Work in Progress

These are Philip K. Dick days. Late Philip K. Dick, when he’d gone half mad. Only late Philip K. Dick would understand. Only the author of the Exegesis. Only Philip K. Dick gone Gnostic …

 

We need to get out Philip K. Dick heads on. To see the tech stuff as completely bound up with spiritual stuff.

We’re Cicero’s team. Cicero’s crew. Cicero’s seven.

We have to realise what Cicero found in us. Actualise it. Awaken ourselves. Open our eyes in the darkness.

We have to send our eyebeams out, piercing the darkness. Looking for what’s real. What’s true.

 

What did she bring us here for?

Come on, she didn’t have a plan. It wasn’t about a long term strategy. She was just an anarchist. Or a nihilist. Or whatever.

She brought us here for her own amusement. She wanted to be entertained. Gnostically.

 

It’s about pooling out strengths. Working together. Avengers-like. Justice-League-style.

 

This is about Cicero’s war with Organisational Management. She knew what was coming, and that we were the only way to defeat it. She brought us here as an army – not as some kind of sacrifice. It wasn’t just Gnostic perversity.

Sure, you go on believing that.

The postgraduates know a catastrophe’s coming. A great cull. Which they’ll survive underground.  It was like those ancient people in Derinkuyu, with their underground city.

The postgraduates know what they’re planning – the enemy. They’re prepping. They’ve got this a vast secret pantry, stacked with tins. With sacks of lentils.

 

Underground: that’s where PhD students go when they don’t want to finish. When they’ve given up trying to get on in the academic world – to publish their work. To get research fellowships.

They’ve left the world, the underground PhD students. They’ve taken their leave. Renounced everything, Written letters to their loved ones, explaining. They’re like those Indian ascetics who have a mock funeral before they take up the mendicant life.

 

They’ve trained themselves in all kinds of things, the underground PhD students. Close combat. Akido – all that fancy stuff with sticks. They can see in the dark, pretty much. And read with the tips of their fingers.

Are they working on telekinesis. Because that would be useful.

Why?

They could steer the bore. Reverse it. Let it drill upwards. Drill away at the roots of the campus towers.

 

Our postgraduates know they can go underground, when the time comes. They know they can take the vow. Disappear.

 

Perhaps the underground postgraduates know a way to defeat all this. Perhaps they know a way to bring down the towers.

So let’s contact them. Contact Nimrod. Can you do that, postgraduates?

Postgraduates, shrugging.

Help us help you. Because if we don’t, the Organisational Managers will destroy you.

 

Do the organisational managers know about the tunnels?

They’re building tunnels of their own. Their own catacombs. The Organisational Management campus goes as deep as it does high.

Trillians: the bar at the end of the universe. The last bar, where it’s always the last night – the last night before the end. Where we’re always in mourning for everything’s that happened. Where we’re always looking back at our lives and the shape of our lives. When we’re always asking ourselves what it was all for? Whether we made the best use of our time on Earth? Did we act for the good? For the True? Did we serve the Beautiful?

Trillians: the last judgement bar, where we console ourselves for what we did. For what we did not do. Where we ask forgiveness in general. Where we’re determined to confess. To convert. Because there’s still time. There’s still one night left. Because there’s enough time for repentance.

Trilliians, where It’s always end time funk night. Where it’s always Ball of fucking Confusion night. Where it’s always dancing with tears in our eyes night. Holding each other. Weeping openly.  

Trillians, where it’s always singalong time. Geordie knees-up time. Singing the old postgraduate songs. The old postdoctoral songs. Singing the new junior lecturer’s songs. The European philosophy tribulation songs. Singing the deep songs of the doomed humanities. Requesting Klaus Nomi’s Death so we can fall into each other’s arms, weeping for the humanities.

Organisational Management Christmas can only be anti-Christmas. What do they know of festivity? Of eating, drinking and making merry?

 

Maybe the drones will do something Christmassy.

They’re still busy with the Northern lights.

Is that really drones? I don’t believe it.

 

Is that a comet? Is that the star of Bethlehem, to light the way?

It’s a drone, sent to find us, because we’re late. They’re worried we’re lost.

The Apex – that’s where we’re heading. Shouldn’t we able to see it by now? How far we’ve come! But we haven’t got anywhere.

 

This wind! So keen! It’s like the campus was build to channel the wind. For wind corridors – wind tunnels. To blast us all. To punish us.

Maybe the wind’s trying to save us. It’s pushing us away. It’s driving us out.

We have to force ourselves against the wind to get anywhere.

 

Are we walking in circles? It all looks the same. It’s all the same and the deepening of the  same.
The campus is some tautology. It is itself, nothing more. It’s the unplace. The noplace. Perfect indifference.

This is where nowhere is. Here, collapsing into nowhere. Nobody’s settlement.

Cicero knew how to flatter the apparatchiks. How to make them feel important. How to make them feel that all her ideas were their own.

Cicero knew how to play them. How to speak their language. She all but hypnotised them. She programmed the programmers in turn. Nudged the nudgers. Out behavioural-psychologised the behavioural psychologists.

 

Cicero understood apparatchik logic. She understood how to work the chain of command. She knew how to do management speak. HR speak. She could paly 4D chess better than any of them.

When there was once personality. And idiosyncrasy. And character. Before the great bland-out. Before everyone became infinitely pliable. Totally manipulable. Before we became gullible and steerable, the believers of every lie. Before we’d been standardised. Processed. Put through their nurseries. And schools. And unis.

Before we’d become foolable. Dupe-able. Programmable. Predictable. Before we became implementers. The carriers-out of orders.

What is the void, anyway? The death of God stuff? Haven’t we got over that yet?

The death of all authority figures. And anything that stands in for God.

And the death of the Self, maybe, with a capital S. The death of who we are.

The usual stuff, in other words. That was exciting in Paris around sixty years ago.

The void’s the great Zero The great nothing-burger.

Nihilism, in other words.

 

The best conspiracy theories are the sublime ones. The wilder, the better.

You’re trying to fill in the void with your crazy theories. When really, there’s just the void – just nihilism.

Just capitalism, you mean. Late capitalism.

We’re being allowed to theorize as wildly as we like because the truth is so banal.

 

The void is baseless human stupidity. And greed. And compliance. And going along to get along. And not noticing what’s in front of your eyes.

The void is utter human mediocrity. It’s no more complex than that.

So cock up versus conspiracy, right?

It’s just fuck up. Fallenness.

It was like, classy. Untouched by all the trends. Secure in its reputation. Content to be what it was and nothing more. Not panickedly casing trends. Not reinventing itself as a new media college or a digital economy hub. Not about to close down all the arts and humanities, just like that. Not chasing the overseas students dollar.

Allowing academics doing their academic thing. Solo researchers, to do their solo scholarly stuff.

Administrators didn’t rule the place. Management speak wasn’t ubiquitous.

A sense of intellectual history. Of tradition. A little bit stuffy, but that’s okay.

With fine Victorian buildings at the university’s core. There’s even a quadrangle … Even a Victorian tower, amidst the dreadful 60s blocks …

 

It wasn’t actually ashamed to be a uni.

It actually had a library. With, like books in. That wasn’t all empty space and disco music.

It had, like a senior common room. And a junior one. They had a staff bar.

No one wore jeans. Trainers.

It didn’t have to frantically self themselves at Open Days. The institution sold itself. Respectable. Was itself. Didn’t have some trendy bollocks animated website. It didn’t need one.

Its great buildings. Well maintained. Newly repointed. There was an actual sense of place. Of genius locii. That this wasn’t just some business park. It wasn’t some glorified adult ed college.