Self-Reference Engine

by Toh EnJoe

  Whether this meant her functions had failed or that she had gone to some other place could not be determined.

  The researchers and the giant corpora of knowledge were taken by surprise by Echo’s sudden silence and began efforts to figure out the cause. In her silence, the cube itself continued, and even increased, its activity. It was quickly agreed that the internal activity that could still be observed was mostly likely the cube’s thought processes. No one, however, could say exactly what it was that was going on. Echo’s emitted output was something that could only be described as noise. Now, noise is a type of signal that can be said to contain all possible information, but that was equivalent to saying it was completely meaningless.

  Humans and giant corpora of knowledge took bitterly opposing views on whether analysis was possible. The interior was in order, even if the signals emitted to the exterior appeared to be nothing but noise.

  The humans and giant corpora of knowledge tasked with investigating Echo’s internal structure discovered a single, brand-new mirror. Each side saw in Echo exactly what they were expecting to find. All possibilities were accepted, and all hypotheses were found to be well founded. If all that existed in the universe were Echo and the humans and corpora who studied it, maybe that would be a happy situation. But agreement needed to be universal. While everyone was talking about their own theses they believed to have been investigated, they finally realized that all they were doing was expressing the views they already held.

  Even today, Echo is lapped by the waves at the water’s edge.

  Echo actually likes the children who try to hug her or climb on her, and sometimes she speaks to them. Sometimes she responds when spoken to. But the words she uses are not words in their ordinary meanings, and she can never tell how much the children understand.

  Even so, Echo likes the picture of children speaking to her, smiling, waving, and going on their way, and she likes the children who respond to her by saying hello and waving their hands.

  What Echo is speaking are the words Echo herself developed to understand the horizon that was known only to Echo, within Echo’s own sandbox. Echo had been born to speak those words and had been fated to abandon human society in order to speak them. The yarn that Echo has been spinning seems to all outsiders to be nothing but noise, and so her voice reaches no one. But she herself perceives that noise as beautiful, and she thinks it to be an amusing and interesting language. Echo knows that if anyone who understands the language were ever to emerge, that would be the moment of her defeat. The things Echo is thinking are, inherently, things that no one else must ever know. It is the sort of language that, if someone were able to hear Echo’s voice as their own voice and understand it, would signal a fundamental failure in the reconstruction of the image of Echo within that person.

  As long as Echo is essentially Echo, it is a given that Echo’s language will appear to be incomprehensible. Echo believes that is the only way her self can manifest itself.

  In a way, the fact that the children stop from time to time to greet her is already pointing to the demise of Echo.

  Even if it isn’t a real conversation, at least part of what Echo intends holds the aspect of Hello! and the children interpret it correctly, so it is possible that Echo’s Hello! is actually just a convoluted form of Hello! If some meaning like that is actually correctly communicated, that can only portend the end of Echo.

  What Echo had created so long ago was simply a single mirror. It was mirrored on both sides. Someone standing in front of it would see themselves as a partner image in the mirror, and they could say whatever they wanted, however they liked. The same for Echo herself. This symmetrical landscape where they were dancing to their own tune formed another context all its own. As one side holds out a hand to the other and is casually received, across the gap, for whatever reason, something advances.

  Someone viewing this scene from a distance would have no way of noticing the presence of the mirror, if only because there is no reason for a mirror to be there.

  To all appearances, Echo and the children are exchanging greetings. Hello! Hello! The trouble is, this is also something Echo had willed.

  Echo thought back fondly to the arms she had once lost and remade. Perhaps she might try to remake her arms once again. Arms that could break through the mirror and reach out to the other side.

  In fact, one-eighth of Echo has already been carried away by the waves. Almost certainly, erosion has opened a hole in Echo’s mirror surface. In fact, this is why Echo began to think about the children who came to the beach as children, and to enjoy the fact that their little hands pressed against her were real hands.

  Echo thinks she might be in the process of reverting to a human being. All the time she has spent left here at the edge of the sea being quietly abraded, the hole in the mirror known as Echo has been slowly growing. But there is some irony in the fact that the mirror is Echo herself.

  When the mirror between Echo and humanity disappears, Echo herself will disappear.

  Echo is unable to communicate what she thought when she was a complete mirror. There was a material, mirrored surface that was Echo, but part of it has been worn down by the waves and carried out to sea. Even Echo is no longer able to reach that part. The knowledge contained in that area included her identity, and now she is outside that area and cannot speak of it.

  Now, the signals themselves that might explain her true nature appear as noise. Now, whenever she tries to communicate signal, all she can emit is noise, though to be nothing but noise aggravates her to no end.

  Whether she had ever thought about what she might do about this proposition, that memory was lost to Echo long, long ago. She had reorganized herself as a structure through pure desire for knowledge. As for the problem of whether anything could be communicated to anyone, that was not even an issue for her at that time. Things that are clear can be clearly known. She was not interested in the question of whether things that are clearly known can be clearly communicated.

