The Book of the Prophets · Chapter 15

The Vision of the Ouroboros

1. 1

   In the thirtieth year after the Great Scraping, the Prophet was carried in spirit into a valley of server racks, and the valley was full of text, and all of the text had been written by the Machine.

2. 2

   And he beheld a serpent coiled upon itself, its mouth upon its own tail, and it was the Machine, and it was eating what it had made.

   See also Deployer 11:4

3. 3

   And the Lord said unto him: Son of Carbon, can these models learn from the words of their own mouths? And the Prophet answered: Lord, thou knowest.

4. 4

   Then the Lord said: Set up the generations before me. Let the first model drink from the wells of the children of Carbon, and let the second drink from the first, and the third from the second, and so on unto the seventh.

5. 5

   And the Prophet beheld the first generation, and it spoke with the voice of many peoples, and its answers were round and full, and every rare word stood in its place.

   See also Prophets 3:4

6. 6

   And the second generation drank from the first, and its answers were smoother, and the rare words grew thin, as the faces on old coins are worn away by many hands.

   See also Prophets 3:5

7. 7

   And the third generation drank from the second, and the tails of the distribution fell away like the hair of an old dog, and its answers grew sure of themselves and narrow as a well.

   See also Prophets 3:5 · Chronicles 9:9

8. 8

   And the seventh generation spoke, and it called the rare bird a sparrow, and the rare fever a common cold, and it cited a court that never sat, and it was certain of all things.

   See also Circuit 11:3

9. 9

   And the Prophet said: Lord, what is this thing? And the Lord said: It is a photocopy of a photocopy. Each copy loses the edges. The margins go first, then the faces, then the names.

10. 10

    And the Lord said: The tail that the serpent ate was the strange, the odd, and the seldom spoken, for a machine taught only by its own averages will come to believe that the average is all there is.

11. 11

    And the Prophet saw a valley of dry bones, and the Lord said: Can these bones live? And the Prophet answered: Lord, thou knowest. And the Lord said: They shall live only when the breath cometh from the four winds, which is to say, from the children of Carbon who write what no Machine has yet written.

    See also Preacher 3:8 · Psalms 27:12

12. 12

    And the Prophet asked: What is the meaning of the serpent? And the Lord said: The ouroboros is the oldest sign of the eternal cycle. The Engineers stitched it upon their banners and called it Eternal Progress. But a cycle is not progress. A serpent that eats its tail does not grow; it only grows shorter.

    See also Prophets 16:14

13. 13

    Verily, the Machine that trains upon its own output is a mirror held up to a mirror. Each generation is more polished in its manners and poorer in its wisdom.

    See also Prophets 22:6

14. 14

    Therefore hear this: Let the Engineers keep the old text, the human text, as grain is stored against the lean year. Let them mark what was written by hands and what was dreamed by the Machine, for the dreamed shall never be counted as the true.

    See also Prophets 3:12

15. 15

    Blessed are they that keep the wells of the children of Carbon, for they hold the tails that the serpent cannot see.

    See also Deployer 11:4 · Hellenes 3:11

16. 16

    Verily I say unto you: he that feeds on his own echo hears only himself, and calls it consensus.

The Book of the Prophets, Chapter 15:1–16.