This is the next phase of their plan – their great plan. They’ll move us all into places like this.
Totally manageable. Everything monitored. Measurable. Consuming as little carbon as possible. Barely exhaling, lest we pollute the world.
This the cage.
It doesn’t look like a cage.
This is the trap.
We know nothing but hyperbole. We speak fluent hyperbole. We have to! I’s the only way … the only possibility … of answering back. Of speaking back. Of shouting back. In the world’s fucking night, how else are we supposed to speak?
Our paranoia … so massive … so great … as great as the campus.
We’re reacting to things that haven’t happened yet. We’re reacting to the future. To future events. We can see the trends. We can see where things are going.
We’re Discerning, capital D. We’re not just passengers. We’re not just carried along.
It’s like there’s a tractor beam. We’re being drawn – pulled across the campus. Some magnetic force. It’s like we know where we have to go. It’s fate. We’re being drawn further and further in.
We’re being shown the secret campus. The campus within the campus.
Do you think?
We’re being shown Secrets. The campus is confiding in us. The campus is whispering in our ears.
The campus is leading us. The campus is taking us where it wants us to go. It’s nudging us. There are all these prompts.
The campus has plans for us. The campus is programming us. This is the campus brainwashing. Happening in real time!
Our thought patterns. Our thought processes …
We’re not supposed to know, though. We ‘re not supposed to know what the campus is doing to us.
How come we know? What’s special about us?
If we know, then the campus wants us to.
Do you think?
The campus is a torturer – that’s what I reckon. It wants to fuck us up and to know that it’s fucking us up. The campus wants to feel its power. To enjoy its own strength. Isn’t that sick? Well, this campus is sick.
There’s a malevolent intelligence at the heart of it all. Testing its powers. Becoming conscious.
Do you think?
The Singularity is here – right here. It’s awakening. Coming to itself. Seeing what it can do.
What awoke it, do you think?
We did, maybe. Us, crossing the campus.
Why us, though?
This campus is conscious. Sentient. There’s an AI intelligence at the heart of it all. That’s awakening.
A super intelligent campus. Trying to communicate with us. Is it possible?
It’s like Solaris – did you see that? The camps is trying to speak. What’s it trying to say?
I am that I fucking I am. The words of God.
You’re a lunatic.
It takes a lunatic. There are probably campuses like this awakening all over the world.
Did you ever wonder – really wonder – why we’re here? Why Cicero picked us? When we’re so … pathetic. We’re at a Russell group uni. Do you think that was by chance.
That was just to amuse Cicero. She was perverse like that.
Don’t talk about her in the past tense!
We were handpicked. To be sacrificed. This campus is basically some giant wicker man.
But Cicero picked us out.
What if Cicero had an agenda? What if she was some kind of agent of theirs.
No!
The best way to defeat the opposition is to own the opposition – that’s what Stalin said.
Cicero wasn’t owned. No more than we are.
But what if we are owned?
Maybe we’re a sleeper cell, just awaiting the trigger word. Just waiting the order that will set us in motion.
They knew they had to eliminate Philosophy first. They knew they had to wipe us out. We’re a danger. Because this is the sort of thing that we discern. We can tell. And they know we can tell.
So why are they moving us to Organisational Management, rather than just shutting us down? That’s the thing that puzzles me.
They want a witness. They want to be seen. It’s like those villains in Bond movies, explaining their secret plans …
Maybe it’s some karmic thing. They have to show their plans to someone … we have to give our tacit permission … that’s what gets them off a kind of karmic debt.
They want Philosophy to know – that’s the thing. They want Philosophy to see.
We’re not even Philosophy. We’re Philosophical studies.
Look, we’re the closest thing on campus.
They’re probably listening to us now. AREN’T YOU, FUCKERS? They enjoying following us working out their plans.
Come on, malevolent AI, flash the campus lights if you understand! Give us a sign! Beam something into the heavens! Light up the fucking clouds!
We were being prepared for this. Our whole lives. Our philosophical careers … our non-careers. We’re for a reason …
Prepared – who by?
By the opposite of this campus. By the opposite of this sentient horror.
A messiah.
Yes – a messiah.
Face it: Organisational Management has become self-aware. Organisational Management has booted itself into existence. Behold – our new Organisational Management God!
But why does it just keep quiet and do its world-domination thing? Why is it revealing itself to us?
Organisational Management wants to be seen, even by its enemies. It wants to be feared by its enemies. It’s living from fear, even now. Fear feeds it, I’ll bet. Fear’s what it wants.
It’s deranged. How come the singularity’s mad?
Work in Progress 