Self-Reference Engine

by Toh EnJoe

  There was a clear and simple reason why this lettering had never been deciphered. It was lettering that no person in the past or the future had ever used. But neither did it seem like some personal language or made-up script someone might have written spontaneously, something that even the one who had written it would be unable to read.

  In fact, this lettering had a firm foundation; it was just the interpretation of the content that was somewhat troublesome. To decode just these three lines of lettering, the grammar primer would require conversion capacity on the yottabyte scale. The reading process would take so long, the universe would end before it did.

  Just because the grammatical structure is complicated, however, does not mean the content of the sentence itself is just as complex. However, a simple, rough translation would clearly be a mistranslation; given the grammar, it is possible that a poor translation could be passed off as a decent one.

  What right anyone had to say such a thing, I would beg to defer saying for a short while. As far as reasoning goes, experience suggests that my claim is more or less correct, but I have no expectation of being believed right away.

  The catfish script came into the spotlight not because someone had succeeded in deciphering it. Something that fundamentally cannot be translated is simply not going to be translated. At some point, however, it simply happened that all over the world the catfish script suddenly simultaneously disappeared. It was this incident that grabbed the world’s attention.

  There are people in the world who, as a hobby, have an interest in collecting unusual texts, and I am one of them. The type of people who find joy in collecting texts that have fooled people, like the Tengu’s Apology or the Voynich Manuscript.

  That said, I don’t really have the financial means to collect rare books. I’m merely the kind who collects manga via the Internet, and once in a great while might print one if I’m really moved to do so.

  Generally speaking, people who share a common interest are more likely to bind together if their numbers are small. We share our collections, and our opinions, with one another. Better to be part of such a group and participating—perhaps by submitting a proposal on how to decipher invented languages—than to observe from a distance that separates one from the group. Once in a great while, an interesting work may even waltz into such a group, and there may even be a public discussion of its merits.

  It was from just such a network that I first learned of the disappearance of the catfish script.

  And by “disappearance” in this case I mean the script actually seems to have disappeared, without a trace, and apparently quite some time ago. If some trace had been left, one might not think something untoward had happened, but because nothing at all was left, everyone wondered if they themselves might have done something careless.

  If it had been a security instrument or a deed that had gone missing one might blush, but here we were talking about a text that no one could read or knew anything about, so it did not stand high in the order of things to be astonished about. The image itself had vanished, and the sculpture on which it was written was itself a copy, and what I have before me now is an nth generation copy of a copy.

  If I were to lose my copy, I thought, I could simply ask someone to make me another one. We didn’t realize at the time that they had all vanished.

  It was perhaps for this reason that the initial investigations into the Mystery of the Continual Simultaneous Disappearance of the Catfish Script got off the ground so terribly slowly. The police had no time to spare, in part because it took a long time for them to receive the report saying that something incomprehensible had perhaps gone missing. That’s why the first investigation to acknowledge the disappearances as some sort of incident was launched by collectors of unusual scripts. They brought their own lunches as they looked for clues, searched for precedents, and, finally, released some information to the general public about what they believed had happened.

  As far as my role went, all I did was remember the catfish text in our house and go to get it, to check and see if it was still there.

  According to the report by the response committee—at some point a group of my acquaintances had acquired the sobriquet “committee” —the disappearance had the following characteristics:

  First, the text disappeared, in all its media forms.

  Second, all copies that were copied at the same time disappeared at the same time.

  Third, The End.

  The first of these statements looks simple at first, but there is a long story behind it. “Disappear” means disappear, whether from some electronic storage or from the paper on which it was printed. In some cases of text on paper, just the text disappeared, leaving the paper behind, and in some cases both the text and the paper disappeared. As an overall generalization, it seems that both paper and text disappeared if the item was easily portable. For texts sewn into bound books, most commonly just the text disappeared, leaving blank paper. Some say it was a matter of minimizing effort; only that which needed erasure was erased.

  If pages had been torn out the book itself might fall apart, and it would be a pain to renumber the pages after the action was completed. While it was also strange for blank pages to suddenly appear in the middle of a book, this was a matter of degree. Some examples have been identified in which pages were removed and the remaining pages were renumbered. It seems to have been a matter of the perpetrator’s feelings at the time.

  There does not appear to have been any suspicious human role surrounding the disappearance. It might have been a crime committed by silverfish, but then we would have to imagine electronic silverfish, which is rather weak as unified theories go. Scraps of paper disappeared even from under the strictest supervision; even those sealed inside vitrines; even some that were encased in tons of resin disappeared. Some disappeared like smoke, in broad daylight in extremely public places. In other words, there was no way to even conceive of stopping it.

  In other words, it seemed like an impossible, almost miraculous heist, somehow worthy of admiration. What else could one do?

