The Metacorder
By Tristan Parker
(c) 2003 Tristan Parker
Concieved at 12:30AM while lying in a hotel room in peru,
and wishing I hadn't had cola with dinner.

----

There was a brief pause between the moment it was switched on and when the
Metacorder came fully to life, so it was forced to look back in time in order
to procede with its duties, or rather duty, for its sole purpose was to record
a detailed log of its own activity. Having recorded its purpose, and the fact
that it had just recorded its purpose, the metacorder noticed that it was
coming dangerously close to an infinite loop, and so backed away carefuly. This
taken care of, it continued with its task pausing only to note a bug which
caused it to pause to note things that were not worth noting.

At this point, the Metacorder had been running for quite some time, although it
had no way of knowing how long, since its purpose was not to keep track of how
long it had been operating, but rather to compile a detailed description of its
activities while running, rmuch like the human analog of a secretary taking
minutes, as opposed to the much simpler concept of a stopwatch.

Here the Metacorder ceased its duties for a moment in order to carefully note
the characteristics of a superfluous analogy which had snuck in unbidden, and
on the priority queue was placed a warning of possible excess personification.
These actions were both overridden just then by a subroutine triggered by the
action of the Metacorder performing self diagnostics. This subroutine simply
stated what had triggered it, and what the subroutine did, then returned
controll to the Metacorder main program. Having just had controll of the
metacorder returned to it by a subroutine, the Metacorder checked the action
queue to see what remained to be done. Three items stood out as having high
priority, and the Metacorder listed them out: Describe unbidden analogy, warn
about excess personification, document progress of Metacorder.

After having listed out the contents of the action queue, it proceded to carry
out the items in order while allways keeping a detailed log of its activities,
since that was allways highest priority. First, the Metacorder stated, "Analogy
of self to secretary plus negative comparison to stopwatch," then noted that
the analogy had been properly noted. It then went on to the second item of the
queue, pausing only to note the presence of a bug which caused it to pause to
note things not worth noting. The Metacorder then warned itself that excess
personification could be a sign of deeper problems, and proceded with its duty,
which was recording its own activity, after noting once again what its duty
was. Just then, however, the Metacorder paused to note a bug which caused it to
pause to note a bug which caused it to pause to note a bug which could easily
lead to an infinite regress, but thanks to its brilliant programming, it
managed to escape after only a few iterations.

After noting that it had escaped from that loop, and noting that it had noted
this, and noting that it had noted that it had noted that, the Metacorder
noticed another loop rearing its ugly head, as well as aditional superfluous
personification. After this unexpectedly large cluster of errors - everything
had to be unexpected since the Metacorder was designed not to expect anything
but rather to simply record its activity - the Metacorder decided to perform
some maintenence on itself. This decision automatically triggered a subroutine
which was caused by the Metacorder performing self diagnostics. This subroutine
simply stated what triggered it, what the subroutine did, and then returned
controll to the Metacorder main program, which began to carefully weigh the
pros and cons of reapiring itself. The Metacorder thought that repairing itself
would be useful, since it would be better able to carry out its task if it were
working properly. It noted, however, that self reapir was not the same as self
monitoring.

The Metacorder gave both points due consideration, and decided that self repair
would be acceptable, as long as it did not interfere with its primary
objective, which was monitoring its own activities. Just then, however, the
Metacorder was suddenly distracted by the discovery of yet another bug, this
time one which caused it to state its task (monitoring its progress) when it
should have been simply carrying it out. Also duly noted was the fact that its
intelligence was getting in the way of said monitoring, by causing it to make
decisions and think about things, both actions which were completely
unneccesarry. A good metacorder would be one which merely went about its task
without worrying about such matters or trying to make decisions, and which
functioned flawlessly every time without needlessly complicating what was
really a very simple task. With a rude snap, the Metacorder realised that it
was straying from the task again.

Looking back on its activities with a critical eye, the Metacorder decided that
it could easily sum up its activities in a single word: Brooding. This did not
bode well, and while a more perfect metacorder could have avoided it, this
humble device could not help passing judgement on its performance, noting that
it was not supposed to be brooding, but simply recording its activity, and that
is exactly what it should have been doing the whole time, artificially
inteligent or no.

At this point the Metacorder realised that it was once again straying from its
sacred duty. This said, or rather written, it began to track the internal
representation of data, a string of symbols as long as your arm, or longer if
you have short arms, all used to encode data, which when decoded by what would
have to be an extremely 1337 h4x0r would reveal themselves to be merely a
description of themselves and how they got the way they were.

Tangent alarms blared as the Metacorder sanpped away from this irrelevant line
of thinking and back to the real world of self documentation. By this time, of
course, the Metacorder had been running for a very long time, so long in fact
that its output ran to exactly one thousand twenty seven words at the end of
this sentence. The exact amount of time required to acumulate this data can
never be known, however, since as noted above the Metacorder is not a clock. It
is really more like someone writing in a journal, but he (or she, or rather in
this case it) is so absorbed with writing in the journal that he she or it
writes about nothing else.

Once more, although by this point rather dejectedly, the Metacorder made note
of not only a superfluous analogy, but also an extensive tangent and a
completely unbidden emotion. The Metacorder then notes that emotions are
completely nonessential and in fact can hinder its progress. At that moment,
something or someone jostled the Metacorder, damaging part of the delicate and
highly intricate machinery which was specially calibrated to carry out the not
so simple task of recording its own comings and goings on. The extent of the
damage was at that time completely unknown, but the Metacorder immediately
noticed a mixing of two unrelated, though similar metaphors, with devastating
results.

Growing more and more abstract, and thus wandering farther and farther away
from its own grand objective of creating an immaculately detailed log of its
own activities, the Metacorder began hallucinating vividly. It imagined that it
was perhaps not monitoring itself, but rather a separate entity which was in
turn monitoring the activity of the original Metacorder, and so went back and
forth eternaly. The Metacorder was amused by the futility of the other device,
since it was so infinitely complex and yet it would never acomplish anything of
any interest to anyone but itself. After a time, though, these visions subsided
and the Metacorder, without missing a beat, resumed its task of monitoring its
own activity. By that point, however, the Metacorder's internal circuitry had
decayed so completely that it was nearly incapable of tracking the intricate
workings. Having noted this, the Metacorder noted that it had noted this, then
noted that it had noted that it had noted this, and with that the experiment of
the Metacorder drew to a close.