Work in Progress

Have you seen Wings of Desire? It’s about these angels who just drift around, listening to people’s thoughts – they’re telepathic or something. Just witnessing their lives. Their joys and their sufferings. It’s set in Berlin. Before the wall came down. The German title translates as Heaven Over Berlin.

So what do the angels actually do?

Watch over everyone. Comfort you without knowing you. Put an arm around you when you need it.

They have these pony tails, that’s what I remember. And it’s in black and white, the film. It has a real silent cinema feel. The cinematographer put a silk stocking over the lens, apparently. To act as a filter. A city symphony, that’s what they called it.

Are there angels in our city? On this campus? Like, Geordie angels? Toon angels?

If there are, they aren’t much help. They didn’t stop this campus being built.

Are there angels of the humanities? Angels of philosophy?

We need some angels, God knows …

The Bug … It’s some new cult among the philosophy postgraduates. I don’t know where it started. They blame everything on the Bug, basically.

Philosophy postgraduates are very credulous.

I always figured the Bug was just a name for all planetary AI. That postgraduates had fucking sensed …

Is there some kind of Bug exterminator who could spray it to death? Can we phone pest control?

 

What side is the Bug on?

What side are the postgraduates on: that’s the question? Are they pro Bug or anti Bug?

There are all these Bug stickers. The Bug sucks, one might say. The Bug socks it to the Man, says another. The Bug’s behind the Man, says still another. It’s confusing.

You see all the postgraduates making the sign of the Bug. And then there are others making the sign of the extermination of the Bug.

 

The Bug is the postgraduates’ dark overlord. Or dark saviour. Or something.

Well, when you’ve been studying as long as these guys have. As incessantly. As hopelessly. You cultivate certain … delusions.

 

How do we shunt the world back on the proper timeline? How do we shift it?

Maybe the Bug knows.

Are we going to ask favours of the Bug? Does the Bug grant favours?

How do we even reach the Bug?

Psychedelics, right. We have to get to hyperspace, or the ethereal plane or whatever it’s called. Where the Bug lives.

 

What does the Bug want? What are its plans?

I dunno. Evil plans. Organisational plans. Management plans.

No, the Bug’s above all that. The Bug’s bigger than that.

 

There are factions among the postgraduates. There’s Bug Club, and then there’s anti-Bug club. It’s like the crips and the bloods.

 

Do you think we should sacrifice Fiver to the Bug?

I think we should sacrifice someone. As an offering. In exchange for destroying this timeline.

Are they any spare postgraduates? Anyone volunteer?

This world isn’t real. It’s like The Man in the High Castle: did you ever read that? It’s a fake world. That split off from reality in some weird way. It’s a false timeline..

So what’s going in the true world? Are there versions of us?

I guess so.

When did the splitting off take place?

When they built the campus, I reckon. When they demolished the Newcastle Brown building.

 

Is there any prophecy about the idiots who come at the end of philosophy? About us – the twisted ones. The fuck-witted ones …

What role do we have? What are we here to achieve? Who will we save?

No one. Not even ourselves, I reckon.

 

We’re part of this. We were made by this. So paranoid! So deranged! So hyperbolic!

We’re as sick as this – the whole world. We’re as twisted as it is – the entire thing, this whole world. We’re no better … Probably worse …

 

Are we going to explode this world – this fake world? Are we going to destroy the abomination? This offshoot from real history?

Are we going to destroy ourselves – what this timeline has made us into? Will we have to kill our false selves? These shadows of what we really are?

The water of life.

That stuff …

The rumours … are they true?

I don’t get it – what’s the water of life?

Postgraduates are always in the line of apostolic succession. Take Fiver. He’s being supervised by Io. And Io was supervised by …?

Ron Flowers, at Essex.

The guy forced into retirement?

Fucked too many students or something …

And who supervised him?

Someone quiet famous, actually: Eloise Springer.

And who supervised her?

That’s going pretty far back. She was American. I think it was …

Hannah Arendt. It was Hannah Arendt.

Fuck off. Look it up.

Eloise Springer … supervised by Curt Broadstairs … supervised by HANNAH ARENDT. It’s fucking her!

See, a direct apostolic line to Hannah Arendt. To old Europe. Pretty fucking cool.

Well, the water of life is supposed to release the accumulated wisdom of the chain of supervisors. To let your supervisor and then your supervisor’s supervisor and so on, speak through you. All the way back.

And Hannah Ardent was supervised by Heidegger, right? I’d like to hear what the old Nazi has to say …

The water of life – if it actually exists – means that the postgraduate student becomes legion. Becomes multiple. The whole tradition speaks through them.

Has that ever happened before?

I never knew the water of life actually existed before. It was always only a postgraduate legend …

 

The water of life is about getting the whole chain of supervisors speaking through you. Going all the way back.

All the way back to where?

