Self-Reference Engine

by Toh EnJoe

  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
, 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.

  Maybe it’s the opposite, said my father, looking at me. I thought what he was trying to say was this: there were twenty-two tatami mats in the big living room because there were twenty-two Freuds. This is not to say that the Freuds were on hand before the house was built. No, that’s not what it means, it’s something else. This just nudged the explanation one step ahead; the problem was that there was still no particular reason for the number twenty-two.

  Why twenty-two? That’s just the number of all these Freuds. I don’t know if they’re dead or just sleeping. For all I know, they’re the ones dreaming this dream. I hope that’s not the explanation.

  That said, the sudden appearance of this self-styled “detective,” just in examining the sword-cane, seemed to be somewhat lacking in enthusiasm. This was a game of push and shove, and he seemed to have decided to push it on me.

  Grandma had stepped down into the garden and gone to attack a cat, or a catfish, with the sword and failed. It was okay to say that she had failed—she was dead, after all. This could be let go of lightly, but it was always possible to paste up some kind of logical connections anywhere you liked.

  The fact was, Grandma had tried to cut it down, whatever it was.

  It could not have been the twenty-two Freuds stashed away under the floorboards. It was the opposite. Grandma had left the living room, where the Freuds were already lying, to confront some thing in the garden. Let the Freuds dream the twenty-two dreams that each Freud might be dreaming. After all, a dream was nothing more than a dream. This was not just playing Russian roulette, just to see what happened, with the Freuds that might or might not be having these dreams. Missing would be the crime of murdering Freud, while hitting would mean nothing particularly good at all.

  Could there be any help for this? father mumbled, and the whole group of relatives were taken aback. Help? Help whom? my older uncle said distractedly. Any day when a man holding a sword-cane was allowed to make a decision, something dangerous was bound to happen. How could you say something like that at a time like this? I said, aghast. Dad, you trying to pick a fight?

  That’s up to you, but I would like you to at least make some explanations.

  Depends what you mean by help, I said. So far in this dream, only one girl has died, and who that was should be abundantly clear. Or, more properly speaking, someone who used to be a girl, anyway.

  I will not go there. Crossing that line is not my role here.

  I thought so. However, it was I who responded, grumpily, Obviously we can help. But I cannot even rely on my own self in that way. Wait just a minute. If what we are trying to do is provide some logical context here, what about your wife? Unfortunately, that person was also my mother. A struggling son discovers a failed attempt to beat and stab his own mother, and on top of that his mother is still alive. The Freudian interpretation might be that the mother is in an unattainable place, already lost, replaced by the first beloved. I pressed my middle finger to my forehead, and I knew that whatever the conclusion I should be unmoved.

  I get it, I said, nodding. Surrounded by our relatives, who were staring alternately at my father and myself, I tapped my dumbstruck mother’s hand two or three times. What can I say? You explained your logic to me, and you’re going to do with it what you will.

  I had absolutely no intention of becoming that sort of adult.

  So, I supposed that meant this would just end up as some sort of Freudian nightmare, but I would like this whole distasteful business to remain just a story within this useless dream.

  10. DAEMON

  A SHAFT KNITTED of countless artless points of light links ground to sky. The red glowing points are each blinking in their own idiosyncratic rhythm. As James watches, the connections are broken, but the points of light reach out to one another, giving birth to new points of light.

  A contrast-dye image of a mega-beast with countless beating hearts. James thinks, If any regime possessed such a structure, it could truly be called a daemon.

  Yggdrasil is the name of a massive artificial brain, and this shaft is her model of the current space-time structure. As in any space-time model, time is represented as an axis and treated as a kind of space. Ordinarily, that axis is stationary, moving not a jot, but the model spread before us pulses a
nd changes restlessly. The points of light dodge one another in same-time; over intervals they are repeatedly created and annihilated.

  Yggdrasil says this particular model projects images of multiple time structures, each contending with another, but that humans, whose brains can handle only a limited number of auxiliary inputs, lack the ability to determine whether they can even believe what she is trying to tell them.

  James sits in an expansive conference room with five-meter ceilings and a thirty-meter span, but still he senses some odd pressure above his head. The images in the space-time model are somehow ominous, like the shadows in a horror film, and it seems an unlikely diversion from the pressure of sitting in the conference room. James thinks it would at least be better if the flickering points of light were green rather than red. The actions may be too lively for the interactions of plants, but they are overly aggressive simplifications of unknown phenomena, with the result being that the images give the impression of emphasizing the rawness of familiar things.

  As a product of the massive corpora of knowledge, human psychology is most likely already incorporated into the semiotics of the display, even if human emotions are not, so it could be that Yggdrasil is following the convention of using red to express danger.

  “Current target is shown below.”

  A girl stands beside the fishnet structure of the shaft, waving her hand at shoulder height. James is unaware of the reason why Yggdrasil uses this Virgo-like avatar when projecting images of three-dimensional objects. As Yggdrasil is a tree within the tree that makes up the complex paths of the net structure, it could be some sort of expression of modesty, as though the Earth Mother Goddess has adopted the conceit of presenting herself as a young sapling.