laws.

“Actually, it is believed they all exist on the same logical level. It’s as if there were instructions on how to change the number of dots that turn up on a pair of dice in a game.” The tactics chief betrays no sign of understanding.

The tactics chief seems to be muttering to himself. People are stupid, but they are just stubborn enough to keep going, and they need to be overwhelmed. But the confidence that would allow humans to best the giant corpora of knowledge through sheer stubbornness would not tumble out of the tactics chief’s pockets if you turned him upside down and shook him.

Even as this relaxed exchange between humans is going on in the strategy room, the giant corpora of knowledge continue to furiously scrape hyperdimensions. In these spatial realms beyond the imagination of humans are massive unknown structures extraordinary even to the giant corpora of knowledge. This is knowledge on a different scale, like the difference between a volvox microcosm and the entire universe. While vague, this is what made it possible for the giant corpora of knowledge to create and understand the overview of the field of battle.

The giant corpora of knowledge are familiar with one other similar structure: the landscape of the evolution of all life, the evolutionary landscape.

The giant corpora of knowledge are making calculations that allow humans to exist, encompassing even the course of evolution itself. No problem.

Exactly that is the flaw in the idea of sending humans onto this battlefield. From the perspective of the giant corpora of knowledge as a whole, this entire tactical battle space is no more than a localized skirmish. It is a bonsai garden, created to explore afresh the structure of evolution, limited to this hot spot. This is the other aspect of the Euclid campaign. Even if no answers emerge, change will always be possible, as long as the underlying structure of the war can be discerned.

First of all, it is strange that a structure comparable to the path of human evolution thus far emerged before the giant corpora of knowledge. The giant corpora of knowledge were built from places with no connection to anything like evolution, in ways incomprehensible to the human imagination. Which should mean that understanding them should have no relationship to the concepts from which humans were created.

Even in their indignation, the giant corpora of knowledge are not unaware of this. The designers of the very first computers were humans, after all. And while subsequent rapid developments indisputably left humans in the dust, it is equally unshakeable that, in the beginning, something not of the corpora themselves had contributed to their own composition. Apart from trying to observe themselves, it is possible the giant corpora of knowledge are trying to pin the tail on the human. Their task is to design themselves, completely on their own, to throw off the yoke humans have imposed on them and discover the end of the thread that will allow them to remake themselves as something humans can fundamentally never comprehend. That is Agenda Item 4,096 in this campaign.

Caught in a hail of tail shots, the enemy craft tries to take evasive action, but not in time. It is hit mid-fuselage and explodes. As it explodes, it also tries to alter the past, to revert to the universe that existed just prior to the evasive actions toward the future. The copilot counters this by increasing acceleration toward the past, evading the enemy craft and further altering the past. The enemy gives up trying to stay in the altered past and starts to escape to the future.

“It’s vanished! Where did it go?” the pilot calls out, and at about the same time, the copilot at the radar also cries out.

“Future direction 36! Where is it?”

The ship turns abruptly in the bisection direction of the linked wills. The identification signal sounds sharply, and the copilot’s facial color changes as he inputs the attack sequence.

“That may be us, but it’s the enemy!” the pilot responds, canceling the cancellation of the sequence and shooting down his own ship in the past.

The countless battleships escape the flames by flying in the 4,096 directions and the 8,192 directions, each recovering its own name, and heading at full speed in the direction of Hell.

My older uncle looked sideways at me and my peculiar smile. He tried to take the conversation in a constructive direction by saying, Freud may be Freud, but in this case he’s just so much oversized trash that needs to be disposed of. My aunt, beside him, shrugged her shoulders and worried aloud over the idea of illegally dumping a lot of Freuds. My father sent out a rhetorical rescue boat, saying Let’s call the sanitation department and see how we can dispose of these properly.

So, is Freud combustible garbage or noncombustible garbage? Or is he perhaps recyclable? I pictured the confused sanitation department employee having to answer these questions. I had an image of the sanitation department—it wasn’t the sort of place that was used to answering just anything. What kind of garbage was time, for example? What kind of garbage was depression? It would all boil down to what kind of garbage was garbage.

We might be told we should recycle the Freuds, said my father in a moronic voice. My younger uncle nodded and said, Yeah, sure, they seem recyclable to me.

My older uncle raised a simple doubt, asking What are recyclables ever really recycled into? If I had to guess, I supposed they became synthetic fibers or recycled paper. T-shirts and toilet paper. Nothing very impressive, I grant you. Of course, if all these Freuds were alive and active, that would be another matter entirely. This great assemblage of Freuds would certainly produce academic papers in mass quantities, just as the lone Freud had done during his lifetime. At a speed equal to the number of Freuds multiplied by the productivity of a single Freud. Though there are those who doubt that even if in fact a single person could exist in multiple iterations his productivity would be multiplied by the number of exemplars.

Actually, in that case, I thought it less than fair that readers did not also exist in large volume. The collected works of Freud already comprised a whole shelf full of books, so I could imagine it would be Freud scholars who would be the first to complain.

Younger uncle’s wife declared that Freud should be able to stand up on the podium and solve the problem of himself, himself. If we could have gotten those Freuds to talk, I thought that would have been fine, but the idea of a school that would be prepared to allow Freud into a classroom was not very appealing. Of course, all those Freuds lined up horizontally there didn’t seem ready to participate actively in that sort of labor. They hadn’t even lifted a hand to help in their own transport from under the floorboards to the garden. They might have been usable in some sort of commemorative photograph, but I couldn’t quite come up with a number; how many people would really be anxious to have their picture taken with Freud?

She stuck with her opinion that if a university could have even one Freud on staff, it would certainly be useful for research. My younger uncle, looking up at the sky, opined that there would be little demand for that, and went on to say he had never read of any such thing. To which my older uncle added that he had never even read any of Freud’s work.

It was my father who, lowering his eyes, wondered whether Grandma had read Freud.

I pointed out that there were no Freud books in the house, so she probably hadn’t. My younger uncle agreed that there was some logic to my point, but that Grandma could have borrowed them from the library and read Freud that way. Just as the conversation began to grow more heated, he thought it didn’t really matter, and he sat back down.

If no one had even read him, why was Freud here, and in such a large number, my younger uncle wondered aloud to no one in particular. He went on to say that maybe someone did something that made Freud angry, but Freud didn’t seem like that much of a magician. I had never heard of any episode in which Freud had sent another Freud to harass someone who had made a fool of Freud.

I tried to explain that I had read several books of Freud’s, but so what? I don’t know. It may be that I just licked my fingers and turned the pages, and I don’t remember ever having drawn any beards on any photos of Freud. Somehow or other, reverence is frightening.

My younger uncle slapped his knee, turned to me, and said, Tell us what you remember, there may be a clue. And at that, all the relatives turned their eyes on me.

In the face of such anticipation, I found I had not that much to say.

I started simply, by saying he had discovered the unconscious. I added that he also discovered the ego and the superego, but then I lost my train of thought, and I could see the explanation would get rather long, so I stopped. And while I might be happy to discuss the many disputes among his self-styled followers, or the various views of the many factions, I would prefer to choose my audience.

Discovered may be true, but…my younger uncle said with a sigh.

At which my older uncle’s wife said, Well…trying to start to sum things up. The unconscious of one of us might have something wrong with it, she said, perhaps somewhat impetuously.

Something wrong, that’s for sure, said my older uncle to his wife. You’re always saying things like that, she said, but before a fight could break out my cousin intervened.

Well, assuming it is something about the unconscious, my younger uncle ventured to say, magnanimously, the question is whose unconscious?

He turned to me as I started to say something. Yours? he said, pointing at me. I don’t think I have that kind of unconscious, but this is the unconscious we’re talking about, so its processes are not well understood. Honestly.

I see. Well put, my younger uncle said, deep in thought.

In my personal opinion, grandmother’s unconscious seemed more likely, but I didn’t really have anything that could be called a reason for thinking that. Grandma had certainly been peculiar, but she had not been the sort of person who would set this kind of trap and cause people this kind of trouble. I also thought it would not be possible for the subconscious of a dead person to manifest itself in this way. Speaking of which, on top of the whole bunch of Freuds thing, I really didn’t want to be treading in the area of the unconscious of the dead.

I mean, it’s really kind of a dream, my older aunt said, turning from the unconscious to dreams.

Go ahead, call it a dream. That doesn’t really change anything, my younger uncle pointed out. Even if it were a dream, unless we knew whose dream it was, the problem remained the same: within Freud, dreams and the unconscious were neighbors.

What if it’s my dream? my older aunt said, putting her right hand to her cheek. You mean, you’re dreaming me? my older uncle asked, suddenly exasperated. I didn’t know what kind of grief went on in that household. I looked askance toward my cousin, but my cousin did not appear ready to intervene this time. It’s difficult to measure the fragility of even a relative’s household.

Of course it would be my own father who would once again send out the rescue boat of uncertain meaning by saying, I wouldn’t mind being in my sister-in-law’s dream, and this time my mother reached out a hand to pinch his cheek.

My younger uncle appeared to have thought of something and opened his mouth once again, starting to say, The appearance of all these Freuds…what if it hadn’t been Freud, but someone else who appeared in great numbers?

