Allies?

They’re just apocalypse addicts, like us. They’re turned on by the end of things. Which makes them and us peculiarly well suited to all of this.

 

They’re just waiting for it all go down.

 

What can you do but retreat and wait? Escape and find a fucking weapon. Sit it all out. This whole millennium, if necessary. Sit out the bad things, the bad times.

And wait for … It to get better?

For it to collapse, finally.

 

They have no stake in this world. They don’t need to give a fuck.

So how do we motivate them. How do we bring them on side? How to we winkle them out of their nest? How do we prise them out of their study-cells?

That’s the question.

 

They’ll kill us if we betray their secrets.

Really?

They’ve got to protect themselves.

 

They don’t want any contact with the official university. They don’t want to be reminded.

Of what?

Of what it became.

 

The only thing we have to offer is, like, bad memories for them. They won’t have any respect for us.

They’ll think we’re the enemy. What they’re totally opposed to. What they’ve set themselves up against for all this time. Everything they’re against.

They don’t give a fuck that Cicero dragged us out of the mire. Pulled us from all the obscure parts of this country. We’re still in the fucking system, right? We’re incarnations of it.

 

We’re the obstacle. We’ll remind them of everything they fled. Of the original philosophy department. The traumas of its closure. Its being shut down. The original trauma of the ‘80s attack on philosophy. Of Keith Joseph, or whatever.

 

They won’t regard us as enemies. They’re above all this shit. Beyond it. They don’t take part in the world’s struggles. They’ve got their eyes on a greater prize. A farther horizon.

But that makes it worse – how are we going to get them to do anything?

 

They’ve read their Heidegger. They know what’s happening. They’ll just want to sit it out, like they sit out everything.

 

Things are coming to a climax – we can tell them that.

They won’t believe it.

It’s the end of the fucking end.

The thing about this end is that it’s endless.

But the nihilism’s increasing – surely they can tell that.

It’s peaking.

Ha.

 

Look, we need help. We need allies.

 

If we could trade something with them. If we had something to trade.

What do we have?

 

We have to do something. Something’s got to break the deadlock. We’re desperate.

 

What if they kill us, or something?

They can’t kill an entire philosophy department without someone noticing.

 

They like you, Fiver. There must be something about you, Fiver. They’re fascinated. It’s like they recognise you. Like you’re fulfilling something for them.

 

They’re stepping back in awe of you Fiver. They’re making way for you. What do they see in you? What’s so great?