Work in Progress

We should just lie down to die.

That’s just what they’d want us to do.

Accept our fate. Just freeze to death in the snow. Like The Little Match girl.

Is that any example to set? Don’t forget that there are postgraduates amongst us!

 

We should sing some rebel songs – some philosophy rebel songs.

There are no philosophy rebel songs. You made them up.

 

It’s like we’re in some world that broke off from the real world. That’s caught in a weird little loop.  

Some hellworld.

No – it’s not yet hell. Hell’s coming.

It’s a little loop of the world just before the actual catastrophe. Just before things really end. We’re just living out the last moments over and again.

 

The controlled sky.

And there are probably micro drones, drone swarms, flying around …

Science fiction is real, on the Organisational Management campus.

 

They’re going zombie research here. How to turn people into zombies. How to remove their souls, essentially. They’ll stop at nothing. Some … cavitation.

 

The weather’s different here – have you noticed? This is different kind of rain … and snow. This sleet … it isn’t right. It isn’t melting. They’re fucking with the sleet. These Organisational Managers ..

 

We should just give up. Lie down to die. What’s that kind of death called where you’re just eaten by vultures? There’s a name for it, I’m sure …

Sure, we could give ourselves up to artificial Organisational Management vultures ….

Are there artificial Organisational Management vultures?

All the animals on the campus are artificial. The people too, probably. Skins – what you saw in your vision, wasn’t it, Fiver?

Yes – skins. Artficial people. Or … enhanced people. I can’t work out which.

 

They’re listening to us – of course they are. They have us contained. They’re probably sending us nudges – personal ones, just for us.

 

We’re at the start of something, not the end of it – do you realise that? We’re at the beginning of something. The AI revolution … The great takeover … It’s happening already. It’s happening right now.

Helmut, talking almost to himself. Wo aber ist Gefähr, wächst das Rettende auch. Looking at us: But where there is danger, a rescuing element grows, too.

 

Helmut, looking very serious. Quoting: Nie könnte Gott dir näher sein,/Also wo Verzweiflung auch zerbirst:/In Zions selbstversunkenem Licht.

In English, Helmut! What does it mean?

Never is God closer to you/as in the deepest doubt:/in the selfwithdrawn light of Zion.

The Organisational Management campus.

What was here before?

The old Newcastle Brown Ale brewery. Prime land, too – so close to the stadium.

How did they clear this land, anyway?

There was a fire, wasn’t there?

A ‘fire’. Space lasers more like. Direct energy weapons. That’s how they work.

Seriously?

They cleared it all. And bought it for a song.

So the university has direct energy weapons?

Or it knows someone who does.

 

it isn’t very cleared. I quite like that. It’s still … undeveloped … The way it campus just opens out into chaos. A wasteland of hillocks and stones. Where local youths hang about, looking threatening.

 

Can you hear a drone? Like, a distant rumbling.

They’re sending a bore down to the centre of the earth. To extract energy from the mantle, or whatever.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

The ambition! What they’re trying to create! At the heart of Newcastle!

It’s a front. A potemkin village.

 

Most of these buildings aren’t open yet.

It’s unclear what they’re for.

 

A lockdown ready campus.

They ready for future riots. It’s carefully planned.

Furio, unscrewing the cap.

I’m developing a taste for finer things, Furio says. This is from my cellar.

Furio, necking wine. Passing it around.

In wine is truth, right? he says.

In wine is piss, Dragan says. It’s disgusting!

Fuck – rank! I say.

It’s only what we deserve, Perry says. It’s anti-wine for anti-philosophers.

Helmut, shaking his head. This wine’s off in some fundamental sense. It’s ontologically corrupt.

It’s not even wine – just piss, Dragan says.

Cat piss, I say.  

The smell of cat piss is actually a sign of quality, Furio says. It means it’s tangy. Kind of funky …

What about rat piss? Dragan says.

How do you know what rat piss tastes like? I ask.

I’m inferring it, Dragan says. From this.

It’s Satan’s piss, basically, Perry says. These grapes were trampled by Satan himself.

Get used to it – I bought a job lot, Furio says.

We could libate this campus, Perry says. Exorcise its demons.

Good luck with that, Dragan says.

It actually has stuff in it, Helmut says. Floating.

Natural sediments, Furio says.

