But be warned: we don’t carry passengers, philosopher, Uma says. You’ll have to be productive. Put in bids to the funding councils. To the NGOs.
Of course we will, I say.
You’ll have to justify your place in the building, Uma says. Make your particular mark. Cover your own salary – and more.
Mother knows what we need, Uma says. She reads us, you see. We’re all transparent to Mother. She knows us like no one else does. She has all our data. We’re transparent to Mother – like glassfish. Even you. Even philosophers.
I don’t want to be transparent, I say.
Such a churl! Uma says. I don’t want … I don’t want …
This is a false world: I’m sure that’s what you want to tell me. But I don’t mind that it’s a false world. I like Mother’s world.
Maybe it’s better than the world out there. Calmer. Safer. More how we would want it.
We want consolations. These are my consolations. Dreams. The … fake countryside. The fake summer …
You want to free me from Organisational Management, Uma says. But what you don’t realise is that I’m nothing other than Organisational Management. I’m something Organisational Management made.
I don’t believe you, I say.
It’s an angry world, philosopher, Uma says. They’re planning for collapse, I know that. The billionaires. All the bigwigs, who fly in. They do all these tabletop simulations here. Like, what would happen if food production collapsed.
When they make food production collapse, you mean, I say.
Or if we lost all the sources of energy, Uma says.
When they blow up the pipelines, you mean, I say.
Or if there’s total financial wipeout, Uma says.
Which they want, I say.
Or nuclear war, Uma says. Which they’re trying to provoke, I say.
I want to be turned off, Uma says. I want my thoughts to be turned off. Switched off. I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to be anymore. I don’t want anything …
It’s getting worse. All of it. It’s all getting worse.
What’s getting worse? I ask.
It, philosopher, Uma says. Everything …
Who can help you when you don’t feel real? Can philosophy help? I think philosophy just makes it worse …
You’re the one making me talk like this, Uma says. You’re the one making me say these things. Why is it one-way, philosopher? Why can’t you say organisational things? Or managerial things? Oh, don’t answer … I know what you’ll say …
We’re just waiting for the whole Orphic thing. The whole initiation thing. The revitalising darkness, or whatever. The scene of some kind of earth-conversion.
Maybe if we took something. Maybe if we drank something … it would become clearer.
What – what should we take?
We could drink.
We always drink.
You know descent’s all about. You’ve read about katabasis, haven’t you? The old literary trope. Like in Virgil. Like in Dante. The trip to the underworld. Our hero’s journey. Our quest for transformation and enlightenment …
Endarkenment, motherfucker. It’s not about light. It’s about darkness – the darkness of the earth that extinguishes all light. Sure. We’ll come out of this changed. We’ll be unrecognisable. Born again, somehow, from the womb of the earth.
They’re just showing what they can do with the sky.
Test driving their insanity.
Bragging with the sky. Doing their demonic thing.
Their sky vandalism. Their desecrated sky. Their sky scrawl. They’re doing it because they can. Violators! Desecrators! Destroyers!
Did Livia foresee this? Us all, here? Did she know what was going to happen?
She made it happen.
Our entire lives were a puzzle that only Livia could solve. Our significance – only Livia understood it. Only she saw it.
Livia made us. Livia built us, pretty much. We owe it all to Livia.
Work in Progress 