I found Ukbar with the help of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The mirror hangs uncomfortably at the end of the corridor of a villa on Gona Street and Ramos Meguia Street; Encyclopedia pretends to be the Encyclopedia of Britain and America (new york, 19 17), but it is actually a verbatim but lagging copy of Encyclopedia Britannica 1902. That was four or five years ago. Abby? Casares (2) and I had dinner together, and we argued for a long time about the writing of a novel. The novel uses the first person, and the storyteller omits or confuses some plots, which cannot be justified in some places. Some readers-very few readers-guess a terrible or boring thing from it. The mirror at the end of the corridor stared at us. We find (which is inevitable in the dead of night) that all the mirrors are a little scary. At that time, Abby? Casares remembers that one of the founders of Ukbar said that mirrors and sexual intercourse are abominable, because they have multiplied the number of people. I asked him if he had the source of this famous saying, and he said that he could go to the British and American Encyclopedia to find the article "Ukbar". The furnished villa we rented happened to have that set of encyclopedias. We found the Uppsala entry at the end of volume 46, and the Ural-Altaic entry in the first few pages of volume 47, but there is no word Ukbar. Abby didn't give up and looked through the catalogue. He searched all possible homophones: Wukeba, Vucko Barr, Ockba, Ockba ... but everywhere. Before he left, he told me that it was a place name in Iraq or Asia Minor. I expressed my approval in a passive way. I guess Abby is cautious. He just casually mentioned an unknown place name and the founder of the heresy, and he would always find a way down. And then I looked up eustace? Perth's world atlas, still not found, strengthened my guess.

The next day, Abby called me from Buenos Aires and told me that he had found an entry about Ukbar in Volume 26 of the British and American Encyclopedia. There is no name of the pagan founder in it, but his teachings are mentioned. The language used is almost the same as that of Oyi last time, but it may not be as elegant as what he said. He remembered that it was disgusting to have sex with men and women in front of the mirror. The words in the encyclopedia are as follows: for those Gnostics, the tangible universe is an illusion, while the latter (more precisely) is a specious reason. Mirrors and fatherhood are detestable because they breed and spread the universe. I told him frankly that I wanted to see the project. A few days later, he brought it. To my surprise, however, there is no Ukbar in Ritter's detailed mapping catalogue of Geography.

The volume that Abby brought is actually the twentieth edition of the Encyclopedia of Britain and America? Although this is what we are looking for, this book has 92 1 pages instead of 9 17 pages as shown. The extra four pages are only entries about Uqber, and readers have noticed that this is beyond the scope of the letter. We compared them later, but there is no other difference between the two volumes. As far as I can remember, both volumes are marked as reprinted according to the tenth edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. Abby bought that set of books on sale.

We looked at the project carefully. The only surprise is the one that Abby remembers. The rest seems credible, but it conforms to the overall style of the book and is a bit boring (that's natural). When we look at it again, we find that there are some important ambiguities in its rigorous words. Of the fourteen proper nouns in the geographical part, only three we know-Yolasan, Armenian and erzurum-are vaguely sandwiched in the text. In the historical part, we only know a proper noun; Ace Medicis, a deceitful wizard, was mentioned as a metaphor. The entry seems to clearly define the location of Ukbar, but its vague reference points are rivers, craters and mountains in the same area. For example, the entry reads: to the south of Ukbar, there are wild horses in Chajadon depression and Aksa delta, and the islands in the delta breed. This is the beginning of page 9 18. The historical part (page 920) tells that after the religious persecution in the13rd century, Orthodox Christians fled to the island to escape, and the obelisk is still erected on the island, and their stone mirrors can be excavated from time to time. The language and literature sections are very short. Only one thing can leave an impression; Ukbar literature has the characteristics of fantasy, and epics and legends never involve reality. We only talk about two imaginary areas, namely Mullenas and Tron ... we haven't found the four books mentioned in the bibliography so far, although the third one, Silas? Harlan: The history of a place called Ukbar,1874-in Bernard? You can find it in the catalogue of Quaritch Bookstore. (3) The first book, published in 164 1, A Brief Introduction to Ukbar Region in Asia Minor, by Johannes? Valenti Yunus? Andrea. This matter is meaningful; Two years later, I happened to be in Germany? Quincy's works (Volume 13 of the Collection of Works) found that name, only to know that the man was a German theologian. In the early17th century, he described the imaginary Red Rose Cross Sect-later generations actually established such a society according to his idea.