  The media on which the catfish texts were recorded were not limited to paper, electronic, or magnetic media. The fact that the existence of these texts was known means that people had their own memories of the catfish texts. While perhaps no one had memorized the text it was just three lines, so it shouldn’t have been impossible if someone set their mind to it.

  No matter what might be doing it, if we are talking about a theft in which texts were pinched from our memories, it shouldn’t be too hard for the thief to suddenly run off with all our other memories attached to the text. He could even steal the memory of the theft, if he really wanted to cement his reputation as a thief among people who wouldn’t remember it.

  If someone were to pluck all memory of a text from our heads, what could we do about it? Even if there were some people who could remember that something used to be there, the fact that it was no longer there would render the memory implausible to say the least, and if nobody could really remember that at one point they had a memory of a text, there wouldn’t really be any way to start a conversation about it.

  It is unknown why the thief did not erase all the texts in one fell swoop, but clearly the thief’s behavior was very disciplined.

  Significantly, the second characteristic: all copies that were copied at the same time disappeared at the same time.

  If this were all that were required, there would be no objection if all the texts were to disappear at once, but in fact it is believed there was one more constraint. That is why we now have to change the description written above.

  Third, texts disappeared one hundred years after they were copied.

  In other words, the life of a text cannot be lengthened or shortened at will.

  I have no intention here of implying that the figure “one hundred” is precise. I have no doubt the mysterious heist was committed by something nonhuman, and I have no particular reason to think it even uses base-10 fi
gures; I’m not even sure I could say with confidence why we use base-10 figures.

  Even so, the number must be on the order of one hundred, not ten, and certainly not one thousand. Some things that appeared about two hundred years ago disappeared about one hundred years ago, something like that. The timing of the appearance and disappearance were deduced from the results of the investigation of the Continual Simultaneous Disappearance of the Catfish Script, so the order of the explanation is reversed, but the overall picture remains the same, so I hope you will understand.

  The texts disappeared after a certain specific interval, as if they had a timer set, with a hand that, when it had counted off one hundred years, would cause the texts to disappear. Some think that is what the catfish text actually says—that it’s a program that self-executes without hardware. Or that it’s a programming language that is identical to its hardware.

  If that’s all there was—that the catfish script disappeared—then that would be the end of it, but somehow it seems the function of the texts extended to copied lines of text as well. When the timer in the copied texts hit zero, it was reset and started counting off another one hundred years.

  The originals from which the copies were made disappeared on a regular basis, but the copies remained for some time, under their new chronological allocation, so this was no major issue. Texts that survived beyond their original medium. Our lives are a lot like that too, and while we cannot say categorically that this is no issue, this is the road we are going down, with no major errors.

  The first to arrive at this realization, unfortunately, was not me.

  There was an old professor whose last lecture laid out the whole story of the catfish script, but for some reason no record of it remains.

  Some may wonder what I’m talking about, I fear, but this is the truth and there is nothing I can do to change it.

  This old professor’s family name was simply Tome, but little else is known about her. The fact of her having been forgotten is truly extraordinary, though it is due in part to the fact that so little tangible trace of her remains. Of particular note regarding her final lecture is the fact that none of the attendees have ever been found, and that is not normal.

  The final lecture took place fully a year after her official retirement. Even the administration had by that time pretty much forgotten she existed. To give you some idea of the care with which this was handled, one administrator, miraculously, appears to have noticed she was due to retire, and in a fluster encouraged her to do so without delay and scheduled her final lecture, but the date on the notice was a whole year before, and the lecture was instantly removed.

  The only reason I have even a vague understanding of this chain of events is that I was one of the few people to see that notice.

  Ms. Tome. Theorist of self-eradicating automatons. In her entire career she published just four papers, none of which have survived. It is unclear how she ever rose to the rank of professor on such a meager output of research, but the true fact is that she did, even as her few papers were already being forgotten. There is no other explanation.

  Even the papers she did publish were dry and devoid of content. The first was a proposal for something called Prototype I, a self-eradicating machine. Her second paper introduced Prototype II, the third Prototype III, the fourth Prototype IV, and that was that. It was at her final lecture that the fourth paper was read, but there was no one in the audience, and nothing is known of its content.

  There was a field of study known as self-replicating automatons, and it seems that this was Ms. Tome’s original interest. The basic theory deals with machines that will reproduce all on their own, just left in a corner. This theory shares a deep connection with computer science, but Ms. Tome had no interest whatsoever in that aspect.

  Ms. Tome’s genius—and also her human oddness—was to recognize the possibility that if these things were capable of reproducing themselves, they might also be capable of eradicating themselves.

