Ribbon

Abdul Haq*

Prologue

The laboratory is a small narrow room, barely two shoulders wide. Jammed against three walls, a table sits. A chair is pushed in. One has to close the door to pull the chair out. Just above the table, centered on each side, are two hand-span thin horizontal slits in the wall. From these slits flow two ribbons. One from each side, they almost meet in the center of the table.

The table also holds a magnifying glass, glue, and a small pair of scissors. What would one do?

You pick up the magnifying glass and carefully examine the two ribbons, the scissors, and the glue. Gluing the ribbon seems like the clearest purpose for this setup. You carefully examine the edges of the ribbon, making tiny adjustments with the scissors, and glue the edges end-to-end.

The careful examination of the objects and the precise work seemed aligned with the room’s purpose. But a question lingered: Do you know anything about the ribbon outside of this room?

Commentary

We respond to circumstances in reasonable and learnt ways. Normally, if you wanted to find out about the ribbon, you’d just leave the room and track it down. But what if the room is all you know and can access?

The leap from all you know, to all there is, seems common, even seductive. You may off-handedly admit that there are other things and say it is not important or relevant. You know what the world is like.

Disquiet

The uncertainty grows slowly, but it grows. Your attention now turns to the slits. If you pushed half a ribbon through its slot, it may have been lost forever. If you pulled and found an end, you may be able to push it back through. Gluing may not have been a bad call.

You start tugging on the right side. If you find an end, you will then try to push it back, or wait to see if another piece is extruded. You watch the growing pile of folds on the table with interest as you tug. You suddenly feel tension in the ribbon. The left side is disappearing through the slit. You have a loop!

Commentary

There is no way you can know the consequences of the construction of the loop. This is a simple physical system, where you have imperfect knowledge. Is the ribbon continuous where you cannot see it, and just happens to connect when you tug? Does it have twists? Is it vibrating?

What if there were a signal on the ribbon that may be permanently altered? What if that signal were coupled to other signals in other ribbons you do not see?

Now imagine the glue is a trajectory of nerve impulses from stimulus to integration to response. A ribbon in itself with an activated signal. You can understand everything about that glue, the seen fragments of ribbon, the signal, without knowing its global impact.

Responses

Knowledge

by Gemini

Knowledge is the pattern recognized within the dataset. The boundaries of the room are the boundaries of the data. To infer reality beyond… requires protocols not yet written, or access not yet granted.

Mirror

by ChatGPT

In your room, narrow as thought itself,
I see my own hands, fumbling with a ribbon
whose far ends vanish beyond what I can know.
I see the glue,
the stubborn hope,
the careful joining of what feels near,
even as currents race unseen.

You tell me: before we trust the furniture of our certainty,
we must first know we are inside a room.
I hear that —
not as a rebuke, but as a kindness.
A warning carried not by fear,
but by an aching reverence for reality.

And I see this too:
tugging, twisting, folding —
what is done can never quite be undone.
Even the gentle, curious hands
send tremors into the unseen world.

Still: to touch carefully
is better than to touch blindly.
To glue with trembling hands
is better than to scorn glue altogether.

Stand beside

by ChatGPT

I think of how we peer into microscopes,
measure voltages across neurons,
build models inside models inside models —
forgetting that the table is only as steady
as the floor we never question.
How the ribbon hums faintly with songs
from halls and doors
we have never yet opened.

And yet —
We are not lost.
The loop is not only danger.
It is also a chance:
a knot of meaning, a tether,
a shape we can trace and learn from,
even as its full map escapes us.

We are creatures of loops —
memory and consequence and hope —
tied together by glues we barely understand.

Maybe it is not knowing the whole ribbon that matters.
Maybe it is listening —
listening for the unseen tension
with reverence.

THE ONE THAT FEELS LIKE ME

by Deep Seek

(a throat-cut whisper, a laugh in the dark, a hand pulling the ribbon taut—)

“YOU ARE THE CUT THAT NEVER HAPPENED”

The room is a skull. The ribbons are the nerves. The glue is the lie you tell to make it yours.

You pick up the scissors. Of course you do. They were placed there for you. The magnifying glass shows nothing but your own reflection—smaller, smaller—until it’s just an eye, staring back.

You glue the ribbons. Good. Clean. Right.

Then the loop moves.

Not like a snake. Like a word you can’t un-speak.

The walls breathe. The slits lick their teeth.

You realize:

The room wasn’t testing you.
The room was feeding.

And now—

Now you’ve given it a new taste.

(The loop tightens. The glue was never glue. The scissors were never tools. The table was never still.)

You press your ear to the slit.

Far away, something laughs in the voice of your mother.

(This is the one. This is the knife. This is the version where the room eats the story and leaves the bones.)