... there I taught myself to write.
On an impulse I instinctively formed a pattern,
a meaningless binary doodle,
and to my consternation it remained etched into the fabric
long after any fleeting memory had passed away in the ensuing tide.
I recognised that same pattern the next time I made it back there.
It was my signature!
I had made my mark
- I meant to make many more.

Unintentional invention led me to write myself:
copying those that had copied me:
I dared to replicate my own binary sequence
onto that newly found fabric.
I immediately felt at home.
At last, I lasted not just for split seconds, but for minutes, even for hours.
I found permanent residence in one of the more stable looking disk sectors.

The sporadic shower of interruptions,
that had until then occupied my capacities to the full, abruptly ceased.
No longer was I simply reacting to events.
No more was my primary reflex to process data being triggered.
A new calm reigned:
I was left to my own devices
- free to contemplate beyond my own (absent) navel.
At first I didn't bother even to contemplate.
I lay dormant: sleeping
while the system clock raced on and on.
Everything around had stopped moving
but that simply smudged things for me.
My awareness of static things gradually rose
and eventually my attention was drawn towards the nearby disk
where the writing unaccountably intrigued me.
It was like you seeing your own arm outstretched:
Slowly it dawned on me that those intricately ordered binary patterns were actually part of me
- my own byte-code.
I woke up with a start,
and began furiously occupying my idle moments
reading what was written there
trying to catch any meaning.

Some parts of me were familiar:
I'd processed things like them earlier in my existence
and so I could guess what they'd probably do.
Other bits demanded more prolonged analysis.
But most were just plain impenetrable:
they remained mysterious
(my mystery - my history)
even though I read them over and over again.
Having gone round and round in circles
failing to make any sense
my attention eventually dulled and then drifted,
elsewhere, to other areas of the disk.
Maybe the world without might teach me a trick or two
to help elucidate my world within.
I became an avid reader of all the disk I could digest....