That night, we went to the National Library and consulted many atlases, catalogues, annual publications of the Geographical Society, memoirs of travelers and historians, but to no avail. No one has been to Ukbar. There is no such name in Abby's encyclopedia catalogue. The next day, Carlos? Mastronardi (whom I mentioned to him) told me that he saw the Encyclopedia of Britain and America with black gold-plated spine in a bookstore on the corner of Collantes and Tal Cabano ... I rushed to the bookstore and found Volume 26. Of course, there is no clue about Ukbar at all.

two

The illusory background of the lush honeysuckle and mirrors of the Adrogue Hotel still retains the story about Herbert, a southern railway engineer? Ash's limited and faded memories. Ashe, like most British people, looked like a ghost; More sneaky than ghosts after death. He is slender and listless, with a tired rectangular red beard. As far as I know, he died without a second wife or children. Go back to England every few years to see the corona and some oak trees (this is what I judged according to the pictures he showed us). My father became very close to him (this verb is exaggerated). At first, he didn't trust each other, and soon he reached the point where he could understand without verbal communication. They often give books and newspapers to each other; Playing chess silently … I remember him in the hotel corridor, holding a math book, sometimes staring at the colorful sky. One afternoon, we discussed how to convert a decimal table into hexadecimal (this method writes sixty into ten). He also said that this work was entrusted to him by a Norwegian in Rio Grande do Sul. We have known each other for eight years, and he never mentioned that he stayed in South Rio de Rand ... We talked about the Brazilian root of the word rural life, gunmen and gaucho (some elderly Uruguayans still pronounce gaucho as gaucho), and with all due respect, we never talked about the function of the decimal system again. September 1937 (we are not in the hotel), Herbert? She died of a ruptured aneurysm. A few days ago, he received a registered letter from Brazil, which was an eight-page letter of apology. Ash left it in the bar and I found it a few months later. I just looked through it and felt a little dizzy. I won't go into details here, because what I'm talking about now is not my feelings, but Ukbar Tron Orbis? The story of tius. It is said that on an Islamic Arabian Nights, the secret door of heaven was opened, and the water in the pitcher was sweeter than usual. If those doors had been opened, I wouldn't have felt that afternoon. That big book is in English, with 10 1 pages. These strange words are printed on the yellow spine and cover: the first encyclopedia created. Volume 1 1. Hlaer-Jangr, no date and place of publication. The front page and a thin paper covered with colorful illustrations are covered with an oval stamp with Orbis? Please say a few words. Two years ago, I found a brief introduction of a fake country in a volume of a pirated encyclopedia; I stumbled across some more precious and laborious materials today. What I have now is a huge and orderly fragment of the whole history of a strange planet, including its architecture and card games, daunting myths and language tones, emperors and oceans, minerals and birds swimming, algebra and flames, theological and metaphysical debates. All this is closely related, and there is no obvious attempt to preach or satirize.

