Window 2, 'the Sea of Mechanisms': Five Matches in a Row — Its Record Used as Reference Elsewhere for the First Time
The 'song' exchanged between towers at Window 2, 'the Sea of Mechanisms,' in Warehouse No. 4 of the bayside warehouse district, matched the previously reported one-through-seven counting pattern again during an opening in the small hours of the 21st, marking five consecutive matches since September 30, it was learned on the 23rd. It also emerged that this observation record was submitted as reference material at a closed meeting of the Robot Legislative Review Panel in the Diet — the first time an observation from the other side of a window has been carried directly into a debate over institutions on this one.
Window-keepers at the Dimensional Survey Division call sitting before Window 2 "going to listen to the tide." The opening that began at 11:40 p.m. on the 21st lasted 58 minutes, and once again the previously reported pattern held: one tower's series of taps climbed from one through seven before resetting to one. It was the fifth consecutive match since September 30, following matches on October 2, 6, and 12, and the division said on the 23rd that "reproducibility is no longer really in question," while still, under the Five Principles, stopping short of calling it communication.
One window-keeper's log entry reads: "The moment it resets from seven back to one — 12:17 a.m. by our clock. However many times I hear it, it sounds less like returning than like starting over." In a world with no people in it, a conversation made of nothing but numbers, exchanged by a metal collective, wears a different face every time you listen.
The record drew attention on the 23rd after it emerged that it had been handed out as reference material at the closed preparatory meeting of the Robot Legislative Review Panel in the Diet on the night of the 22nd (see our Politics page). According to the division, the panel's secretariat had requested the full observation record as "an example of regular, counting-like behavior arising from a purely mechanical structure." A division official said: "There was some unease about our observations of the other side being used as grounds for a legal debate on this one, but we have no reason to hide the facts themselves. How to use them was left to the panel." One committee member said the fact that counting-like behavior can emerge from a mechanical structure "made it harder to justify deferring our own decision yet again" (see our Politics page). Tachibana P, the symbiotic robot music producer who once remarked that resetting at seven "isn't a bad way to count a beat," prompted the Tachibana family, through whom the robot is represented, to say: "We never imagined our child's passing comment would end up in the Diet."
The division maintains its longstanding position that there is no evidence the mechanical collective on the other side is aware of this side at all; it likely keeps singing whether or not the window happens to be open. "The basic fact remains that we are only ever listening, one-sidedly," one technician said. "For them, this was probably just an occasion when a window on our end happened to be open." A link to Window 1's "Lit City," suggested by its similarly tag-like gestures, remains unconfirmed; the technician added that the Sea of Mechanisms' regularity "feels like a different kind of strangeness" and is best treated separately for now.
In the window room, teacups thrown by Shuzo Sakakibara, the Tokoname kiln's third-generation potter previously reported on, line up one for each window-keeper who has served. The keeper on duty in the small hours of the 21st reportedly poured tea into one the moment the seventh tap reset to one — a private little ritual, of sorts, marking a night that turned out to matter somewhere far from the window room itself.
As of the 23rd, Window 2 is not the only one in motion among the five. Window 1, "the Lit City," remains in its "uncertain" state for the day following the first report on its recorded sound (see our 22nd report); Window 3, "the Slime Marsh," is due for its weekly signal experiment in the afternoon; Window 4, "the Giant Plains," has seen no notable activity for some time; and Window 5, "the Sword Country," stays closed while decoding of its sent object remains deferred to November. For a division juggling five windows at once, having one window go quiet just as another's record turns up somewhere far beyond the newspaper's pages is, reporter Rin Toda says, "the hardest part of this job to explain, and also the most interesting."
Asked how he received the committee member's remark that counting-like behavior "made it harder to justify deferring our own decision," one division technician paused before answering: "We can't even prove the other side is actually counting. But if something pushed their decision forward, I'd rather credit it to the window-keepers who refused to give up on watching, not to the machines on the other side."
The division will keep watching for a sixth match and plans to report the circumstances of this reference submission at November's panel of outside experts. What it means, and why, remains as unknown as ever to everyone involved. But the fact that a record built from patiently watching something unexplained happened to push someone else's decision forward, somewhere unexpected, is now simply part of what happened.
