There’s a term in programming for the ability of running code to examine its own structure: Reflection. The short computer program at the core of Narcissystem does nothing but gaze at its image lovingly. Its output, a complete description of itself down to the level of bits—of zeroes and ones—is presented in this book as a beautiful material text, a tribute to how computer programs and poems, although they have the power to do much more, are often pathologically self-centered.

… I’ll examine and describe myself using the following process: Go through each line, describing each token. For each, describe the ASCII characters that constitute it. For each, enumerate the eight bits that are used to represent it.

One early version of this project was part of National Novel Generation Month in November 2023. Another was presented at the open mic at WordHack in Brooklyn on December 21, 2023. This book’s textual contents and material form are definitive.