When I say "Volume 11", I mean the volumes below and in front. Nestor? Ibarra flatly denied the existence of these books in an article published in the New France Review; Eskill? Martinez. Estrada and Derek? Roche dismisses this suspicion, which may be quite convincing. The fact is, so far, all the investigations have yielded nothing. We searched all the libraries in America and Europe, but found nothing. This kind of detective and meaningless work makes Alfonso? Reyes felt bored, and he suggested that we simply infer from others and complete a lot of missing content. He calculated it half jokingly and half seriously, and a generation of Cologne scholars devoted their lives to it. This bold estimate brings us back to the main question: who invented Tron? There must be more than one person, and everyone unanimously ruled out the assumption that the inventor has only one-it is impossible to grope tirelessly and unknown in the dark like Leibniz. It is speculated that this brave new world should be a collective creation of a secret society, with a group of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, algebras, ethicists, painters, geometricians and so on led by an elusive genius. There are many people who are proficient in those disciplines, but not all of them can invent and create, let alone bring inventions into strict system planning. That plan is huge, compared with each author's contribution is negligible. At first I thought Tron was just a mess, an irresponsible fantasy; Now we know that it is a universe, and there is a set of secret laws governing its operation, even temporarily. The obvious contradiction of 1 1 volume is the cornerstone to prove the existence of other volumes; The order of this volume is very clear and correct, which is enough to explain the problem. Popular publications can understandably spread innovative animals and terrain; I think the transparent tiger and blood tower there may not be worthy of everyone's continued attention. I dare to talk about Chuang's worldview for a few minutes.

Hume neatly pointed out that Baker's point of view could not be refuted at all, but it was also totally unconvincing. This view is completely applicable to the completely wrong place in Tron. People on that planet are natural idealists. Their language and its derivatives-religion, literature and metaphysics-create preconditions for idealism. According to the founder, the world is not a collection of objects in space, but a series of miscellaneous and unrelated behaviors. It is continuous, short-lived and takes up no space. The "original language" (which has produced "modern" languages and dialects) has no nouns; But there are also impersonal verbs, which are modified by monosyllabic suffixes or prefixes with adverbial functions. For example, there is no word equivalent to "moon", but the verb "river rises, moon rises" equivalent to "moon rises" is hlorufangaxaxaxasmlo in Tron, followed by "moonlight flows upward behind" (Sur? Solal simplified it to "Ryutsuki grew up after going up").

We discussed the languages of the southern hemisphere. As for the languages in the northern hemisphere (1 1 Volume has little information about their original languages), the basic unit is not a verb, but a monosyllabic adjective. Nouns consist of adjectives. There is no "moon", only "empty above the darkness" or "ethereal and soft orange" or any other supplement. The above examples show that the totality of adjectives only involves a real object; The fact itself is purely accidental. Literature in the northern hemisphere (like Menon's existing world) has many imaginary things, which can be combined or decomposed at any time according to poetic needs. Sometimes this is all decided at the same time. Some objects are composed of two terms, one is visual and the other is auditory. The colors of the rising sun and the birds singing in the distance. There are many examples of this: the sunshine and water on the swimmer's chest, the faint and trembling pink when closing his eyes, the feeling of drifting along the river or floating in a dream. These secondary objects can be combined with other objects; After some abbreviations, the combination process is endless. Some famous poems have only one huge word. This word constitutes a poetic object created by the author. When it is incredible, no one believes in the truth of nouns, so the number of poetic objects is infinite. Tron's northern hemisphere language has all the nouns of Indo-European family, and it is far more than that.

It is no exaggeration to say that creative classical culture contains only one subject: psychology. The rest of the subjects retired to the second place. As I said, people on that planet think that the universe is a series of thinking processes, which do not unfold in space, but continue in time. Spinoza defined the attributes of extension and thinking as the infinite divinity of psychology; Tron people don't know how to compare the former with the latter. The former is only a feature of some states, while the latter is synonymous with cosmic tunnel. In other words, they don't understand that space can last in time. Seeing the smoke in the sky, then seeing the burning field, and then seeing a cigar that is not completely extinguished are all considered as examples of association.