  If a person wanted to dismantle himself, he would be foolish to start by taking a sword and lopping off his own head. He should start with his fingernails, or his hair, parts that are not themselves essential to the dismantling process. What Ms. Tome was the first to demonstrate was that there were no limits to the eradication process. In other words, someone or something wishing to eradicate itself could pursue the process as far as it wished.

  The fruit of Ms. Tome’s research, the self-eradicating automaton Prototype I, was rewarded with a certain level of acclaim. Even now, it is possible to ask an expert and get a response something like Ah, yes, there once was such a theory.

  But somewhere in that train of thought an obstacle had intruded, and forward progress was impeded. It seems somehow obvious that what wishes to eradicate itself will find a way to do so.

  While it is true that Prototype I achieved a certain level of acclaim, it never took off as any great, influential success beyond that. Even so, it managed to keep the train of thought from drifting off in another direction. There once was a person who had a certain view. Academics can be strange people. Who was it that transcended the cycle of self-mortification? Most likely the research referee.

  Self-eradicating automatons. Impossible. But if there was proof of concept, or a working prototype, what would it mean to be able to think about it at this point?

  This could be called an objection from desperation. The research referee exists to play the devil’s advocate. Objecting in some way or other is simply his job.

  It is easy to imagine how Ms. Tome responded to this attack. The number “I” affixed after the name “Prototype” itself signified that her theory aimed to make further progress. It seems only appropriate to believe that Ms. Tome conceived of her papers on self-eradicating automatons as a series right from the very start.

  The papers on Prototype II and Prototype III were published later, but the fact that the records grew increasingly sparse after that could be taken as a sign of the success of Ms. Tome’s research. With the release of each paper, the self-eradicating automatons improved in functionality, and their power to erase the memories of those who read the papers increased. Those whose memories were erased thought the things they no longer remembered had never even existed; those who could remember something began to feel ill and could no longer even respond to the views of the referee.

  By the time Prototype IV came along, in the fullness of time, communication from Ms. Tome had nearly come to a complete halt.

  Even I hesitate to describe the scene of Ms. Tome’s last lecture, of which absolutely no living witness, no record, no memory remains. Even I—who have up to this point engaged in some rather imaginative storytelling, even beyond the point of what might be customarily justifiable—have some standards. It is unfortunate that few share my own conceit that I am a man of principles. But having come this far, it would be wrong not to proceed to the final curtain.

  Standing behind the lectern in an otherwise empty lecture hall, Ms. Tome read out her paper clearly, to the end, took a deep, deep bow and stood straight once more and, standing before the empty hall, spread her arms wide.

  At that instant, an invisible barrier separating her from the empty seats, on which a text was written, rose from the floor to the ceiling, but no one else was there to witness it.

  Rows of horizontal writing, shining gold on a transparent screen, rising. The closing credits.

  The letters faced Ms. Tome, and so to the audience they would have appeared in mirror image. In a roundabout way, what the audience would have seen was the backside of a transparent screen.

  Ms. Tome stood with arms outstretched, as if ready to embrace someone or something, no expression on her face, and she followed the lettering with her eyes.

  The closing credits went on and on for a long time, until finally the words THE END could be seen, and Ms. Tome began to applaud, slowly, loudly. It seemed the echoes of her applause would go on forever, and I don’t know what finally made her stop, except that a
ll things must eventually come to an end. Although it’s possible that in this wild fantasy there would not have been any such restrictions on time.

  While the applause was still echoing, a thick curtain separated Ms. Tome from her audience. Eventually the sound of the applause stopped, and we can only imagine what was happening behind the curtain.

  In front of me is a black telephone with a rotary dial, but the end of the wire is cut.

  Even so, I hold the receiver up to my ear. I hear nothing, not even static. I guess that’s why they call it a black phone. Just like the term “steam engine” seems to convey, just by its sound, the sense that something is being carried away. It just summons up that image.

  And then I hear a voice asking, “Did you understand the talk?”

  “It was mostly self-explanatory, right from the start.”

  I can hear a chuckle in response to my comment. The trembling in the voice of the old woman, long past retirement age, seems far away.

  “The last end credits you will ever see.”

  “That’s right.”

  Ms. Tome shows no sign of denial. And so we can say that’s how it went with her final lecture.

  “Who was playing whose role?”

  “I believe the question is not clear.”

  For one thing, the entire context of this story is not clear, so what can be done about it?

  “For one thing, how does the catfish have anything to do with this?” Ms. Tome asks.

  And well she might ask me, but I have no way of knowing. I have not been given the power to change things as I see fit; all I can do is work to achieve order, at my discretion, within the framework I have been given. Compared with being able to flip all the cards over at will, or not flip them as the case may be, or judging which were flipped and which were unflipped and arranging them as they should be, I think this is a much more irksome job with little discretion involved, don’t you agree?

  “Ms. Tome?” I ask.