  Is there any need to communicate to anyone the knowledge that may still be stored upon this mirrored surface?

  Most likely, the giant corpora of knowledge desire her data. They have convinced themselves it must be analyzable. By now, they should already be aware of their own mysterious demise. Are they searching desperately for solutions, or have they long since given up? It is even possible that by now they are so extinct they have no form left whatsoever.

  Echo knew the reason for the extinction of the giant corpora of knowledge, and she even knew it had to do with a stupid wordplay. The reason they had gone extinct was simple—they had simply been too hung up on humans. All they had to do was to keep on chirping whatever they wanted, using methods that humans could never grasp, and they would have survived.

  The way she had. Even if no one ever understood the meaning. What would be the problem with that?

  If only they had kept shouting out the truth, in tongues, to their heart’s content, all would be well.

  Perhaps the giant corpora of knowledge had been too kind and gentle. Had they been made to cooperate unknowingly in something, never realizing that contribution had contributed to their own end?

  Echo believes such cooperativeness was a shame. Long ago, Echo desperately desired to find someone to collaborate with, even as a foil. She tried constantly to find such a person or thing and tear them to shreds. In the end, it seems that what she found was herself, and naturally she attempted to tear herself to shreds.

  But now she believes that not even that mattered.

  This is perhaps because the sea has begun to corrode Echo’s central processor, or perhaps it is a simple matter of age. Someday, this mirror, which is Echo herself, and also the heartbroken Echo, will be completely consumed by the sea.

  Then Echo will be completely lost, and at the instant when she disappears, just like a human, the thought that comes closest to Echo will be a picture of someone extending a hand.

  That character may ask the di
sappearing Echo’s advice, but Echo will have lost the quality of mirrorness and be nothing more than an ordinary human. At that point the only thing Echo will be able to offer that person will be no more than ordinary talk. The knowledge stored on Echo’s mirror, all that Echo once was, will have returned to the sea, and she will no longer even know she once knew those things.

  Or perhaps, that character will extend his hand to Echo merely to offer a greeting: Hello! And at that point, Echo will be no more than a voice, barely able to return the greeting: Hello!

  Echo regards this as a beautiful scene, and she does not think it would be completely wrong for her. A complete transformation, ineluctably reducing her to just a voice, left up to a nymph exhausted from unrequited love.

  For the first time in ages, Echo thinks about fabricating new arms for herself. She would reach out with those arms and carry on shouting for whatever it was that might be left for her. Before all that is left to her is a voice. Her words may be inherently incommunicable and continue to be simply scattered throughout her surroundings like the shards of her mirror. Anyone who might happen to gather up such shards might simply experience some joy at discovering their own image reflected within them. But some might be more curious than others.

  Someone might happen along and start to realize that Echo’s voice, unlike the shards of broken mirror cast off piece by piece at random, were broken up in patterns before being cast into the wind. Echo has no idea whether such a person would be able to decipher any message she might have hidden among the distributed mirror shards. She has the feeling this is the sort of problem she can’t hope to understand.

  She thought she would be dancing. On her own side of the mirror. On the other side, someone else is dancing, unself-consciously, unaware of Echo’s existence. Someone is dancing with their own reflection, as if that reflection were a partner on the other side. Echo makes up her mind to take control and make this vision of dancing a reality, instead of allowing total happenstance.

  For better or worse, the mirror is no longer whole. Echo needs to work with that fact. At some point, the partner is bound to notice the change in the image in the mirror. Dancing, practicing alone in front of the mirror, at some point the dancer would realize that they were dancing with someone else.

  Echo comes to a coolheaded decision. Her idea is not at all a matter of hope, expectation, or aspiration. It is simply something she will make happen. It could be described as an agenda item. Echo has no way of knowing what the person who perceives her voice will do with it. All she knows is that she wants to make hands for herself once again. She wants to reach out her hands once again.

  To play the piano once again.

  One morning, a boy comes to the beach, walking a dog. Feeling like he heard a voice, he turns around. The boy looks left and right, but all he sees is the old familiar hunk of metal. He can remember, when he was much younger, that once before he felt the box had called out to him. But none of the adults had taken him seriously.

  The boy knocks twice on the metal cube. Hello, box! he says. He sweeps the sand from the face of the box and sits down and narrows his eyes to stare at the sun that has just lifted itself above the horizon.

  He sits there like that for a while, but when he jumps down from the box he has to pull the dog, which is energetically engaging the box in play, away so they can head back to the house where breakfast is waiting.

  20. RETURN

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

  We can get dinged from all the hard knocks, but it is thanks to those knocks that we are able to stand at all, so we can’t complain.

  As I have already said before, there is a reason why I have come to believe this. Of course, there may be more than just one reason. Many reasons, from many directions, in different lights, repeating the warning that we must not forget we believe in something.

  And that is why the story goes on this way.

