by Un-su Kim
It’s still not well known how it is our brains work, or what thoughts and consciousness are. A single human brain has one hundred billion neurons, each of which is linked to ten thousand other neurons. The human brain generates nerve impulses and secretes chemical transmitters in nearly an infinite number of combinations. I sometimes wonder if we humans, as finite beings, will ever be able to tame the infinity that exists in our brains. Yet, many scientists say that in the not-so-distant future we will understand the inner workings of neurons and nerve cells and be able to directly connect human brains to computers. I don’t believe that such a thing would be possible without side effects, but, if it were possible, I guess I would want to try to hook my brain up to a computer. What would appear on the monitor? I wonder. To be honest, if it does come to that, I hope my wife and children aren’t with me. What if, god forbid, pornographic images were beamed from my head to the computer monitor?
Those who argue for the sanctity of humanity express grave concern over the fusion of man and machine. Some people even get ready to protest in front of the National Assembly, cutting red ribbons and buying red pens to write with on picket fences whenever such news is reported. “Machines and people should never be connected! Preserve the sanctity of humanity!” If people like this exist around you, I hope you tell them that the time for such things has yet to come. We still have a long time before we connect human brains to computers. After all, we still don’t even fully understand how migraines are caused.
“If you had a time machine would you go back to the year 1998?”
“I would. Even though all I can remember from that year is a carrot.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“I am. But when you think about it there’s no time in our lives we haven’t been able to endure. If there was such a time, we wouldn’t have made it this far. We live with happy memories. But we also live with unhappy memories. That’s the power of loss and ruin.”
PINOCCHIO
Now I want to tell you a story about a toothpick. Yes, that lowly, insignificant item no one has shown interest in for thousands of years. A product that no CEO would ever be proud to admit their company makes. I’m going to tell you a story about a man who had no choice but to live a life full of toothpicks.
“More and more I’m starting to resemble a toothpick,” he once said to me. “But I’m not worried. You’ll see. By the year 2100, all machines will look like humans. And if that’s not the case, all humans will look like machines. It’s got to be one or the other.”
From the times of the ancient Greeks when natural philosophy flourished, to the early Middle Ages when universities first emerged, not a single philosopher has ever taken interest in the existential essence of toothpicks. And who would? But of course, neither were they interested in the existential essence of things like chairs, bathtubs, pots, or mosquito nets. Most people don’t think much at all (indeed, the people of antiquity and the Middle Ages had a hard enough time just thinking about how they were going to feed themselves each night); and for the type of people who did think – such as the well-fed Roman youth of aristocratic families who grew up with a dozen private tutors, or the monks who were so bored at their monasteries that they couldn’t help but think about philosophy, or the people who worked in the then-new profession of professorship (new in that professors of universities had the unprecedented luxury of selling “knowledge” in fancy buildings without much need for aggressive business pursuits, as opposed to the sophists of ancient Greece who made their living running small academies or scouring flea markets in search of wealthy families with dim-witted sons in need of tutoring) – for people like this, there was time to ponder nobler, more metaphysical questions. Whether gods had internal organs, and if they did have organs, whether the gas produced in those organs made them fart – you know, the type of questions that had no relevance to daily life. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that from antiquity to the Middle Ages, no one took serious interest in or tried to understand the things known as toothpicks.
And by the sixteenth century, people started to emerge who pondered questions more concrete, more realistic, and more substantial than those concerning the internal organs of gods – questions about things that could physically hurt someone if thrown. These people were the humanists who carried the Renaissance, and their research dealt with things like the Moon, Venus, and Mars; sailing vessels, trade winds, maps, and mountain ranges; gold and silver; mainsprings and compasses. Yet still no one cared about toothpicks.
It was an Arab butler named Allal Rashid who first attempted to capture the essence of the toothpicks. In his work The Book of Lost Things, he started inquiry and research into civilization’s inventions and the things civilization has lost. He carefully worked to uncover the essence of those things that had been lost to time.
The story of the toothpick appears on page 7233 of The Book of Lost Things. According to this story, there once was a merchant by the name of Caspi who had elevated the status of toothpicks to a level hardly imaginable by today’s standards. Caspi the merchant left Damascus for Rome with grand dreams. Back then, the Mediterranean Sea was still the center of all trade, the Pope was attempting to restore Rome’s ancient buildings, and the renowned House of Medici was spending lavish amounts of money for the sake of artistic production.
However, while on the way to Rome from Damascus filled with ambitious dreams, Caspi was met with heavy seas that caused his ship to run aground on a coral reef. Caspi spent all night clinging to the reef as he watched the waves engulf his belongings. Caspi survived through the stormy night, and when day finally broke, he was saved by a Spanish merchant vessel passing by. With their help he arrived in Rome, but now he had nothing to sell. The only thing he had in his pockets was a lone knife. The homeless Caspi wandered the streets of Rome until one day when he had a bright idea that compelled him to start hacking away at a tree with his knife. He was making a toothpick. The toothpick he made was similar to ordinary toothpicks in that it was pointy, but unlike other toothpicks, it was the size of an erect penis – in fact, if you looked at the toothpick’s handle, it looked particularly phallic.
