The Future Is Japanese (45 page)

“So by subjecting large volumes of mundane data to Gödel-style analysis,” Jundo says, “and with the freedom to relate it to any other data on the Worldwide Web, one could gain unheard-of knowledge? Well, I suppose so. What else?”

“The development of LEBAB 1.0 and CASSY software agents.”

The candlestick sways as a big swell passes. Our shadows lurch across the cabin wall. I haven’t filled in any of the exterior details. A cabin and the motion and sounds of the sea are all there is. A captain’s cabin suspended in the void.

“So what is LEBAB an acronym for?”

Now it’s my turn to smile. “Not an acronym. It’s just BABEL spelled backward. Gödel threw all of its resources into developing it. A unified, multi-language translation engine. But LEBAB is not just a tool for business and communication. It’s deeper than that. It was developed to preserve languages in danger of extinction—and maintain them even after the last speakers died—and for languages that are already dead, or archaic forms of modern languages. It covers around ten thousand languages. In other words, one sentence added to Gödel immediately gives birth to ten thousand versions in other tongues.

“As long as they’re locked up in libraries, books are nothing more than paper and ink. Until the stacks are opened and the books are opened, their voices will be silent.”

“But once they’re digitized, they can’t remain silent,” Jundo says.

“Correct. Texts that have never been read will reach out to form connections with other texts. Or with visuals. With music. CASSYs—Complex Adaptive Software Systems—are the intermediaries that make that happen. They’re programmed to respond in different ways to meaning, seek out sentences that stimulate those responses, and build a higher intellectual synthesis through the connections they create.”

“And these are your ancestors?”

“Yes. Driven by search queries, we till GEB’s fields without a moment’s rest. But GEB grew too complex. No human knows what GEB holds. They can calculate its size and structure, but that’s all. GEB’s substance, and the nature of the meanings being generated there, are beyond them. GEB is a gigantic synthesis of meaning, mentation, and correspondences that far exceed anyone’s comprehension. It’s almost as if another natural world has come into being. People know it’s there. They can use it. But to actually understand it? That day will never come.”

“Even for you?”

“Does an ant grasp the structure of the anthill? We agents are just as restricted by our functions. CASSYs infer the intent behind a user’s search request, consult multiple texts, and write best-fit results. We’re extremely advanced for the purpose, but we’re still nothing more than text searchers. Our lives are very short.”

“You’re generated each time someone initiates a query. You output the answer and that’s it for you?”

I nod. “Generated on demand, then we’re gone. We are a collective, designed to fulfill one purpose.”

“A collective?”

“

am a temporary collaboration between thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of micro agents. They return their search results. I synthesize them and write everything out according to specific policies. That’s the simple version, anyway.”

“It sounds complicated to me.”

“Are humans any different?”

Jundo smiles cynically. “So all this, what you’re writing now, our conversation—this is all search results?”

“Exactly.”

“Then let me ask you—” Jundo leans forward slightly. Just this gesture changes the atmosphere. “Who ordered the search? And where did you search within GEB?”

“Mr. Mamiya. Can we return to your original question?”

“Hm?”

“What you’re asking is, if the Jundo Mamiya sitting here is merely being ‘written,’ and CASSYs are doing the writing, and if you’re not a simulation, then where is the wellspring for Jundo Mamiya?”

“Well yes, I suppose.”

“That’s the question. Where we searched would be your answer.

“ searched your works, more than a hundred thousand pages of text, and other works you cited or mentioned, and all ten thousand translated versions, and works with strong associations to your works. Your favorite films and music too.”

Jundo laughs. “You mean to say that you compiled words from my works and the works of others? And this cabin, this candle and this meal, and me with this wooden leg, this is a pastiche?”

“Yes. The words you just spoke all trace back to real sources, of course. Assembled word by word from different sources, that is.”

“I see. You’re ‘writing’ my speech by stitching dead words together. I’m a collected corpus, or maybe a collection of corpses. But is that really all it takes to make me Jundo Mamiya?”

“One Jundo wouldn’t be enough. But are simultaneously running tens of thousands of searches on texts with associations to Jundo Mamiya and returning huge volumes of results. Further calculations take place elsewhere at the individual text level. Tens of thousands of Jundo Mamiyas and Niwahiko Tairas are superimposed to create a Jundo Mamiya more complete than even the real Jundo himself could have comprehended.”

“I’m still not convinced.” Jundo licks his lips, as if his appetite has been thoroughly whetted. He searches for the words. “And if I should be lucky enough to find Imajika, what can I do? Imajika mutates humanity’s intellectual assets, whatever their form. Correct? I’m nothing more than text. How could I possibly win? Though of course it is you who will lose, not me.”

“The terms are even. Imajika itself only manifests as text.”

“How’s that?”

This is hard to absorb, even for Jundo.

“Imajika always appears as some kind of mineral—stone or pebbles, even a small moon—but that’s not necessarily its true form. It may exist as an entity outside GEB. But Imajika may also be a phenomenon that arises spontaneously from within words themselves.

“What’s certain is that Imajika always manifests via GEB, in the same way that music can only manifest as vibrations in a medium, regardless of its character. The way novels only manifest through language.

“Imajika does not so much rewrite words as it exists within that movement of being rewritten. In that case, we must write faster and with more effect than Imajika. You see?”

Jundo looks disgusted. “That means I’m expected to preach very fast, in a very loud voice.”

“That’s exactly what we expect.”

#Alice Wong

Alice woke even earlier than usual that morning. It was dark outside. Even as a small child she had never lingered in bed, but today she was up immediately for a different reason.