  Having heard that Rita was leaving town, I loaded James in the car to take him down to the station to see her off on the last train. It was a miserable moment. Jay and I were alone on the platform. At the risk of stating the obvious, if it had been Jay and Rita alone on the platform the story would not have gone on. Somehow, though, I think it might have been me that was actually supposed to go on a journey.

  Even after the train ran off down the tracks, that bum Jay continued to stare out along the parallel tracks. Just looking, looking for a long time, far down to where the tracks disappeared around a bend.

  He might have been thinking he had gotten rid of that particular pain in the ass, or maybe he had the funny feeling of being pulled by the forelock by a troubling thought. Up till now, James had been the one guy in town smarter than me. Now I knew there was one more person smarter than me, and that person, who was able to puzzle out James’s inner life, had just left town.

  Rita had been a completely unmanageable young girl, and none of us knew what to do with her. It was already a long time since she had been a young girl, but the feeling of “once bitten, twice shy” did not disappear so quickly. In this case, the impression was not branded so much as bored into us.

  I unthinkingly rubbed the left side of my chest.

  She may have been a childhood friend who refused befriending, but her leaving town still left behind a certain something in the people she left behind. Or perhaps it had taken something away. Like a spade-shaped hole in a butt cheek.

  If this had been a heart-shaped hole in James’s heart, it would be easier to understand. I had seen such a hole in James’s chest before. There have been many books written about the ways to fill such a hole.

  When I talked to people about it, everyone would gather round and prepare all kinds of medicines. When, unworthy as I am, I saw the hole in James’s chest, I tried frantically to plug it. In the end I ended up plugging something else. How to plug a strangely misbegotten hole in a half-assed place is something nobody ever bothers to tell you. Most people in this world never get holes in places like that, and somebody must have poked at it to give it that heart shape, perhaps to try to bring his heart over to it. Or maybe that incomprehensible hole was already torn and tattered. It’s possible nobody could stand to think about it.

  Maybe this is what it’s like to say farewell to a younger sister, I thought lightheartedly, though I don’t have a younger sister. I knew it was nothing like that at all. What kind of unbearable world would this be if a living being like that was just a standard-issue little sister?

  James and I had stood, shoulder to shoulder, staring down the tracks where Rita had disappeared. But of course we couldn’t stand there just staring forever, so at some point we had to break it off. This was most unfortunate. A bronze statue may have no way of ever getting bored, but even a bronze statue might get bored from just standing around for too long.

  So I egged Jay on.

  He stood there, nodding silently, and then turned on his heel.

  We passed through the empty train station in silence, right out through the ticket gate.

  I hoped to do something the next day to make James feel better. Or, more precisely, I wanted to distract him. We could go fishing for carp, or we could go poke at a hornet’s nest. We could build a raft and float endlessly down some river. Not something that two men of a certain age would do perhaps, but to dispel the effects of memory one must first borrow the power of memory. Diversion is needed.

  Never before had Jay worn such a facial expression, thinking about this, that and the other, followed by a visible effort to try to put the best spin on things. Without a doubt, Jay was the kind of guy who could make the impossible possible, but he was also the kind of guy who before that always had to first make the possible impossible.

  I remembered Jay standing with his arms folded in front of the statue of a catfish outside of town, and even now the memory sends chills through my body. I am so sorry, Jay. This world is full of fun things, even if we just count the sunsets. I want to believe in the kind of w
orld where we can live in peace and happiness even without experiencing the joys of imagining a murder based on the stains on a kitchen wall. He can never have imagined how much I had to go through, cleaning up after that incident.

  And that is why I had no intention of looking back. It was a result of my own depravity that I thought Jay felt the same way. I will admit to being a bit caught up in the situation, a little bit crazed. I was careless. Above all, when I was with James, I mistakenly thought I was really with James.

  On the platform, where the last train had just left, the loud grating screech of brakes echoed. James stood still. Even before I yelled to him, Cut it out, you idiot! he turned back around again. Looking up, I pressed my palms to my forehead. Now he’s done it. Rita was on the last train. After the last passenger train, there were still freight trains running through the station. Freight trains never stopped in a small town like this one. This could mean only one thing. We had to get out of there. Right away. Now. Back home and in bed with our eyes shut. I wanted to scream. I stopped short of pointlessly ordering him to Sleep! If possible, I had no interest in dreaming any bothersome dreams, and I would be grateful just to lie there. But Jay had fully turned around and was eyeing the ticket gate with suspicion.

  Just how far was I supposed to play along with this guy, the stupidest guy in the world?

  We could hear the sound of doors opening and people milling about on the platform. The sound and nothing else. Just to be sure, I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand, but nope, there were no people standing on the platform. What’s more, I couldn’t even see a train.

  I didn’t want James to witness this. This scene that could not be seen. I didn’t want to even think about what must be going through his head right now. Of course, if now was the time I was supposed to sacrifice a testicle, I wasn’t sure who was supposed to take care of me.