Intrigued, people approached Caspi and asked him what the object was used for.
“This is a toothpick.”
“Goodness, but why the odd appearance?”
“This is not just any toothpick. Cheap Roman merchants say that you should use toothpicks because not doing so is bad for your dental health and will lead to bad breath from the leftover food rotting between your teeth. But they’ve forgotten about the essence of toothpicks. What they are selling can’t be called genuine toothpicks.”
“Then what’s a genuine toothpick?”
“Genuine toothpicks are a conduit for magic. They must force self-reflection upon the servants who use them to pick from their teeth the scraps of the food their masters filled their bellies with – reflection about how they got this food; how they can repay their master for this food; how noble and magnanimous the generosity of their master is; how they must eat this food to show their gratitude; how they must repay their master’s generosity; how much work they must do to please their master. When servants use these toothpicks, they will repay the cost of their food and then some by tilling the land and reaping its plentiful crops; and when butlers use these toothpicks, they will never waste or steal their master’s money; and if you somehow were able to make horses or oxen use these toothpicks, they would work for you until they run themselves into the ground; and if your wife or a nun used these toothpicks… Oh, look at me, I’m getting carried away. This pagan almost said something inappropriate.”
Once Caspi finished his pitch, there erupted a loud murmur. All the landed aristocrats gathered there began to think to themselves, “Ah ha, it wasn’t a whip that my slaves needed, but this man’s toothpick!”
“Does it matter if several people use the same toothpick?” one aristocrat asked.
“As long as the user doesn’t reject the toothpick
,” answered Caspi.
“Fantastic. Let’s see – If I buy one toothpick for every twenty slaves – I’ll take thirty.”
Despite the steep price, Caspi’s phallic toothpicks sold extremely well. Even after all the landed aristocrats purchased enough toothpicks for their slaves, they kept selling. All the noblewomen, widows, and tomboys were secretly buying toothpicks, though I don’t have the slightest idea why. There were even rumors that a large order had come in from a convent, but these rumors were never confirmed. After meals, people would take these odd-looking toothpicks and think to themselves, “Why in the world did I eat food? O, on such a lonely night, what now is the most valuable thing I can do with this toothpick?”
Of course, Caspi did not invent the toothpick. Since inconvenience drives invention, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people who claim they invented the toothpick. But even though Caspi wasn’t the inventor of the toothpick, he was the one who endowed it with valid existential value. By imbuing toothpicks with fantasy and magic, he elevated the toothpick from its lowly position on the hierarchy of objects.
Now let me tell you about the boy who turned into a toothpick. There was once a boy who turned himself into a toothpick after thinking about toothpicks for too long – a boy who “evolved” into a toothpick, so to speak (for those who might say this was a devolution and not an evolution: no, it was definitely an evolution). A boy who was so satisfied with his new life as a toothpick that he had no intention of ever turning back into a complete human again.
The boy’s connection to toothpicks traced back to his father, who ran a small cottage factory that manufactured them. Yes, a father that made toothpicks. But the son hated toothpicks. And – as anyone who knows the history between fathers and sons could tell you – such a combination was inevitably going to the lead to unhappiness for the boy.
The reason the boy loathed toothpicks so much was that everything about him – his nickname, his identity, his very existence – was derived from, and bound to, that despicable piece of wood. Indeed, because he was scrawny, it was only a matter of time before people started to call him toothpick. In fact, he had so many nicknames that were puns on the word toothpick that he was almost never called by his proper name. His friends always teased him with names like “Pick” or “Picky” or even “Pick Pick.” And to the old people in the neighborhood, he was always “Pick’s second son.” Why it was that they said “Pick” and not “Toothpick” isn’t hard to figure out if you just try pronouncing each ten times fast. Language always has the tendency of being contracted when pronunciations are cumbersome. Therefore, considering the unlucky fate of language to be repeatedly created, altered, and annihilated, it’s important that one always follows the principle of “simple pronunciation” when giving an object or a theory a name. The nickname the boy hated most was that derogatory name which identified him with his toothpick-making father: “The Toothpick Bastard.” He hated toothpicks. He hated his father. He hated his father’s small toothpick factory. He hated the toothpick machines. He hated the factory workers who eyed his mother’s ass as she worked. He hated the fact that, out of all the millions of objects in the world, it was toothpicks to which he was bound. And most of all, he hated the strange tradition his family had of always using toothpicks after eating, be it only some vegetable side dishes or a fried egg. He often wondered to himself whether it was really necessary to use a toothpick after every meal. As if his family were holding on to the 100,000 arrows that Zhuge Liang famously stole from Cao Cao, it was custom to have a million toothpicks just rolling around in the boy’s house at any one time.
