Self-Reference Engine

by Toh EnJoe

  “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 tactics chief is trying to figure out where he is walking. The landscape keeps repeating itself, like a film being rewound and replayed, changing slightly each time, losing its color. How does this have anything to do with the question of humanity’s role in this battle?

  “It seems to be a trick to make it easier to escape the space-time structure.”

  “You mean something like human senses?”

  The operator tilts his head, just a little, trying to assess the officer’s appraisal of humans.

  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.

  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.

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

  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.

  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.

  “Future direction 36! Fire reverse round three into the past!” the copilot barks without even looking at the radar.

  The pilot responds, “It’s vanished! Where did it go?”

  The machine takes a sharp turn toward the future. The sudden thrust of space-time Gs applies G forces to space-time itself, as if it just remembered to do so.

  “Forward, toward his future!” reports the copilot as he accelerates more. The two, feeling woozy, stretch out their hands and press them against their heads. Overtaking the enemy on the time axis, once they reach the future they spin back again, point the nose of the ship toward the past, lock the opposing craft—now in
the past—in their sights, and fire off all the tail shots they can muster at some undefined past.

  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’s…our ship!”

  “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.

  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.

  09. FREUDS

  WHEN I WENT to demolish my grandmother’s house, a whole bunch of Freuds came up from under the floorboards.

  The question will probably come up again, so at the risk of repeating myself, it was Freud who emerged, and in great numbers. I am not trying to be evasive or pretend it was something else named Freud. It was Freud. Sigmund Freud.

  The one with the frightening face.

  This past winter, my grandmother on my father’s side passed away, leaving behind a big old house in the country. That’s how this whole thing got started. And once it was started there was nothing that could be done about it, and there is still no end in sight.

  In her final years, my grandmother declined all invitations to live with any of her family, and she was doing pretty well on her own, but one day her sword-cane failed her and she collapsed in the garden. It is believed she meant to attack the black cat that came to the garden every day, or it may be she meant to spear one of the catfish that swam in the pond. She was in the prime of her life, like a master swordsman, and this is how she passed her final days.

  The cause of death was given simply as old age. It seems she may have stumbled over one of the paving stones in the garden, and that’s what did her in.

  So, about the house she left behind, the family gathered for the funeral and put their heads together, but no one was interested in moving back out to the countryside. Letting it stand and having someone live in it would be a pain, and taking proper care of it would be costly. The family could try to sell it, but who would buy it? And so the decision was made to raze it to the ground. A date was set, and the family honored the last day of grandmother’s house by gathering there once again on that day.

  Before the demolition began, the tatami mats were removed, and that is when the whole bunch of Freuds were discovered.

  Not one Freud or two Freuds. They just kept coming with each tatami mat that was removed. There were twenty-two Freuds in all, one lying beneath each of the tatami mats in the big living room. Exactly twenty-two. As the old saying goes, A person takes up half a mat when sitting up and one full mat when lying down. Life can be lived virtuously, simply.

  The faces of our family tree, which ordinarily radiated both carelessness and courage, were struck dumb at the sight.

  Twenty-two Freuds lined up in the garden. Grandma’s parting gift to this world.

  Even my ordinarily bossy younger uncle, who always wants to run the show, was rendered speechless at the sight of so many Sigmund Freuds. He was completely flustered and made no gesture of directing how to move them. He just lined up the Freuds in the garden and then brought out some tables and set some beer bottles on them, trying to calm himself down.

  My younger uncle appeared to be searching for words that would bring down the curtain on this act, but he was at a loss for anything clever to say, apart from an opening gambit that tossed the ball in the completely wrong direction: If they come from underground, shouldn’t they be Jung instead?

  So far as I was concerned, the sheer number of floorboard Freuds would eclipse the problem of who they were, but my uncle seemed unsatisfied, and he responded to me, Fair enough, these are Freuds.

  This was Freud’s face. There was no other face like it.

  For the most part, the things my grandmother had owned during her life had been taken care of. She had not left much worth fighting over, with the exception of her sword-cane. Dividing up her worldly possessions had been a very placid closing of the curtain. About the most exciting thing that happened then was that I put on one of her camisoles and danced around in it. Then in the end, there were the Freuds, which counted as a major deal, and in large numbers. This was not a legacy to be divided; it had been transformed into a grand game of hot potato.