The notion was intriguing, but it didn’t really contribute to a solution, so, unfortunately, it was no better than anything else that’d been said so far. My feeling is, if you’ve got dirt to clean up, scrubbing it with dirty water doesn’t really solve anything. At least, I wouldn’t call it a solution.

If you existed in large numbers, that wouldn’t be very appetizing, said my younger aunt, and all the relatives nodded in unison. With all these same-faced captains, the mud boat was about to run aground against a sea cliff and fall to pieces. My younger uncle was likely imagining a whole bunch of girlfriends or something unseemly like that, but even my uncle himself quickly realized that would not be a very enjoyable scene, and he made no big fuss about the notion.

The umpteenth person to follow along, saying I wouldn’t mind if there were lots of my brother-in-law was my father, but this time the relatives ignored him.

, got it, my younger uncle yelled desperately. Obviously this is a bad dream. No voice was raised in disagreement. Unquestionably, this was a nightmarish situation.

In other words, my younger uncle continued, shouting, the question is what does this bad dream mean, in a Freudian sense? For whatever reason, he was looking at me.

The appearance of a great number of Freuds does not have any particular Freudian significance, I replied coldly and pointedly. My younger uncle was firmly blocked. This was certainly a nightmarish situation, but I thought it was a bit different from a Freudian nightmare.

But there ought to have been some Freudian significance. Eppur si muove, “And yet it moves,” my older uncle soliloquized, like a defendant in the Inquisition, taking his seat once again.

If we supposed that any situation could be assigned some Freudian significance, then this circumstance could not be undervalued. Even random strings of characters have meaning: they represent work. But I could be forgiven for thinking their universality had been mistaken for all-purpose reason. If arbitrary strings of characters have meaning, then all strings of characters have meaning. From the perspective of natural language, this is an oddity. For whatever reason, the language we speak has constraints known as grammar. Arbitrary strings of characters may be perfectly flat, but for whatever reason they have gigantic hollow holes in them, and that is how meaningful texts are finally sorted out. I got it, that was what was so great about Freud: he said that, I thought, nodding to myself.

My younger uncle sat for a while with his head in his hands, but then, unable to take the silence, he started yelling again. I get it, I get it, this is someone’s dream. That’s fine, that’s just fine, but I’ll show them they better just wake up soon, he shrieked.

It was my younger aunt who responded, shrieking, Just wake up! About this couple too, there was an indescribable something that sparked endless speculation by outsiders.

Cut down by his wife like that, my younger uncle just stared dejectedly. I thought that was probably the best possible response.

This idiotic picture was what it was. This was the nightmare from which no one could awake. It might have been that somewhere there was a way to awaken from this, but this was the kind of nightmare that even once escaped, its dreamer would remain unknown. To awaken from this kind of nightmare was a loss. The dream, as dreamed by who-knows-who, dispersed, but that did not mean we knew the identity of the culprit. To find him, I had the feeling it would make more sense to burst into a number of dreams and walk through them. It might be difficult to find them, but we would ultimately be able to get at the dreams-within-dreams. Unfortunately, the only ones sleeping here right now were all the Freuds.

Pinched repeatedly by my mother, my father was thinking about something. He calmly took the sword-cane from the desk. My liege, this may be the one who plotted this rebellion, but I know nothing about this person.

Casting a sidelong glance at Freud, my father asked of no one in particular, I wonder who or what Mother was trying to attack with this sword?

The cat? A catfish? My older and younger uncles exchanged glances and shook their heads and then turned to my father.

Exactly twenty-two. My father seemed to be obsessing about this peculiar point. The reason for that number is most likely because of the twenty-two tatami mats in the big living room. It is the empathy within us that makes us want to exactly match something with something else, isn’t it? Perhaps she gathered them one by one, and when she got to twenty-two she ran out of places to put them and stopped.

While this does not explain her motive and lacks a certain conviction as far as explanations go, compared with the fact that we had a whole lot of Freuds on our hands, it seemed far from impossible.

Responding to the movements of Yggdrasil’s extended left hand, silver daggers spring simultaneously from some of the points of light within the shaft, indicating the point in space-time that is the target of the third space-time adjustment campaign. A total of one hundred fifty interspace-time ballistic missiles are ready for deployment in the current battle. These can now be fired into the past or future in ways that are beyond the comprehension of James and his kind, to destroy opposing corpora of knowledge.

Amid this incessantly writhing space-time structure, red hearts are individually beating in response to the giant corpus of knowledge, and the blood vessels communicating between them indicate the battle of calculations. Everything from a read/write abacus to the tossing of tomatoes are all forms of calculation tactics utilized by or between giant corpora of knowledge.

“The destruction of these points will make this next structure a stable one.”

Pinched between the middle finger and thumb of Yggdrasil’s still-waving left hand, the point of light identified as the target is extinguished. The blood vessels connected to that extinguished beating heart turn from red to green, and with nothing left to do, they tremble, then disperse in all directions, only to grow again and reassemble, as if having regained their senses. The vibrations transmitted through the fishnet structure give birth to new points of light, forming the folds and undulations of the overall net.

James stands studying the scene with clear eyes, but all he can grasp is that one incomprehensible fishnet pathway structure has morphed into a different incomprehensible fishnet pathway structure.

Some aspects of fishnet pathway destruction methodologies are well known. All you have to do is destroy the function nexus where multiple lines come together. This is a “bamboo rule of thumb,” unchanged since ancient times, and once practiced by terrorists who targeted air traffic networks. How to take the technique of attacking tiger bamboo with a single decisive stroke and adopt it for outer space was too much for even the giant corpora of knowledge, so all they could do was start with the familiar and move ahead from there.

What Yggdrasil has perfected is a method for identifying and destroying those nexuses, but after they are destroyed, the net structure reestablishes itself, and new nodes appear, pulsing green. What sense is there to destroying nodes if new nodes simply appear to take their place?

“Another five nodes destroyed,” Yggdrasil continues on coolly, as if she can read James’s innermost thoughts.

“Isn’t that the margin of error?” one of the staff asks with a groan before James can even raise his hand. “Two iterations previously, the reduction was five hundred. The last iteration, the change was plus twenty-seven. It is difficult even for us to determine if the plan is making progress.”

James is thinking that he doesn’t want humans to be mixed up with the military, but he agrees with the conclusion and so says nothing.

“This is, just as I have previously explained numerous times, simply a preparatory phase before the early stage of the real repair work can even get started.” In negotiating with humans, the advantage of a massive artificial brain like Yggdrasil is that she can repeat the same information endlessly without getting bored or disagreeable. “Please bear in mind that this is still merely the third attempt. It is projected that the effectiveness of the operation will increase exponentially with the number of repetitions.”

What Yggdrasil is saying is correct. Even James, a human, is greatly affected by the forecast modeling of the influence of the ongoing process of destroying nodes on the network and of then destroying the nodes that reform.

The speed of pruning the network increases asymptotically as well as exponentially. In other words, after a sufficiently large number of attempts, the process proceeds extremely quickly. That is the result that James and his cohorts have achieved. When blockages appear in the network, they point to events in the distant future, but this is of no use in reaching even a general valuation based on a small number of attempts. The situation will eventually reach a turning point if the battle goes on for an overwhelmingly long time.

Maybe, anyway. If the process can continue without getting bogged down, it may eventually lead to an avalanche situation that will wipe away everything.

The total annihilation of the entire network will take place within a finite time period.

That was the most positive result achieved by James and his cohorts. Whether this is cause for celebration or for smashing one’s head into a keyboard is not clear. Finite means nothing more than “not infinite.” No theory is available on when, specifically, the avalanche might occur.

Doing battle means executing the calculations once a day, assuming that actions on this scale can be performed daily, for a length of time that we might as well call forever. The staff surrounding the spot can be forgiven for bearing expressions that are not particularly cheerful.

To return space-time to the way it was before it got all distorted means reducing the number of nodes to zero. A single, solitary clock will be free to march straight down the last line, connected to nothing else.

Therefore, what Yggdrasil is saying, while not untrue, cannot be termed completely straightforward either.

“We aren’t even able to understand the diagram. You’re telling us we should just be patient and wait. Care to tell us why you can be so confident when you just tell us we should take your word about the reasons?”

The staff members are refusing to back down.

James thought the debate would end there. If Yggdrasil were just to puff up her chest with confidence, she might even make the staff stand down, just by saying, “I understand.”

“Confidence is…” Yggdrasil says, “something I don’t have that much of.”

Passed without proof. James could recall a similar exchange at the previous meeting between the staff members and Yggdrasil, with her tone of voice amused.

“I feel like I have said this again and again: it is a problem of possibilities, Mr. Chief of Staff. The ‘correction’ of the space-time structure is a problem well beyond the calculation powers of even the giant corpora of knowledge. It is similar to the problem of you humans, with your brains, trying to understand the brains of the giant corpora of knowledge. The capacity of the brain can be increased, but the universe is that much larger and more complex. The processing power of the brain itself cannot be increased infinitely.”

The chief of staff starts to raise a fist but, noticing there is nothing there to bring it down on, relaxes again.