I think they’re flies, Perry says. Satan’s, like, the Lord of Flies right?

There must be a German word for how disgusting this is, I say. Tell us, Helmut.

We’re walking against the campus. Through it, but against it. We’re opposing against the campus. Everything we are.

 

How can resist this campus? What does resistance mean? Our resistance?

We need to call upon our philosophical powers.

What powers?

Summon our philosophical spirit animals, or whatever.

 

This rain … is artificial rain. This snow … You can’t trust the snow. You can’t trust the sky. These paving stones. You can’t trust them. Full of some terrible tech. Full of some new kind of surveillance device. And as for the lamp posts. Well, we all know about them.

 

What are we good for here? What can we do?

Nothing. But they want us here. To neutralise us. To capture us. To close us down. Our higher faculties.

But don’t you see: this is our highest test! Our greatest test! This is where we’re confronting the Beast. Our existential enemy. On the Beast’s home turf! This is what we’re for. All along.

Cicero gave us apocalyptic names; new names, didn’t she? She was preparing us for this apocalyptic task. This confrontation. Say it in German, Helmut! What’s confrontation in German!

Auseinandersetzung, Helmut says.

So lucky that we have a German with us! Who knows all the philosophical technical terms! A spiritual member of Philosophical Studies, if not an actual member … Who will help us with the Auseinandersetzung … isn’t that right, Helmut?

But we’re already drunk. We’ve peaked too early. We’ve shot out bolt! Too soon! We’re premature. By the time we get there, it’ll be too late. By the time we reach Organisational Management towers – Mount Doom, the eye of Sauron, or whatever – we’ll have lost our resolve.

 

What can we do? Can you feel my pulse … it’s racing. It’s roaring. It’s out of control. Panic … I’m panicked.

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?

And now we’re marching across the campus! Across the Organisational Management campus! The magnificent seven (if we include our postgraduates), across the Organisational Management campus! Over the paving stones! By the great buildings. This building, that building. The Core. The Catalyst. The Idea. The Concept …

 

Can’t we feel the dynamism? The energy? Are we inspired?

The future’s here. The future’s angular. The future’s covered in metal cladding. Like some knock off Daniel Libeskind. The future’s got grass roofs …

And the future’s sustainable! The future’s explaining its sustainability. Advertising its sustainability. Plaques everywhere, advertising the campus as a sustainable campus! Advertising the sustainability features of the campus to all who cross it. Marketing it! Internally marketing it. To us, the campus’s staff. And its students. Reassuring us that it’s all fully sustainable. Selling itself as sustainable, 100% sustainability. Setting an example of its sustainability.

And even smug, about its own sustainability. Even virtue signalling its own sustainability.

This metal and glass campus. The glass. Dark windows. Staring out at nothing.

 

This is Architecture. It’s supposed to be dynamic. Exciting. It’s supposed to be of the future. It’s supposed to be inspiring. To generate ideas! Have we had any ideas? Any thoughts?

 

It’s a nudging campus. It nudging us in the direction it wants. Into behaving as it wants. We’re adjusting our behaviour – we don’t know it, but we are.

The campus is reforming our souls. But at least we have souls … for the moment. Not for that much longer.

 

The campus shows you what kind of person you are. If you feel at home here: a campus person. A person who will inherit the future. And if you don’t? If you’re depressed by the campus … If you despair … If you’ve had enough of the campus (and the campus will always make sure that you’ve had enough, if you’re a certain kind of person …) Straight to the euthanasia booths!  

Are there actually euthanasia booths?

There will be.

 

No despairers on this campus. No alcoholics! No homeless! No vagrants! No tramps! They’re taken care of. Nudged away.

Everyone here’s purposeful. With a good attitude. Availing themselves of opportunities for leisure. For work. Everyone here, enjoying the public spaces. Heading to work. To the gym. To the café. To play badminton. (That’s the campus sport: badminton. Everyone can unwind with a bit of badminton, in the famous campus badminton halls.)

Don’t like badminton? Well, there’s activities for all ages. Places to date. To meet someone. Go bowling. Play darts. Beer pong. Beer pong! Have you ever played beer pong! Karoke joints … Tai chi …

There’s even a place for ecumenical worship. For your spiritual needs. Non denominational. Open to all.

 

It’s doing things to us, this campus. It’s working on us.

