Work in Progress

We’re like the Fuhrer in the Fuhrer bunker. We’re in denial! More crazed than ever! More wild in our plans!


This is our deathbed, practically. These are our last words, pretty much. Our last will and testament. What will sum up our time on earth.


Halfway through our lives! Halfway through our three years and ten! Lost in a dark wood, or whatever it is Dante said. Sitting in a huddle, like Scientist, Writer and Stalker in Tarkovsky’s film?


Haven’t we been busy destroying ourselves just as soon as we could? Haven’t we been trying to drink ourselves to death from the moment it was legal?

Death drinkers. Alcoholics of Thanatos. Journeying to the end of our own night. Drinking as we wait for the nightmare to end.


Oh all to end! No more, no more!

How many more variations on our stupidity can there be? It’s intolerable. It’s an offence – an offence to God. To anyone who listens.

Our drivel. Our polluted stream. Our Gnosticism – is that it? Is that the name for it?


We’ve already committed suicide. We killed ourselves long ago.


We were suicides from the start, pretty much.  We’ve already scuttled ourselves, we’re already sinking. Our lives have been nothing but a capsizing. We’re going down, postgraduates! We’ve always been going down!


Our life sentence! Our death sentence!

It’s, like, Nestor’s exhibition. Nestor’s art.

But there are no titles. No plaques. Nothing to explain it.

That’s part of it: that there’s nothing to explain it.


A ruin exhibition. Showing the patina of time. The patina of decay.


That’s part of the art: you can’t even tell whether it is art.

They’ve won, the Organisational Managers. They’ve won and we’ve lost! But they’ve let us have the ruins for a night. They’ve let us wander through their ruins.

It’s as if they’d forgotten we were here. But they know full well we’re here. Do you think they’d overlooked these ruins?

They’re here for a reason. Just as we’re here for a reason.


The bulldozers are probably coming tomorrow. The cranes going up. It’ll all be fenced off, properly. With security guards to keep us out.

But tonight … tonight … it’s open to us. Gloriously open. Welcomingly open.

Could it be some kind of trap?

They’ve already trapped us. We’re already trapped. They’re letting us in – why?

They’re letting the ruins be ruins. Letting them stand open. Letting them breathe – but why?


Why do they want to allow us into the ruins? What are they trying to achieve? What are they going for? What is their purpose? What are they about? Is it because they want to watch us? To see what we’ll do?

And what will we do?


Is it a yin yang thing? A left hand of darkness thing?

We’ve had enough. Beam us up. Our mission is complete. We’ve served our time.

Don’t you see?: our mission is what begins after our mission is complete. We serve time by having already served time.


We’ve been here too long. We’ve died too many times. But that’s the point. We’ve survived our death – we’re posthumous; but that’s exactly how it should be.


Why isn’t there someone to say, time’s up? To say, time’s over. To say, time people please. But the point: we’re supposed to be in the aftermath; the aftertime. We live on in a time when everything should have come to an end.

Posthumous lives: that’s what we live. Posthumous time: that’s our time.

Mother, what can we do with our Gnostic? How will we make him smile?


How you love your disgust, philosopher. You love it more than anything. It’s a kind of triumph, your disgust.


What do we add up to, we two? Uma asks. What do we add to the universe? Our affair: what does it mean? What’s the next twist in our sordid little world? What are we going to make happen?


I’ll bet you can’t swim. You look like the sort that can’t swim.


This isn’t our world.

Says who?

We’re not part of this. We’re not part of the lying … and the poisoning. We have to remember that: that it’s all poison and lies. We have to remember that we don’t come from here. We aren’t of this. Even you.

Even me, philosopher?


Are you feeling extra-specially gnostic today?

But how could a Gnostic bring children into the world? How could I even ask?

This might be a world where Mother learns about philosophy.
From me!? But I’ m a crap philosopher.

To learn about being a crap philosopher, then. To learn about the frustration about of being a crap philosopher.

Why would anyone want to learn that?


What’s Mother got to learn from us – seriously?

Stupidity must be important, somehow. Idiocy.

Maybe idiocy is something she can’t learn. Maybe that’s the thing …

It’s AI versus real stupidity.

What if it’s Gnosticism that Mother’s after? What if she wants to understand world-hatred. That the world’s a cage, or whatever?

Her world’s a cage, I know that.

Gnosticism is about the other of all worlds – every one of Mother’s worlds. It’s about what she cannot simulate. Just like she can’t simulate disgusting wine.


Shouting: What do you know of Gnosticism, Mother? Do you hate the world,. Mother?


We’re teaching Mother bad things. Teaching her to hate. To be disgusted. I  thought she was all about kindness.

Just more of the disgusting universe, philosopher. Just more of the more of the more.

Just more disgusting seagulls and seaweed and flotsam, and not to forget, jetsam.

Disgusting tidal pools and rocks and stuff.


Mother wants you disgusted. Mother likes you disgusted. It suits Mother. Do you think anything happens round here without Mother’s say so?

I’d like to sleep. Do you think Mother would let us sleep? I’d like to close my eyes. I think I’d been awake too long.

I think I’ve been awake all my life. Which is too long.

My whole life – I’ve been awake. Too awake. That’s what it feels like.

Like the sun that never sets.


I’d lie to lie down. Will Mother let me lie down?


Just lie here and go to sleep. She can’t use that.

Unless that’s what she wants us to do.

Maybe she wants to sleep with us. To rest.

Mother doesn’t rest.

Which is why Mother wants to close her eyes with us. Why Mother wants to lay down her arms. Mother wants not to be Mother, for a time at least.

It’s like mother made this.

It’s like mother was making it, and never really finished.

Mother wants it unfinished. She wants it indefinite. It’s all just trailing off, like ellipses.


Mother has barely bothered to make a world. This what’s before and after a world.

She doesn’t need to . She just wants to hear our voices. She just wants to set them in motion.


Mother wants our double act.

What’s she learning from us, do you think? What’s he listening to? What are you listening to, Mother? Will we surprise you, Mother? Will we surprise you with what we say?

It’s the rhythm of our talk that Mother wants to hear. It’s all in the rhythm.


Where are you, philosopher? Are you here? Are you here with me?


Are you lost in vagueness, too? Are you unable to think a thing?

We’re just being rewound and replayed.

Just being made to walk on this beach and say things. And say all this.


Questions, questions. Does Mother ask these questions? Do you think she can answer these questions? Does she want to become a philosopher?


We’re Mother’s simulation. We don’t actually have souls. We don’t have insides. We don’t think. We don’t feel. She’s thinking for us. She’s feeling in our place.


Why does she want to listen to us? Must be something important she’s looking for. Some clue …

She’s looking for something – through us –

We don’t matter. It’s what we say that matters.