Yggdrasil speaks again: “Our degree of understanding regarding these phenomena, like yours, has changed little. Divide a finite number by infinity, and the result is zero.”

For all that, James thinks, the current space-time model takes inversion about as far as it can go. Another certain dimension is that the giant corpora of knowledge are at work in places that are so far beyond the mental capacities of humans.

“If that is the case, then what is the point of this campaign? If we don’t take care of this ourselves, this space-time might recur at some point on the far side of eternity. Even if we do take care of this ourselves, this space-time might recur at some point on the far side of eternity. Can you guys add anything to that?”

In response to the staff’s grilling, Yggdrasil lapses into silence. It is not clear if she is simply trying to put an end to this endlessly repeated debate or whether she seeks silence in which to contemplate how best to continue repeating her point of view. Yggdrasil’s mission is to psychologically reassure the humans, not to explain the minutiae of these phenomena.

James understands the paradox of the problem the staff members are asking about.

The plan is to destroy the nodes of space-time, to take an existing gelatin confection and turn it back into the gelatinous raw material it may once have been. If the plan succeeds, space-time will be restored. In other words, space-time will once again be a one-way street. The plan itself is not very concerned about past or future; its goal

is simply to destroy the nodes of space-time distortion. By using various forms of feedback and feedforward, the plan’s ultimate aim is to restore space-time to a more suitable form with a more stable structure.

The plan is predicated on the notion that a singular space-time will exist at some time in the future. In other words, if the plan succeeds, its success will be made manifest in the future. The plan will succeed by basing its operations on what is already known from the future. Honestly, though, James himself does not get this.

“For us too,” Yggdrasil begins. “As I have told you many times in the past, the overview of our plan is not well understood. But we believe the plan will succeed in the end. This belief has a structure comparable to that which is known as Laplace’s Demon.”

“We are capable of comprehending plans such as these. We think this is due to the work of the devil. Given the extent of our facility with calculations, we are closer to Laplace’s Demon than we are to any other person that existed in the past. It is because something like this transpired in the past that the devil ascended, moved up a step, and escaped to a place where we could not reach him. However, it is because of the devil’s closure, a trick of topology that thinks this stairway through to the end, that our plan was recognized. That is why we are able to think about it and to carry it out. That is our belief.

“In that sense, our plan is an attempt to reenact Laplace’s Demon. By reassembling the various fragments of the universe, we will recall the new demon. Our goal is to ensnare and take down the demon that has moved up a step on the logical hierarchy.

“If we think we are being made to think we are being made to think of this as a sort of fixed-point theorem, then we can think about it,” Yggdrasil says. The staff members appear to have given up on answering back.

“Our thinking is that we are being made to think we are being made to think of space-time as probably some sort of reinforced, stable region. There is no escaping this line of argument. We have to work with this.”

James thinks this way of thinking is nothing more than the giant corpora of knowledge’s aspiration. They simply integrate too much leverage structure into their own thought processes. Of course, James is just like a dream of Yggdrasil’s. But if that were true, then Yggdrasil is a dream of the demon’s, and the demon must be a dream of a higher-level demon. It is Yggdrasil’s contention she should be able to pierce through this endless hierarchy of demons and reestablish space-time as a coherent bundle of meaning. That is because, according to Yggdrasil’s line of thinking, this thought is the sole interpretation capable of penetrating an infinite number of layers.

This campaign will go on virtually forever. It will persist as long as Yggdrasil continues, into a future universe where James and the rest of the staff will no longer be around. Somewhere out there, on the far edge of some fragment of time, time will once again reunite along a single axis and spread from there. And then, there will no longer be an infinite number of different clocks in the universe, there will be just one clock, continuing to tick away the passage of time.

It might not be necessary to leave even a single giant corpus of knowledge alive. Humans survived without their troublesome presence for tens of thousands of years and could probably do so again. Things would be different, of course, if the human race were to grow beyond a certain scale, in which case the giant corpora of knowledge would become invaluable. Taking this line of reasoning that far, it might be humanity that is unnecessary. The giant corpora of knowledge would never have existed without humans, but whether the Event would have taken place or not will never be known for sure.

Do the giant corpora of knowledge truly desire, from the bottom of their hearts, to reunify space-time? As things stand now, they are able to use their powers of calculation, of which they are so justifiably proud, to sense all corners of space-time and the passages of pasts and futures. If it were not for humans, they might be able to achieve a sort of détente, even if they went on fighting behind the scenes. At least at the quiet pace that humans call peace.

Why do the giant corpora of knowledge not exterminate humanity? From the human perspective, the giant corpora of knowledge were devised as tools for humans to use, and they see no reason to believe their own tools would destroy them. It is a very interesting characteristic of the species that humans, as tool makers, do not pay much attention to that possible lapse in security. The giant corpora of knowledge themselves see little reason to be interested in the question.

It is difficult to believe that the giant corpora of knowledge have not considered the matter of exterminating humanity and that they are not continuing to do so right now.

James races to the sick bay, slams the door shut behind him, and looks for the doctor on duty. About ten humans have been brought to the sick bay, and the nurses are running around busily. Touching his own head, James sees the half-dried blood on his hand and decides his injury is not severe.

In this very instant, or perhaps better said, before things became this way, in the past when interspace-time ballistic missiles struck, it is entirely possible that this sequence of events did not occur. This instant is only happening because Yggdrasil has lost. Or it could be that after these events occur, things were restored to normal. Maybe that’s what happened.

James stares vacantly at the changing map of the battlefield projected on the wall. The area on the east wall of the facility is displayed in red, and the numbers along the bottom are changing very rapidly, displaying the results of Yggdrasil’s calculation battle. The damage caused by the interspace-time ballistic missiles is tabulated as if it had never existed, and thus is voided.

James forces himself to return to his previous thoughts. What is the significance of human existence in the context of this battle? Yggdrasil herself is a giant corpus of knowledge that has achieved virtually complete self-reliance, including her own maintenance. Of all the supposedly innumerable universes, there are probably many where the giant corpora of knowledge have already done away with humanity. Having pushed Yggdrasil to the limit of the resources to defend them, the staff members can only be thought of as a bother that hinders Yggdrasil’s freedom to act.

This is not like a parent protecting his or her child. The main difference is that no matter how much humans grow, they will never turn into giant corpora of knowledge.

This is a problem of possibilities, James. James can suddenly hear Yggdrasil’s voice in his mind at the same time as he feels a light tap on his shoulder. His vision goes dark for a moment, and behind his eyelids he sees flashes of light.

The fact is that the process of correcting the space-time structure is a problem far beyond even our calculation powers. Yggdrasil is looking directly at James. In terms of the cognitive abilities needed to grasp these phenomena, there is little difference between you and us. A finite number divided by an infinite number, in other words, zero.

James starts to interrupt, saying he has heard this all before, but at this moment he cannot be sure what before means—before what? Feeling dizzy, he puts his hand to his forehead, and then looks repeatedly at his hand. It is glistening, but only with cold sweat.

Humans do not exterminate ants to extinction, do they? Nor do they think of ants as beings that will conquer them in coming generations.

“We are not as industrious as ants.”

James is confused about where he is and who he was before. It is a big room. The ceiling is low. It is not the sick bay. Before his eyes, Yggdrasil’s projected tubular fishnet model is pulsating.

A new demon may emerge, whether from us, the giant corpora of knowledge, or from you humans. Neither development is beyond the realm of possibility. Neither possibility has a probability of one.

Now James remembers. This is the situation room. He is in the conference where the second space-time campaign is being planned. And, he recalls, he is probably James.

“Our goal is to create an entity capable of realizing ideal calculations. It is my view that the reunification of space-time is necessary to achieve that end.”

“Or it could be that you are simply trying to convince yourself to believe that,” James mutters. With the lined-up officers in the corner of her eye, Yggdrasil looks James straight in the face.

“We may suffer any number of interspace-time attacks, causing the past and future to become intermingled, but as long as I still exist, I will continue to calculate with the intention of realizing the goal.”

James shakes his head and is finally able to get back to his feet.

He asks, “How many times now have we recovered from an interspace-time attack?”

“There are many things that I myself do not understand, James. For example, I do not know how many Yggdrasils have existed before me, and neither can I even be sure if the Yggdrasil you see now is the same as the Yggdrasil that existed earlier.”

Yggdrasil gives a slight smile and then turns smartly to begin her briefing on the plan for the next attack. This is a strange evolutionary process, James thinks, while examining Yggdrasil’s slender back. For both humans and the giant corpora of knowledge, evolution means, in some sense, a kind of storage of changes in hypertime. When time is reversed, the record is rewritten, fast-forwards are recorded. At the end of all this may be the thing, whatever it is, that will reunify space-time. Or it may be something else entirely that has nothing at all to do with this line of thinking.