You can just go back and back. So if your supervisor was Prof Shithead back at the University of Shite, she might have been supervised by Prof Bellend from the University of Fuckery. So what? So what? Because Prof Bellend might have been supervised by someone good. Someone continental. Who might have supervised by someone at the Sorbonne. Who might have been supervised by Foucault himself. Or Deleuze. Or Laurelle – who knows?

Wow, so we could channel some French philosopher?

Theoretically.

So let’s try it.

On the way to a postgraduate party.

I don’t get why they’re inviting us. Would we have invited staff to a postgraduate party? Would the staff who taught us actually have gone to a postgraduate party?

I mean, we’ve made it, right? We’ve done what they’re dreaming of doing, and probably never do. We’ve got the job. We’ve got the fucking career. God knows how, but we have. Whilst they’re … fucked, right?

We won’t be able but to appear as smug. As complacent.

As old, for fuck’s sake. What’s the average age here?  

These guys aren’t anything like as fucked as we were. They’re Russell group, for one thing. That’s an advantage.

Yeah, but they don’t have our desperation. Our desire to make it despite all odds.

They don’t have a Cicero to rescue them from total oblivion.

They’ve got more book learning than we did. Some of them even have languages.

Which means they don’t have the despair that we did. They aren’t as mad.

I wish I was still a postgraduate. They’re not yet at the age when they have to deliver, right? They live in possibility. In pure potential ..

We still have some potential, though. We’ve got a few years. Heidegger wrote Being and Time at thirty-seven.

That gives us a few years. Wait – how old are you?

Thirty-three.

Heidegger had already give the History of the Concept of Time lectures by the time he was thirty-three.

Merleau-Ponty had already written The Phenomenology of Perception at thirty-three.

Simone Weil was writing her best notebook stuff. She was dead a year later.

Kristeva published Revolution of Poetic Language at twenty-nine …

Fucking Schelling was published at seventeen. Hume wrote his Treatise at twenty three.

We could always be late bloomers.

You’re going to bring up Kant, aren’t you? Someone has to bring up Kant.

He was fifty-seven when he published The Critique of Pure Reason. Fifty fucking seven …

We could still bloom at fifty-seven …

Delusion.

But it’s an enabling delusion. It makes us feel like we could have something to say. Philosophy’s generous like that. You don’t have to give up your philosophical hopes until you’re positively ancient …

Which means you spend your whole life living in a dream.

What about the great works of commentary – like, secondary stuff. How old was Hyppolite when he finished his book on Hegel?

Thirty-seven, I reckon.

And Derrida published those three books at thirty-seven.

They were hardly commentary …

Cixous published that enormous book on Joyce when she was thirty-one. That was her doctorat d’État. Much higher than a British doctorate.

And they do habilitations on the continent, don’t they?

Sure. Doctorates are for pussies: that’s what they think over there. Benjamin’s Trauerspiel study was supposed to get him his habilitation.

How old was he?

I don’t know. Twenty-nine, maybe.

We’ve to buckle down. Get something written …

Common room.

Is this where you all hang out?

I don’t hang out.

Is this where you have a cup of tea together, a nice chat? Pore over the magazines together?

Examining the titles. Journal of Critical Management Studies. Inclusive Capitalism Bulletin. Yearbook of the Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research: sharing research practices for fostering happiness, resilience, kindness and connection: that’s the tagline.  

Business Dialogue magazine. Here’s the mission statement: Facilitating discussion among business stakeholders on issues related to local social responsibility and sustainability. That’s really snappy. I love it when capitalism does ethics.

How come you look down your nose at all these things. Are you some kind of commie?

Cicero used to call us libtard commies. She was brought up behind the iron curtain. When there still was an iron curtain.

So she was anti-left?

She was of the superior left – that’s what she called it.

Actually, business studies has gone rather anti-capitalist. It’s all ESG now.

Sure, capitalism does woke. I’ve heard about that.

It’s all about kindness and diversity.

Sure, it’s right here: the kindness board. Reading: Embedding kindness behaviours in the organisation culture. Planting seeds of kindness. Kindness is Contagious … Pass It On. No one can agree on the word, compassion, but we agree on kindness. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

That’s the Dalai Lama, I think. It’s kindness week. Or kindness month. Or kindness season. Actually, I think it’s permanent kindness now.

You know you’re in trouble when corporate types start taking about ethics …

The corridor, widening.

Philosophy PhD students, sitting on cushions. Fiver, recumbent. Closed-eyed.

How did you guys get here? I ask.

Postgraduates, shrugging. We wanted some quiet.

And what are you actually doing? I ask.

Fiver’s trying to reach the other timeline – the real one, the postgraduates say.

Laudable, I say. Via ayahuasca?

Yeah, they say. Wanna join?

We’re busy, I say.

We’re having an illicit affair, Laure says.

Cool, the postgraduates say.

Scatter cushions. Floor to ceiling windows . Mobiles, dangling. The faint sound of a drone.

What is this place? I ask.

The notch, Laure says, pointing to a plaque.

Me, reading: A space for contemplation. An area that has no purpose. A whatever space. Pure potentiality. Ready for any activity. That can be used … however anyone likes.