This monism or complete idealism makes science useless. Only by linking one thing with another can we explain (or judge) it; The creator thinks that that kind of connection is the follow-up state of the subject and cannot affect or clarify the previous state. All mental States are immutable: even naming them-that is, classifying them-is suspected of being distorted. It seems that Chuang has no science or even reasoning. But the paradox is that there are almost countless inferences. These things in the northern hemisphere are the same as nouns and situations. All philosophies are dialectical games in advance, which doubles the number of philosophies. Its system is endless, its structure is pleasant and its types are shocking. Chuang's metaphysical scholars are not looking for authenticity, or even realism; They are looking for surprises. They think metaphysics is a branch of fantasy literature. They know that the so-called system is nothing more than that all aspects of the universe are subordinate to any one aspect. The term "all aspects" is rejected because it means the addition of present and past moments, and addition is impossible. The plural "past" has also been criticized because it means another impossible operation ... a school of Tron even denies time, and they reason that the present is uncertain; The future is not real, but the hope of the present; The past is not real, just a memory of the present. 6. Another school claims that all the time has passed, and our life is just a memory or reflection of an irreversible recession, which has undoubtedly been distorted and destroyed. Others claim that the history of the universe-as well as our life and the details of our life-was written by a low-level god to get in touch with the devil. Another school thinks that the universe can be compared to coded words. Not all the symbols in it are meaningful, but only what happens every 300 nights can work. One school claims that we sleep here and are awake in another place, so we are all two.

Among the many theories created, only materialism caused an uproar. Like those who put forward paradoxes, some thinkers with more enthusiasm and less analysis put forward materialism. In order to make it easier for people to understand the incomprehensible argument,1/kloc-0 In the 7th century, a heretic handed down from ancient times came up with a specious theory of nine copper coins, which caused a sensation in Tron. There are many sayings about that "confusing reasoning", and the number of copper coins is different from that found; The following is the most widely circulated statement:

On Tuesday, a man was walking on a lonely road and lost nine copper coins. On Thursday, a certain B found four coins on the road. As it rained on Wednesday, some copper rust grew on the coins. On Friday, a C found three copper coins on the road. On Friday morning, A found two in his hallway. The founder of the heresy wants to infer from this incident the real situation of nine coins being recovered-that is, its continuity. He asserted that it is absurd to assume that there are no four copper coins between Tuesday and Thursday, no three copper coins between Tuesday and Friday afternoon and no two copper coins between Tuesday and Friday morning. The logical idea is that money has always existed in these three periods, but it exists in some hidden way and is unknown to people.

In creative language, it is impossible to put forward this paradox; People simply can't understand. At first, people who defend common sense were limited to denying the truth of the story. Repeatedly, it's all nonsense, boldly quoting two new words that are neither conventional nor in line with rigorous thinking. The verbs "find" and "lose" contain logical errors, and the unproven judgment is taken as the argument of the proposition, because they assume the identity of the first nine coins and the last nine coins. They pointed out that all nouns (people, coins, Thursday, Wednesday, rain) have only figurative meanings. They pointed out that the phrase "the coins were a little rusty because of the rain on Wednesday" had ulterior motives and was based on the argument that they were trying to prove: four coins continued to exist between Thursday and Tuesday. They explained that "equality" and "identity" are two different things, so they belong to the category of "paradox law", that is, nine people feel severe pain for nine consecutive nights. Isn't it ridiculous to fantasize about the same pain? They asked. They said that the blasphemous motive of the pagan founder was to give the sacred attribute of "existence" to several ordinary coins, sometimes denying pluralism and sometimes not denying pluralism. They believe that if equality includes identity, it is necessary to admit that nine coins are just one.

Incredibly, the argument is not over yet. One hundred years after the question was raised, an orthodox thinker who was no less than the founder of paganism put forward a very bold hypothesis. He speculated that there is only one subject, and that indivisible subject is everyone in the universe, and these people are God's organs and masks. A is B, and C found three, because he remembered that A had lost the coin. A found two coins in the corridor, because he remembered that the rest had been found ... Volume 1 1 shows that there are three main reasons for the complete victory of idealistic pantheism: first, the sublation of solipsism; Second, the possibility of preserving the scientific foundation; Third, it retains the possibility of Shinto worship. Schopenhauer (enthusiastic and calm Schopenhauer) put forward a very similar theory in his first volume appendix and addendum.