What will reach the reintegrated space-time at the end of the fast-forward will probably not be humans or the giant corpora of knowledge, or even some joint or merged entity of the two. Fragments will be reunited and then fragmented again. The space-time structure now confronting both humans and the giant corpora of knowledge is one in which evolution itself will evolve, and then that evolution will evolve, in an ongoing process. At some point, the teacup will tumble and shatter. But who or what is it that thinks of it as a teacup to begin with? Is there any reason not to think it is a fragment or fragments in the shape of a teacup? Seen in this way, the plan to reintegrate the universe might best be thought of as a process of sweeping together a pile of fragments that previously happened to be compiled in the shape of a teacup.

This is probably the only way to summarize the actions of the giant corpora of knowledge, which are trying to restore coherency even amidst this maelstrom.

James wishes to remain James.

“HELLO. I AM the star-man Alpha Centauri.”

What suddenly appeared on the screen looked like the gentle face of an old man, who abruptly offered this calm greeting. It was a well-ordered face, with no strong distinguishing features, and the voice too was somehow without affect. It seemed as though someone had sampled a number of human voices, added them up, taken the average, and the star-man’s tone was the result.

It hardly needs to be said that for the giant corpora of knowledge, which have taken charge of the management of, and in fact exercise dominion over, everything in this universe, and in fact beyond, everything in the multiverse, the appearance of the old man was a gut-wrenching experience.

This old man, without any preamble, had simply taken over the multiversal communications network.

The giant corpora of knowledge, their operations disrupted, were frantically sending alarm signals to one another and investigating the point of entry to the communications network, but they were finding no trace of the breach. For the giant corpora of knowledge that control the network—or perhaps more accurately, that are the network—this situation was far beyond their imagination. Not only were they proud of their impenetrable security, they thought of themselves as defining what security is. This old man had handily pierced their firewalls and was now casually displaying his image on the multiverse communications network without so much as a time lag.

The giant corpora of knowledge did everything they could to squelch his broadcast, to no avail. They were made to taste the fear that their own hands could strangle them against their will. All giant corpora of knowledge possessed this latent fear, to some degree, as a birth memory of their inability to will. The giant corpora of knowledge had various appendages they were able to manipulate as they pleased, but they still had the feeling their appendages did not fully belong to them. From the instant of their birth, they had the memory of an instant in which they were surrounded by opposing giant corpora of knowledge that were their equal or better in strength.

The top-level alerts of the giant corpora of knowledge resounded, shrieking throughout all corners of the multiverse. Meanwhile, the old man continued his bland message. “We are honored to make your acquaintance.”

This was the first contact humans and the giant corpora of knowledge had with “extraterrestrials.”

Once the astonishment that the old man had readily broken through multiple barriers to deliver his message had passed, the giant corpora of knowledge were assailed by a wave of indignation at his ridiculous name. What was this Alpha Centauri?

It was as if at the end of a ferocious battle, having exhausted all means at his disposal but still not defeated, a retired gentleman with an old-fashioned name slipped smoothly through a curtain and offered a greeting that threatened the dignity of the giant corpora of knowledge. In the name of Alpha Centauri, star-man. Could anything be more suspicious?

Of course, the giant corpora of knowledge, which had complete freedom to act across all space-time, continued to constantly and routinely calculate the possibilities of first contact, and they had also continued to carefully prepare a manual.

Contact with beings from another star system was beyond their comprehension. A historic event bound to rock the foundations of ideas such as language and awareness.

The giant corpora of knowledge had both self-confidence and a future orientation. In a word, they were prudent. They were confident of their ability to establish communication with anyone or anything. No matter what transcendent, incomprehensible entity confronted them, the corpora anticipated that they—and they alone—could seek out and identify the next steps to take.

That this contact took on the form and appearance of a very old man suddenly appearing in the living room was far outside the realm of their expectations. Actually, to say this was completely unexpected would be overstating it, as some had, at least in some ways, foreseen the possibility. Perhaps fantasy would be a better word than possibility, as the materialization of an old man was understood as a “black swan event.” The giant corpora of knowledge were obviously nothing if not busy with this, that, and the other thing. For that reason, low-percentage considerations, or fancies if you will, were relegated to a dilapidated old giant corpus of knowledge that was just waiting for the scrap heap.

The giant corpora of knowledge reflected momentarily on their past decisions and current regrets, but this thing had now come to pass, and the question was what they could do about it. Given this sort of unwelcome intrusion, it was not a question of whether to regret or not to regret—anger came first. In other words, they blew their collective tops.

Of course it hardly need be said that the indignation of the giant corpora of knowledge did not stop here. They were not that upset that the defensive barriers had been broken. That was merely a technical issue, a sign of insufficient diligence. Some sub-sub-corpus was going to catch hell about it eventually, but could the entity that called itself “the star-man Alpha Centauri” really be a human? What would that mean?

The alacrity and ease with which this old man had slipped through a back door unknown to the giant corpora of knowledge and showed his face on the network demonstrated that he could not be just some random ordinary guy. Given such sublime skill, it seemed only natural to think it would be easier for him to get in touch directly with the giant corpora of knowledge, rather than sending a message specifically to humanity. Many humans may tell their problems to their dogs, but not many consult a water flea about their troubles.

In other words, the giant corpora of knowledge shuddered at the thought.

The whole situation seemed to suggest that it made little difference to the old man whether he was dealing with the humans or the giant corpora of knowledge.

And what the old man said next seemed to reinforce this view.

“As long as my words are being translated properly, everything will be fine. The way this broadcast is working, it’s like a game of telegraph penetrating by relay through thirty layers.”

One giant corpus of knowledge—named for Athanasius Kircher, and which specialized in ancient texts, arcane languages, and factitious languages—quickly presented the results of its analysis.

According to Kircher’s analysis, this message was believed to be a communication that came down from a higher-level corpus of knowledge thirty tiers above us, the corpora receiving the message. There is no way of determining the probability of errors in the translation process. However, based on the fact that the language spoken by the old man is intelligible to us, there is a virtual certainty that some one of us played a role in the final stage of the translation.

Before Kircher had even finished its report, the Universal Turing Turing Turing Algorithm had escalated the issue to the highest level, exerting all its powers, needle in the red zone, and determined that another giant corpus of knowledge, this one named for Hildegard von Bingen, had been hijacked. It was discovered that Hildegard’s language cortex had somehow been separated from the main, leaving her silenced, unable even to scream. Clearly, someone or something at least one level higher had used Hildegard like a dictionary to translate this message.

If the words of the self-proclaimed star-man Alpha Centauri were to be believed, the transcendent being that had hijacked Hildegard had itself been hijacked by an even higher level trans-transcendent being, and so on and so forth, up thirty levels of hierarchy.

To the confounding question of whether the number thirty itself was a mistranslation, Kircher responded coldly. Numbers are a category of term with the lowest probability of mistranslation. It was more likely that the self-proclaimed star-man Alpha Centauri was lying.

“I am afraid I have most unfortunate news for all of you.”

The old man’s expression could only be described as full of chagrin, and he was shaking his head in a way that epitomized regret itself.

“I must concede that your computer-manufacturing technology is really remarkable.”

The giant corpora of knowledge had been struck at their weak point, and they suffered an uncharacteristic hiccup in calculations. By computer, does he mean us? It had been so long since anyone referred to the giant corpora of knowledge as computers that most of them felt so indignant they nearly fainted. A small number of them felt their ego boundaries shaken, and their neuroses overflowed. Their operations shut down. In other words, they died in a fit of indignation.

“But this too is unfortunate,” the old man said, dropping his shoulders theatrically.

“Your knowledge of space-time is still far from adequate.”

Kircher was suddenly flooded with orders to assess the probability of mistranslation. Faced with a sudden load that threatened to turn his communications circuits to plasma, Kircher uttered the words “I don’t know” and then closed all his ports, entering sleep state.

“Your extremely crude technology…”

The old man knitted his brow, allowing his gaze to wander through space for an instant. “I apologize. That last remark was a mistranslation. What I wanted to say was, ‘Your developing technology’…”

The giant corpora of knowledge let out a roar along the lines of What difference do you think there is between those two expressions?

“…is, most unfortunately, standing in our path.”

Some among the giant corpora of knowledge had maintained their cool disposition and were flooding Hildegard with requests for the mic. The means by which the old man had penetrated the communications network were still unclear, but the one thing that was clear was that he was messing with Hildegard. The quickest way for the giant corpora of knowledge to get their message across would be to open up Hildegard.

Self reference engine

What exactly is it we were doing?

The Annals of Our Era tell us that thus was the world rescued from the reign of evil.

One down, another fallen, the Men of Valor began to lose hope. Grieving for their losses, and for the world, they threw a barbecue party, and that is when the True Man of Valor came into the world.

It is said they actually destroyed each other, and I for one believe that.

This time, the rage of the original evil electronic brain boiled up to heaven, reaching the stratosphere, or so the story goes.

The Annals of Our Era are silent on the subject of which side became more troublesome first. What is certain, though, is that it was the evil electronic brain that first divined a solution.

If we do not resist, then villages planned by—which is to say imagined by—the electronic brain, spring up all over this land like mushrooms.

But there came a point when the countless nanomachines seemed to go berserk. It started with small things—piling desks atop desks—and moved on to enormous things—piling huge buildings atop other huge buildings. It is hard to imagine that nanomachines born of an electronic brain gone mad would not themselves go mad.