In his senior year of high school, the boy applied for the military academy. The reason for this was simple: he wanted to choose a career as far away from toothpicks as possible. And that for him was the military academy. However, on the application for the military academy, there was a line for his father’s occupation. He was finally about to start a new life, but it seemed as though toothpicks had followed him there too. For days he anguished over what to write. Then finally he had a brilliant idea. For his father’s occupation, he wrote “timber processor.” But when he turned in the application at school, his homeroom teacher stared at the words “timber processor” with an incredulous look. The boy crossed his fingers in hopes that the teacher would let it pass, but as is often the case with life, things never go the way you want.
“What does your father make with the timber?” the teacher asked in a low, calm voice.
The boy said nothing. In all honesty, he didn’t want to say one word about what his father did. But his teacher waited patiently for an answer. With no other choice and blushing up to his ears, the boy said in the smallest of voices:
“Toothpicks.”
But the teacher neither laughed nor showed any hint of surprise. The teacher merely cocked his head slightly. His homeroom teacher was usually taciturn and didn’t smile much.
“Then why did you write timber processor? You have to be clear when you fill out these forms.”
The teacher lightly reprimanded the boy. Then after staring at the application for a while, he finally crossed out what the boy had written with two lines. Above it he wrote:
Master Wood Craftsman.
I think that teacher had at least some understanding of the essence of toothpicks. Anyway, that year the boy passed the entrance examinations and entered the military academy without a hitch.
From then on, his life continued to distance itself from toothpicks as he had hoped. And after he graduated from the military academy, it looked for a while like his life would continue down the road of a soldier. But that was not the case. The unit to which he was commanding officer was struck with several suicides and desertions He had been in line for a promotion, but now he suddenly found himself discharged from the military. After his discharge, he was able to get an administrative job at a munitions manufacturer with the recommendation of his superior. But, being used to life in the military, he often clashed with other employees and didn’t get along with the researchers. So he quit and found work at an insurance company. But this time the former commander was met with the shining flower of capitalism: business.
“You lack what it takes to be a salesman. No customer on Earth likes a salesman who barks orders at them.”
He quit in less than a month. Finally, with the severance pay he received from the military, he opened a fried chicken chain with his wife. Fortuitously, a large apartment complex had just finished construction nearby, and it seemed like he had finally gotten a break. His fried chicken chain saw a boom for two months. But by the third month, more than ten other fried chicken chains had set up shop in the neighborhood. All of the famous chains were present. There was even a place that gave away free pizza. What’s more, a Chinese restaurant got in on the action; they even had a promotion for free jjajangmyeon or fried dumplings with every order of chicken. The former-commander sat for three months in that fly-infested fried chicken restaurant eating daikon radish before he forfeited his security deposit on the lease and sold the store. It was around that time that he started to lose it. He took all of his money and put it into stocks. The stock market wasn’t doing badly, but for some reason he kept losing his money. Little by little he started taking bigger risks, and before even six months had passed, he had already lost all his assets. He began racking up debt. Once that started, he became obsessed with betting on horses. Everyday there was a new winning horse, but his horse was never “the horse.” Soon his debt became too much for him to manage. So, he sold his apartment and his car and his piano, But he wasn’t able to make a dent in the money he owed. He sold his kidney and one of his eyes, and still his debt didn’t go away. When his wife demanded a divorce, he didn’t even protest as he signed the papers.
He lost everything and became sick. He had nothing left. He didn’t even have a place to sleep at night. All he had to lean on was the toothpick factory that his old man still ran in his spare time. Defeated, he went back to
his father. When he arrived, he said to his father, “You win. I’ll make toothpicks. I’ll make these damn toothpicks.”
The man started working at the toothpick factory. Yet it wasn’t like his life made a remarkable turn for the better. He simply worked at the toothpick factory making toothpicks for many years, just as his father had done. Of course, the reason this man was included in Cabinet 13 was not because of his normal, unfortunate life. If that were the type of file Cabinet 13 accepted, then it would have burst from all the sad stories of this city’s inhabitants long ago. No, the reason he’s in the cabinet is because of his finger. While working, he had an accident in which he lost three fingers to a cutting machine. He said nonchalantly that such accidents were common in this line of work.
“Losing a couple fingers won’t kill you, even if people do treat me like I’m a cripple. It doesn’t bother me. The problem is I lost too many fingers. You need to have at least three fingers to make toothpicks. A thumb, an index finger, and one other finger to support them. I would have been fine if I had only lost two fingers, but it was just my luck that I lost three. So, I spoke to the local hospital and they told me they had a prosthetic finger. They really do have everything these days.”
The man had a prosthetic finger where his middle finger had been. A pin attached the prosthetic finger to his hand. But the manufactured finger was cumbersome and hurt the man’s productivity. Keeping only the pin, he threw away the prosthetic finger and replaced it with one he fashioned himself from wood. He made countless iterations until he had one that was just right for him.