  What could one do with a Freud? my younger uncle’s wife wondered aloud, perplexed. Grandma was a strange one, but did she have to keep all these Freuds under her floorboards? said older uncle’s wife.

  My cousin’s daughter had been staring at the many Freuds that had been carted out and lined up neatly, supine, in the garden, but then she started crying, and I led her outside the main building. If I had seen a bunch of Freuds like this when I was her age, I would have asked permission to leave myself.

  This might be THE COMPLETE SIGMUND FREUD, my uncle said, once again tossing the ball in the wrong direction. The question of whether this was the entire collection or not was just so much pointless jaw-boning, because they all seemed to be Freud himself. Somewhere there might even be an “on” switch to press, and they would all begin giving lectures. Assuming, however, that some things remained normal, that was not likely to happen.

  To line up all the Freuds in the garden, I had to take their limp bodies in my arms and make countless round trips between the big living room and the garden. A terse, tangible reminder of my own humanity, coupled with that special gravity of the unconscious, lying flat across my forearms.

  I had said these were all Freud himself, and my uncle picked up on the himself part and went on to say that was awkward. I too wanted to continue and say that was awkward, but that awkwardness was not any old ordinary awkwardness; it was really, really awkward.

  It was my younger uncle’s wife who said, I wonder if we couldn’t sell them. While this was a forward-thinking idea—who today would want to buy a Freud?—my younger uncle admonished his wife, and my cousin added, Yeah, who would want to keep a Freud in their house?

  But this number was not normal. My father, having just finished meticulously arranging the Freuds, with their heads pillowed toward true north, came back, wiping the sweat from his brow. My father did not appear to be particularly concerned by the appearance of all these Freuds. His appearance suggested nothing more than a father who had just finished a physically difficult task. I had no idea what his inner life was like.

  As my father rejoined the uneasily coagulating group of relatives, he raised a can of beer and calmly said, Isn’t that just like Mom? Once he noticed, though, the critical gazes of the other family members, he returned the can to the table, muttering, I didn’t mean that.

  Clearly my younger uncle had witnessed the looks of reproach that met my father, and he didn’t seem to have found anything that really needed saying, but turning to me he said, About how old do you think these Freuds are, anyway?

  I had just assumed they were Freud at the age at which he died. Other than the fact there were a lot of
them, and that they were all Freuds, I thought they were just ordinary dead bodies, not breathing, retrieved from under the floorboards where they had been buried.

  Their complexion seems too good for that, my uncle pointed out triumphantly. Well, I didn’t know anything about the circulatory system, but now that he mentioned it, I took a better look, and they did seem to be more like Freud in his prime. Which would mean that what we had here in the garden was a whole array of Freud skulls, all from the prime of his life. Viewed objectively, it became clear that the size of each Freud was slightly different. Now, the prime years are not generally a time when people grow or shrink, so I thought this must have been because of differences in the state of preservation.

  I wasn’t one averse to talking about peculiarities such as the skull of the eighteen-year-old Taira no Kiyomori. I didn’t really understand what was going on, and I thought it was kind of strange. And it was the large number that had me knitting my brow. If we were talking about this large number of Freuds, I couldn’t seem to mind what age skulls these were, and that was the strange thing.

  Where the heck did she get all these Freuds, anyway? my younger uncle snorted. Did she smuggle them in from somewhere? Did she steal them? asked the older uncle standing beside him. Steal? What are you talking about? the older uncle started to say to the younger uncle, but he composed himself and instead said, Freud is not something that is usually stolen.

  My younger uncle agreed that Freud was not something that someone could simply steal in large quantities. Before we even get to the question of stealing, there is the question of how a large quantity of Freuds can even exist, my cousin noted. And in my heart I had to agree.

  It was strange that no one had brought it up yet, but had these Freuds been Grandma’s boy-toys? Grandma a Bluebeard, specializing in Sigmund Freud. Trying to picture an old woman kidnapping a young Freud from the village and holding him in the house, I sensed no resonance with my own living grandmother. But it was kind of an interesting thought exercise, as a way of remembering my grandmother, even if the meaning was unclear.