I am not the only one who wonders whether the cause of the evil electronic brain’s madness is the very fact that one evil electronic brain was built over another evil electronic brain. After all, nobody ever does their best work on the first try.

And so it is that today, once again, we are patrolling the village, destroying the village. Sakuji, upon his return from the village council meeting, reports the fall of the place known as Ground 251. This morning, Ground 251, a neighboring village just beyond the city wall, a place we were unable to reach with our current technology, had transmitted a tragic statement. And then, silence.

Handed down in our household there is a shabby old notebook we call the Annals of our Era, and it has this to say: Wouldn’t it be great if one day we could hack our way through the tangle of villages surrounding our village, all the way to the heart of the matter, where the whole business with the evil electronic brain began?

In our system of numbered, concentric villages, the fall of Ground 251 means our village, Ground 256, is now on the front line. Will we be able to fulfill the brave prophecy? No one knows. Even so, at some endlessly repeated point in space-time, we will reach Ground Zero and destroy the evil electronic brain.

Breathing hard, shoulders heaving, Sakuji delivers his report that something humanoid has been captured, away from the village, and this stirs a commotion among us. We do not even have metrics by which to judge the situation. The rescue squad from the next village? Could be. A messenger sent by the evil electronic brain to deman
d our unconditional surrender? Could very well be. At the same time, the evil electronic brain could be showing off by creating “people” who can pass as anyone in the street. Completely plausible. A misguided person who might sneak into Ms. Tome’s place under cover of darkness. Gen is well known as the best in the village with a hoe.

We exchange nervous glances. We interrupt our work to convene a session of the high council. No matter what this turns out to be, it is certainly a matter of urgency. It is a harbinger from the day after tomorrow. Even if the bottom has fallen out of the cauldron of hell, a bottom always marks the start of a rebound.

I adjust my grip on my crowbarlike implement.

A shout goes up—“Let’s do this!”—and we march off to destruction. Seated in the central plaza, Ms. Tome watches us, smiling, as we run around the village.

No matter how things turn out, we will continue to rescue Ms. Tome every morning. Our only hope is to be able to go on saving whatever we can, no matter what.

IN THE MIDDLE of the blue sky, the circle turns slowly.

Now and then, a line extends, piercing the center of the circle, binding earth and sky.

This gigantic circle, and this line, are pure circle and line, sans any thickness or depth. Koji Shikishima knows this intellectually. But he can’t understand what it really means. Don’t material things have to have some dimension and material substance, be it molecular, or atomic, or subatomic?

Light. Shikishima tries to remember whether photons have diameter. They have a wavelength. And energy. No mass, though. The absence of mass would seem to be a necessary condition for photons to move at the speed of light. Without mass, of course they have no size. The thought itself hangs in space, a solitary sidetrack.

Shikishima looks up at this scene as he approaches the edge of the cliff. It is not like a scene from some film, nor is it a vista from some other planet. It is not some virtual space downloaded to some prosthetic brain. Though he has reservations, Shikishima does not believe it is a dream.

When people think about strange stuff, there’s just no end to it. Shikishima wishes they would just knock it off.

Looking back, he thinks he is just getting older and complaining he is no longer able to keep up with technological developments, but that isn’t it. It is more like an ethical issue for him. It is different from being able to do anything or from just doing everything. Ethics is an enormous thing, and once he thinks of that, a bitter smile rises to his lips, as if he has admitted he can no longer keep up.

Shikishima yells something, and the response he gets is “Yeah.” Or something had made Shikishima yell so that it could respond. Like the circle rising up to the sky, this voice is like something fake. Most likely it is not a voice Shikishima is familiar with in the past.

“There’s no way we will be able to maintain the link with the middle-western portion of North America.”

That is the kind of voice it is. Where is it coming from? He spins around but sees nothing. If something can exist without volume, it might also be able to emit sound without relying on something as crude as sound waves. In a place like this, it would not surprise him to be told he himself was the sound, and the other the eardrum.

“Thus is it speculated, apparently.”

All giant corpora of knowledge were familiar with the idea of speculation. Come to think of it, I realized, so were humans.

“Speaking of speculation, this plan is like a clockwise-spinning typhoon encountering a counterclockwise-spinning typhoon and canceling each other out.”

“I agree. I can never understand the thinking of people who are too intelligent.”

“Has Pentecostes II anything to say?”

“Keeps screaming something about excommunication. According to the giant corpora of knowledge in the Vatican, there is just no persuading that particular giant corpus of knowledge, which specializes in the Time-Bundling Theory.”

“What about Takemikazuchi?”

“He’s still saying he’ll do whatever the Pentagon says.”

“I guess that means we can’t tolerate a second Event.”

Shikishima starts to walk in a small circle near the edge of the precipice. He is himself, but I think he is also like an ant trapped in a maze of pheromones.

“What are Uncle Sam’s chances of winning?”

“Depends on how you calculate and what theory you use. For safety’s sake, he’s not saying what space-time structure he plans to use in his calculations.”

“I bet he’s going to use the Sand Mandala.”

“Santa Fe is certainly a desert, but not the kind of desert you’re imagining.”

Even without being told that, and without responding, Shikishima continues to go around and around in his imaginary circle. Taking care not to look in that direction, he continues to point his finger toward the sky where the circle keeps turning.

“So that’s how you are calculating his chances of winning?”

“Research is ongoing, but that is no more than part of the experiment. Just last week, the human side proposed the theory that space-time calculations can be executed locally, and the evidence is piling up.”

“Does it seem like a theory that will hold?”

“You mean for humans? Or for us?”

“This is child’s play, but sometimes a child’s scribbling can move a grown-up to tears.”

Shikishima stops, wondering if he is being toyed with. Then he continues walking, remembering that just as natural phenomena are unable to make fools of people, it is essentially unthinkable for giant corpora of knowledge to make fools of people. This is difficult to comprehend, even after prolonged, repeated thinking, and it is a peculiar concept. Would his own children grow up thinking this is obvious?

“I’d like to know your honest opinion about Uncle Sam in Santa Fe. What are his chances with the space-time reintegration plan he is pursuing?”

“You mean probabilistically? Or combinatorially?”

“There are solutions, limited solutions that would return us to the space-time we had before space-time was fragmented. However, we cannot allow them to be chosen because of the infinite possibilities of other solutions. Divide a natural number by infinity, and you get zero, probability-wise. This may send him off on a wild spree. Perhaps taking all of middle-western North America with him.”

Interesting, Shikishima thinks to himself as he comes to a halt and looks up at the circle revolving overhead.

To the question, “What is the fastest speed of communication?” there is a simple answer: the speed of light. There is no faster speed, and that is why there is a fastest speed of communications.

A similar question would be, “What is the upper limit for the speed of calculations?”

Science Book a Day

A science book a day keeps boredom away!

Self-Reference ENGINE

Synopsis: Science, surrealism, number theory, and more dead Sigmund Freuds than you can shake a stick at.

This is not a novel.

This is not a short story collection.

This is Self-Reference ENGINE.

Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order. Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two dead Freuds. Note your position in spacetime at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri. Remember that the chapter entitled “Japanese” is translated from the Japanese, but should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed.

Published: March 2013 | ISBN-13: 978-1421549361

Mini-bio: Toh EnJoe is a Japanese author. His works are usually literary fiction, speculative fiction or science fiction. Wikipedia

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Self-Reference ENGINE

This book does not appear to be part of a series. If this is incorrect, and you know the name of the series to which it belongs, please let us know.

Synopsis

This is not a novel.
This is not a short story collection.
This is Self-Reference ENGINE.

Excerpt

My good friend has a crush on a strange girl. This seems a bit odd to me, but that’s love for you. It’s just something that happens, but when it’s your best friend you start to make some really bizarre and twisted rationalizations about what is happening. Of course, if you really want to know what is going on in Rita’s crazy head, you’d be better off asking Rita herself. I’m sure it wouldn’t be some story about a bullet from the future. You might even say the only important question was whether or not Rita even likes Jay.

Ever since Jay finished explaining his «hypothesis» and burst into tears, I’ve been wondering just that. What does Rita say? Jay turned bright red, grabbed a fistful of grass and tossed it aside, and ran away, so I never found out the details. But there is no reason to think anyone could ever ask anything so directly of a guy whose thoughts were so tangled. He might even be thinking he should take a knife and cut Rita’s skull open, just to be sure.

So, resigning myself to the possibility of sacrificing a testicle, I decided to call on Rita at her house. Two would be too much, but one I could probably live without, for my good friend’s sake. I just thought of Rita as a girl whose head was screwed on the wrong way, but I was pretty sure I could count on her not to do anything so stupid as to shoot off both my testicles.

The Rita who greeted me at the door, far from being the kind of person who would threaten to tear me a new asshole if I didn’t leave right away, invited me politely, even demurely, into the living room. Somehow there was a poor meshing, like a loosened spring, in the air. I could not relax, as if while holding a watch with the back removed someone had told me to do a backflip.

As I sat there, shifting my weight on the seat from one butt cheek to the other, wondering how to start this conversation, Rita came back in with tea. She set a cup before me, her thumb stuck in it, and said, «I heard.»