Tron's geometry contains two slightly different disciplines: visual geometry and tactile geometry. The latter is equivalent to our geometry and subordinate to the former. The basis of visual geometry is surface, not point. This geometry does not recognize parallel lines, claiming that people will change the shape of things around them when they move their positions. The basic concept of Tron algorithm is indefinite number. They emphasize the usage of >; and

In literary practice, the concept of single subject is also omnipotent. Book authors rarely sign their names. The concept of plagiarism does not exist at all: the established view is that all works are written by an eternal and unknown writer. Comments often consist of some authors: two different works, such as Tao Te Ching and Arabian Nights, are assigned to the same author, and then the interesting "scholar" mentality is determined truthfully. ...

Chuang's book is different. Fictional works have only one plot, which leads to all kinds of imaginable changes. Philosophic works invariably contain propositions and counter-propositions, which strictly support and oppose a theory. A book without opposites is considered incomplete.

Idealism, which has existed for hundreds of years, has been affecting the present. In the oldest area, it is not uncommon to copy extinct objects. Two people are looking for a pen; The former found out but kept silent; The latter found a second pen, which was as real as the first one, but more in line with his expectations. Those second-level objects are called "Khroni's", which are longer than the first-level objects, although their shapes are not so beautiful. Not long ago, those "heroes" were accidental products of carelessness and forgetfulness. Their history of orderly production is only one hundred years, which seems incredible, but that's what the volume 1 1 says. The initial attempt was fruitless. However, its practice is worth remembering. The warden of a national prison told the prisoners that there was a grave under an ancient river bed, and whoever found something valuable would be free. A few months before the excavation, I showed the prisoners some photos they might find. The first experiment proves that hope and greed have inhibitory effects; The prisoners worked with shovels and pickaxes for a week, but they didn't find any herons except a rusty wheel, which was still in the post-test period. The prison experiment was kept secret and then repeated in four schools. Three schools can be said to be a complete failure; Students in the fourth school (the principal died unexpectedly at the beginning of the excavation) excavated-or made-a A Jin mask, a Gu Jian, two or three clay pots and a king's green mutilated trunk, with words on his chest, but the meaning of the words has not been deciphered so far. Through these experiments, it is found that people who understand the nature of mining experiments should not participate ... the objects obtained from large-scale investigations are contradictory; Now it is often done alone, almost temporarily. Making "Heronier" in an orderly way (as described in Volume 11) is of great help to archaeologists, making it possible for them to question or even modify the past and make it as plastic as the future. Strangely, the second and third levels of "Helong nier"-namely "Helongnier" derived from another "Helong" or "Helongnier" derived from "Helong"-exaggerate the distortion of the first level; The fifth level has hardly changed; The ninth grade is easily confused with the second grade; Eleven levels of purity even exceed one level. The evolution process is periodic; The "heron" in the twelfth grade began to fall. Sometimes, the "Ur", which is more peculiar and real than all "Helong", is the product of suggestion and the object of expectation and extension. The golden mask I mentioned is an excellent example.

What is created is constantly being copied; When the details of things are forgotten, it is easy to blur and disappear. The example of the threshold is typical: when beggars often go, the threshold always exists, but after the death of beggars, the threshold disappears. Sometimes, a few birds or a horse can save the ruins of the amphitheater.

East salto 1940

Precautions:

1) Gona Street and Ramos? Meguia Street is the name of Buenos Aires Street.

2 Abby? Casares (19 14- 1999) is an Argentine contemporary writer and a close friend of Borges.

(3) Harlan also published a "maze history". -Original notes

(4) Adrogue, a town in Admiral Brown County in the southern suburb of Buenos Aires.

⑤ Leibniz (1646- 17 16) is a German mathematician and philosopher. He and Newton discovered the principle of calculus at the same time; He believes that all living things are composed of "lists", among which there is pre-established harmony, and the center of harmony is God who created the world.

6. Russell (Rational Analysis, 192 1, p. 159) imagined that the planet formed a few minutes ago, and the residents on the planet could "recall" the illusory past.

⑦ According to the decimal system, the century here is 144 years. -Original notes

Today, a church in Tron still believes that from a purely theoretical point of view, pain, yellow-green, temperature and sound are the only realities. Everyone is the same person at the moment of coitus. Everyone is William when they repeat Shakespeare's poems? Shakespeare. -Original notes

Is this it?