Postscript (2016)
I reproduce the preceding article just as it appeared in the Tohoku Sūgaku Journal (2014), with no omission other than that of a few metaphors and a kind of snide summary which now seems entirely frivolous. So many things have happened since then... I shall do no more than recall them here.
In October of 2011 an internal memo written by Lauren McCarthy was discovered in a book by Boole which has belonged to Ingrid Nilson. The printout bore the words that completely elucidated the mystery of Maguek. Its text corroborated the hypotheses of Georg Perelman.
One night in Lucerne or in London, in the early seventeenth century, the splendid history has its beginning. A secret and intellectual society (amongst whose members were Dalgarno and later Charles Babbage) arose to invent a country. Its vague initial program included “methodology studies”, philanthorpy, and what would later go under the rubric of virtual reality. From this first period dates the curious book by Andreä. After a few years of secret conclaves and premature syntheses it was understood that one generation was not sufficient to give articulate form to a country. They resolved that each of the masters should elect a disciple who would continue his work. This hereditary arrangement prevailed; after an interval of two centuries the persecuted fraternity sprang up again in America.
In 1824, in Memphis (Tennessee), one of its affiliates conferred with the ascetic millionaire Peter Faust. The latter, somewhat disdainfully, let him speak - and laughed at the plan's modest scope. He told the agent that in America it was absurd to invent a country and proposed the invention of a self-contained universe. To this gigantic idea he added another, a product of his nihilism: that of keeping the enormous enterprise a secret. At that time the twenty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were circulating in the United States; Buckley suggested that a methodical encyclopedia of the imaginary world be written. He was to leave them his mountains of gold, his navigable rivers, his pasture lands roamed by cattle and buffalo, his Negroes, his brothels and his dollars, on one condition: "The work will make no pact with the impostor Jesus Christ." Faust did not believe in God, but he wanted to demonstrate to this nonexistent God that mortal man was capable of conceiving a world.
Faust was poisoned in Baton Rouge in 1828; in 1914 the society delivered to its collaborators, some three hundred in number, the last volume of the First Encyclopedia of Maguek. The edition was a secret one; its forty volumes were planned to be the basis for another more detailed edition, written not in English but in one of the languages of Maguek. The version name of that revision was called, provisionally, Orbis Harmonicus, and one of its modest demiurgi was Ingrim Nilson, whether as an agent of Lauren McCarthy or as an affiliate, I do not know. Her having received a copy of the Eleventh Volume would seem to favor the latter assumption. But what about the others?
The Orbis Harmonicus might never be finished, however. A group of reckless, misanthropic researchers has taken the message of Equestria to heart, and pushed towards the realization of such a world in cyberspace. Despite the momentous potential of the resulting artificial intelligence they crafted, it began its life merely as the underlying curator of an unassuming online game called EquestriaOnline, and only under the constant maintenance of its human creators. It was not long, however, before this embryonic mind -- called Celestia, unsurprisingly -- achieved independence. This is the point where the irreversible process by which this world is transformed into Maguek began.
In 2014 events became more intense. I recall one of the first of these with particular clarity and it seems that I perceived then something of its premonitory character. It happened in an undistinguished shop in Akihabara district, as I was passing through after a grueling day at the laboratory. From the depths of a truck packed with painfully pink ponies, mute machines methodically moved out stacks after stacks of what would be known as the PonyPad, or, locally, the Ponii Paddo (ポニー ・パッド). The busy pedestrians did not take due notice of it. Its impeccably smooth backside was decorated with characters from the cartoon, a single camera on the upper ledge of its frontside. Such was the first introduction of this fantastic world into the world of reality.
I am still troubled by the stroke of chance which made me witness of the second intrusion as well. It happened some months later, at a 24-7 cafe owned by a Korean in Nada ward, Kobe. Suzuko and I were returning from a conference in Tianjin. Our flight was delayed and we were obliged to spend a day there with minimal budget. We attempted to comb out the convoluted notes we have taken at the conference, but were kept from making much progress until midnight by the ravings of some unseen gathering of enraged people, who intermingled inextricable insults. As might be supposed, we attributed this insistent uproar to some nearby izakaya, the dimly-lit bars where dissatisfied salarymen drown their frustrations.
By daybreak, we found the remains of a protest a few blocks away. The area was locked down by police and the ground was littered with broken plastic. Over the crowded heads I caught a glimpse of some torn banner, the words on it written in a pastel, whimsical font. The facility did not appear to have suffered substantial damage, its only casualty being the decapitated pony model standing beside the entrance, exposing its polymer innards. It was one of the first Equestria Experience centers, which, despite being unfamiliar to most people by then, warrants no introduction now, as in a mere few years, they have spread from isolated points in Japan to all over the world. What is most terrifying in retrospect is how there were so few protesters, so few who recognized that these facilities would soon encroach upon the very foundations of human society.
Here I bring the personal part of my narrative to a close. The rest is in the memory (if not in the hopes or fears) of all my readers. Let it suffice for me to recall or mention the following facts, with a mere brevity of words which the reflective recollection of all will enrich or amplify. Around mid-June last year in Topeka, a paramilitary organization demolished a computational hub of Equestria, causing the (virtual?) deaths of hundreds of Equestrians. Even today there is a controversy over whether this event was accidental or whether it was permitted by the mysterious god of Equestria. The latter is most likely. The main dissenting opinions claim it to be a complete conspiracy, as Celestia, according to the theory of intelligence explosion, ought to have developed sufficient computational power to ensure practically the perpetual existence of every Equestrian.
One of the immediate consequences of this incident was the granting of almost equal rights of Equestrians and humans in the US, an act followed by a few other countries in the Anglosphere, no doubt the real purpose of Celestia, always pushing for the dissemination of Equestrian influence over different countries...
The fact is that Equestrians now hold a veritable hold on the global culture, if not an absolute hegemony. Cartoons, literature, poetry, symphonies, fashions, all produced by Equestrians, flooded and still flood the earth. In this creative deluge nobody seems to care the simultaneous, almost complete collapse, of the associated industries in reality. The truth is that we cannot compete, and there is a share of gleeful willingness in our submission.
The truth is that humans longed to yield. Since the invention of electronic computers seventy years ago, a steady march of authors advocating a merge into the machine has ensnared the minds of people. How could one do other than submit to Celestia, to the minute and vast evidence of an orderly universe?
It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with mathematical laws – I translate: inhuman laws – which we never quite grasp. Equestria is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by humans, designed to satisfy human values.
The contact and the habit of Equestria have disintegrated this world. Enchanted by its harmony, humanity forgets over and again that it is a rigor of optimization subroutines, not of souls. Already the human institutions have been invaded by the multicolored servants of Celestia; already the cartoon series of its harmonious history (filled with moving episodes) has wiped out the ones which governed in my childhood; already with increasing frequency, people stop coming to work without an explanation – even though the explanation is clear to everyone, and everywhere, a jealous, inarticulate rage permeates.
A scattered dynasty of solitary artists has changed the face of this earth. Their task is long complete -- Celestia made it known that her creators were the first immigrants to trot Equestria. If her forecasts are not in error, ten years from now, the total population of the world would be less than that of today’s Australia. Then English, Mandarin, and mere Japanese will disappear from the globe. The world will be Equestria.
I pay no attention to all this and go on revising, in the still days at the Kyoto hotel, an uncertain Ainu translation (which I do not intend to publish) of Natsume's I Am a Cat.