One System One Code
By Ajang Aguer
Not sure what time it is! No clock to tell the time. No shadow to follow, either. Everything appears devoid of physical features. In the sky, the sun seems to have stood still! In front of me is a wall-a shimmering but translucent wall. I can see what is on the other side of the wall, but can’t really fathom the details. Is this an illusion? I blink my eyes in quick succession. But the wall is still there! I scream out aloud, but the wall swallows the sound in indiscrete fashion.
So I touch it. But the feel that I receive is delusional. The wall is so sleek and comfortable to the touch that I somehow forget that it even exists. Maybe this wall is not real. My impulses try to resist. The whim is almost intolerable that the no-time-feel good sweeps my brain, and somehow synchronizes the feeling into “I don’t care” kind of despair.
I take in a deep breathe. I gaze left-right, and back-front. For a slim moment, the universe around me appears hallow and lifeless. But in front of me-on the other side of the wall-I can see an operating system. I want to be part of the system. I want to be on the other side of the wall and become an integral member of this membranous wall! On one ambitious impulse, I try to break through the wall.
But like a tethered proverbial dog that was shown a red meat, I bounce back: to the confine of my original circumference. The wall is lustrous but hideous. Repulsive it is, such that any outside particle that tries to emerge through the wall is immediately passed through a strong magnetic separatory sieve. The influx and out flux are well defined.
I wish, in earnest, the wall didn’t exist, and even so that I could just replace it with a free space-replace it with just one continuous space. But that is just a wish. The wall pre-existed me. The operating system on the other side of the wall is prototyped. Bureaucratic maybe! It is inflexible in its own way such that any particle outside the membranous wall is repelled while the enclosed ones are retained, nurtured and programmed to be the principal system which all the other systems, those from within and without, vow before.
But wait! Maybe, I’m too naïve. Maybe, the wall between me and the life behind the wall isn’t the problem. It is, therefore, not a problem of replacing one reality with another but of the two realities. The problem, though, is the complexities of codes assigned to entities on either side of the wall. Perhaps, just replacing the wall in between, without synchronizing the two systems on either side of the wall, is not a feasible strategy.
Momentarily, I find myself at the edge: the interface of two immiscible systems, in all the existence to the two sides, and in all the existence for me and those behind the wall. Stranded at this interface, I figure out that maybe debugging and reprogramming the two systems to be represented by one code would surely demolish the wall in between.
So, I ask myself one fundamental question. Should the code be preferentially attached to the control system or made global? Universal! Yes, universal. This looks like a crazy and an impossible undertaking. Some part of me seems to give in to the notion while the other disagrees. “Nothing is impossible,“ says the one part.
My conscious mind does tell me that for any two operating systems to functionally operate in harmony, they have to share a similar coding system. Indiscriminate passage of particles through a membrane that was previously impermeable to diversity, whereupon fear, dissimilarity, suspicion, and mistrust are filtered out, fulfills the archetypal definition of our common universe.
Everything that we want to pass freely across the wall must be debugged of its primordial codes, and reprogrammed to more receptive phenotypes. Or else, the systems will die, and cease to exist. Finally, my thoughts follow a clear path-one system one code!
Ajang Aguer
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