It’s leading us. Driving us. As though it were some kind of cattle run – a very gentle cattle run. As though it were some gentle abattoir.

 

We’re being channelled by the campus. Led somewhere. Taken. We’re flowing, with the campus. We don’t need signposts. We’re being borne along to its centre, to Organisational Management towers (not its real name.) We’re being taken to the centre. There’s somewhere it wants us to go. We’re being led. By the nose. To its hub. We’re being taken to its leader.

The campus steers us, almost without our know it. Gentle descents. The downward slope of the paving stones. Gathered onto the paving stone path, led onward on the path. And now we’re following a poem, written on a metal band that’s wending through the campus. Now we’re follow the sinuous curve of that poem, as it winds through the campus. It’s suppose to be replicating the course of the culvetted river beneath. To meander as a river does.

 

And there’s running water on the campus. Sort-of-rivers – created rivers, channels of pacing tiles, elevated a little. Water flowing. Sustainably, no doubt.

 

The campus is doing sinuous. This campus is doing flow. But it can only be fake flow. It can only be false sinuous.

The campus is doing ups and downs. There’s a drama to the topography. They couldn’t flatten it. Or is it part of the design? Perhaps it was all planned this way. Perhaps they made hills and valleys.

Probably the whole design was bought from some  globalist’s template. Probably exactly the same campuses are being built all over the world. In one hundred and four campuses at once. Designed for mind control.

It’s part of the great globalist coup d’etat. The whole synchronised global takeover. They’ve perfected the legal framework. The financial framework. This is part of the architectural framework. Of the higher education initiative.

They know what they’re doing. They know what the effect of all this is on us. The dwarfing. The feeling of futility. Of impotence. That others, greater than us are in charge. That there’s no point in lifting a finger … But then why would they?

 

The campus is right about everything. It’s on the right side of history. As we are not.

 

And now, the culmination of the campus. Now the peak of the campus. This is where it all comes together. This is where it’s led.

The Organisational Management building! Organisational Management towers! The command centre of it all. The hub around which it was all built (its official name: The Hub.) That provides it with its meaning..

This is an Organisational Management campus, after all. An Organisational Management campus built with Organisational Management money. Which is why it’s only right that the whole thing orbits Organisational Management towers …

I can’t believe Daria’s missing this. I can’t believe she’s staying at homes. Sensible woman. She can’t stand it when we’re drunk and doomy, she says. But we’re always dark and doomy.

She’s staying in to write her magnum opus – that’s what she’s doing. It’s her ticket to a job somewhere else – that’s what she things. She’s on the way out. She just wants to pass through our skies like a meteor.

Don’t meteors burn up?

Like a comet, then.

She has other plans … Maybe to bust out of Philosophy altogether.

Into what?

Comparative Literature, maybe. Modern Languages.

A cunning move.

Though Modern Languages are doomed. And Comparative Literature doesn’t really exist in the UK. America, maybe.

America … is that where she wants to go? What a move …

Anyway, she’s got her head down … wants to complete her monograph, and then she’ll be off …That’s why she’s indifferent to the whole Organisational Management thing. She’s not like us. She won’t go down with the ship. She won’t be shipwrecked, with the philosophical ship.

My God. These buildings. So vast! So high! Babel all over again. Did they think they could build whatever they liked? Apparently. And the names for these buildings. Can’t you feel the evil?

 

Did Satan fall to earth here, on the Organisational Management campus?

Which chapter of Revelations are we in, on the Organisational Management campus?

 

All that’s left to us are more or less spectacular suicides. Which no one will understand.

 

We’re lost in the coils of our evil. Lost in the coiling, the writhing. Lost in the agitation of our sin. Lost in the deepening of the Fall.

 

Does the horror know itself as horror? Does it feel its own horror? Is it innocent, in its horrifyingness?

Remembering our old Philosophical Studies parties. When Cicero was in charge.

Guests from all over the university … Cicero’s guardian angels, she used to all them. Lofty people! Senior people! The great and the good, among the academic staff, like a protective guard, over our unit. Over Philosophy!

And that choral music Cicero used to play. Beautiful. And the way we’d head out on the town. To Jilly’s. Cicero liked that.

And back to hers, sometimes … Out to the coast. Ascending the stairs to her flat, in the Sir James Knott Memorial building. Falling asleep one by one, Cicero laying soft blankets over us …