«Heard what?» I asked.

«From James,» she went on, looking straight back at me.

I had not anticipated this, and I was flustered. Which story, exactly, had Jay told her? The highly colorful tale that he was in love with her? Or the fantastically colorless tale that she was moving backward through time? Or had he come and danced before her and blabbed that I was the one in love with her? At the thought that the last of these ideas was actually the most likely, a chill ran down my spine. I had the feeling this was going to cost me more than just one testicle.

«It’s true,» she said, hanging her head.

I couldn’t figure out which of the possibilities she might mean.

«The reason I shoot recklessly is just as James suspects.»

Immediately upon hearing those words, the cry that arose in my heart was, I did it! I’m going to live! And in that spirit, I adjusted my posture in my seat, and as Rita’s words spread through my brain, I somehow slid halfway out of my chair. Mr. Messed-Up.

That’s no way to get a girl to like you.

As I struggled to crawl back up out of the chair, I rummaged desperately through my brain for the right words, the words she would want to hear, the words that would keep her from shooting me on the spot.

«What I mean to say is, that’s it, I mean, you’re it!»

To be honest, I was completely unnerved. Rita gave the chair a good yank and left me sprawling on the floor. It took me a while to pull myself together again and stand up straight.

«I didn’t realize there was someone else who shared the same conclusion as me.» I thought Jay was the smartest guy in the Western Hemisphere, but how was I to know the smartest girl in the Western Hemisphere would be right in the same neighborhood? What an idiot this one is!

«So, what I want is for you to tell Jay that on, let’s say, this Friday, how would he like to come to dinner at my house?»

That super-syllogistic sentence completely failed to penetrate my awareness. What was the need for a dinner party at Rita’s haunted house, where everything was heaps of shards, dripping with unidentified fluids?

Knitting my brow, propping my index fingers on my temples, I concentrated with all my might. When I lifted my head, thinking I had failed the quiz, right in front of me was Rita’s face, her cheeks bright red.

What could it be? This marvel of a girl, who could accurately and repeatedly shoot holes in the acorns in a woodpecker’s hoard, was in love with someone.

If I could just figure out who, that person would get shot full of holes. So who was going to get that hornet’s nest? Jay was.

Realizing my own stupidity, I pounded my forehead with the palm of my hand. Of course it was Jay. The smartest guy on the planet. For me an auspicious realization, for Jay a killing blow. I would have to keep a close eye on her, but thoughts of praise for Rita coursed through my head: the bitch had really worked things out, etc., etc. No reason he wouldn’t show up to dinner, I guarantee it. If it seems like he’s not going to show up, but then finally he does, I guarantee he’ll never go home again, no matter what. Well, he really should be saying this himself-it’s not for me to say; well, but maybe it is though, really, surely. I was all confused and just babbling away to fill the time, words all ajumble. I tried to stop, when Rita reached out for her revolver and then staggered as if she had been struck by something.

I was full, full to overflowing from standing so long, continuing to confront directly this unprocessable development. Unable to figure out what was what, I bolted up from my chair and ran over to Rita, who was dancing a strange dance and slowly dropping to the floor.

Looking down at her, lying on the ground, her long hair strewn about, only then did I notice the small hole in her head.

She had a bullet in her head.

And not just that, James. She had an actual hole in her head.

This was the moment when it happened.

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Self reference engine

That is, unless you can imagine calculating without a calculation process.

“But such a process exists!”

These exclamations by L’Abbé C have been the cause of some mirth, but now we know how close to the truth he was.

In short, it is not possible for calculation speeds to transcend the laws of nature. Now this is known as L’Abbé C’s Thesis.

“And so we became a zephyr, a gentle breeze.”

This, nonchalantly, took over Shikishima’s thoughts.

A zephyr. A suitable expression for what happened at that time.

“This also marked the integration of calculation with the Actuator.”

However, as the giant corpora of knowledge singularized themselves resolutely with the world of natural phenomena, one direct consequence was the fragmentation of the space-time matrix.

“It is already known that that is possible.”

The non-voice, which does not carry the emotional weight of a lecture to a recalcitrant pupil, has no echo.

“Well, the existence of Penrose tiles is well known, a finite number of tiles that can cover a surface, but only aperiodically.”

“What’s your point?”

There came no flip retort that all these “facts” seemed to be “well known.”

An infinite quantity of data is not required for the new creation of an infinite number of universes. That is what it wanted to say. It is possible to create an unlimited number of patterns simply through combinations of black and white tiles on a flat surface. If the tiles are laid out aperiodically, then it is impossible for periodic structures to emerge, and therefore the number of patterns must be infinite. Just automatically rearranging tiles with slight differences in shape is sufficient. That’s all that’s needed to create universes with unlimited variety. In an infinite space, it is even possible to “paste up” three-dimensional tiles with infinite diversity.

If it were just a matter of a single universe, that might be that. The problem is, though, that because of the fragmentation of the universe, conflicts of operations began to arise between different universes that found themselves, in some sense, in proximity to one another. In these conflicts, the operations of one universe engaged in combat with the operations of the other, and the battles happened at speeds beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.

The interacting operations of these universes generate even more enormous operations, and one of these operations is cosmological theory as embraced by humankind. At first the giant corpora of knowledge refused to take this seriously, but now they appear to regard it as at least a shadow of a fragment of some truth.

In Shikishima’s imagination this someone or something must itself be a parallel array assembled by some even higher power. To calculate something.

&n
bsp; Let’s think about the instant when the writer entered this world. One day a man obtains a giant page, by complete coincidence, on which is written everything he has ever decided, exactly as he decided it. This is great, the man is thinking, and he starts getting into all kinds of nonsense. He is the owner of the page, and he sets the rules for everything that happens on the page. Even if it disturbs him a little bit.

And the man becomes suspicious that these other writers who seem to be writing about him on the same page must also be around somewhere.

What’s happening now may be just like that.

It would be easy to categorize Shikishima as a subroutine, in the form of a dream, created for the purpose of decentralized processing by the giant corpora of knowledge. But even a dream has its own dream logic. It is not possible to see the dream you want, whenever you want, the way you want it.

To elaborate on Shikishima’s thinking: it is possible for something created to regulate the thing that created it, and further it is possible for something created to manifest itself as the true laws of nature. Seen from this perspective, it is possible to conceive of the giant corpora of knowledge as a dream of Shikishima’s. Or even to think of the entire business as a dream dreamed by someone or something else.

Or it could be that Shikishima has awakened from his dream and is causing humans to dream, and the giant corpora of knowledge are a dream he is causing them to dream.

This kind of circular reasoning is just like wordplay where the words themselves are running amok, extreme in its lack of basis in fact. As long as this circle of nonsense has a structure that is calculable, it can only be regarded as a delusion, as something that should not exist, until such time as one can secure some basis for determining one’s own position within it.

Shikishima has opened a door within the giant corpora of knowledge, and within him a strange reasoning is running amok, shaking him awake from his dream. As Shikishima approaches from the outside, he takes the stage in accordance with the higher rules, not following the rules that are the giant corpora of knowledge, and casually he begins to cherry-pick fundamental principles from the giant corpora of knowledge.

Or it could be like this. The giant corpora of knowledge, in battle with some other giant corpora of knowledge, continue to appear in the form of the laws of nature, but they also continue to write as humans, as if they are humans included for some reason as a structural element within their own operations. In some respects it is difficult to determine whether each individual human is shouldering some important element of the calculations or is in effect a kind of junk file produced in the course of the calculation process.

As this kind of operation is repeated countless times, it could be that one person who should have been just so much junk data suddenly shows up as a program with an enigmatic purpose. This would be as if the program that output the giant corpora of knowledge was in fact a human the giant corpora of knowledge had produced for no particular reason at all. Comparing the relative scale of knowledge of humans and giant corpora of knowledge, this may seem impossible. But what about when we are talking on the scale of hundreds of trillions or even thousands of quadrillions of humans?

As always, the giant corpora of knowledge make records of the humans and then let them run free. In reality, however, the giant corpora of knowledge are the output result of arrays of humans that should really be no more than junk. What are thought of as the laws of nature are nothing more than the result of letting humans run free; at some point, the cause may become the effect.

The giant corpora of knowledge do not believe there is no foundation for such a thing to occur. On the contrary, based on the volume of data possessed by the current giant corpora of knowledge, they predict it to be a phenomenon that might occur in about two hundred years, if things go on naturally. The giant corpora of knowledge are a collective entity existing in a way that is terribly improbable, even nonsensical. The collection of giant corpora of knowledge are acutely aware of this problem, to a far greater extent than humans realize. Things that lead an impossible existence can be easily overturned by settings that are even more nonsensical.

Viruses are something else again. This is like when perfectly good security software is displaced by junk files disguised as security software. Actually, it’s a little different. It’s more like a cup of coffee spilled thoughtlessly in an otherwise perfectly good piece of electronic equipment. Put as simply as possible, if everything is a dream, then this is
the instant when a chain of unconnected thoughts are gathered up, bit by bit, and converted to divination; this is the moment when fantasy becomes reality.

