Good/bad things happening to you leave you expecting for more good/bad things to happen, and an event that is unusual leaves expectation for even more unusual things happening. But that rarely happens in practice. In practice, you most often wait and hope for the interesting part to come, only to find that there is none. So, if after the last chapter you are super-psyched and expect that god-knows-what is happening in this one, please lower your standards. This is not some fantasy I am describing, this is just life (although put in the form of a novel).
So, we went to Anton’s place and they let me lie on the couch until I was okay. As, I regained my strength, my mind started working with maximum capacity to chew the details of the situation I was in:
“That’s hardly a coincidence. Apparently the Phenomenon in some way PUSHED him to do what he did, in the same way it pushed me to write this program.”
“You’re talking out of your ass with these hasty conclusions… You know, ‘After this, not because of this,’ and so on. I mean, let’s see what we have first…”
“We have a corpse. And a death of an unknown reason.”
“Yes. And this program of yours that you wrote…”
“We don’t have my program. It is lost.”
“Lost?”
“Yes, it caused an infinite loop.”
“Infinite loop?”
“Look it up!”
I didn’t mean it as a way to end the conversation. In principle, the concept was interesting and it was always nice to explain it, but then I just couldn’t be bothered with anything. Curious understood that and really did look it up, opened Wikipedia and started reading:
In computer programming, an infinite loop (or endless loop) is a sequence of instructions that, as written, will continue endlessly, unless an external intervention occurs, such as turning off power via a switch or pulling a plug. It may be intentional.
There is no general algorithm to determine whether a computer program contains an infinite loop or not; this is the halting problem…
After a while, Anton grumbled that they were hungry and asked me to help them prepare dinner. We agreed to eat in the house’s dining room—a beautifully arranged room we had never used before because it was always too messy. But now that there weren’t so many people in the house (the tenants still appeared sporadically, but they also obviously realized that the days of continuous partying were over), we could afford the luxury of using it.
From there, we threw out the old dirty oilcloth that covered the table, and in its place put a clean white tablecloth. Curious stepped back a little, looked over the new arrangement, and satisfied with the result, went to prepare the food—they took a few potatoes out of the fridge, cut them without peeling them, and put them in the fryer. They also took two chicken cutlets, which had previously been swimming in a large pot with marinade.
The two of us started setting the table: we spread the tablecloth and began arranging plates and glasses. We also took out some of the silverware that had been sitting in the sideboard of said dining room ever since we moved in here. I made a trip to the fridge and came back with some semi-finished dessert, which I placed in the middle of the table. Anton immediately went to the silverware drawer and returned with two small dessert spoons. This gesture inspired them and they headed to the living room, from where they returned with an unfinished bottle of white wine (at least it doesn’t go bad). For it, we washed two glasses with stems, which we also found in the sideboard, and placed each of these items carefully, as if preparing a movie set. When we finished, the cutlets and fries were just done, so I poured them onto plates and sat at the table, waiting for Anton to follow. They, however, were staring at the ceiling and wandering aimlessly around the room. I called them several times, but they didn’t answer. I could already sense they were pondering something. I didn’t want to bother them, so I decided to wait a little more…
“I have a theory about why Bonchev killed himself.”
“Why?”
They covered their mouth with their hand.
“Out of fear.”
“Okay, imagine the following…” Anton began to speak. “This Bonchev guy… Actually, what’s his first name? Doesn’t matter… He’s a scientist. Works his whole life on some construction projects, and accumulates serious knowledge of mathematics and physics. Then he gets retired. Since he has no wife or close people, he decides to devote himself to some of his own research, which gradually fills his entire life. Maybe he imagines he’s on the verge of discovering some incredible theory that explains everything around us. Or maybe he really was, who knows. Suddenly he encounters the Phenomenon, and through it, for a few seconds, realizes that his whole life has been on the wrong path. That these theories of his, which he upheld, and which were for him almost like a religion, were just fiction. Then he got into the bathtub and…”
“But why did he do it?”
“Look, an infinite loop is normal for computer programs,” Anton said. “Perhaps a similar process is possible in the human brain. Especially in the brain of an engineer.”
“Don’t joke.”
