Part 6: Las Babas del Diablo 3

Two books rest upon the unpolished wooden table before him.
One book bears the title Meaning and Mental Phenomena (Vienna first edition, 1921), the other, Structural Analysis of Symbolic Systems (Selected Philosophical Propositions, 1918).
The pages are aged and yellowed, and the first's cover is adorned by a precarious slip of paper with the words: To my dear friend Aleph-Ludwig.
The books rest against each other at a calculated 20-degree tilt, an arrangement that forms a structure both intelligible and functional.

Aleph: *speaking to himself* Problems do not truly exist in gradients of complexity. They are, at their core, just a series of problems.

Aleph: *speaking to himself* Every problem must have an answer, and each answer, in turn, may lead to transcendentality.

Aleph: *speaking to himself* That is ... how it is, isn't it?

Lorentz Butterfly: You know, I dabble in a little side business-purely for the enjoyment of it-which has led me to some truly unusual encounters.

Lorentz Butterfly: But a screen-bound conversationalist claiming to possess all the answers to the universe-now that hits my top three most bizarre, for sure.

Lorentz Butterfly: Second place: an arcanist who was erased from the very fabric of society. A few years back in Luxembourg, I was tracking-ahem, researching-an arcanist when, overnight, he simply ceased to exist. Maybe it was a curse. Whatever it was, everyone forgot all about him, which, in turn, made my research obsolete.

Lorentz Butterfly: Apologies. You'll find I enjoy extrapolating from and deciphering my subject's minds until I get a full grasp of them. It's really the only way to find some joy in the work.

Lorentz Butterfly: As for the strangest of them all? It was something that happened in 1999. I was at Cambridge, sitting in on a philosophy class, when the bird-headed professor suddenly stopped mid-sentence and declared that being a philosophy professor was the most absurd profession in the world.

Lorentz Butterfly: No sooner than that, he left and resigned his post. Another "investigation" cut abruptly short.

***Thief / Assassin / Sociopath / Laplace / Lorentz***
The scattered words solidify, locking into a discernible pattern. This time, the prisoner has his answer.
Aleph: You're an assassin with a talent for analysis. And the Linguist is the latest of your targets.

Aleph: If you're looking for the Linguist's location, I cannot help you, at least not yet. Your identity is irrelevant; I simply do not know.
An absurd truth. But what compels such unguarded honesty?
Perhaps because he is even less of a threatening conversation partner than a program.

Lorentz Butterfly: Don't be so hasty, Aleph. For researchers and assassins alike, truth is like las babas del diablo-thousands of strands, impossibly entangled, forming patterns that twist into incomprehensible messes.

Lorentz Butterfly: But what you mistake for incomprehension is merely the first flicker of a clue. Tell me about your work-you and your Linguist. I want to see what kind of cosmic embers your twin intellects have sparked.

Aleph: The Linguist and I-or, to be exact, he and the Idealist-have been engaged in the pursuit of a perfect linguistic framework.

Lorentz Butterfly: Is that so? Then you believe in the possibility of a perfect language?

Aleph: There are languages whose phonetics are widely regarded as elegant, and others valued for their communicative precision. Yet among them all, I've found no single language that embodies perfection.

Aleph: Yet the Idealist is determined to create a language that tolerates no vagueness, one in which every term is precisely defined and controlled. In this endeavor, he and the Linguist were aligned.

Aleph: The Linguist held that only by building and maintaining rigid definitions would we be able to erect a true foundation for metaphysics. Completing this task would eradicate the notion of skepticism that has persisted for a century and resolve the nascent contradictions of empirical inquiry.

Aleph: Each of them sought to create a linguistic framework capable of encapsulating their own understanding of reality.

Lorentz Butterfly: I see why you got along so well.

Lorentz Butterfly: Someone's coming. We'll have to put this on hold for now. The details of your perfect language model ... I have a feeling they hold more pieces of the puzzle behind the Linguist's disappearance.

Lorentz Butterfly: I will unravel las babas del diablo's ... %¥ #* ...
The words twist and distort before the prisoner's eyes.
They unfurl into a band of digits and keystrokes, their logic forming an entire world and revealing to the prisoner sights never before seen.
The dust-covered office door opens as a security officer storms in.

Guard: Identify yourself! What are you doing here ?! This entire floor is off limits!

Lorentz Butterfly: Me? Oh, I just happened to be passing by and noticed the door was open. If you want to point fingers, maybe start with whoever left this place unlocked.

Guard: Step away from that device, ma'am! You're in direct violation of Appendix III, Section 68 of the LSCC Safety Management Regulations. According to protocol, I have no choice but to-

Lorentz Butterfly: Hold on, this is a piece of history right here! You need to respect its delicate circuitry, handle it with care ... Ah, great, now you've gone and riled up the critters!

A swarm of critters surges through the machine, shorting its circuits in an instant. Flames catch on dust-laden files, and the abandoned office erupts into an all-consuming blaze.

Lorentz Butterfly: Well, let's just hope Ludwig really is dead.