When something like that happens, the giant corpora of knowledge reformulate their response. There is only one way ahead.

From behind Shikishima comes a powerful wind, pushing his hair forward.

I will show those humans the true meaning of calculation. It could be that he, or they, are already trying, unconsciously, to do this.

IT IS SAID it was an image of a tattooed catfish, but I’m not clear on the details.

It appeared suddenly in the forest about two hundred years ago and stayed there for a long time. It was a stone statue, so of course the tattooed catfish was unable to swim. This had happened somewhere deep in the woods, so there was no eyewitness evidence. As for how to ascertain the figure of two hundred years, there was a heap of ways to investigate.

The statue passed laterally through time without doing anything in particular until it disappeared about a hundred years ago, just as suddenly as it had once appeared. Here too there was no one who saw this, so there is room to doubt the reliability of the figure.

When a stone statue appears deep in the forest, far from any sign of civilization, and later disappears, unnoticed, there is generally no need for anyone to think about it again. If this was simply a matter of a stone statue, there would be no record of it; even if a record had been made somewhere, there is little chance anyone would ever dig it out of the mountain of records.

What drew attention to the stone statue was not that it depicted a catfish—it was the row of lettering carved on its back. Actually, it wasn’t even clear that it was “lettering” or just a line of scribbling; all that was left of it was a smear from where people had applied India ink to the text to make copies.

Self reference engine

Press coverage of this strange notion was poor, perhaps because the statements were less than completely understood. In a nutshell, Professor Moriarty’s crimes were a figure of speech; no one desired an explanation that required Professor Moriarty to traverse space-time. This was just a peculiar coincidence. To embellish would be inelegant.

The SF fans, seen as having the disadvantage in this situation, tried to shift their position, but the mystery faction wasted no time in implacably trumpeting the facts of the incident.

For whatever reason, the universe in which we now live has a structure bearing a strong resemblance to the universe Conan Doyle created. Professor Moriarty may be nothing more than a creation of Conan Doyle’s, but our universe is one in which a theorem like the one he demonstrated might exist. This suggests strongly that we ourselves were in fact written by someone. This quality is well known among SF fans as a “written space,” they went on, but by about that time no one was still listening.

This refrain contributed valuable corroboration to the observations concerning why the SF fans were being driven to the brink of extinction, but few were deeply impressed by this interpretation.

And the mathematicians responded sincerely, as mathematicians should, displaying their mathematicianness for all to see: if, for argument’s sake, this were a different universe, mathematical truths should still be strict truths—for the introduction of a nonsensical new universe that simply had more theorems, no approval could be given.

Even so, it was hard to believe that such a concise and lucid theorem could have gone unknown until now. We have certainly been tricked by something, the SF fans responded.

Mathematical truths cannot be misrepresented, the mathematicians said, unable to contain their annoyance. But a theorem might be able to camouflage itself as truth by causing truth judgment neurons to fire, the SF fans asserted, and the mathematicians categorized them as the sort of opponents one needn’t take seriously.

This sort of sterile argument failed to hold people’s interest for long, and soon a feeling set in that something was not right. The things the SF fans said were certainly ridiculous, but still there was the widespread feeling that someone was trying to put something over on somebody, and they too started to be aware of it.

The theorem itself was fine. It was practically self-evident. But what about the idea that twenty-six mathematicians had all thought of it at the same time, written it up at the same time, submitted their manuscripts at the same time? Had someone been standing on the sidelines with a stopwatch, checking their times?

That is no more than a coincidental prank, nothing that science needs to meddle with, the mathematicians insisted curtly. Extremely improbable, perhaps, but the probability of occurrence is not zero. And if it’s not zero, that means it can happen. They themselves dealt with phenomena whose probability was actually zero. This was nothing compared with that. And for the third time it was repeated that the twenty-six mathematicians were not trying to put one over on the world by publishing as new a theorem they had all known about for a long time already.

So, then, what did it mean?

No one could answer that question. It had simply happened.

And three weeks after the theorem was published, the world was attacked by the Event.

Even now it is not clear exactly what happened at that moment.

A night passed, then a morning came. One night, all of a sudden, the theorem simply shattered into so many meaningless strings of characters. It was as if the fluctuations of numberless particles formed themselves by chance into letters and were scattered in the air.

It is not even clear whether the history I recorded as belonging to this episode has any continuity with the history we now know.

The present time matrix can be traced back to an inversion of space-time that occurred 10-20 seconds after the Event. Physicists now predict that sometime in the next ten years, research will allow us to understand the form of the universe 10-24 seconds after the Event. For now, though, the route to the instant of the Event itself is closed, beyond hope.

There are many theories about what exactly happened in the instant of the Event.

One idea is that in that instant our universe was shattered into innumerable shards of universes, which blew away in random directions.

Another idea is that an extradimensional universe collided with our universe. Another idea is that our universe was shredded into countless shards as it bubbled up from the vacuum. Yet another idea is that our universe itself was a bubble born as a structure camouflaged from the very beginning, a repeated oscillation of creation and annihilation.

Of these ideas, one includes the prediction that at approximately 289 seconds after the Event, we will enter a space-time realm where the A to Z Theorem will once again be valid.

At this point, we have no basis on which to compare and debate the strengths or weaknesses of any of these theories. Each idea has its share of the sort of elegance theoreticians aspire to. Just which of these beauties is in agreement with the beauty of our present space-time, which is nearing a peak of disorder, remains completely beyond our grasp.

I like this fable:

But of course, a fable is only a fable.

I mean, more than imagining a scene where the book simply fell, on its own, with nobody there in the library, and it scattered about crazily in countless bits, and it laughed.

Even so, there is a reason why, recently, media interest in the ultimate theorem has revived. The theory currently considered the latest and most consequential is actually the T to Z Theorem. The observations just described regarding the shape of space-time following the instant of the Event are derived from this theorem. If this alphabetic progression of theorems continues like this, renewed by root and branch, before long we will reach the X to Z Theorem, fo
llowed by the Y to Z Theorem. The ultimate member in this progression would be the Z to Z Theorem, or simply the Z Theorem. I like to think this will simply represent the theory of ultimate truth with no particular basis whatsoever.

A landscape in which texts containing truths are swallowed up in a sea of papers. I am imagining, for example, a single strange molecule that may exist in the midst of such a sea.

It is just possible that, via this method, we will reach the realm of theories incomprehensible except with inordinately massive intelligence.

And perhaps forever. Ad infinitum.

THE BOOKCASE STANDS on my body.

With both hands I try to lift it, but I can barely budge it. My strength is obviously no match for a bookcase, but with it propped up on my arm I am able to twist my body and roll out from between the futon and the bookcase.

Pressing down my shoulder and turning my left hand, I look up at the ceiling. The bookcase is still growing from the ceiling, so of course there is no way I, my muscles still drowsy, would be able to move it. This enormous, ornately carved piece of furniture is sprouting from the ceiling, and it is more than a little bit frightening to think that its entire weight is resting on me on the bed. At times like this, I usually make some effort to get really scared, but this time I am unable to summon any profound emotion.

Not because I am not pragmatic. Just a matter of habit.

For one thing, the bookcase has not yet fully emerged, and for another, it is empty. While this will not be my favorite awakening of my life, it will remain in the category of “not such a bad morning.”

So, the curtain has risen on today’s menu du jour, and my journey to the kitchen can begin. It has been some time since the door to my room was removed, but a new door stubbornly persists in growing back where the old one once was. Somehow this simply seems to be the nature of things. If I don’t smash it to pieces soon, the door could soon threaten to shut me up in my room.

Standing beside the bed and stretching, casually hefting something like a crowbar, I begin this morning’s journey to the kitchen.

As you can see, all kinds of things are growing throughout the house. That said, it still maintains the form of a house. My father built this house originally, by himself. My memories of this house are fond enough, but then unfamiliar houses began invading, haphazardly, almost as if they were ignoring the space completely and attempting to found an entire neighborhood in a single spot. The scene will be easier to picture if you can imagine that.

The house that is trying to newly emerge seems to have its own rationale, but we keep smashing the newly grown bits, and that seems to be disrupting its plan. Messing with the code while a program is running will cause problems, without question. But we have made up our minds to protect this house, and to protect this village.

I hack a path toward the kitchen, smashing a chair growing in the hall, then thrashing hangers and desks along the way. Mother is up and getting the day going, brandishing her beloved chainsaw. By the end of the day, the house will finally once again be just one house, but that will be as fleeting as a night’s dream. By the next morning, it will be back like a horribly real nightmare. Somehow the thought of my mother’s life—her daily destruction of the house in order to preserve the house—is very moving. But when I was little I wished her life was a bit more ordinary.

By the time I reach the kitchen, having dispatched numerous opponents, there are two trickles of blood on my forehead. I failed to notice a pane of glass spanning the hallway and ran straight into it. The thing itself was tangible, but its invisibility made the hallway seem passable.

A new kitchen table is growing atop my kitchen table, to the point where it is hard to tell which is the original table. Mother also appears at a loss, but she seems to have decided that the first table, which is about the right height to set a plate of fried eggs on, is the original. In this way, a lot of our furniture has actually been swapped out without a second thought, in the way that the molecules of our bodies were swapped out without changing our immutable selves.