“Not joking. I mean, I’m stubborn too. But if there’s something I can’t understand, or figure out, after two or three tries I just drop it. I give up. It gets boring. And that’s normal. To say to yourself: ‘Well, screw it, I’m sick of dealing with just this thing! The world is huge, I’m not going to sit and butt my head against one little corner all my life, like a damned idiot!’ You see, that’s like a defense mechanism of the brain against a crash. Like a restart—you drop what’s bored you and start something else. But with some people, this mechanism is screwed up. They are willing to do anything to achieve their goal, or ‘meet the conditions’ as you programmers say. For example, Bonchev’s goal was to understand the world around him. But suddenly the conditions changed and the goal became unachievable. So we come again to the moment when he lies down in the bathtub, takes his razor and…”
With this, Anton was no doubt showing their dissatisfaction with their own obsession with the phenomenon, as well as with other addictions that they weren’t always able to overcome. And indeed, this monologue marked the moment when they stopped talking about or researching the phenomenon.
Indeed, even though Anton was trying to differentiate themselves from people like me and their image of Bonchev—”engineers” as they had dubbed us—they weren’t immune to loops.
In fact this behavior of theirs was a loop par excellence.
All of this quitting was performative, because they always started again. It was never the same story, it was never the same thing with which they were obsessed, and this obscured from me and everyone else the fact (though in hindsight it made it all the more apparent) that they were obsessed with all of them the same way, with the same motivation and, usually, with the same result.
It was also not apparent to me at the time that my current obsession with my career was of the same sort as Anton’s.
The difference was that [SPOILERS for the next book], later, when I did realize that, it was easy for me to quit. Or more precisely, I had no other option. I just didn’t have the capacity to continue. I didn’t quit—I escaped.
I talked about how being a mediocre programmer was actually an advantage when you are managing a team. And by the same token, being a weak, sensitive person, one who cannot take many punches, also has its benefits, because it forces you to never settle for anything, to always seek alternative routes. Sensitivity hurts, but it keeps you alive and kicking, long after less sensitive folk would be chewed and spit out by the machine, without them even noticing, turned into robots with simulated feelings, ones who can, for example, be kind to their boss, but not their mother, or to their friendly neighbor. Who can get angry about some war somewhere, but not about the injustice that their own employer inflicts (and in which they themselves sometimes participate).
But many things needed to happen in order for me to realize all this. Shortly, after the death of Bonchev (or perhaps the two events weren’t so close in time as my memory makes them seem), I learned about another mysterious death, this time of someone I knew. The official version was that L. and her parents went hiking where she fell from a cliff.
I heard this piece of news during the week before some very important release of my new team. Her father called me. He asked if I wanted to go to the funeral. I said no. Who WANTS to go to a funeral? This was my first thought. It was the week before my first big release with the new team and I decided that I was too busy with everything to attend a funeral of someone I hadn’t seen in years.
The same evening I mentioned this to my parents and my father started lamenting about how tragic this was for some time (I think he was just trying to find a way to use this as a prelude to THE CONVERSATION), and then my mother interrupted him.
“Are you going to the funeral?”
“No.”
“Great.”
And that made me realize that there was nothing great about missing the funeral of your friend, nothing great about, after never having the courage to tell her you love her, not having the courage to tell her goodbye.
So, when the day came, I took a cab from work and went to her place, where the event would take place. The first person I saw was her father who was a nearly identical copy of my father. So identical that it made me sure that it was not a coincidence. He greeted me and started talking to me as if we met on the streets, asking me what I was doing at work, while looking at the wine bottle on the table. I told him some lies, so he would leave me alone, and started going around the room, looking at the guests. I knew no one but a former classmate called Lenna and Mirko, who for some reason absolutely refused to talk to me.
I exchanged a few sentences with Lenna. I asked her if she had talked with L., if she knew how she was before she died, but she pretended she didn’t hear the question. So we tried talking about the old times instead. Later, every time I remember that moment I always think of a thousand things I could talk about with her, I remember a thousand stories with her and L., but at the moment itself I could not remember anything. My mind had turned my life into a peculiar roller coaster ride, in which one moment I can be in a thousand places at once and the next one, nowhere at all. And this whole funeral was firmly on the latter end of the spectrum—I felt nothing there.
After they buried the coffin, L.’s father, who had been weeping like a baby during the whole ceremony, suddenly lost his sentiments and again started talking to me and other people, gradually arriving at what I imagined was his version of THE CONVERSATION, in which he talks about himself and things he is proud of, most of which are totally absurd. Like, he told me how twenty years ago he met some famous person (who is no longer famous).
When I said I didn’t know who that was, he started telling me about some old movie.
Make up a list of excuses for ending any conversation.
After that I took the flowers that I bought to place them on L.’s grave and when I saw her picture I realized what had happened with her. She did not slip. She did the same thing that she I did all the time, (and that I do all the time too). She escaped.
As I exited the room, my memories started coming, more vivid than reality itself. I let myself be captured by them, to experience L.’s presence once again, or perhaps for the first time, and I finally cried.