Which is what the postgrads are doing: using the space, Laure says. You guys are pretty fucking cool. Not at all as doomy as Shiva. Is this guy – Fiver – okay?

Postgraduates, eyeing Laure suspiciously.

She’s cool, I say. She’s on side.

Are you guys as paranoid as Shiva? Laure asks.

Uh … maybe, the postgraduates say.

More paranoid! I say. They believe in the Bug.

The Bug? Laure says.

The postgraduates, silent.

Do you have apocalyptic names too? Laure asks.

Shaking their heads.

The Bug. Laure says. Is that like who’s in control of it all?

Maybe, the postgraduates say.

So what’s going on in the proper timeline? Laure asks.

We don’t know yet, the postgraduates say. Fiver’s trying to remote-view it.

Go gentle with him, I say. He already had one vision this evening.

So this isn't the real timeline …, Laure says, wonderingly. 

This is the timeline to fucksville, the postgraduates say.

Why do you philosophers always think you’re doomed? Laure says.

Everything's doomed on this timetline, the postgraduates say. 

They might be right, I say.

Is it all Organisational Management's fault? Laure asks.

There is no Organisational Management in the real timeline, the postgraduates say. We're sure of that. This building doesn't exist in the real timeline. This whole campus.

What about me – do I exist? Laure says.

You'd be doing something else, probably, the postgraduates say.

That might not be a bad thing, Laure says. But then I wouldn't have met Shiva.

Another thing: we spiked the drinks, the postgraduates say.

At the party? Laure asks. Right on. It needed a bit of life.

What with? I ask.

We have stuff, the postgraduates say. You know us.

I’m not feeling anything, Laure says.

Did you drink any punch? the postgraduates ask.

Just the wine, I say.

Should be hitting them about now, the postgraduates say.

Righteous, Laure says.

They’re retooling and rewiring our bodies. And it’s clever. It’s not via some kind of surgery. It’s not about putting chips in your brain. They’re injecting this stuff into you. It self-assembles, swarms through your body, crosses the blood brain barrier. And then you’re ready to receive your marching orders. From frequencies.

 

It’s genome editing. Genome engineering. Where your DNA is deleted, modified or replaced live.

 

Whoever owns the patent on your gene alteration, owns you and can do what they like with you. They can clone you. Kill you. Enslave you.

 

They’re programming us at the level of the cell. The molecule. Turning us into biological robotic machines.

 

There are new kinds of human, engineered in the lab. Grown there. Who are going to inherit the earth. Old humans are being phased out.

They’re turning us into synthetic humans. From within. That’s the plan. We’re to become zombies.

Really?

Zombies or synths. Same difference. Biohybrids, basically – that’s the new name for cyborgs. Biorobotic machines. Biology by design, right?

So it’s not about actual robots. About building androids.

We’re going to become synthetic humans. Us. They’re modifying us from within. They’re working on us. Our blood’s full of genetically modified nanoparticles allowing them to track us, manipulate us, programme us, and hybridise us. And to alter our genes, apparently. To fuck with our DNA. So that we aren’t homo sapiens anymore.

What are we going to be?

Homo borg genesis. That’s their name for it.

Fuck off. They named it after Star Trek.

They have a sense of humour. But they actually mean it.

We’re becoming borgs …

Whatever we’re becoming, they’ve got the patent on it. They’ve patented our altered genes. Which means they own us. Just like with GM crops. We’re chattels, basically. New kinds of slave.

And you think this is happening?

Sure. They’ve gone from beta to operational. They’re rolling it out. It’s happening in real time.

What will they actually do with us, as homo borg genesis?

Their bidding. Whatever they want. They can just kill us, if they want to. Simulate any disease. Blood could just pour out of our edifices at any time, if they decide so.

Why don’t they just do it?

Wait and see. Perhaps they will.

Shiva’s not my real name, you know.

What is it?

Sunil.

I prefer Shiva.

It’s a badass name. Cicero came up with it.

Cicero? What did she have to do with it?

She gave us new names. Actually, she gave herself a new name: Cicero wasn’t her real name. Her real name was something Eastern European.

Yeah, but why Cicero?

I don’t know.

Did she identify with Cicero?

She never said anything about it, if she did.

So you just let Cicero give you new names.

Sure. It seemed fun.

It’s like you joined a cult.

Yeah, it is a kind of cult. I didn’t want to be who I was.

You guys are so fucked up.

It was kind of like the Magic Band. Do you remember how Captain Beefheart gave them new names?

But this is like a philosophy department.

Sure.

And Cicero got your email addresses changed.

Yes.

Thorough. You know, I don’t even understand the names she gave you. Why did she call Barbarossa, Barbarossa? Was it actually after some Holy Roman Empire? Did it have anything to do with Operation Barbarossa.

I think she just liked the name. How it sounded. Apocalyptic names, she called them. Like you’re supposed to different names at the apocalypse in the Bible. You get white robes and new names – so long as you’re one of the righteous.