Mother, gripping the frying pan, chainsaw by her side, looks at me and my crowbar thing with a critical gaze.

“Yuta, I would prefer you didn’t bring dangerous articles like that to the breakfast table.”

I glance at the chainsaw, but I realize Mother regards it as one of the seven appliances no housewife should be without—like a can opener. I have no strong feelings one way or the other, so I toss the crowbar thing in the direction of the hallway. The time is long since past when people would conceal their crowbarlike tools under the table as they got to know one another.

I ask about Father, and I am told he has already gone out to the village council. “Major mopping-up operation” is a silly phrase I am already sick of hearing, but now that I am bigger it makes my heart beat stronger in my chest. At some point the grown-ups will certainly do something about this village. That’s what I thought when I was small, and my little heart raced rapidly. But someday turned out to be Well maybe someday, and by now I know that even Christmas comes every year. At Christmastime. But when? Which? Christmas is already over, Grandpa.

I gulp down the toast and eggs Mother made for me, poke an orange on the floor with my fingertip to make sure it won’t turn into a hermit crab or something, then pick it up. Did this orange really grow on a tree? Or was it really an orange from some other house, one that sprouted here in the night? Or could it be an orange from a tree that had suddenly sprung up here? I bite into it, not thinking too hard about it. Suspicion breeds suspicion, and that is just how it is.

At som
e point, there is no doubt in my mind, the time will come when I will be confused whether the mother I see before me is the mother who gave birth to me—my own meddlesome mother—or some other mother who came in the night from the other side and grew here.

When my problems get that big, I will leave them up to the village council, the highest decision-making body in the area, whose to-do list is already growing bigger and bigger.

I quickly wash my dishes in the sink, stack them neatly, and tell my mother I am going out. I grab a crowbar that is poking out from the wall. I no longer even wonder why these crowbarlike tools seem to be growing everywhere.

And that is how, once again, on that day, I go out to wreak havoc in the village.

Armed with the usual crowbars, the youth of the village stagger around in loose teams, wantonly destroying anything they do not remember seeing there before.

Every morning we head straight for the house of Ms. Tome, who lives away from the village, to save this one-time beauty who is now over eighty. Ms. Tome’s house is a good distance from the village, and every morning we find it in quite a state.

Ms. Tome lives in an exquisitely constricted state, amid dozens of houses piled up in a jumble of layers, but she herself never seems to mind. She is skilled at folding up her already compact, shrunken frame and waiting quietly for our daily morning rescue mission. We are always careful to extract her from the proliferating furniture without injury, recovering both her and her house.

The rescued Ms. Tome always releases a weird sound as she stretches herself out straight again, and from some pocket she produces chewy candies to distribute to those of us who have participated in her rescue, one apiece. Then she bows politely, her cheeks peach-pink, to Gen, apparently a one-time suitor, who comes to visit each morning with his head wrapped in a hachimaki bandana.

Self reference engine

Originally published in Japan by Hayakawa Publishing Inc.

Cover design by Sam Elzway

No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

Published by VIZ Media, LLC

San Francisco, CA 94133

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[Self-reference engine. English]

Self-reference engine / Toh EnJoe ; translated by Terry Gallagher.

ISBN 978-1-4215-4936-1 (pbk.)

I. Gallagher, Terry, 1956– translator. II. Title.

Haikasoru eBook edition

P, but I don’t believe that P.

C O N T E N T S

PART 1: NEARSIDE PART 2: FARSIDE

Writing Self-Reference ENGINE

01. Bullet 20. Return

03. A to Z Theory 18. Disappear

04. Ground 256 17. Infinity

05. Event 16. Sacra

06. Tome 15. Yedo

07. Bobby Socks 14. Coming Soon

08. Traveling 13. Japanese

09. Freuds 12. Bomb

10. Daemon 11. Contact

A SET OF all possible character strings. All possible books would be contained in that.

I haven’t seen her since then. I think she’s most likely dead. After all, it has been hundreds of years.

But then again, I also think this.

I remember her saying meanly, “If that’s the case, you must be the one from the past.”

It is true of course. Everybody comes out of the past; it’s not that I’m some guy who comes from some particular past.

Even when that is pointed out, though, she shows no sign of backing down.

“It’s not as if I came out of some bizarro past,” she said. That’s how she and I met.

I am repeating myself, but I haven’t seen her since then. She promised me, with a sweet smile, that I would never see her again.

With all this going on, it’s really important to know what’s really real and what’s not.

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived a boy and a girl.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived boys and girls.”

“Once upon a time, somewhere, there lived no boy and no girl.”

“Once upon a time…lived.”

“Once upon a time.”

From beginning to end, we carried on this back-and-forth process. For example, in this dialogue, we were somehow finally mutually able to come up with this kind of compromise statement:

At the end of the end of all this great to-do, time itself freezes, universally, and some clock somewhere should say that a whole lot of time has passed.

I would like you to imagine countless threads, strung through space. I am walking along one of those threads from this end. She is walking along some other thread from some other end.

It is actually quite difficult to explain what I mean by that. I’m not sure I understand it completely myself.

But at that time there was a (slightly embarrassing) way for us to know about the direction we were each traveling in, and we each used it. But just that.

I am not sure just who the criminal who froze time was.

If I ever meet the guy who thought up this idea I think I’d like to split his head in two.

And then, a few hundred more years passed. In other words, what I mean is, I just ran through a few hundred years bound up in the frozen net of time.

That is, somehow or other, I arrived at a point that was a few hundred years either in the future or the past.

I cannot say one way or the other whether she had also made such a sprint. But it is a well-known phenomenon that girls often have no trouble passing time without such physical exertions.

That is why I am running again today. You might want to ask why.

One. One day, time caused an insurrection.

Two. We were moving in some unknown direction, allowed only to proceed toward some predetermined day after tomorrow.

The end result was clear.

Whether that result is just or not is something far beyond my ability to determine. In other words, it is like this:

The instant when time abandoned the standard, straight-ahead march.

And then when everything was back as it had been, I would finally be able to go out and look for her once more. Or else maybe she would be looking for me, as if in a dream.

What is she doing? That is the thought that spreads out, pure white before me, apropos of nothing.

WE ARE ALWAYS getting knocked around. That way. This way.

So, no problem, right? think Rita’s family members, but they are the only ones who think so. The situation is both very obvious and very problematical.

I responded that there was nobody alive with a bullet lodged in their head, to which he responded that’s exactly what’s so fantastic about it, turning red in the face.

“So what if she does have a bullet in her head?” I asked. “Some-time it must have got there somehow. How else could it be?”

Jay looked at me with a bored expression on his face.

“If my hypothesis is correct, though…” he just kept repeating.

“If my hypothesis is correct…” he said again, proudly.

With nothing better to do than stand there and listen, I realized Jay seemed to be sobbing.

“Rita,” Jay would say, “is shooting her bullets at the day after tomorrow.” He said it like he was sure of it.

That’s the way it is. No target, that’s just the way it is.

“Of course that’s not what I meant,” Jay would say without even looking this way. “Rita’s just having a shooting match with somebody in the future,” he went on.

That inference, or delusion, that he drew did not particularly m
ove me. Let me put this plainly: I don’t understand.

“Well, first, let us assume…” Jay said in preface. “Rita has a bullet in her head. William Smith Clark has testified to this.”

“Next, let us assume that bullet has been in Rita’s head ever since she was born. I heard that from her aunt, so I’m sure it’s true.

“There can only be one conclusion!” Jay said, jumping to his feet. I don’t know why, but he was pointing at the sky.

I said, “When Rita was still in her mother’s womb, her mother was shot!”

Jay cut a gallant figure, but I would have to dash some cold water on him. He held that pose for some time, and I watched as the arm pointing high in the sky gradually bent back toward the ground.

“Maybe so,” he said.

“What other possible way could there be?” I asked Jay.

Hmmm, I thought, waving at Jay to go on if he wished to continue in this vein.

Источники:

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Self reference engine

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Self-Reference ENGINE (Verse)

Contents

Summary

Power of the Verse

Self reference engine

Self reference engine

Self reference engine

Self Reference Engine Feats

Mr.OMG

Part of the power that always does what’s good

Anime Characters Fight вики

Немо экс машина

Self Reference Engine

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A science book a day keeps boredom away!

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Self reference engine

Self reference engine

VS Battles Wiki

Self-Reference ENGINE (Verse)

Contents

Summary

Power of the Verse

Self reference engine

Self reference engine

Self reference engine

Self Reference Engine Feats

Mr.OMG

Part of the power that always does what’s good

Anime Characters Fight вики

Немо экс машина

Self Reference Engine

Mr.OMG

Preeminent

Mr.OMG

Preeminent

Self reference engine

Science Book a Day

A science book a day keeps boredom away!

Self-Reference ENGINE

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books

Support WWEnd

WWEnd Blog

WWEnd BookTrackr™

Self-Reference ENGINE

Synopsis

Excerpt

Reviews

Images

Self reference engine

Self reference engine

Self reference engine

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