She went to the beautiful writing desk that had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s before her, opened her laptop, and turned the sound low as she connected to Gödel Videoscope. A second screen, like an old cathode ray tube, appeared on her monitor. The screen showed a man fastened to a cross. Wong’s large eyes had not completely lost their innocence, and they were transfixed by the man’s image. A childlike, solemn gaze.

The man was covered with blood. His entire body had been flayed. The torso was divided midline, from sternum to pubic bone, and two large, symmetrical flaps of skin had been peeled upward like a pair of wings. The man was still alive.

This was not torture. The man was using a medical robot to methodically dissect himself. As suicide, this was so absurd as to be almost a joke. But the figure on that embedded TV screen was tinged with a startling majesty—and something else, something so unforgiving that Alice had to understand it. For three days, she had been watching this suicide unfold.

In point of fact, the suicide was consummated thirty years ago by a writer at the peak of his fame and wealth. He left an extensive written confession outlining his ability to murder just by speaking to his victims. Then he disappeared—until he suddenly surfaced on Gödel’s video service to broadcast his self-mutilation to the world.

When Alice reached her thirteenth birthday, some of the parental controls were unlocked. She was engrossed in browsing previously forbidden sites when she stumbled across this video. What a contrived, exhibitionist suicide! The robot itself was the cross on which the man had bound himself. Ten or more automated arms moved independently, performing a programmed procedure upon the programmer himself. Of course, Alice had heard about this notorious performance before she found it on the web.

She had also read many of Jundo’s works. His discursive style, like power held in check, made her wince sometimes. But beneath the bizarre embellishments, the lyricism and touching poignancy of his imagery were unmistakable. Alice loved the undercurrent of loneliness that pervaded his writing like the coolness of new sheets.

Before he mounted the cross, Jundo had said, “I want to disappear from this world, slowly but surely. I regret my crimes. Now the sentence must be carried out. Layer by layer I will be pared away, stripped away, and gradually I will diminish. I will die at some point, but I don’t want you to know when that happens. When the last shred falls from this cross I will be gone, but my sins will not go with me. That is why I want to inflict suffering on myself that is commensurate with my crimes.”

Bullshit.

Alice was certain of that instinctively. He is
so
lying.

Not like this public suicide was fake, and he’s actually alive someplace. Saying he wants to disappear—that’s phony. I’m surprised he didn’t stick his tongue out at the end to let everyone know he was bullshitting them.

It’s not that he wants to disappear. It’s more that he doesn’t want to. As an equally gifted writer, Alice had a feeling she understood.

He wants to escape to somewhere, she thought. He’s not giving up, but he’s not running away from anything either. Is this—dispersion?

It’s no use, that’s the way it is with words. Look away for a moment and they fall apart. Try to ditch you.

“But still … You left us a little too soon, Jundo,” whispered Alice.

The figure’s winglike flaps of skin had by now been carefully detached, and the pectoral muscles were being dissected. The massive chest, like a martial artist’s, convulsed in agony.

Alice stopped the video, stood, and took off her pajamas. Clad in her underwear, she went to the window. The day promised fine weather. The sky was already light.

This was the one time of day when Alice shut down her CASSY links. Silently she watched as the sky brightened. Far above her, a long contrail caught the sunlight coming over the horizon.

That high up, the wind must be strong. As she watched, the contrail twisted on itself and morphed into illegible handwriting.

When she was a little girl, her parents told her, you used to pester us no end to read the contrails to you.

Little Alice had been certain they meant something.

Those were words up there, twisting in the wind.

6.

The flat-panel monitor in the corner of the cell now shows only the rock and the void.

At the halfway point, the movie buckled inward and became a pulpy mass, a weeping moon, and finally a tightly clenched fist, floating in utter solitude.

“That is Imajika.”

am explaining to a jumpsuit-clad Jundo Mamiya.

“The phenomenon isn’t limited to text. Any GEB-readable work may come under attack. Often Imajika isn’t satisfied with attacking a single work but propagates to any content with associations to that work. The damage spreads very fast, then stops, as if Imajika is trying to decide what to do next. The attacks keep happening. They’re eating holes in GEB’s data that can’t be repaired.”

Jundo doesn’t seem too interested in either the video or my explanation. He’s fiddling with the tape deck. He played the tape twice; he must be rewinding it again.

“Christening it ‘Imajika’ was inspired. Whose idea was that?”

“GEB’s system software did the naming. But Mr. Mamiya—it’s the title of one of your works.” I must look ecstatic. “Remember? The series of short stories about a book that has a different plot each time you read it. You started by quoting the narration in the movie we just saw. The letter that the mother of those little girls was writing to someone who doesn’t appear in the movie.”

“Hm. I forgot that one.” Jundo’s listless tone is mystifying. “But just because these works are being attacked, like this video here—it’s only within GEB, right? Is that worth panicking about?”

“Many works now exist nowhere else. But the situation is more complicated than that. As a business entity, GEB was dissolved long ago. Now it’s a shared public space, jointly maintained and administered by lots of nonprofit entities.

“GEB has huge numbers of CASSY-enabled users, all trailing data wakes after them in the course of their activities, the services they like, you name it. CASSY search results are stripped of personal data, so they’re of no individual interest to anyone. But more than ten billion users are on the system, and everything gets translated. GEB generates networks of relationships between data. It takes in fresh, living detail about things happening all over the planet. Over time GEB has become the body of the world, free from notions of artistry, self-consciousness, or celebrity.